The Words Between Us, page 14
I fed and watered The Professor and changed out the newspaper at the bottom of the cage. He had plucked out all of the feathers from his breast to his feet so that now he looked like a fat little naked man in a gray cape and hood. Careless in my overtired state, I let the tip of my pinky slip between the bars as I put the water bottle back in place. The Professor sped across his perch and clamped down on it with his beak before I even realized what was happening. I couldn’t find the antibiotic ointment or the bandages in the pile of junk on the bathroom floor, so I wrapped my finger in toilet paper and squeezed it with my other hand as Peter took my suitcase to the car.
I locked the door out of habit, as Grandma had insisted.
Once we were out of sight of the trailer and I could breathe normally, I pulled two folded pieces of paper from my back pocket and handed them to Peter. “Before I forget.”
“You read them both?”
“I finished Moby-Dick.”
“You have to read the other one before you write the poem.”
“Just take it. Things are so crazy, if I don’t give it to you now it might get lost and your collection will be forever incomplete. And anyway, I’ve read it before.”
Peter had acquiesced and covered the rest of the distance to his house. He left me standing in the foyer while he deposited my suitcase in a room down a dark hall, then emerged a moment later with a small first aid kit. He led me to the kitchen and doctored my finger.
“Dad’s probably in the den,” he said. “We should go say hello.”
I followed Peter down a short hall to a closed door. He knocked lightly, and a voice from the other side granted us access. When the door opened, all I could see were bookshelves, an entire wall of them. All empty. They shrank back like a woman stripped of her clothes in front of a crowd. I wanted to turn off the lights, to clothe them in darkness. A rustle of paper drew my attention to the corner of the room where Jack Flynt sat calmly in a brown leather chair, reading the newspaper, as if nothing scandalous was happening, as if he was not to blame for the bare bookshelves.
“Dad, this is Robin Dickinson.”
Mr. Flynt looked up from his paper. “The breaking and entering?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your cousin, Robin. Please make yourself at home. I’m afraid two men make for poor hosts, but we’ll do our best.”
He was already focused back on the newspaper when I managed a small thank-you.
Peter steered me out. “I can make eggs,” he said.
I watched him at the stove and listened to the symphony of the kitchen. The ticking of the toaster, the smack of the eggshells against the pan, the sizzle of butter, the various taps and clinks of spatulas and plates and glasses of orange juice. But somehow it all rang hollow, like the cellos were missing. I felt the losses in our lives compound and expand until they filled the room. Lost parents, lost innocence, lost homes, lost security. When Peter slid a plate in front of me, a tear tumbled down my cheek and betrayed me.
“What’s wrong?”
I wasn’t going to cry here. I wasn’t going to be some hysterical female in this cold male house. I kept my feelings locked deep within my chest where, despite my practiced indifference, they had been slowly poisoning me for months.
“Robin, she’s going to be fine.”
I shook my head.
“She will,” he said.
Couldn’t he see? Didn’t those naked shelves gnaw at him? Didn’t the empty nails snag him as he walked through these rooms? How had he managed to continue living here when the life of this house was gone? Why didn’t he leave, abandon this place like the Grays had abandoned the old house beyond the cemetery one by one?
When things are out of your control, sometimes you do dumb things, just to show yourself you can do something.
I stood up. “Where’s my suitcase?”
“It’s in the guest room. Why?”
“We’re going to see my mom.”
19
Now
The morning of the book drive is the first time I’ve been back to Kennedy High School since I left Sussex. Even after I moved back to River City and started the store, I rarely crossed the river and never went within a mile of the school. To do so seemed dangerous somehow, like ice fishing in March. Virginia Woolf had drowned herself in March 1941 in the River Ouse after returning to her own Sussex in England, having been driven from two separate homes by Nazi bombs and driven mad—by what? A childhood trauma? The loss of so many dear friends? The deaths of her parents?
When I step out of Sarah’s car onto the cracked blacktop parking lot, nostalgia and fear grumble in my stomach like the river in springtime. The asphalt seems solid enough, but that’s probably what the guy with the blue pickup had thought about the ice. It’s a warm morning. Perhaps the present is only a thin crust that might break apart beneath my feet at any moment, allowing the river beneath to sweep me inescapably back into the past. If I walked to the football field right now, those boys might be there in dirty red practice jerseys, Peter among them. He would look up and notice me as he did then, and we would start over and I would be fourteen again.
“Why are you just standing there?” Sarah says. “Come on. We only have an hour to get everything in place before this thing starts.”
I follow her across the parking lot to a patch of lawn north of the main entrance. She snaps out the card table legs, flips it over, and affixes a poster to the front with masking tape. I stand dumbly, staring at the red mites running across the Spam bricks, waiting for orders.
Ryan eases a small rental truck parallel to the sidewalk and jumps down from the driver’s seat. “Balloons are in back.” He rolls open the back door of the truck to reveal dozens of helium balloons attached to weights. Grabbing a few, he trots off to place them at the entrance of the parking lot.
Sarah positions some more around the table and on either side of the truck, then puts some in her car. “I’m going to go put some of these at a few strategic corners. You and Ryan get the sign on the truck. There’s duct tape in that bag.”
Happy for a clear task, I scramble onto the hood of the truck, then the cab, then the box. Ryan tosses a folded sheet up to me. The sign is secured too quickly and I’m back on the ground with nothing to do. A little breeze sneaks behind the sheet, rippling the painted dinosaur and the words, “BOOK DRIVE! Build Our dREADnoughtus! Save Our Bookstore!”
“Did she really need that many exclamation points?” I ask.
Ryan laughs. “You know Sarah. Did you bring your little dinosaur?”
I pull the model out and place him on the table between a box for monetary donations and a stack of informational flyers Sarah had picked up from the copy shop this morning. On one side they explained the struggle of the independent bookstore, the symbolism of the dinosaur we had chosen to build for our ArtPrize entry, and how we would use the prize money if we won. On the other side was a coupon for 25 percent off at Brick & Mortar Books. I had put the flyers info-side up. Sarah had flipped them over to show the coupon.
Dawt Pi arrives in a car driven by her pastor’s wife, the backseat stacked with boxes of donuts, the trunk full of collapsed cardboard boxes she has spent the last week begging off of every business in town. Sarah returns from her balloon errand, and we all get busy putting the boxes together. Now all we need are books, which start to roll in a few minutes after nine o’clock.
“I’ve had these for years,” one woman says. “I’ve put them in every garage sale I’ve had and they never seem to sell.”
I can immediately see why. Most of them seem to be her college textbooks, outdated psychology books, touchy-feely counseling pamphlets, and books on guided meditation. The covers are all typical of the late 1970s. I thank her, hand her a flyer, and offer her a donut.
“My daughter read all these,” a man says of a box of well-loved romance novels.
“She doesn’t want them?” I ask.
“I’ve been telling her to get these out of the basement for eight years. She’s had her chance.” He gratefully accepts a powdered donut and walks a few steps away to read the flyer I’ve pressed into his hand.
Several more cars roll in, most bearing at least one box or paper grocery bag full of books, a few with half a trunk load. I sift through them all, looking for gems I might want to save from use in the Dreadnoughtus, but find little worth keeping aside. Most of these books are not alive. They have not stood the passage of time. They do not still burn in the hearts of those who have read them. It’s unlikely any of those readers could pull the names of the protagonists from memory. They are merely inert paper and ink, and I doubt very much they could live again. Like old Farley. Like the frog we dissected in eighth-grade science. Like Emily Flynt.
How much time does my father have left? Stays of execution don’t last forever. Some last only a day, some last a few months, but almost all are simply buying time. Most of those convicted are executed anyway. Peter’s long-ago words trip through my mind. You might regret it if you didn’t take the opportunity to talk to him before . . .
We’ve collected from perhaps a dozen people when the remote news crew from WRST rolls in and starts getting their equipment set up. My palms are already sweating. The reporter who alights from the van is the same woman Dawt Pi pushed out of the store a few months ago. I can tell by the way Dawt Pi looks at her that she recognizes her too. I take a slow, deep breath. Let it out. Ignore the damp feeling under my arms and at my hairline. I force my feet to move and approach the woman with a pleasant smile arranged on my face. I’ll pretend that I have never seen her before in my life, and because I pretend, she’ll pretend. And that’s how we’ll both get through this.
“Hi, I’m Robin Dickinson of Brick & Mortar Books.” I hold out my moist hand to her.
The woman pauses a moment before she decides to play along. She grips my hand in a firm shake and smiles broadly. “Winnie Myers, WRST. Thanks for inviting us out today.” She wipes my sweat off her hand on the back of her skirt. “We’ll be live this morning on the eleven o’clock show, so no second takes, okay?”
I nod my understanding, though the blood coursing through my ears muffles her voice. A few more fake pleasantries are exchanged before the camera is turned on me and Winnie Myers, standing by the truck. The cameraman says, “And we’re on in five, four,” and silently finishes the countdown with his fingers. Winnie’s anticipatory smile looks more and more like a grimace the closer he gets to one. Then he points at her.
“This is Winnie Myers on location in the Kennedy High School parking lot in Sussex, where Robin Windsor, owner and operator of River City’s Brick & Mortar Bookstore, is running a book drive for a project of ‘literary’ proportions. Robin, tell us what you’re doing out here today.”
Winnie turns the microphone and her bright white teeth on me. She said Windsor. I am Robin Windsor. I am exposed. I am standing before an oncoming train, unable to lift my leaden feet.
I see Sarah’s upraised thumbs and urging eyes, Dawt Pi’s calm smile, Ryan’s relaxed posture and nodding head. I focus my mind on the talking points I spent the past week memorizing and hear myself speak.
“Today we’re collecting used books from people around the area to be used in a special project for Brick & Mortar Books. We’re entering a very large piece of art in the ArtPrize contest that’s held in Grand Rapids, and we’re asking residents to be a part of that by donating their used books, which we’ll be using to build an animatronic dinosaur called a Dreadnoughtus.”
“Wow! And can you give us an idea of what this dinosaur looks like?”
I hold up the prototype that Ryan created for me. “This model gives you an idea of how it will look, only we intend to make it full size, which is about eighty-five feet from nose to tail.”
“Amazing. Obviously you’re not doing this on your own. Tell us about your team.”
“I’m grateful to have the support and expertise of local artist Sarah Kukla, my friend and coworker Dawt Pi Lian, and Ryan Miller, who is a teacher at Kennedy High and coaches the Science Olympiad team, which is playing an integral role in designing and building the inner skeletal structure. We’re also the happy recipients of building materials from Neometallum Incorporated, which is providing the high-tech lightweight metal tubing for the skeleton, and Mid-Michigan Robotics Corporation, which has agreed to provide the materials necessary to bring this dinosaur to life.”
“I see. And what will you do with the money if you win?”
“The bulk of the money will be used to pay bills and back taxes at Brick & Mortar Books, make some building improvements and renovations, and refresh our stock. We’re the only remaining independent used bookstore in the area, and times have been tough over the past several years. In order to keep operating and keep serving River City readers, we need more resources. I’ll also be making a donation to the Kennedy High School Science Olympiad team.”
Winnie turns away from me to address the camera. “Okay, folks, get into your basements and attics and bring your old books to Kennedy High School in Sussex today before four o’clock or tomorrow from noon to four. And then get out to Brick & Mortar Books at 1433 Midway Street on River City’s west side. I’m Winnie Myers with this Round About Town report.”
“And cut,” says the cameraman.
Winnie finally sheaths her teeth. “I think that went well. We’ll also run it at six and eight.”
“You got my name wrong.”
Winnie pastes a surprised look on her face. “Did I?” She walks back to the news van.
Ryan puts his arm around my shoulders, pats twice, and lets it drop back to his side. “Nice job, Robin.”
“Thanks.” I let out a long breath, dizzy from the soliloquy. “I’m glad that’s over.”
Winnie emerges from the back of the news van with a big box of books. “We took up a donation at the station and managed to get a few boxes.”
“Thank you,” I struggle to say. “That was thoughtful.”
“Unfortunately there are some kind of smutty ones in here. I don’t know who put them in—I have my suspicions—but I figured you could put them on the top where no one would see them. There are two more boxes in the van.”
“Let me help,” Ryan says as he trots off.
All day the stream of books ebbs and flows, flush one moment, dry the next, and by four o’clock we’re all done in. We’ve made a decent haul, but it doesn’t look to me like it could possibly begin to cover such a large dinosaur. Still, it’s a start. By five we’re packed and ready to go to Ryan’s house to watch ourselves on the six o’clock news.
As Kennedy High School recedes in the side-view mirror, I feel as though I accomplished something far more important today than simply gathering building materials. I survived. I dipped my toe into the raging river of the past and somehow managed not to get swept away.
“What’s the weirdest book you saw today?” Sarah asks as she arranges pizza and chips on Ryan’s coffee table.
“Knitting with Dog Hair,” Ryan says.
“Ew!” Sarah says. “Mine was Psi High. The cover had a hand that had an eyeball in it, and three of the fingers were chunky naked people.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “There was so much to choose from. I think we’re doing the world a favor by getting some of these out of circulation.”
We look to Dawt Pi for her answer.
“I saw a book of fat babies dressed like bugs and cabbages and things. It was cute. But strange. You know?”
“Yeah, we know.” Ryan chuckles.
“Shh! Here it comes,” Sarah says, waving her hand at us and turning up the sound on the TV.
“Now we go to Winnie Myers with a story about a local business in crisis and the gargantuan effort one woman is making in order to save it.”
The interview appears on screen, and I am happy to see that my hair looks fairly under control, there are no sweat marks showing through my shirt, and I’m not stumbling over my words, though I probably should have put on some makeup as Sarah kept insisting on the drive there. I’m chagrined to see that I winced visibly when Winnie said my real name.
It finishes far quicker than I remember it taking to film. Back in the newsroom, the anchor says, “If you missed the book drive today, never fear. As Winnie said, you can donate your books tomorrow between noon and four o’clock. And if you can’t make it out then, you can still do your part to build that massive dinosaur by dropping your used books off at Brick & Mortar Books at 1433 Midway Street in River City.”
A shot of the store appears on screen. There. That wasn’t so bad.
“Regular viewers may remember the store from our coverage of the River City connection to the case of former senator Norman Windsor, whose bizarre saga continues as calls to reopen the case are being made. Brick & Mortar Books owner Robin Windsor is the senator’s daughter. Now we turn to Steve Bartkowski for weather.”
All the breath leaves my body. Ryan flips off the TV. No one says anything for a moment.
“All publicity is good publicity,” Sarah says. “It’ll bring more people in and it’ll bring more books in.”
Sarah and Dawt Pi help Ryan clean up the plates and cups as I stare into space, wondering what Monday will bring. They say their goodbyes and head out to the car.
I turn to Ryan at the door. “Thanks again. For everything you’re doing. If it weren’t for you . . . well, I think we both know it wouldn’t happen.”
He gives me a melancholy smile. “No problem.”
“So, Fred says we can start moving materials into the marina. I can help you unload all the books tomorrow after the drive.”
“Sure.” He puts his hand on the door, almost around me. “See you tomorrow.”
I don’t know why I wish he would actually touch my shoulder. Maybe so I could be present in this moment rather than obsessing about the moments that have passed and those still to come. But he doesn’t. I walk into the still-bright evening sun and get into the car. I look back to the house. In the place where Ryan stood is a closed door.
