She really doesn’t need this.
When I see that he’s gone, I get my overnight bag from the car and head upstairs with it, but stop short in Maya’s old room. The bed hasn’t been slept in, but a suitcase is open on the floor, and I see a boho dress I know to be Norah’s. Is she sleeping here now?
A few piles of books and papers are stacked on the bed. One of the books is mine, the memoir about falling in love with Augustus, starting Peaches and Pork, and turning Meadow Sweet Organic Farms into the business it now has become.
I pick it up off the stack—several other food histories of the region and a couple of cookbooks—and see that it’s marked up, passages highlighted or underlined, with notes in the margins. The handwriting doesn’t belong to Maya. Several are quite long, including one about Maya, when she came to live with us: Affair brushed over. Maya’s mom?? Social services?? Why didn’t Augustus take M with him when he left if S so bad?
A roll of anger and discomfort moves through my body. None of her business. Nobody’s business. I chose what to tell the world. It’s my story. I’m allowed to leave out what I don’t want the world to know.
I sink down on the bed and flip through the notes. More of them are commentary than questions, but a long note in purple ink fills half a page at the end of chapter fourteen.
What about childhood influences? Where did Meadow come from? Who is Rory’s father? And which of the stories Augustus tells is actually true? Both of them seem to have reinvented themselves whole cloth when they arrived in California. Which is something people come to California to do, I guess, but it seems like a big gap in the story. If you write a memoir, isn’t it supposed to be the whole story?
Fascinating person.
Again, resistance rises in a protective wall around me. She has no right to ask those questions. It’s not hers to know.
I knew she’d wanted to interview me, and that’s how she met Augustus, who took her for himself before she could even talk to me once. A dark burn of anger flares in the pit of my stomach. He always did that, or tried. Took the best of everything without much thought for anyone else.
I flip back to the first note, about Maya. Maybe I’ve taken things, too. I mean, obviously I did. Although I broke up with Augustus when I found out he was married, I didn’t resist very hard when we got back together. I didn’t honestly care about Shanti or her story.
Maybe that’s why the universe punished me by not allowing me to have another baby with the man I loved so much. What goes around comes around.
Except that it doesn’t.
Life is as cutthroat as any jungle, and if you want anything, you have to take it. I wanted Augustus Beauvais and I took him. Then Christy wanted him and took him for herself. And then Augustus took Norah for himself, when it’s plain she was here to write about me.
Anger grows, burning through my gut, up my esophagus, fueled by a million things—Augustus and the past and Christy, who took him when I would have kept him healthy and well until his nineties and then just dumped him after our marriage was destroyed, walking away without looking back when it was too late for us. Anger at Norah for digging into my privacy this way, and taking up space in this house when I told her to leave. Why won’t she just go away?
And what the hell is she doing here, anyway? I toss the book aside and stomp down the stairs. Maya is still sitting outside, stacking the backgammon pieces in their spots. “What is Norah doing here?” I demand. “I kicked her out. This house is yours.”
Maya glances up at me. “She’s broke and stranded and she was hiding in that awful room off the garage.” She finishes stacking the pieces and closes the board. “She heard me crying over my arm and came up to make sure I was okay.”
“All of her stuff is in the room I’ve been using.”
“I told her she could sleep there.” She folds her arms.
“But I was sleeping in that room. You can’t just—” I halt.
“It’s my house, right?”
“Wait, why are you angry with me? I’m here to help you.”
“I didn’t ask for your help, Meadow. I really don’t need to be rescued, not from anything. Or anyone.”
I glance toward the beach path where the doctor disappeared. “You know he’s only been a widow for six or eight months.”
“I do know that, and I also know that it’s none of your business. I’m a grown woman and I know how to manage my life.”
“No, you don’t, actually,” I blurt out. “You’re barely out of rehab. You have a huge number of things to decide, and the last thing you need is a boyfriend.”