Page 50 of Bad Words

“Oh, you must be Parker,” said Juliette Liao, turning to me. “How are you? It’s so good of you to come all the way out here in this mess. I’m Juliette.”

I was momentarily speechless. Juliette’s eyes had delicate bags beneath them and six decades of smile lines fanning out from their corners, and as she regarded me, I imagined intricate processes of association and retrieval happening behind those deep brown irises, the type of connection I’d seen mapped out in all seven of her books.

“Hi,” I blurted out. “It’s no problem, really, the subway is running fine. I can’t tell you how great it is to meet you.”

“Likewise. I don’t think we’ll have an especially large crowd,” she said, glancing to the snow-filled window. She didn’t sound too bothered by this prospect.

Over the next half hour, six people trickled in from the silver-dashed darkness. They seemed scared of the front row. Clustered near the back of the seating area, they steadied stacks of Juliette’s books in their laps, unwinding scarves, brushing snow from their shoulders.

I kept scanning the sheet-glass storefront. Eight million people lived in New York City. Surely a few more of them could handle a little snow? I wanted this shop to be full to bursting, to show New York’s appreciation for Juliette’s work.

She caught me looking. “Worried about the attendance?”

“I’m sure people are just running behind because of the weather.”

Juliette chuckled. “Oh, you’re sweet.”

The door swung open again—I felt as much as heard it, the wind clawing away our precious heat—and I glanced over my shoulder, hoping for a dozen latecomers.

Instead I got one narrow figure in a black felt coat, red-cheeked from the cold, a crimson knit hat pulled low over her serious brows.

I recovered from Selina Chan’s appearance more quickly than I had at the Wiseman Festival. Tight-jawed, I watched her take a seat in the back row and smooth the static out of her hair with two fingers. She unbuttoned her coat and shrugged her narrow shoulders out of it. Beneath, she wore an overlarge cable-knit sweater, dark red, like the gloss on her lips.

“Are you two ready?” asked Chester.

I tugged my eyes from Selina and nodded.

Chester took his time introducing us, the seven-person audience patiently absorbing Juliette’s extensive list of fellowships, their eyes straying every so often to the gap between the bookshelves where we waited. Finally, they clapped us out into the shabby velvet armchairs at the front.

I could feel Selina’s eyes on me, but I was surprised by how steady I felt. Maybe I’d worn out the worries this week with the rewriting of my questions, or maybe it was the small audience, but I didn’t feel on edge. The feeling reminded me of a good day’s writing, when you’re so deep into your love for something that even the nerves can’t reach you.

I gripped my advance copy of House Hearth Home and met Juliette’s eyes. I felt, again, the immensity of the presence in front of me. She settled back into the embroidered cushions and looked at me with luminous serenity.

“First of all, Juliette,” I said, “I want to thank you for writing this book. Whenever I come to your work, I know I’m going to a place where nothing else can reach me.”

She inclined her soft, round chin. “That’s kind of you, Parker.”

“In case we have anybody here who doesn’t know the gist of the book, would you describe it for us?”

“Of course.” Juliette lifted a hardback into her hands. The jacket hushed against her dry skin. “House Hearth Home is a frontier novel set just after the War of 1812. It follows a woodcutter who’s searching for a Duckbill Maple, a rare tree, to build a crib for his newborn daughter. This interweaves with the story of his wife, who will outlive him by twenty years, and their daughter, who will outlive him by sixty, and the species of tree, which outlives him by about a century, and the crib itself, which outlives them all by several centuries.”

“Yes. Amazing.” I opened my notebook. “I have some questions about that overlap of lives. There’s only a brief window at the start of the book where all these—consciousnesses, I guess, exist at the same time. And these very Christian characters are obsessed with the idea of eternal life, but the book is more preoccupied with nostalgia for slender windows of time. Did you mean to set those two ideas in conflict?”

“Not conflict, but in contrast, of course.” Juliette smiled. “The book and its characters do not worship at the same altars. If there is divinity on earth, I don’t think it comes from the eternal; it comes from the ephemeral. We have only this brief moment together.” She glanced toward the front window, where the wind was ripping at the awning. “I’m glad to spend this particular moment here, by the way,” she added mildly. “I haven’t done an event in years, but frankly I can’t imagine better conditions.”

The nine of us laughed, Juliette twinkled, and the snow clung to the corners of the window, smoothing the view of the street into a wide dark oval. We spoke for half an hour about the seven drafts she’d written longhand, about how the book honored her late husband, about the months she’d spent in Missouri for research, then turned to the audience for a surprisingly lively Q and A, considering our numbers. For a fleeting half hour I’d won back the feeling I used to have as a kid, hiding away in Poppy Street Books: that there was no world outside the bookstore, no world I’d rather inhabit than this one.

When the Q and A ended, the audience queued for the signing. Juliette carried on unhurried conversations with each person as she dedicated the copies. Selina stood at the end of the line, black coat on, and after reaching the front, she handed her copy of House Hearth Home to Juliette without acknowledging me.

I waited for Selina to say something about City Magazine, to tell Juliette who, exactly, she was.

She didn’t. She said, “Could you sign this to Selina, please? S-e-l-i-n-a.”

“Of course,” said Juliette. “Thank you for being here, Selina.”

“Thank you,” Selina said too quickly. “The book was—I mean, it was—it really moved me. All your books do. Have. Since I was a teenager.”

I stared at the point of her nose and the curve of her cheek, the only features I could see beyond the fall of her hair. I hadn’t been aware that Selina Chan could engage in human behaviors like “stuttering” and “being uncool in front of a person you admire.”