The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (17 page)

August 9, 2010

Sara Lindqvist

Kornvägen 7, 1 tr

136 38 Haninge

Sweden

Dear Sara,

What a shame about your job. Maybe things will still work out? After all, it's not certain that they'll open a clothes store or a cafe in your old store. Right? Perhaps it'll be a new bookstore, and if they don't hire you on the spot then they must be mad.

Many of my ‘youngsters' still live in town. Claire's still here, and she's never told anyone who Lacey's father is. Claire's surname is Henderson, but she's Caroline's niece. Caroline's sister married Bob Henderson, so Claire's half Henderson and half Rohde, and that, let me tell you, is quite a combination. It's because both of the families have red hair, I think. You can't have flame-red hair and let someone else lead you by the nose, or be content just being a part of the flock. The Hendersons have always been a bit wild, the men and the women, and even if no one ever says it, the same is true of the Rohde men. It's just that the Rohde women have always overcompensated for them. At first glance Caroline certainly seems to go against the theory of having red hair. Hers isn't quite as vibrant nowadays, but she had Claire's hair when she was younger, and of all the words you could use to describe her, wild wouldn't be one. Though I actually think that there's more than a touch of the red hair in her struggle for decency. She's tried to be part of the flock her entire life, but it always ends up with her shepherding the flock.

Claire is a typical Henderson, but I think she got her strength from Caroline's side of the family. It's not exactly a perfect combination, being wild, self-sufficient and strong. I see her, Tom and Andy as ‘my' youngsters, but as Claire grew up, she was much too proud to accept any help, even from me. The only time she really accepted any was when she was just seven, and it was related to jelly. That girl loved sweet things. This was the time when mass-produced jelly full of artificial sweeteners and very few actual berries began to appear in Broken Wheel (we've always been a little late to the party, and as far as jelly is concerned, we resisted for as long as we could). Proper, home-made jelly suddenly wasn't the same. It never had the same bright, clear colour, or the same artificially sweet taste; it had real fruit in it, and berries. I used to buy jelly just for her, even though we never managed to eat all the jars I'd made myself. But when she was older, she was much too proud to take any of my help, and once she got pregnant, she stopped coming over at all.

Andy always found it much easier to both give and receive help. He never took things especially seriously, and I think that's probably what saved him.

Best,

Amy

SOME OF BROKEN
Wheel's inhabitants were already starting to get used to the new bookstore and to the odd Swedish tourist who spent her days there. Those who knew Sara now visited it only to talk to her. But the vast majority of people in Broken Wheel and the surrounding area felt confused. How had it – the shop, the tourist – suddenly appeared among them? Of all the shops they might have needed, why would someone choose to open a bookstore? And why would they travel all the way from Sweden to do it?

Most simply shook their heads as they passed, but without really knowing it, they had started to get accustomed to the sight of a new display window on their street, and to the strange, idle woman standing behind its counter. Some even found themselves confusedly nodding at her. She always smiled back in her odd, beaming manner.

But that afternoon, she was sitting in one of the armchairs, and her reading caused two of the town's children to pause outside the window. They were on their way home from the school bus and were in no hurry at all to start their homework.

From the street, Sara looked like part of the window display. The name of the bookshop was painted on the window, and she was sitting directly beneath the welcoming yellow letters which spelled out the words
Oak Tree Bookstore
in a broad arc.

Her hair fell like a curtain around her face as she sat curled up with a book in her lap, an enormous pile of books on the table next to her. Her long, slender fingers were turning the pages so quickly that the two boys wondered how she had time to read them.

It made them stay standing there. At first, they had stopped only in the hope that she would nod to them or shoo them away, but now an hour had passed and she hadn't even noticed that they were there. When George appeared, the younger of them amused himself by pulling a face at her, his nose pressed against the window.

Even that didn't lead to any obscenities or weary request for them to clear off, either. Strange.

‘What're you up to?' George asked. He was slightly overprotective when it came to Sara.

‘We're seeing how long she can read in one go,' said the elder.

‘She hasn't even noticed us,' said the younger.

George leaned forward and peered in through the window, curious despite his better nature. ‘How long have you been standing here?'

‘An hour.'

‘And she hasn't looked up once?'

‘Nope.'

The younger joined in. ‘Even though I've been pulling faces.' George frowned at him and moved back from the window, in case Sara looked up at that moment and thought he was part of the whole thing.

‘We're gonna stand here till she looks up,' the younger said confidently. ‘We're gonna time her. Right, Steven?'

His big brother nodded. ‘I'm going to anyway. Go home if you want.' He said it in that nonchalant kind of tone big brothers resort to when they know their younger siblings are going to copy them anyway.

If they had known that Sara had just settled down with Douglas Coupland's
All Families Are Psychotic,
they might have chosen a different day for their experiment. A day when she was reading a weighty biography, for example, or something else which made breaks seem more necessary. As things stood, she just carried on reading. Every now and then she laughed or smiled to herself.

Their group grew steadily as the afternoon wore on. By the time Jen and her husband came by, there were ten people standing there. Her husband had decided to go with her to visit the tourist his wife was always talking about, and she had graciously taken him along to do so. She wasn't the slightest bit amused to find a crowd blocking her way into the shop. Once the children had told her everything, she threatened to ruin the entire thing by going inside and telling Sara.

‘It's not good manners,' she said. Whether she meant standing outside, watching Sara like she was a circus animal, or preventing her from going into the shop was unclear.

George agreed, but he couldn't help suspecting that Jen's disappointment stemmed partly from the fact that she hadn't come up with the idea herself. Her husband announced that he intended to stand there and watch, too.

Jen, on the other hand, still seemed prepared to march in and alert Sara. She loved her husband, of course, but that wasn't the same as letting him decide what she should do. She put a hand on the door.

‘Wouldn't this be something to put in the newsletter?' her husband asked.

Jen paused. She stood for a few indecisive seconds before turning round to go and fetch her camera from the house. ‘Wait here,' she said. ‘Don't go anywhere. If Sara looks up while I'm gone, stand here till I get back. I mean, just let me get my camera and we can always take a posed picture.'

But when she got back, everyone was still there, and Sara was still reading.

Jen immediately took a photo of Sara sitting in the window with her book.

‘Who the hell wants to watch someone reading?' Grace asked from the doorway of her diner. She had lit a cigarette, but it was more an excuse to see what everyone was up to.

‘What else is there to do?' asked Steven.

‘That's true, I suppose,' she admitted after a moment. ‘You're gonna need food,' she said. ‘Help me carry the grill out from the backyard and I'll cook you all hamburgers.'

While she was getting everything she needed ready, she realised that while food was good, it would be even better with beer. She made a quick call to Andy, who came straight over with Carl, some crates of beer and their regular customers.

Tom saw the crowd of people before he saw the bookstore, since the group which had gathered in front of it had, by that point, completely hidden it from view.

He had been on the way home from work when he saw everyone, and for a moment he was determined to drive straight past them, but he suddenly found himself stopping and parking his car, without really having made a conscious decision to do so. He could feel the tension from work lessening with each step he took towards the shop, and that bothered him.

For some reason, he seemed to relax when he was around Sara. He had felt it the first time they were in the car together, when she had demonstrated so clearly that she wasn't expecting anything of him. It had actually seemed more like she wanted him to just leave her alone. And later, when they had been sitting outside Amy's house, he had felt an almost physical sensation of peace. He hadn't been thinking about work or about John or about anything else that should have been on his mind. Which was what made Sara's company so unsettling.

He swore he wouldn't make the same mistake again this evening. He would just go over and see what was going on. Nothing more. Five minutes, tops.

There was something subdued about the scene. Everyone seemed to be straining to whisper. Andy sought him out as he reached the edge of the group, giving him a beer and taking him to the front.

It was already dark, but the light from Amy's shop was spilling out onto the street. Sara was curled up in an armchair holding a book, her eyes fixed on it. She turned the page. At one point, she pushed a strand of hair from her eyes.

It felt strangely private, seeing her read. Like watching her when she slept, he thought. She was so obviously unaware of their presence. At least there were no tears this time. Thankfully.

Beside him, Andy was whispering loudly. Tom caught fragments of it, but he wasn't really listening. ‘Reading …', ‘Been waiting here since this afternoon …', ‘Changed the book but didn't look up …', ‘Got a sandwich with the book still in her hand …'

Sara smiled.

Her expression was so comical that he found he was intrigued despite himself. Her face was open and expressive when she thought no one was watching, warm and friendly and disturbing to his peace of mind.

She had never smiled at him like that. Maybe you needed a book to coax that kind of smile out of her, he thought, even though he had never bothered trying to make her smile. Maybe he would actually try it sometime, he found himself thinking.

He forced himself to look away. Next to him, Andy was still talking. ‘Shouldn't you be at the Square?' Tom asked him.

Andy laughed. ‘No point. It's all happening here tonight. Grace called us, so we packed a couple crates of beer, closed up and came over. Everyone's here tonight.'

‘Why …?'

‘To watch Sara read, obviously.' He explained the backstory. ‘Incredible, right? She started a new book two hours ago but she's barely looked up. Like a relay, you know?'

Tom shook his head.

Sara continued to read.

Until she didn't.

She read the last line, smiled as though at an old friend, and closed the book. She unfurled her legs and stretched. When she finally saw the crowd outside, she stood up suddenly and went confusedly out to them.

‘My friends!' Steven shouted when she stepped through the door. ‘That was exactly five hours and thirty-seven minutes.'

Sparse applause broke out. The smell of charcoal, grilled meat and beer filled the air, and empty beer bottles littered the floor. There was a spontaneous party atmosphere to the whole thing, and people began talking more loudly now that they no longer had to worry about Sara hearing them.

Sara blushed and blinked at them. She had never been good at being the centre of attention.

It happens occasionally. Certain groups seem to exist only to make one person, the one we are meant to see, appear more clearly. It rarely happens like it does in films, where rooms filled with people unconsciously part to give the heroine a glimpse of the hero, or the other way round. And yet for some people, there are similar moments of insight, when they turn to a group of people and instead see only one.

For Sara, it was when she stepped out of the bookshop that evening and found herself faced with betting and crowds and beer and hamburgers; it was that evening when, for several confused moments, all she saw was Tom.

Someone had thrust a beer into her hand and she drank it gratefully while Grace and Jen talked away next to her.

‘For God's sake, woman, haven't you got anything better to do with your time than read?' Grace asked.

‘What were you reading? Can I have some book tips for the newsletter?' Jen asked. Her camera flashed before Sara had a chance to reply.

It was as though all previous thoughts of avoiding Tom had vanished; she was acutely aware of exactly where he was the entire time. As though a quietly murmuring radar, placed high in her chest, was keeping track of where he was standing and who he was with. She wanted both to avoid and for him to come over to her. Every time she saw him talking to someone else – and he seemed to be determined to talk to everyone except her – she found herself thinking that he should be talking to her instead, standing next to her, smiling at her.

Caroline was hesitating at the edge of the improvised street party. She kept herself close to the other side of the street, doing her best to blend into the shadows.

No one looked in her direction. They seemed too busy drinking themselves silly and becoming even more idiotic than normal, which said a lot about the damaging effects of alcohol.