Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

And as she half listens to how many people were affected and what medicines they had or didn’t have, she’s reaching for the courage to say what she needs to say. It’s only when she misses their customary exit off the I-80 that Casey stops talking.

“Babe, where are you going?”

“To your parents’.”

“Is Avi there? Are we picking him up?”

“No.”

Casey turns in his seat and really looks at her for the first time. “What’s going on?”

Isabelle shakes her head, then pulls off the freeway at the next off ramp and parks the car on a street of auto body repair shops and empty, trash-strewn lots, a desolate part of Berkeley she almost never sees. She can’t have this discussion while she’s driving.

She turns the engine off and stares straight ahead, through her windshield. Casey waits for her, silent. It’s one of the things she’s always loved about him — his ability to be quiet, to leave her some space. Now it only serves to make what she has to say harder.

“I think you should stay at your parents’.”

“Because?”

A good question. “Because” what? Isabelle searches for the words that will answer his question. All the rehearsing in the world hasn’t helped. She wants Casey and she can’t have him. She still — stupidly, insanely she knows — clings to some vestige of hope that he might change. She’s resolved that she can’t keep living like this; she’s too unhappy. But that doesn’t stop the desire to swallow her words and sleep next to him just one more night, feel the warmth of him against her, open herself to his body one more time.

And yet she has to say what she believes to be true. All those conflicting needs swirl around and silence her tongue.

“Have you met someone else?” is what Casey finally says.

“God, no, that’s not it.”

And Casey relaxes, leans back against the closed door, immediately relieved. “Okay. Then everything else is fixable.”

“No, Casey, it isn’t!” And she surprises herself with her vehemence, with a depth of anger that flashes bright, that she didn’t even know she possessed. “I’m not okay with all this anymore. I know I said I was. I tried to be. I wish I could be a better, more generous person, but I’m not. I’m selfish and needy and I want you here with us, Avi and me, more, a lot more. You’ve been away three days for every one you are home!”

“That doesn’t sound right.”

“Casey, it is! It is! I kept a record because I knew you’d say that!”

“You marked off the days? You kept a time card on me?”

“We want you home with us, and that doesn’t look like it’s what you want, and so I’m driving you to your parents’ because we’ve got to begin to separate out our lives and this is the first step.”

Casey is quiet for a very long time. He simply looks at her, and she stares out the window and won’t, can’t, meet his eyes. She knows that if she did, she’d capitulate.

Finally, softly, he says, “I’m not any different from the guy you met six years ago.”

“I know! I know! But things are different. We have a child and he needs you and I…I want more than you are willing to give!” There — she’s said it. And it hangs in the air between them, and the worst thing that could happen happens. Casey doesn’t disagree. Doesn’t try to negotiate with her. Doesn’t say he’ll change or he’ll try.

“I do what I’m called to do.” It’s a gentle plea, but not at all what Isabelle wants to hear. It hangs there between them, an impenetrable wall, and slowly Isabelle puts her hand on the ignition key and turns on the car and Casey looks straight ahead at a skinny yellow dog patrolling one of the empty lots, nose to the ground, searching for something to eat, and Isabelle pulls out into traffic and drives him to Art and Louisa’s and leaves him there.

The next day, a Monday, Isabelle goes into work. She drops Avi off at school, watching him fairly dance across the star stepping-stones to the front door of A Circle of Friends, happy, it seems to her, but she knows the reverberations will come. This separation she’s initiated will widen and Casey will be in their lives even less and Avi will feel the loss and she will feel guiltier. What a mess she’s made of things.

Her next stop is Full of Beans for her morning cappuccino — today she makes it a double — and then on to the bookstore to open it at nine, the way Meir likes. This morning there’s a large box waiting for her at the front door. She knows it’s new books, and there’s even a flicker of excitement amid the self-loathing she’s been indulging in lately.

Over the years she’s worn Meir down, and he has agreed to carry some new books, those that he deems worthy. True to his prejudices, he never consults the bestseller lists. He picks and chooses from the advance notices he gets from the various publishing houses. He agrees to carry new books by writers he esteems and to consider new works whose supporting quotes from other authors make the book sound promising.

These brown cardboard boxes that arrive unexpectedly and sporadically feel like gifts to Isabelle, and her eagerness to open the box and see what Meir has ordered this time makes her fumble with the keys and struggle to open the front door.

But there! She’s in. And she puts the heavy box down on the steamer trunk in the reading area, rips off the packing tape, and slowly, with great anticipation, opens the four folded flaps of cardboard. What riches will she find? What wonderful new book can she read and then discuss with Meir and argue over and read again?

The cover is blue, a bright gorgeous-day sky-blue, with the title across the front diagonally from left to right in thin white script, almost as if it were the trailing wisp of a cloud or the vapor from a plane as it skywrites Out of the Blue . And then she sees it, spread across the bottom in elegant black type, the author’s name: Daniel Jablonski.

That makes no sense. Daniel wrote a book and he didn’t tell her? After all the e-mails and confidences exchanged in the past two years, why would he keep this a secret?

She sits down on the sofa, cracks open the pristine cover, and finds the first sentence. It reads, Lanie walked into my office without knocking, wearing high-heeled, buttery smooth, caramel-colored boots that made her seem six feet tall. I’ve always liked tall women.

No! Those are her boots. The ones she’s wearing now, in fact. The ones with the vine pattern along the outer edge that she wore often that last year at Chandler because they were new then and she loved them. And Lanie? Who is this Lanie? And why is she wearing her very boots?

Isabelle sinks into the musty sofa cushions, props the scrutinized boots up on the steamer trunk, and continues reading, devouring each page, whipping it over and eagerly beginning the next. When a small, white-haired man makes the mistake of opening the front door of Noah’s Ark and taking two steps into the store, Isabelle barks, “We’re closed!” then catches herself and says more kindly, “We’ll be open this afternoon, if you can come back. Sorry. I’m so sorry if I startled you,” as she escorts him out, turns the front door sign to CLOSED so she can read in peace, and spreads herself out on the sofa with Daniel’s book tightly clasped in both hands. And she reads. And reads.

When Meir shows up sometime after noon, she’s just finishing up.

“What’s with the CLOSED sign?”

Isabelle says nothing, not exactly trusting what will come out of her mouth. Instead she holds out the book so he can read the title.

“Ah, it’s here! It was supposed to be a surprise for you.”

“Oh, I was surprised!”

“He didn’t tell you he was writing it?”