The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman Page 0,27

that period than I’ve ever done since, although I love my wife and son very much.” He met her eyes again. “Not sure what that says about me.”

They paused to consider this, then Nina plowed on. “And what about Eliza, your stepmother and now the widow?”

Archie shrugged. “We only really got together—all of us—at the holidays, usually at our dad’s instigation, so I don’t know if we’ll even do that anymore. I don’t know her very well; they live on the other side of town.”

“Santa Monica?”

“Worse: Malibu.”

“Might as well be Mars.” They both nodded. Los Angeles is a big city, as everyone knows, but there is an even bigger divide between the West side and the East side. To get from east to west you have to cross under the 405 freeway. There’s a stretch of Olympic Boulevard where you can see the 405 just ahead, a parking lot in bridge form, where it can take you over an hour to go one or two blocks because a portion of the traffic is going up the ramp to get on the freeway and blocking the way for everyone else. People have gone insane on that stretch.

Whenever Nina was stuck there, which was rarely, because she would rather have filled her ears with flaming dog turds than go to the West side, she thought of that Andrew Wyeth painting Christina’s World, where the young woman is lying on the hillside, dragging herself up toward a barn in the distance. That same sense of desperation and struggle and reluctant acceptance permeates the very air in that part of town. It is purgatory. Or limbo. Sartre said hell was other people, but that was only because the 405 hadn’t been built yet.

“How long were they married?” Nina realized she’d probably have to meet this woman; she might as well know more about her.

“Oh, a long time. Since 2000, maybe? Millie is ten, and she was born quite a few years after the wedding.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I’m not so good at dates.”

“Millie is our half sister?”

He laughed. “You get used to it. We end up just using everyone’s name and not worrying exactly how they’re related unless someone asks.”

“Do people ask?”

“Sometimes. People will say, is this your son, or is this your father, and you have to say, no, the little one is my brother and the older one is my nephew. Most people ignore it, but some people think about it for a minute and either demand a full explanation, which is a pain, or realize for themselves it means your father never stayed married for very long, and it gets awkward.”

Nina looked at him. “Like now, you mean?” It actually didn’t feel awkward; it was as it had been with Peter. A weird feeling of knowing someone already; a total absence of the usual pressure she would feel with an attractive man; a kind of comfort.

Archie’s expression grew cooler. “Yeah. That was dad’s dark side, unfortunately. He was funny and handsome and charming, but he was also a narcissistic loser. He married and left three wives and didn’t seem to lose a night’s sleep over any of it.”

“He didn’t leave your mom. And he didn’t leave Eliza.”

“But he cheated on my mom, and who knows about Eliza. The fact that you exist means there might be more of us out there.” Archie shrugged. “He always seemed so loving, but it was like he was two people: the one who was there in front of you, and the one he turned into the minute he left the room.”

“The one in front of you loved you, at least.”

“Yeah, but the other guy always won in the end.”

He reached up his hand and called for the check.

Back in her apartment that night, Nina sat in front of her bulletin board and stared at it. She looked up other people’s visualization and organization practices on Pinterest and realized hers was woefully in need of updating. At the very least, she was now a different social being, someone with a family. Someone who might need to write down more birthdays, for example. Or have more invitations to decline.

Concerned, she started looking at bullet journaling instead, to see if maybe that would work better for her new, wider circle. Honestly, you couldn’t turn your back on the Internet for a minute. There were, like, fourteen thousand pins about bullet journaling, which was a way of laying out a daily planner to be more . . . something.