Matchmaking for Beginners
Page 35

Noah introduces us—“Jessica, Marnie; Marnie, Jessica”—and she holds out her hand for me to shake.
“Oh, Marnie!” she says. “I’ve heard Blix talk about you! Oh my goodness, it’s so awful what happened—I miss her every single day.” She glances over at Sammy and lowers her voice. “He does, too. He adored her. There was nobody like her.”
Sammy is listening to us talk and dancing over by the fire pit, like a goofy bird ready to take flight.
“Sammy, it’s bath time, and you need to come in and get your stuff packed up,” she says. Her eyebrows are all knitted up in a frown. “Wait. Did you break this planter?”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“It was an accident,” says Noah. “No biggie.”
But she is clearly worried about Sammy being careless, and now he’s destroyed this planter that was Blix’s, and those were Houndy’s red geraniums planted inside, and everything, she says sadly, seems to be crashing to an end all around them—and right then, my phone starts buzzing in my pocket, and I would be so deliriously happy to be able to escape from this conversation except that when I look down at my phone, I see the faces of all my family members grinning and waving—all of them, plus Jeremy—wanting to FaceTime with me. It’s as though they’re suddenly right there on the rooftop with me.
I go tearing inside, down the stairs and into the hall and skidding into Blix’s kitchen before they can see where I am and—oh God—who I’m with.
“Hi!” I say, and there they all are, jockeying for position in front of their little screen: Natalie holding up Amelia, who is blowing bubbles—“Look, Auntie Marnie, I talks with spit!” Natalie crows in a baby voice—and my mother and father peeking in from the side, trying to ask me a million questions. All of them at once.
“Where are you right now?”
“Is that really Blix’s house? Show me the kitchen!”
“Is it old? It looks really old!”
“Don’t even tell me those walls are red!”
“You look tired, sweetie cakes. Bet you wish you could just come home!”
And Jeremy, last of all, smiling so winningly. “Are you having a good time? Do you like the house?”
I hear Noah coming down from the roof, and so I dash with the phone downstairs toward the living room and sit down on the floor, as far away from the window as I can get.
“Oh, yes, it’s lovely!” I say to Jeremy, and if my face is turning ashen or bright red, either one, I can only hope he doesn’t see in the dim light of the living room. From the kitchen, I hear Noah throwing our beer bottles into the recycling bin and whistling.
“We just wanted to make sure you’re all right, that you made it in and everything,” says my father. “Also, honey, just so you know: we’ve had a family meeting and we’ve decided to teach Jeremy the quadruple solitaire game tonight.”
“Yep, I’m in way over my head,” yells Jeremy from off camera.
“So how are you, sweetie?” says my dad.
“I’m fine. Nothing much to report as yet.”
My mother’s face now looms in the phone. “CAN YOU SEE ME, HONEY?”
“Yes, Mom! Yes, I see you just fine. I hear you, too.”
“So just tell us this much: ARE YOU GOING TO BE ABLE TO SELL THAT HOUSE, DO YOU THINK?”
I look up then to see Noah standing in the doorway of the living room, his arms folded. And if I had thought he looked shocked when I was standing at the front door earlier, that’s nothing compared to how he’s looking at me right now.
TWENTY-TWO
MARNIE
So. Here we go.
When I hang up, Noah comes all the way into the living room, walking so deliberately it’s as though the floor might be made of pointy little rocks. His eyes are round and bright with shock. He sits down on the floor across from me and shakes his head.
“Okay, Marnie,” he says slowly, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on? What are you doing here?”
I swallow. “Oh God. It’s so confusing and complicated. I thought you knew what was going on, but—well, apparently your Aunt Blix left me this house when she died. You didn’t know that?”
“No, I didn’t know that! How was I supposed to know that?” He falls back against the couch and rubs his face briskly with both hands. “She left her house. To you. My ex. Oh my God. I can’t believe this.” Then he puts his hands down and stares at me for a long moment. “Why would she do this? To my mom?”
“I don’t know. I’m as shocked as you are.”
He gets out his phone and looks at it. “Oh, fuck. I’ve had the ringer off, and there are, let’s see, um, nine, ten . . . no, thirteen calls from my mom in the last day and a half. And three texts saying I’ve got to call her immediately.” He sighs and puts the phone back in his pocket. “And my mom doesn’t believe in texting. So this means she’s really desperate. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. What am I supposed to do?”
“Wait. Seriously? You don’t check your phone?”
“Correction: I check my phone, but I keep the ringer off because if I didn’t, I’d go crazy from my mother wanting to be in touch with me all the time. Trust me, this is only slightly more calls than I usually get from her. My policy is that I return about every fifth call.”
“Noah! What if something’s ever really wrong?”
“I’ll find out eventually. She’s insane, my mom. You know that.” After a moment he says, “Before I call her, could you please walk me through this? How did this all happen? Did you talk to Blix?”
“No. I got a letter from a law firm.”
“A letter. I’m going to need to know more than that now, aren’t I? What did the letter say, Marnie?”
“Just that I had been left this piece of property in Brooklyn, and that I should come as soon as possible because there were some things that needed doing. Some decisions.”
“Some decisions.”
“Yes.”
“And what kind of decisions?”
“Noah. I don’t know what kind of decisions. Stipulations, I guess. Things I need to know about or do or . . . something. That’s why I’m here. It said I should come as soon as possible.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time after that, simply stares off into space. He’s flicking his thumb against his index finger, a nervous habit he used to display in meetings, back when we were teachers together. Back before everything. When we were still falling in love.
But I remind myself that we are so not anywhere near falling in love anymore. He left me. He’s not sorry about that. And I inherited this house. And why? Because maybe this is all part of the big life Blix thought I should have. I can’t very well tell him that, though.
He gets up and starts pacing in circles around the middle of the room, rubbing his hair. “But were you in touch with her since the wedding? Did you know she was doing this? Have you ever talked to her?”
I sigh very heavily, to show him that I am nearing the end of my patience with this line of questioning. “Look. I talked to her once. One time. But she didn’t say anything about this. I swear. And I didn’t even know she was sick, much less dying.”
“Tell me the truth. Just so I know. Did you somehow get her to do this to get back at me?”
“Noah! You know me better than that.”
“But now you’re going to sell it? That’s what your mother said. ‘Are you going to be able to sell that house?’ Those were her exact words. She was practically screaming it. So that’s what you’re planning, right?”
I don’t say anything.
“Yeah. That’s what you’re planning. Oh my God. And here’s what’s so ironic. If you sell it, then what? You’ll take the money and move to some three-bedroom house in the suburbs, won’t you? You don’t even care about it.” He keeps shaking his head in disbelief. “Too, too unbelievable. Just incredible. But that was my Aunt Blix in a nutshell. Totally zigging when you thought she was going to zag. Always keep ’em guessing.” Then he stops walking and sighs. “And you know what? What I’m most sorry about here? The conversation I’m about to have with my mother. She’s going to have a million things to blame me for in this little scenario. Trust me.”