The Words Between Us, page 13
Ryan laughs. He looks like a different person when he laughs. Like a guy who drives a beat-up old Camaro instead of the Prius in which we drove to this restaurant.
“You’re not an old maid.”
“Maybe not by today’s standards, but in Jane Austen’s day I would have been.”
“Well, we’re not in Jane Austen’s day, are we?” He refolds the cloth napkin he had placed on his lap. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have to run out to the car. Watch: the minute I leave, the food will come.”
I sip my glass of water and watch him leave. Then the waiter comes in fast from the kitchen, tray high overhead, weaving through the crowded room like a carefully controlled tornado. He lowers the tray onto a stand and begins to populate the table in front of me with what is the prettiest food I’ve seen in years. Ryan is coming back in from the parking lot with an I-told-you-so grin on his face and a large cardboard box in his hands, even though this restaurant is not one into which a person would ever think to bring a large cardboard box.
“What is that?” I ask as he tucks it under the table.
“Oh, just a little something I got for you. But I’ll show it to you after we eat. I’m starving.”
Over our meals, Ryan and I pick up where we left off at breakfast last week. I know he teaches earth science and biology at Kennedy High School, so I keep my questions aimed in that direction. I ask him to explain all the different events at Science Olympiad. He asks about the bookstore and about what Kennedy was like back when Sarah and I went to school there. I almost tell him about the novel I have been working on most nights, but that revelation seems one level too deep for a first date.
Eventually the dirty plates are whisked away and nothing is left between us but space and silence and bread crumbs. Beneath the table I finger the copy of Pride and Prejudice in my purse and silently recite the poem I wrote for it.
Pinned and labeled, lit dimly to preserve
Put on display, I am observed
Yet watch as you pass.
Scrutinized—What specimen is this?
Whatever I was once, I am now less,
Immobilized by glass.
Or is it I who walks these echoed halls
While you hang—static—upon the wall?
“Okay,” Ryan says, “I was out looking for a birthday gift for my nephew and I saw something I thought you’d like. So I got it, but then I thought maybe I could improve on it a bit. So . . . I made some modifications.”
He reaches into the box and places the mystery object on the table between us. I am speechless for a moment. There in front of me, in miniature form, is a dinosaur that appears to be made out of tiny books.
“It’s not a Dreadnoughtus, of course, since those are a fairly recent discovery,” he says. “But I made the tail shorter with a knife and bulked it up a bit around the middle when I put the little books on it.”
“How did you—”
“I sliced up a magazine in my crosscut shredder and then went to town with the glue while I was binge-watching old episodes of Doctor Who. It was more fun than I think I’d like to admit.”
I carefully turn the dinosaur on the table. It’s about a foot tall and a foot long, and every micron of it is covered in tiny squares of colorful paper representing books.
“I figured it would give you some inspiration, and it would be something to have in the store—kind of a mascot and an in-joke—that people around here would come to know and recognize as representative of the big chance you took and the spirit you need to have in order to succeed.”
“All that?” I joke, a little uncomfortable at the thought that I might not actually have the spirit it takes to succeed.
“Plus now you have a 3-D model to show to people at the book drive. You could easily show it on the news.”
There it is again. The news.
“This is really sweet, Ryan. But I’m not sure I can talk to a reporter. Sarah could do it. Or maybe even Dawt Pi.”
“Well, yeah. They can both be there, but Robin, it’s your store. You need to be the face of it.”
I’m shaking my head.
“Why are you so afraid of reporters?”
“Don’t you watch the news?”
Ryan smiles. “Yeah. Robin, look, I know all about the thing with your father. Everyone knows. You have to get over that. You have to stop hiding. It is what it is. And you have a life to live. Don’t let some scummy tabloid jerks determine your future. Dreadnoughtus—fearer of nothing. You need to be like this little guy here.” He turns the dinosaur to face me. “You need to show those punk predators that you are not someone to be messed with. You’re Dreadnoughtus! You don’t run away and you don’t hide. You’re too big to hide! You stand there eating your leaves, and when you feel one of these reporters gnawing on your leg, trying to bring you down, you stomp the stuffing out of them, okay? You knock down a whole row of them with your tail! Then you go on doing your thing, living your life. Doesn’t that sound better than always worrying about what people are saying about you?”
It’s hard not to get pulled in by a pep talk like that. The guy must be a great teacher and coach. But I don’t feel like I’m more massive than a Boeing 737. I feel like I’m a foot tall and a foot long and I’m stuck in a fixed position where I can’t move my feet to stomp on anything or move my tail to knock anything down.
The tornado waiter comes up with our desserts high atop his perfectly balanced tray. He lowers it to the table, sets the plates in front of us, and disappears. Ryan picks up his fork and digs into his carrot cake.
I stare at the dinosaur on the table. “Do you think we could make it move?”
“What?”
“The dinosaur. The big one. Do you think we could make it move? The head and the tail, a little bit? So it looks alive instead of looking like it’s an exhibit at a museum? This whole time something about this project has been bothering me. I think the dinosaur image is clever, but it’s extinct. And that’s not really the message I want to send about my bookstore or bookstores in general. What if we could make it so it looks alive? Sure it’s old, but it’s still alive. It’s a survivor.”
“It would cost more. And we’d have to get another company involved to help with the parts needed for the robotics.”
“But it could be done?”
Ryan picks up the little dinosaur and slowly spins it in his hands. “Anything’s possible.”
I take a bite of gelato as Ryan puts the dinosaur back on the table facing me. “So,” he says, “are you going to be at the book drive or not?”
I breathe deeply. Sometimes you do things you don’t want to do in order to please your friends.
“I’ll be there.”
18
Then
Faced with that unlatched door, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t think. In a nearby tree, a robin let loose an alarm call. The first robin of spring. Time began again. I crept up the stairs and, hands shaking, pushed the door open, but something stopped it. Panic fluttered in my stomach.
“Grandma?”
At the sound of my voice, The Professor started screeching. I squeezed through the half-open door into the trailer. Everything that had been in the front closet—coats and shoes, an oscillating fan, the twisted hose of the vacuum cleaner—was piled on the small square of linoleum that served as the entryway.
“Grandma?”
In the kitchen, every drawer had been pulled and dumped, every cupboard opened and ransacked. Broken plates and glasses, silverware, pots and pans—all scattered across the floor. My eyes swept the living room. A chair overturned. Cushions everywhere, slashed and bleeding stuffing. A cigarette moldering on the carpet. I stomped it into oblivion. The Professor screamed and leaped in his cage amid a cloud of feathers. My chest was caving in.
“Grandma! Are you there?”
I tiptoed to her room. I wouldn’t find her. She was out at the store or at a friend’s house or at the church. She would come home soon and be as horrified as I was at the state of the house. But she’d be okay. She’d put her arm around me and we’d sit together in the mess as we waited for the police. She’d get that stupid bird to calm down.
But I did find her, stuffed between her bed and the wall, two viscous trails of blood running down her face from somewhere on her skull. Her bedside lamp was in pieces, her dresser drawers had been emptied all over the room, and the mattress had been pulled off the box spring and both slashed to ribbons. I threw off my backpack. I felt her wrist for a pulse, but I couldn’t be sure if the heartbeat I felt was hers or my own throbbing in my fingers. I snatched up the phone receiver. No dial tone. I slammed it on the cradle and tried again. I couldn’t see the buttons through the tears. It took three tries to dial those three magical numbers.
I could hardly hear the 911 dispatcher over The Professor. I wanted to wring his rotten little neck—anything to stop the shrieking. I thought I might let him out of his cage, open the door, shove him outside so he would fly away. Then I remembered his clipped wings.
It took forever for help to arrive. Why did she have to live in the middle of nowhere? Finally the ambulance came. The police asked their questions. They wanted an inventory of what was stolen, but there was little I could say. Nothing she owned was really worth anything. The old TV and VCR were still in the living room. In my bedroom, Emily Flynt’s books were scattered all over the floor. My eyes darted around at the titles. All there. As far as I could tell, the intruders had taken nothing at all. But they had obviously been looking for something.
“Jewelry?” a cop shouted over The Professor’s histrionics.
“I don’t know. My grandma will have to look through things once she’s released from the hospital.”
I didn’t like the way the cop looked at me then. It was the same look I’d gotten from the social worker when I told her I could stay at my house alone because the police had made a mistake and my mom would be back the next day. I never saw my house again.
The EMTs loaded Grandma up in the ambulance and invited me to ride along. I wanted a minute to call Peter, but things were moving so fast. I threw the black sheet over The Professor’s cage to calm him down. I was not conflicted about shutting the door on his screams.
After several long hours in the ER, Grandma was moved to ICU with cracked ribs, a broken collarbone, and a concussion from a blow to her head. The steady beeping from the machines and monitors they’d hooked to her sounded like trucks backing up. Her swollen eyes fluttered open once, but she was hopped up on so many painkillers and anti-inflammatories that I couldn’t ask her anything about what had happened. I sat in an uncomfortable chair in the corner, relieved that I’d had the presence of mind to grab my backpack on the way out of the trailer.
In the dim light of a lamp, I flipped slowly through the yearbooks, looking for the young Emily and for the Lindy Gray my poor battered grandmother believed was as innocent as the day she was born. I found Peter’s mother easily, her blonde hair stylishly flipped and her light eyes sparkling even in black and white. My own mother was harder to track, but I finally found her portrait in the 1972 yearbook. Peter’s parents were seniors that year and seemed to infuse every other page with their perfectly happy glow. Lindy Gray was a freshman. In her long dark hair, deep eyes, and serious expression, I saw a near mirror image of myself. My eyes were my dad’s hazel and my hair was more auburn than brunette, but in every other way I looked exactly like her.
I flipped through team photos and candid shots, my eyes drifting slowly down every page, following each line of text with my finger, looking for more Lindy. Finally I found her name in a caption about making a homecoming float. Emily stood beside her.
The faces were small and a little blurry, the photographer having framed the photo so that the large float was wholly visible. A few other girls stood alongside, their straight backs and broad smiles showing how proud they were of their accomplishment. The float was impressive, a large Viking ship covered in tissue paper flowers and sporting a banner that read “Vikings Take No Prisoners.”
But what really caught my eye was the house in the background. The distinctive ornamentation along the roofline and between each column on the large front porch was utterly familiar. I struggled to lift its importance from the sloshing pool of information in my mind. Then all at once it came bobbing to the surface like pieces of a shipwreck. It was the Doll House, my mother’s house, the dead house that still slouched behind the cemetery.
I took the yearbook into the blinding, buzzing fluorescent lights of the hallway and shut the door behind me.
“You need something, sweetie?” a nurse asked.
“Is there a phone I can use?”
“There’s one in the room.”
“I don’t want to wake up my grandma.”
She gave me the same look as the police officer and the social worker—a pitying smile and a slight shake of the head.
“There’s a pay phone in the waiting area.”
“Thanks.”
The nurse went on her way. I didn’t have any change, so I began a slow stroll down the hallway. At the end I found a room that was unoccupied, slipped in, and closed the door. I set the yearbook on the bed and dialed Peter’s number. He answered on the third ring.
“Peter, I found a photo of our moms together at the Doll House. I think they may have been friends.”
He yawned. “You do realize it’s one in the morning, right?”
“Oh, crap. No. I didn’t. Sorry. I’ve been at the hospital and I lost track of time.”
“The hospital?” He sounded fully awake now.
I told him about the break-in and how I found my grandmother beaten and unconscious, about the destruction, about the odd fact that nothing seemed to be missing. As the story unfolded, I felt like I was living it again. Though I was surrounded by machines that were supposed to keep people’s hearts beating steadily and their lungs puffing in and out in rhythm, my heartbeat raced and my breath came in gulps. Once I got to the part about the hospital I calmed down. Hospitals fixed things. Everything would be okay.
“So, I guess this is my answer about whether or not we’re going to see my mom this week,” I said.
“Yeah, no kidding. Do you want me to come to the hospital?”
“No. But maybe you could stop by and check on my grandma’s parrot? Make sure he has food and water? He’s freaking out.”
“Sure.” He sounded dubious. “Does he bite?”
“Viciously. But you can fill his food and water from outside the cage. You could swing by in the morning. He’s probably fine for tonight.”
“Why don’t I pick you up and bring you home?”
“Are you kidding? I can’t go back there. Anyway, I’m not sure I should leave. She might wake up.”
We said our goodbyes and I went back to the cool dark of Grandma’s room. The machines still beeped and hissed. I traded the yearbook for Moby-Dick. I had to finish it soon because I already had the next book in hand.
“It took me so long to read that beast, I wanted to follow it up with something short and sweet,” Peter had said when I complained he’d given me the next book too fast.
“The next one may be short, but I don’t know that I’d call it sweet,” I said.
“Well, no. I guess not.”
“You better read something by Dickens or Tolstoy next, or I’ll never catch up.”
“Deal.”
I finished Moby-Dick in some nameless hour in the night and quickly wrote my payment poem while it was still fresh in my mind. Then I turned the page in my notebook and wrote the next poem. I didn’t need to read the short and not-so-sweet book to write about it. Everyone knew that story. And anyway, it was practically poetry itself.
The next morning, Grandma was sitting up in bed. It would have been a heartening sight if she had looked anything like herself, but her face was more purple than peach and the normally sagging skin around her eyes was taut and puffy.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like a truck hit me.”
“I think the police need you to go down to the station once you’ve figured out what all was taken so you can give them a full list. Do you remember anything about the guy who attacked you?” I asked.
She closed her eyes and didn’t answer.
“It didn’t look like he took anything,” I continued.
“Who?”
“The person who broke into your house.”
A look of concern settled on her brow. “Someone broke into my house?”
“You don’t remember? There was stuff thrown all over the place.”
“You were in my house?”
“What? Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You’re too young to be a police officer.”
“I’m your granddaughter. Robin.”
She squinted and slowly shook her head. “I don’t have a granddaughter.”
I felt like I had swallowed a nest of baby snakes. I got to my feet and swung open the door. “Nurse!”
Peter carried my suitcase into the foyer of his house. The place looked like Jack Flynt—serious, no-nonsense, and a little bit empty. Whereas my grandma’s trailer was packed with decades of kitschy, cutesy knickknacks—Hummel dolls, Precious Moments figurines, limited-edition plates with state capitol buildings painted on them—Jack Flynt’s house was clean, linear, masculine, and stalwart. The tables and shelves were mostly bare, the occasional blown-glass vase or bronze casting the only decoration. Two empty nails in the wall reminded me of Peter’s comment about his father erasing all evidence of Emily Flynt after her death. What had hung there? The beer sign Peter had bought his father for Christmas was nowhere in sight.
The nurses had told me to go home and get some rest, but there was no way I could stay in that ransacked trailer all alone with an apoplectic parrot. Peter picked me up at the hospital. We stopped at the trailer so I could pack a bag, but I could hardly get my feet to take me inside. Peter went first and I followed close behind, my fingers curled around his belt.
