Today Will Be Different (25 page)

“Joe,” I said. “Do you think I’m a mean person?”

“You’re not a mean person,” he immediately answered, and paused. “You’re a mean
nice
person. Big difference.”

“See,” I said. “I need you for this stuff. You’re my Competent Traveler. Don’t go all Jesus-y on me.”

“Can I go kind of Jesus-y on you?”

“What’s Jesus-y?” Timby said.

“Nothing that can’t be worked out,” Joe said to me. “Genuinely.”

“I know that.”

We smiled. Our smile.

Joe got up and stuffed the blue paper in the trash can. “Are you aware,” he said, “that Thomas Jefferson, the model of reason, called the New Testament ‘the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man’?”

That’s Jesus-y,
I mouthed to Timby.

“But,” Joe continued, “even Jefferson struggled with its contradictions. So get this. He took a razor blade to the four Gospels and cut out the miracles, mysticism, and other hoo-ha, and pasted the good parts into one coherent story.”

“He performed surgery on the Bible,” I said.

“There you go!” Joe said.

Then I noticed it, on the wall.

I’d sketched it on our second date. I’d forgotten Joe had saved it. Or that he’d had it framed.

He was still so exotic to me then. I remember the thrill in my stomach. Could he be the one, this serious med student from Buffalo? Brilliant in so many ways, but uncomplicated in his kindness.

And there we were, twenty years after we’d met in an examination room, back in an examination room. Now we were three. My little family.

“I think I can do this,” I said.

Joe turned.

“Let’s move,” I said. “New York, Chicago, Scotland, it doesn’t matter.”

“We’re moving?” Timby asked.

“Even Spokane,” I said. “It would be an adventure. A pretty lame adventure. But we
are
old.”

“Mom and I need to discuss it,” Joe said to Timby.

“Nothing’s keeping me in Seattle,” I said. “I can draw and do damage anywhere.”

“I want to move to Scotland!” Timby said.

“You’re full of surprises,” Joe said to me.

“I can see the wisdom in what you were saying.” I paused to think about it. “If you truly believed you had a benevolent bus driver, and you were certain he was taking you somewhere good, you could just settle in and appreciate the ride.”

“You make me sound a little like Yo-Yo,” Joe said. “But I’ll take it.”

First it was my eyes going wide; then it was Timby, gasping.

“Oh, Mom!”

Joe walked across the vast empty parking lot. A moonless night, the only sound the waves lapping in Elliott Bay. The slimmest light blue line traced the top of the Olympic Mountains across the black sound; the sun would set in seconds on the other side.

He stopped and waited. What a striking and chancy thing to witness, a mountain range being absorbed into the dark night sky.

Then Joe saw him, just outside a pool of orange light, sitting politely.

“That’s a good boy,” Joe said.

Yo-Yo, still tied to the cart rack, swept his tail across the asphalt. Seeing a familiar face, he stood up and wiggled his little behind. As Joe got closer, Yo-Yo pranced and reared. He was always delighted but never surprised that someone had come.

With my good hand, I moved aside the stacks of art books. The hardwood floor was so smooth, the towers glided without toppling. Behind them, a narrow and impractical closet, chockablock like the rest of my tiny workspace. I dug through the crazy quilt of crap. A carton of linen drawing pads I thought I liked but then didn’t. That meditation cushion, dusty and sun-bleached. A tangle of phone wire and ancient printer cables. A cache of Sears Wish Books (that’s where they were!), forty years’ worth, painstakingly collected for reference. A white leather case with Joe’s mother’s silver. Flashlights from Super Bowl XLVIII. Coconut water from forever ago. Tucked in the way back, the crumpled Neiman Marcus bag.

The Flood Girls.

I set the leather book on my drawing board and turned on the light. The endpaper split when I opened the cover.

Mom and Matty. Every drawing of her looks like a different person. All I had to work off of was my fading, shifting memory. Ivy, my intention was for her to glow. I captured it best in the one with Parsley. The background on the second page: That was from an actual book of nursery tales. Those crayon scribbles done by Ivy’s hand. The pillows on the rocking chair, embroidered by Mom, thrown away by the grieving, vengeful nine-year-old me. The guy who wrote the screenplay for
King Kong,
he and his wife used to have us over to watch the Broncos. Matty’s chicken scratches. When people die, their handwriting dies too. You don’t think about that.

I didn’t plan not to tell Timby about Ivy. When he was two, I was suffering through a particularly rough stretch of sleepless nights, emotions churned by another new shrink (this one Jungian, this one no help either). Joe and I were in Meridian Park, pushing Timby on a swing. I asked Joe if he hated Ivy and Bucky. He said, “That would make as much sense as hating a rattlesnake. You don’t hate rattlesnakes; you avoid them.”

When Joe declared on Highway 82 in Aspen that he was done with Ivy, he meant it. I honestly doubt if he’s thought about her more than a handful of times since that day. One thing I will say against Joe: He expects me to do the same. Joe can be done with Ivy. I will never be done with Ivy. I don’t want to be done with Ivy. She’s my sister.

The Aspen map! It took me a month to draw that damned thing. We used to love Richard Scarry and the Sunday
Family Circus
. For our birthdays, Matty would create treasure hunts. These were the only times he allowed us inside the lady’s big house. (The rest of the year, he pasted strips of S&H Green Stamps across the front and back doors. He told us he’d written down the serial numbers so we couldn’t sneak in.) Those birthday treasure hunts when Ivy and I could finally see the inside: wonders upon wonders.

And the bear. That’s a good bear.

“Mom!” Timby called. “Come here!”

I closed the scrapbook. And there it sat amid my jumble. Beautiful, every page of it, drawn by a person I used to be.
The Flood Girls
. Jinxed no more.

Timby was at the mirror on his step stool waiting for me with his toothbrush. If I’d ever had an excuse to skip our routine, it was then. But Timby and I had rarely missed a night standing shoulder to shoulder.

“Look at this!” he said, holding open an
Archie Double Digest
.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at.

“The last line!” Timby said impatiently.

In the panel, Archie and Jughead had just been busted by Mr. Weatherbee for something. Archie turns to Jughead and says, “Grab a rake.”

“That’s the first time in
Archie
history it doesn’t end with an exclamation point!” he said.

My little son. What a smarty. What a sweetie.

“Always ahead of me, you are.”

With my good hand, I held out my toothbrush. “Hit me with some of that.” Timby squeezed paste on it.

We began brushing.

After a moment, I stopped.

I lowered my toothbrush. I turned to Timby.

“I have a sister,” I said. “Her name is Ivy. She’s four years younger than I am and she lives in New Orleans with her husband and two children. That means you have an aunt and an uncle and two cousins you’ve never met.”

Timby lowered his hand, leaving his brush sticking out of his foamy mouth. He studied me in the mirror.

Now the hard part.

“Even though they don’t know us,” I said, “they don’t like us.”

Timby pulled out his toothbrush, spit into the sink, and looked up.

“They know
you,
” he said. “But they don’t know
me
.”

Today will be different. Today I will be present. Today, anyone I speak to, I will look them in the eye and listen deeply to what they’re saying. Today I’ll wear a dress. Today I’ll play a board game with Timby. I’ll initiate sex with Joe. I won’t swear. I won’t talk about money. Today there will be an ease about me. My face will be relaxed, its resting place a smile. Today I will keep an open mind. Today I won’t eat sugar. I’ll start to memorize “One Art.” Today I’ll try to score Timby and me tickets to the Pope. I’ll ask around about Scotland. I’ll clean out my car. Today I will be my best self, the person I’m capable of being. Today will be different.

Acknowledgments

Thank you…

Anna Stein, Judith Clain, Nicole Dewey

Barbara Heller, Holly Goldberg Sloan, Carol Cassella, Courtney Hodell, Katherine Stirling

Eric Anderson, Daniel Clowes, Patrick Semple

Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, Craig Young, Lisa Erickson, Terry Adams, Amanda Brower, Karen Torres, Keith Hayes, Mario Pulice, Julie Ertl, Andy LeCount, Tracy Roe, Karen Landry, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, Lauren Passell

Arzu Tahsin

Clare Alexander, Mary Marge Locker, Claire Nozieres, Roxane Edouard

Ed Skoog, Kevin Auld, Nicholas Vesey, Phil Stutz, Tim Davis, Kenny Coble

Howard Sanders, Jason Richman, Larry Salz

Joyce Semple, Lorenzo Semple Jr., Johanna Herwitz, Lorenzo Semple III

Peeper Meyer

These pages begin and end with George Meyer, as do I.

About the Author

Maria Semple is the author of
This One Is Mine
and
Where’d You Go, Bernadette,
which has been translated into eighteen languages. She lives in Seattle.

mariasemple.com

ALSO BY MARIA SEMPLE

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

This One Is Mine

*
Did I say it was a
little
late? I guess it’s eight years late. But I did say I was bad with dates. And numbers. And names. Although Camryn Karis-Sconyers is one I won’t soon forget.

Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.

Sign Up

Or visit us at
hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters

Contents

1. Cover
   
2. Title Page
   
3. Welcome
   
4. Dedication
   
5. The Trick
   
6. The Flood Girls
   
7. Cracked Actor
   
8. Troubled Troubadour
   
9. Blur
   
10. The Plan
    
11. The Art of Losing
    
12. Acknowledgments
    
13. About the Author
    
14. Also by Maria Semple
    
15. Newsletters
    
16. Copyright
    

Copyright

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright © 2016 by Maria Semple

Cover design by Kelly Blair

Cover art by Geoff McFetridge

Author photograph by Elke Van de Velde

Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

littlebrown.com