The Bookish Life of Nina Hill (ARC)

by Abbi Waxman

  Becky sat down and stroked the head of one of the older dogs, who’d laid his heavy chin on her knee and was gazing up at her. “The problem with dad was that he kept disappearing. He’d promise to do this or that, but there was always a last-minute reason not to show up. Eventually we all stopped expecting anything from him; if you bend something too much it breaks, right?” She looked up at Nina, and her kind eyes had grown cool in memory. “My first husband, Peter and Jennifer’s dad, was like that.”

  Nina looked at Peter and John, who were listening and drinking their tea. They were clearly so comfortable together.

  “How old were you when your dad left?” she asked Peter.

  His mom answered, “He and Jenny were three and one. They don’t remember their dad.”

  “He’s not around?”

  “No.” There was a slight pause, but nothing further.

  “Luckily for all concerned,” said John, stretching his arms above his head and then ruffling Peter’s hair as if he were still three years old. “I showed up about twenty minutes after he left and made everything better again.”

  “It was a couple of years, but same difference,” said Becky, still petting the dog.

  “John’s my dad,” said Peter, shrugging. “There’s never been a better one.”

  John made a face at him, but Nina could tell he was touched. “It’s a lot easier to know you want to take care of a kid who’s so cute that old ladies faint in the street,” he said, gruffly. He looked at Nina. “The thing about being a stepfather is you know what you’re getting into. I saw a beautiful woman with two fantastic kids and a totally ridiculous number of animals. I guess Peter’s dad had a different dream in mind, but for me, it was everything I’d ever wanted.” He looked at his wife. “I feel sorry for him every day.” He paused. “Except when something throws up on me, then I feel sorry for myself.”

  There was a scratching at the door, and they turned to see the new dog, Boris, standing there. Becky let him in, and the dog docked his smooth head with her hand as if they’d been engineered together. He looked up at her with melted chocolate eyes, and when she spoke, she was looking at him, but she may have been talking to her husband. “It takes a lot to join a family that’s broken, but sometimes it turns out you’re exactly the glue it needs.” Then she looked up at Nina. “Hey, are you sure you don’t want a dog? This guy is a total sweetheart.”

  Peter laughed. “You know you’re going to keep him, Mom.”

  John nodded. “She has a terrible weakness for sheepdogs. Show her something black and white and smart as a whip and she’s putty in their paws.”

  Becky grinned and ruffled the dog’s ears. “Well, to be fair, there’s always room for one more in the family.” She looked up at Nina and grinned. “Even if you’re not a dog.”

  Nineteen

  In which Nina attends a wedding.

  As a woman in her late twenties, Nina had attended many weddings. Indeed, the last several summers had been a painful forced march of dry chicken breasts and soggy canapés, stilted conversations with relative strangers and clammy dances with people she vaguely remembered from college. However, shortly after arriving at the wedding of Lili’s sister, Rachel, Nina realized this wedding wasn’t going to be business as usual.

  The camel was her first clue. It was standing on one side of a large expanse of grass, tied to a tree by a long rope, wearing a jeweled, pom-pom-covered, traditional Rajasthani camel outfit of such incredible ornament that a crowd had formed. Admittedly, it was a crowd of children, but still.

  Nina wandered over, spotting Annabel. “Hi there,” she said, casually. “Is this your camel?”

  Annabel, who was wearing a sparkly dress and cat ears, looked surprised to see Nina. “I thought Clare was making it up, that you were coming,” she said. “But I’m really happy you’re here. We can talk about books later. I’ve got questions.”

  “Great,” said Nina. “But the camel?”

  Annabel shrugged. “It’s not mine. It’s here for the wedding.”

  “Was it invited?”

  “No,” said a voice behind her, and Nina turned to see Lili, looking resigned and amused. “It was sent in place of someone who was invited, but what I’m supposed to feed it, I have no idea. It came with a guy who backed it out of a horse box, handed me the rope, and said, ‘I’ll be back in three hours.’” She looked at Nina. “You saw the invite; the RSVP was yes or no, not yes, no, or send a camel.”

  The camel turned and regarded them thoughtfully, found them boring, and turned away again.

  “Well,” said Nina, looking around at the rugs and cushions. “It sort of goes with the theme. And at least it didn’t bring a plus one.”

  A tall man came over with two buckets of water, which he placed in front of the camel. Annabel’s little sister, Clare, was behind him.

  “Hi, Nina,” she said. “Did you meet the camel? Isn’t he lovely? They didn’t tell us his name, but I’m calling him Humpy Bogart. Did you know camels don’t actually store water in their humps, that they’re just big mounds of fat? Like boobs?” Behind her Lili covered her face and the tall man snorted.

  Nina nodded. “And did you know that they can drink up to forty gallons of water in one giant slurp?”

  The tall man frowned. “Maybe I should have brought bigger buckets.” He had an accent, and smiled at Nina. “I’m sorry, my name is Edward. We haven’t been introduced.”

  “This is Nina,” said Clare. “She’s my guest. I invited her.”

  Edward nodded. “Lovely, so happy you’re here. Clare, you better find out where Nina’s sitting and show her to her … uh … rug.”

  Clare reached out and took Nina’s hand. “Come on, let’s look at the chart. The show will be starting soon.”

  Nina followed her. “But I still don’t understand about the camel.”

  “Me neither,” said the little girl, “but my mom said Aunty Rachel knows a lot of strange people all over the world, because she’s a smuggler of rare and beautiful things”—she ran that last part all together, so it sounded like rareandbeautifulthings—“and one of those people sent the camel.” She glanced up at Nina and made a face. “It’s not for keeping, though; it’s only for looking at.”

  “Bummer.”

  “You said it.” Clare paused, and lowered her voice. “I’m thinking maybe the camel stays.” Nina could see the cogs turning.

  They reached the front of the meadow, where Clare tugged Nina up to a large display board. They’d passed dozens of people, all of whom were lolling, exactly as the bride had planned. So far, so good.

  Clare studied the board. “Where are you?” Nina, looking over her head, quickly spotted her name.

  “I’m on rug fourteen. With …”—she read out some names—“Mike and Angie, Eloise and Frances, and Frances and Michael.” She smiled at the little girl. “Two Franceses?”

  Clare nodded. “They’re easy to tell apart. One is bigger than the other.”

  “But if they’re both called Frances then I can use the same name for both, right?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Because they’re easy to tell apart.”

  There comes a point with young children, Nina had learned, where it was best to say OK and walk away.

  “It’s a good rug,” said Clare, like a maître d’ leading a guest to a special table. “They’re garden club people, apart from the other Frances, who’s a friend of my mom’s.”

  Nina arranged her features in a friendly expression, getting ready to be introduced to strangers. For some reason, she wasn’t feeling as anxious about it as usual. There was something about being outside that kind of gave you more room. Perhaps she should move into a tent.

  “Hi, Clare,” said a larger, older woman who was sitting on the rug Nina and Clare were clearly approaching. “I thought you were a bridesmaid.”

  “I am,” said Clare.

  “Well, shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

  “I am ready.”

  Both t
he lady and Nina looked at Clare, who was, Nina realized, wearing Peppa Pig pajamas with a long pink slip over the top. The kind of slip Elizabeth Taylor wore in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; the kind with lacy bits and straps.

  “And very nice you look, too,” said another woman, who looked vaguely familiar. “I bet that’s your favorite dress.”

  “It is,” beamed Clare, glad someone was on the ball this evening. She turned back to Nina. “These are the Franceseses.” She stumbled over the pronunciation, and tried again. “Francesssess. Franceses.” She sighed. “They have the same name.”

  Both women smiled. The older one reached up a hand. “I’m Frances from Gardening Club,” she said. “This is my wife, Eloise.” Another lady who looked pretty similar to her waved lazily.

  “And I’m Frances from school,” said the other one. “Don’t you work at Knight’s, on Larchmont?”

  “Yes,” said Nina, “I’m Nina Hill,” and she reached out and carefully shook both their hands.

  Frances-from-school beamed. “I’ve seen you there lots of times, of course. I live around the corner, and my kids and I are there at least once a week.”

  Nina recognized her now. In Nina’s head she was “nonfiction and parenting” because those were the books she bought, and her kids were (she thought hard, and placed them) young adult, early chapter and picture books, respectively. This Frances was the kind of woman who made you feel welcome, even if you were both in a strange situation. She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, which was an odd choice for a wedding, but the invitation had said “wear whatever you want.” Frances caught her looking and grinned.

  “I don’t know Rachel, the bride, very well, but I know Lili, and she assured me Rachel really didn’t give a fig what people wore. So I went with a clean version of what I wear every day, because it makes me comfortable.” She looked around. “And I guess I’m not the only one.”

  It was true. People were dressed in everything from cocktail dresses and black tie to, in at least one case Nina could see, footie pajamas. On an adult.

  Clare had already run off to do her bridesmaid thing, and presently a voice could be heard over a loudspeaker.

  “OK, people.” It was Lili. “We’re going to do this thing, so try and find a rug, yours preferably, but any is fine, and let’s get these folks married. Rachel has insisted that everyone stay on their butts while she walks through, because she says she intends to dawdle.”

  Frances leaned over. “Isn’t this fun? The camel was a lovely touch.”

  “I heard they spit,” muttered the other Frances. “Ten dollars someone gets it in the eye before the evening is out.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” said a man who was lounging on the other side of the rug, presumably Frances’s husband, Michael.

  But Nina wasn’t listening. She was looking at Rachel the bride, who was incredibly beautiful, wearing a vintage ’70s cream linen suit, and looking like a million bucks. She was making her way across the meadow, with Clare and Annabel behind her, wearing their favorite outfits and no shoes. Nina realized the haphazard arrangement of rugs was actually a way for Rachel to pass by each one on her way to the front, and people were handing her single flowers to make up into her bouquet. She was thanking them, greeting them, and even occasionally bending down to kiss people. It wasn’t the most formal wedding ceremony Nina had ever been to, but it was already memorable for its friendliness. At one point Rachel looked toward the front, where the bridegroom and best man were waiting.

  “I’m getting there, babe,” she called. “I just want to say hi before I’m too drunk to recognize anyone.”

  The bridegroom, who looked like he might already have had a few, waved his hand at her. “Take your time, Rach. We’ve got the rest of our lives.” Then he grinned at her, like an idiot.

  Next to him, the best man was talking to Lili, who was wiping tears from her cheeks and watching her sister and her daughters make their way across the grass. Then the best man turned to look at Rachel, too, and that was when Nina realized this wedding really wasn’t going to be business as usual, and not just because of the camel.

  The best man was Tom.

  • • •

  The vows took quite a while, because they were wide ranging. Nina’s favorite was a promise to always set up the coffee maker the night before, followed by a paired promise to never let them run out of half-and-half.

  Finally, the officiate said, “For their last vows, Rachel and Richard have asked to read the lyrics of their favorite song.”

  Rachel said. “Richard, we wrote our vows together, and they mean a lot to us. But we also know when someone else has put it better, so here goes.”

  She cleared her throat. “I’m never going to give you up.”

  He replied, “Never going to let you down.”

  She said, “Never going to run around and desert you.”

  Nina turned to Frances, and raised an eyebrow. Frances shrugged. “It is a classic song of their childhood, I suppose.” They both watched as the happy couple finished up by promising never to tell lies or hurt each other, then Frances added

  “The great philosopher Richard Astley knew a thing or two about commitment.”

  “He’s in the Guinness Book of World Records,” said Nina, unable to help herself. “His first eight singles reached the top ten in the UK, he’s the only male singer to do that. As far as I know, the record still stands.”

  Frances patted her arm. “Good to know.”

  Nina peered into the picnic basket and pulled out a packet of Pocky, those little biscuit sticks with chocolate on them. Again, a big improvement over chicken breast or mushroom vol-au-vents. There were sandwiches in the basket, and bread rolls, and cheese and fruit and enormous bars of chocolate. Tiny pastries in a tin. Meringues shaped like flowers.

  “What’s in the other basket?” she asked Frances.

  Frances lifted the lid, then turned and grinned at Nina. “It’s a cooler pretending to be a basket. It’s full of ice cream bars.”

  Every so often a waiter would come around with fresh drinks, and although Nina had switched to fizzy water after the toasts, she was feeling as buoyant as everyone else. The sun had gone down, strings of lights had come on, and it really was magical.

  Lili appeared and sat down on the rug next to her. “Is it the right Tom?” she asked, getting to the point.

  “Yes.” Nina nodded. “But I don’t really understand.”

  Lili hugged herself. “Well, when I looked up the team, I saw his name and thought it was entirely possible there was more than one Tom Byrnes in Los Angeles, right? I knew Richard had a brother named Tom, but he and I had never met, and you and I had never really met properly before that night. It was a long shot.”

  “Yeah,” said Nina. “Kind of unbelievable.”

  “And yet these things happen,” said Lili. “In my experience they happen more than you’d think. So I invited you to the wedding, and if it was supposed to be, then he would be the right one.” She shrugged and looked around. “Besides, there are lots of single men here because most of the people who work for Rachel are young guys who lift stuff, so if Tom wasn’t the right Tom then you still might meet someone nice.”

  “Clare said your sister was a smuggler?”

  Lili laughed. “She’s an importer of art and artifacts. She works with museums and private collectors, but one time when Clare was visiting her at work, Rach told her she was a smuggler, and then it was funnier to leave it like that.”

  “Let’s hope Clare doesn’t grow up to work for the IRS.”

  “Wash out your mouth,” said Lili, and got to her feet. “Have fun tonight. Tom seems very nice, and Richard is fantastic. We’re definitely improving the gene pool in the family by adding him.” She looked around. “Wait … where’s the camel?”

  • • •

  It turned out Clare had the camel and was trying to persuade it to climb into the back of her mother’s car. It further turned out that camels are not easily
persuaded, particularly if you want to fold them up like umbrellas and squeeze them into small spaces, so Clare wasn’t getting very far.

  Once she was separated from Humpy, under duress and with a lot of heated tears, she revealed she’d had four ice cream bars and two bags of gummy worms, and then threw up all over the back seat of the car. Nina offered to go hunt down a damp cloth and a roll of paper towels, and headed off. While she was talking to a helpful waiter, Tom came up behind her.

  “Hey, Nina, fancy meeting you here.” He’d spotted her after the ceremony, but he’d had to go and pose for fifty thousand wedding photos, and it had taken him until now to come find her. “I’m not sure how you are here, I’ll be honest.” He blushed slightly. “I mean, I’m really glad to see you.” Smooth move, ex-lax, he thought.

  Nina had her arms full of paper towels, which was good because she could hand him a roll and explain the Clare–camel–gummy worm situation as an opening conversational topic. That way maybe he wouldn’t notice how flushed her cheeks were.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said, as they crossed the grass. “You’re here at the invitation of Clare, my new sister-in-law’s niece, who has been overcome by sugar and attempted camel-napping, and we’re on our way to provide assistance.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” replied Nina. “Her older sister is one of the girls who was staring at you last week at the bookstore. She’s in my elementary book club.”

  “Wow, it’s a small world.”

  “No,” said Nina, spotting Lili and Clare still sitting on the ground by their car, the camel chomping the grass nearby. “It’s a very big world, but Larchmont is very small.”

  Clare was looking much better, so Tom led the camel back to its original spot while Nina helped clean up and Lili explained to Clare that no, she couldn’t have more ice cream now that she felt better. No, even though she’d made room by throwing up. No, even if it was probably the gummy worms that had caused the trouble. And no, she couldn’t have a camel.