Page 86 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“I need to find my address book. If Nathaniel wants a drummer, then I need to call Jim.” Jim was the drummer in Susan’s old band.
Patrick sits down next to her and starts rummaging through the boxes that she’s already opened. The first box he looks atcontains Michael’s clothes. Right on top is this awful red cable knit sweater he used to wear every winter. Susan clutches his arm, and they stare at the sweater like it might disappear if they look away.
Susan gingerly removes it and puts it on her lap. The rest of the box is jeans, t-shirts, a few oxfords. “Salvation Army,” she says, and Patrick shoves it all into a corner to deal with later.
It’s brutal. A hair comb, a razor. Michael’s alarm clock. Mundane objects, most bought at a Woolworth or drugstore, now precious for all the wrong reasons. An entire box of ratty Agatha Christie paperbacks, mismatched editions, all purchased secondhand, usually by Patrick, and given to Michael as a too casual afterthought when they saw one another. He puts that box aside.
The cups and plates choke Susan up: hundreds of meals shared together on dishes with green and blue flowers. They picked those dishes out together, the pattern a result of a compromise as carefully brokered as the Potsdam Agreement. Patrick had mostly been shocked that Susan and Michael hadwedding china.
“They’re nicer than your dishes,” Susan says. This is a fact. “If you want them.”
Patrick isn’t sure he does, but Nathaniel will—he likes nice things, no matter how much he pretends he doesn’t care.
He feels like there should be something in here for Eleanor, something she could look at and treasure and know it belonged to her dad, but none of it’s like that. Michael took his watch—a college graduation present, purchased jointly by Susan and Patrick—to Vietnam, and apparently it got destroyed right along with the rest of him.
In the top drawer of Patrick’s dresser is the telegram, the paper creased and the ink smudged from the days it spent in Patrick’s pocket. Maybe Eleanor will want that someday, notbecause of the words on it but because of the smudges and creases, the evidence of having been folded and unfolded so many times: maybe she’ll want to know her father was loved.
“I sent Iris home,” Nathaniel says when he comes upstairs. “Need help?”
“Sure.” Patrick glances around at the wreckage surrounding them. “We’re looking for an address book.” Nathaniel sits next to Patrick and opens a box.
“Patrick,” Susan says. She’s looking at a photo album. Patrick already knows what’s inside, because he pasted the photos in there himself.
“We don’t have to look at it,” he says, but it’s already open on Susan’s lap.
The pictures start in seventh grade, Susan in braids and braces and an evil smile, Michael laughing for probably the first time since before their parents’ funeral. It was Susan’s camera, but Patrick took most of these photographs, so it isn’t until the third page that he appears, his hair in a crew cut, Susan’s old poodle in his lap. Sometimes there’s someone else—Susan’s mother, a classmate, a cousin who got invited to one of her birthday parties—but mostly it’s the three of them, during the six years between the day they met and the day Patrick left.
Patrick can barely stand to look at Michael, always grinning so hard his face must hurt. Patrick can almost hear him talking too fast, laughing at his own jokes, unable to resist an awful pun. Patrick refuses to be someone who looks at a picture of someone who’s died and comments on how full of life they seem, but that’s all he can think. It’s an outrage and a waste that he isn’t around anymore, that someone took this kid and made it so he didn’t get to see his daughter, didn’t get to turn thirty, didn’t get to listen to boring music and complain about hamburgers.
It’s only when Susan sniffles that Patrick realizes he’s already rubbing his eyes on the cuff of his shirt.
“You look like twins,” Nathaniel says. “I figured you’d have to, to explain Eleanor, but still.” He traces a finger along the edge of a photograph, very gingerly, only making contact with the album.
It’s a picture from prom night, Susan in a dress her mother picked out and which must have used all the seafoam-green tulle on the entire North Shore, Patrick and Michael in rented suits, Michael’s date a pretty redhead whose name Patrick hasn’t thought of in a decade.
The next day, Michael stumbled into Susan’s living room hungover, wearing sunglasses, with a giant hickey on his neck. It was overcast and drizzly. They’d eaten celery sticks that Susan’s mom filled with peanut butter and dotted with raisins, just like they had a hundred other afternoons. It was the last time Patrick set foot in Susan’s house; he was arrested less than a week later.
It’s difficult to look at himself—clean shaved and painfully young—and think about what’s about to happen. It’s difficult to look at that kid and blame him for fucking things up with Michael. Patrick did the best he could, and he’s still doing the best he can.
It’s Nathaniel who goes through the rest of the boxes, lifting and sorting and occasionally holding up an item for a verdict. By the time he’s done, there’s a stack of boxes by the front door that they’ll bring to the thrift store tomorrow, a box of Agatha Christie paperbacks that Patrick will hang onto, the wedding china, and Susan’s address book. It’s past midnight, and Patrick feels like they’ve had the funeral that they should have had in February.
“I need to sell my house,” Nathaniel says, apparently apropos of nothing, but Susan looks at him, sharp.
“I’m coming,” she says, and he nods once.
* * *
Without Susan and Nathaniel, the shop feels abandoned. Even Eleanor, who’s going through a phase where she babbles whenever she’s awake, doesn’t make a dent in the quiet.
But everywhere Patrick looks, there are traces of them. The kitchen is still a lurid green, and the coffee pot is never full because the regulars know they can sneak back there and help themselves. The bulletin board is layered with notices—people looking for apartments and jobs, a litter of kittens that need homes, an invitation to a jazz venue that somebody’s opening in their loft on Prince Street, information about a protest in a few days. Walt is there, taking shameless advantage of Nathaniel’s absence to claim his half of the bed.
The Valdezes bring him a plate of mofongo, like they think Patrick might not be able to feed himself without company. They’re mostly right—he’s been eating cold pizza and lukewarm canned soup. He would have sworn that he hadn’t been lonely or unhappy before Nathaniel and Susan came—and maybe he wasn’t, but his life has stretched and grown and shaped itself so thoroughly around them that he can feel their absence like something solid is missing, like bricks have been pried out of the shop wall and now he can feel the draft coming in.
The fall semester’s in full swing, and when Viv stops by on the way to her morning class, she takes time to have a cup of coffee. Patrick hears her say, “Oh dear,” from the kitchen.
“What’s the matter?” Patrick calls out.
“Somebody needs to water that lilac. It hasn’t rained in a few weeks, and lilacs are fussy.”
