The Light of the World, page 11
Today though, it was a losing battle. She just wanted to look as if she hadn’t been eyeballing Mr. Schultz’s son and sweating like a pig on the way over, but it was hopeless.
The bookshop’s cool interior provided a welcome respite from the heat. She loved bookshops, especially ones like this. She liked the wide-open spaces of the big commercial stores as well, but stores like this, with their twisting aisles and reading nooks hidden at the dead ends, were Eva’s one true love. She could spend hours here, surrounded by the words of the living and the dead, lingering, learning. She wanted to spend an eternity here. She could see herself easily spending her entire working life in a place like this. She’d be good at it. The only problem was that most bookshops wanted even their clerks to have a college degree. It was another possibility that had to be dismissed due to circumstances.
Caught up in a daydream of a settled future working in a bookstore, Eva nearly missed the sound of a chair scraping against the floor beyond the closed door. She exhaled quickly, anxiously shifted from foot to foot. She’d never been good with nerves. Her ears strained to catch the low murmur of voices. The discussion sounded heated but amicable, like casual banter between two friends.
Eva waited, hand half-raised to knock again. The door was flung open and a short, round man with greying curls and the most impressive set of eyebrows that Eva had ever seen stood in the doorway. Those eyebrows easily gave Mr. Bertelli’s mustache a run for its money. Eva hid her smile behind her hand.
“Can I help you?” He shoved his round wire-framed glasses up his nose with his thumb. His voice sounded as though it was trying to be cultured, but there was a hint of something underneath that Eva recognized well, an accent that could only be from here, or maybe over in Red Hook. He was a local, and therefore exactly who she needed.
“Hi.” She tucked her purse under her arm and stuck out her left hand. She was humming with anxiety, but the smile on her face was genuine. She could only assume this man was Mr. Schultz. He looked a bit like Al, especially about the nose and eyes. “Eva Kessler. We spoke via email?”
His eyebrows drew together for a minute, just as Al’s had, before realization dawned. “Ah,” he said. He reached out awkwardly with his right hand to shake hers, then switched to his left to take Eva’s and shake it firmly. Eva was used to that. Being left-handed made everything slightly off for her when it came to meeting people, she always forgot and proffered the wrong hand. Her grip simply wasn’t as firm in her right hand. Her father swore by a firm handshake, and Eva wasn’t about to disregard his advice in favor of right-handed culture. “Theo Schultz. I’m glad you came, I got a little worried when you didn’t email me back again.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” He held the door open for her to step into the room. “I woke up late and saw your response.” She shrugged, giving just a little indication of how terribly awkward she felt. “I hurried over so I wouldn’t miss your quiet period.”
“It’s no trouble.” He waved her off. There was a small smile playing at his lips. “I was just very interested in what you’d found. It’s not every day that someone emails me out of the blue asking about something as specific as The Light of the World.”
Eva opened her mouth, wanting to protest that she really wanted his help with her grandmother’s diaries rather than with the light of the world, at least at first. She was sure the answers to all her questions lay within the pages of those diaries. She wasn’t sure the light of the world would be as interesting to her. She swallowed the words and tried to meet his smile with one of her own. There would come a time to temper his expectations.
He led her into a workshop that was lit by two large skylights. A wide workbench dominated the room and was covered with papers, books, and rolls of maps and blueprints. In the far corner was a smaller desk with a computer and scanner.
A young woman sat at the computer. She had a bored look on her face, one finger toying distractedly with a chain around her neck as she clicked through the online edition of the New York Times. Eva was struck by her, taken by her casual grace as she lounged in the desk chair.
“Liv,” Mr. Schultz called to her.
Eva’s stomach flip-flopped. She felt she knew this woman but could not place her. Where had she seen her before?
Liv uncurled from the chair and stepped closer. She had an almost predatory look about her slate-blue eyes. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless button-down collared shirt that looked as though it had seen better days, but there was an elegance about her that set Eva’s teeth on edge. Her hair was pulled back into a bun. She hadn’t bothered to pin back the blond hair that spilled loose to frame her face.
“This is Eva Kessler,” Mr. Schultz continued his introduction. “She’s the one who emailed me about The Light of the World of all things, can you believe that?”
Liv held out her hand and Eva took it awkwardly with her right, shaking it weakly. She looked up to find herself on the receiving end of a dimpled and crooked smile that made Liv’s eyes seem far warmer and friendlier than before. “Olivia Currance. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Eva Kessler. You too.” She faltered. Liv had not let go. Her hand was very warm.
Eva felt scrutinized, as if she were being carefully assessed as Liv’s gaze raked over her face. “Um…” she started again, slowly pulling her hand back from Olivia’s tight grip. “Is it all right to call you Liv?”
“Most everyone does.” Liv jammed her hands into her back pockets, spinning on her heel toward Mr. Schultz. There was a small rectangular carton pressed against the fabric of her back pocket. Cigarettes, Eva guessed. “I’m going to go out front for a bit, is that okay?”
“It’s a filthy habit,” Mr. Schultz replied. He made a shooing gesture all the same. He had the distracted air of an absent-minded professor, but there was a sharpness about him that made Eva feel that she should be on the defensive. It wasn’t so much that he was frightening, but rather that he was intense. Eva, a few years removed from her failed attempt at college, had forgotten how unnerving intensity could be.
Eva tried to hide her nervous smile by busying herself with her purse. She wasn’t entirely sure how best to venture into this conversation. She could think of a million questions.
Mr. Schultz regarded her for a long moment, his eyebrows drawing together into a single bushy line. The door closed behind Liv’s retreating back and Eva swallowed her nervousness. She supposed that Mr. Schultz wanted to talk about The Light of the World, given how excited he was by her mentioning it. That seemed like a good enough place to start. It gave Eva some leeway to temper his expectations and also to gauge how he would react to a potential deep friendship developing in the pages of her grandmother’s diaries.
“Do you know what The Light of the World is? My Gran talked about it all the time, but never really explained what it was.”
There was a pregnant pause and a pensive expression slipped over Mr. Schultz’s face. Eva wondered if he were, trying to pick out exactly what he would or would not say. When he spoke, his tone had a heavy feel to it and seemed to fill the entire room. “The Light of the World is one of those strange cultural phenomena that scholars spend their entire lives studying.”
Turning on his heel, his shoe scuffing on the rough wooden floor of the workshop, he crossed to a bookshelf and pulled down a thick volume. When he stepped closer, Eva realized it wasn’t a book, but rather a folio. Mr. Schultz opened it with a practiced flick of his wrist and pulled out a journal that was not dissimilar to her grandmother’s diaries. He thumbed his way to a marked page and began to read: “As far as this researcher can determine, the concept of The Light of the World is something of a spiritual representation of love to some, but an actual physical manifestation has never been proven. There are stories that crop up about once a decade or so that seem to indicate that there could be a physical being connected to this concept. It is this researcher’s opinion that the likelihood of the light of the world existing in the present day is slim; however, such an individual certainly could have existed in the past.”
“So, it’s an idea?” Eva raised an eyebrow. She was so sure that it had to have been something else, something more than that. Her grandmother wouldn’t have fixated on it so much if it hadn’t been important. An idea wasn’t enough, Eva thought, to shift a person so drastically. It couldn’t be.
Mr. Schultz snapped the journal shut and shrugged broadly, and Eva could see a little bit of Al’s slouched shoulders in his demeanor. Al was so much skinnier than his father. His mother must be tall, Eva guessed. Al was tall and dark-skinned, while Mr. Schultz was as white as they came. “As far as anyone can tell, the light of the world is a myth. I take it your grandmother talked about it a good bit? Was she an immigrant?”
Eva shook her head. “No, she was born here in the city in 1909. Her parents were immigrants, but they were both Catholic as far as I’ve been told. My family’s pretty agnostic now. The light of the world was just something she talked about a few times in the diaries, and a lot later in life. I was more interested in discussing the Talbot boarding house, actually. There are a few names in here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the January diary. “I wanted to see if you could help me track them down.”
Schultz nodded, stepping forward with eager eyes. Eva understood his interest. The journals were the sort of thing that she, too, would read greedily. They were full of fascinating detail of a time and a place so different from today. She bit her lip and sighed, tucking the diary into her purse. “She talked about the light of the world as something that she’d lost, but she never said exactly what it was.”
“Perhaps it was her way of talking about something else?” Mr. Schultz suggested mildly. “Those were very different times.”
Eva frowned. “I don’t think so,” she explained. “My grandmother was a hard woman, but I loved her all the same, but there was always this great sense of loss that followed her around. It wasn’t for my grandfather, or for my great-uncles who died long ago. No, this loss was deeper than that—an older, festering wound. My father asked her when he was a kid why she was sad all the time, and she told him that it was because the light of the world had gone out. I think that she saved these diaries because she wanted to tell someone about what had happened to her, but she either forgot about them, or found that she couldn’t do it.”
“If I could have a look…” Mr. Schultz did not sound eager now, just respectful. Eva grabbed the diary back out of her purse. She held it out to him and he took it, staring down at the looping cursive of her grandmother’s handwriting.
There was a long pause while he read. Eva shifted from foot to foot, feeling awkward. Mr. Schultz turned a page and squinted, his lips moving silently as he read something and then repeated it back to himself. His eyes were racing across the page now. “There are more of these?” Eva nodded. “And what makes you think that she saved them for any particular reason?” he asked.
Eva leaned against the table. “The box they were in, along with a few others, was jammed in the back of her storage closet under a ton of dust. This was in the only one that looked as though it had been carefully packed. It’s an old scrapbooking box, probably from decades ago now, and it’s acid free. That means, to me at least, that she probably was keen to preserve whatever was kept inside.” She sighed, turning to face Mr. Schultz once more. “It isn’t so much that there could be an easy explanation to all of this, it’s just that I feel that there’s more to it. There has to be. It’s too simple otherwise, and I can’t accept that. My grandmother wasn’t a simple woman.”
“And if the light of the world truly was a person, would that change things?” Mr. Schultz suggested. There was a strange hint of eagerness in his voice that caused Eva to look at him sharply.
“Probably,” Eva admitted, “because it would mean that she’d lost the love of her life or something equally tragic.”
Mr. Schultz handed Eva back the journal and turned to the wall of bookshelves. “Well,” he announced, resting his hands on his hips, “why don’t we look into it and see if we can’t find something to give you some closure?”
It was late when Eva found herself drawn back into her grandmother’s world. Her tea was steaming on the coffee table. The night was warm, and the blanket that Eva pulled over her knees was more for comfort than warmth. She leaned back and started to read.
April 3, 1925
The drizzle of this morning let up to a sky the color of a robin’s egg. I was only able to work a half day today as Mr. Perkins was in a closed deposition with the state’s attorney and I was not allowed into the room.
I’m concerned about him. This is the second time in as many weeks that he’s told me to go home early so that he may speak with someone privately. It is as though he does not wish for me to know what is going on.
Wren says he’s working for someone, she won’t tell me who, but that he’s working for someone who might get him killed. I have no idea how she knows, but her conviction was so sincere that I was inclined to believe her. Wren knows things like this. She looks at people as if she can see straight through them. She took one look at Mr. Perkins when she came to meet me after my unexpected half-day today (we were just to meet for lunch) and understood exactly what was happening.
Wren’s ability to do this is so infuriating! She laughs it off and says my cheeks are admirable when they’re puffed out and flushed with anger.
I don’t understand her. She is a mystery, quick to smile, quick to hurt, and quick to heal. She gets into arguments with Mrs. Talbot about women’s suffrage and rights; she reads voraciously and seems to have money even though she does not work. Mrs. Talbot says she’s a bad influence, but I won’t stop seeing her. She is my only true friend.
We went to the park today. Everything is in bloom, and after taking the crammed uptown train, it was a welcome reprieve to walk among the flowering trees. There is a kind of magic in spring that is still clinging to winter’s chill—flowers against a cold background, beauty in death. Wren says I’m particularly morose today.
In the shadow of a tree, she took my hand and I felt my heart swell within me. Her cheeks were flushed a warm pink in the cool afternoon. Her hand was warm.
She did not let go until we left the park.
Eva’s tea was stone cold by the time she stopped reading and rereading the entry. She swallowed a mouthful with a wince and went to heat up her mug in the microwave. Her mind was reeling from what she’d just read. Maybe her suspicion of a lady crush wasn’t that far off. Maybe this deep friendship was progressing to something different?
She couldn’t wrap her head around what that might mean for her family. This changed everything. It wasn’t just a mystery now, but a family secret that her grandmother had buried in the back of her closet.
“Closet.” Eva gave a derisive snort of laughter. “Of course, Gran. Of course.” Her tea warmed up, she went back to her spot on the couch and continued to read.
May 30, 1925
It is too hot. Wren and I were up on the roof earlier, until Judith came and chased us down. She said we were being too loud, but I doubt it. We weren’t even talking, just enjoying the breezes that swirl around up there. Wren brought a book of poetry, but she wasn’t reading it. She likes to do that, give dramatic readings when she has a captive audience of one.
Judith does not like Wren. She never has, and it isn’t on account of the newspapers, as far as I can tell. Wren won’t be open with me about what she does for work, so I can’t tell Judith how Wren is a seamstress, or a teacher, or a clerk at the post office, I think Judith gets upset. She doesn’t like not knowing things, filthy gossip that she is.
It was odd to see Wren actually fight with her, though. Wren got right up in her face, all flashing anger and clenched fists. Her hair was flying every which way, wisps of it flying straight up in the breezes we so wanted to catch. She told Judith exactly where to take her complaints and her nosy nature. I’ve never been prouder of anyone in my life.
Wren is a lifesaver. She is the only one who understands how worried I am for Mr. Perkins now that he’s spending more time than ever in those closed-door meetings. He keeps muttering under his breath about having to find something. Something that will “save her,” whatever that means. He won’t elaborate when I ask him and I’ve decided I like my job too much to push it. Lord knows I don’t want the bum’s rush out of that job. Not yet at any rate.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about what it might be like to have a little house somewhere. Maybe out in California, or perhaps Chicago, though I hear the winters are dreadful. I wonder if I would ask Wren to come with me, and if she’d come at all. I wonder if she’s the sort of person who will ever settle down.
Judith demanded the same thing, and Wren just about decked her. I was shocked, and she did not apologize before storming out. Her hand was clenched around something at her neck, the cross I think she wears.
I wonder if she means to cloister herself once she’s lived a little. She has no future, she tells me. I don’t believe her.
We ended up sipping some of Elizabeth from upstairs’s hooch on my bed, our feet knocking together, lamenting Judith and her bad temper. It wasn’t a bad night, just odd. I’ve been having a lot of those recently.
Chapter 10
Olivia
Eva started at Mr. Bertelli’s shop that Tuesday with little fanfare. The work was dull, but the company was good. Mr. Bertelli had a bunch of funny stories about her grandmother that he seemed more than willing to share. Eva was grateful that he did not need prompting to relate a story about this or that, always with a wealth of detail that she could never quite recreate in her recollections of her grandmother.
