Matchmaking for Beginners
Page 62

SHUT UP I NEVER HEARD OF YOU
I remove the book from the shelf and take it downstairs with me. I’ll sleep with it tonight in my bed. And tomorrow I’ll call Charles Sanford and tell him what’s happened.
Bedford’s professional opinion is that we should go outside so he can pee, and then we should lock the bedroom door tonight, just in case. He actually lies on the floor with his nose by the door and growls every few minutes to make the point.
I’m pretty sure that Noah isn’t going to come back tonight, but then what do I know? I never thought Noah cared all that much about getting this building in the first place. And clearly he does.
I go over and scratch Bedford behind the ears. “No one’s here but you and me, boy. Come on up on the bed. Everything’s fine.”
He finally, worriedly comes up on the foot of the bed, but every car that goes by sends a cascade of light darting around the walls, ending in a point in the corner. And each time he lifts his head and growls a bit. There are noises, the settling of the house and the banging of the radiator, voices of people going past in the street, laughing even though it’s the middle of the night. A car backfires and Bedford and I both leap into the air.
At last he puts his head on the pillow. But he keeps his eyes open long after I think we should both be sleeping. It’s like he knows we’re not done with the bad vibes just yet.
And I feel so sad about the missing letter. My connection to Blix.
THIRTY-EIGHT
MARNIE
It’s after noon on Wednesday when I finally get back to the house from the store, lugging the eighteen-pound turkey and the bags of groceries—so many that I had to take an Uber instead of the subway.
Bedford is even more hyper than usual, so after I put all the food away, I leash him up and take him outside. But then he’s not interested in anything in particular. Pees on the curb with a lackluster air. He sits on the stoop and looks at me expectantly, like I’m the one who needed to come out here, not him.
When we go back inside, he charges into the bedroom.
My head is full of cooking plans, but he’s barking and running around . . . and that’s when the little prickles of dread start.
I follow him into Blix’s bedroom, which looks different, even since two hours ago when I left it. My dresser drawer is open a crack, and my flannel pajamas are on the floor. And the walls—they’re bare! Not entirely bare, but things have been taken down—Blix’s artwork, her talismans, her weavings.
And the bed—the bed is all in disarray, with the covers tossed everywhere.
My breath is high up in my chest as I run and lift up my pillow, which is where I had hidden The Encyclopedia of Spells.
It’s gone. I feel around under all the sheets and blankets, look under the kantha, look on the floor on the other side of the bed.
Bedford looks at me.
Blix’s secrets are gone. I slide down onto the floor.
Patrick comes right up when I call him. I let him in, and we walk through the rooms, and I show him all the places where there was once artwork. The living room, the kitchen, the hallway—everywhere you can see little pale patches on the wall with nails sticking out.
I think my heart is breaking.
Patrick says I should immediately call Charles Sanford, and I do, but he’s not picking up. Right. It’s the day before Thanksgiving. A lot of people are going over the river and through the woods today. They are not in their offices.
“Should we call the cops, do you think?” Patrick says.
“I feel too sad,” I tell him. “I don’t want the police going after Noah. For God’s sake, his great-aunt has died. And maybe this stuff had some sentimental value to him. Also, who’s to say Blix wouldn’t want him to have some stuff from here?”
“Yeah,” says Patrick, but he doesn’t look convinced.
“Do you want some coffee?” I ask him. “I fight every day with this damned coffee press, and I’m willing to go another round with it.”
“Oh, I know how to work that thing,” he says. And then he very competently makes coffee. He’s wearing jeans and a blue sweater. His dark hair brushes his collar, and I love that, for a moment, at least, I have an excuse simply to watch him, since I’m pretending to care how to work this abominable coffee thing that hates me.
Normally, Patrick doesn’t like it when I look at him. But now, as I see his miraculous, stitched-back-together hands and fingers, see the nimble way he has of moving about, I can’t help but think how stunning it is that he is here at all, that we’re together in this room, in Blix’s kitchen. Standing close together. I think of the spell book, Blix’s journal, and my breath goes up high in my chest. This feels so momentous.
He straightens up, hands me a cup of coffee.
“Would you like a little help with piecrust?” he says. “Because I am, as you well know, the Prince of Pastry.”
“Prince of Pastry, Chief of Cheesecake . . . you could have many titles.”
“At Thanksgiving, though, I try to stay with pies. It’s only fitting.”
He rolls out some piecrust on the table, and I get busy chopping carrots and celery for the salad, and then, maybe because I’m feeling bold because there’s nothing left to lose here, or maybe because I know I’m going home in a month and he’s leaving for the depths of the Wyoming wilderness, I say very carefully, “I want to know what happened to you. I’ve now told you every embarrassing thing about me, and now I need to know about you. What happened. Please tell me.”
“A lot of people don’t know that the true secret ingredient to piecrusts is that the baker cannot talk to others while making it.”
“Don’t joke with me about this. I have to know. Is there somebody you love? Is that why you’re going to Wyoming, because one of the twenty-eight people there loves you and wants you back?”
He lifts his chin up, looks for a moment like he’s not going to say anything, and then he sighs. Maybe my persistence has worn him down, but somehow I prefer to think that Blix is making him tell me—Blix operating from the other side.
“She died,” he says finally. “The person I loved died.”
The sentence hangs in the air. I swallow and say, “Please tell me.”
There’s such a long silence that I think he has decided to completely ignore me. But then he sighs again, and when he starts, he speaks haltingly, lightly, like maybe it won’t land so hard that way.
“Four years ago. A gas leak.” He stares out the window. “We were in the studio together. I was making a sculpture. She was finishing a painting. She went to make coffee, lit a match near the gas stove, and there was an explosion. Blue light, the whole room engulfed in that light. I looked up and she was on fire. She was in the flames, and there was no getting her out.”
He stops, looks right at me. “I was across the room, but I remember running toward her, pulling her away . . . grabbing a blanket and rolling it over her.” He holds out his hands, spreads his fingers apart. I see the scars and the patches, the scaled-away parts, the ridges. “These, believe it or not, are medical miracles. For some reason Anneliese didn’t get the miracles. I did. Even though I didn’t want them.” He flattens the dough with the palm of his hand. “What I wanted was to have died right along with her.”
I hold myself very steady. It’s like he’s a wild animal and I don’t want to frighten him away with too much sentiment, too much sympathy. I feel almost as though I am outside of myself. Maybe this is how Blix would have handled things.
“For the longest time death was all I wished for. Instead, I got surgeries. Thirteen surgeries. And a settlement. I lost my love, my art, my ability to even look at my old sculptures without wanting to throw up, but apparently society gives you money for that kind of loss. I went from being your typical poor, starving, happy artist to being a rich guy with literally nothing in the world that I wanted.”
Bedford comes over and puts his rubber ball on the floor next to Patrick, and Patrick strokes his head, scratches him behind the ears. He actually smiles down at him.
“Where did Blix fit in? Did you know her at the time of the accident?”