Rebecca

She was in sixth grade and had landed a small role in the school play. She wanted the lead but knew it wasn’t meant to be. Not only was she way too shy and awkward, and couldn’t sing, but she also didn’t actually audition for it. Maybe more than wanting the lead, she wanted to actually be the kind of person that would try out for it. Somewhere, deep inside of herself she really did have the desire to be that person, but in reality she was the kind of person who liked to blend in and not really cause a scene. Rebecca told herself she was fine with the role of the grocer, and “ensemble choir.”

At home, she told her mom and there was very little fanfare. But when her dad came home from work later that night, after she was in bed- she suddenly heard on the record player, “If I were a Rich Man…” she could hear him singing and whistling the words. Her mom must have told him that she was going to be in A Fiddler on the Roof. Suddenly she swelled with pride and thought of her role in the chorus as being crucial to the success of the show.

Right before she was about to fall asleep, her father whispered into her open doorway, “nice job, that’s my one and only favorite play.” Every time she heard that song for the rest of her life she was reminded that no matter what she did, her dad was proud of her. This was actually the best gift of her life. Her only regret was that she had let him down so significantly before he died. She wanted him to know that she was heading somewhere or at least wanted him to know that she knew she deserved to be heading somewhere better.

Jason turned out to be exactly what everyone warned her he would be: a horrible person. What is it about smart women? Why did they make all of the right decisions their whole life only to be sidetracked and blindsided but the wrong guy? Yes, it is an over asked question and seemingly a waste of time to even attempt to answer but it happens all the time to the best of women, doesn’t it?

The next morning she woke up for the first time in a long time not thinking about Jason and the mess that became of her life because of him, also not thinking about her father and how much she missed him. She surprisingly woke up thinking about William- was that his name? And how he really didn’t seem to like records at all. Music in fact, seemed to be a thing that he’d rather not even discuss. It seemed implausible to her.

Of all the things that had come and gone in her life, it was the music that she could always count on to keep her company. When her dad died and left her a small inheritance and his old record collection, she could think of nothing else to do with it then start a record shop and continue in his footsteps spreading his passion for music.

She wished she would have never allowed Jason to walk through the doors of her shop, then it could have remained her happy place, her escape, the reason that she opened it in the first place.

It was always her plan to have a little shop that she could call her second home. She would dream of the customers coming in and out, making small talk, suggesting records that would change their mood, their day, their life- the way music had for her.

But, for the six months since Jason broke her heart, she hadn’t recommended an album to anyone until William came in. It must have been that he looked even more miserable and down-and-out than she did, which she didn’t really think was possible. Maybe it was? Maybe it was possible that someone felt worse off than she did? Rebecca laughed at her own melodrama, remembering the nerve of Jason breaking her heart and telling her that he was leaving her right in the Cole Porter section!

The Cole Porter section used to be her favorite spot in the whole store. There was a small spiral staircase leading up to a cozy loft with a huge window. She wanted it to be treated like a special section of the store. So she put the Cole Porters, the Nat King Coles and the Etta James types up there because to her that was the kind of music to be revered. It was the only place in the store that she would request customers not bring their drinks or their little children. It was her pride and joy. But now she avoided it like the plague.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall in love with her. Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, you know?” Did he really say that? Had she really married someone that would say something so ridiculous? Did he realize that the “other plans” he so casually mentioned was her entire life. God damn him for ruining the Cole Porter section!” She thought. Anger felt nice. She liked feeling anger.

This was a new day for her. She woke up thinking how nice it felt to share her love for music with someone new and she felt anger for the first time since Jason left her. Her friends kept saying that eventually she would get past the heartache and get to a more constructive emotion. She stopped believing it would come months ago, twenty pounds and a few hundred grey hairs ago, to be more accurate.

Looking in the mirror, she wondered how she had actually gotten to this place. A place where she would allow one person to determine her self-worth. She wasn’t raised this way. She had all of the precautions in place; a good family, great friends and a promising education. “You just got side tracked,” her ever-optimistic friend told her when she came over to make sure she was still breathing after three days of disappearing off the face of the earth and not even opening up the shop. She remembered dismissing her friend and thinking that if she had ever been in love like this, she would know it wouldn’t be so easy to get over it. Now Rebecca suddenly felt ashamed for being so dismissive. Love didn’t have to be so all consuming and suffocating to count. It shouldn’t be the only thing in your life. She knew this and had actually known this all along, because when Jen had come over to check on her, she realized somewhere in the back of her brain that is had been months since she had seen her. Months since she had seen her best friend on the planet because of Jason. He didn’t really like Jen so she was always cancelling with her to appease him, or makes things easier, or whatever it was she was doing.

This day was a big step for her. She felt it. She felt the healing power of anger. Commuting to the shop that morning felt a little less exhausting than it had recently. She even tried to look a little nicer than usual by throwing some make up on her face and not wearing black. Up until this very moment every time she walked into the shop all she could see was the look in Jason’s eye as he explained he was leaving her for Susan, a person she thought was her friend. He had stolen her happy place with his inconsiderate and shocking admission of guilt.

Why couldn’t he have taken her to lunch and told her at a restaurant she didn’t like, or at their house? She could live anywhere, or eat at different places, but he contaminated her store, her lifeline, with his self-centeredness. She knew it was PTSD and she knew it would eventually pass, but damn him, he stole her love for music. That was the unforgiveable thing. He could keep his Susan and their house in the suburbs and their new baby, but he couldn’t keep her love for her shop, that didn’t belong to him. She would fight for that and her meeting with William helped her to remember that this was her battle to win.

“Oh dad, what song would you play for me right now?”

WILLIAM

Today was the day that he would wake up, get dressed, leave the house and immediately apologize to Lizzy for leaving her in the middle of dinner.

“Who does that?” He couldn’t believe that after all of the years of acting like a gentleman in his life he actually left his friend in the middle of dinner without saying goodbye. She had done so much for him these last few months and he repaid her like this? Who had he become?

Being depressed was one thing- but being rude? That was just unacceptable to him. He awoke with a purpose, he would buy her a blueberry muffin from her favorite bakery and go apologize. He was still human after all, was he not? He was surprised Pete hadn’t stopped by to punch him yet. Theirs was a marriage of a united front! You didn’t hurt one without paying the price to the other. William knew that because Pete did not physically or verbally confront him yet that they were definitely worrying that he might not ever bounce back from this whole thing. The thought that he had secured a married couple’s combined pity might just have been the worst part of the whole thing so far.

It had been two months since he had gone to the shop. Two months, how was that possible? The store was his favorite thing in life. Well, his second favorite thing if he were being honest. How could it have been so easy to just walk away from it all?

Kate. She ruined everything. He loved that shop because he opened it for her, didn’t he? She inspired him to do it, and he really did love it there. Each and every book on each shelf meant something to him- meant something to them. When they dreamed of going to Russia, they’d read War and Peace together, and the Russian section had become so popular over the last few years it was like all the customers felt the same way about going to Russia with the person they  loved. When taking long walks together was their thing, they’d read Bill Bryson and Patrick Leigh Fermor and then serendipitously that section of the shop would become the most popular. It was as if the customers were subconsciously sensing their love and the books were bringing them along for the ride.

He thought of all the sections that seemed to have created themselves around their relationship as he brought the muffin and the humble apology to Lizzy. He was embarrassed that he had let things get this bad. He was an adult man for God’s sake. He didn’t realize that the rug could be ripped out from under him like this. When had he stopped protecting himself?

“William. Is that really you?” Lizzy honestly looked as if she had seen a ghost.

“It is and I am so sorry.” He felt embarrassed but relieved to get this moment over with. She immediately hugged him, this simple gesture reminded him why she had always been one of his best friends. Friends should never keep score, and Lizzy never did.

He was back in his bookshop. Back in the place he built from the ground up, each and every light switch chosen in love and commitment to the success of this place. If he thought Kate leaving him was hard, feeling out of place here was almost more than he could bear.

“Thank you for keeping this place running for me. How can I ever repay you?” 

“William, you can love it again. That’s what you can do to repay me. That’s all I want.”

A few years back a customer came in looking for a book to bring to her son who was recently diagnosed with cancer. He was in the middle of a pretty long hospital stay and she wanted to try and cheer him up with something without seeming like she was trying to cheer him up.

William asked a few questions and then recommended that she bring him a copy of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Why? The customer asked clearly thinking, it was an odd choice because William said, “Just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”

This was Lizzy’s first day at the job, this was the day that she realized this was more than a bookstore.

She couldn’t stop herself from saying what she said next even if it meant that William wouldn’t talk to her anymore. “William, I am not sure what happened with Kate, but I do know this, she loved you- you could tell just by sitting in the same room with you both- you just knew. But, you are my friend, and other people need you too. You have to find a way out of this. Please.”

Lizzy left the store with her muffin and said she needed to run an errand. William was alone with his books. All alone with them for the first time in months. He felt like a stranger in a cafeteria filled with teenagers and couldn’t find where he would fit in. His thoughts wouldn’t rest and for some reason he thought of music. He thought of the five songs. He thought of Rebecca and her theory and he wondered if it was the same for books. He picked up a copy of The Joke by Milan Kundera and thought, this would be one of our five books.

He thought suddenly of his mom and how she never could seem to get the right emotions out but would always give him just the right book at just the right time: Robert Browning when he was in love, Robert Louis Stevenson when he couldn’t sleep, Emerson when there was a decision to be made. He’d even been ignoring her lately. Unforgivable.

Of all the times in his life when he could deliver just the right words at just the right time to the person that needed them, why couldn’t he do it for himself? Why couldn’t he talk himself out of this? It was his specialty, but for some reason he always ended up with a bottle of wine and unanswered calls from the rest of the people he loved.

He lasted only an hour at the store but it was, as they say, a start.

On the way home he decided, without remembering how or why he decided it, to stop by the record store. When he walked in there were a few customers, so he just said to her quietly, “I own a bookstore. I don’t know why I thought you should know this, but I just wanted to tell you.”

He didn’t expect her answer to be what it was, not that he was expecting any certain answer but he did find himself surprised when she said, “Really? That’s funny because I lied to you for some reason, this is my shop. I own it, I am not helping out a friend.”

She turned to help a customer, and he walked out of the store.

REBECCA

Rebecca couldn’t help but think on the way to work a few days later, in the middle of an incredibly crowded subway car, of the days of Mozart. When he would perform, the newspaper would send out a decree to women requesting that they please remove their hoopskirts before attending his concert because they simply took up too much space. Somewhere between subways stops she almost yelled out, “Ok ladies, if you could all just remove your farthingales and petticoats maybe we would all have a little bit more space.” But she refrained, she was only teetering on insanity, she hadn’t gotten there just yet.

If she had been going somewhere as soul inspiring as to see Mozart perform, then possibly the elbow of a stranger in her rib cage would be a bit more worthwhile, but she wasn’t -she was just going to work and the struggle just didn’t seem as necessary. It was bad enough that she had been going two blocks out of her way for coffee these days, all of this just adding more time and more stress to what was already a very annoying commute. A few weeks ago, she made a decision to buy her morning coffee from someone she thought of as the last friendly person left in the city and she was going to stick to this vow even if it meant walking two blocks out of the way because it seemed like friendliness was as alluring and as fleeting as a Mozart performance in Vienna.

It was true that when she and Jason broke up and she moved to a different place, her commute had gotten longer and more stressful, but she was trying to ensure the commute wasn’t the thing that broke her. She had been bottling up what really happened for so long and hadn’t yet talked to anyone about it. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She married him without the support of the people that really loved her. She didn’t listen to any of the pleas or warnings and now everyone else was right and she was wrong so she was more than just sad, she was humiliated. She knew that the risk of not telling her own truth meant that there was the risk of allowing someone else to make it up for her. She wondered often what was being said amongst her relatives and friends from home about what had transpired.

But what was her truth? The person she loved left her for another person that she also loved and trusted. She was her friend. That part stung with just as much acidity as the fact that her husband was leaving her. Part of her didn’t want to admit that she was as hurt by her friend as she was by her husband, but in truth, she was. Marriage was one thing, it was a contract, a legal promise that you make to someone usually after years of weighing the pros and cons of it all.  But, friendship? She thought of friendship as a willing and voluntary partnership, she had never considered that someone would participate in a friendship unwillingly. Friendships were supposed to add joy to your life, a confidante in times of trouble, someone to share your weaknesses with even if you tried to hide them from your spouse.

Did Susan use the insecurities that she had shared with her over many glasses of wine and conversation against her in the pursuit of her own husband?

In horror, Rebecca remembered a time when she had gone out with a bunch of the girls for drinks for someone’s birthday. At the end of the night as the crowd started to thin out and the restaurant and had grown quiet, she and Susan had started to talk in that more intimate way you do when there are only two people and not such a large group. It just so happened that Rebecca had recently miscarried and she was still feeling a little unsettled about it. On the one hand, it was early on so she hadn’t really gotten used to the idea of becoming a mother yet, but on the other hand, she felt such a sense of failure and she couldn’t shake it.

Susan sensed something was bothering her so she ordered them two more drinks and even a plate of nachos to share and they sat talking about things for over an hour. Rebecca told her that she was really sad and confused about her feelings but also that she sensed an unspoken relief between herself and Jason. “Neither of us would ever admit it,” she said, “but it’s there and there’s no denying it.” At the time she just assumed that Jason wasn’t ready to be a father. She didn’t consider that he didn’t want to have children with her. She wondered if Susan thought about this now. She wondered if she felt all the unfairness now that only a few short years later she was having a baby with him and they were celebrating the arrival knowing how differently things could have turned out.

It was all too much. This reality of her life really did hurt too much to think about. Sometimes she would take herself out of it and look at it from the perspective of a stranger, knowing her truth made her seem weak and boring but knowing in reality she was just trusting and as embarrassing as it now seemed, she was happy. She didn’t see it coming, not even in retrospect, even though she and Jason had a rocky beginning, things had grown quiet and predictable and felt safe and didn’t all marriages start off a little harder than expected?  She was always good at things; picked up the piano without really trying, always got promotions at whatever job she had, was a great friend and the most devoted daughter, but now she had failed at the one thing she never really planned to fail at, marriage. It caused her to feel as if all of the rest of her relationships weren’t what they had seemed to be either.

She couldn’t let the record shop fail. Ever since admitting out loud the other day to a perfect stranger that it was failing, she realized that she needed to stop the flood waters from rising. She needed this to succeed more than she needed to breathe.

When she got to the record shop, she put on Si Tu Vois Ma Mere and sat and thought about her mom. Lately she had been missing her dad so much that she felt like she hadn’t been spending enough time with her mom in her thoughts. Her dad would play this song when she was younger and dance with her and her mom around the kitchen. One time, when she was a little bit older and had her first real heartbreak, her mom played this song for her and made tea and they sat at the table and ate croissants and even though she refused to really talk about what happened with Sam, just sitting there at the table with her was all she had needed to feel better.

If only she had known that it would be the last time her mom would be able to comfort her, she would have told her everything. She would have told her that Sam really was the person that she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. She would have told her how she really loved him and was devastated when they broke up, but she would also admit to the time they went to a wedding together and he got jealous and embarrassed her in front of all of her friends. She remembered that he was so sorry he bought her flowers for five straight days after that. She remembered that he cried and said he never loved anyone so much, so she had to understand why he was so afraid to lose her to the guy at the wedding who was flirting with her. But what she didn’t remember until months later was how scared she had felt that he would actually hurt her, how humiliated she felt in front of that guy that was only asking her where she was planning on going to college.

If she had one more moment at the kitchen table with her mom, she decided that she would ask her why she didn’t break up with him right then? She would ask her mom what was wrong with her that she kept allowing people to hurt her and feeling as if she did something to deserve it.

Logically she knew that she didn’t but somewhere inside of her, she made it ok to be treated that way. Lately, that was all she thought about. Ever since Jason cheated on her, she increasingly felt herself wondering when she decided it was ok to be treated so unfairly. This conversation with her mom could never be and that was getting to her as well. Her mom wasn’t there to set her straight, her dad wasn’t there to make her feel better. She was still feeling too embarrassed that Jason left her for Susan that she had even shied away from most of her other friends. They had a lot of the same friends and she wondered what they were saying as their defense. She could only imagine the public relations campaign being deployed by Jason and Susan in their own defense, and while she wasn’t trying to defend herself against their poor scruples, she really did wish someone was there to stand up for her until she got the strength to do it herself.

Anyway, she had a shop to open and really, really needed to figure out a way to increase sales and get more customers in the door. She turned on the lights, unlocked the front door and wished she could feel as happy in here as she once did.

She wanted to listen to a Nat King Cole song and she knew exactly where it was but she knew she wasn’t ready to go upstairs into the little loft with the Cole Porters and the Billie Holidays to get it. She’d remembered that “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons,” was a song that she and her dad would cry to when they missed her mom and she really felt like listening to a good crying song but she just wasn’t ready to go up there. The song and moving forward would just have to wait a little longer.