Haunting Jasmine (12 page)

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Authors: Anjali Banerjee

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women

BOOK: Haunting Jasmine
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“Jasmine, give us your bookseller’s literary wisdom,” Lucia says after she has shushed everyone.
“I have no special knowledge,” I say, shaking my head.
“Oh?” Virginia places her cup and saucer on the table in front of her and stirs in a dollop of cream. A heavy silver bracelet glints on her wrist. “Then why on earth would your aunt bother to bring you here?”
I freeze. Lucia clucks her tongue. “Oh, Ginnie, you know this situation is temporary. Ruma’s coming back.”
“But why her? This Jasmine?”
“Why not?” Lucia says.
A key turns inside me, a subtle unlocking. “I can help my aunt get this shop in order.”
“Fine, let’s see what you can do.” Virginia glares at me.
Lucia pulls out her dog-eared copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. “This book was originally called
First Impressions
. I looked it up.”
Virginia slurps her tea. “That’s a stupid name for a book.” A mysterious breeze ruffles her hair, leaving a couple of strands sticking straight up, as if electrified.
Lucia forges on. “More important, it’s about how first impressions can deceive you.”
The breeze subsides.
Another woman says, “I’ve heard that authors think of many titles for their books before they settle on a final one.”
Virginia keeps slurping. “Both titles are silly.” Her silver bracelet slips off her wrist and falls on the hardwood. “The clasp broke!” She reaches down, fumbles around on the floor. “Where the heck did it go?”
“I’ll help you.” I get on my hands and knees. The bracelet fell impossibly far from where she is sitting. “Here it is.”
“Thank you.” When she sits straight again, several new strands of hair are sticking out. I stifle a smile.
Lucia pulls a pocket notebook from her purse, licks her thumb, and flips to the first page. “Was Jane Austen a realist? Charlotte Brontë said her work was like a ‘carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson said that her depiction of life was ‘pinched and narrow.’”
A creaking sound comes from the hallway. We all glance in that direction.
“Mark Twain thought libraries shouldn’t carry her books,” Lucia goes on. “But I say don’t pay any attention to jealous authors. She wrote a masterpiece. I love this book every time I read it—because it makes me believe we can overcome any obstacle.”
Every time she reads it?
Virginia tucks her broken bracelet into her purse. “I’m not fond of so much dialogue without any description.” Her arm bumps into her cup, tipping it over and spilling tea on the table.
I jump to my feet, grab napkins, and dab at the liquid. “I’ll get towels. Carry on.”
Lucia laughs. “The house is angry with you, Ginnie.”
Everyone turns to me. My heart skips a beat, but I smile.
“So, Jasmine,” Virginia says, glaring at me, “you have to give us the key question.”
“The key question?” I blink.
“You did read the book, didn’t you?” Virginia stares at me.
“Your aunt poses an important question about the book, but if you didn’t read it—”
“Of course I read it.” A long time ago. I hold up the soggy towels. “I’ll go and put these in the wash.”
I run to the laundry room, take a few deep breaths. What question, what question? I read this book so long ago.
Their voices drift down the hall.
“Consider Mr. Wickham,” a woman says behind me. Her voice is musical, touched by a soft English accent.
I spin around. Did one of the women follow me? Nobody’s here.
Complex odors spread through the air—dried horse manure, wood smoke, roses, and sweat. As if someone has entered the room, someone who makes fires, tends a farm—someone who bathes maybe once a week and wears cologne to mask her body odor.
“What do you mean about Mr. Wickham?” I say. Mr. Wickham, the smooth-talking young soldier who tricks Elizabeth Bennet into believing the worst about stoic Mr. Darcy. But Mr. Wickham turns out to be a scoundrel. I knew my own Mr. Wickham, someone I trusted. Someone I wanted to trust.
“You know the story better than you think.”
My mind spins. The smells grow in intensity, and fabric swishes—a dress rustling nearby. “I haven’t read the book in years,” I whisper to the empty room.
“You must learn to trust your instincts.”
“Why?… Virginia, is that you?” I’m talking to myself in my aunt’s laundry room. The perfumed detergent must be poisoning my mind. But what of the horse manure odor? Smoke?
There’s a soft sigh. “Virginia is insufferable.”
“Stop this,” I say. I press my hands to my temples.
The strange smells disappear, and only a faint lemon scent remains. There’s an absence in the room, as if someone has left.
I take deep breaths, my head spinning.
I shuffle back to the parlor, holding out my hand to brace myself against the wall as I go. When I step inside, everyone stares at me.
“You look pale,” Lucia says. “Will you sit down?”
The women all murmur. “You’re not feeling well?” “Is everything okay?”
“I have my question. About the book,” I say. My voice sounds distant, as if someone else is speaking. “Consider Mr. Wickham’s function in the novel.”
“Go on,” Lucia says, staring at me.
“Think in terms of the geometry of desire. What is the source of Elizabeth’s attraction to Mr. Wickham?” Where am I getting this?
“She believes he’s good,” a small, round woman says. “He’s everything she wants—handsome, accessible. He’s not proud. She can talk to him.”
That was my ex-husband, Robert. He had me fooled, too. “What role does he play in her attraction to Mr. Darcy? What is the significance of his love affairs?”
There’s a silence, then Lucia says, “He represents her preconceived notions—what appears on the surface versus what’s underneath. So it really is about first impressions.”
“Exactly,” I say.
“How did you come up with this question?” Virginia asks, her gaze prickly.
“I have no idea. I didn’t even read the book, at least, not recently.” The knot tightens in the back of my neck. All eyes are on me. The house creaks; the floorboards groan as they settle. The walls breathe dust. Virginia is shaking her head, skeptical. What does she think, that I ran off to read the CliffsNotes on
Pride and Prejudice
?
“I knew it.” Lucia slaps the table. “I knew Jasmine would know just what to say.”
Toxic black mold must be growing here, making me hear things, smell things. I’m allergic to laundry detergent, or maybe a tumor is growing on my brain. The house will have to throw another tantrum tonight. I’m not staying past dark.
After I bid the book group good-bye, I run up to the apartment to grab my luggage. My suitcase thumps all the way down the stairs.
The wind picks up, blasting the house, and to the west, twilight drops a gray blanket across the sky. As I reach to open the heavy front door, a shadow falls across the foyer, and a familiar baritone voice slides across my skin. “Jasmine, wait. You’re leaving us so soon?”
Chapter 18
 
“Connor, you scared me half to death.” My suitcase tips over, the handle slipping from my fingers. I hastily yank it upright again. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping to catch you. Looks like you’re going away.” He steps in front of me, blocking my path to the door. He has just arrived from somewhere, the smell of the outside air and a hint of wood smoke still clinging to his clothes. He has a fondness for travel jackets, cargo pants, and hiking boots.
“I’m closing up the store.” I dangle the bookstore keys in the air between us. “I’m staying with my parents down the road.”
“You’re open until eight, another half hour.”
“I know, but I have to close early. Will you come back tomorrow? I’m in a hurry.” I try to brush past him, but my suitcase has gained a couple hundred pounds.
“You’ll return in the morning?” he says, sounding worried. A faint halo surrounds him, the glow from a Tiffany lamp.
“Before the store opens.” My suitcase wheels are turning now, but the front door seems to be welded shut.
“I’ll try to stop in before work,” he says. He opens the front door with ease and steps out onto the porch. How did he manage that? His dark hair shines in the pale porch light.
I drag my suitcase out after him and turn to lock the deadbolts from the outside. “Still can’t get the hang of this.” I jiggle one key this way and that. Three ancient deadbolts, three different keys. Finally I succeed, but when I turn around, Connor is gone. He’s nowhere on the porch, the sidewalk, or the street. He has disappeared again, but my cell phone is beeping.
“Wow, a signal! That’s strange.” I flip open the phone.
“Finally,” my best friend, Carol, says. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for two days.”
“I’m in the remote wilderness,” I say to her distant, crackling voice. “I could lose you at any second. I don’t usually get a signal here at the bookstore.”
“Hope you’ll be flying back here on time. Bill Youngman wants the Hoffman account. He’s been pestering Scott for it, trying to hint that you’re unreliable.”
I squeeze my phone so tight, the metal might buckle. “He’s lying. I’m totally reliable.”
“I know that, and you know that, and Scott won’t give in, yet. You need to make your usual perfect presentation. Are you preparing?”
“I’ll practice tonight. I’m thinking of flying back early, on standby.”
“Having that much fun, huh?” I hear her children yelling in the background. “Gotta go. Oh, wait. I meant to tell you. Don and I got a sitter last night. We went to Andante. You know, first Tuesday and all.”
“And?” My skin prickles. Andante, a romantic Italian waterfront restaurant where Carol and her husband and Robert and I used to go for dinner the first Tuesday night of each month, a tradition. I’d forgotten—or blocked out the memory.
“You wouldn’t believe it. Robert was there with that woman.”
The keys fall on the porch with a hollow thud. I bend to pick them up. My fingers are trembling. I drop the keys into my coat pocket. “This isn’t something I want to know.”
“She was wearing this strapless black thing. She might as well have been naked. The slut.”
The phone shakes in my hand. “Carol, I—”
“I wasn’t going to tell you, but Don said I should. He went up to talk to them. Of course I had to go with him or I would’ve looked rude.”
“Of course,” I say. My lips are going numb. My teeth are chattering. Robert is still destroying me from a distance.
“They were holding hands across the table, just like you and Robert used to do. I felt like telling him, this is
our
restaurant. He shouldn’t have brought her there.”
I’m silent, stunned, the words gone from my mind.
“Jasmine? Look, I’m sorry for telling you. Robert asked about you—he said he needed to talk to you. He was trying to reach you. I said you were on a wild, fantastic vacation on a beautiful island in the middle of nowhere and for all I knew, you could have fallen in love again.”
My heart is racing. “Thanks, Carol. You didn’t tell him where I was?”
“He kept asking me for details, like it was still any of his business. The slut was not happy. She started fidgeting, and she wasn’t smiling anymore. I didn’t tell him a thing, but he had that jealous look. The nerve of him, after he cheated on you and there he was sitting there with
her.
He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Maybe you shouldn’t come back. Let the guy wonder where you are, and serves him right.”
I lose the signal, and Carol’s voice vanishes into the night. “Serves him right,” I echo. My fragile heart, which had begun to heal, shatters into fine fragments.
Suddenly I’m not so eager to leave Auntie’s bookstore. Why not stay here, where Robert can’t reach me, no matter how hard he tries? I turn off my phone, unlock the door, and step back into the darkness.
Chapter 19
 
I can’t believe I’m here, lying in Auntie’s sagging bed in her attic apartment as a midnight windstorm wails across the island. The house groans and shudders. Rain pummels the roof, the roar of its wrath as loud as an airplane engine. A triangular window, set high on the wall beneath the peaked ceiling, trembles and shakes, threatening to break. The bedside lamp, stained glass imprinted with monarch butterflies, flickers.
I sink back into the pillows. No TV, no cell phone signal. Nothing but books piled on the bedside table, including a collection of Edgar Allan Poe short stories. Bad idea to read about the horrors of reanimated dead bodies while I’m trying to survive in a haunted mansion.

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