by Gayle Forman
I glare at Chad.
“Aww, cut him a break,” Chad says. “He’s cool and he knows everything about books. Like for instance, did you know Gone Girl was a book before it was a movie?”
“Everyone knows that,” Libby says.
“Oh,” Chad says, blushing.
“If it makes you feel better,” Jax says, “I didn’t know Clueless was based on Emma until like last year.”
“Well, Aaron probably did. He knows all that stuff and more. He’s read everything.”
“Everything?” Hannah picks up The Magician’s Nephew. “Have you read this?”
After I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in third grade, I devoured the rest of the series in a ferocious gulp. When I got to the last page of The Last Battle, I picked up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and started again. I used to reread the entire series every year, starting on my birthday, like a pilgrimage back to myself. Mom used to call Narnia my first love.
What I think: Yes, Hannah Crew, I have read The Magician’s Nephew. And the fact that you’re reading it means something. Even if I don’t want it to.
What I say: “Never heard of it.”
A Wrinkle in Time
Ira wakes up the next day with a head cold. He blames it on the change in the weather, but I expect the combo of our disastrous trip to Coleman’s and the ramp-building misadventure had something to do with it. He’s flushed, and shivering under the Pendleton blanket.
I touch his forehead; it’s clammy and warm. “You have a fever.”
“I’m fine,” he insists.
“Let me take your temperature.” I head back into the apartment and root around for the first-aid kit, but all I find is a cluster of Band-Aids so old the glue no longer sticks.
“I’m going to the store,” I call. “We need a thermometer. And some cold medicine. And some Band-Aids.”
Ira nods. He looks so pathetic. “Maybe some chicken soup?”
Chicken soup was the one Jewishy thing Mom learned to cook. She’d make it whenever anyone was feeling bad with any ailment, whether it be a cold or a sprained wrist. She made it for Sandy when he detoxed at home, spending hours trying to coax a spoonful down. She and Ira both swore by its healing powers. I never bought it. Soup is soup, but right now, I’ll take what I can get.
* * *
I decide to walk the mile to ValuMart, not because it’s a particularly nice stroll—it’s mostly a stretch of auto mechanics and gas stations—but because it’s not raining and it will give me more time to figure out how I’m gonna tell Ira.
I’ve decided to sell the store.
No, that makes it sound like I’m still thinking about it. I did sell the store. It’s been a week since I knocked on Penny’s door and said, “If you want to buy our store, it’s not Ira you need to convince; it’s me.”
Penny made me an offer I can’t refuse.
Only she didn’t. I asked her what she’d pay for the place. She wrote down a number on a piece of paper and slid it across her desk. It was so low, it would barely cover the mortgage, let alone our debt. “Forget it,” I told her, getting up to leave. Penny chased me out into the night, a funny little smile on her lips. “Aaron, some free business advice: you don’t walk away from an opening bid. Come inside. Let’s negotiate.” And so we did.
Don’t you see, Ira? We are the dinosaurs and the asteroid’s already hit.
Penny understood this. It took about an hour to come up with a price that would give me and Ira enough of a nest egg to make a fresh start. Another hour to negotiate the smaller details—like her letting us stay in the upstairs apartment, paying rent, until we find a new place, and agreeing not to tell anyone about the deal until I told Ira. “We both know you’re making the right decision,” she said after we’d finally come to terms. “Really, the only decision.”
Ira, you can’t fight the inevitable. The inevitable always wins.
After we agreed on the deal terms, Penny insisted I stay for a celebratory toast. Against my protests, she poured us each a shot of whiskey. “Did you know,” Penny asked—after she’d downed hers and I pretended to sip mine—“that I almost bought your building a few years back when your family had all that trouble? The deal fell through.” She smiled. “But I knew eventually I’d get it.”
The aisles at ValuMart are narrow, the floors scuffed, the produce unappealingly wrapped in cellophane. I grab the cold medicine, a thermometer, and some off-brand bandages and head to the meat department for some chicken, but the only pieces are rubbery and yellow, and for a minute I just want to be back in that beautiful corporate health food emporium, with its buffed floors and grass-fed everything, even though I know Ira is right about places like that.
I put the chicken back, grabbing a few cans of soup instead. I put my groceries on the belt. The cashier is someone I know, a girl from my year named Stephanie Gates. She checks my groceries without a word, pretending not to know me like I am pretending not to know her.
On the way home, I pass C.J.’s. The round table up front where the Lumberjacks usually sit all morning is empty. I get a bad feeling.
I pick up the pace.
Our store comes into view, Ike’s truck parked out front.
I start to run.
I arrive as Richie is lifting a ladder from the bed.
“What. Are. You. Doing. Here?” I ask, wheezing from the run.
“Good morning to you too,” Garry says, pulling a tarp from the truck. “We’re here to paint.”
“Paint?” I pant. “What? Why?”
Now Ike appears, holding a five-gallon tub of paint in each hand. “Well, you see, me and the boys were going back and forth about whether to stain the ramp or paint it to match the facade, and that’s when we noticed the facade was in bad shape.” Ike uses his elbow to gesture to the front of the building, shingled and once painted a robin’s-egg blue—Mom liked to keep things on brand—but which now has faded to a shade best described as overcast. “Anyhow. I took a splintered chip of the paint to Joe Heath. You know Joe?”
“No.”
“He’s got that old refurbished barn he used to run a scrap shop out of. He wants to retire, and is trying to offload all his surplus supplies, including several cans about the same color as your building. Have a look.” Whipping a stir stick out of his coat like a sword, he opens the tub. “Now, it ain’t an exact match.” He gives the paint a stir and it emulsifies into a grayish blue that falls somewhere between the robin’s-egg of yore and the gray of now. “But it’s close. And we thought we best hurry if we want to get it all done while the weather holds.”
“Should I start sanding?” Richie calls.
“Sure,” Ike says. “Start with the three hundred.”
“Wait!” I shout. “Stop.”
“Why?” Richie asks. “You think we need two-hundred grit instead? Ike, the kid thinks we should use the two hundred.”
“I never said that!”
“You want the one hundred?” Richie asks, scandalized.
“I don’t want any of it.”
“Why, you think we should power wash?” Garry asks. “I told you we should power wash.”
“And I told you power wash is the fool’s shortcut,” Ike says. “It’ll tear the wood clean apart.”
“Everyone just stop!” I yell.
They stop.
“What is going on?”
“I told you,” Ike says. “We’re painting.”
“No one told you that you could paint.”
“Ira just did,” Ike replies.
I breathe through my frustration, counting one, two, three, four, five so I don’t lose my shit at Ira. But holy hell! I was gone for an hour.
“That’s not Ira’s call to make.”
“Well.” Ike pauses to load a wad of tobacco into his lip. “It better be someone’s call. �
��Cause it needs doing.”
Just then Ira shambles onto the porch, looking like Jesus in a Pendleton blanket. “You’re back.” He sneezes. “Did you get the medicine? I think I do have a fever.”
“Did you tell them they could paint?”
Ira pauses to consider, as if he doesn’t remember, even though this conversation has to have taken place in the last hour.
“We got two days of relative sunshine,” Ike says, “which in November is a gift.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Ira says.
“I can. We don’t need the building painted.”
Ira follows Ike’s gaze to the facade: the paint is patchy, some shingles are missing. “Respectfully disagree,” Ike says. “In fact, I suspect a lot of your water damage inside is coming from leaks on the outside. I’ll hazard that’s what split that beautiful mahogany shelf. The one you’re gonna replace with . . .” He trails off and shakes his head before spitting out the rest of the sentence. “Metal.”
“We couldn’t afford to buy a new wood shelf,” Ira tells Ike.
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
“Why would you buy anything new when you could repair the old one?” Ike asks. “But if you don’t find the source of your water damage, it’s gonna start all over again. So before you even think about fixing the inside . . .”
“Hold up!” I yell. “No one’s fixing the inside. Or the outside.”
“Why not?” Ira asks. “I mean, we’ve wanted to for a while now. It just keeps getting away from us. And now these gentlemen want to help. For free.”
“Ira,” I say levelly. “There’s no such thing as for free.”
“Ike swore it wouldn’t cost us anything.”
I laugh, hard and caustic. “That’s because he thinks we’re stupid. They all do.”
“Probably not half as stupid as you think we are,” Garry shoots back.
A sharp whistle cuts through the morning. Ike pulls his fingers from his mouth. “Like I told your father, you don’t need to worry about the money, but we’re wasting clear skies, so can we stop all this bickering and get to work?”
“Telling someone not to worry about money is like the opening to every swindle ever perpetrated.”
“Aaron!” Ira scolds. To Ike, he says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
“Nineteen years of living in this town is what’s gotten into me. And I know that when people like you say something’s free, it’s not.”
“People like us?” Garry asks. “You don’t know us.”
“You’re Caleb’s brother, right?”
His face hardens. “What’s he got to do with it?”
“He was an asshole to me.”
“Got news for you. He was an asshole to a lot of people. Doesn’t make you special.”
“Excuse me . . .” A middle-aged woman approaches the store. She’s wearing turquoise nursing scrubs, bright-green Converse high-tops. Rainbow-framed glasses hang off a purple chain around her neck. Everyone stops to stare at her, and not just because of the outfit. The woman is Black and there are about as many Black families in our town as there are Jewish ones. “I was told this was a bookstore,” she says, taking in the Lumberjacks and Jesus-Ira. “But perhaps I was misinformed.”
“No. It’s a bookstore!” Ira practically shouts. “Bluebird Books. It’s our bookstore. Mine and my son’s, Aaron’s. I’m Ira.”
“Hello, Ira. Aaron. I’m Bev.” She taps herself on the chest. “I just moved to town to work in the clinic. I thought it would be nice to build a small library for our younger patients because sometimes the wait can be a while and I’d like to give the children something to look at that isn’t a screen.”
Oh, what sweet music to Ira’s ears. He straightens up a bit. Smiles.
“I have a few requests.” Bev pulls out a piece of paper. “And I’d love some recommendations.”
What Bev is requesting is a hand-sell. The effect on Ira is dramatic. He stands up tall, shrugs off his blanket. “I can certainly help you with that.” He opens the door for Bev. “Aaron, I’ll leave you to sort this out with Ike.” He nods at Ike and disappears inside.
Garry starts unfolding the tarp all over the porch.
“Stop it!” I snap.
“You don’t want us to use a tarp?” Garry asks. “We’ll get paint everywhere.”
“I don’t want you to use a tarp.” I look at Richie. “I don’t want you to use the one hundred or the two hundred or the thousand grit.”
“Thousand grit’s overkill,” Richie says.
I look at Ike. “I don’t want you to paint.”
“Well, then, what do you want us to do?” Ike asks.
What do I want them to do? For starters, not kick a man when he’s down. But that’s what guys like these have always done. Whether it’s Caleb picking on me in high school, or Ike trying to pull a fast one on Ira now.
“I don’t want anything from you,” I tell Ike.
I have no idea that this is the most hurtful thing I could’ve said to him.
* * *
After I get rid of the Lumberjacks, I come inside to find Ira failing at the hand-sell.
“We have it. We have it,” he’s saying, his voice high and reedy. “I know we used to have it.”
“Have what?” I ask.
“Oh, Aaron.” Ira is flushed and miserable. “I can’t find anything on her list.” He shakes his head. “I used to know where everything was.”
“Maybe I can help.” I turn to Bev. “What are you looking for?”
She puts on the rainbow glasses. “Anything Percy Jackson. Anything Dog Man. Something about a unicorn rescue society. A book called Ways to Make Sunshine. Oh, wouldn’t that be nice around here. Any of the Wonder books. Anything by someone named Jason Reynolds. Anything from the Walter the Farting Dog series. A book about A Wrinkle in Time but not A Wrinkle in Time.”
“I think we have A Wrinkle in Time,” Ira says.
“Oh, I have that entire series,” Bev says. “This one is about A Wrinkle in Time. It has a map on the cover.”
“A map on the cover, you say?” Ira says. “Sounds familiar. Let me check.” Ira heads to the corner that used to house travel, cookbooks, and parenting books, but that’s the shelf that broke and the books are scattered on the floor.
“Wouldn’t it be in the middle grade/career section?” I ask Ira.
He swivels around and heads to the back corner where that section is. Or was.
“Middle grade/career section?” Bev asks.
It was the particular way Mom cataloged our inventory, not by subject of the book but by behavior of the reader. She came up with this system not long after they opened and she began to notice that when moms (and in our town, it was always moms) came in looking for books on how to potty train, they wound up lingering in the travel section, looking at the glossy books of Icelandic geysers or French soufflés. She realized the new moms needed escapism and began shelving parenting with travel. And she shelved early-reader books with career guides because by the time the kids could read, a lot of those moms were trying to go back to work.
Her system, like so much about this place, made sense when she was here. But without her, and with Ira stashing orphan books in every nook and cranny, we can’t find a thing.
Ira starts in on the picture books, sending an avalanche of them tumbling down.
Bev grimaces. “I didn’t mean for you to go to all this trouble.”
“No trouble. No trouble at all.”
Ira flaps around a bit longer, lost now, in his own bookstore. Bev checks her watch. “I can just Google it. And order it online.”
Ira stops dead in his tracks, face pained.
Et tu, Bev?
“No!” Ira insists. “Come back. I’ll find the book. I know we must have it. We’re just a
little disorganized these days.”
Poor Bev. She thought she was going to a real-life bookstore, not the fossil of one. And poor Ira, his first shot at a new customer and he’s blowing it. All the starch has come out of him. “Can you come back?” he asks.
She must hear the raggedy edge of desperation in his voice. Because she promises she will. But as she leaves, Ira sinks into his chair, sick and dispirited. Like me, he knows that once things are gone, they never come back.
Just Kids
After the Bevacle, Ira falls into a funk. He sits in his chair all day, coughing and snorting and emitting a low level of contagious misery. So when Chad waltzes in, we are both in a mood.
“Hey, dawg,” he says, holding his hand up for the high five. “How’s it swinging?”
“It’s not swinging,” I say, limply slapping his palm but declining the elaborate handshake that follows.
“So check this out. I have a crazy idea.”
“Does this one entail building you a ramp you don’t need? Tricking me into getting you carried down a flight of stairs?”
Chad strokes his invisible goatee. “Are you pissed off about something?”
“Why would I be pissed? I mean, you make me build you a ramp and then disappear.”
“Disappear?” Chad looks behind him. “Did I disappear? I don’t think so. I’m here.”
“Whatever.”
“Dude, did we bone or something?” Chad asks.
“What?”
“I mean, I’ve never done that with a guy before, and it doesn’t totally appeal, but, you know, a lifetime of heteronormative conditioning might have something to do with that. But if we did and I failed to call you or text you or send you heart-shaped emojis or do whatever’s got you in such a snit . . .”
Suddenly, I’m not mad so much as tired. “What do you want, Chad?”
“I wanted to see if you wanted to take a trip to Seattle.”
