Juliet's School of Possibilities

by Laura Vanderkam

  “I think maybe we can get it,” Juliet yelled. “The fire extinguisher . . .”

  “I’ve got it!” Riley grabbed the nozzle. “If you open the door . . .”

  Juliet did as told. Riley aimed the hose at the first burning plant and blasted the spray at it. Then the next one. Then the next one. They heard sirens in the distance, turning closer.

  “Just in time,” Bob called, racing back into the room. “Fire department is here.”

  Leaving Bob with the fire extinguisher to make sure everything was out, Juliet and Riley flew down the stairs, past the bewildered and pajama-clad women of MB huddled in the dark living room, and out the door just as a Maris fire engine parked on the street. “This way!” Juliet yelled as the men on duty surveyed the smoldering tree. One fireman cleared debris from the area. Another shone a giant flashlight at the scene. Two men aimed the hose just as a truck from a neighboring town wailed up too.

  It wasn’t a huge fire; within a few minutes, the flames were gone. A few plumes of smoke wafted up into the churning sky. Bob, with his flashlight, came back down to talk to the firemen about the property. Juliet brought Riley into the kitchen, where a backup generator was powering the refrigerator and a few lights. Using the gas stove and a match, Juliet whipped up a batch of hot chocolate for the fire crews. Riley helped distribute the marshmallows and carried the mugs outside. The rain had mostly stopped, but it was still drizzling enough that the men stood on the porch to sip from their mugs. “You know,” one young man said, “this cocoa is really, really good . . . do you make this a lot? You could sell this stuff.”

  “Oh, I just dabble in the kitchen sometimes,” Juliet said. One of the older men, who’d been in the area longer, threw his head back and laughed.

  Their drinks finished, the crews waved, got back on their trucks, and drove down the road. As they disappeared into the deep lampless darkness, Juliet and Riley listened to the quietly dripping rain. Then, after a minute, they went back inside. Juliet fished around in a foyer drawer until she found a lighter. She lit three candles. Then she addressed the still-stunned women of MB, both those from Riley’s floor and a handful of others awakened by the sirens.

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think I’d like something stronger than hot chocolate. What do you think?”

  This was immediately agreed upon. Juliet fetched a few matching bottles from the cellar. She handed one to Nadia. Riley knew little about wine but everyone who’d been to Napa fawned over this particular merlot. Juliet grabbed ten glasses from the curio cabinet and twisted the cork out of one bottle. Nadia took a taste. She gave a thumbs-up. Perfect. In the candlelight, the dark red wine glowed with a memorable boldness. Riley looked down at a set of coasters on the coffee table. On them, in calligraphy: You are always choosing. They raised their glasses. They toasted that the fire hadn’t damaged much.

  “You know, Riley,” Nadia teased, “I’ve been watching you run around since you banged on my door and you haven’t checked your phone yet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you go half an hour before . . .”

  “Oh!” Riley felt for her pocket, but she was wearing sweatpants. There weren’t pockets. She actually had no idea where her phone was. In her room? Had Bob put it with her bag? She felt Juliet watching her. “Yes, well . . .” She paused. “When there’s something more important to do, right? Infinite demands. Limited time . . .”

  Juliet smiled. Her bracelet caught the light as she raised her glass to her lips.

  Chapter 10

  Riley woke later than she planned the next morning. She heard clangs, voices—the hum of her colleagues and the buzz of an espresso maker in the kitchen. She looked at the blinking alarm clock next to her. The power must have come back on. She sat up. Where was she? Sun streamed through the windows. One, facing the ocean, was cracked open, and a chill breeze ruffled her hair. The air held just a hint of smoke. She remembered: After the fire, after the late-night merlot, Bob had helped her move from the starfish room to a smaller room on the main floor. She forced herself out from under the warm down comforter and pulled on her now-dry jeans and a fleece before she could shiver. Drawn by the smell of coffee, she opened the door and slunk as quietly as she could on the creaky wood floor toward the common area.

  “Well, if it isn’t our firefighter!” Nadia said as Riley walked in, still blinking. The women of MB raised their mugs and cheered.

  “Oh, please,” Riley said.

  “Fearlessly ignoring her email to evacuate the south wing and extinguish the burning bush!”

  “Hear! Hear!” They clinked their mugs as Riley blushed and found an empty one, which she quickly filled. She hunted around for the cream. Real cream. The morning after envisioning stark choices for your future and putting out a fire called for something more fortifying than skim milk.

  “Good morning, Riley,” Juliet said. The sunlight streaming through the window glinted off her auburn hair. She stood back, radiant, as Betsy and Faye bustled around the kitchen. They plated eggs, bacon, and glistening, buttery biscuits served with little tins of jam made from strawberries the school grew on a farm a few miles inland. Juliet urged them all to visit for pick-your-own season in the summer. “Bob said the damage wasn’t too bad. We’ll be getting the tree service out here to get rid of those branches later today. And it’s so nice this morning—warming up fast. You can eat outside if you want.”

  Riley didn’t need to be convinced. Balancing a plate, and her coffee, and her silverware, she ambled off to the porch. She breathed in deeply as she sat down. All traces of the storm from the night before had vanished, save for seagulls swooping in to examine the detritus on the beach. The morning sun glittered off the calm sea. Juliet was right on the rising temperature; already the wind had changed from cold to pleasant. A few fishermen sat at the end of the pier. She could hear neighbors mopping up their porches. Someone shouted; a leaf blower hummed. The town of Maris was waking up. Morning brought everything back to normal. Even the fallen branches of the formerly flaming tree had been stacked neatly in a pile, testament to the efficient operations of Juliet’s School of Possibilities. Down the street, a man parked a truck with a giant trailer. He climbed out and walked around to the back. As Riley ate her breakfast, he unloaded a dozen bicycles, one by one, onto the sidewalk.

  She was lost in her thoughts when Juliet poked her head outside a few minutes later. “Sorry to rush you,” she said, “but I just talked to Tom, and he said that he’s going to be ready to take you all on your boardwalk bike ride in just a bit.”

  “Oh.” Riley took a big swig of her coffee. She answered by habit. “It sounds fun, but I should probably stay here and get my travel schedule sorted out for the week and . . .”

  “Really? Really, Riley? That’s what you’d choose to do over a lovely morning ride?”

  “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

  “Then . . .”

  Riley laughed at herself and threw up her hands. As one of Juliet’s acolytes whisked away her plate, Riley followed the small crowd of MB women in their weekend-warrior athletic garb down the street to grab a bike.

  The man who was unloading them waved as they walked closer. And as they walked closer, Riley couldn’t stop staring. He was tall. Almost unbelievably blond. Well-built, with a rugged face and deep blue eyes. He spoke with a slight accent as he introduced himself. “I’m Tom—I’ve been running Tom’s Bikes, about three miles south from here, and leading rides for Juliet’s guests since I moved from Copenhagen two years ago . . .”

  Riley stifled a laugh. She couldn’t help herself. Where was Juliet? She whirled around, but the domestic maven had disappeared into her school somewhere. Riley had to admire the sheer audacity of her host’s scheming as she recalled the description of her alleged future husband. Yes, Juliet did like to envision all possibilities.

  Not that it would be a bad possibility. She had no idea what this man was like,
but there on that storm-washed boardwalk, it didn’t really matter. She was content to spend the next few hours replacing all thoughts of the word “challenges” in her head with glances at someone who was incredibly easy on the eyes.

  The women of MB likewise whispered and twittered as they climbed on their bikes and followed Tom down the boardwalk. I would have dressed nicer if I’d known. She just got our return business for next year, right, Nadia? Do you think we can ask for a chef who looks like him too? The scenery, the joy of speed, made them buoyant. Autumn had mostly emptied the shore, and so they could fly down the smooth boards without needing to dodge clots of beach-goers. They could feel the cool wind waking them up as well as Juliet’s espresso. Riley had pedaled toward the front of the line when Tom dropped back to bike beside her.

  “So Juliet said you’re the firefighter, right?”

  She tried to decide if his eyes were closer to the color of the sea or the sky. “Oh, just a little excitement with the storm last night,” she said. “Nothing major.”

  “Not in Juliet’s telling. In her version you bravely rescued all your colleagues from their rooms and then rushed back toward the conflagration to single-handedly extinguish the flames.”

  “Is that what she told you?” Riley tried to picture Juliet calling her hunk of a neighbor to plant this idea. Always working her magic. “Just a little job with the fire extinguisher. I once put out a fire in my dorm in college, so I know the drill.”

  “Still.” He glanced back toward the women of MB, stretched out over several hundred yards in groups of two to three. They were all watching him strike up a conversation with Riley. She hardly dared think about what teasing she was in for later. “I was on the volunteer fire crew back when I was in school. I know most people don’t run toward flames.”

  “I see problems, and I try to solve them.” It was true. It was what she had always wanted to do. It was the lure of MB—its promise that she could solve important problems and share those solutions on as big a stage as possible. For just a second, the image of Jean reading her performance review flashed into her brain. But she didn’t want to let that cloud her thoughts now. She simply wanted to let her mind wander. She let herself float over the water, the beach houses, the autumn-bright trees.

  “Do you like to bike?” Tom asked.

  “I do, though I haven’t . . .”

  “I go on long rides most mornings before I lead tours. If you ever wanted to come along, I’d welcome company.” He grinned and Riley couldn’t help but smile back. Then Tom looked behind him at the train of women. “Oh, shoot, someone’s stopped. OK, you all keep going! Down to the drawbridge. We’ll catch up or meet you there!” He rode back to deal with the stuck gear or unaligned seat or whatever woe had befallen one of Riley’s colleagues.

  Riley kept pedaling. The morning shore was so beautiful she could think of little beyond the open sky. She breathed in the fresh, salty air. As she exhaled, her shoulders drifted down. Her jaw unclenched. She let her body revel in this strange sense. Was she . . . relaxed? She hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Like all that was buzzing around her did not matter. Like she could see clearly. Like her brain was actually working as she flew away from the inbox dramas that could not matter in a year. She wasn’t sure how to describe this openness. It felt exhilarating.

  She pedaled faster, through a gust of wind that kicked up clouds of fallen scarlet leaves. She pondered how she might recount all this sand and sea and space to Skip. She recalled the vision of her friend beaming at the podium, and that happiness from decades hence made her happy. It made her happy right there. Now. She focused on that happiness. She wanted to see that happiness. She pondered how she might make that possible, how she might choose her minutes to make that vision come to be. She should call Skip more often. Meet her more often. Then she remembered Skip mentioning that her roommate was moving out soon. Riley’s lease would be up in a few months. Maybe she should see if Skip would be up for sharing her place in Brooklyn. It was farther from the train station, and it might be harder to find a cab to the airport, but it would feel more like a home. She pictured herself walking through all those artisanal markets Juliet described, bringing groceries back to the kitchen in their Brooklyn home, where Skip would be fluttering about, telling tales of her middle school charges. She would like the companionship and . . .

  Brooklyn. Home. Companion. In Riley’s windswept brain, those three words caught on one another. She watched them stack up. Something came together. An image. A possibility. Riley pedaled a little harder. As she thought about it, and thought through the logistics, it all began to make sense. She began to smile. And then she began to smile some more. The lighthouse loomed up ahead. Oh, Skip.

  She might finally have an idea.

  Chapter 11

  The Brooklyn Home Companion?” Skip asked.

  Riley paced around her room, smoothing her white comforter as she talked on the phone, more excited than even she had imagined she might be. “Listen, Juliet said that people are obsessed with Brooklyn artisanal anything. Her daughters write blog posts about pickles, and page views go off the charts. You have your girls produce a magazine looking at crafts, food, urban farming, the arts. They can write poems and stories for it too, like those old Woman’s Home Companion magazines. People love retro stuff. Anyway, the girls learn about writing and editing and graphics and publishing, and the business of producing a magazine, but the concept is about ten times more hip than your average school literary journal. People might actually read it, as opposed to a normal school publication. And you’d be positioning your nonprofit right in the center of this local scene.”

  “It sounds . . . intriguing.”

  “And listen, I mentioned it to Juliet because why not, right? I’m here. May as well try. And you know the first thing out of her mouth?”

  “No.”

  “She said, ‘I’d love to be an adviser. Do you think they’d want me? I’d be happy to help out.’”

  “Oh my goodness. Um, yes.”

  “Yes, right? So do you think that’s something your funder might like?”

  “I think . . . there is a distinct possibility.”

  “You’re meeting with her this afternoon, right?” Riley glanced at the alarm clock next to her bed. “Give me an hour, and I will send you a proposal.”

  Riley hung up and fished her laptop out of her bag. The women of MB were on a short break after biking so they could freshen up before their scrapbooking class. Riley figured she might be late to scrapbooking. She might not shower. She was fine with that choice. She glanced at the number on her inbox—1,459 unread messages—but so it went. There was only one email going out in the next hour that mattered to her anyway.

  She felt a surge of energy as she sat down to work: the thrill of possibility at the start of any new project. This she knew how to do. If nothing else, MB had drilled her on the skill of turning a good idea into a compelling proposal. And this idea—which had sprung into her brain in a moment of utter clarity—would be unlike anything Skip’s potential funder had seen. Riley tore through the Wikipedia entry on the Woman’s Home Companion; she pulled up a quote from Gertrude Battles Lane, editor during the 1920s and 1930s heyday of the magazine. The reader “is forever seeking new ideas; I must keep her in touch with the best. Her horizon is ever extending, her interest broadening.” Just like Skip’s girls. Riley wrote up the skills they would learn. She threw in estimates on printing and distribution costs she’d learned through tangential research she’d done on a now-defunct People’s Coffee Shops publication. She wrote about where the girls could distribute the magazine: the libraries, the craft fairs and maker spaces, the farming co-ops. She wrote a business plan for how the magazine could become self-sustaining after initial philanthropic support. And then she doubled down on the print aspect of it. Of course, everything was online these days. But the whole point of the Brooklyn artisanal scene was go
ing back to real things, enabled by technology, but also slightly apart from it.

  Also, Juliet was willing to put her name on the masthead. So there was that.

  She finished a draft in forty-five minutes, then spent the next fifteen minutes editing. She marveled at her own execution. She sent the document to Skip.

  A few minutes later, Skip replied with a text message full of emoji hearts.

  So she was being put in Challenges, Riley thought. She knew she was good at this. The powers that reigned at MB could suggest her resignation. They could change their euphemism and demand it. She would be fine. She loved finding problems and solving them, and when she needed to work, she could work harder than anyone else. She was always choosing, and this work was her calling. This work was where she worked her magic, and when she focused on what she could do best, she could see what others couldn’t.

  That opened up all sorts of possibilities.

  Chapter 12

  Later that afternoon, the women of MB oohed and ahhed over one another’s scrapbooks. These keepsakes did indeed look fabulous, albeit thanks to staff help every bit as intensive as they’d received with the meringue the night before.

  Riley, on the other hand, though fifteen minutes late to class, had spent the remaining time grilling every staff member in the room about page layout techniques, fonts, and complementary material textures. Maybe she’d volunteer with Skip’s girls sometime. If she was going into the magazine business, she needed to understand more about aesthetics than one might assume from her navy and charcoal suit rotation.

  She kept pondering the Brooklyn Home Companion as she worked. Skip had liked her proposal enough that Riley jotted down notes of backup plans: a dozen other potential funders if this first one didn’t bite, and people she knew who worked at each of those places, so she could introduce Skip and get her meetings. She showed her colleagues her book of autumn photos, and smiled through a presentation from Jean on MB’s new training programs. But then as people drifted up to pack, she wandered off on her own. She snapped pictures of Juliet’s school, and the beach, and the boardwalk. The cawing birds, flying south, filled her with a sense of openness. Maybe she’d try a scrapbook of the weekend. Or just a few pages with those words to remind her: Expectations are infinite. Time is finite. You are always choosing. Choose well. She couldn’t quite explain it, but every time she repeated that phrase, the words seemed to push her on to try new things.