Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(5)
Ava’s one-bedroom apartment is a fifth-floor walk-up, meaning four flights of stairs, but nothing about the climb—even carrying her heavy school bag and a load of laundry—diminishes the joy Ava feels each and every time she walks into her apartment. It is, absolutely, nothing special. The kitchen is the size of a piece of pie, a four-square-foot triangle that features a fridge with a microwave above it on one side and a small stove on the other, a sink in the middle, and enough countertop to either drain dishes or place a cutting board, but not both at the same time. The bathroom floor is made up of tiny hexagonal tiles in black and white, but whole rows of them are missing against the walls. There is exposed brick in the living room, Ava’s sole point of pride, as she knows exposed brick to be valued in Manhattan real estate, although she’s not sure why, since she can’t hang anything on it. The bedroom has two windows, both with bars, and a reasonable closet. Granted, Potter’s apartment has cathedral ceilings and a butler’s pantry off the kitchen and one and a half baths and original crown molding. Both Margaret’s and Drake’s apartments fall into the luxury category. Margaret’s apartment is a three-bedroom overlooking Central Park—meaning that if you tossed a water balloon, that’s where it would land—and Drake’s apartment, though smaller, is sleek and modern and filled with actual art that he buys from a dealer in Chelsea. Both Odell Beckham Jr. and Jimmy Fallon live in Drake’s building, and there’s a pool on the roof and a fondue restaurant on the first floor that is presently the hottest reservation in the city.
But what Ava treasures about her apartment is that everything in it is hers. Her books are lined up on the shelves, her music plays on the wireless speakers—she can play Natalie Merchant whenever she wants, and no one is around to complain—her favorite foods are in the fridge, her twelve pillows dominate the head of the bed. She bought a Persian rug for the living room at the flea market on Columbus Avenue, and she has hung photographs of Nantucket on every available bit of wall space. Set up in the corner is a stepladder that she has decorated with white fairy lights and houseplants. It’s not sophisticated, but Ava doesn’t care. She loves it because it’s hers.
Ava puts the Gerber daisies in her white scallop shell vase and places it in the center of her round white dining table from IKEA (the table is an eyesore; Ava will replace it after she saves up), and she pours herself a glass of white wine. Potter is due at seven. Ava is making tomato soup from scratch, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, and a green salad with creamy lime dressing. Her past Friday-night endeavors have included roast chicken, pork chops braised in milk, and a gluey mushroom pasta that they decided to throw away after the first bite in favor of pizza from Ray’s. Ava takes both her successes and her failures in stride. She isn’t cooking to please Potter as much as she is cooking to please herself.
She realizes she may seem solipsistic, but she doesn’t care. She is reveling in being her own person.
She needs to go to Gristedes and get started on the soup and the dressing, but an envelope among the pile of mail—a purple envelope?—catches her eye. She recognizes Mitzi’s handwriting on the front, and suddenly the purple makes sense. Why settle for a white envelope when you can send purple? That would be Mitzi’s logic.
Ava opens the envelope. It’s an invitation to Bart’s twenty-second birthday party on Halloween at the VFW on Nantucket. Well, Ava thinks, if anyone deserves a party, it’s Bart. He missed his twenty-first birthday. There were no kegs, no streamers or cake, in the prison camp on the barren plains of southern central Afghanistan.
Halloween is a Tuesday this year. There’s no way Ava can attend the party, and that’s the God’s honest truth; she won’t feel guilty because her circumstances flow with her personal preference. She doesn’t want to go. It’s not only that she detests Halloween—every teacher in America hates Halloween, with all the kids hyped up the day of and in a sugar coma the day after—it’s also that Ava doesn’t want to go home. She’s afraid that if she sees that her father is sicker than anyone is letting on, and that Bart is clinically depressed, and that Kevin and Isabelle are underwater from the birth of their second baby in two years, and that Mitzi is incapable of holding everyone together—instead of dealing with the real issues, here she is, throwing a party at the VFW—Ava will feel like she has to move back.
Move back! Impossible. She has her apartment; she has a job she adores. Copper Hill is the best place to teach music in the whole country. First of all, music is an elective, so every single one of Ava’s seventy-five students—five classes of fifteen—wants to be there. Not only do they want to be there, they want to achieve. Ava has singers and piano players and composers and musical history students. And she runs the madrigal group and a club for recording music videos.
Also, Ava has a boyfriend whom she is healthily in love with. There’s no drama with Potter, no theatrics, no jealousy (not much jealousy), no tears, no senseless yearning, no insecurities (or not much insecurity, anyway).
Ava is not going home, even for a party, even for Bart. She doesn’t want to feel guilty.
Halloween is rapidly followed by Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving is rapidly followed by Christmas. She’ll go home for Thanksgiving and Christmas… well, actually, Potter said something about taking a trip to Austria over Christmas—Salzburg and Vienna. Ava nearly shrieked with joy. To visit the birthplace and breeding ground of so many great composers—Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, Mahler, Strauss. She is thirty-two years old and has never been to Europe!