by Amy Meyerson
“How’d you find out he passed?” I asked.
“Malcolm.”
Of course Malcolm knew where Lee was along with all the other things he knew about me. I fidgeted in my chair, uncomfortable in my body again.
“Don’t hold it against the boy.” Lee frowned. “Billy put him in a tough spot.”
I was about to fight him, then I pictured Malcolm and Billy behind the desk at Prospero Books, Malcolm picking at his thumb as Billy tried to tell him about his death plans. Malcolm had hidden that story from me, too. Even when we were fighting, he didn’t force me into that moment, when he had learned that his best friend was dying.
“The bookstore will never make you rich,” Lee said as he saw me out. “But if you watch your budget and find ways to bring in more folks, you’ll get so much more than fortunes out of it. I guarantee you that.”
I hugged Lee and he hesitated before putting his arms around me. It was the closest I’d get to hugging Billy. The closest I’d get to hugging Evelyn, too.
* * *
I walked down to the beach with the padded envelope in my right hand, imagining what it must have been like for Lee, not talking about that morning in Big Bear, if every time he thought of Evelyn he saw her lifeless body, that image erasing those of her smiling or laughing. I hoped telling me about it had made him feel better. I wondered what it must have been like for Billy, too, returning from trips abroad, that moment before he stepped into Prospero Books, a glimmer of hope that he might find Evelyn inside. Someone else would have sold the store. Instead, Billy gave up his career, denied himself any chance at a life outside Prospero Books to remain where job, place, love were all one. Where they were all Evelyn.
On my phone, I found the photograph I’d saved from Mom and Evelyn’s yearbook. Their faces pressed together. Mom’s tongue out, her eyes wide. Evelyn laughing at her best friend, demure, poised. Joanie and I had similar photos. She was always doing something theatrical and uninhibited while I smiled beside her, the straight man to her one-woman performance. Lee was right. I shared qualities with Evelyn, attributes that were as much a part of me as my curly hair, my brown eyes, my features that made me look like Billy, like Mom.
From the beach, I could see Lee’s dirty apartment building. The chairs on the balconies were all empty. I kept watching them as if Billy and Lee might slide open the door and sit down to talk about happiness as the waves unfurled onto the beach.
I walked along the shoreline where the sand was sturdy and cold under my feet. The coast in Santa Barbara looked different than in Los Angeles, more sailboats undulating with the waves, paler sand, bluer water. I pictured Mom in her hooded sweatshirt from the Quaker school where I taught, her regular walks on the beach in Santa Monica. What was it like, living with that big of a secret? Did she think about it every day, during those hours alone as she strolled toward Malibu, staring into the vast Pacific? Had she buried it so deep that she’d learned to forget I wasn’t hers? Or was it more like a scar, something permanent, no longer feeling, something neglected yet always there? I’d discovered the secret she kept, but I still didn’t know about the fight that had driven my biological father out of my life. I opened the padded envelope Billy had left for me.
The journey came full circle. Same cover. Same rogue wave. Same doomed vessel. Same betrayal. This time, a different speech from The Tempest. In the fifth act, an envelope marked the last scene where Prospero told Ariel he would swear off his magic books, he would relinquish his thirst for revenge, he would forgive his brother even if Antonio didn’t regret what he’d done to Prospero. Prospero’s famous words were highlighted.
The rarer action is
In virtue than in vengeance.
I ran my nail beneath the envelope’s seal and unfolded the letter.
August 1, 2012
Miranda—
“Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint.”
Like Prospero, I have reached the end of my story and I am alone onstage, asking you to forgive me. You have every right to be furious. You might even be so angry you abandoned this journey as soon as you discovered I’d lied to you. But I hold out hope that despite the years, I still know you. You will see this quest to the end, even if it only brings betrayal.
A year ago, when I discovered I was sick... It’s true what they say about your life flashing before your eyes. Only the life that flashed before mine wasn’t the one I’d chosen, but the one I’d ruined. I could see it clearly, wheeling Evelyn out of the hospital, holding her newborn daughter in her arms, our newborn daughter, Miranda, you. I could see us tucking you in each night, first in your crib, then your bed. I could hear you sprinting down the stairs of our cabin in Big Bear, off to swim at the lake, Evelyn reminding you to be careful and worrying until you were home safe. Evelyn was always a worrier. Even as I imagined the life we could have had together, I couldn’t escape that. She worried. I made light of it. Sometimes I was right to calm her restless nerves. One time I wasn’t. The time I can never take back.
I haven’t told anyone I’m sick. Even as I write this, no one knows what little time I have left. I don’t want their pity. Mostly, I’m not ready to admit that I am going to die, that my life has amounted to this, a man who allowed his anger to grow stronger than his love, so much so that at the end of his life he has no family, not even his daughter.
And I was angry. I was angry at your mother. I thought I was like Prospero, a victim of my sibling, who had betrayed me. Overtaken my kingdom and cast me away. It was an easy anger, and I held on to it for years because it allowed me to ignore what I had done. It was my choice to let you go. Not your mother’s.
I will always feel responsible for Evelyn’s death. No matter how many people tell me it was an accident, I know it was my fault. I deprived my love of the thing she wanted most. Growing up, Evelyn never had family dinners, holidays, movie nights. I took the possibility of that from her when I failed to make the house safe. When I failed to keep her safe. I told myself that I didn’t know how to keep you safe, either, that I didn’t deserve to create a family without Evelyn. Really, I was afraid of all the ways you reminded me of Evelyn, all the ways you didn’t. I was afraid that you would never know her. I was afraid that we would never be complete, and so I told myself that I would give you a complete life, one where your birth wasn’t paired with tragedy, one with two parents and a stability I could never provide. I thought I was being noble. I thought I was being brave.
When I realized that giving you up was cowardly, not courageous, I tried to fix my mistake. It was too late. I blamed your mother for that, but it was my fault. I had waited too long. I didn’t know how to be your uncle anymore, so I left. There was no courage in that, and for that, I can simply say I’m sorry.
It wasn’t your mother’s fault. I put her in an impossible position. She’d learned to treat you as her own. She loved you like a mother. She is your mother. It wasn’t fair of me to give her that, then to try to take it away from her. Maybe she shouldn’t have accepted it, but I didn’t give her much of a choice. Once I let go of my anger, I saw my mistakes clearly. Despite forgiving her, I didn’t want to apologize to her. I didn’t know how to apologize to her. But I do want to apologize to you. I know how to apologize to you.
And so, in the words of Prospero... "As you from your crimes would pardon’d be, Let your indulgence set me free,”
Billy
I sat on the beach, rereading his letter as the waves stretched toward me, grazing my toes with their cold fingers. The summer after first grade, we spent nearly every afternoon at the beach, me, Mom, Billy. Mom would pack a cooler with peanut butter sandwiches and juice boxes. A beach bag with shovels and a bucket. To anyone who saw us, we must have looked like a family, Billy and Mom holding my hands and swinging me into the air on the count of three. Were they both thinkin
g that Evelyn should have been holding my hand in place of Mom? When Mom let us bury her in sand, turning her into a mermaid, when she broke through the bust and engulfed me in her dirty arms, carrying me into the ocean, was she acting the way she thought Evelyn would? And when Billy came barreling into the water, when he held me high above the waves and Mom spotted me so I didn’t fall, was he thinking that Evelyn would have spotted me, too, that she had been right to worry? I could still see the way he gaped at me as he held me high above the waves, like everything was perfect, only it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. It wasn’t surprising Mom and Billy had a falling-out. It was unbelievable that they’d pretended for so long.
I put the letter in my back pocket, and watched the middle-aged men who fished off the pier. Some of the men cast lines into the calm waters. Others used both hands to haul buckets filled with seaweed and fish. They sorted through the buckets, throwing back the fish that were too small, fish that got caught in the hooks at the end of nearby lines, an endless cycle of catch and release where the fish were never big enough to keep. Still, the men measured them, hoping they’d somehow grown. I didn’t want to be in an endless cycle, reading that letter over and over, hoping for something more from Billy. I wanted to understand why he and Mom had stopped pretending. I wanted to understand the catalyst for their life-changing fight. I still didn’t.
I rolled up my jeans and stepped farther into the ocean. The swell engulfed my ankles and retreated. Let your indulgence set me free. Billy had asked me to release him, but I was still trying to capture him. I took the letter out of my pocket, the wind threatening to tear it from my hand but I held tight. I wasn’t ready to let him go.
Besides, what did it mean to set Billy free when he was already gone? Was he asking me to forgive him? Was he asking me to let Prospero Books go? Lee had said that he and Evelyn had named the store Prospero Books because they both loved Prospero. Maybe the past would have been different if they’d given the store another name, even Tempest Books or the Bard’s Store. Maybe Billy wouldn’t have become Prospero. Maybe he wouldn’t have needed forgiveness. Maybe I wouldn’t have become Miranda. Maybe I would have known my mother, a piece of virtue.
Prospero Books. I missed it more than I’d realized. I missed the after hours when the store was mine. I missed the daytime when it belonged to the neighborhood, those rare hours when it was busy, the mornings when the regulars populated its mosaic tables. I missed Dr. Howard teaching me about Annabel Lee and the zipless fuck. I missed how Ray the screenwriter would nervously peer at other writers, as if they might steal his material. I missed Sheila, how she always seemed to be waiting for someone to recognize her. I missed Lucia, and her tattoos, Charlie and his tattoos. I missed Malcolm. Most of all, I missed Prospero Books, how it was love, job, place and—my addition to Lee’s list—family.
What was I saying? Could I stay? Did I want to? School started in three weeks. I couldn’t quit three weeks before the trimester started. After five years, I couldn’t do that to my principal, my colleagues, my students. Plus, I loved history. I loved sharing competing versions of the past, even though few of my students understood what I was trying to teach them.
But that was just it. It wasn’t the teaching I loved but the history. The past.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I held my phone in my hand, staring at my principal’s number as I willed myself to hit the call button. She would have every reason to be furious with me, and she was good at anger. She’d had enough practice with students. While she would make me feel horribly guilty, guilt was better than regret.
“Miranda, I’m just sitting down to dinner. Is everything okay?” she asked when she picked up.
“Everything’s fine.” I dug the big toe of my right foot into the cold, wet sand. It was soft like clay.
“So what’s up?”
My heart raced. “My uncle died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I had to come home to manage his estate.” Stop stalling, I chided myself. You’re making this worse. “It’s been a pretty unexpected summer. There’s no easy way to tell you this. I’m afraid I can’t come back to school in the fall.”
“What do you mean you’re afraid you can’t come back? School starts in three weeks.”
“I know the timing is terrible.”
“Your timing couldn’t be worse.”
“You know how much I love our school. It’s such an important part of who I am.” The waves buried my feet in their white foam. The bubbles tickled my calves.
“It can’t be that important if you’re calling me three weeks before the trimester starts.”
“I have a responsibility to my family,” I said.
“You have a responsibility to us.” She waited for me to apologize. “What am I supposed to say here, Miranda? You want me to tell you it’s okay? It’s not okay. This is completely irresponsible and inconsiderate. I’m so, so disappointed in you.”
“I know you are.” When the water withdrew, I followed its path farther into the ocean.
“This is final. No calling back tomorrow and telling me you made a mistake.”
“I’m not making a mistake,” I said as I hung up.
The water cut my legs with its cold, and each time my legs acclimated I stepped a little farther, daring the water to punish me again. I still had one call to make. One I should have made weeks before.
“Hey,” Jay said cautiously when he answered. “I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.”
“I should have called.” The water splashed my jeans, threatening to soak my pants, but I kept my footing. I stayed grounded. I didn’t run back to dry land.
“You okay?” Jay asked.
“I just quit,” I said in a trance.
“You quit school? Fuck. That’s big.” He paused. “It’s not because of me?”
His words snapped me out of my daze. Of course that’s what Jay would think. “It was because of me. I’m staying here.”
Jay didn’t say anything for so long I thought maybe he’d hung up or fallen asleep.
“What should I do with your stuff?” Jay said indifferently. His apathy made this easy for me, but I didn’t want it easy. I didn’t want him to fight for me, either. I wanted some emotion, though, something that confirmed that we had happened, that it had mattered. There was a reason Jay and I weren’t destined to be together. It wasn’t Prospero Books. It wasn’t my uncle. It wasn’t even Malcolm.
“I don’t know. I’ll get someone to pick it up,” I said.
“So that’s it?” he said with the efficiency of a waiter who had taken my order and was ready to rush off to the next table.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”
After we hung up, I stood in the ocean watching the waves crash against my calves. I waited for the panic to hit me. I’d just quit my job. Just broken up with my boyfriend. Just forfeited my life, a life that was by all accounts pleasant and easy. And for what? Prospero Books was still losing money. Even if we raised enough at our gala to keep the doors open for another month, we couldn’t throw a party every time we were short on the mortgage. If we closed, where would I be then? But I didn’t feel panicked. Only tremendously relieved. I took another step into the water. The waves flung icy water farther up my kneecaps, then receded, carrying my old life out to sea. It was going to be a struggle but I was up for the battle. And it wasn’t just Prospero Books I needed to fight for.
As you from your crimes would pardon’d be, let your indulgence set me free. Billy had ended his letter with Prospero’s final appeal to the audience members to remember their wrongdoings and forgive him as easily as they would have wanted to be forgiven. As you from your crimes. My crimes. Billy wasn’t the only one who cast Mom as the villain. She’d been put in an impossible situation. She loved me like a mother. I could let her love me like a mother.
A shr
iek jolted me out of my head. A girl screamed in feigned disgust as her boyfriend tackled her into the water. The splash off their bodies rained down my arm. My feet had grown numb. Movement sent sharp pains up my calves. I trudged out of the shallow waves. I realized how I must have looked, a woman in drenched jeans and a T-shirt, walking out of the ocean. While Billy might not have known how to apologize to Mom, I did. I decided it was time to go home.
* * *
The foyer smelled of rosemary and garlic and was warm from the oven. Mom leaned against the front doorjamb, blocking my path inside, and watched me. I waited for her to say something. She must have been waiting for me to say something, too. I was overwhelmed by the things I wanted to say to her. But the bravery I’d summoned to face my principal and Jay had vanished. I wanted her to make this easy on me. I wanted her to tell me what to do.
She stared at my pants. The bottoms of my jeans were caked. “You’re covered in sand.”
“I was at the beach,” I said, as if that explained anything.
“Hold on.” She left the door open while she rushed upstairs. Music was playing in the kitchen. I couldn’t make out the song. I waited outside until she returned, laid a towel on the ground and waved me inside. She held out another towel, turning away as I took off my jeans. I wrapped it around my waist and Mom bent down. She cleaned my legs with a towel, gently rubbing off the sand, patiently caring for me, and I let her.
“There,” she said. She squeezed my arm, using it as a crutch to stand. “All clean.”
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I said.
Mom sat on the bottom step, wringing her hands. “I should have told you years ago.”
“What am I supposed to do here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I know what I want you to do. I don’t know what you should do.” The foyer was so quiet I could hear Mom’s hands rubbing violently against each other over the distant music. “I always knew the truth would come out.”
