We Are Inevitable

by Gayle Forman

  “Did your mom really do the roughing?” Richie asks.

  I’m caught off guard by the reference to Mom.

  Ike shines his flashlight inside. “It’s solid work. Café would practically build itself.”

  “Café? Have you been to talking to Chad?”

  “I’ve been talking to Angela Silvestri,” Ike says.

  “Who’s Angela Silvestri?”

  “She was the secretary at the middle school. Just retired. Heckuva baker. She makes a mean crumb cake. It’s got this cinnamon sugar topping, but with crunch. You know what gives it the crunch?” Before anyone can answer, Ike crows, “Life cereal. She puts it in the topping.”

  “Ike, I said you could fix the bookshelf. No one said anything about a café.”

  “We were talking with your dad,” Garry says. “We think a café really would make the whole space more hygge.”

  “What’s ‘huggy’?” Richie asks.

  “Hygge,” Garry corrects, pronouncing the word like he’s swallowing it. “It’s some Danish thing about how to make spaces more cozy. My girlfriend got a book called The Little Book of Hygge. Went around trying to make the whole house hygge. We got lots of throw pillows and sheepskin rugs, and she painted stencils all over the walls. It’s nice.”

  “A café will make it more hygge?” Richie asks.

  “Yep,” Ike answers. “Especially a café with crumb cake.”

  “Will you shut up about crumb cake and hygge!” I shout.

  “Yeesh,” Garry says. “We’re just trying to help.”

  “Help? Is that what you call it?” I look at Ike. “I’ve lived in this town long enough to recognize a Lucy when I see one.”

  “Who’s Lucy?” Richie asks.

  “From Peanuts!”

  They stare at me blank-faced.

  “You know. Charlie Brown? Lucy?”

  “Oh, Lucy van Pelt,” Richie says. “What about her?”

  “She always pretends to hold the football for Charlie Brown and at the last minute she yanks it up and he winds up flat on his back. Well, I’m not falling for it.”

  “You’re upset about Charlie Brown?” Richie asks.

  “I think he’s mad about Lucy,” Garry says.

  “I’m mad about you!” I shout.

  “Which you?” Garry asks.

  “All of you, but especially you, you!” I jab a finger toward Ike. “We agreed you’d fix the shelf. That’s it.”

  “See, the thing is, the shelf’s been keeping me up at night,” Ike says. “It’s been neglected. This whole place has been neglected.” He gestures at the broken bookshelf, the water-stained ceiling, the warped floorboards. “Ain’t no one taking proper care of it. If they were, it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  “You cannot be serious,” I say, the rush of anger from last night outside of Bogart’s Ballroom returning tenfold. I am so fucking tired of guys like this.

  “Serious as a heart attack. Someone needs to see to this place.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I begin, my voice shaking. “Don’t you dare lecture me about neglect.”

  “Not lecturing anyone,” Ike says. “Just stating a fact.”

  “Oh, you like facts. How about this one? For the past few years none of you, not a single one, gave two shits about us. I mean, where were you when we needed you with your GoFundMes? Or even a casserole. Or just a kind word, a condolence. So you don’t have any right to talk to me about neglect.”

  “Well, that’s got nothing to do with this fine wood.”

  “Shut up! Just shut up about the shelf! The shelf can burn for all I care.”

  Ike recoils at this threat of harm to his precious. “You’re not thinking straight.”

  “You don’t get to tell me what I’m thinking. And you don’t get to put ideas into Ira’s head. If you don’t get your asses out of here right now, I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll what?” Richie asks, scoffing the way the Refrigerator did.

  “I’ll . . .” And before I know what I’ll do, I’m doing it. I’m swinging my fist at Ike.

  I miss. Of course.

  Before I can regain my footing, I’m up against a bookshelf, arms pinned behind my back. “Now just wait a gosh-darn minute,” Ike says.

  “Did you just try to punch Ike?” Garry asks.

  “Go to hell!” I shout.

  “You go to hell,” Garry shoots back.

  “Now everyone just calm down,” Ike says, still squeezing me tight. “Seems we are having ourselves a little misunderstanding.”

  “No misunderstanding,” I say, pulling away, fruitlessly, because Ike’s grip is granite.

  “Yes, a misunderstanding. And we’re gonna brew that pot of coffee and we’re gonna sit down like civilized men and straighten it out.”

  I yank myself away at the exact moment that Ike releases me. I stumble backward, my elbow rearing up and colliding with Richie’s nose.

  “Oww!” Richie cries. “He hit me.”

  “I didn’t hit you.” I spin around to see Richie’s nose geysering blood. “Oh, shit!”

  “You clocked Richie,” Garry yells. “You little bastard!”

  “I elbowed him. By accident,” I begin, but it’s too late. Garry is already charging me. But once again, Ike’s faster. He jumps in front of him.

  “Now everyone just cool your jets!” he roars, holding Garry back with one hand, while drop-kicking me to the floor, and also somehow handing Richie a bandana to staunch his blood-spurting nose.

  It’s at this precise moment that Ira makes his way down the stairs to the store. He takes one look at me, on the floor, the pool of blood, turns an unnatural shade of green, and passes out cold.

  * * *

  Ike insists on driving me, Richie, and Ira to the clinic. Garry stays behind to clean up the blood before it seeps into the wood. Because according to Ike, once blood penetrates the grain, it’s impossible to get out.

  Bev’s working and she takes Ira, now conscious, and Richie, barely bleeding, back at the same time, leaving me and Ike to awkwardly leaf through old issues of Family Circle.

  When I finish reading an article about how to make the perfect confetti cake, I look up at Ike. “I’m sorry I punched you.”

  “You didn’t punch me.”

  “I’m sorry I tried to punch you.”

  “Why’d you try to punch me?”

  “I don’t know. The thing you said, about the neglect. It made me feel like shit.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, because the neglect is my fault, obviously.”

  Ike is silent a spell before he says, “Do you know my wife, Binatta?” I shake my head. “Her friends call her Beana.”

  “Beana’s your wife?” Beana used to be one of our best customers, the kind who came in once a week and bought a frontlist hardcover. But she hasn’t been in the store in ages. I figured she’d started getting her books online. Like everyone else.

  “Married forty years and counting,” Ike says.

  “I didn’t know that. I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “Not for about six years, I’d guess.” Ike pulls out his can of tobacco and then looks around the waiting room, seems to realize he shouldn’t dip in a medical office, and puts it away. “That was when her fibromyalgia got real bad. Her joints got so swollen, it was just too painful to go anywhere. But she loved to read.” Ike whistles. “Always did, but after her condition got worse and she had to quit her job, it was all she did. Sometimes two books a day. An expensive habit, especially after the mill closed. When your dad stopped seeing her so often, he called her up on the telephone and asked if she might read some of those free books the publishers send you ahead of time.”

  “The galleys?”

  “That’s right. He set aside the galleys for her. And it tickled her so bec
ause she felt like she got to read things before everyone else. She used to tell your dad which ones she liked, which ones she didn’t. Though even when she didn’t care for a book, she always finished. And your dad never charged us because he said she was doing him a service and he wasn’t allowed to. Showed me where it said right there printed on the books: Not for sale.”

  Ike clears his throat. “But then a few years on, I started to notice that the books he was dropping off for Beana weren’t paperbacks no more but hardcovers, like she used to buy. And they didn’t have that ‘not for sale’ thing on them. I figured out he was now giving Beana actual books, not the free ones.”

  I nod. “When we stopped buying new books, we stopped getting the advance copies.”

  “I didn’t know that. But I knew we’d gone from doing favors to getting them.” Ike tugs on his beard. “I’ve always provided for my family. It don’t feel great to need charity.

  “Around that time, our daughter sent Beana one of them tablet readers. She didn’t like it at first. No pages to turn. But she got used to it and now she loves it because it’s easier to hold, easier to see, and she can get a dozen library books on there at once.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “’Course with that tablet, there wasn’t much cause to come into the store, so I didn’t. Even when I knew I ought to have. Not just to buy books. But to offer condolences, on account of what happened with your brother.” Ike stares at his gnarled hands. “Don’t know why I didn’t. Knew it was wrong. But sometimes too much time passes and there don’t seem a way back. I hadn’t set foot in the store in years when we built that ramp. And when I saw what happened to it, to your father, I just felt downright ashamed.”

  “Ike,” I say, my heart feeling somehow larger and smaller at the same time. “You didn’t wreck our store. It’s not your fault.”

  He searches his pockets for his bandana, not finding it because it’s up Richie’s nose. I hand him a box of tissues and he honks out a few trumpety blows before he looks up. “You know what’s the biggest threat to wood? Not fire. Not water. But termites. They get into a perfectly healthy house and gnaw away until there ain’t nothing left. I might not have been the only one, but I was one of the termites that weakened your foundations, and I’ll be darned if I’m gonna let it fall down on my account.”

  “But Ike . . .” I say. “What if it’s too late? What if the termites have eaten away so much of the wood that there’s nothing left to save?”

  Ike dabs his eyes as he contemplates this, but before he answers, the door swings open and Bev emerges, Ira and Richie trailing behind her like wayward children.

  “They’re both fine. No broken bones.” She points to Richie, who glares at me, like he’s even more pissed off that I didn’t give him a legit injury. “And no strokes.” She gestures to Ira.

  “I had a panic attack,” he announces cheerily.

  “Are you sure?” I ask Bev. “He’s never passed out before.”

  “If you’d seen your only son covered in blood, you’d have passed out too,” Ira says with a dopey smile on his face.

  “Panic attacks can manifest in all sorts of ways,” Bev says. “Scary but not life-threatening, unless you’re driving.”

  “She gets them when she’s driving. And you’ll never guess what she does to calm herself down.” When no one guesses, Ira says, “She sings!”

  “What can I say?” Bev shrugs. “Singing calms me down.”

  “She’s going to help me get a handle on my depression and anxiety!” Ira chirps gaily.

  “Seems like she already has,” Richie mutters.

  “She gave me Ativan!”

  “I did,” she says. “And we discussed other options.”

  “Support groups!” Ira says. “Bev’s going to take me to one. Her husband died.”

  “Condolences,” Ike says.

  “Thank you,” Bev replies. “And yes, support groups can be very helpful.”

  “You gonna put him on them drugs?” Ike asks.

  There’s an awkward moment. Bev smiles mildly and says, “Like I said, all options are on the table.”

  “Because Beana tried Zoloft but it gave her headaches,” Ike says. “We switched her to Wellbutrin. Works like a charm.”

  “My dad takes Zoloft, no problem,” Richie announces, then remembers he’s mad at me and glares anew.

  “I’m really sorry, Richie,” I tell him.

  “We’re all sorry,” Ike adds. “And we’re all friends now.”

  “Oh good!” Ira beams. “Now we can go back to work. I told Bev all about how we’re fixing up the store and I promised her we’d have Lit and Knits.”

  “Knit and Lits,” Ike corrects.

  “Those too,” Ira adds. He looks at me. “See, Aaron, I told you, it’s not too late.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” Ike says, swinging an arm around my shoulder.

  The average dinosaur supposedly lived between seventy and eighty years, which is basically the average life span for a human. I think back to those thirty-three thousand years after the asteroid hit and before the last dinosaur disappeared. Some of them must’ve carried on, right? Chewing plants, eating turtles, having sex, playing with their hatchlings. Some of them must have been the dinosaur equivalent of happy.

  And so when I tell Ike and Ira, “Maybe it’s not too late,” I kind of even almost believe it.

  The Art of the Deal

  Penny Macklemore keeps a couple offices in town—one in the back of the hardware store, another in the car dealership—but the place you can reliably find her is at C.J.’s Diner, where she eats lunch every day. Cindy Jean won’t let anyone else sit in the corner booth between the hours of eleven and three.

  “Aaron, what a pleasant surprise,” Penny says as I approach her booth.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Please do.”

  I slide opposite her.

  “You look pale, like you could use a bit of iron. Cindy Jean, let’s get this boy a burger.”

  “It’s fine. I just came to talk to you.”

  “Have a fry, at least.” She dips a limp spear in ketchup and holds it up to my lips. I have no choice but to accept it. “Good. Would you like an order of fries?”

  “No, thanks. I’m really not hungry.”

  “Suit yourself.” She dabs her lips with a napkin and then bares her teeth at me. “Do I have lettuce stuck anywhere?”

  “What?”

  “When you age, your gumlines recede and food gets stuck. Gerald used to point out if I had anything in my teeth, but he’s passed on now so there’s no one to warn me.” She bares her teeth at me again. “Do I have any gunk?”

  “Nothing that I can see.”

  Not quite trusting my response, she takes a knife and holds it up to her mouth like a mirror. When she’s reasonably assured there is no loose vegetation there, she puts down the knife. “I take it you’ve come to talk to me about the work going on at your store.”

  “You know about that?” I let go of the breath I have been holding since I decided to back out of the deal. If Penny knows, Ira will never have to. Everything might turn out okay after all.

  “I make it my business to know everything that happens in this town. How do you feel about pie?” Before I answer she calls, “Cindy Jean, what kind of pie do you have?”

  “Cherry and apple, same as always,” Cindy Jean replies. “And pumpkin for the holiday.”

  “Do you have a preference?” Penny asks me. “Aside from pumpkin, which I never cared for.”

  “I don’t really want pie.”

  “Oh, share a slice of pie with me. Otherwise I’ll eat the whole thing. Which do you like better? Cherry or apple?”

  “Cherry, I guess.”

  “Cindy Jean,” she calls. “We’ll have the cherry.” She t
urns to me. “Now what is it you need, dear? You want to back out of the sale?” She says it so breezily, like she expected it, that my limbs go rubbery with relief.

  “I do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Our circumstances have changed.”

  “How so?”

  “I think I might have been wrong. Maybe people here do want a bookstore.”

  “Interesting.” She turns toward the kitchen. “Are you warming the pie?”

  “Always do,” Cindy Jean replies.

  “Not too hot, or the ice cream melts.” She turns back to me. “Don’t you love pie à la mode?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Me too!” She takes a bite of her pickle. “Oh, nice and dill. So you were saying people here want a bookstore?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, you know me. I’m more of a TV person. I’m a big fan of that show Survivor. Have you ever seen it?”

  “No.”

  “Gerald used to love that show. We used to watch it together every Wednesday.”

  “Uh-huh.” The pleasant rubbery feeling in my limbs starts to harden into unease.

  “Cindy Jean,” Penny calls. “Are you getting me my Sanka?”

  “Do I ever not?” Cindy Jean replies.

  “Just making sure. Do you want any Sanka?” she asks me.

  “No. I don’t want any Sanka.”

  “Okay. Now where was I?”

  “Survivor.”

  “Right. So you see, on Survivor, when they don’t want you, they vote you off the island. This town voted you off the island years ago. A fresh coat of paint won’t change that.”

  “It’s not just paint. It’s also . . . other things.” I scramble to remember how Chad put it. “We’d diversify our revenue streams.”

  Cindy Jean drops off the pie and Sanka. “Now look what you did,” Penny scolds. “The ice cream’s already a puddle.”

  “’Cause the pie’s hot. You wanted it heated,” Cindy Jean says.

  “Warmed, not piping.” Penny sighs as she takes a forkful of the hot, melty pie. She chews, swallows, and says, “So what’s in it for me?”

  “For you?”