Page 105 of We Could Be So Good
“We don’t need to do this today,” Nick says.
“I want to get it over with.”
They’ve been through this a couple of times: Andy is determined to sell his mother’s apartment and that means he needs to sort through his mother’s belongings. Or, rather, he needs toput aside the things he wants to keep and have the rest sold at an estate sale.
Nick’s been here a few times already, but now he’s paying attention. The reporter’s notebook on the desk by the window is filled with handwriting that isn’t Andy’s. A copy of theHerald Tribunewedged behind the typewriter is two years out of date. He imagines Andy living here alone and it breaks his heart.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with all these books,” Andy says. Along one wall are shelves with books shoved in at any and all angles.
“If you want them, we’ll get another bookcase. Hell, we can take that one.” Nick pulls a familiar-looking volume off the shelf. It’s a crisscross New York phone directory, an older volume of the same thing all reporters keep at their desks. He pages through it idly and two receipts, a lace-edged handkerchief, and a dollar bill fall out.
“Christ. You came by it honestly, I guess.”
“What’s that?” Andy asks.
“Was your mother as scattered as you are?”
“No, of course not,” Andy says, offended.
Nick gestures at the collection of items that fell from the book, then at the haphazard arrangement of books on the shelves, the typewriter almost obscured by a stack of paper, the Pulitzer being used as a paperweight.
“I’m not so sure about that,” Nick says. After living with Andy for three months now, he’d recognize it anywhere, this habit of absentmindedly leaving things in odd places, and he’d bet that Margaret Kelly was like her son in other ways, too. If he read her old stories, he wonders whether he’d hear Andy’s voice in them.
As they poke around the apartment, they find four pairs ofwomen’s reading glasses. “She was always losing hers,” Andy says. “So she kept extra pairs lying about.”
Nick gives him a pointed look.
In the end, they pack up three boxes of books, all the notebooks, a couple photographs, the Pulitzer, an ancient-looking bed quilt, and the typewriter. Then they break open one of the bottles of wine they find in the kitchen. Andy’s eyes are red, and Nick can’t tell whether it’s just from all the dust they’ve dislodged.
“It’s been nearly two years,” Andy says. “I shouldn’t feel like I’m coming right from the funeral.” They’re sitting on the floor of Andy’s mother’s bedroom.
Nick doesn’t know what to say to that, so he bumps his shoulder into Andy’s. “You’re doing fine.”
“I want to say that you’d have liked one another, but I don’t even know if that’s true.”
“I grew up reading everything your mom wrote. Are you kidding me? It would be like meeting Captain America or Roy Campanella. I’d have made sure she liked me.”
He hears a sniffle and doesn’t turn his head, just squeezes Andy’s thigh and pours some more wine into his glass. Andy needs to get nice and soused, then watch a sad movie where a horse dies or something so he has an excuse for a good cry.
Nick takes out a handkerchief and passes it to Andy, then makes a mental note to order another dozen.
***
Nick doesn’t know what finally makes him pick up that book. Probably it’s because Andy’s been pointedly leaving it where Nick will see it—on top of the percolator, the edge of the bathroom sink—but also because Andy’s apparently on a campaign to befriend every queer staffer at theChronicle. The third time he waves Mark Bailey over to have lunch with them, Nick concedes that he’s probably almost nearly friends with Mark, not that he’ll admit it out loud or anything. So maybe he should just read the damn book.
One Saturday morning in the middle of June, while Andy is still asleep, Nick sits on the sofa, taking care not to dislodge the cat, who’s sprawled in a patch of sun. He opensThe Charioteerto the first page.
The book is—well, Andy had said it was a bit sappy, which is true, but it’s not bad. It’s not the sort of book he’d pick up on his own, and privately he thinks this group of queers in this fake city in England are all too dramatic for their own good, but they’re in the middle of a war and getting bombed all day—who wouldn’t be a little overwrought? That might be what turns the tide and makes Nick enjoy the book, at least a little. These men are finding time and energy to flirt and have queer parties and get jealous and fall in love despite bombs and injuries and death. That feels like the truest thing he’s ever read.
“Did you finally read it or can we keep mocking you?” Lilian asks one evening. Apparently now Andy’s Queer Club gets drinks after work even though Andy’s still in a meeting.
“I read it, I read it,” Nick says. “I didn’t hate it.”
“And?”
“I could have done with another chapter,” Nick admits. He’s already lent it to Emily so they can decide which actors they’d cast as the various characters. He bets she’ll manage to get Paul Newman in there. She always does.
Conversation turns to how one of Lilian’s cats had kittens, and she passes around snapshots of Maureen covered in fluffballs. Nick takes out his wallet and shows Lilian and Mark a pictureof the idiot cat hiding on the top shelf of the cupboard. Andy had gotten some wallet-sized prints made because he thinks he’s funny, but Nick’s the sap who put one in his wallet next to a school picture of Sal.
