The Bookshop of Yesterdays

by Amy Meyerson

  I pressed on toward Orange County.

  The Orchard Estate, belonging to one Burt Weston, was housed in a community where each home had a name. The guard eyed my parents’ Japanese sedan, its black paint speckled gray from weeks of street parking.

  “Name?” he asked dubiously.

  “I’m Miranda, Miranda Brooks. I don’t think my name’s on...” I tried to explain as he disappeared into his hut to review the visitors’ list.

  The guard opened the gate. He pointed toward the road to the right. “Follow it around to the top.”

  I was about to ask him how my name had been on the list. Instead, I confirmed, “That way, to Burt Weston’s?”

  “Like I said, the top of the hill. You can’t miss it.”

  I followed the windy road up to the Orchard Estate, impressed that Billy had thought of everything.

  I parked outside the stucco, tile-roofed mansion, feeling my pulse in my temples. This was what I’d been waiting for. Finally, some answers. Sweat gathered above my upper lip as I watched Burt’s Mediterranean house. Billy, via Jane Austen and Sir Walter, had nothing nice to say about Burt. If Billy was sending me to a man he despised, Burt must have had something to tell me that no one else could. If Mom was so desperate for me not to talk to him, it must have been huge. I unbuckled my seat belt and stepped into the breathless afternoon.

  A Filipino nurse answered the door. Behind her the house was dark. The air-conditioning wafted out, like a silk scarf grazing my arms.

  “I’m not sure if Mr. Weston is expecting me. I’m Miranda Brooks. My uncle, Billy Silver, sent me to talk to him?” I told her.

  “Miranda! Come in, come in.” She opened the door wider, and I followed her into a formal living room, shocked that this was all so easy. “It’s one of his good days, but be gentle with him. He gets agitated when he can’t remember.”

  Burt sat in a wheelchair, watching a telenovela on the television above the marble mantel. An antique armoire reflected the profile of his long nose, his deadpan face.

  “He doesn’t understand Spanish, so he watches it on mute. Makes up storylines for what he sees on the TV.” The nurse turned on the light. “Burt, you’re going to go blind, watching in the dark.”

  He turned his wheelchair to face us. “Why would I go blind?”

  “I was joking, Burt,” she explained.

  “Oh.” He laughed. He looked at me like he wanted to know who I was. “Hello.”

  “Burt, this is Miranda. Remember I told you she might stop by? She’s Billy Silver’s niece.”

  “No, she’s not,” he said angrily.

  The nurse turned to me. “He’s been good all day.” The nurse put her hand on his shoulder and leaned close to him. “This is Miranda. She’s come a long way to see you. Isn’t it nice to have a visitor?”

  “It is nice.” His voice quaked, and whatever vanity he’d had when Billy had known him had been stripped of him in old age. Deep lines carved his cheeks. He was frail. Immobile. Maybe I should have left him be, but as he continued to stare at me his frightened gaze dissolved into something that resembled friendliness.

  “I’ll be in the other room,” the nurse said as she left. “If he starts to act up, just call me.”

  Once Burt and I were alone, he pressed a button and wheeled his chair to turn off the light.

  “I hate sleeping with the windows open.” He laughed. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  I sat on the couch and watched him peer into the distance. I’d never spent any time with elderly people, healthy or sick. My grandfather—Mom and Billy’s father—was the sole grandparent still living when I was born. He was in his early seventies, a lifelong smoker, already in an assisted-living home. My parents had a picture of me with him in hospice, a visit I didn’t remember. Mom said I was terrified of him, which upset both Mom and her father, so she didn’t take me to see him very often. He died when I was two. Even though he’d been sick for a long time, his mind was sound. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been for Mom if her father was like this. I brushed off thoughts of Mom. I didn’t want to be thinking about her. I didn’t want to be feeling sorry for her, either.

  “Loretta?” Burt asked when he realized I was still in the room. He wheeled over, stopping so close I could smell onions on his breath, see dandruff in his thinning hair.

  “Miranda, I’m Miranda,” I said, shifting away to create some space between us.

  “Right. Of course.”

  “I was hoping we could talk about your daughter, Evelyn.”

  “She used to eat pancakes every Sunday. I’ve never seen a kid who could eat so many pancakes.” He paused. “What was I saying?”

  “You were telling me about your daughter, Evelyn.”

  “Loretta?” He wheeled closer to me again.

  I rested my hand on his. It was icy, lifeless. “My name is Miranda. Miranda,” I shouted as if saying my name at louder volumes might help him to understand who I was. “I’m not Loretta. I’m Miranda.”

  Burt’s eyes watered. I should have called the nurse. Even if he had been as vain as Sir Walter Elliot, even if he was once worthy of Billy’s scorn, no one deserved this.

  Burt grabbed my forearm with surprising strength. “Why did you leave, Loretta?”

  “I’m Miranda. I’m right here.” The conversation was making me light-headed.

  “Did you think of Evelyn? Did you think of what you were doing to your daughter?” he pled.

  “What did Loretta do? Was she Evelyn’s mother?” I wasn’t going to pretend to be Loretta, but I would talk to him. He wanted to tell me about Loretta. I wanted to listen. “What did Loretta do to Evelyn, Burt?”

  “She died, you know,” Burt said soberly.

  “Evelyn did die. She died thirty years ago.” He looked as if he was trying to calculate whether thirty years was a lifetime or barely anytime at all. “Do you remember how Evelyn died?”

  “Of course I remember.” He was angry again. “You think I would forget how my own daughter died?”

  “How did she die, Burt?” I squeezed his cold hand.

  “You were supposed to get her.” His voice was weak. The tortured expression on his face sent a chill down my arms.

  “Burt, what happened to Evelyn?”

  “Did you forget?” He clutched my forearm. “How could you forget?”

  “Forget what, Burt? What did I forget?” His eyes were focused on mine, but I couldn’t tell where he was, whether we were talking about Evelyn’s death or something else entirely.

  “She waited at the school for you. You never showed.” A tear rolled down his right cheek.

  “Burt, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who was waiting? Did Evelyn die in a car accident?”

  “She waited all alone on the school steps. You were supposed to pick her up, Loretta. Why didn’t you take her with you? Why did you leave Evelyn with me?”

  “Did Loretta leave you, Burt?” Burt nodded. “Did she leave Evelyn?”

  “Yes.” He drifted in and out. A moment with me. A moment disappeared. The past seemed to be right there, as though he could slip all the way into it.

  “What happened to Evelyn, Burt?” I leaned toward him like the nurse had done, trying to create an intimacy that might return him to the present.

  “You look so much like Evelyn. And Loretta. Evelyn looked like Loretta when she was pregnant. I always wanted to tell her that, but I didn’t know how.”

  “What do you mean?” It was impossible to tell what was fabricated from the past, what was embellished from his telenovelas, what may have been real. “Was Evelyn pregnant? Did she have a child?”

  “Before we left the orchard. She didn’t want to raise our child there. If we had, maybe you wouldn’t have left.”

  “You’re talking about Loretta,” I decided for him.
“Loretta was pregnant at the orchard. Not Evelyn.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Do you remember Billy?”

  “Billy?” he said like he wasn’t sure that was a real name.

  “Evelyn’s husband, Billy Silver.”

  “Murderer!” he shouted. “Murderer!”

  “Shh.” I turned toward the doorway, expecting the nurse to come rushing in. The television blasted from the other room, and if she did hear the commotion, she decided not to investigate. “Shh, Burt. Calm down.”

  “He killed her. He killed my Evelyn. I tried but I couldn’t prove it. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve either of them.” Burt was shaking his head like the past could be dislodged with a little effort.

  “Either of whom?” I was completely turned around. I couldn’t find my way through Burt’s story.

  “Evelyn and the child,” he explained.

  “What child?” What child?

  “Evelyn.”

  “Evelyn is your child, Burt. Evelyn was your child.”

  “Evelyn was my child,” he said.

  “So Evelyn didn’t have a child?”

  “Evelyn didn’t have a child.”

  I was dizzy, slightly intoxicated. If this was a good day, I didn’t want to know what a bad day looked like.

  Burt turned away from me toward the television above the fireplace where a tall woman with dyed blond hair and artificially blue eyes paced frantically across the screen. She ranted on mute, waving her arms like she was speaking in tongues.

  “She’s my favorite. Esmeralda. She gets so enraged. It’s beautiful.”

  I still had so many questions to ask him, but whatever Billy had expected him to tell me, he wasn’t capable of it. And yet among all the seemingly irrational things he’d said, one word persisted. Murderer! Murderer! Billy wasn’t a murderer. That was beyond the realm of possibilities. He’d devoted his career to making the world a safer place, to decreasing death and destruction. No way he murdered his wife, yet Burt’s lucidity as he shouted, Murderer! Murderer!—it was the only thing he’d said that didn’t get wrapped around itself, woven into a spiral of fragmented memories and regret. Murderer! Murderer! Burt was so certain Billy had killed her, even if he couldn’t prove it. And I already knew that Billy blamed himself. What if Sheila was wrong, if it wasn’t grief talking when Billy had said Burt was right to condemn him. What if Evelyn’s death really was Billy’s fault?

  Burt and I watched the telenovela until the nurse returned. He was calm again, not entirely cognizant of me.

  “Well, Burt,” the nurse said, turning the light back on. “What do you say to a nap? Let’s say goodbye to Miranda.”

  He cast me the same expression of almost recognition he’d had when I first walked in.

  I sat alone in the living room, waiting for the nurse. She came back in and sat beside me. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m all right. He was confusing me with Loretta.”

  “He confuses me with her, too. I know it’s hard, but you should visit more often. It helps him. Even if he can’t express it, it helps to remember.”

  “Does he ever talk about his daughter, Evelyn? She was my aunt.” Was Evelyn my aunt? Did she belong to me?

  The nurse nodded.

  “I was hoping Burt would tell me about her. I never got to know her.”

  The nurse walked over to the armoire and dug through a pile of photo albums until she found a faded gold canvas book. She handed me a yearbook, 1969 embossed on the bottom right corner. The year Mom graduated high school. The year Evelyn must have, too.

  I opened the cover and saw several handwritten inscriptions to Evelyn. Good luck at Vassar! And I’ll miss sitting next to you in drama class! I still think you should act instead of doing set design! And I’ll never forget when you set the counter on fire in chemistry class and Keep fighting the good fight!

  “Burt kept this?” I asked.

  “It’s amazing what makes the move,” the nurse said. “And what doesn’t. Even when he can’t remember, he likes looking at the old pictures.”

  “Can I have this?”

  She frowned. “I’ve got to get Burt’s dinner ready. Take your time.” She left me alone in the cold living room.

  I skimmed through the early pages of the yearbook, filled with headshots of the administration and teachers, stopping when I saw a photograph on the newspaper’s page, Evelyn in a crocheted vest leaning over a table, a strand of hair bisecting her face. She looked serious and pensive and older than eighteen. Evelyn was one of two girls on the debate team. A member of the Students of Concern Committee, the Key Club, National Honors Society. I scanned the clubs for Mom. She was a member of the Jazz Club, a photograph of her dancing suggestively behind a microphone. She looked disobedient and energetic and young. I flipped through the rest of the yearbook, searching for Evelyn and Mom, for some evidence of how they’d been best friends. In the class portraits, they looked like everyone else, only haircuts to differentiate them. Evelyn’s hair was long and straight. Mom’s was cut into a pageboy, bangs hiding her eyebrows and ears, shorter than I’d ever seen her wear her hair.

  On the second to last page of the yearbook, in the candids, I saw them together. Evelyn and Mom sitting on the floor, leaning against a row of lockers. Evelyn wore jeans and a striped sleeveless shirt, Mom was dressed in black tights and a short A-line skirt. Evelyn’s head rested on Mom’s shoulder, her face scrunched in laughter. Mom stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes. Beside the photograph, Mom had written, Love you forever—Suzy. I thought about Mom’s desperate tone in the voice mails she’d left me, the voice mails I’d erased, how terrified she was of losing me. She’d already lost someone she’d expected to love forever. I snapped a picture of the two of them, and left the closed yearbook on the coffee table.

  The sounds of a blender led me to the kitchen where the nurse was making soup. When I started to say goodbye, she signaled for me to hold on as she wiped her hands on a towel. She opened and closed a few drawers before she handed me an envelope.

  “Came for you about two months ago.” We walked toward the front door. When she opened the heavy door, light poured into the cool, dark house. “Stop by again. Even if he can’t express it, he likes the company.”

  On the porch, I tore open the envelope. Inside was a rebus. A drawing of a tree plus a set of keys. Tree keys? Tree ring? Spruce ring? Spruce keys? It wasn’t a spruce. It was a broad tree with a massive crown of branches and leaves. A maple? A birch? An oak? Oak keys? Okies! There was only one quintessential novel that documented the Okies struggle, one quintessential novel that happened to be displayed on Billy’s side of the staff recommendations table between The Portrait of a Lady, Tender Is the Night, The Age of Innocence, classics that hadn’t seemed like Billy’s favorites.

  * * *

  When I got back to the store, the closed sign dangled on the door even though it was only six o’clock and we should have been open. I unlocked the door and went inside. The stacks were empty, the tables of the café unoccupied.

  “Malcolm,” I called.

  “In the bathroom,” he shouted.

  Malcolm was mopping the tiled floor, his shirt soaked, his hair frizzed.

  “You picked a great day to not show up.” His words had a mean edge. Still, it was a sentence that consisted of nine words, which was more than he’d said to me in weeks.

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll give you one guess.” He must have realized he was being unnecessarily prickly, because he added, “Some asshole clogged the toilet, then a pipe burst. It’s been a fucking day.” He squeezed the mop into the bucket.

  “Can I help?”

  “Now that it’s all cleaned up?” He wheeled the bucket into the kitchen.

  “Did you fix it yourself?”

  “I’m a man of many
talents, but cleaning up other people’s shit isn’t one of them. Plumber left about a half hour ago.”

  “So, it’s fixed?”

  “Yeah, it’s fixed. A thousand dollars, but we’ll be open tomorrow.” Malcolm hauled the bucket to the sink and poured the gray water down the drain.

  “You spent a thousand dollars on a plumber?”

  “It was a rush job.” The dirty water ricocheted off the sides of the basin, splashing his face. He wiped it off aggressively.

  “You didn’t shop around, see if you could find anyone cheaper?”

  He dropped the bucket on the ground. “You know what, if you were here, you could do it your way.”

  He swept past me and stormed out. I wanted to chase him down Sunset to apologize for not being here, for doubting him, for assuming he was lying to me when he was mourning. I wanted to ask him if we could go back to the way we were before. I wanted to scream at him, What the hell were you thinking, spending a thousand dollars? and poke my finger into his chest, telling him if Prospero Books closed, it would be his fault. I wanted to use Malcolm as my punching bag, to blame him for my fight with Mom, for Burt’s words—Murderer! Murderer!—but I couldn’t do that to him. I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t lost my best friend.

  I walked over to the recommendations table and spotted the drawing of Billy.

  “Why weren’t you more careful?” I asked his forlorn face. Billy was methodical as a seismologist. He was precise in each of our scavenger hunts. “How could you have been so reckless with Prospero Books?”

  I scanned his recommended titles. The Portrait of a Lady, Tender Is the Night, The Age of Innocence. No Grapes of Wrath. I raced around the table, tossing books aside. It wasn’t under books one and two from A Series of Unfortunate Events, between copies of In the Time of the Butterflies. I raced behind the desk where Booklog confirmed that we’d sold a copy of The Grapes of Wrath, paid for in cash, the ticket stub or dinner receipt or whatever keepsake Billy had left in the book carried onto Sunset, thrown away by an anonymous customer, the destroyer of Billy’s hunt forever unknown.