21. Kai
— ? —
Kai
The line wraps around the block twice, and I’ve been standing in it for three hours.
Albie wanted to walk me in. He said it the way he says everything, like an observation about the weather, that the store manager would surely make an exception, that Mr. Channing needn’t stand on a sidewalk, and I told him no and I told him to go get lunch, and he’s been parked around the corner for three hours with the engine off, not getting lunch, because Albie has decided that whatever I’m doing today, I shouldn’t do it with nobody nearby.
I can see the corner of the car if I lean.
My legs ache and my back is screaming, and a teenage girl with bright pink hair has been telling me about her fan fiction for the last forty-five minutes, and I’ve nodded along like I understand any of the terminology she’s using.
The grandmother behind me keeps offering me hard candies from her purse, and I’ve accepted four, and they’re surprisingly good.
Everyone in this line is here for the same reason, five minutes with E.C.
Hart, the breakout author, the woman whose speech about wanting to be seen made grown men cry on their morning commutes, and they’re clutching their copies of Coming Home like talismans, and the energy in the crowd is electric.
I’m clutching my copy too, but mine doesn’t look like theirs.
Mine is destroyed, dog-eared and water-stained from the night I fell asleep holding it in the bathtub, the spine cracked in a dozen places, and every single page is covered in my handwriting, cramped and desperate, bleeding into the margins wherever there was space.
“Who are you here for, honey?” the grandmother asks, somewhere in hour two. “Your wife? Your daughter?”
“My wife.”
“Oh, she’ll love that.” She pats my arm. “They love it when we make the effort.”
I don’t tell her that my wife is the woman at the table, or that I’ve made an effort exactly once in four years and this is it, standing on a sidewalk in shoes made in Italy, holding a book I’ve ruined.
I let her think I’m a man in line for an autograph to bring home, and she pats my arm again, and I stand there being patted for a thing I haven’t done in four years, and I take it, because I’ve got no right to correct her.
I bought this book the week after she left.
I thought I’d skim it, understand what the fuss was about, maybe find some insight into the woman I’d apparently never really known, and instead I read the entire thing in one sitting, and when I finished I started again from the beginning.
By the third read I was making notes, because I couldn’t help it, because every scene and every conversation and every moment where the heroine felt invisible in her own marriage held up a mirror I couldn’t look away from.
The line shuffles forward, the teenager squeals about how close we’re getting, the grandmother offers me another candy, and I take it, because my hands need a job.
“Have you read it?” the teenager asks me, somewhere around hour three, with the suspicion of a person who’s just noticed I haven’t said a word about the plot.
“A few times.”
“Who’s your favorite?”
I think about it honestly, which is a mistake, because the honest answer is that I don’t have a favorite, I have a man in chapter three I’d like to take outside. “The husband,” I say. “I understand him.”
She looks at me like I’ve said the worst thing a person can say in this line, and I suppose I have, and she doesn’t talk to me much after that, which is fine, because I’ve run out of things I’m allowed to say to anyone today except the one.
The bookstore is packed beyond capacity, people crammed into every available inch of space, cameras everywhere, phones held aloft, the low murmur of excited conversation a constant background hum, and there, at the center of it all, is Erika.
She’s seated at a long table near the back, a stack of books to her left, a line of adoring fans stretching to her right, a cup of tea going cold at her elbow that somebody keeps refilling and she keeps not drinking, wearing a cream-colored blouse and dark jeans, her hair down and tumbling over her shoulders, not the navy dress from the gala but softer, more like herself.
She looks like the girl I fell in love with in a dive bar near campus, and like my wife, and like everything I ever wanted and was too stupid to hold onto, and the sight of her makes my chest ache.
The line moves. I’m ten people away, then five, then three.
The grandmother gets her book signed and immediately bursts into tears, clutching the inscribed copy to her chest, and Erika comes around the table to hug her, warmth radiating from every line of her body, and my throat tightens at the tenderness of it.
The pink-haired teenager practically vibrates out of her skin as she approaches the table, and Erika listens patiently and signs the special edition with a personalized message, and I watch my wife be kind to a stranger in a way that hollows me out.
Then it’s my turn.
Erika looks up from signing, automatic smile in place, and the smile freezes.
“Kai.”
“Hi.”
The word comes out rough, and around us the bookstore has gone quiet.
“What are you doing here?”
“Buying a book.” I set my copy on the table, the destroyed, annotated, water-stained copy that contains every confession I couldn’t make out loud. “Sign it for me?”
She stares at the cover, and then she opens it, and her hands go still.
The margins are full, my handwriting covering every page, blue ink bleeding into every available space, weeks of sleepless nights poured out on white paper, every thought I couldn’t say preserved in the spaces between her words. She turns pages slowly, and I watch her read my unraveling.
This was us. That fight in chapter three. I remember every word of it now.
I didn’t know you were hurting. I should have asked. I should have seen.
Her brow furrows as she turns another page.
The scene where she looks at her closet full of clothes he bought her and realizes none of them are things she would have chosen for herself. I did this. I dressed you up like a doll and called it generosity.
Her lower lip trembles. She turns another page.
I was already failing you here. I see that now. I see everything now.
Her eyes are wet when she looks up at the next one.
When she says she’s fine but she’s not. I did that. Believed her because it was easier than digging deeper. Because I didn’t want to know. Because knowing would have meant changing, and I was too selfish to change.
She turns to the climax of the book. The scene where the heroine finally breaks.
The moment he chooses his ambition over her. That’s me. God, that’s me. I can’t stop seeing myself in every page. I read this and I finally understand what I did to you.
Her hands are trembling when she looks up at me, and she looks past me for a second, at the phones, at the faces, at the manager hovering near the end of the table with the expression of a man who doesn’t know whether he’s about to have a problem, and then she looks back at me, and I watch her decide.
I watch it happen. She could hand it back unsigned.
She could say next. She could do the thing that would end this in front of a room full of cameras, and I’d deserve it, and I stand there and let her choose.
The bookstore is silent. Everyone is watching. Phones are recording. I don’t care.
“Sign it for me?” I ask again, and my voice breaks on the question.
She picks up her pen, and her hand is shaking, and she writes on the title page, taking her time, the pen moving in careful strokes, and then she slides the book back across the table.
To Kai.
You’re learning.
E.C. Hart
My hands are trembling when I take it, and the words blur as tears prick at my eyes.
It isn’t forgiveness or a promise, it isn’t even particularly warm, but it’s more than she gave me through three inches of hotel door and more than she gave me with a pile of boxes at her feet, and it’s a door cracked open instead of slammed shut.
“Thank you,” I manage.
“Next person in line, please.”
I walk away because I have to, because there are people behind me waiting, because standing there any longer would mean breaking down completely while strangers filmed it, and on the way out a woman near the door says, “That’s him, that’s the husband,” not quietly, and I keep walking.
Outside the sun is too bright, and I find a bench half a block away and sink onto it with the book clutched to my chest, and Albie’s car pulls out of the side street and rolls to a stop at the curb in front of me, and Albie looks at me through the open window and doesn’t ask, and I shake my head, and he nods and turns the engine off again and waits, the way he waited outside a restaurant once while my wife called him from a ballroom, and I know he’s thinking about it too.
You’re learning. Two words. Four syllables.
I sit there as the afternoon stretches on, watching people pass on the sidewalk, a woman with a stroller, an old man walking a tiny dog, teenagers laughing at their phones, normal people living normal lives while I sit here holding a book that contains every mistake I ever made.
The pages are worn soft from how many times I’ve turned them, and the spine barely holds together anymore, but her inscription is crisp and new, her handwriting steady where mine was desperate.
She didn’t throw me out. She didn’t refuse to sign. She read my notes, all of them, every humiliating confession, and she gave me two words.
My phone buzzes. A text from Dora.
DORA: Well? Did she throw the book at your head?
I type back with shaking fingers: She signed it. She said I’m learning.
Three dots appear, disappear, appear again.
DORA: Then learn faster.
I laugh, out loud, on a bench on a sidewalk with tears still drying on my face, and a woman with a stroller gives me a wide berth, and I don’t blame her.
The line dies down around five. I don’t go back in.
I sit there and watch the store empty out through the front window, the last fans drifting away with their signed copies, the staff stacking the unsold books, and eventually the lights go down in the front of the shop and I see her come out a side door with Tessa, laughing at something, tired, rubbing her signing hand, in her cream blouse and her jeans and her hair coming loose from being tucked behind her ear all afternoon.
She doesn’t see me. Or she does and she doesn’t look, and I don’t know which, and I don’t get up.
That’s the part I’m learning. Two months ago I’d have crossed the street.
I sit on the bench with her two words in my lap and I let her walk to her car with her agent and get in and drive away, and only when her taillights are gone do I get up and get into the car with Albie, and he says, “Home, Mr. Channing?” and I say yes, and I hold the book on my knees the whole way like it might get up and leave too.