2 Evie
2 Evie
Midland, Ohio
Evie-pie!
I’m dead, it seems. That old witch Priya will take my place as the head of the gardening association, I suppose. What a mess
she’ll make of things—her tulips! If you lived in San Francisco, I’d tell you to spy on her for me. Maybe you can arrange
some espionage anyway.
Instead, you’re wasting away in Midland—but not for long. Dear one, I have a proposition. It’s a big one. I always intended
to leave you my house in San Francisco. After all, you were practically raised there. You can sell it or live in it or set
up a crazy artists’ commune (just please, no orgies on my crane tapestries). I wouldn’t have it go to anyone else.
But, in my old age, I suppose I’ve become rather meddlesome. You see, I’ve decided to add a condition. It’s a little one.
Tiny. You may inherit my house if you agree to go on a matchmaking tour in Vi ? t Nam. I’ve even chosen the matchmaking organization! Love Yêu (get it?!) is a brand-new feminist-run tour, perfect for a
poetess like yourself. I reserved a spot for you as soon as I heard about it.
I know you’ll think this out of character for me—after all, I spent years decrying the worth of men. While I don’t think a
partner is the only answer, I do think you’re lonely. Don’t talk to me about that Atlas fellow. He’s Phineas in wire-framed
glasses.
You could use a shake-up. I’d like you to have a shot at love—with a man or woman, Auntie doesn’t judge—before you become cynical. There are many ways to be brave, but I admit that I was never brave in love. Forgive me for saying I see a lot of myself in you. I suppose one’s deathbed can make one morbid at times. Regretful, even.
Why Vi ? t Nam, you ask? Well, we are all a bit disconnected from our heritage. Your father would have wanted you to visit the homeland.
And I promised. Two birds, one stone! Plus, I thought you might get some inspiration for your poetry. Many of our people were
absolute fire—as the kids say—in the poetry department.
I’ve put aside some money for your fee for the tour. All you need to do is contact my lawyers, and they will set it all up.
Because I know how you like to drag your pretty little feet, there are a few clauses. You have three months from the receipt
of this letter to complete the tour. Photographic evidence of you in the motherland must be sent to the lawyers. If you don’t
complete your mission, my most beloved, then the house will be sold—probably to some soulless developer—and the funds distributed
among your grasping cousins. I know you know our home (for I’ve always thought of it as ours) deserves a better fate.
But I’m no despot. You don’t have to fall in love. You just have to try. And once the tour is complete, even if you have found
no Prince Charming to shove in your suitcase, you’ll get the deed to the house. Win-win! What’s a few weeks to a lifetime
of promise?
Evie-pie, I love you so much that I think I might burst with it. My hopes for you are myriad, and I believe that you will
soon find the path to your wildest dreams, even the ones you are too afraid to speak aloud.
—Auntie H ? o
Evie finds the letter no more sensible after the hundredth reading than after her first shocked skim, a few days ago. She hasn’t told anyone about Auntie H ? o’s deranged, posthumous wishes, save her cousin Lillian Lang-Peterson, who squealed with delight and immediately tried to
book Evie on the first flight to H ? Chí Minh City.
“Why the hell not?” Lillian had demanded, hands on her pregnant middle.
The reasons are many. First of all, can one go on a matchmaking tour if one already has a boyfriend? Not that Atlas ever registered
to Auntie H ? o as a serious partner, despite the few times she met him. He’d turned up his charm, rushing to open doors and pick up the
bill at the fancy restaurants he’d persuaded them to go to, but Auntie H ? o had only sniffed in his direction, as if to say, You don’t fool me .
Aside from Atlas, there is Evie’s job as an adjunct writing professor at Midland College, one that employs her through the
summer months and keeps the cockroaches from skittering around in her bank account. And Vi ? t Nam! Who picks up and hops on a flight halfway around the world with only a month’s notice? But that was Auntie H ? o to a tee. Tempestuous, adventurous. The opposite of the person Evie has become at the ripe old age of thirty-two.
Evie shoves the letter back in her messenger bag and fumbles under the squat gnome where Atlas keeps his house key. Unlike
her unkempt apartment, Atlas’s house looks like it could grace the front of a real estate catalog. With the blue wooden shutters
and actual landscaping in the form of bright poppies and leafy hostas, there’s not a stone out of place.
She juggles her purse, along with a paper bag full of groceries from the gourmet store on Main Street, and lets herself in
with the key. Even though they’re technically not supposed to be dating, it’s the worst kept secret in the whole English department,
of which Atlas himself is the head. One too many faculty members (and students) have seen them leaving readings together or
her hastily dashing from his house in the early morning wearing yesterday’s teaching clothes.
Today is Atlas’s forty-fifth birthday and a particularly melancholy one for reasons Evie cannot uncover. He’s been moping over his Earl Grey for the past week, muttering something about mortality and life lessons. Evie, being the good secret girlfriend she is, has decided to cook his favorite meal—beef Wellington with a side of mashed parsnips. Along the way to the kitchen, she passes photos of Atlas at Oxford with his boxing pals, a black-and-white portrait of a walrus-’stached Thomas Hardy, and a small oil painting of Atlas’s deceased hound, Doyle.
In the kitchen, she hums as she gets out the pots and pans, scrolling through the ingredients on her phone. While she cooks
her way through a very complex dish she has no business attempting, she tries not to think about Auntie H ? o’s letter and the promising little thrill it gives her. Of course, she can’t just go to Vi?t Nam . She has a life here! And she’s just learned that parsnips aren’t as horrifying as she supposed they would be!
But then there’s the row house in the heart of San Francisco. A real estate boon for anyone. Evie wouldn’t live in it, but
she could sell it, which would set her up for a long time. No more adjuncting on a pittance. No more random editing jobs from
Upwork. She could finally not worry about money and write .
Turns out, poetry isn’t exactly a get-rich scheme, though she was named the poet laureate of Midland by a portly mayor with faintly veiled literary aspirations.
Her debut book of poetry, Auntie H?o’s Cabinet of Curiosities , did moderately well, but once the early reception died down, there wasn’t enough luster to carry her forward. Since then,
she’s missed out on numerous opportunities to attend hallowed residencies in the woods, where all the writers sing about their
most burning aspirations over an open fire.
She’s missed out on jobs too, especially ones promising permanency and the dangling carrot of a tenure-track life. Her agent
nudges her monthly about a new manuscript, telling Evie unnecessarily, “The iron is no longer hot.” Perhaps Evie has been
in a bit of a creative funk since Auntie H ? o’s death.
She’s pondering this as the fire alarm goes off, blaring so loudly that she has to cover her ears with her oven mitts. Smoke
billows from the oven. Oh, God , she thinks, 475degrees is definitely not the same as 375. Last time she tries to cook while distracted. Last time she tries to cook at all.
Just as she’s pulling the beef Wellington out of the oven, she hears the front door open. And there’s Atlas pausing in the
kitchen archway in a sky-blue button-down that somehow matches his eyes perfectly. He takes a dishcloth and, in one smooth
movement, bats it toward the smoke alarm, appeasing it enough for the siren to dissipate. He opens a window, then the back
door. Then, he stares, bemused by Evie’s flour-streaked boots, the ragged mess of her hair, and the blackened blob on the
baking sheet.
“Well, darling, this is a surprise,” he says, with a faint British accent.
Atlas isn’t British but has Anglophile aspirations that Evie has always found charming. The accent only disappears when he’s
been drinking. Then he has a slight drawl from Montana. A man of many accents.
She motions to the burnt top of the dish. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be that color. But it’s your favorite.”
“Kidney pie!”
“No,” Evie says dejectedly. “Wellington. Beef.”
“Chin up, Evie. The mashed potatoes look just the thing.”
“Parsnips.”
“Huh.” Atlas pushes his glasses up on his nose.
“Happy birthday,” she says, shrugging.
He laughs and opens his arms to her. She steps into them, thankful that he isn’t scolding her for nearly burning down his
house. Gently, he rests his chin on the crown of her head. There it is, that mind-numbing comfort that only Atlas can give.
She wants to place her head on his shoulder and sleep forever and ever. Briefly, she wonders if this is really what you want
to feel in a relationship. Comfort is a beautiful thing, but is there such a thing as too much of it?
He’d been the one to pursue her with a job offer, after her poetry collection started getting some minor awards. He told her that Midland needed a voice like hers on its literary scene. She had been bopping around a small town in Iowa before that, and she guessed Ohio might be a slightly different shade of the same, so she agreed. The dollar could stretch far in a place like this.
It had been natural to fall into bed with Atlas after a few months of teaching writing seminars and attending faculty meetings
where he presided. Toward Evie, he’s always been attentive and sincere, and seems to truly care about her work. Sure, he’s
sometimes a little pretentious, and he likes to flirt with other women much more than she enjoys watching him flirt with other
women. And of course, they annoy each other after long periods of time together, as two introverts can. But surely he never
deserved Auntie H ? o’s raised eyebrows and unveiled disdain. If she could have conjured up a perfect, nerd-hot boyfriend, it would have been
Atlas, right down to the argyle socks.
Even still, Evie finds herself wondering if she’s missing something.
He drops a kiss on her lips and says, “Let me go change. I have the smell of undergraduate desperation on me.”
“Ah. Eau de Can-You-Change-My-Grade?”
“What else? I suppose the smoke masks it now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Let’s order in pizza, love.”
As Atlas bounds up the stairs to his room, Evie sighs and punches in an order for caprese pizza on her phone’s restaurant
delivery app. Then she spies the edge of Auntie H ? o’s letter peeking from her messenger bag.
Evie scoffs at the name of the matchmaking service. Love Yêu— yêu meaning “love” in Vietnamese. Her countrymen sure love a good pun, judging from the names of the local restaurants: Ph ? Sho and Nguyening at Life. Evie flips open the laptop on Atlas’s kitchen counter. Password: 060253. The late Queen ElizabethII’s
coronation date.
She is about to type “Love Yêu” in the browser when she spies an open Google document on the screen. It’s a job description.
For... an adjunct creative writing professor. She peers closer. Reads through the requirements. It’s her job. Same salary, same title, same parking benefits. Contact email: [email protected].
“Oh, dear.”
Evie whirls to see Atlas in a gray polo, his face looking equally ashen. He’s reaching toward her, but she flits out of his
grasp.
“Are you interviewing people for my job?” she asks, her voice low and deadly.
“That is—” Atlas pushes a hand through his beautiful auburn locks. “It’s just that—”
“For a man so eloquent, you are looking like an open-mouthed carp.”
“Evie, please understand,” he pleads. “Your student evaluations have not been... up to par. There have been complaints
about your grading structure from the students.”
“They don’t try!” Evie cries, throwing her hands up. “They’re entitled! And lazy!”
“Certainly, but their parents pay tuition and fund the department.”
“And that’s a reason to kowtow to them?”
“All I’m saying is that certain concessions must be made,” he tells her tiredly. This is not the first time they’ve had this
conversation. “We meet them halfway. And some of the subject matter you’ve covered seems unorthodox.”
“Sad Dead Women?”
“Precisely.”
Evie had assigned an influx of writings from early feminists who, unfortunately, usually came to dismal ends. Sylvia Plath
and Virginia Woolf and Anne Sexton, beautiful voices that left their mark, long after their lives ended. She thought her curriculum
was unique. That it said something about life and love and trauma and the creative life. She assumed her students would find
resonance in the despair of the greats. Instead, there were reports that the college counselors had seen a marked uptick in
sessions scheduled by students from her class, specifically.
Atlas asks, a touch of plaintiveness in his voice, “Did you have to call it that?”
“It was that or Head in the Oven.”
He gestures expansively with his palms, as if to say, See?
She can respect that he needs to let her go. People have been fired before, perhaps even by those they were sleeping with.
And she’s not terribly invested in teaching at the moment, it’s true. At least, not teaching this particular group of undergraduates.
But to hide the firing from her and draft a job posting before she even knows that her professional days are numbered, before she even
has a plan... well, that is another level of betrayal. Humiliation. More than that: it’s cowardice, through and through.
Looking now at Atlas, his pained eyes landing everywhere but on her face, she realizes that she does not want to spend another
minute at his home, pretending to be cheerful about his birthday while he slowly pulls her job out from under her. She’s too
mortified to be the good secret girlfriend today.
“I’m going now,” she announces. “I hope you choke on your birthday pizza.”
“Wait, Evie. Stay. This doesn’t have to ruin everything between us.”
“Call me when you have the balls to communicate like a human.”
She snatches her bag, along with Auntie H ? o’s letter, and flounces out of the room, with Atlas calling halfheartedly after her. On the porch, she sees a young freckled
man in a dirty shirt, carrying a large pizza box as he squints at the door number.
“Large caprese?” he asks, blinking bewildered eyes at her.
“I’ll take that,” she says, snatching the pizza from him. And without missing a beat, she throws the box like a Frisbee into
Atlas’s prized garden, where it knocks over a gnome and splays across a hedge like a fallen banner.
The pizza deliveryman clears his throat. “Good aim. Hey, is that you, Professor Lang? It’s Sage. From your Intro to Poetry
class. I was wondering if I could get an extension on—”
“Yes!” Evie says over her shoulder, bounding to her car, pizza forgotten. “You can have an extension until the end of time!
A’s for everyone!”
“Whoa, really?”
As she starts her car, Evie begins to reconsider the turn her life has taken. No job. No summer plans. Nothing but time ahead of her. She holds Auntie H ? o’s letter, then brings it to her chest, like a kind of talisman. A few weeks of sightseeing for a house that’s worth several
million dollars, plus some much-needed breathing room from her cowardly secret boyfriend. Who wouldn’t take the offer?
Her heart beats a little faster, though at the moment, she doesn’t know if it’s due to the confrontation with Atlas, or excitement,
or pedestrian hunger. Whatever she decides, though, she knows she has to do it soon. Open doors don’t stay open forever.