Chapter Eleven
When I leave for work Monday morning, there’s a plastic Tupperware of four perfectly round homemade cinnamon rolls, a small purple pouch, and a folded note stacked neatly against my car’s windshield.
They aren’t Cinnabon, but it’s my mom’s recipe. Hopefully these will tide you over until I’m back and can replace the one you dropped. The clicker is a dog training tool, but for you, it’s for audiobook recording. No more snapping, please. Your thumb is a wreck. Be back Thursday.
(There’s a smudge here, and I swear if you squint looks like he was going to write love and then thought better of it.)
Your faithful fake boyfriend, I.
I grin all the way to work. Even when I get another form rejection email letting me know I’m no longer in the running for an editorial position.
Even when my podcast app reminds me I have “two new episodes” of On the Same Page in my library as I pour my tea.
And even when I spill some of that tea on my shirt when trying to open the door to my booth—not a lot, but still —I can’t stop smiling.
I tell myself it’s from the cinnamon roll sugar spike, but myself and I both know we’re lying.
—
Catarina is a great sport when I ask her if I can interview her on camera at the end of the recording day to make a series of posts in James’s absence. She is a natural, laughing and managing to make the ins and outs of recording a dramatized audiobook sound intriguing and fun.
She talks about the other actors—how the other main cast is remote and the pros and cons of not having everyone under one roof—and how the process of casting varied from role to role.
She talks about the audio equipment for any techies who might be listening, and about how her experience working in corporate America prepped her for being an audiobook director.
“You so rarely end up doing the same thing for your whole life,” she says when I express surprise at her corporate background.
“It’s something I’ve tried to instill in my daughter: Be smart, but don’t get so tied up in the why and how of things.
People tend to end up where they belong if they’ve got a good head on their shoulders.
And sometimes you’ll find you belong in different places at different times, and that’s okay! ”
When we’ve wrapped up and are collecting our things, I’m still thinking about what she said about sometimes belonging in multiple places, and I wonder if that’s my problem.
If maybe I’m not in the wrong place and wrong time so much as I’m transitioning elsewhere so it’s wrong here so maybe it can be right there. Wherever there is.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Catarina asks, slinging her tote bag onto her shoulder. “I do hope I don’t tank your viewership with my rambling, though I expect you and Mr. Neely can devise a way to bounce back if I do.”
I blush at her words and tone.
“I guess I’m just thinking about what happens after the project is over and done with,” I say. “I don’t really have anything lined up yet.”
Catarina winks at me as we both walk toward the door. “What would Arabella do? You’ve been channeling her for weeks now. Maybe she can help guide you.”
She’s not expecting an answer. She gives me a friendly squeeze on the arm as she runs to her office to grab her “swim mom” ball cap for her daughter’s meet, and it’s my dismissal.
Which I’m glad of.
I already have too much to think about without Catarina muddling it with her Meadow wisdom, and yet…
What would Arabella do?
Something I’ve always disliked about Meadow discourse is how the people who hate it “on principle” are not interested in critical analysis of the characters, the plot, anything.
There are valid critiques of Arabella, but sometimes it feels like she is dismissed solely for being a teenage girl, like it’s a crime to be a young woman and totally in love and to make decisions accordingly.
I’ve heard it all: She’s boring, she’s one-dimensional, she’s a Mary Sue.
And yet Jennifer Sullivan must have done something right, because the series is popular, sure, but lots of people also see themselves in Arabella.
She has agency and uses it to get what she wants even when she’s scared out of her skin.
She takes care of people—her mom, her dad, and to an extent William—and she takes care of herself.
Critics like to point out that Arabella sank into a deep depression in Forest Dark when she and William spent most of the book on different continents, but I’ve always found that interpretation sorely lacking. (And sexist. And ageist.)
Because who hasn’t let the loss of something—or someone—totally level them for a few days or weeks or months?
Or years.
As if on cue, Serena calls to interrupt my spiraling the moment I turn on my car. Her personalized ringtone—a remnant from our college days, Lorde’s “Royals”—blares tinnily over my speakers.
“Do you think Arabella would go to New York and pursue publishing?” I ask.
Serena takes my question in stride. She sighs, and I hear the creak of the pantry door.
“I need to go grocery shopping,” she says. “I wouldn’t say no to a hot vampire husband who made oodles of money and could hire personal shoppers so I wouldn’t have to take the wildebeest to Target on a Monday.”
“You want a vampire husband?” I ask. “Does Leonora know?”
“Leonora would hand-deliver me to a coven of bloodsucking heterosexuals if they gave her enough money to fix the greenhouse at the nursery.”
I pull onto the main road to head home.
“It’s broken again ?”
“Yeah,” Serena groans. “So she’s been working late trying to patch-fix it until they can get someone out to take a look at it, which means she’s been working twenty-four seven and couldn’t come home before Misha’s bedtime last night.
Which was abysmal, because he had been looking forward to her coming home.
I think the longest he slept in a stretch was three hours. ”
I wince. “Which means you didn’t go grocery shopping, either, I take it?”
Another deep sigh of confirmation from Serena.
Sunday evenings have historically been Leonora and Misha’s bonding time while Serena roams the aisles of Target with AirPods and one of Leonora’s Stanley cups full of green tea. The three of them look forward to the ritual all week, especially Serena.
“And now my options for lunch are spinach and kale Cheerios or what’s left of the cauliflower chicken nuggets from Misha’s lunch. But enough about me. What’s this about the job hunt?”
“Nothing new,” I say. “Unless you count another rejection, which I don’t. My boss suggested I look to Arabella for answers. Like, a what would Jesus do situation, but make it Meadow. ”
I hear the door shut, and when Serena talks again, her mouth is full of what I suspect are the veggie Cheerios.
“Arabella was a teenager, Juniper,” she points out helpfully. “We are as old as the hills. We can’t look to her for help.”
I run my hand over the peeling steering wheel.
“I mean, technically she’s immortal, so that’s gotta count for something,” I mutter.
“What does James say about it?”
The driveway crackles beneath my tires as I park my car and lean back against the headrest.
“We don’t really talk about that stuff much,” I say.
“You’re dating, aren’t you?” Serena says. “You can’t see me, but I’m shaking my head. I swear, you straights are impossible. What are you doing? You’re not…you guys haven’t…”
I glare at the roof of my car. “Planted ficus trees in my yard? No. We haven’t.”
Serena is uncharacteristically quiet.
“You know what show that’s from, right?” I ask. “Oh my god, please tell me you know what show that is from.”
“I was just thinking, Juniper,” Serena says, indignant. “Of course I know what show that’s from. I’m the one that got you started on Parks and Rec in the first place. Don’t cite the old magic to me, witch. I was there when it was written.”
“Just checking,” I say. “But no. We’ve hung out. Recorded some stuff. Planned some more stuff. We’ve talked a bit about his mom and my mom and—”
“Well, that’s something, ” Serena interrupts. “Maybe you just need more time. He’s, like, industry-adjacent to you. He might know some people. Might be able to get you an in somewhere you wouldn’t be able to get on your own.”
“I don’t think acting and publishing have much in common besides usually shitty ghostwritten memoirs.”
“Um, Jennette McCurdy’s book was revolutionary,” Serena says. “You take that back.”
“Yeah, but Breslin used actual hashtags in the middle of sentences for her memoir.”
“Touché.”
“Go eat some real food,” I say, finally getting out of my car. “I’m going to go inside and apply for more jobs.”
“That’s depressing,” Serena says. “You’re off work. Shouldn’t you be kicking back and drinking tea and reading a book or something?”
“Not as depressing as leftover cauliflower chicken,” I argue.
The conversation could end here, but then Serena pauses a second too long, and not in a Misha is up to something kind of way, but in a Serena is about to drop some wisdom kind of way.
Sure enough, after a beat, she says, “Have you considered just…not?”
I know what she means, but my brain is scrambling to take it in, so I say, “Just not what ?”
“The whole publishing thing,” Serena says. “You could…Idon’t know, recalibrate.”
My brain is still scrambling, and all it’s coming up with are flashes of memories of Mom—of Mom and how much she wanted books and publishing and New York for me.
“Call your boyfriend,” Serena says in parting. “He’ll have better ideas than Arabella, and he might know someone who knows someone. You never know.”
—
I don’t call James, but I do send an eggplant emoji along with the message, It’s a crime against humanity that there isn’t a cinnamon roll emoji. Thank you for the clicker and the rolls. My thumb appreciates the gesture, and my pancreas can just shut up about me eating all four of them in one day.