Book Lover, The (22 page)

                            
21

A
S SHE WAITED FOR THE PAGE TURNERS TO ARRIVE, Ruth stared out the store window at the pots of purple petunias and red geraniums that sat on each corner of Main Street, beneath the gas lanterns. It was June already, with the longest day of the year just a few weeks away. It would be the 4th of July before you knew it, and then Labor Day and Halloween, and on and on. Life seemed to speed up each year, and when you were nearly sixty-five, it was hard to imagine how many might actually be left.

She looked back at the registration form for the Independent Bookseller’s Convention in September. She knew she shouldn’t spend the money, an argument she had with herself every year. It was her one big splurge and now she gazed at pictures of Philadelphia’s historic district, with horse-drawn carriage rides. Not that she’d do much sightseeing. She loved just talking books with the other booksellers, getting reenergized and full of ideas. And coming home with bags of galleys and signed copies from some of the biggest authors in the country.

What else did she really have to look forward to? The seasons of her life had been established long ago: work, family, duty. Right now she needed something else to get her through the long days that loomed ahead. Of course Thomas’s face flashed before her.

Just then the bell tinkled and in walked Larry Porter, a welcome interruption to her thoughts.

“And how did she like
Sonnets From The Portuguese?”

“She loved it. We read to each other over dinner.”

“I’m so glad. Where’s Angela been, anyway? She hasn’t come in with you in a while.”

“She’s working a lot of overtime at the hospital. I’m here to find something for both of us. We’re going away for the weekend.”

“Well, save some money for food,” she joked.

He chuckled, then headed to the romance shelf, which she knew was Angela’s passion. Ruth turned back to the convention form. Things were tighter than ever since the rent increase, but she hoped that after August, she might be able to pay off some debts. The past three years, August had always been her best month, thanks to Stephanie Meyer’s vampire series. And Megan’s idea to hold midnight release parties, which grew each year.

Maybe she’d call her friend Deb from Chapter One Books to share a room again; that would cut the cost in half. She was going, she decided, no matter what it took. She filled in the registration form, wrote out a check and put a stamp on the envelope.

Larry came up with a stack of books and after she rang them up, she asked him to drop the envelope in the mailbox out front, before she changed her mind.

AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE PAGE TURNERS TRICKLED in for their monthly book club meeting. They were ten women, give or take, and brought wine and snacks. For Ruth it was nice to hear the chatter in the back corner of the store, which typically got louder as the evening wore on. By eight, she’d sit with them as they picked her brain about new books, favorite authors, and her recommendations. Last month she’d suggested Lucy’s book, but they’d passed because someone already had a book picked. Ruth hoped they’d order it tonight for their next meeting.

As they settled down in the back of the store, she turned to the day’s mail. Bills and more bills. She shoved them in her purse to agonize over later. There was no blue envelope, of course. There wouldn’t be any more. Again and again she’d picked up the phone to call the cell number he’d left on the table, but never made the call. She wondered for the thousandth time how Thomas was doing in Pine Island, pumping gas at the garage, living in a few rooms above it. She knew the world wouldn’t be an easy place for him to navigate. Perhaps he wasn’t even there anymore. Perhaps he’d gone back to Albany, finally giving up on her. He must still have a few friends there, some family. But what if there was no one?

All she had to do was drive out to Pine Island to see if he was still there. That he was doing okay. To explain that it wasn’t really him or what he did. It was her. It was simply too late.

A loud voice brought her back to the moment. The Page Turners were chatting up a storm now. Then Ruth overheard a name that made her stop and listen more carefully.

“It’s true, I heard it when I was at town hall.” She recognized Vicki Hoffman’s voice. “Won’t that be great?”

Vicki had just told them that BookWorld was coming to Warwick, in that new mall that had the revitalization committee up in arms, just a few miles from downtown.

“I love BookWorld,” Nancy Beasley chimed in. “Whenever I go to my sister’s in Virginia, we spend hours at hers.”

Ruth wanted to go smack Nancy. Last month, before Ruth even got back to the register to ring up the books for this meeting, Nancy had whispered in that gravelly voice that she was going to order hers online and save money. That they didn’t have to get all of their books from Ruth, even if they did meet in her store and she took the time to sit with them and give them her personal recommendations. Someone had shushed her, and more than half had ordered the book that night, a few others saying they were going to share, which was fine with Ruth. She understood economizing. No one understood that better than her.

But Ruth knew Nancy wasn’t in the minority. For every customer who came into The Book Lover and paid for the privilege of her staff’s hand selling, knowing their tastes, catering to their idiosyncrasies, giving them a warm and comfortable place to linger with books, there were probably a few dozen others who bargain-shopped online, or at discount box chains. Then they lamented when another store in town went out of business, Ruth thought.

She said nothing now, as she hadn’t last month. She just gritted her teeth and told herself once again you couldn’t win them all. But who was she kidding? A megabookstore was coming to town. E-books were taking off, and you didn’t need a bricks and mortar store for that, you just had to go online, as they’d been lamenting at the past few conventions. They would laugh about being dinosaurs, worrying that phones and handheld gadgets would wipe out books as they knew them one day. Ruth loved a real book, with a beautiful cover and bound pages, a carefully chosen find.

She looked around at her shelves and shelves of books. The creative labor of someone’s mind and hands for months or even years. Once, the most precious thing someone might own.

Ruth couldn’t imagine giving up the pleasure of a real book.

But little by little the world was changing, the book business was changing and as much as she kept trying to keep up with it, somehow she felt things slipping from her grasp.

                            
22

L
UCY CONTINUED TO RISE EARLY EACH MORNING, at first dabbling in poetry, and now creating snippets of scenes for a new book. The first thing she always did, though, as she opened her laptop and sipped her first cup of tea, was check her e-mail, in hopes of hearing something good about her book. But every time she got even a shred of good news, it always seemed to be followed by something bad. She was starting to feel like a yo-yo, constantly up and down.

She had a handful of bookstores on board now, and gladly sent copies on consignment. Some even suggested
A Quiet Wanting
to their book clubs, as Ruth had done, but…Ruth’s store club, The Page Turners, had decided to pass on her book, after all.

A reader e-mailed to say she loved Lucy’s novel, and gave it a five-star review online. When Lucy checked the website, she was floored to see a one-star review just below it.
Been there, done that,
was all it said. She tried to stay upbeat, reminding herself that five stars was incredible. But her confidence was a fragile thing, and it was that one star that haunted her.

This morning her eyes were riveted to two e-mails, one from Clinton Books in New Jersey, with a subject line:
We’d love to do a signing with you.
The other was from David, and the subject line was blank. She opted for the good news first. Yes, they wanted her for a signing! She’d sent them a book on Ruth’s recommendation, and the owner’s mother—
We consider her the Oprah of Clinton,
they wrote—screened all their women’s fiction and loved it. They were going to invite all their book clubs and make it a “Girls’ Night Out.” She just had to send them a press release for the media. Yes! She squealed, pumping her fists. She would gladly put together a new press release. She’d become an expert while working at Serendipity.

Then she looked at David’s e-mail, knowing that this was probably the down to her current up.

She clicked it open:

Dear Lucy,

As you no doubt know, I’m home now, and have begun my house arrest. I’ve had a lot of time to think, as I’m sure you have, too. My attorney told me that you’re somewhere up north, traveling around for your book. I hope it’s working out for you.

Lucy, I need you to understand what’s been going on with me.

She stopped, shaking her head. He needed her to understand? Was he kidding? As if she hadn’t been willing to listen? To understand? Hadn’t she been trying since this nightmare unfolded to get him to open up?

Ever since Ben died, I’ve felt like someone who is just going through the motions. I’m not using that as an excuse for what I did. I take full blame for that. No matter how much turmoil I was in, that was horribly wrong. I’m sorry.

The two words she’d waited and waited for and here they were, nearly three months later. She shook her head, running her hands through her hair.

Do you remember when we started talking about the future after our mothers met? We both said we didn’t want children. You’d spent most of your childhood being the caretaker for your brothers and it made sense you didn’t want to do it again. I told you I didn’t think I was father material. I had no siblings, no other family besides my parents. And to be honest, I thought I was probably a little too selfish to be a good father.

After a while, you changed your mind. Despite my own feelings, I agreed.

When we couldn’t get pregnant, I went along with all the fertility treatments. When the first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, I was upset as much as you were. Then it happened again. The third time it was so early, and I was almost relieved. Don’t hate me for saying that, I just want to be honest. It was barely real, and I was scared. It was wearing us both down, the constant sadness. Then you got pregnant with Ben, ironically without even trying. You said it was a miracle. I was holding my breath. In the beginning I told myself that if it happened again, that would be it. I would tell you I wasn’t going to go through it again.

The feelings I had consumed me with guilt, not that you knew any of this. But none of it compared to the guilt I felt when Ben died. I knew it was my fault. That God was punishing me for not really wanting a child. If you knew all of this
you would hate me. While you retreated from me and the rest of the world in your grief, I said nothing. Because Lucy you have to believe me, from the moment I held him, when his gray eyes looked up at me and his tiny hand grasped my finger, I was a goner. I wanted him more than anything in this world. Suddenly it was real. We had a son.

Why was he doing this? Bringing all this up now? And then she remembered the rest of his sentence. He must have started his mandatory counseling. So the gambling, the stealing, the betrayal was all because of Ben?

When we lost our son I was consumed with guilt. But I was also filled with anger. Toward you, for putting me through it all. But even while I was angry, I was grieving for you because you were suffering so much. Moving south seemed like a good solution and after a while, things started to fade. I thought I’d gotten over it all, that time really could heal all wounds. But I guess it didn’t, because somewhere deep inside it’s been simmering away and I didn’t even realize it. I was just trying to escape it. I can’t begin to understand it all yet, and I’m not using it as an excuse. I just need to tell you this. It’s been eating away at me for a long time.

David.

She sat there, her head reeling. So it wasn’t because of Ben. It was because of her. All of it, because of her. A sob bubbled up in her chest and she closed her eyes, pressing them with the heels of her hands. She jumped up and ran to the door, throwing it open, heading toward the lake, sparkling in the morning sun. She needed to walk, but there was nowhere to go with woods stretching along the shore past Colin’s cabin.

Then she remembered Ruth mentioning a trail. She went back up the hill and rounded the cabin. Just beyond the small patch of grass she saw an opening in the woods that might be a path. If she recalled correctly, Ruth also said it led to a state park that covered the ridge on this side of the lake and continued down to the other side, where the park entrance was. The trail was narrow, barely enough for one person, and cut straight though a thicket of hardwoods. She moved quickly, breathing hard as she climbed, inhaling the woodsy scent of dirt and decaying leaves and the fresh, almost sweet smell of ferns and skunk cabbage that grew in the wet spots.

At the top of the trail she looked up at the roof of the forest, a patchwork of trees and leaves, with sunlight pouring through the gaps. She sat a moment on a fallen branch, pausing to catch her breath. A sudden breeze shifted the air and the trees began to move, long branches swaying, leaves lifting, their undersides a silvery green. She stared for a long time, watching them move, change colors, amazed at how many greens there could be: the freshly minted green of new buds just coming into leaf, the deep velvety green of the pines, and the soft, lacy green of the hemlocks, always her favorite. She remembered hearing that the native Alaskans had nearly a hundred different words for snow, and thought that was how it probably should be for green in the northeast.

As she sat there in a patch of sunlight, she could feel its warmth begin to calm her shaking limbs. It was so beautiful, the glory of spring unfolding after the long gray winter in the northern woods. She stood finally and continued walking down the other side of the ridge, watching her footing now because of the slope and loose rocks. Climbing over a downed tree, she halted on the other side as a startled deer leapt away from her. Twin fawns, their tan coats spotted with white, froze for a moment, then followed their mother, white tails flashing.

All around nature was bursting with life. There had been baby rabbits flittering across the grass the past two mornings. Squirrels and chipmunks scampering from tree to tree, and of course the birds nesting all around the cabins. Somehow it all looked so easy. So simple.

A sob escaped her, reverberating in the silent forest. She’d been doing so well with the loss of Ben. But now it was coming back in fresh waves of sorrow thanks to David, and their marriage ending. Because it was all somehow connected, she didn’t really need him to tell her that.

She slipped off her sweatshirt, tied it around her waist and kept walking, coming out eventually into a clearing flooded with early morning sunlight. Puffy white seeds of dandelions drifted in the air like dust motes. Purple phlox bloomed in the brush and she lifted her nose, detecting something sweet and fragrant. Wild roses? It seemed too early for that.

Here in the midst of such beauty she was certain God resided, just as she’d felt it on the beach. In all of her churchgoing years as a child, sitting in the hard pews beside her mother and brothers, she’d never felt God’s presence as she did now. The only other time was when Ben was moving inside her.

Somehow she had to let go of David and her anger. Sitting on the grass, she leaned back on her hands, looking up at the sky.
Please God, help me find the strength to do that,
she prayed. She didn’t like being bitter. She’d spent too many years watching her mother poison herself with it after her father left. She wanted to be better than that.

She wanted to feel hope again.