The Painted Room

by Tina Mikals

Chapter 24

  The Library of Time

  The top of the stairway opened out into another whitewashed room—this time enormous, with a high, vaulted ceiling above and a cool, gray marble floor below. The walls were lined with simple built-in bookshelves, also painted white, and which stretched all the way from floor to ceiling.

  May gave a low whistle.

  "My thoughts exactly," said Carlisle. "I don't see how this room can fit over the floor below, let alone how the lower structure can support the weight of anything in here."

  Some of the shelves were empty, but most were completely full of leather bound books, all neatly organized by subject, their titles stamped in gold leaf on the spines. Each subject title was posted in elegant script on a three by five card tacked to the shelf. The subjects started with 'Astronomy' and ended with 'Zoology'.

  In addition to the shelves of books, there were also other shelves for CDs, DVDs, and another for a multitude of three ring binders, which on closer inspection contained neatly clipped and punched magazine and newspaper articles. Closed cabinets comprised the lower portions of the bookshelves.

  In the center of the room was a round, marble table. On it sat an oversized glass-domed clock with a gold four-balled mechanism inside that revolved continuously, marking time. As May and Carlisle walked by the table, he leaned over and put his hand to his ear.

  "What are you doing?" she whispered.

  "Why are you whispering?" he whispered back.

  "I—I don't know," she said a little louder, "I think this must be some kind of library."

  "Shhhh." He put a finger to his lips. "Listen."

  She heard the clock whirrrrrrrrrr as the four balls of the internal mechanism spun around rapidly getting faster and faster as though building up to something. Suddenly the mechanism stopped spinning and the clock gave out a loud clicking noise which made her jump a little.

  Carlisle straightened up with an I-told-you-so smile. "What did I tell you? A whirr and a click."

  "What is this place?"

  "How would I know? You painted it."

  May went to a computer on a desk a few feet away. A colorful, spiraling screen saver whirled around the monitor in blue and green and pink. The computer was practically an antique. It was like the one her family had when she was little, the monitor so large that it took up most of the space on the small desk. She moved the mouse back and forth and the text of Carlisle's news article—the one in her back pocket—appeared.

  She pulled out the chair to the desk and sat down. Clicking the mouse a few times on the back arrow, her last homework assignment came up, then the back of a corn flakes box flashed on the screen.

  "What is this contraption, anyway?" asked Carlisle, putting his hand on top of the monitor and looking around the back of it.

  "It's a computer," she mumbled.

  "A ... ? How does it—"

  "Hey! Don't touch that."

  He dropped the cord in his hand.

  She began pressing the back arrow repeatedly. Math homework, the front page of last Friday's newspaper and some pages of Emerson she was reading for English appeared in rapid succession. "This is freaky," she said. "It's like everything I ever read is in here."

  "Interesting machine," said Carlisle, scratching the side of his neck and wincing. "It's a kind of book? Only it's a little heavy to take to the beach."

  "This is old. They aren't all like this."

  "I wouldn't mind seeing that news piece again. Do you mind?"

  "Knock yourself out," she said, getting up.

  Leaning over the desk, he placed his hand on the mouse. "How does this—" He ran the mouse briskly back and forth and watched the cursor trace wide circles on the screen in response to his movements. "These arrowheads are what turn the pages?"

  She nodded.

  "And so—if I want a different page, I move this little arrow up to here—like so, and I press the top button of this small device that looks a little like a mouse—"

  The text on the monitor changed, and he smiled at it, pleased with himself.

  "Bingo," said May, rolling the computer chair gently into the back of his calves. "Sit down. You'll get a crick in your neck. You can move the small device that looks like a mouse to the other side of the keyboard if you want."

  "Thank you," said Carlisle, sitting down, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  She went to one of the bookshelves and read some of the gleaming gold titles. Under 'Medicine' she found an Anatomy and Physiology textbook and a medical dictionary she remembered having taken out of the library. Under the category of 'Literature' she saw War and Peace, Jane Eyre, and A Tale of Two Cities.

  She skipped to 'Languages' and spotted her first year French textbook. 'Mathematics' not only had her current algebra textbook, but also last year's geometry and all of her other math textbooks as well; every single one of them, all the way down to her first grade math journal.

  "This has got to be every book I've ever read. Even the ones from the library are here," she said, walking down the shelves of books.

  "I wondered if that's what they were. That certainly is a lot of books, May," Carlisle said, suitably impressed. "And the titles! Wouldn't you rather be reading romantic adventure stories at your age?"

  She stopped suddenly in front of 'Art History' and pulled a book off the shelf. She went through the index then flipped back until she found the section on Francisco Goya. "Oh, thank goodness, it's here," she said out loud.

  "What is?"

  "Saturn Eating His Son—that's what it's called. See, I knew it had a different name. It was driving me crazy. Did you hear what I said? That painting we just—"

  "Yes, well, that's it, isn't it?" he said over his shoulder. "It's not like it really matters at this point, does it? I'd rather just forget about all of that."

  "I'm not sure there are some things you can ever really forget, but I suppose you're right. Only, I know myself. That title would have kept haunting me forever unless I found out what it was. At least now I know." She put the book back.

  Carlisle pushed away from the computer, came over and pulled out a book. "Did you really like reading some of these, May? What is a girl your age doing reading something like this?" He held the book out in front of her so she could see the title.

  "A Concise History of Infectious Disease," she read. "Actually, that's really not that bad once you get into it."

  "Get 'into' it? But it's—" He turned to the last page and pointed. "It's 846 pages long. How concise can it be? I think I would just prefer to get the measles again, wouldn't you?"

  "Actually, it's 864," she said, glancing at the page. "And I wouldn't know if it was worse than the measles; I never got them. They have medicines for that now: vaccines and antibiotics, and stuff like that."

  "I'm glad to hear that," he said, closing the book and slipping it back into the bookshelf.

  "Does that happen a lot?" she asked.

  "Does what?"

  "Do you mix up letters and numbers like that a lot? Read them backwards. Flip them around."

  "No more than other people, I imagine."

  "It doesn't happen to everyone. It's called dyslexia."

  He smiled. "My goodness! Is it catching?"

  "I'm being serious. And you might like to know, it's more common in left handed people. It just makes it harder to learn things."

  "Like what things?"

  "Reading for instance. But it's got absolutely nothing to do with whether you're smart or not."

  May took another book down from the shelf. "Aristotle's Physics", she read. "I borrowed this one from Charley last year. Only I accidentally left it at the bus stop and it got rained on. He didn't speak to me for a week."

  "May, I think we've seen enough. We should go." He held his hand out for the book.

  She remembered how mad Charley had been when he'd found out what had become of his beloved philosophy book though she couldn't figure out why. She thought Aristotle was going to be interesting
, but it was like reading one of those teabag tags with a cryptic saying that didn't make sense no matter how hard you thought about it. She got about half way through the book and didn't even finish. It suddenly occurred to her that she should probably buy her brother a new copy and wondered if she would ever get the chance.

  She let the book drop open in her hands and stared at the page in front of her. Instead of the normal text, the entire page was taken up by one sentence in large bold letters:

  You will never be as smart as Charley.

  She turned several pages and then fanned through the book with her thumb. The embarrassing and infuriating sentence was on every single page of the book from beginning to end.

  Almost involuntarily, she thrust the small volume from her, and it landed open on the marble tiles several feet away with a dull thud. She stared at it as though it were a rattlesnake poised to strike. "Do all the books say that?"

  "No."

  "Just that one?"

  Carlisle didn't answer her.

  "There's more? How many? A lot?"

  He shook his head. "I wouldn't say a lot."

  "Two or three?"

  He bent his head down toward the floor and scratched the nape of his neck.

  "It's more than that? But, why do they say that?"

  "I don't know. I can't make much sense of it either. It's not all of them anyway. Maybe it's just the ones you didn't really want to read in the first place?"

  "You mean the ones I was just too dumb to understand, don't you?"

  "I never said that."

  "You were thinking it though."

  He looked offended. "I was not. And really, how would I know? I thought that one was a book on artists when I took it off the shelf. I can't even pronounce what you called it."

  She stared sulkily at the open book on the floor. "Well, it's true, I guess. I never ever will be as smart as Charley. It takes me hours to do my homework, and he's done in ten minutes. Did you know he's valedictorian? I don't even know why I bother. If I dropped off the face of the earth it's not like my parents would care anyway. They probably haven't even noticed I'm gone. Maybe everybody's better off without me. I'll never be smart. I'll never be pretty. I'm useless at sports, and I suck at painting. I don't think I could be more average if I tried."

  "Oh, you can't think that. You're far from stupid, May. And you're certainly not—"

  "Is everything okay up here?" said Sheila at the top of the stairs. "I heard a loud noise."

  "Yes, fine. I just dropped something," said Carlisle, scooping down to pick up the book. He snapped it shut and put it away.

  "What is this place anyway, a library?" Sheila looked over several titles on the first shelf she came to. "Yikes. Talk about boring. Where do they keep the good stuff?" She reached down to open one of the doors to a lower cabinet.

  May swatted her hand away.

  "Ow, what was that for?"

  "Do you always waltz into people's houses and open up their cabinets?" said May.

  Carlisle put his hands in his pockets and looked around the room.

  May gasped and waggled a finger under his nose. "You opened them, didn't you? You, at the very least, ought to know better. You really aren't a gentleman! That's totally rude."

  "It's not exactly ordinary circumstances, May. I wasn't trying to pry, but I'm glad to see that you read something else besides this dry rubbish. There's nothing wrong with reading for amusement, though frankly, I will say there are several under there I think your parents ought to know about."

  Sheila's face lit up. "Seriously? Do you seriously have bodice rippers under there? I didn't know you read any of those," she said, reaching for the handle of the cabinet again.

  "I do not," said May, smacking her hand away.

  Carlisle dropped out of the conversation as a book under the category 'People' caught his attention. He ran his finger along the three words on the spine, then picked the volume off the shelf and headed for the door with it.

  "Hey, where are you going with that?" said May. "Not to get too technical, but I'm pretty sure that's mine."

  "That's up for debate," called Carlisle, most of the way down the stairs.

  May and Sheila arrived in time to see him toss the book into the downstairs fire. As the flames licked the cover, he picked up the poker and drove the thin volume deeper into the embers.

  For a brief moment the words 'Francis Everett Carlisle' shone in gold on the spine of the book before both the gilt lettering and the burgundy leather were singed to a uniform black.

  "You can't read people like books, May," he said.

  "Thank you."

  "For burning it?" he asked.

  "No. For not reading it."

  The farmhouse let out an agonizing groan of wood.

  "What was that?" asked May, though she doubted anyone else knew either.

  "That's weird," said Sheila. "Could I get that key, Mr. Carlisle?"

  "Why?"

  "There's a door over there I didn't notice before. Maybe we could find some dry clothes in there for you, too."

  "You're very kind, Sheila," he said, gazing up at the ceiling which had grown a full six inches taller over his head. "But we should probably go now. I think we've mucked around in this place long enough." He took the photo of May and Sheila off the mantel and removed it from the frame. He slid it into his vest pocket as they headed for the door.

  Before leaving, he stopped in his tracks, turned and stared into the fading fire as though he'd forgotten something.

  "Aren't you coming, Mr. Carlisle?" said Sheila.

  "In a moment," he answered, returning to the fire. He got three more logs from the firewood bucket and threw them in the fire. As the logs ignited, a spray of sparks exploded from the hearth and extinguished themselves on the cold stone floor, each one leaving behind only a dark smudge and a small trace of harmless white ash.

  Looking into the now blazing fire, Carlisle brushed off his hands and smiled. "That's better. Now we can go."