Pages of Sin, page 5
“Carpet on the stairs blocks the sound,” he explained.
“You could’ve called out or something.”
He shrugged. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to see you up here.”
“We were just . . .” Mom feebly waved the clump of incense.
“That’s fine. I appreciate it.” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. “Wanda had plenty of her family’s rococo crap that could’ve been used to decorate this room, but I drew the line and luckily, she agreed with me.”
“You also drew the line at the office downstairs,” I said, then realized it made us sound like we were snooping. Oh, well, it was too late to try to pretend we weren’t.
He chuckled. “Now, that was Wanda’s idea. She thought I should have one room that was all mine. She used to stock my refrigerator with snacks and beers so I could watch my football games in peace. But most of the time, she ended up watching the games with me.”
“That’s nice,” Mom murmured.
Byron nodded. “Yeah, she always pretended to come in there to check out the view of the backyard, but I think she came to get away from the memories. And the obsessions.”
“Why did she . . . never mind.” Mom shook her head. “It’s none of my business.”
“Why did she wall herself off from the rest of the world?” he finished. “Or why did she kill herself?”
“Really, Byron,” Mom said in a rush. “We had no right to wander through your house. And now we’re bringing up bad memories for you. I think we’d better go now.”
“Anytime I think of Wanda,” Byron said in a hushed voice, “the memories are never bad.”
I sniffled back the tears I felt brewing, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“You know she dressed up every day?” he said. “Even when she was working in the garden. She was so beautiful. You remember, don’t you, Becky?”
“She was lovely,” Mom said.
“She greeted me every morning with one of those soft smiles,” he continued, his eyes warming at the memory. “Every afternoon when I came home from work, cocktails were poured, dinner was made. Despite what everyone thought, she was never depressed.” He chuckled. “She didn’t take drugs. Well, not until that last day.”
“Oh, Byron.” Mom walked right into his arms and they held on to each other for a long moment. Finally she stepped back. “Do you have someplace you can stay for a while? I hate to leave you alone here.”
“This is my favorite place in the world,” Byron said, his eyes clear again. “Please, Becky, don’t worry about me. I might give Marjorie a call. Maybe she and Elaine will go to dinner with me. It’s about time we all got together and made our peace once and for all.”
As he walked with us downstairs, Mom kept talking. “Did Marjorie visit Wanda very often?”
“Oh, sure,” Byron said. “She came by every few weeks, usually dropped off some books or brought some pastries or some kind of gift or goodie for Wanda.”
“That was nice of her,” I said as we reached the bottom of the stairs. But I couldn’t help wondering why Wanda allowed her sister into her home when she wouldn’t allow my mother to visit.
“Marjorie’s a nice gal,” he said. “She’s the one who found Wanda. She came over that last afternoon and saw her lying on her favorite chaise in the garden. She couldn’t wake her up. Tried to give her CPR, but it didn’t work. She went screaming out of the yard and down the street.”
“Poor Marjorie,” Mom said.
Byron sighed. “When she finally calmed down enough to talk to me, she kept saying, Why? Why?”
From the way he was staring at the walls and rambling on, it seemed that Byron was still mystified as to why Wanda had killed herself. “Marjorie said she’d called Wanda that morning to let her know she was coming by. Told her she was bringing her some new shoes. She did that sometimes. Wanda appreciated it.”
“Shoes?”
“Yeah. They were nice ones, too. All the Bradford girls have great taste in shoes.”
Byron continued talking but I was lost in my own thoughts. I felt so awful for him, knowing his wife must have suffered so much. But in another part of my mind (an admittedly shallow part of my mind), I knew that I never could have killed myself before checking out that cute new pair of shoes.
Chapter Five
That evening, I arrived at the library an hour early to set up the room for my book-repair class. It was good to see that the library was a quiet but busy hubbub of activity at this time of day. At the front desk, the assistant librarian handed me a copy of the sign-up sheet, then led the way upstairs to the meeting room. Not that I needed a guide; I knew my way around the Dharma Library probably better than the librarian who was giving me the “guest” spiel as we climbed the stairs.
In the nondescript community room, four long utility tables had been set up in a chevron pattern, all facing one long table at the front of the room. There were enough chairs for twenty attendees and I checked the list again.
“This is more chairs than we’ll need,” I said.
“Oh no, five more people signed up today,” the assistant said, grinning. “This is turning out to be one of our most popular events this month.”
“That’s great.” The more book lovers, the better, I thought. “Good thing I brought some extra supplies and tools.”
“Do you need help setting up?”
I checked my wristwatch. “No, thanks. I’ve got plenty of time to arrange things.”
She left the room and I pulled my small dolly over to the front table. I lifted the two boxes of Wanda’s books onto the table, then laid out and organized my tools and supplies in the particular order I liked them to be.
The busy work kept my mind from playing Byron’s words over and over in my mind. It was pretty obvious to me that Byron had still been deeply in love with his wife. Wanda must have known how he felt. So Marjorie had called her that morning to tell her she was coming over with a brand new pair of shoes. Had Wanda chosen that day to kill herself so that Marjorie would find her instead of Byron? Maybe she didn’t want Byron to be the one to find her because it would hurt him too much.
Any way you looked at it, Wanda’s death was heartbreaking. And it left me with more questions than answers.
I shook my head to get rid of all those sad thoughts. I’d completed setting up my own work area, so I moved to the attendees’ tables. At each place, I laid down a thick place mat that could double as a cutting board. On it, I placed a bundle of supplies and tools each person would use to complete the assignments I planned to give them.
It might sound odd, but this quiet time prior to the students arriving for class was one of my favorite parts of teaching. I preferred everything to be ordered and methodical and I think my attendees appreciated the attention to detail. I had tried in the past to give everyone free access to tools and supplies, but that had proven to be too chaotic, so I’d gone back to setting things up in my own orderly style. It’s not that I was a control freak. Not really. Oh, fine, I was a control freak, but it worked for me.
Once I finished laying everything out, I sat down at my table and studied the list of attendees. I found Robin’s name at the end of the list and was happy to know I would have a friend in the room.
One of the library assistants had typed up the list and next to each attendee’s name, they’d added either an occupation or the person’s reason for taking the class. Eight of them were library employees who were looking for ways to make their inventory last longer. The rest were simply book lovers. That makes sense, I thought with a smile. I qualified as one of those, too.
Two women strolled into the room and I stood up to greet them. “Hi, I’m Brooklyn Wainwright. Are you here for the book-repair class?”
“Yes,” the taller woman said. “I’m Celeste and this is Trudy.”
“Hi,” I said, popping open the packing boxes. “Come on over and pick out a book.”
“Cool,” Celeste said, and peeked into the box. “Some of these are beautiful.”
Trudy looked at me with an apologetic frown. “What did you say your name was? I didn’t catch it.”
“Call me Brooklyn,” I said, and added, “Thanks for reminding me.” She laughed, then nodded in approval as I pulled a sheet of name tag labels from my box of supplies, along with two markers. I quickly wrote my own name on one, peeled it off, and slapped it on my jacket. “We’re doing name tags.”
“Good idea,” Celeste said, and filled out tags for both of them. Then they perused the box of books for a few minutes while I checked my watch and wondered where everyone was.
“These look ratty enough,” Trudy said, grinning as she held up two faded classics. She looked around the room, then said, “Can we sit anywhere?”
I smiled. “Sure.”
Within twenty minutes, every student who’d signed up had arrived, including Robin, and my worries about having an empty classroom were over. There was the usual chattering while each chose a damaged book from the box and filled out a name tag.
Once everyone found seats, got comfortable, and introduced themselves to their neighbors, I moved out from behind the front table and waited as they grew quiet and attentive. I caught Robin’s gaze and smiled—and was abruptly hit with a wave of nervousness. I had to take a few quick breaths to calm down.
I’d never been nervous in front of a class before, so I blamed it on Robin’s presence. I decided I’d better avoid eye contact with her; otherwise I’d flub up everything and sound like a knucklehead.
“Let’s get started,” I said, then reintroduced myself and gave them an abbreviated version of my background in bookbinding. “Now, I know everybody hates this part of any class, but let’s take ten minutes and go around the room so each of you can tell us your name and briefly share what you hope to get out of the class.”
“That’s thirty seconds for each person,” an intense young fellow named James said, flashing a warning glance at his fellow attendees.
There were some mutterings and eye rolls aimed at James, but the introductions went smoothly and quickly. The eight librarians knew one another and all worked for the county. I asked if any of them worked in archives or preservation and thankfully, none of them did. Those archival people were an intimidating bunch who often thought they knew a lot more about book restoration than I did.
The last two attendees to introduce themselves were a retired couple named Sam and Rita. They had been holding hands during the other intros and now that it was their turn to talk, they laughed and giggled and patted each other’s hands as they finished each other’s sentences.
“We’re taking the class because we’re fledgling book collectors,” Rita said.
“Yeah,” Sam piped up. “We want to keep our books in good condition so we’re hoping to get some ideas here.”
“I promise you’ll get lots of great tips,” I assured them, then asked the question everyone else was probably wondering, too. “Are you two newlyweds?”
Sam grinned. “I guess it’s obvious, huh?”
“I guess.” Rita blushed as she nudged Sam with her elbow. “We were recently married after meeting up at our fiftieth high school reunion.”
“Ooh, how romantic!” Trudy cried, as everyone in the room applauded and congratulated them.
The cheers died down and I moved on to the first exciting topic of the evening: a brief primer on glue.
Holding up a small, familiar looking white plastic bottle, I said, “PVA glue, or polyvinyl acetate, is a book lover’s best friend. It’s sold almost everywhere. But beware, all white glue is not created equal. Be sure to look for the words ‘acid free’ on the label. That means it’s a certified pH-neutral adhesive.”
“Say what?” Sam said.
I smiled. “That’s a fancy way of saying that it won’t damage the paper in a book or cause it to turn yellow.”
Rather than try to describe the damage the wrong glue could cause, I passed around a book ravaged by a well-known adhesive that came in a tape dispenser. Wherever the tape had been used to repair tears, the paper underneath was stained a dirty, dark yellow. “That’s what happens if your adhesive isn’t pH neutral.”
“Gross,” said James, who’d announced earlier that he was a graduate student in engineering.
Next, I explained a few of the items I’d laid out at each of their places. “Along with PVA, these are the miracle tools of quick and dirty book repair. Most of them can probably be found in your kitchen.”
“Cool,” Trudy whispered.
I held up each one as I mentioned it. “Wax paper. You’ll need a few sheets to do most repairs. Next, a couple of thin bamboo skewers, the kind used for grilling veggies or kabobs. You can buy them at the supermarket in packets of forty or fifty.”
“We love kabobs,” Rita said brightly. “We go through those sticks like crazy.”
“Great,” I said. “And finally, you’ll need something to use as a weight. You can use a brick. Or a cast-iron frying pan. Something flat and heavy. And with these household items, you, too, can tighten a loose hinge on almost any book.”
There were some actual gasps and I laughed. “I know. It’s thrilling. Okay, here’s our first victim.” I used both hands to hold up an old cloth-covered book by its boards, causing the text block to hang down limply.
I walked along the rows of tables so everyone could get a good look at the damage.
“Are you avoiding me?” Robin whispered when I got close.
I leaned over and whispered, “Yes, you make me nervous.”
She grinned. “I feel the power.”
I rolled my eyes and kept walking.
“That’s just sad,” Ruby said, staring up at the droopy old book.
“Isn’t it?” I returned to the front of the room and glanced around, meeting all their riveted gazes—except for Robin’s, but I could hear her snickering. “Now I’m sure our librarians recognize this problem. Loose hinges. So many library books are checked out over and over again, then carelessly tossed into the return bins. Eventually, the hinges come loose, leaving the text block in danger of being torn away from the cover. So here’s how we fix it.”
I slid one of the bamboo skewers through the small opening in the glue bottle and pulled it out. “See how the glue is evenly distributed around the stick? Doing it this way allows for a perfect amount of glue, every time.”
Standing the book up in an open position, I inserted the glue-covered skewer inside the inner hinge of the front cover. I twirled the skewer a few times so that the glue was completely affixed to the inner paper, then pulled out the stick. I repeated the dipping, inserting and twirling action with the back hinge.
“Be careful not to get any glue on the spine itself,” I said, pointing to the space between the spine and text block. “Otherwise, the book won’t open and close properly.”
Then I grabbed two sheets of wax paper. “Slip one sheet inside the front cover and one inside the back. This will prevent any glue from sticking to the outside of the endpapers while the book is weighted down. Now close the book and take your bone folder . . .”
As I picked up the next tool, I paused and waited for the titters and giggles to subside.
“It’s made of bone,” I explained, holding it up for everyone to see. “It’s a great tool for smoothing cloth and pressing down paper folds. That’s why we call it a . . . bone . . . folder. See how much sense that makes? After you’ve said it a few times out loud, it won’t sound as funny. I hope.”
“Nope, still sounds funny,” Sam said, and everyone laughed.
I held up a popsicle stick and a tongue depressor. “If you don’t have a bone folder around the house, you could use one of these items.”
“Oh, that’s smart,” Celeste said.
“Or you can always use your finger,” I said, smiling.
“I have one of those,” Sam said.
We all laughed again. There was a comedian in every class.
I showed them how to run the edge of the bone folder in the hinges of our newly glued library book so that the hinge wouldn’t lose its crease as the glue dried. Finally, I laid another skewer into the creased hinge of both front and back covers so each would retain its groove, then weighted the book down. “In ten minutes, this book will be as good as new.”
The class applauded and I smiled. Book lovers are my favorite people.
“Okay, let’s move on.” I grabbed a random book from Wanda’s collection and held it up. “We’ll be repairing torn pages and ripped spines next. If you’ll look at the book you picked out from the box, you’ll find something about it that needs repairing. Whatever you find, I’ll show you how to do a quick fix.”
“But you gave me a perfect book,” Robin said, then frowned. “Oh wait. This page is ripped almost in half. Darn, I was hoping a perfect book would make me teacher’s pet.”
Some people nearby chuckled. I pinned her with a look as I walked over to see her book. “Oh, that’s a nasty tear.”
“The nastier the better, I guess.”
“Definitely.” I glanced around at the class. “I tried to pick out books that had something wrong with them. So some of you will have torn pages, some ripped spines, a couple with loose hinges. Go through them carefully and then we’ll do some quickie fixes on the spot.”
There was general chatter as everyone began to thumb through their books.
A guy named Rob sounded horrified. “This page is completely falling out.”
“Excellent,” I said.
“I’ve got a bad thingie-ma-jig,” Celeste said, holding her book out for me to see.
Trudy chuckled. “That’s gotta hurt.”
There were a few more laughs as I took the book and examined it. “Oh, you’re right, that’s really bad. You’ve got a flapping spine.”
Celeste gave Trudy a pointed look. “See? I told you there was something wrong.”
Trudy snorted. “You’ve got something wrong, all right.”
“This is easily fixed,” I said, overlooking their friendly banter as I walked up and down the rows of tables showing everyone Celeste’s flapping spine, flicking the loose material back and forth so they could all see the problem. “Now remember, we’re talking quick and dirty repairs here. If this were a rare antiquarian book, I would cut off my arm before I’d use any of these tips. Is everyone clear on that?”
