The Words Between Us, page 8
She leans her painting against the counter. “You sure? Dawt Pi could pick it up tomorrow.”
She could. I don’t need to get it today. I could open two of them tomorrow. But I don’t want to wait. When there's no mail on Sundays I feel anxious all day. I’m starting to depend on Peter’s books, just as I had when I received them the first time, just as my grandmother had depended on cigarettes and The Professor depends on his morning paperback.
“I’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course I’ll do it,” Sarah says, sitting on the stool behind the cash register. “I just didn’t know if you really wanted to leave.”
I laugh lightly. “It’s not like I never leave. What do you think I eat up there? I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
She doesn’t sound sure, and I’m not as sure as I make myself out to be. I have spent so much of my life becoming invisible that it’s a shock to the senses when I go out in public and people don’t walk right through me. I do go grocery shopping out of necessity, but always late at night when there are few other customers and few clerks, and I always use the self-checkout.
“You can take my car,” Sarah offers.
“I’ll walk. I could use the exercise and the fresh air.”
“Wait, what about this bird?”
“He won’t bother you.”
Sarah looks unconvinced.
“I’ll only be twenty minutes.”
It’s a short walk to the post office. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten the mail that I have to double-check I’ve got the right box before I turn the key in the lock. Two slim envelopes wait for me. Bills. I tuck them in my purse and head for the long counter behind which two workers stand ready to serve. I make my way to a short, plump woman with frizzy hair and large glasses about twenty years out of date, which is River City’s fashion sweet spot.
“What can I do for ya, hon?”
“Any packages for Brick & Mortar Books?”
The woman narrows her eyes. “Where’s Dorothy?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where’s that little gal Dorothy?”
“You mean Dawt Pi?” I ask, carefully separating the syllables and pronouncing every letter.
“The little Oriental girl.”
“That’s Dawt Pi. She’s in her twenties.”
“Huh?”
“She’s in her twenties. She’s not a little girl. And people generally say Asian now.”
The woman gives me a suspicious look. “She sick?”
“No, I gave her the day off. Do you have any packages for me?”
She eyeballs me. “I’ll have to see some ID. I can’t hand out packages willy-nilly to people. And I don’t recognize you.”
“I recognize her,” says the tall bald man with fish eyes who has been watching our exchange from his perch at the next station. “Didn’t you see her on the news?” At her blank look he adds, “You know,” as if his insistence will retroactively change whether or not she had been watching the news a few weeks earlier. He turns to me. “Windsor, right?”
“Well, I’ll go take a look in the back.” The woman waddles off before I can correct her on the name or hand her the ID she insisted she needed, and I am left trying to avoid eye contact with the bald man in the preposterously short, government-issue tie.
I pretend to read a pamphlet on passports. Maybe when I sell the store I’ll have enough money to get out of here, dye my hair blonde, start somewhere fresh. Again. My own personal witness protection program. The notion is as daunting as it is enticing.
The woman waddles back in. “Sorry, hon, but I got nothing for any Windsor.”
I hold out my ID again. “It’s actually Dickinson. Robin Dickinson.”
“That your maiden name?” she says without looking at it.
“Yes,” I lie. It’s too much to explain.
She sighs and heads for the back again. The man is still staring at me.
Suddenly a tiny spark of the plucky person I once was pops in my chest. I whip my head up and stare him down. His bulgy eyes maintain their target for a moment until all at once it seems his brain catches up. He looks away and busies himself with some papers.
I turn, triumphant, to the round woman puffing her way back to the counter. She plops a padded manila envelope onto the desk in front of me. “There ya go, hon.”
“Thank you.”
The bald man does not look up as I pass, but I’m sure as I push through the door that he is watching my exit.
Out on the sidewalk I check the postmark. Colorado. One state closer than the last. What is this game Peter’s playing? I pull the red strip on the envelope and slide the book out. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I remember exactly what Peter said to me back then. “Figured if that one by Emily Brontë was good, this one would be too.”
I remember wondering as I read it whether he saw himself as the older Mr. Rochester, saw me as Jane. And I remember the chill that ran up my spine as I realized that the only underlined passages in the entire book were those involving Mr. Rochester’s mad arsonist of a wife.
I open the cover, and sure enough, my payment poem is there.
A road drawn taut between horizons
moves me ever on
from one sun to the next,
suns that can’t discern the rising
from the sinking down,
beginning from the end.
Flanked by fences delineating
my life’s boundaries,
I walk along to then
when now is barely past being.
There’s no wandering,
no asking why? or when?
Whether custom or misfortune’s hand
propels me onward,
results are much the same:
I exist upon this hostile land,
walking dirt packed hard,
with nothing—save my name.
Perhaps someday I will come upon
a gap in the fence,
a burnt-out opening,
and light out, stumbling, on my own
to find evidence
I’m one of the living.
I close the book and quickly walk back to the store, memory at my heels.
Inside, I don’t see Sarah at the desk or The Professor on his perch. What I do see is a large and elaborate manor constructed of chunky mass market romance and mystery novels. There are towers and parapets, gates and a grand hall lined with the spines of books that have a figure of some sort on them, like two stately rows of sexy statues. I find The Professor inside the structure, pacing back and forth before his throne of books.
Sarah appears with an armful of additional building materials. “You’re back! How’d it go?”
“What is all this?” I wave my hand at the castle of books.
Sarah shrugs. “I got bored. And that bird kept moving around and running at me. I think he’s disturbed. I didn’t want to touch him, so I thought I’d at least contain him. Sorry. I’ll put them all back.”
“No, it’s cool. Do you think that would fit in the front window? That could really draw attention.”
Sarah looks doubtful. “I’d have to take it all apart and build it again.”
“I’ll help. You were going to have to take it all down anyway.” I start to remove the two books closest to me.
“Not there!” Sarah shouts, but it’s too late. Half the castle comes tumbling down. The Professor flaps and swears and poops on the countertop. “Those were load-bearing books,” Sarah says unnecessarily.
We clean up the mess, placate The Professor with cashews, and move all the books to the window to build the castle bigger and better than before. Sarah directs the design, creating a stunning gold and pink and ivory castle surrounded by a moat of blue and peopled with the dashing, bare-chested heroes and desperate, clutching heroines of old romance novel cover art. When it’s all done, we stand on the sidewalk and gaze in at our beautiful creation.
“I should have had you doing my displays all along.”
“You’re absolutely right,” she says. “Maybe you could get someone from the paper to come down here and take a picture and get a little free advertising.”
I nod despite my distaste for members of the news media. “That’s a good idea.” I reach for the door, but Sarah grabs my arm.
“Oh, Robin! I know how we can save your store.”
12
Then
Sarah should be coming back to school soon.”
Though I never asked about her, Peter faithfully updated me on Sarah Kukla’s progress. We were strolling through downtown River City on an unseasonably warm and sunny December afternoon, shopping for the few people in our lives to whom we owed Christmas presents, people neither of us actually knew very well.
“She’ll be walking soon.”
I was glad for her recovery, but I didn’t want to talk about her. She was on Peter’s mind entirely too much. When he visited her, did he talk about me?
“What did you think of The Yellow Wallpaper?” I asked.
It took Peter a moment to switch gears. “I thought it was pretty good. Kind of creepy, in a good way.” He put a hand out to stop my forward motion. “Let’s go in here.”
We stepped through the fake snow–encrusted door of St. Macarius & Sons candy shop. The smell of roasting nuts filled the air. The shelves were lined with every kind of chocolate and candy known to man. If I found nothing else for her, I could at least get my grandmother some chocolate turtles and gourmet jelly beans. We drifted down the colorful rows of gummy fruit shapes, butterscotch, black licorice, and lemon drops. I thought of the mayhem The Professor could spread were he let loose in such a colorful, textural place.
Peter bent over and snagged a bag of burnt peanuts from a low shelf. “Why is it that there are so many crazy women in these books?” he asked. “Aren’t there normal, happy women in the world that don’t do completely irrational things?”
I was impressed that he had noticed that particular trend in the books we had been reading of late. His mother had obviously noticed it. In any book that included a woman who appeared depressed or insane, Emily Flynt had underlined, double underlined, and scribbled little notes that seemed to me to indicate some level of solidarity.
“The story tells you why,” I said.
He picked up a bag of gummy orange slices, then put it back down. “What, because she couldn’t write? That’s what drove her crazy?”
“No. Not just that. Isn’t it pretty obvious? Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Bluest Eye, The Color Purple, The Bell Jar—they all tell stories of women controlled by men or circumstance or society’s expectations. Everyone is telling them to act or look a certain way, and they don’t fit the mold. At some point everyone breaks, I guess. They want to be in control of their own lives. When things are out of your control, sometimes you do dumb things, just to show yourself you can do something.”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t buy that. I don’t know any women who are oppressed or controlled by men. That doesn’t happen anymore. Women can do everything a man can do.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said under my breath. I didn’t really want to get into this. I’d already had some of these gender conversations in English class, and they always turned ugly. I thought of my own mother, of Grandma’s insistence that she had been tricked into helping my dad cover up his crimes and coerced into pleading guilty. I hadn’t wanted to talk about it before, but the more I read Emily Flynt’s books, the more I thought about it. What other options did my mother have, after all? Had she simply been boxed in by expectations? Had she snapped like the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper? I wondered if maybe I wasn’t being fair to her by refusing to read her letters, which Grandma had kept in an ever-growing stack on the kitchen counter until I told her I didn’t want to look at them. Would it drive my mother mad if I never responded?
“Anyway,” Peter went on, “it happens to guys too.”
“What?”
“Being controlled.”
I picked up a big box of jelly beans and headed for the counter. “Can I get half a pound of chocolate turtles? The ones with the pecans? And a bag of unsalted peanuts in the shells.”
“Ew. Unsalted?” Peter said.
“For the bird.”
He plopped his candies down by the cash register. “Geez, it’s hot in here. Why do they have to turn the heat up so high? Everyone’s dressed for winter weather and then you come in here and sweat to death.”
“Will that be all?” droned a girl who obviously didn’t want to be at work.
Peter paid up, took his brown paper sack full of candy, and waited outside for me to finish up. A few minutes later I was out with my own paper bag, larger than his. A crisp breeze cooled the sweat that had begun to gather at my hairline.
“Where to now?” Peter said.
I looked out across the gray-brown river. “What’s on the other side?”
“Not much, I don’t think. Bars and boats, mostly. A few stores.”
“Let’s go over there. We’ve already been almost everywhere on this side.”
“Not the antique shop.” He pointed across the street to the sprawling antique mall that took up nearly half a city block.
I gave him a doubtful look. “You really think you’re going to find your dad something in there?”
“Maybe. They’ve got lots of cool stuff. And there’s always something my grandparents would like. They’ve got books there. Why don’t we do that first and then we’ll go to the west side.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll run our bags to my car and meet you in there.”
He trotted off down the sun-dried sidewalk. I crossed the street, entered the antique mall, and found myself hopelessly lost in its labyrinth of junk within moments. I spied a few things here and there that were likely worth something, but much of the inventory looked like it should be inserted into the deep recesses of a landfill, never to be seen again. Even a cursory scan of the books on offer revealed little of interest.
People got so sentimental about old things. The homes I had frequented when I lived in Amherst usually sported an impressive collection of high-end antiques and expensive paintings, some of which had been in the same families since before the founding of the nation. I grew up knowing that I was not to put a glass directly on wood, I was not to play with toys on the sideboard, and I was never to drink grape juice over the carpets. But of all the items I had seen thus far in the antique mall, none of them looked like they required any amount of special care beyond fumigation.
Peter finally caught up with me beside an endless row of porcelain sinks and toilets in the basement.
“So, are you thinking about getting your dad an antique john?” I quipped.
“Those are for restorations, smart aleck. Let’s go look at the records.”
I stood by as Peter thumbed through hundreds of LPs. “What are you looking for? I’ll help you find it.”
“I’m not really sure. I’ll know it when I see it.”
But he apparently didn’t see it, because ten minutes later we were back upstairs. I was getting antsy and hot and tremendously bored.
“What does your dad like?”
“Oh, you know, football, beer, fishing, hunting—stuff like that.”
I started to search for stuff like that. I wanted to get out of there. My grandma had enough old stuff. What she needed was some new stuff. Or less stuff.
Finally Peter found a lighted Miller Lite sign—an antique only in the very loosest sense of the word—and paid the cashier. We got into his car and headed for the Columbus Bridge. As we approached, the light on the bridge turned red. A bell began to ding as the red and white arms dropped down to block our path.
“Wanna see if we can make it to Cortez Bridge?” Peter asked with palpable excitement.
Racing bridges, I had learned, was one of the things the locals did for fun. It was safer than racing trains and it gave one a story to tell, albeit not a terribly unique one. Everyone raced bridges. When I first heard of it, it didn’t seem like it would be all that hard to beat a freighter laden with cargo in a race. But the bridges opened so early for these giant ships and there were so many traffic lights on the roads between them that it was actually a fair contest.
“Let’s do it.”
Peter made a sharp U-turn on Chippewa, bent on making it down the twenty-five-mile-per-hour street through six lights and over Cortez Bridge before it opened for the oncoming ship. But traffic was thick, and too many people were either pulling out of a parking spot along the road or waiting for one to open up.
“Stupid holiday crowds!” Peter said as he hit the steering wheel at a red light. “We’re never gonna make it. At this point it would take less time to turn around and go back.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said.
“My dad always beats these things. So does Alex.”
The light turned green and he gunned it, then braked hard at the next light.
“Who’s Alex?”
“My brother.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“Alex Flynt, class of 1997, star quarterback at Kennedy High. And now he’s a starting quarterback for Michigan State.”
“So football runs in the family. Is that what you plan to do as well?”
“We’ll see.” He made the turn onto Cortez Bridge, which was already beginning to rise, and let out a frustrated grunt. “I won’t be going to State, though.”
“Why not?”
“Dad thinks Alex is wasting his talent at MSU because he would get better offers from the pro teams if he was in a winning program like the University of Michigan—that’s where my dad went. But Alex wanted to go to MSU because that’s where his girlfriend was going.”
The bridge was straight up in the air now, an impenetrable wall of gray. The big freighter came creeping in from the north, heading upriver to drop its load on trains or trucks that would disperse it all over the country. Probably one of the last of such deliveries until spring. In not too long, the river would ice over.
“You seem like you really care a lot about what your dad thinks,” I observed.
