This Is How I Find Her
Page 18
“Mom—” I start.
But before I can remind her who James is, she looks up from the dough and smiles at him, the kind of welcoming, wide, present-in-the-moment smile that makes me want to grin back, I’m so relieved to see it.
“James!” she says, coming around the counter toward us.
“Hi, Ms. Canon,” James says. It comes out in something closer to the little kid voice I remember, lifting at the end, like he’s pleased she remembers him. They both laugh.
I step aside and she reaches for his arm just as the doorbell rings again. When I leave the room to answer it, she’s pulling him toward the counter to pour the filling into the crust.
This time when I pull the door open, I know I’ll see Natalie and Zach standing in the pool of light on the porch, leaning against each other. They both smile at me, and Natalie squeezes my shoulder as she comes in, as close as she gets to a hug.
“Thanks for inviting us,” Zach says. It sounds oddly formal, but he softens it by actually giving me a hug.
“Come meet everyone,” I tell them, leading them into the kitchen. I walk them over to my mother first, introducing Natalie and Zach as my friends.
Soon, everyone’s talking to one another, Natalie asking my mother about painting and my mother waving her arms around as she answers; James and Zach chatting as they snack on chips; Leila and Aunt Cynthia carrying dishes into the dining room as Leila asks her mother how long the pie will need to bake. I have to grab a spoon and clink it against a glass to get everyone’s attention when it’s time to sit down for dinner.
James grabs my arm to hold me back as everyone else moves into the dining room. When I look at him, he stares at the floor and shuffles his feet.
“I have off work tomorrow. So I was wondering if you, um, if you maybe wanted to hang out?”
I feel a smile spread across my face, so wide I’d be embarrassed if James were actually looking at me. It’s not just his question, it’s everything: having my mother back, having everybody there.
But still, I have to ask. “Are you sure?”
James looks at me, as if to say, why would I have asked if I weren’t sure?
I tilt my head toward the dining room, where everyone is passing plates and pulling out their chairs. The whole messy group of them. Do you really want to get involved in this?
But really, he already is.
“I’m sure,” he says. We spend about a minute smiling at each other, until he shuffles his feet again. “So, tomorrow?”
“Okay,” I say. “Tomorrow.”
—
As soon as we’re sitting at the table, passing around the food, the conversation picks up again. Now Leila’s telling Natalie about her classes—I hear her say something about our English project. James asks Zach about living in New York City.
“I’m hoping to move there for college in two years,” he tells him. “I’d love to go to NYU.” Something I didn’t know about him.
I know no one would mind if I jumped into the conversation, if I told Natalie and James that Leila and I used to want to live in New York too. That maybe someday we still will. But for the moment all I want to do is lean back in my chair, watch, and listen.
Aunt Cynthia and my mother have their heads bent together, and they’re talking to each other quickly, excited about something. Every so often, they erupt into laughter, and I wonder what they’re whispering about. Uncle John smiles, looking at them, the kind of what am I going to do with them smile I imagine he’s been giving them ever since that party years ago when my mother introduced him to Aunt Cynthia.
We look nothing like Trudy’s family, all with identical strawberry blond hair and the same pattern of freckles across their noses, matching like the pots lined up in Aunt Cynthia’s kitchen. We’re a mishmash. More like the array of dishes and spoons and forks that might be in the kitchen of a guest house, where people are always coming and going, accidentally taking some pieces with them to be replaced by others that don’t quite fit.
But in a way, we do go together. Uncle John, at the opposite end of the table from me, spotted the ways Aunt Cynthia and I are alike when neither of us could see them. There’s Aunt Cynthia and my mother, whose heads of identical brown hair tilt toward each other at the same angle as they talk. Natalie loves photography the way my mother loves painting. Zach and James have the same dream of living in New York City. Leila spends as much time practicing her singing as James does his drumming.
And then there’s me, who has a little bit in common with each person lined up around the table.
My family.
I don’t want to interrupt to make a toast, and I’m not actually sure how I would say everything I’m thinking right now. But Leila and I catch each other’s eyes and smile, and then I look over at my mother and Aunt Cynthia.
We don’t need to say anything out loud. But at the same moment, the four of us raise our glasses to each other.
Acknowledgments
There is a world of people without whom this book would not exist. Thanks to my wonderful agent, Suzie Townsend, who loved this story from the beginning and made it so much better. To Kristin Ostby, who acquired the manuscript for Albert Whitman, and Wendy McClure, who shepherded it through the publication process. And to everyone else at Whitman: thank you.
My first handful of pages would never have become a book without feedback from Micol Ostow and everyone I met in Micol’s YA writing class at Mediabistro. G. Jules Reynolds, J. Anderson Coats, Meg Burden, and Hannah Ehrlich, beta readers extraordinaire, made the story stronger with every draft.
My friends are an incredible source of support and encouragement, and their joy at seeing my book published has made the process all the more exciting for me. And, of course, my family: my brother, who always makes me laugh (“How’s that novel coming?”), my mom, who showed me what it means to love books, and my dad, who was my first writing teacher. I am lucky to have all of you.
About the Author
Sara Polsky writes fiction, essays and journalism. Her work has appeared in Christian Science Monitor, Poets & Writers, and various literary magazines. She writes for the blog Curbed as well. She lives in New York City. This is her first novel.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Sara Polsky
Cover design by Jenna Stempel
Cover images ©iStockphoto.com/Shaun Lowe and Vladimir Piskunov
Published in 2012 by Albert Whitman & Company
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