The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (24 page)

She was drawn to it time and time again. First, to make sure the cover image wasn't visible through the protective wrapper. Then to put it beneath a pile of newspapers in the hallway, just to be on the safe side. Then to make sure that the title on the spine wasn't visible. Then to move it and hide it behind the embroidered picture on her nightstand, in case someone happened to come by and leaf through the newspapers. She shuddered at the thought.

Each time she gave in to the impulse to pick the book up, it grew stronger. A soft, tempting voice cajoled her: are you really going to judge it before you've read it? the voice reminded her. Then: how dangerous can one little chapter be, after a long and God-fearing life?

The book seemed to be staring at her. It had been a long time since something had managed to make her feel so uneasy.
No one
had managed to outstare her in over twenty years. Still, this little book was forcing her to avert her gaze and look away.

It was lying there in its sleeve, covered with calming, beautiful oaks.
Oak Tree Bookstore
was printed in the same warm yellow as the autumn leaves in the picture. But beneath it, the picture of two half-naked men embracing one another seemed to shine through like neon lights in the seedy area of a big town.

Filth! Filth! Filth! it seemed to be shouting to the world.

Surely no one would believe that she
wanted
to read it? Though it was certainly suspect to have it hidden in her bedroom. Carefully and deliberately hidden. Maybe she should leave it lying around, openly and demonstratively. Look what they're selling in the bookstore, she'd say indignantly to Jen if she came by.

She took two steps towards her bedroom before she paused. Good Lord, what was she thinking of? Having a book with two near-naked men lying in the hallway? And telling Jen about it? That would certainly give her something to talk about.

The book could stay where it was.

She slept uneasily beside the book. Each night, its power over her seemed to grow. The lack of sleep made her jumpy and unfocused, and she walked restlessly around the house in a way that was clearly improper for a woman of her age.

She decided to read a chapter, for the sake of research. She could have sworn the book was laughing at her when she finally picked it up.

‘If other books are as shameless as you, it doesn't surprise me that people have been burning you on pyres for centuries,' she said as a rebuke, which seemed to make it fall silent. She smiled in satisfaction.

She steeled herself and opened the book. Fifteen years as a teacher, she reminded herself. Nothing scares me.

She started reading.

 

 

 

 

Broken Wheel, Iowa

January 19, 2011

Sara Lindqvist

Kornvägen 7, 1 tr

136 38 Haninge

Sweden

Dear Sara,

Tom has never been much good at accepting help, or at admitting he might need any. I'm writing this with love, of course. Sometimes I think he's very lonely, but it's nothing he would admit to himself. Actually, I think he would argue that he doesn't need anyone at all. Or anything. If I told him that he needed oxygen, he would shake his head, smile, and tell me not to worry about him. ‘I'll be OK,' he would say, and it's not at all impossible that he would believe he really was the only person on Earth who didn't need to breathe. There's a fine line between independence and stupidity, if you ask me.

When Andy fought with his father and decided to move to Denver, he spent the night at my house. I was a widow by that point, so I didn't need to explain anything to my husband. I never told anyone that he stayed with me that night, or that it was my money which paid for his bus ticket and put a roof over his head for the first couple of weeks. He went to Denver because he wanted to leave the whole state, not just Broken Wheel. I don't know if he ever forgave his father, but back then, I just hoped that the distance would make things easier.

I don't want you to think that Andy just took my money. He's as proud as Tom and Claire, it's just that his is a different kind of pride. I think he just needed to feel that there were people who cared whether he had a roof over his head or not, but a month or so after he left I got a parcel. In it was all of the money I'd lent him, plus a postcard of a barely dressed man. I didn't want the money back, but I was really grateful for the postcard. It showed that he could still laugh at life.

Best,

Amy

NOW THAT THE
bookshop had been open for a little while, Sara was really starting to enjoy her days there, but it was a melancholy kind of enjoyment. She had started leaving the door ajar so that the scent of damp autumn air could mix with the smell of the books. For as long as she could remember, she had thought that autumn air went well with books, that the two both somehow belonged with blankets, comfortable armchairs and big cups of coffee or tea. This had never been clearer to her than right there, in her very own bookshop.

In Sara and Amy's bookshop. That was what was so sad about it. She was constantly coming across things she should have asked Amy about. They had exchanged letters for more than two years, but there was still so much she had forgotten to ask. What had she even written about?

‘Do you believe in throwing books away?' she asked Amy now, putting the question to the silence. She tried to avoid talking to Amy whenever there were customers in the shop, but now, just before the market, the majority of people in Broken Wheel seemed to have better things to do than visit her.

She was busy preparing a new shelf. She was leaning towards calling it ‘MEET THE AUTHORS' and was thinking about ordering in some more literary biographies. So far, there were three books on the shelf, but she thought she could also put books about books there. In fact, Helene Hanff was the reason she was now wondering what Amy had thought about throwing books away.

She had just put
84, Charing Cross Road
on the shelf. It was probably one of the most charming books about books that had ever been written, even after
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
had come out. The outspoken American Helene Hanff's fantastic exchange of letters with an exceptionally British antiquarian was followed by the almost equally good
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street
, which was all about Helene Hanff finally arriving in
her
England.

Miss Hanff couldn't understand people who didn't throw books away. For her, there was nothing less worthy than a bad or average book, but Sara didn't agree.

They were still
books
.

Sara sold them on or gave them away, but she couldn't throw them out. Not even when they were so bad that she wondered whether it was defensible to share them with innocent new readers. She wondered what Amy would have thought.

When it came to biographies of authors, Amy had owned one about Jane Austen, one about Charlotte Brontë, and a novel about the Brontë sisters' lives,
The Taste of Sorrow
. Fitting. Sara sighed. So far, her authors' shelf was very sparse.

‘Do you think writing books makes you happier or unhappier?' she asked as she placed the Jane Austen biography on the shelf.

She hoped the authors had been happier. She had always hoped that Jane could have looked out over her surroundings and thought: ‘I can create a better world than this', or ‘You're much too unbearably boring, and perhaps I can't say anything about it without being impolite, but you are going to be absolutely wonderful in my next book. I need another ridiculous minister.' Still, Sara couldn't help but wonder what life must be like if you couldn't daydream about Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (
how
had she decided on that name? One of literary history's most inexplicable mysteries), because you yourself had created him.

She had first read
Pride and Prejudice
when she was fourteen, and for a long time, it had almost ruined Jane Austen's other works for her. Other books in general, in actual fact, not to mention real men. It was such a perfectly formed world that it had been a disappointment to be forced to leave it. The best women ended up with the richest, most interesting men; the next best got the next richest, and so on. After that experience, Edward Ferrars was no longer rich enough, and also, Sara thought, even though she shouldn't have been judging anyone, he was a touch too feeble.
Mansfield Park
was certainly intoxicating and sharply written, but Sara had trouble forgiving Edmund Bertram for not falling for kind Fanny Price until much too late in the book, and then only in a vague, absent-minded way. She could enjoy them all now and thought that
Persuasion
, with its gentle melancholy, was almost as good as
Pride and Prejudice
, but it had needed years of work. She hadn't even had the good taste to be upset by
Sandition
, Jane Austen's last, unfinished work. Secretly, though, she enjoyed both the first fifty pages – written by Jane herself – and the rest of the book, which was wildly and not particularly faithfully written by ‘Another Lady'.

‘Do you think Jane had stopped dreaming by that point?' she asked Amy.

Amy didn't answer, and Sara picked up the novel about the Brontë sisters. She had decided not to read it; thinking about them was much too depressing. Charlotte Brontë's great dream in life had been a house by the water, somewhere she could live with her brother and sisters, and perhaps continue writing. Ideally without also having to teach and run a school in the house, but that wasn't essential.

That was all, and yet as a dream it was still out of her reach, almost foolish to think of.

Sara thought that, nowadays, everyone seemed to be dreaming of absolutely everything. Travelling and loving and having a fantastic career and a happy family, all while being thin, beautiful, popular and in touch with your spiritual side.

‘Amy,' she said, ‘do you think our dreams are subject to inflation?'

‘Yes,' a voice replied from the doorway. Sara jumped, turned round guiltily and saw Tom standing there with an amused look on his face.

She wondered whether he had heard her saying Amy's name. She decided to assume he hadn't. ‘You're probably right. But does having dreams make us more or less happy?'

He shrugged. ‘I don't think dreaming has ever made anyone happier.'

Sara agreed, but sometimes she wondered whether it didn't make people more … alive. She didn't think Tom was someone who dreamt much especially, and that bothered her slightly. All the same, she had never had a single tangible dream. The other girls from the bookshop had all seemed to want to do things. Travel, if nothing else. Save up for holidays. Have children or meet someone or renovate the kitchen.
Real
things that they could fantasise and talk about at work. Sara had simply read.

But her time in Broken Wheel had made her think about what she had actually
done
in Sweden. Her evenings and free weekends were just hazy memories now, blending into one another. It frightened her, and she doubted she would be happy simply reading books and working in the future. But how, exactly, did you become someone who had dreams and goals? Sara couldn't help but think that she had somehow missed the moment when life was meant to begin. For a long time she had simply been drifting through it, reading, and while everyone around her had been teenaged, unhappy and foolish, this hadn't been a problem. But then suddenly everyone had grown up around her and she, she had done nothing but read.

Until now. She was still reading a lot, of course, but there were other things. People talked to her. Sometimes they even actively sought her out, and there had been a few occasions when she had actually decided to put down her book. She could read it later, she had thought, which in itself was a strange new feeling.

‘Cup of coffee?' she asked. ‘I just put a new pot on.' He nodded almost imperceptibly, as though he had been planning on saying no but had given in against his will.

She had brought a couple of real cups to the bookshop and she now poured a coffee for each of them, its aroma spreading through the room.

‘Do you think Amy was a dreamer?'

Tom sat down in one of the armchairs and she settled down in the other, curling her legs up beneath her so that she could lean against the armrest and turn towards him.

‘No,' he said, but then he hesitated. ‘Actually, I don't know.'

Sara nodded. ‘There was so much I never got a chance to ask her about,' she said.

He surprised her by saying: ‘What about you? What's your dream?' He sounded almost ironic, but Sara thought she could also detect a serious undertone in his question.

‘I don't have one,' she said quickly, taking a sip of her coffee so that she didn't have to say anything else.

‘What are you going to do when you go home?'

She brushed the thought aside.
Home
.

‘Start another bookstore?'

She shook her head. That was something she knew for certain. ‘You need lots of things for that. A business plan, for starters.'

Tom looked around the shop, raising his eyebrows. ‘I guess it might help.'

You definitely needed capital.

‘Tom,' she said, ‘do you think John has anything against this? The bookstore, I mean,' she added quickly, but what she really wanted to ask was: Do you think he has anything against
me
?

‘Why would he?'

‘Because of Amy, I mean. It's just that … he hasn't even been in here.'

‘I don't think John cares about much any more.'

They were quiet for a moment after that, until Tom looked down into his empty coffee cup and said, almost to himself: ‘I should probably get going.' But he was in no hurry to leave, and Sara didn't have anything against putting off reading a while longer.