“Do not move or touch anything,” I say.
But when I come back four and a half minutes later, she has both moved and touched something. Many things. I can see some piles of books have been pushed and some have been displaced and some have been rearranged. She has moved to behind my yellow chair. She has touched a picture that sits between the children’s books about gnomes and the children’s books about owls. She has touched it by holding it. It is a photograph of my mother and father at their wedding.
“Your father was a handsome man.” She says “was” which means either she thinks my father is ugly now or she knows he is dead, and it can be assumed it is the latter because why would she think my father is ugly now?
I nod. She nods.
“Your mother was a lucky woman.”
“Lie,” I say.
Her eyes move quickly to look at mine then quickly move away again. She puts the picture back on the shelf and takes a deep breath. “You have my books?”
I hand over what I have chosen for her: a videotape of the movie Animal House, a paperback (old but reissued) of Love Story, and the copy of Charlotte’s Web I took back from Nellie when her reading group was finished with it.
Apple Templeton considers them.
“I don’t have a VCR,” she says.
“You can borrow one from a friend,” I suggest.
“No one has a VCR,” she says. Then adds, “And I don’t have any friends here.”
“Would you like a book on how to make a friend?”
She squints like she is having trouble seeing. “Love Story?”
“Love Story is a novel about two people who go to college in Boston”—it can be assumed, since he will not stay in Bourne, that River will return to Boston for college—“but then half of them die.”
“Uh-huh.” She is smiling a little bit now. “And Charlotte’s Web? What does Charlotte’s Web have to do with writing college applications?”
“I do not have a copy of The Elements of Style because The Elements of Style got sold when my library closed, but fifty percent of The Elements of Style authors wrote Charlotte’s Web.”
“I suppose, but—”
“In addition, Charlotte’s Web is about using writing to change your life and gain admission.”
“To the county fair.”
“Exactly.”
“The county fair is not an institution of higher learning.”
“Both have cotton candy,” I point out.
“I don’t think that’s quite right.”
“Then I have been misinformed,” I say.
“Truth!” She grins like she made a joke.
* * *
On Apple’s way hurrying down the driveway, she encounters Mab hurrying up the driveway. Even though it is sunny out, Mab is carrying a green folder I have never seen before. When she spies and identifies Apple Templeton, she tries to stuff the folder in her jacket. It is too big, but Apple does not notice anyway. They both look away when they pass each other as if they do not like it when people look in their eyes. Mrs. Radcliffe likes to pretend that it is only me who does not like looking in people’s eyes and the rest of their faces, but it is more accurate to say lots of people do not like it. I have just been not looking too hard to see that I am not the only one.
Three
Love stories are only love stories if they go somewhere. Really, that’s true of all stories. They require a beginning, a middle, and an end. Rising action, climax, denouement. Conflicts sorted, strife overcome, or challenges succumbed to. Plot. Change. Lessons learned. That’s what makes a story. Otherwise it’s just a description. Otherwise it’s just conceit.
Maybe the point is that’s true of all stories, but it’s most true of love stories. Boy meets girl and all that. They meet, one of them resists the inevitable, then finally they fall in love. They meet, encounter barriers, love anyway. They meet, encounter barriers, love then lose, love then die. Die then love, sometimes. Love stories often end badly, but their bad ends are what make them good stories.
Unless nothing ever happens. They meet, but love was never really on the table. They meet but don’t imagine it will be requited or even expressed or even noticed. They meet and one of them loves and then nothing happens next. These are not stories.
But they’re all the story I’ve got at the moment. If it’s unsatisfying to hear, imagine how unsatisfying it is to tell, to live. But there’s precedent. Think of courtly love. Dante met Beatrice when they were nine, so requited wasn’t on the table for them either, and after that he loved her from afar. He loved her more because he could only love her from afar. The question is why. What did he love about her if they never spoke, never joked together over sunset-colored spritzes, never shared a gelato on an early summer evening, never got close enough to find out if they had sexual chemistry? Modern readers assume she was hot, but modern readers are shallower than Dante. He says she made him a better person; she made him wholer; she made him worthy. He says she brought him closer to the divine and the eternal. Tell me that’s not better than popcorn and a movie and a make-out session in the backseat of a car. Not that I wouldn’t like to make out in the backseat of a car.
If you look closer, if you go slowly, there can be story even without progress or plot, life in small change, like Dante and Beatrice, like fish swimming hard against the current just to stay where they are. They’re not getting anywhere, neither Dante nor the fish, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t effort, growth, triumph, and beautiful poetry. Trust me, stasis is challenging. And challenge is story.
So maybe these are my love stories: Girl meets boy, loves him, and makes her sister save him. Girl meets boy, loves him, and makes her sister make him save her family. There’s story there, at least a little. It’s tragic, yes, but the best love stories are. I think you know that.
And it’s not like I’m not in good company. I am surrounded by tragic love stories. In Bourne there are more than most, but it’s also probably true that anyone who sat in on as many therapy sessions as I do would conclude there are no happy endings.
Chris Wohl this week is about as good as it gets, and that’s what I mean—sometimes anticlimax is less satisfying but better than the alternative. Sometimes quiet is just like joy. If you squint, you could mistake Chris and his cup of urine and disinclination to chat as cause for jubilation.
“Leandra had an okay week so I had an okay week.” From the doorway, Chris sounds almost apologetic for not being an emotional wreck, but really he’s just sheepish about what he says next. “I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it.”
“That’s not how it works,” Nora says.
“I know.”
“Then sit down.”
“But just in case.”
“So talk about something else,” Nora suggests.
“Next week, maybe. Probably,” Chris says, then winks at me. “Bye, Miracle Mirabel.”
I wave and he leaves, and Nora smiles at me. “Speaking of miracles, looks like you and I have a whole unscheduled forty minutes to ourselves. What shall we do with it?” An unanswerable question—there is not a lot to do in Bourne, and anyway I have biochem homework (though it’s true I assigned it to myself)—so it is only luck, or maybe fate, that what happens next happens next.