“No. Thanks. Listen, Blix has my number upstairs. Call anytime you need something.”
“Thanks. Can I give you my number? If you need anything?”
“Sure. Slide it in the mail slot, will you?”
When I get back upstairs, Noah has gone into the back bedroom and closed the door. I can hear him talking, though, no doubt on the phone with his mom. His voice is rising and falling, and when I pass by, I hear, “I’m trying to explain to you—she’s here now!”
The larger bedroom at the front of the house, with its sienna-colored walls, is open, so I go in there and close the door. The room is kind of surreal, with posters everywhere, and a big lumpy double bed, a kantha quilt, and all kinds of crazy little knickknacks on every surface, and crystals and banners hanging on the walls, little pieces of art, pieces that Blix no doubt loved and that still seem to hold on to some part of her.
I lie there looking up at the ceiling, which is illuminated by the streetlights. You could shoot a movie in this room it’s so bright.
The ceiling has a crack that looks like a sweet little chipmunk eating a burrito. Don’t give up. Everything is going to be fine, the chipmunk says.
It’s all unfolding just the way it’s supposed to.
It’s a long time before I can close my eyes and go to sleep.
And that’s the end of the first day.
TWENTY-THREE
MARNIE
Noah already seems to be gone when I wake up in the morning, which is nothing short of a divine blessing.
I take a shower in Blix’s fabulous claw-footed tub and then go up to the kitchen, where I have to search for a coffeemaker (she has some press device that seems to be missing some key parts). There’s hardly any food in the refrigerator, just bags of dark chocolate and green mushy things, possibly lentils, and some bottles that look like dietary supplements. And of course beer. Lots and lots of beer.
Luckily, as I’m about to plan a journey into the outside world in search of food, there’s a knock at the back door.
“Helloooo!” calls Jessica. I open it to find her standing there wearing a pink flowered kimono and blue jeans, her wet hair tied up in one of those divinely messy knots.
“Oh, hi,” she says. “I just wondered if you might want to get some breakfast with me.” She makes a sad face. “The truth is that my ex, Sammy’s dad, came and picked him up this morning, and that’s always tough for me, so I could use a little distraction. And I’m guessing you might possibly want to get out of here, too.”
“I’d love to.”
“Well, great. I can show you the neighborhood! Park Slope rocks, you know.”
I go grab my thin, little, good-enough-for-Florida sweater, and she dashes into her apartment to get her real sweater, then she tells me about all the great places around here. As we’re leaving, Lola waves to us from the stairs next door and calls out, “You doing okay, Marnie? Settling in?”
“I’m doing fine, Lola!” I holler, and she says, “Come over sometime! I have stories to tell you!”
Jessica murmurs, “She and Blix—such a pair! Always out on the stoop talking to everybody who came by. Playing with the babies, inviting the old people to come sit with them. Blix knew everybody.”
It’s a beautiful day outside—warm for October first, Jessica says, and the sidewalk is filled with people: kids in soccer uniforms heading off to games, families with strollers, groups of young guys all wearing black clothing decorated in zippers, a man on the corner who seems to be lecturing a brick building, a guy setting out buckets of flowers in front of a little grocery store. Cars lurch along the streets, then come to screeching halts as people double-park and jump out to run into various shops, setting off spates of annoyed honking and swearing—and although everything that happens makes me jump, Jessica pays no attention to what’s going on.
I keep wanting to slow down and soak it all in, pause somewhere and just watch for a while, but Jessica is walking along, at a brisk thirty-miles-per-hour pace, cheerfully ranting about Sammy’s father, who cheated on her while they were married, and who is now living with that woman. And now the judge has said that Jessica is supposed to be sharing custody with him! Can I even imagine? She has to share weekend time every other week? The precious time she has to be alone with her own son, the time when they’re free from work and school responsibilities—and now she has to share that with her ex the scumbag, the guy she calls Creepasaurus?
“I know what you’re probably thinking, and you’re absolutely right: I should get over it already. He’s Sammy’s father, and Sammy needs to see him, but—and this is a big but—he lost some of his privileges when he betrayed me, and how can I get over that? Anyway!” She looks over at me, and I see that she is puffed up with anger, puffed up and beautiful in her outrage. “You’ve had some complicated stuff, too, I gather. All of Blix’s people have. I mean, you were with Noah, for starters.”
“Complicated, yes,” I say, and she says, “Hey, what’s your policy about waiting on line for a table? There’s this excellent place I love, but it takes monumental patience because it’s so awesome, and also it’s got hundreds of reviews on Yelp.”
“I’m fine with waiting,” I say, even though my stomach is growling. I’m surprised she can’t hear it.
“Great. Because it is the place for eggs in Park Slope! You like eggs, I hope? And it’s Southern food, which I know you’ll like. Goes with your accent. Oh, here we are! See how cute? It’s called Yolk!”
Sure enough, we’ve arrived at a tiny little place that has about thirty people milling around outside, sipping mugs of coffee and chatting. Inside, I can see that there are approximately five tables we’ll be competing for. But we put our name on the list and then she suggests we walk around, look in the shops. I try to resign myself to the fact that I won’t get breakfast until sometime in the middle of next week.
“I know it must be so much worse for you, but I still can’t believe Blix isn’t here any longer,” she says. “I miss her so much, it’s like my own grandmother died or something. I saw her every single day! Sammy couldn’t leave the house without stopping by her place. She was everything.”
“Did you know her for a long time?” I say.
“Since Andrew left. I met her that same week. So, yeah, three years? But it seems so much longer because she was always the person I could talk to about anything. She was like my guru and my grandmother and my therapist and my Reiki master and my best friend, all rolled into one. Even while she was sick, she kept up with everybody.”
“I-I didn’t even know she was sick. I met her last Christmas and then she came to my wedding . . . but that’s it.”
“Oh my goodness, she loved you a lot. She told everybody about you! The whole borough of Brooklyn probably knew that you were coming. And then Noah showed up right before she died, so I thought that might mean you weren’t coming after all. But I couldn’t ever get her alone to ask her, you know? I hope you don’t mind that I know all this. That’s the way it is when you’re one of Blix’s people. We all seem connected somehow.”
“I have to admit that I didn’t know I was one of Blix’s people.”
“No? There are a bunch of us. I met most of them at the wake slash good-bye party she gave for herself. Did you know about that?”
“Sadly I am way out of the loop on everything.”
“I’ll fill you in, then,” she says. “There’s Patrick downstairs. He’s an amazing person, an artist and sculptor, but he doesn’t come upstairs anymore since she died. Have you seen his sculpture in Blix’s living room—the woman holding her hands up near her face? Incredibly beautiful. Too bad he doesn’t do that anymore.”
“Did he stop because she died?”
“Oh, no. Even before she died he had stopped.” She looks at me and laughs. “I am talking way too much. Sorry. So! But Blix left you the house—am I right? She left you the building?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”