The Romance Reader's Guide to Life

Snyder’s Universe

Snyder lost the job that Lilly found for him with the fruit-and-vegetable-store owners. He’d done what he always did, scooting out on Fridays to get to the back alleys of New York so he could root through Dumpsters behind comic-book publishers before the garbage trucks got them. He made mistakes whenever he had the chance, undercharging for oranges and overcharging for turnips, mindlessly accepting deliveries of rotten potatoes. Our father did exactly what he’d said he would do and threw Snyder out. He was on our doorstep that night, Janey at his side and a suitcase in his hand. I resisted, of course. Jane told Snyder to go into the kitchen area and make us coffee and off he went, leaving her the room she needed to work on us.

“Use the womanly charms God gave you,” Lilly said to her, “and talk Daddy into letting him come back. You can do it.”

“I probably could, but Snyder and Daddy are never going to be at peace with each other. It’s a terrible thing to say, but Daddy just seems to hate him. Snyder needs to move out.”

“That doesn’t mean he has to move here,” I protested.

“And where else is he going to go?” Janey asked, but it wasn’t really a question. “The money he made, what little of it there was, went to fantasy art and books. He can’t afford an apartment of his own, or even a room in a rooming house. You have space, and you’re starting to make money. You’re his sisters, and you know it’s the right thing to do.”

Janey was not somebody who would stare you down; she’d give you an openhearted meet-my-gentle-gaze kind of thing, which was much, much worse than a stare-down. I looked away from her.

The next day Jane, Snyder, and I drove back and forth a dozen times, staggering up the warehouse stairs with posters (some framed, some in cardboard tubes, some flat), boxes of comics, and fantasy books. Lilly had managed, characteristically, to be too busy to help.

“I’m hiring a carpenter and dropping more walls in this warehouse today,” I said to Lilly when she reappeared. “We’re going to put him in the back corner by the fire escape, and we’re plumbing another bathroom because I have shared my last soap dish with Snyder Terhune.”

Construction started the next week. We told him to start looking for another job but I didn’t see any sign of effort. He was stuck. And he was living in my space.

“Send him to that drugstore on Weiller Avenue that has the giant comic-book section,” our little sister suggested. “Tell him to find the guy who’s ordering all those comics. They’ll understand each other.”

Jane was, as usual, right. Where Lilly had aimed only at getting Snyder employed, Janey was interested in making him happy, which she suspected might finally make him competent. At the drugstore he developed a following of the comic-book people. They adored him. The store owner noticed the heavier foot traffic when Snyder was around but got less enthusiastic when he realized that none of Snyder’s fans bought anything but comics. He kept our brother on a part-time schedule at an embarrassingly low hourly wage.

“That’s not a real job!” I despaired. “He’ll never earn enough to leave.”

“Oh, calm down,” Lilly said cheerfully. “Who cares about what Snyder does or doesn’t do. Look at us! We have outrun, out-tricked or outsold every trouble! We’ve got the Technicolor look nailed down fast and hard. Good lord, we have two bathrooms!”

And so we did. The next thing I was going to do was get a decent stove to replace that piece of junk that had burned my last cake into a doorstop. Then shelving and something that could work as a butler’s pantry. Then a counter surface big enough for rolling out dough. Time passed. Snyder made little or no effort to move out.

Then one afternoon I walked upstairs from the “office” space to our loft living space, and found my older brother with my copy of The Pirate Lover propped in front of him at the kitchen able, eating a bowl of cereal at four in the afternoon.

“That book was by my bed. In my room,” I said grimly. “Which is not your room.”

He ignored me. I pulled the book out of his hands.

“Don’t touch my stuff. Stay out of my room.”

“‘Don’t touch my stuff,’” he mocked. “What are you, ten years old?”

Someplace deep inside me the answer was yes, of course I was, and you stay out of my room! Snyder’s superpower was that he could drop me through a rabbit hole right back to third grade.

He pointed to The Pirate Lover. “You used to keep this book at the back of the closet, right? When we were kids.”

“What were you doing in the closet?”

“It wasn’t your personal closet. We all knew you had stuff hidden back there. Big deal. I mean, I know you went into my room and got into my comics. You did, right?”

This was true. I had.

“You know, this story’s not so great. Nothing important happens except the sea fights. And ending with a wedding? Lame.”

The book in front of him was lying open where he’d stopped. “How do you know the ending? You’re not even halfway through.”

He shrugged vaguely. “I’ve read it a couple times.”

“Really? How many times?”

“A few.” He shifted uneasily.

It felt so strange, imagining Snyder stepping quietly into my room, sifting through the books on the nightstand or the floor, plucking this one up.

“I think it’s weird,” he said, “how you keep reading this thing over and over.”

“It’s not half as weird as you reading it over and over. Why do you do that? Is it the pirate stuff and the guns?”

“It’s…”—his feet shuffled under the table and he tugged at a hank of his own hair—“the deciding who’s in charge stuff. It’s the contest.”

“What contest?”

“Between the pirate guy and the electric girl. Whatsername. Electra. The contest about who’s the most powerful.”

“What are you talking about?” Electra and Basil had each seemed to me to be engaged in the same struggle—the challenge of abandoning control; the challenge of opening themselves with complete trust to the other. My brother had turned the same pages that I had, but read an entirely different story.

“He’s terrific but the girl’s really limp. What makes her special? What’s her superpower? Getting the right dress for a ball?” He snorted.

“I wish you could hear how stupid you sound right now. Stop jiggling your foot.”

“It’s not jiggling. And what if I feel like jiggling? What could you do about it?”

“I could throw you out of the apartment.”

“Jane won’t let you. Lilly won’t help you. And you can’t do it alone.”

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