The Words Between Us, page 9
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said. You seem to really care about his opinion.”
“Yeah?” Peter prompted.
“I mean, do you want to go to the University of Michigan and play football?”
“I could do a lot worse.”
“Are you planning on being a pro football player then?”
Peter shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“What?”
“It just seems like people who become pros in a sport have a lot more drive. Like they don’t have any maybes, you know? So maybe you were meant to do something else.”
Peter didn’t speak again until the ship had passed and the bridge had lowered enough that we could see the cars waiting on the other side. “What was your father like?” he asked.
I didn’t care for this turnaround. But if I was going to be critical of Peter’s relationship with his father, perhaps I ought to be more open about mine.
“Is.”
“Is?”
“What is my father like. He’s still alive.”
The red and white arms went up, the dinging bell fell silent, and the red lights switched to green.
“Okay, then what is your father like?”
“Ruthless.”
His head swiveled toward me. “What do you mean?”
Cars honked behind us.
“I think they want you to go,” I said.
Peter threw the car back in drive, and we crossed the bridge over the rolling wake the freighter had left lapping at the rivershore. On the other side he parked in a video store lot and turned to face me. “What do you mean, ‘ruthless’?”
“You know, cruel, brutal, merciless. That sort of thing.” I smiled. “I’m pretty sure that’s a vocab word you should be familiar with by your senior year of high school.”
“Did he hurt you? Is that why you’re living here with your cousin?”
“He never hurt me.”
“Your mom?”
“Not that I know of.”
I savored the bewildered expression on Peter’s face. It might be the last time he looked at me without pity or disgust. For all the wild stories I’d spread about myself, I’d noticed that there, hidden among the lies, the truth had already seeped out. Peter had included it in his list of rumors about me back in October. The only reason it didn’t get much attention was that there were so many other stories floating around that were just as outrageous. Of all of them, though, it really was the most plausible. Maybe Peter wouldn’t be all that surprised to find it was true. He was my best friend. He deserved to know. Anyway, secrets want to be told, otherwise they wouldn’t be so hard to keep.
“My father is Norman Windsor.”
He looked like he couldn’t place the name, so I helped him out.
“He’s a senator—was a senator. He killed three people to cover up embezzling money from arms sales. My mom was arrested as an accessory or something a few months after my dad. His trial is going on right now. She pleaded guilty, so she’s already in prison.”
I paused, waiting for him to react, but his face was a frozen mask of confusion.
“So, maybe your dad’s not so bad compared to some,” I quipped. “But it still seems like he’s pushing you to do something more for him than for you.”
It took another moment for Peter to find his voice. “Are you serious?”
I nodded.
“You’re criticizing my dad for wanting me to go to a particular college when your dad killed three people?”
“See, this is why I didn’t want to talk about it before. It’s not my fault my dad is a monster.”
Peter stared at me. “You’re making this up. Like all the other crap?”
I looked into his perfect blue eyes. He didn’t want to believe this. I could take it back easy as that, push the reset button. Everything would go back to what it was. Sweet anonymity.
I forced a breezy smirk across my face. “Yeah. I’m screwing with you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Geez, Robin. You’re insane.”
We drove in silence a few shabby blocks to a street that sloped toward the river. I felt as run-down as the houses we passed.
“This side of town is where people settled first,” Peter informed me, “before the lumber boom and all those mansions got built up over on Centerline Road on the east side. Now it’s mostly bars. This is the place to be if you want to get smashed.”
Despite its seedy reputation, Midway Street was beautiful. Brick and stone buildings with tall, skinny second-story windows lined the street. It resembled the streets on the other side of the river, but there was something different about the west side. Something older, earthier, a bit unfashionable. It felt like an undiscovered country. Like a juicy little secret you wanted to share with people.
We parked and walked until we found a storefront that wasn’t a bar. Mystic Rhythms Aromatherapy Shop.
“Let’s go in there,” I said. “I need something to cover up the smell of old cigarette smoke. I’m living in an ashtray.”
When the door shut behind us, we were immediately assaulted by the thick odor of sandalwood incense and something that reminded me of the stoners smoking out on the corner during lunch hour.
“Oy,” Peter said. “I think I’d rather smell like cigarette smoke than this.”
I walked over to a shelf lined with scented candles and essential oils. A heavyset woman with long curly hair streaked with gray and about thirty filmy scarves around her neck drifted out from behind the counter. She wore a long skirt in shades of turquoise and jade, a flowing white top, and chunky brown sandals despite it being December. Her toenails were far too long. She looked to be in her forties—or maybe her sixties. It was hard to say.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” Her voice was like feathers.
“I’m looking for a gift for an older lady. Something to make the house smell nice.”
She escorted me around the store, explaining the origin and properties of every product and making wild claims about how much each would change the recipient’s life. I wanted to ask her if she had anything that would change my life.
Peter excused himself to wait outside. “This place is giving me a headache.”
After twenty minutes I finally convinced the woman that I had made my choice. I assured her that I did not need Sensual Touch Massage Oil or healing crystals or a gold statue of Buddha, and walked out into the crisp air.
Peter was leaning against the wall, hands in his coat pockets, breath fogging. “I was wondering if I would have to send in a search party to extract you.”
We started down the road.
“She talked so slow.”
Peter laughed. “Do you have everything you need for Martha?”
“I have enough. I hardly know the woman.”
He gave me a sidelong glance. “So how did you really end up out here living with a woman you hardly know? For real.”
“Peter, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Whatever. I bet it’s so boring and vanilla that no one would care, and that’s why you won’t tell the truth.”
“Believe whatever you want.” I put my hand out to stop him. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Look at this place.”
The yellow-brick building at the corner of Midway and Chestnut was empty. It sported a large front display window, a heavy wooden framed door fitted with leaded glass panels, and a large black-and-yellow-striped awning, torn and faded and filthy.
“That is so cool.”
When I looked to Peter for confirmation of my assessment, he raised his eyebrows doubtfully. I ignored him and pressed my face against the window. Inside, the remains of some doomed business sat silently beneath a patina of dust. A chair lay on its side. Old candy machines stood waiting for small, sticky hands to insert quarters. A few tables and shelves sat empty. It was beautiful, abandoned, and full of possibility.
“What would you put there if you owned it?” Peter asked.
I didn’t even have to think about it. “A bookstore.”
He nodded and stuck out his bottom lip. “With a coffee shop?”
I screwed up my face. “Nah. All the walls would be floor-to-ceiling shelves, and a ton of shelves all throughout so you can hardly fit down each aisle. Like a rabbit warren.”
“Sounds dark and claustrophobic.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is cozy.”
“But Barnes & Noble is really open, you know? With lots of space and lots of light. And a coffee shop.”
“Then why would my bookstore need to be that way? There’s already a Barnes & Noble in Saginaw. My store wouldn’t be like that.”
“But that’s what people like.”
“Not me. My store would be more like an old library, I think. I would have lots of used books. Ones people had written in, like your mom’s.”
“No one wants to buy books with stuff written in them.”
“Why not? It gives them character. It gives them a life of their own. I like that all your mom’s books are written in. It’s like I can talk to her even though I never got a chance to get to know her.”
“I guess you could sell those books in your store then. Look at that. Already have a start on your new business venture.”
“Never. I’d never sell those books. They’re friends.”
Peter gave me a look. “You’re so odd.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Take it however you like.”
We walked on down the street toward the river. I wished Peter would put his arm around my shoulders, but he didn’t. Ever since our interrupted kiss on the night of the accident, he’d kept me at arm’s length, as though to get too close might have ill effects on the lives of others.
“Does your dad know you’re giving away all of your mom’s books?”
“I told you, he already got rid of most of her stuff anyway. Plus I’m not giving them away, am I? I’m selling them.”
“For bad poetry.”
“I think it’s good. They’re short, which is good for me. It’s kind of turned into a fun game.”
“A game?”
“It’s like a treasure map. If I read closely and put all the pieces together, it should lead me to the real you, right?”
We stepped out onto a wooden dock devoid of boats. They were all in storage. Ice gripped the pylons where they met the still water of the empty marina.
“I guess that all depends on you,” I said. “How well did your English teachers do teaching you to interpret poetry?”
“I don’t know. Mom was always trying to get me to take more of an interest in it.” He kicked a stone into the water. It broke through the thin layer of ice and sank to the bottom. “I think I must have disappointed her as much as my brother disappointed my dad.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I dunno. Just a feeling. She never smiled anymore. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the more I thought about it later . . . Anyway, your poems are good.”
I wasn’t really surprised to hear that Emily Flynt didn’t smile. If my poems were a map to the real me, the notes she’d made in her books told the story of someone who was in a far darker place than her former students might have assumed. Whenever her name came up at Kennedy High, students and teachers alike painted a picture of a bubbly woman with endless energy and creativity. But the passages she underlined in her books told another story altogether. It wasn’t hard to see that Mrs. Flynt might not have been the effervescent woman she so successfully projected.
I just wondered why I seemed to be the only one who could read between the lines.
13
Now
As I explain Sarah’s plan to save Brick & Mortar Books to Dawt Pi, I can’t help but feel utterly ridiculous, especially as we click through the photos of past ArtPrize entries online. There were plenty of pieces constructed of random items—bizarre fabrications one might loosely term “art”—but none of those pieces seemed to have won either the juried prize or the people’s choice. People’s choice winners tended to be enormous and highly realistic drawings and paintings of people or animals or landscapes. Stuff that took a lot of time and talent but didn’t always get a lot of love from the fine art community. The juried winners seemed closer to what Sarah might dream up—often strange and very artsy and not really made with the masses in mind. I couldn’t envision someone putting any of the pieces in a foyer or living room. But people who knew something about art apparently thought they were pretty impressive.
“So it is a dinosaur?” Dawt Pi says.
“Yes, made entirely of books. It’s art, but it’s also a metaphor for the printed book and the local independent bookstore in general. It’s actually extremely clever.”
“But where do we get the books?” Dawt Pi asks.
“From the store. We have a ton of used mass market books that have been here for years. No one’s ever going to buy those, and selling them doesn’t make us any money. We may as well use them as materials for the sculpture.”
“So we use up the books to save the store.”
I nod.
“And then what do we sell?”
“The rest of them. It won’t use up all the books. We use them to make our ArtPrize entry, and then we’ll have more shelf space for new inventory that might sell better. I’m thinking we should expand our cookbooks—people love big, glossy, photo-filled cookbooks, and they have a higher profit margin than used mystery novels from the nineties anyway.”
Cookbooks? Has it really come to that? Next thing I know I’ll be facing celebrity memoirs and self-help gurus.
Dawt Pi nods. “Dinosaurs were big.”
“Some of them. But some were small.”
“So we will make a small dinosaur?”
“Well . . .” I hesitate. “It can’t be too small, or it won’t have enough of an impact. We need people to be wowed when they see it—overwhelmed. It has to be big enough to do that. Sarah said it should be life-size, but it’s not like we could do like a brachiosaurus or a diplodocus or anything. Maybe a stegosaurus?”
A quick perusal of an old set of World Book encyclopedias that have been on a high shelf for at least five years reveals some handy charts showing the relative sizes of some of the more commonly known dinosaurs, comparing them to a six-foot man. Even the stegosaurus seems prohibitively large.
“You are crazy.” Dawt Pi laughs. “How can we make one of those? How do we get up that high? How do we keep the books together? This is not like the castle in the window.”
“Well, yeah, there are some technical considerations. We can’t stack books without somehow securing them in place. We would have to construct some sort of skeleton out of wood or metal. And we would have to make it so that it could be partially dismantled so we could move it in a truck to Grand Rapids.”
“Who will pay for the wood or the metal? And who will pay for the truck? Who will pay for the glue?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We’re in the early stages of development. Sarah had the initial idea, so maybe we should ask her if she’s thought any of these details through.”
But Sarah has never been one to think things through. Not in high school when she climbed into the car with a drunken Brad Ellis and got in that terrible crash. Not when she cheated on her husband and ended up pregnant and then divorced and raising the kid on her own with only her mom to help her. Not when she goes out drinking every weekend at the bars down the street, drunk-texts her boss, and goes home with guys who only want one thing from her. But no matter how many bad decisions she makes, Sarah Kukla has been a friend to me for the past seven years—years when I really needed one. She may not be a detail person, but she is passionate about art, and if some of that passion and excitement can come my way and benefit the store, I am all for it.
“Let’s see what she has to say,” I suggest.
“Where will we build this thing?”
“We’ll figure it out,” I assure her.
“Americans always think there is an answer to everything.”
“That’s because there is. That’s how we do things. You dream big and work hard and make it happen.”
“I work hard.” She doesn’t need to say more.
“I know you do. Believe me, I know. Sometimes it takes longer than you want it to, but if you keep trying, eventually you succeed.”
She looks like she wants to believe me. And truthfully, I wish I were not such a hypocrite. Because no matter how much I try to convince myself that I can make this life everything I want it to be, I haven’t really believed it, deep down believed it, since my father was taken away in handcuffs.
Dawt Pi nods and shrugs. “We will try it.”
With that, we get back to work. As I look at the shelves of books now, I don’t see stories or immortal authors or steadfast friends or conduits of some mysterious life-giving force. I see raw materials—bricks.
Late that night I meet up with Sarah at The Den. I had wanted to meet in my apartment, but she flatly refused.
“It’s Ultimate Darts Tournament Night. Come on. It will be fun.”
It will not be fun. It will be loud, crowded, and on the unintelligible side. But I give in, knowing that she often has better ideas when she’s slightly inebriated. At a high-top table beneath an enormous TV showing the winning keno numbers, Sarah considers my questions. I try to ignore the bodies that brush my shoulder as other people attempt to mingle.
“So what will hold all the books together? What’s inside?”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure about that,” Sarah says slowly. “I’m more of the big-idea person. But if you want help with actually making the thing work, we should ask Caleb. He’s great with that sort of thing.”
“Caleb is fifteen.”
“So? He’s in Science Olympiad. They build stuff all the time. He could probably make it so you could move its head and its tail with your mind if you wanted.”
“Let’s not get crazy. Did you have any ideas about where we could put this thing together? Does anyone have an empty pole barn?”
