The Merchant of Venice Beach (6 page)

The Wolf women came from intellectual stock. Their mother was a history professor and their late father had been an English professor. The brains had clearly not been evenly divided when it came to the offspring. Of the two girls, Erinn was definitely the egghead. When Suzanna was very little, she would be amazed when Erinn would come home from school with straight As, even though Suzanna never saw her study. Because she was so much younger, Suzanna assumed that she herself would be getting astounding grades as she got older, equating good grades with age rather than a DNA crap-shoot. When she got to the age when she could see that this was not about to happen, she asked her mother about it.

“I’m not as smart as Erinn, am I?” she had asked.

Her mother, who was creating a historical timeline at the time, looked up at her younger daughter and studied her. Suzanna had the feeling the answer was not going to be good.

“No, dear, you aren’t,” her mother said. “But you should thank your lucky stars. Your sister is too smart. It’s going to be very, very hard for her to ever be happy.”

“So,” Suzanna said, trying to digest this, “I should be happy that I can be happy.”

“Exactly!”

Over the years, Suzanna had shared this story with many people. Some felt that her mother had done her a terrible disservice by implying that Suzanna could get away with not striving because she had been given a get-out-of-jail-free card—a “you’re not as smart as Erinn” pass from her mother. But Suzanna didn’t feel that way at all. She was grateful to her mother for being so honest. She felt a huge burden lift off of her. She wasn’t as smart as her sister, and she should stop trying to be—and she should figure out how to be herself.

Figuring out how to be herself was taking a little longer than anyone expected, but Suzanna had never resented her mother’s take on things.

And let’s face it, I’ll never be interested in anything as dirt-dull as a play about the Spanish Armada.

Suzanna tuned back in to the conversation.

“The Spanish Armada, huh?” she said. “That should be, um, interesting.”

“Of course it will be interesting. I wouldn’t write it if it weren’t going to be interesting.”

“I really don’t know much about the Spanish Armada,” Suzanna said.

“Exactly!” Erinn said. “But once you’ve seen my play, you will know everything there is to know—from the Spanish perspective, of course.”

“Of course.”

Eric added a final book to the stack in Erinn’s arms. Suzanna held the door open for her.

“I’m sure your play will teach us a lot,” Eric said.

Erinn turned and looked up at him.

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

“Nicely put,” Eric said, smiling at her.

“Thank you. I will send Socrates your compliments.”

“Bye,” Suzanna said.

“Suzanna,” Erinn said—but then, surprisingly, she continued. “Walk with me.”

Suzanna saw Eric’s eyebrows shoot up as she dutifully followed her sister out to her car.

“Have you ever heard of Peter Pan syndrome?” Erinn asked.

“Well, no. Should I?”

“I think you have it.”

“You think I have Peter Pan syndrome? That’s ridiculous.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t need to know what it is. It sounds ridiculous.”

“Don’t be so swift to judge,” Erinn said. “It’s a psychological condition that manifests itself in the inability to grow up. It is usually applied to men, but in your case, I think the medical community would make an exception.”

“I’m so relieved,” Suzanna said. Judging by her sister’s expression, Erinn didn’t understand that this was sarcasm.

“Remember when you—and your roommates—went back to Napa for your tenth high school reunion a few years ago? You were the only three who hadn’t any sort of real profession or gotten married or had kids. And nothing has changed. You are stagnant.”

“We have a real profession!”

“You don’t need to be defensive. This is just an observation. You just don’t seem . . . very mature for thirty-three.”

“I’m only thirty-two. And besides, if this applies to Fernando and Eric, too, why are you taking it out on me?”

“Because I love you,” Erinn said matter-of-factly, and got in her car. “I suppose that’s why.”

Suzanna was speechless as she watched Erinn drive away.

Well, a torrid affair will be just the grown-up thing, then, won’t it?

Suzanna walked back up the steps, closed the door, and looked around the shop. In the age of Kindles and audio books, she was always surprised that they managed to stay in business. Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of keys turning in the lock of the tea shop.

“It’s about time you got back,” Fernando said, locking up the tearoom with a resounding clunk. “I’ve been trying to talk to you all week!”

Fernando, who closed the tearoom an hour before Eric closed the bookstore, rushed across the room. He was at loose ends, having just broken up with his gym-rat trainer boyfriend. The affair had left him brokenhearted (and broke, since the boyfriend had “borrowed” several grand from Fernando as a down payment on a gym). Suzanna had been relieved when this particular affair flamed out. Fernando spent every spare moment at the gym, and at five-feet-seven, he had probably worked his body a little too hard. In Suzanna’s eyes, his head had started looking startlingly small atop his massive shoulders. While Suzanna felt bad about the breakup, she was glad that Fernando would be giving his workouts a rest. The only problem was, now he was spending all his time coming up with new ideas for the tearoom.

Now what?

“We need to add a swing to the porch in front of the tearoom,” Fernando said.

“We can’t afford it,” Suzanna said, feeling entirely justified, since she just opted out of private dance lessons for the sake of economy.

Fernando followed her around the store as she straightened up the shelves.

“Seriously, Suzanna, I am so sick of the same old, same old.”

Join the club!

“Sorry, sweetie,” Suzanna said, “but same old, same old is pretty much what you’re stuck with when you run a tea shop.”

Suzanna climbed the sliding ladder—one of her favorite things about the old-fashioned bookstore—without a word and Eric seemed to magically appear with a armload of books to be reshelved. Fernando pushed the ladder along the wall and Eric handed Suzanna the books one at a time. Suzanna smiled down at her two cohorts.

Look at us! We’re like a finely tuned machine.

“How much could it cost to buy a swing?” Fernando asked as he slid the ladder expertly along its track.

“You’re just bored,” Eric said. “A swing won’t help. Plus, it will be an insurance liability.”

Eric stretched and handed a book up to Suzanna. He winked at her as she reached for the book. It always unnerved her that he had such an easy wink.

Why can’t I have an easy wink?

With much effort, Suzanna had gotten over her lifelong crush on Eric. There was a time when that wink would have sent her soaring, sometimes with hope, other times with despair. But having a crush on your childhood friend turned high school buddy turned business partner, just got exhausting—and the days of wistful longing for Eric were over. She returned the book to its place on the top shelf with an emphatic shove. Usually, this thought vaguely depressed her, but now, with the fabulous dance instructor in the works, she actually found herself taking pleasure in it.

“That’s easy for you to say,” Fernando said to Eric, giving the ladder a small tug. “Suzanna listens to you!”

“I do not,” Suzanna grabbed the ladder for balance as she looked down at the top of Fernando’s head. “I mean, no more than I listen to you.”

“Oh, really? Then why can Eric have a book club when I can’t have a swing?”

“Not again,” Suzanna said, jumping down from the ladder.

She turned to Eric for support, but he just smiled his “you’re on your own, sister” smile, scooped up another pile of books, and picked his way through the haphazard stacks of books and periodicals toward the back of the nook. Fernando crossed his arms in a well-
rehearsed huff.

“First of all, a book club doesn’t cost any money,” Suzanna said. “And second, if I recall, the book club was your idea.”

“That’s because I’m supportive,” Fernando said.

Suzanna tried not to roll her eyes. If memory served, Fernando had actually come up with the book club idea for the tearoom. He had just read a book by Michael Cunningham called Land’s End, about Provincetown in Cape Cod, and he wanted to share it with the world.

If you made any sort of “I’m an outsider” comment to Fernando, he was off and running. Suzanna tried to gently point out that you couldn’t form a club of outsiders . . . it was an oxymoron. The whole point of being an outsider was aloneness. Did Johnny Depp run around starting book clubs? He understood the allure and mystique of being the Outsider. The Stranger. The Silent One.

Oh, if only Fernando understood how to be the Silent One.

“You start signing up outsiders and you’re just going to look like a bunch of losers,” Eric had said.

But Fernando was not to be dissuaded. He had been in a fever and Suzanna had finally given her consent. Fernando bullied all his ladies (including Harri and Erinn) into attending the book club meeting in the tearoom. Eric took pity on the group and was able to get them a substantial discount on a bulk order, and the session came to order with each participant clutching her own new copy of Land’s End.

Fernando’s flirtation with the book club idea lasted less than one meeting. Instead of discussing Land’s End, the ladies wanted to discuss the more famous of Cunningham’s tomes, The Hours, a lovely book which was turned into a movie starring Nicole Kidman wearing a prosthetic nose.

“All the old bats wanted to talk about was how brave Nicole Kidman was to wear a big fat ugly nose,” Fernando said, as he reported the end to his book club. However, the ladies who attended the book club loved it and badgered Eric to keep things going. Now there were monthly meetings in the nook. Fernando alternately insisted on taking credit for the idea or used it as leverage that Eric had something exciting going on and he didn’t.

Suzanna’s cell phone rang, mercifully cutting off Fernando’s swing bid. She looked down at the screen, which was signaling that her friend Carla Caridi was calling from Napa. Suzanna furrowed her brow, hoping that it looked to Fernando like she had a very important business call to take. She indicated that she would take the call in the office and Fernando rolled his eyes. As Suzanna headed to the office, he called after her.

“Say hi to Carla for me.”

Rats!

Suzanna closed the office door as she clicked on the phone.

“Carla, hey!”

“Hey! How’s the beach?”

“Coastal.”

“As usual.”

Suzanna smiled. Carla always had a comeback—the story of their lives.

It always amazed Suzanna that people in Los Angeles seemed to change friends every ten minutes, and here she was, still tied to all three of her childhood cronies. Until high school, when Suzanna, Fernando—and sometimes Eric—became attached at the hip, Carla had been Suzanna’s constant childhood companion. Suzanna’s parents had moved to Napa from New York City when Erinn was nine, before Suzanna was born. Suzanna couldn’t remember a time without Carla. Carla was as much a part of her life as her own family. Good thing, too, or Suzanna would have dumped her a million times.

Suzanna and Carla’s relationship had had some pretty breathtaking ups and downs over the years, but since they really were almost family, they always managed to patch things up. Carla was always ready to jump in with an insightful insult any time Suzanna had had it with either of the boys.

“Boys treating you like the jewel you are?” Carla asked.

“More like cubic zirconium, but yeah, things are fine.”

The two women caught up on friends, family, and jobs. Carla might have stayed in Napa where her family owned a winery, but she had gone on to study architecture. She lived on the East Coast after college, got married, then divorced—and returned to Napa. She not only had become somewhat of a big muckety-muck in architectural design around the wine country, she also helped run her family’s winery with her father.

Carla always was an overachiever.

Luckily for Suzanna (and Erinn), Carla’s family’s winery was right next door to the Wolf residence. Carla made it a point to check on Suzanna’s mom every week, now that Suzanna’s father had passed away. This eased Suzanna’s guilt about not seeing more of her mother—and anything that eased guilt was a good thing.

Suzanna had resolved to tell no one about her big secret, but Carla’s voice, which was like a magic carpet ride back to the past, always broke down her defenses.