All Adults Here(76)

“Why don’t you come in?” August said. Elliot looked startled. “I’m friends with Cecelia. Want some?” He pointed to the window with the corner of the pizza box.

“Sure, okay,” Elliot said. August watched as he ran his hands through his hair a few times and then jogged across the street, taking the pizza from August while he unlocked the door.

Birdie was working fast. There were at least four inches of Cecelia’s hair on the floor. “Things are happening,” Cecelia said, her face pointing toward the floor.

“Chin down,” Birdie said.

“I found your uncle Elliot,” August said.

“Huh?” Cecelia said, peering up from behind a wall of hair.

“Hi, Elliot,” Birdie said. “What a nice surprise.”

August slid a slice out of the box and onto a paper plate and set the plate gently in Cecelia’s lap before curling into the chair next to her with his own slice.

“You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Birdie.” Elliot took a slice of pizza and folded it in half.

Birdie looked up, her scissors still. She made eye contact with Cecelia in the mirror. All Cecelia wanted was to stop being a person who other people confided in. Not really, not forever—but temporarily, absolutely. Not that her uncle had confided in her—he hadn’t. And she hadn’t told anyone about what she’d seen in his desk drawer, which meant that she could plausibly pretend she hadn’t seen it at all. It might not exist.

“What’s going on?” Birdie asked. Her glasses were halfway down her nose; she was making Cecelia look better, and she was doing it for free. Cecelia had never met her grandfather, so she didn’t know what he’d been like, but she liked watching Gammy and Birdie cuddle together in the kitchen when they thought she wasn’t looking. Sometimes Cecelia thought that her superpower was her ability to fade into the background like a neutral wallpaper. Katherine had expected her to keep her mouth shut. August too. Elliot had invited her into his house, assuming she wouldn’t open drawers. Cecelia was never the subject, she was an object. Even now, Birdie was doing the transforming; Cecelia was just a head in a chair.

“Yes?” Birdie kept working, snipping away. August held the pizza in front of her mouth and let her take a bite before moving it away, so that it wouldn’t get covered with hair.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the space on the corner,” Elliot said. “I’m not sure if my mother knows yet, but I bought it.”

“Did you?” Birdie stopped what she was doing. “Do you know that Astrid is obsessed? You must know that. Do you? All she wants is for something to open there, and I keep telling her, something will. But it’s you!”

“Yes,” Elliot said. “It’s true.”

“That’s exciting,” Birdie said. “So what’s your plan? You know, Susan’s Bookshop and I have had the same landlord for eighteen years. Predating my time in Clapham. Spiro’s has been there since the dawn of time. Frank too. It’s a big responsibility, thinking about the community. Especially because you live here. Most landlords want to stay as far away as they can.” She turned her attention back to Cecelia’s head and gently pointed it toward the ground.

“Yes,” Elliot said.

“What do you actually want to put there?” August asked. “I mean, when you bought it, what was your plan?”

“It’s not that simple,” Elliot said. “It’s about real estate, not services.”

“But you live here,” Cecelia said.

“And you must want stuff,” August said.

“These are some smart kids,” Birdie said.

“I want one of those Instagram museums,” Cecelia said. “You know, those places that just exist so people will take pictures and post them on the internet.”

“That’s not real,” Birdie said. “Is it?”

“It is,” Cecelia said.

“Do you think that’s what people would want?” Elliot asked, his voice searching.

Cecelia and August made eye contact in the mirror and burst into laughter.

“No, I knew you were kidding,” Elliot said. He looked miserable. He knew this feeling—the feeling that he was getting it wrong. His brother, Nicky, had never done anything wrong, not really. Even when Nicky did something royally stupid, it slid off his back. Porter too. Both of his siblings could have tried to water-ski with cement blocks, and they somehow would have skidded along the surface. Confidence. That was what they had. Enough confidence to not care about making money, or having a big house, or living a normal life, the kind of life everyone wanted. When Elliot looked at his brother’s weird marriage and tiny apartment, or his sister’s refusal to just marry someone already, he felt embarrassed for them, but also, he felt embarrassed for himself, that they clearly didn’t need what he needed, that they were powered by some internal engine that he did not possess, to move to their own beat, when he’d always been happy with the usual rhythm. Only in his family could Elliot feel like the weirdo for getting married before having children, for having a baby on purpose, for registering for kitchen appliances.

It couldn’t all be blamed on one conversation, of course. Or could it? Elliot didn’t know how brains worked. One conversation could change the course of a life, though—what about people whose spouses had to tell them they were getting a divorce, or every parent or wife or son who got a call saying that someone had been killed in an accident? Bob Baker’s life had changed with a conversation, hadn’t it? And so why not Elliot’s too?