She stops walking so abruptly that two people nearly run into her. “How’s Noah doing with that?”
“It’s kind of a mess,” I say. “Noah and his mom believe that she should have been the one who got the house, and I kind of agree, if you want to know the truth. And no offense, but I don’t really want to live here, so I guess I’ll just sell it.”
“Oh, no!” Her face changes. “You’re just going to sell it and go?”
“Well . . . yeah, I mean this isn’t really home, you know. I have a life elsewhere. In Florida.”
She is searching my face. “I hadn’t even thought about that. Of course you have a life! Oh, man! This would be like somebody in—oh, I don’t know—Oklahoma or somewhere leaving me a house and expecting me to pick up and go there.”
“It does feel kind of random.”
She shifts her bag over to her other shoulder and purses her lips. “I have got to tell you that this is so Blix-like. Doing something like this. No warning, no explanation. We all call this ‘getting Blixed.’ Although mostly it works out for the best once the dust settles.”
“Ha! So I’ve been . . . Blixed?” I say.
“You, my dear, have been sooo Blixed. And you probably haven’t even finished processing your breakup with Noah. That takes forever to get through, and you’re going to have to start the whole thing all over again, now that he’s all up in your face again and reminding you of the past. Is he being—weird? He is, isn’t he? He’s being weird. I can tell. Just from the way he was last night.”
“He is being a little weird,” I say. “But I get it. He’s in shock.”
She frowns. “Can I tell you something, even though I probably should just keep my big mouth closed and keep out of it?”
“Okay.”
“She didn’t want him or his family to have the building. She left it to you on purpose.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, she wasn’t all that happy when he showed up.” She comes to a full stop in front of a shop like she’s slammed on the brakes. “Hey, this is one of my favorite stores,” she says in the same chirpy tone of voice she’s been using all along. “Want to go in and look at the coats? You might need one.”
“Okay,” I say, “although Florida doesn’t really call for a lot of coats.”
“Well,” she says in a singsong, “but you never know what’s going to happen when Blix is involved! You just might find she wants you to stay here.”
“Since she’s dead, though, she doesn’t have much of a way of getting that to happen,” I say.
“So you’d think,” she says.
We go inside and she goes over to the coats, starts flipping through all the shades of gray, black, and brown. And then suddenly, without warning, she stops moving and looks straight ahead, stiffening.
I follow her gaze and see that a man is staring at her and making his way over to us, and behind him is Sammy. If Jessica were a cat, her back would be arched, and she’d be hissing.
“Andrew!” she says, and her face has turned angry. “What in the world are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be on the way to Cooperstown?” She looks around. “And where’s your girlfriend, huh?” She reaches over and puts her hand on Sammy’s arm, protectively. Sammy has a stricken expression on his face; I see him mouthing to her, “It’s fine, Mom, it’s fine.”
The man looks abashed, as though he’s been caught at something, which is exactly how she sounds. Sammy, pushing his mop of too-long hair out of his eyes, scoots out of her range and says, “Easy, Mom. It’s okay. We just wanted to get some food first, and now we’re looking at gloves.”
She turns to her ex. “If I had known, Andrew, that your girlfriend wasn’t going to cook for you, I could have fed him breakfast.”
“It’s fine. We had a nice breakfast down the street. I always like eating in this neighborhood.” Andrew puts his hand on Sammy’s head, which I see Jessica register as some possible violation, and Sammy looks down miserably and kicks at something on the floor.
“So where is she?”
Andrew mumbles something, and then the two of them glare at each other, and then he dips his head, smiles, and steers Sammy over to where they were before, the glove section.
“Good-bye!” she says. “And don’t come home later than you said, okay? We’ve got to stick to the schedule we agreed on, Andrew.” She turns to me. “Let’s get out of here. Do you mind?”
Sammy is giving me an imploring look. Me! Like I could help.
“Of course I don’t mind,” I say. And I smile at her son.
“Sorry that was awkward,” she says. “That man is constitutionally unable to stick to a plan, even if he’s the one who made it.”
“So I’m not the only one processing about an ex,” I say lightly, and am glad when she laughs.
“Gah! No, I’ll be processing this guy for the rest of my life if I’m not careful,” she says.
By the time we get back to Yolk—after threading our way down the street as she points out the best places for beers, for East Asian clothing, for jewelry, for hamburgers, for muffins, for coffee, for everything—it’s somehow become our turn to eat, and we snuggle into a tiny table near the back.
The waiter comes by, a hot-looking guy with a black knit cap and red plastic glasses, and I order a cheese omelet with bacon, coffee, and whole grain toast and grits, and she says she’ll have the same. As soon as he’s moved on, she says: “Okay. So we’ve established that we’re both dealing with exes who are in our faces right now, but I don’t really know the story of you and Noah. Before we get to be best friends, do you want to tell me what happened between you?”
So I haul out the usual story—the wedding, the honeymoon, the walkout, all of it minus the wedding gown dismantlement—and then a waitress comes by and puts two coffees down on the table, and I suddenly know that she has recently broken up with the waiter, and they’ve not been able to put things back together between them, but there’s a guy walking down the street who would be perfect for her. Maybe she should take off her apron and take a few minutes off to go run into him. She could make it look all casual-like. Or maybe the guy will come this way. He needs breakfast. He needs a hug. He needs her.
At the next table, a couple is falling in love. Outside, a golden retriever has run down the sidewalk and is licking the face of a toddler. A toddler who laughs and says, “Mommy, I want doggie!”
My head feels funny. It’s like there’s a golden light spreading over everything, like maple syrup poured on pancakes.
I look up and Jessica is smiling at me quizzically.
“Jessica,” I say. “You need to get back together with Andrew. You do know that, right?”
TWENTY-FOUR
MARNIE
The maple syrup haze stays with me. It’s like I’m moving in some sort of glow-filled fog. All the moments stand out somehow. Everything is brilliant and bright and etched in my brain like it will always stay in my memory. Even when Jessica laughs and assures me that she will not be getting back together with Andrew. No thank you, not now, not ever.
“He. Is. Sleeping. With. Someone. Else,” she informs me icily.
“But you match,” I tell her. “You both match. You don’t see that?”
She laughs. And then she pays the breakfast tab, and we walk back to the house—and along the way she says, “You and Blix with your get-back-together-with-Andrew talk! I’m beginning to see why she wanted you to have this house, so you could take up her song and dance about me and Andrew. Come on, tell me the truth. Did she put you up to this?”
“No,” I say and feel that dazed, shaky sensation again, like the air is wobbling.
“Well,” Jessica says. “I cannot forgive a man who’s been unfaithful! Sorry, but that is a deal breaker, pure and simple. Period. No excuses. No backsies.”