The Last Book Party(37)

“But I have to work,” I said, hating the idea of not seeing Henry.

My mother stopped stirring her coffee.

“On Saturday?” She eyed my father.

“Isn’t this supposed to be a part-time job?” he asked. “It seems like it’s swallowing you whole. I trust Henry is not asking too much?”

“He’s not,” I said. “There’s a lot of work to do and I find it interesting.” I tried to sound casual, as if I hardly gave Henry himself any thought, when in truth I thought about him all the time. “I don’t see why I have to drop everything for Danny.”

My father sighed. My mother set down her coffee.

“He’s already on his way,” she said. “I doubt he’d be coming if you weren’t here. Seriously, Eve, who needs you more right now—Henry or your brother?”

Understandably, the thought that I might need Henry had never occurred to her. But my parents were right; I should spend time with Danny. I remembered how frightened I was by the depths of his sadness the last time I saw him. I agreed to take the day off.

When Danny arrived, I was glad to see he looked a little more himself, not as washed-out, and almost back to being the baby-faced guy whose soft brown eyes and flop of smooth, dark hair over his forehead made him look more like a musician than a mathematician. But he was still lethargic. Stretched out on the living room couch with his eyes closed, he nixed all my ideas for our day together. He didn’t want to canoe up the Pamet River to Jams. Or go sailing in the bay. Or ride the bike paths in the Provincetown dunes.

“How about I pack a lunch for you to take to the beach?” my mother asked. She spoke so sweetly that I wouldn’t have been surprised if she suggested a childhood menu of peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off and a pack of Oreos.

Danny opened his eyes and, in an unusually snappy tone, said, “How about … not.” He stood up, put on his dark sunglasses, and grabbed the keys to his car. “C’mon, Eve. Let’s go for a drive.”

I followed Danny outside. He drove too fast down Toms Hill Road to Castle Road and toward Truro Center.

“How can you stand living with her again?” he said. “She’s suffocating.”

“Me? I’ve been living away for years. You’re the one who’s always seeking her out for help.”

“It’s a pattern I’m trying to break,” he said, taking the curve before Castle Hill dangerously fast. “I’ve realized she shouldn’t be my go-to person for sharing my doubts about pursuing mathematics.”

It was the first I’d heard of his misgivings.

“But you love math. What else could you possibly do?”

“Yup, that’s the problem. I don’t know. But it’s not fun anymore. It’s jumping through hoops, trying to stay a step ahead. And for what?”

I was surprised but excited at the thought of Danny trying something new, putting his incredible intelligence and focus to a purpose other than advanced mathematics, the pursuit of which I’d never understood anyway.

“So do something else. What’s stopping you?”

Danny pulled onto Route 6 heading toward Wellfleet.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” he said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“C’mon, Eve, you’ve been talking about writing seriously for years, yet all you do is dance around it. What’s stopping you?”

“I’m working on it,” I said, but as I spoke I realized that since I’d gotten involved with Henry I hadn’t written a single word.

Danny put on his blinker and turned left off the highway into the entrance to the dump.

“Swap shop?” I asked.

“Swap shop,” he said, smiling for the first time that day.

Danny and I loved the swap shop at the town dump. Housed in a wooden shack, the outside of which was completely covered in old traffic, parking, and shop signs from all over the Cape, it was Truro’s version of a Goodwill store. But instead of paying for the items, you could take anything you wanted, preferably as long as you left behind something else. Filled with old fishing gear, handbags and dishware, record albums and books, percolators, wind chimes and macramé plant hangers, the swap shop was the realization of the old adage that one person’s trash was another person’s treasure. Danny and I loved finding weird stuff there, always hoping to trump our best childhood discovery—an ancient gumball machine that was still half-filled with caked and faded gumballs that we chewed despite their age.

Inside, Danny gravitated toward the crates of old record albums, and I sifted through some bolts of fabric, hoping to find something to adorn my dress for the book party. I was starting to feel good about my costume choice, which, I hoped, would be both beautiful and difficult to guess. I was unraveling some strands of lace when I heard a familiar voice bellow, “Where do the books go?”

It was Henry, carrying a red plastic milk crate. He spotted me as he set the books atop a shelf on the side of the room. Taking a quick look around the shop, which was unusually crowded that morning, Henry came to my side and said, “Well, if it isn’t my long-lost assistant.”

“What brings you here?” I whispered, hoping he would lower his voice too.

“Tillie wanted me to get rid of these books that she cleared out of the living room shelves.” He hooked his pinky through mine beneath the table. “It was a welcome distraction. I missed you this morning. Is it a fair swap for me to leave the books and take you?”