The Printed Letter Bookshop

by Katherine Reay

  But it’s not the same—I know. Family means more. You can miss your family so much you have to look down to see your chest rise and fall, to confirm that it hasn’t been cut open and you’re not bleeding out and you’re still breathing. Friends can’t hurt you like that, nor can they fill that fissure.

  There’s a questioning hum around me. People aren’t just missing her or whispering about her. They’re wondering. I sense it more than hear it.

  Did you know? How long was she sick?

  No one knew, people. No one knew she got the diagnosis in late July. It’s only December! She’d commented about headaches, backaches, stomachaches for the past couple years, then brushed them aside each and every time. I’m getting old, girls.

  No one knew.

  I’d barged in on her in September. The shop’s restroom door was ajar and I needed a tissue. I banged it open and landed right on her, slumped over the toilet bowl.

  “Maddie, Maddie, Maddie . . . You naughty girl . . . Late night?”

  “I wish. My head . . . Everything hurts. How can everything hurt so much? How bad can this get?” She pushed back from the toilet and leaned against the wall.

  “How bad can what get?” I whispered and slid down the wall next to her. Her tone warned me Advil could not fix this, whatever this was.

  “Dying.” Her eyes widened as if she’d said “Voldemort.”

  It felt as hideous and evil as Harry Potter’s dark wizard.

  She then shook her head—not in an I can’t believe I said that gesture, but in a Please don’t tell anyone gesture.

  I rubbed her back and I kept her secret.

  I look around the church more slowly this time, corner to corner, and across the nave. I begin to recognize people. Margo from the bank. Veronica Beven and her husband from one of Maddie’s book clubs. Lisa Generis . . . Jasper from the gas station. Maddie left her mark on the hearts of everyone here.

  For the past couple years, she did more than that for me. She was Seth’s friend first. Then, as everyone else in my life drew away, she pulled me close. I felt the press of her every day. She kept me from flying about like ash scattered in the wind. Now she is gone, and I fear blowing away.

  Claire, the Printed Letter’s only other full-time employee, plucks at my sleeve. “We’re too late. There’s nowhere to sit.”

  I gesture toward the first two rows. “Let’s sit up there. We have as much right as anyone.”

  “We will not,” she hisses. “It’s reserved for family.”

  Always doing the right thing. If Claire weren’t so nice and perfectly polite, you’d want to hit her, constantly. Instead I cast her a glance, head to toe. She wears a wool crepe A-line dress—Who is she, Kate Middleton?—pumps, not boots, despite the icy mess outside, and stockings. Real silk black panty hose, not tights. Only the red-rimmed eyes and a few flyaway gray hairs escaping the neat brown bob let me know she’s human. I run a hand down my black pants to smooth the wrinkles. I don’t dare look at my boots. I couldn’t find the slim Ferragamos Seth bought me years ago, so I wore cowboy boots. They’re black so it’s okay. It’s not okay, but it’s the best I can do right now.

  “They’re probably not coming anyway. Remember Pete’s service?”

  “I didn’t live here then.” Claire glances across the church. “Besides, she has a brother and a niece. Remember? The one who lives downtown. They’ll come.”

  I scoff at that. “The niece didn’t bother coming to the house these past months. What makes you think she’ll show up now? And if any of them do show up, they don’t deserve those seats.” I take a step down the aisle.

  Claire tugs me.

  “Fine.” I step back and loop a finger into my blouse’s neckline. I rarely wear more than one layer, but even this thin silk feels warm. I pluck again; it’s sticking to me. “It’s too crowded and it’s hot. We’ll never find seats . . . Why don’t they have the air on?”

  “It’s thirty degrees outside. They probably have the heat on.” Claire levels a measured look at me. “And we will find seats.”

  A man steps into the aisle in front of us. He extends his hand into the sixth row. “Please.”

  I want to object. Not because I don’t appreciate his gesture or because I don’t want the seat, but because I simply want to protest. I want to stamp my feet and yell.

  “Thank you.” Claire speaks for both of us. She slides in first and widens her eyes at me when I don’t move.

  “Thank you.” It takes me that moment to focus and recognize him. Though twenty years younger, Chris McCullough has become a good friend. I squeeze his hand, and a wave of calm washes through me. It’s his green eyes. Green eyes are wondrous things and will always make my heart jolt. Seth had green eyes, has green eyes. I simply don’t look into them anymore.

  Seth . . . He must be here. I settle into the pew and scan the nave—and land smack on him. On his eyes, looking at me. Moss in the fall when he pulls out his dark-green sweaters. Pale grass-green, citron almost, with flecks of gold, on a hot summer day or when he’s really tired. Electric emerald, hard and unyielding, in anger . . .

  I’m used to emerald. I have endured over two years of Seth’s emerald eyes.

  Yet today . . . moss. Seth, standing against a side wall, acknowledges me with a nod. I feel as if he’s been waiting for me to find him. Not because he’s reaching out, but because it’s a duty. Politely acknowledge the ex-wife. Check. Seth always performs his duty. He’s kind of like Claire in that way, which is probably why I never bop her. There’s something comfortable and secure about people who color within the lines.

  He looks good, really good, in a dark-blue suit, blue shirt, and a dark tie with flecks of gray. Not flecks . . . tiny dolphins. He’s wearing the tie I gave him for our twenty-fifth anniversary. We swam with the dolphins in Hawaii for our trip that year. It’d be our thirty-second anniversary in eight months . . . It’ll never be our thirty-second anniversary.

  “Where’s Brian?” I shift my focus from my ex-husband to Claire.

  “He couldn’t miss some meetings in New York,” she whispers without turning her head.

  Couldn’t or wouldn’t? The question floats unspoken between us. I nudge her again. “Seth is here.”

  Claire leans around me and waves before I can stop her. “Of course he is. He adored Maddie.”

  She smells of gardenias. I open my mouth to snap at her. It’s December! Change your perfume! I clamp my lips tight before the words escape. Not to save her feelings, but because it’s a beautiful spring smell—a green-blossoming, hope-filled smell, full of fresh new beginnings.

  I’m in the fall of life and I hate it.

  I close my eyes and breathe deeper. Spring fills me, and I almost believe . . .

  “But she was my friend,” slips out instead.

  The hard silence opens my eyes to Claire’s raised brow. Not for the first time, I wonder how much money or time she spends to get them that way. She has the darkest brows, not a hair out of place and contoured into perfect arcs. They’re her best feature really, quite remarkable. She holds the brow up so long it becomes insulting.

  “Don’t.” I raise a single finger.

  She uses that look on her kids, or on me when I behave like one. But I’m too close to tears right now. Too close to becoming a puddle in public, again. That’s all anyone thinks of me anymore—not the woman I used to be or imagined I could be—just a lying-cheating-emotional puddle. I keep the single finger pointed stiff and straight. It was my signature move, years ago, on my own kids. It divides the space between us.

  We stay frozen for a moment, eyes clashing, but not in anger. That’s not the emotion coursing through me, and I know Claire well enough to know she’s not mad either. We’re adrift. As stable as Claire is, Maddie was our anchor. Without her, we are each other’s lifelines, whether we like it or not, whether we can handle it or not. I sense the panic in her eyes, and I’m certain she’s getting flooded as it pours from mine. Bottom line, we’re sinking.


  I face forward and press my shoulder into her. “I don’t feel well. Maybe I’m dying too.”

  “That is not funny.” She grinds out the words with perfect diction, but still reaches for my hand. I enjoy her comfort until she squeezes one shade too tight.

  I butt-scoot a few inches away. “I’ll be quiet.”

  I can’t resist looking back to Seth. He’s gone. I shift to find him, and the pew creaks with each twist. Now the entire congregation knows I’m searching for my ex-husband. He’s nowhere in sight. Movement draws my eyes forward again. The family is filing into the first row. They don’t fill it. There are only three of them.

  “Told you,” I whisper in Claire’s ear. When she doesn’t turn or reply, I continue, “That must be her brother. And the one on the end is probably that niece she always talked about but who never came to visit. She lives forty miles away, in some Chicago high-rise, but still couldn’t make it here once to see her dying aunt.”

  * * *

  Claire

  Claire kept one eye on Janet and one ear on the service. It was traditionally beautiful in many respects. The minister read a passage from Corinthians and one from the gospel of John. Do not let your hearts be troubled. The words felt like a warm spear, entering and stabbing, making her aware of how fragile she felt. But they didn’t wound. They consoled. Hers was not the first heart to be troubled—and that meant she wasn’t alone.

  She shifted in her seat. Janet squirmed beside her as the service took an unconventional turn. It ended. The family didn’t make any comments or remarks. Songs, Scripture, sermon. There were no childish anecdotes, no expressions of thanks for support, no kind words about a sister or an aunt who would be missed. No scheduled time for friends to say good-bye. Claire peeked at her watch. A life wrapped up neat and tidy in nineteen minutes. Maddie had been an approachable, warm, and true friend with remarkable depth. She spent more time on the birthday cards she gave.

  Claire looked at Janet. During the service she’d plucked at her blouse and pulled her highlighted blond mass of curls into a loose bun. She’d stopped short of fanning herself. Now she was swiping her eyes with another tissue. In the year Claire had known her, all Janet’s emotions came out in one form: anger. The tears were unexpected. Be patient with her was the first advice Maddie gave Claire with regard to Janet, the day she began working at the shop. She had intimated to her that Janet was deep in a valley and it had washed out all her color, resilience, and grace.

  As the notes of “Lift High the Cross” swelled around her, Claire cast back to the first day she’d met Maddie and Janet. Lost and alone in a new town, she had wandered into the Printed Letter Bookshop in hopes of escaping. Brian had started work, the kids were settling into their new school, and the cable company hadn’t arrived yet, so she couldn’t find some over-the-top romantic movie to hide within. And the coffee shop down the street terrified her. The Daily Brew was packed with groupings of people, almost like a town meeting of sorts, with friends calling Hello and How are you? across the tables, fireplaces (there were two), and lattes. She’d taken three steps in, patted the top of her head as if looking for her sunglasses, and backed right out.

  Blocks of aimless walking landed her only a few storefronts from the coffee shop and outside the Printed Letter. A peek inside confirmed it was welcoming. She headed straight to her safe harbor, the classics. Anna Karenina? Too depressing—and that made it too dangerous. War and Peace. Too trying. Too fraught.

  They were the solid novels that had anchored Claire with deep roots and generational solidity through ten corporate moves, but that day they’d felt heavy and constricting, and she feared if she lingered in them she’d never break free and feel the sun again. After all, Dr. Zhivago and Lara lingered in gray, and look how it ended for them. She ran her finger across the spines . . . Alcott, Austen, Brontë, Cather, Chesterton, Dickens, Dostoyevsky . . . Didn’t anyone write from Italy? Greece? Didn’t anyone bask in sunshine and joy?

  Then came that shuddering exhale, as if her last breath of hope and expectation was leaving her for good. It was embarrassing to have someone else hear it, and the two women working in the shop had definitely heard it. The older one, with the gray hair and laughing eyes, smiled at her. The highlighted blond one gave a quick glance and moved on to help another customer.

  The gray-haired one focused on Claire. She lifted her head in a disconcerting way to look through her reading glasses rather than push them up on her nose—as if she saw beyond the surface.

  “What do you like to read?” She stepped from behind the counter and narrowed her eyes as if daring Claire to lie.

  Claire remembered how she’d waved a hand at the hand-printed New Fiction placard standing sentinel at the center table. She started the gesture in confidence, ended it in defeat. “Nothing there. I stick to the classics. I guess I’m old-fashioned. Or boring.” Claire shrugged—it was that or cry.

  “Classics are never boring.” The woman’s voice arched as if the classics were the hottest thing off the press. Yet she led Claire away from them, leaving behind all those paperback Penguin copies with their slightly Baroque oil painting covers.

  Claire wondered where they were headed until they arrived right back where they started, the classics. But this time, the stories were adorned in bright cloth covers and lined six shelves. “This is Penguin’s Project Drop Caps. All these fresh faces for some of the best works. But that’s not what I want you to see. Have you read The Secret Garden?”

  “Too long ago to remember it. My children are older than that now, but even when they were young I couldn’t get them to read it.”

  “I meant for you.” She slid a book from the shelf below the rainbow of color. This, too, was bright and fresh—striking and bold, with yellows, greens, and reds. She laid her palm on the cover as if offering a delicacy. “It appeals to the young or the young at heart, or to those who need to believe in dead things growing again.”

  She offered Claire the book; rather, she laid it in her hands. “Mary Lennox begins her journey in a new and unfamiliar land, but makes her mark on it. She transforms it, and renews the people around her as well as herself. She blossoms . . . And when you’re finished, come back and we’ll talk some more . . . I’m Maddie.”

  The hymn ended as Claire let the memory settle over her, as bright and clear as if it had happened that morning. She had pulled the book to her chest with one hand, knowing she had to buy it without understanding why, and reached for Maddie’s outstretched hand with the other. “I’m Claire Durand. We moved here a couple months ago.”

  Maddie’s hand was weathered and her knuckles enlarged. Claire had felt every joint. She didn’t squeeze, and Maddie didn’t pull away.

  As they walked to the counter, Maddie had rubbed one hand against the other. “They’re a little swollen from too much work in the garden yesterday. I’m planting some fall flowers to make the next few months more colorful. Do you garden?”

  “Can anything last the winter here? It gets so cold.”

  Maddie laughed. “Pick hardy plants and they’ll survive.”

  Now, over a year later, in a church devoid of mirth, the memory of that laugh filled Claire with the same sense of wonder it had that first afternoon. It was a laugh without subtext—genuine, soulful, and rich. It filled her with a sense of awe and terror—both then and now. Awe that someone could feel such genuine pleasure at the mundane; terror that she might never again feel it herself.

  Janet ended Claire’s memory with a poke in her back. “Go . . . It’s our turn.”

  The pews were filing out. Janet tucked close behind her. “Can you believe that? That’s all she gets? My hot flashes last longer than that service.”

  Claire reached behind for Janet’s hand, unsure what message to send—commiseration or reprimand. She willed herself to commiserate. To always reprimand was hard, unbecoming, not who she wanted to be. She wanted to be Mary Lennox and enliven those around her.

  She glanced back. Janet was a
beautiful woman, with her long, loose curls and blond highlights, a spark plug most days, who carried herself with all the sophisticated armor she’d acquired in her youth. Even distraught, the woman had style and the hair to make twentysomethings envious. The tie at the neck of her silk blouse had come undone, revealing a chunky black and silver necklace, and her pants swirled around intricately detailed black boots.

  But when Claire looked past the armor, the truth was evident in the deep lines around Janet’s lips and the dark, hollowed skin beneath her eyes: Maddie’s death had dealt a severe blow.

  Claire withdrew her hand and pulled at the sleeve of her own wool dress. It had inched past her wrist again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered over her shoulder.

  “For what?”

  “You carried too much these past weeks.”

  Janet’s curls bounced as she shook her head. “Don’t say that. You did your share at the shop. It would’ve gutted Maddie to close the doors, and you couldn’t have stayed nights with her. You have a family.”

  “And . . .” Claire waited to catch Janet’s eye. “It’s your birthday. I almost forgot.”

  “Fifty-four is not a memorable number. You’re welcome to forget. Everyone else will.”

  She gave Janet’s hand another squeeze as, like water through a funnel, they followed the widening flow from the nave into the church’s lobby and spilled out into the stone courtyard.

  “Let’s go have lunch and a glass of champagne. We’ll celebrate the spectacular life of one dear friend and the birthday of another. My treat.”

  Chapter 2

  Madeline

  I walked toward the train station, the number settling within me. Twenty years. Nineteen, actually, since we visited, the summer after eighth grade—the worst spring of my life.

  The original plan that summer was a weekend visit on our way to California—just Dad and me. Spring had been hard on both of us—all New York was reeling. The tech bubble had burst in April, and my school turned into a war zone: those whose parents still had jobs and money versus those who were moving out of the city, broke and humiliated. The sharpest knives were hurled at those whose parents had been “responsible” for the catastrophic losses—the financial advisors, the hedge fund managers. The people like my dad.