Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Henry
“Normal People by Sally Rooney is an instant classic. It teaches the art of the situationship, which some people, especially booksellers at this store, need to learn.”
—Stewart’s Staff Pick
I hadn’t remembered my grandfather’s apartment being this messy.
After my mom moved us down to Tennessee when I was ten, I spent a month up here each summer until I turned sixteen. And in that month, I was rarely in this apartment. My grandfather spent most of his time at the store or in a park, reading, and I was eager to join him.
His apartment was a fifteen-minute walk from The Last Page.
Sitting on the edge of the Meatpacking District and the West Village on Jane Street and Greenwich, it was a rent-controlled two-bedroom on the third floor of a moderately nice building.
He spent most of his life here. It was nothing like the brownstones surrounding the bookstore on Bleecker, but it at least had laundry in unit.
Turns out that was as good as gold in New York.
The neighbor had been cleaning out the litter box and filling the food and water bowls, but I’d yet to spot Leo’s cat.
She was a bit of an enigma. When people came over, Leo would have them guess what his cat’s name was.
He’d tell them she was a cat pun based on literature and people would throw out names like “Jane Clawsten.” They would be a bit horrified when he would tell them her name was Emily Lickinson.
I had hoped she’d recognize my scent from way back when and warm up to me, but I hadn’t seen her once since I moved back in.
But the litter box needed cleaning and she always ate the food I left out for her, so she was certainly somewhere.
To be honest, I could’ve used some of her comfort after such a long day.
“I don’t really want to talk about it, Mom,” I said into the phone, tossing the apartment keys on the table near the front door. I slipped my shoes off as I walked down the slim hallway that opened up to the living room and kitchen area.
I rested my phone on the kitchen countertop, setting her on speaker, as I rifled through the nearly empty fridge, save for some Chinese takeout leftovers and a few Hazy Little Thing IPAs. I snatched two from the fridge and popped the tab on the first one, sitting on the couch.
“Were they mean to you?” she pushed. “This is like your first day of school all over again. You didn’t tell me anything then and you’re not telling me anything now.”
I rolled my eyes. “No one was mean to me then and no one’s mean to me now.”
“I know you, Henry Martin,” she said in her stern mom voice, which was a joke more than anything else.
It had been just the two of us for most of my life.
It was rare for her to lay down the law, but when she did, this was the voice she’d use.
“And I know you’re hiding something. You’re obligated to tell your mother, you know. ”
I took a long sip, a little desperate for a buzz. “There was a girl.”
She gasped. “Another one? I told you the world’s got it wrong. New York’s the city of love, not Paris. You’ve barely been there a week and already are falling in love all over the place!”
My family lived and breathed books. While my dad had leaned a little more toward the mystery side of books, my mom was a voracious romance reader.
She lived in the folds of Rosie Maxwell and Jessica Joyce novels.
It skewed her perception of my love life a little.
She thought everyone was destined for some grand story when in reality, I’d probably meet someone on Hinge and settle for an okay life.
“It was the same girl, actually.” I had detailed my literally painful run-in at the subway to my mom yesterday and got a thirty-minute lecture on subway safety. “She works at the bookstore.”
My mom laughed, delighted. Homesickness ran through me like a wild river, and I wished we were sitting on her front porch with two mugs of coffee instead.
I was hesitant to FaceTime her because part of me knew that seeing her and glimpses of the house I grew up in would wreck me as I worked to stave off the inclination to run back home.
“This is perfect! A classic New York meet-cute! You know, your father and I had a meet-cute. I figured this would happen to you. I prayed for it.”
“It wasn’t a meet-cute,” I said quickly.
“It sounds like one. Was she a bookseller?”
“No,” I said, sipping at my beer. “She’s the manager. Apparently Leo was going to give her the store.”
The other side of the phone fell silent.
It wasn’t even like I wanted the store. I had a plan: a month in New York to learn as much as I could about the business before I fled back home to Tennessee and ran it from afar.
As a business consultant, I looked at every angle for a solution.
Pored through policies and numbers to give someone a way out.
I was hoping that by the time I went back home, I’d have figured out my life a bit more. I’d always felt a little listless, miserably lost in a routine. I wanted to feel excited about life again.
“Well,” my mom said eventually. “We knew this could happen. We talked about all the outcomes and this was one of them. I told you he might’ve left someone else the store or had an entirely different plan laid out.”
“I know.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I feel really guilty. Like I don’t belong there.”
“I can see why you’d think that,” Mom said gently. “But I knew your grandfather, Henry. He didn’t ever leave anything up to chance with that bookstore. And if he was serious about this girl taking over the store, he would’ve changed his will immediately. I’m certain he wanted you to have it.”
“Then why train her?”
“I don’t know why your grandfather did half the things he did,” my mom said, laughing. “He used to dress up like a clown every Wednesday and try to do balloon animals for kids until your dad and I told him it was creepy.”
“I guess I just feel bad for her.”
“What’s her name?” she asked. “Did you get it this time?”
“Ella,” I said, the name rolling off my tongue like a prayer. I cringed at my own thoughts. My mom’s over-romanticization of life was infecting me. Because I hated to admit how smitten I was with her. Something about her felt so familiar and warm, but something told me her warmth would burn me.
“So long as you’re nice to Ella and you work alongside her, you’ll be fine,” she said softly.
She yawned big and loud, and I listened closer.
A little less than a year ago, my mom had a stroke.
She was getting older and more medical problems kept popping up, but the stroke had nearly scared me to death.
She and my best friend Charlie basically had to push me onto the airplane because I was terrified of leaving and getting a call that would take her away from me forever.
I don’t know if I could handle another loss in my life.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine, Henry.”
“I just want to make sure—”
“Don’t sit in that apartment and worry about me. Go out to a bar or a club or something. You won’t be able to say you lived in New York in your twenties if you did nothing with it.”
“I’m at the very edge of my twenties,” I said flatly.
“One day you’ll be old like me and wish you were twenty-eight again,” she countered. “Promise me you won’t stay in your apartment all month?”
“I’ll make myself busy. And you’ll call me if you’re not feeling well?”
“A deal’s a deal.”
After we hung up, I finished off my IPA as I took in Leo’s apartment. Before I headed back home, I needed to clean up this place and let the landlord deal with it. My mom said I should consider keeping it in the family, but I wanted this chapter of my life behind me.
I cracked open that second IPA, wandering down the hallway to the bedrooms. He had shared the master with my grandmother, but the other one was my dad’s, untouched from his childhood. It was the room I always stayed in as a kid and slowly became mine, too.
Mom and I moved out of New York when I was ten, just a few months after Dad’s heart attack. It was hard to discern what I actually remembered and what I’d been told about our time living here.
I wasn’t thrilled to leave Tennessee for New York, even for a month. I liked having my quiet life, where nothing ever really changed. I’d go to work and sometimes I’d get dinner at my mom’s. Sometimes I’d get a beer with Charlie. I was fine. Content.
Charlie was the one who’d convinced me to come up here. I told him about everything one night at Yee-Haw Brewing Company, our Thursday night spot.
“You have to go,” he’d said, excited. “Henry, this is exactly what you need.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think I need this.”
“You’re in a rut,” Charlie said, his voice flat. He was the kind of guy that fit in anywhere. Effortlessly cool and charming and always everyone’s friend. At times I envied him, but I was mostly just grateful to have him as a friend.
I frowned. “No, I’m not.”
“You do the same thing every day.”
“I have a routine—”
“Henry, as your best friend, I really think you should go.” Charlie took a swig of his beer. “You haven’t been happy in years. Maybe you’ll find happiness there.”
I’d recently confessed to Charlie that I felt a little unfulfilled saving billion-dollar companies by cutting half of their workforce.
“Books are in your blood, dude,” he had said. “Why not at least try it?”
I knew Charlie was right. Even if it wasn’t to get out of a rut, I’d regret it forever if I didn’t give it a shot. So I quit my job at the business consulting firm and booked a plane ticket.
I stood in front of Leo’s bedroom door now, my hand hovering over the doorknob.
I didn’t have the strength to turn it. My throat tightened at the thought of smelling his cologne again.
If I could go back, even just a couple of months, I’d just talk to him.
About books. About my job, about the store. Anything, really.
The store was the last living connection I had to my grandfather. I had a month to make sure his legacy was intact.