“I like Julie,” Izzy offered quietly.
“What if this project was just a long-term investment in her career? She becomes the most visible member of the Infinite Family; it becomes her brand. If someone is going to write a book about this place when it’s all over, who do you think is going to do it?”
“Are we allowed to write a book about it?” Susan asked. “Legally?”
“Even if it’s not a memoir. What about another novel? Don’t you think she’s been taking notes?” Nikisha offered, not bothering to answer Susan’s question. “Do you think we’ll turn out to be characters in her next book?”
After one of the bookstore employees introduced Julie, she stepped up to the podium to fairly boisterous applause. The book, only out for two weeks, was already at nine on the New York Times bestsellers list, well reviewed in numerous newspapers and magazines. There was talk, Julie admitted, of film rights being negotiated. Julie, wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail, read from the first chapter, where the main character, Anna, one year after her parents have died, puts an ad on craigslist for two actors to play her parents. Once she finished reading, she took questions from the audience. One woman in the front row asked if living at the complex and participating in the project had helped her writing. Julie frowned, thinking over the question, and then said, “Well, it gave me more time to write as a new mother than I would have had otherwise. But, on the other hand, there were times when I wanted to focus on the book and there were just so many people around, so many wonderful people, I might add, that it was hard to find time for myself. I don’t think of the project as something that helped me as a writer; I think of it as something that helped me as a person.”
A man then asked if she would be sad when the project ended. “Yes,” she said, looking at the group of people from the Infinite Family, smiling. “But I’ll also be happy to see what comes next. I think it will be a good thing, too.” She then shrugged, as if to apologize for her honesty, but Izzy completely understood what she meant, the appreciation for the larger family, but the feeling that there was an unknown future that would only open up after they left the complex for good. It seemed, now that they were more than halfway through the project, that it was harder and harder to avoid the understanding that the Infinite Family, despite its name, would eventually end. And it was even more difficult to properly analyze how they felt about this, if they should be guilty for wanting to move on to what was next or if they should be terrified to be leaving their family behind.
Once the Q and A ended, Julie signed books and the rest of the family members hung around in the children’s section with the kids, finding it very strange to stand in a line to have Julie sign their own books. The kids were beginning to grow bored in the bookstore, their bodies needing some new distraction, and so the adults promised them doughnuts, even if it would spoil their dinner. The five children, Irene, Cap, Eliza, Gilberto, and Jackie, all cheered and began to put away the shocking number of books they had pulled from the shelves and scattered across the floor. Dr. Grind walked behind them and plucked every third or fourth book to purchase for the complex’s library. Link sneaked over to Julie to tell her to meet them at the Donut Den after she had finished meeting with her fans, and the rest of the family walked out of the bookstore, all of them holding books, excited to be out in the city on a weekend afternoon, as if it was an adult version of a field trip.
At the Donut Den, the children all chose the pink sprinkled doughnut, each one warmed in the microwave, pink icing smudging the fingerprints of the kids. The adults chose coffee and glazed doughnuts, though Asean tried a maple-bacon doughnut and Izzy, slightly embarrassed but determined to get what she wanted, ordered a pink sprinkled doughnut for herself and was instantly gratified by her decision. Julie joined them, giddy from the reading, and Link handed her a doughnut as if it were a Pulitzer Prize. Izzy and Nikisha stood with the children who were, a single doughnut in their systems, already becoming slightly manic from the sugar, so happy and elated to be out in public. “It’s been a good day,” Link said, his tone that of a man who always expected happiness, and Izzy admitted that, even with her innate anxiety to never expect things to work out, she would not deny the string of good days that stretched out in front of her.