The Book That Matters Most (17 page)

“Je t'aime bien aussi,”
she said.

“Puis-je t'embrasser?”

Maggie nodded, and he leaned his long frame down until his lips met hers.

In the distance, his friends called to him.

“À demain
?” he asked her.

Maggie nodded, although she had no idea how she would be able to meet him tomorrow. What would she do with Julien? Already she worried about how angry he was going to be at her for staying away all afternoon.

“We'll meet here? On the beach?” he was asking her.

Maggie realized her legs were trembling. Was it fear? Or the need for a fix that had started in her gut?

“Oui,”
she said.
“Ici.”

Henri said something to her, but all of a sudden she could only think of the long way back. The climb up the steep rocks. The walk past the almond and olive trees. And the sun was starting to set.

With her legs shaking it was harder to climb up the rocks. Henri stood below her, calling something that she couldn't hear through the whooshing sound in her head. The rocks loomed sharp and jagged above her. Maggie looked beyond them, then down at Henri and the beach. She took a breath. She knew she could never go back to Julien. Never. Slowly, she began to make her way down the rocks.

Hank

Hank Bingham stood in Nadine's garden, a brand new garden hose stiff in his hand. At Benny's, the local store that sold everything from tires to Barbie dolls to coffee pots to . . . well, to garden hoses, he'd stood staring at the hoses like he'd never watered anything before. They sat, coiled like bright green snakes, waiting for him to choose one. Honestly, Hank couldn't remember ever buying one in the first place. Maybe the old one had come with the house? The people they'd bought it from, an old retired couple, had left things behind. A hummingbird feeder that Nadine dutifully filled with sugary water. A box of old postcards that Hank had tried to
return to them because they seemed special, full of memories and signed with love. Except the old guy had told him to throw them out. They weren't special at all. His wife had bought them at a junk shop on Wickenden Street, thinking she might use them in one of her craft projects. But she never did. Remnants of those craft projects had been left behind too. Scissors that left whatever they cut with a scalloped edge, scraps of felt and bits of embroidery thread. Nadine had used some of the stuff, like the scissors. But not those postcards. He'd finally thrown them out after she died. So maybe the old couple had left the hose behind too.

This morning Hank decided to water Nadine's garden.

Hank looked at all the dead plants. He owed it to Nadine to keep her plants alive. It was too late to save the tulips. Those, apparently, had to be planted in fall, before the first frost. Somehow a few had appeared anyway, standing tall and yellow among the brown leaves in the corner. Hank pointed the hose at them, turned the nozzle, and felt the water gurgle and then shoot through the hose. He adjusted the nozzle to a spray, and lifted it high so that it rained down on all the dead things.

Years ago, Hank had a Korean partner. A nice guy named Lee who came and went from the precinct so fast that no one even noticed he'd been there. Every afternoon, Lee made a big bowl of those instant ramen noodles, the kind that Nadine wouldn't let Hank eat because they had too much sodium. But Lee added an egg to his, and thin strips of American cheese, and chopped scallions. He would sit happily slurping the soup while Hank ate his tuna salad sandwich—one slice white bread, the other wheat—and carrot sticks and an apple. That ramen smelled so damn good, and Lee looked so happy eating it that Hank sometimes had to walk away.

Tonight, dirt under his fingernails from planting and his back aching from kneeling so much, Hank made himself that soup.

“Sorry, Nadine,” he said out loud as he stirred the flavor packet into the boiling water and noodles.

He wondered what had happened to Lee, why he had come and gone so quickly, where he'd ended up. They weren't close, but they'd had some fun together. Hank got the crazy idea to track Lee down and tell him what he was having for dinner. But then he realized he wasn't even sure if Lee had been the guy's first name or the last name.

Miss Kitty, smelling the cheese Hank was ripping into orange ribbons, moved in and out of his legs, purring. Funny how he'd never known a cat's purr before, how satisfying a sound it was.

“Sorry, Nadine,” he said again, dropping half the cheese onto the kitchen floor for the cat.

Hank picked up the bowl of soup and took it to his usual spot in front of the TV to watch
Wheel of Fortune
, Miss Kitty at his heels. The soup was good; Lee had been right to slurp it with such joy.

H
ank glanced up. The wheel of fortune was spinning. His soup had cooled. He got to his feet heavily—the sore back, the shot knees—and went into the bedroom. He opened the bottom drawer, lifted the neatly folded row of his summer shirts. Nadine had washed and folded them and put them away when the weather cooled and summer turned to autumn, just before she got sick. Or before they knew how sick she was, anyway.

His hand slid along the bottom of the drawer until he found what he'd come for:
From Clare to Here
. He carried it back to the sofa, and for the first time in months he turned off the television.
A loud silence filled the room. The cat stretched out on his chest and immediately began to purr. Hank stroked its short fur, opened the book, and read:
Jane's parents had not talked since her sister died last summer. Oh, they talked—
please pass the salt,
and
can you get Jane at school at four—
but they didn't talk talk. Instead, her father went to work and her mother stayed home and cried. But today, for reasons Jane didn't understand, they were going on a holiday. The three of them
. . .

THAT MORNING

1970

Hank

Hank Bingham loved being a cop. He loved the stale coffee, the satisfying snap of blank paper inserted onto the clipboard, the weight of his gun against his hip. He loved the long hours, the way the sky turned silver just before sunrise, the way it turned violet at dusk. The only thing Hank Bingham hated about being a cop: a dead kid. Blood and gunshot wounds and heads cracked open didn't make him flinch. He'd watched the jaws of life free twisted broken bodies from wrecked cars without even flinching. But a kid . . .

He saw her as soon as he turned the corner, a small patch of pink against ridiculously green grass under an almost too
bright sun. A woman paced with the nervous energy some people get in catastrophes. Another little girl stood so still she didn't seem to be real. An ambulance with the red light on top spinning was parked on the side of the road, two men stood over the body. Hank took it all in as he parked, and walked toward them.

The woman ran to greet him. Her cheeks were tear-stained.

“She's dead!” the woman screamed.

Hank's partner Lee arrived, and he stepped from his car. He'd let Lee handle the hysterical woman, Hank decided, and continued to the scene.

The little girl in pink on the green grass had a broken neck. Hank saw that right away. And a bruise on her cheek. He looked at her, and then away, swallowing hard. His gaze lifted upward, to a tall tree covered with white blossoms.

“She fell,” he said.

He went over to the girl standing frozen in place. Someone so young, and in shock, wasn't going to be helpful, he knew. Still, he had to try.

Hank kneeled so that he was eye to eye with her. Her eyes were hazel, that color you don't see much, kind of brown and green and gold all at the same time. They were hazel and flat with shock.

“Sweetie,” he said, “I know this is hard, but I need you to talk to me.”

Nothing.

“I'm Hank,” he said. “And you're . . . ?”

Her mouth opened and closed a couple times.

“I can't hear you, sweetie,” he said. “What's your name?”

She licked her lips, whispered something.

“I'm going to write it down,” he said, holding up the notebook. “Can you say it nice and loud so I get it right?”

“Ava,” she said. Then she added, helpfully, “A–V–A.”

She started to cry, the tears falling fast and hard.

“Is Lily okay?”

“Lily's your sister?”

Ava nodded.

“And she was what? Climbing that tree?”

“I told her she was up too high,” Ava said, trembling.

“And so she was coming down?”

“No! She wouldn't come down.”

“So you went up for her?”

“I don't like heights,” Ava said. “I'm afraid to be too high up.”

Lee was questioning the mother.

“Did your mother go up after her?” Hank asked.

“My mother's at work,” she said.

“That's not your mother over there, talking to Officer Lee?”

“My mother's at work,” Ava said again.

“So who's that then?”

“Aunt Beatrice. She's babysitting us today. Is Lily okay?” she asked him again.

Hank wrote down that the mother was at work and that the aunt was babysitting.

“Did Aunt . . . what did you say her name is? Beatrice?”

“Aunt Beatrice,” Ava repeated.

“Did she go up to help Lily?” Hank asked.

Ava shook her head. “She was inside.”

“You stay right here,” Hank told her. “Don't move. I'm going to talk to Officer Lee.”

The sound of a car taking the corner too fast and screeching to a halt made them turn.

Hank frowned.

“What the hell?” he said out loud.

Did she follow him here? he thought, ridiculously, because if she'd followed him she wouldn't be arriving now.

But it was her, most definitely. No one else drove a beat-up lime green Citroën. And now she was getting out of the car in her lavender dress and she hadn't brushed her hair so it was snarled like it always got after sex and she was running toward him, yelling something. Yelling, he realized,
“Lily Lily Lily Lily Lily.”

Ava

“García Márquez said that nothing happened in his life after he was eight years old,” Cate began. “And he went on to say that the atmosphere in his books reflects the atmosphere of his childhood in Aracataca, Colombia—”

“Cate?” Ruth said. “May I take it from here? I mean, I chose the book and although I really really love you as a facilitator, I just have a few things I'd like to say, right off the bat, you know?”

“Oh sure,” Cate said, stepping aside.

“She's got her index cards,” Honor said, and everyone laughed.

Penny leaned toward Ava. “She's very organized,” she said.
“She makes outlines and puts everything on those cards. I suppose if I had six children I'd do the same.”

Ruth glanced at the first card, then looked at her audience.

“The things I'd like to discuss are, one: the provincial experience in Márquez's life and his fiction,” she said. “Two: the political ideas in the book and in Latin America. Three . . .”

As she spoke, Ruth counted off her points on her fingers, holding them nice and high.

Luke casually placed his hand on Ava's knee. She stiffened, and swatted at it, but Luke didn't seem to notice.

“Five: how his descriptions reflect Colombian history, and Latin America's struggles with colonialism and modernity,” Ruth continued. “And six: what the book says about human nature.”

“Bravo!” Honor said, looking absolutely delighted with Ruth's presentation.

“That's exactly what makes the novel so great,” Luke said.

When everyone turned toward him, Ava wondered if they could see his hand on her knee. Was John staring at them? Or did he just look confused, as usual?

“It's political and historical,” Luke said. “But in the end, isn't it mostly about the possibility of love? And the sadness of solitude?”

“The book does speak to all that, Luke,” Ava said. “And so beautifully. I was surprised how moved I was by this novel.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw John nodding.

“The burden of memory,” Diana said. “The characters consider forgetfulness dangerous, yet ironically they speak of the burden, the weight, of memories.”

“Look at Rebeca,” John said. “After her husband died her memories force her to lock herself in her house.”

“She would rather live alone with her memories than deal with the world around her,” Kiki added.

Ruth flipped through her cards.

“Colonel Buendía is kind of the opposite of Rebeca, isn't he?” John said. “He doesn't have any memories at all.”

“We're kind of jumping ahead,” Ruth said. “Aren't we?”

Cate smiled. “You know this always happens, Ruth. Do you ever get through your outline in order?”

“What did all those little gold fish he made mean?” Kiki asked.

“That comes under symbolism,” Ruth said. “Number four.”

“Yes,” Diana was saying, “but when he realizes that the little gold fishes represent a mistaken ideal, he stops making them.”

“Stops making them,” Honor agreed, “but melts down the old ones, again and again. A perfect symbol of . . .”

Ava glanced around the room, at John wearing his befuddled expression; and Monique nodding enthusiastically; and Ruth standing there gripping her index cards, flustered; and Honor lecturing them; and Diana with her dramatically made up eyes and dark red lips; and Kiki taking notes in her Moleskine; and Cate, such a good friend for letting her come here in the first place, sitting back and listening to their voices rise in their love of books. The sight of them all filled Ava with a warmth and comfort she had not felt in a long time.

PART SIX

MAY