Page 87 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
“Lilac?”
“The little shrub you planted in the courtyard. It looked quite healthy the last time I saw it. If you take care of it, it might bloom the year after next.”
“Nathaniel usually waters it.” It’s difficult to imagine that thing blooming. It’s difficult to imagine it surviving, honestly. Patrick fills a pot at the kitchen sink and takes it out back.
One afternoon, Jerome comes in five minutes before closing with a stack of books, and the ink isn’t even dry on his check when he’s dragging Patrick out the door—“bring the carriage, nobodycares”—and that’s how Eleanor goes to her first rent party. Jerome’s friends all act like a baby is a thrilling novelty, like a two-way radio or a lava lamp.
The next day, Mrs. Kaplan comes by. “Give this to Susan when she comes back,” she says, handing Patrick a stack of official-looking papers. “That’s her copy.” When he reads the heading, he sees that it’s a twelve-month lease for the apartment. “Now you can take me out to lunch to celebrate.”
He nearly asks, half-jokingly, whether all the people in his life have organized behind his back to form a rota to check on him while Susan and Nathaniel are away, but he decides he doesn’t want to know the answer.
A bookstore near Union Square is closing, one of the last holdouts from the Book Row days. Patrick stops by, ostensibly to offer wholesale prices for any stock he can sell, but mostly to pay his respects. The books are picked over, but there are two decent shelves left, solid wood infused with fifty years of cigarette smoke and dust. He buys them for eight dollars each, not because he needs them in the shop—he couldn’t fit two more shelves in there if his life depended on it—but because if Susan is staying, she’ll need bookshelves. The books have started to invade her apartment, piled against the wall and stacked on the coffee table. On impulse, he offers five dollars for a steel wire paperback spinner rack.
A week after Susan and Nathaniel left, Susan pulls up to the curb in the enormous Cadillac she borrowed from her father. Patrick stops what he’s doing, takes Eleanor out of her playpen,and goes out to the sidewalk. When Nathaniel gets out of the passenger side, he’s wearing corduroy pants and an argyle sweater Patrick’s never seen before. He looks like he’s barely slept the whole week, circles under his eyes and everything strung too tight. It’s alarmingly similar to the state he was in when he arrived at the shop in February.
“It’s not that bad,” Nathaniel says when Patrick gives him a grim once-over. “I’m mostly rattled by Susan’s driving.”
Susan takes Eleanor from Patrick, then grimaces at him behind Nathaniel’s back.
Patrick unloads the trunk of the car. There are two suitcases in addition to the suitcases they left with. Patrick grabs one in each hand. Nathaniel reaches for the other two. “I can get them,” Nathaniel says before Patrick can protest. “I’m notill. Susan took care of everything. She spoke to the lawyer and the Black Panthers and the bank and got everything straightened out.”
“The Black Panthers,” Patrick repeats, not sure he heard right.
“They’re getting half the proceeds from the sale of the house and everything in it. Susan said Michael listed the Black Panthers as the beneficiary of his army life insurance and it seemed like as good an idea as any.”
“He did?” Patrick feels a laugh—half hysterical, half plain amused—bubble up inside him. “Oh my god.” The image of Michael writing in the Black Panthers on official army paperwork is something he’ll cherish always.
Nathaniel’s mouth ticks up at the side. “Right? She insisted that I keep some of the money to pay for a lawyer, if I need one.”
“Are the two of you going to stand out here forever?” Susan says from the shop door. Patrick shuts the trunk and follows Nathaniel inside.
“What’s in these things?” Patrick asks. One of the suitcases is heavy enough that it might be filled with bricks.
“You should open it,” Nathaniel says. He’s sitting in Patrick’s desk chair. Patrick puts the suitcase on the desk and opens the clasps. It’s filled with neatly stacked books. The first one he sees isEast of Eden. He picks it up carefully, opens it and sees that it’s a first edition. The next book isThe Old Man and the Sea, from the same year, also a first edition. Both are in fine condition.
“Are they all firsts?” Patrick asks.
“Yes, I checked. I didn’t collect them, but I bought them when they came out. I thought—you know how you hang on to a few first editions ofHowlandOn the Roadbecause the value keeps increasing? I thought you might like these.”
“You thought I might like them.”
“A present.”
This, from a man who apparently walked away from all his belongings with nothing but two suitcases and enough to pay a defense attorney—and one of the suitcases is for Patrick.
“If you’d rather not have any part of it, I’d understand.”
“Thank you. Nathaniel, thank you. They’re going in the safe. What’s in the other suitcase?”
“A tuxedo,” Susan says. “And a few sweaters.”
“That way I don’t have to keep borrowing yours,” Nathaniel says.
“You can always borrow my sweaters,” Patrick says. “Always.”
Nathaniel’s gaze lights on the paperback rack, still empty, and when he catches Patrick’s eye, there’s something almost like a smile there.
Patrick makes dinner—the tofu and broccoli that Susan sometimes cooks, the recipe written out in her handwriting and attached to the refrigerator with a magnet. While he cooks, Nathaniel leans against the counter, occasionally grabbing a piece of broccoli or tasting the sauce.
