Rosetown

by Cynthia Rylant

  Flora laughed.

  “Did Friday play in the snow today?” she asked.

  “Endlessly,” said Yury.

  “What will your family do for Christmas?” asked Flora.

  “We’ll drive to the Russian Orthodox church in Indianapolis,” said Yury. “But our Christmas comes earlier than your Christmas.”

  “Really?” asked Flora.

  “Yes,” said Yury.

  “The words in your church, are they all in Russian?” asked Flora.

  “Yes,” said Yury.

  “And you understand them?” Flora asked.

  “I do,” said Yury.

  “I’m in the Christmas choir at my church,” said Flora. “But I don’t harmonize well.”

  “Says who?” asked Yury.

  “The choir director,” answered Flora.

  “You’ll get better,” said Yury.

  Flora was not so sure. She had so looked forward to being in the Christmas choir and was finally old enough to participate this year. But the choir director had chosen music far beyond Flora’s ability to follow, so she was stumbling along in rehearsal and doing her best to harmonize without attracting too much attention.

  When Flora’s father had picked her up after a recent rehearsal, she had told him all this.

  “Well, if it’s too difficult, why not wait until you’re older?” he asked.

  “I can’t wait,” said Flora. “I’m inside the singing now.”

  “Inside the singing?” repeated her father.

  “If I’m in the audience, I’m outside the singing,” said Flora. “But if I’m in the choir, I’m inside the singing. It’s like the difference between just looking at a bear and being a bear. I feel like I’m a bear now.”

  Flora’s father smiled. “That is the best reason for being in a choir that I ever heard,” he said.

  “I knew you’d understand,” said Flora.

  Flora felt such peace this holiday season. Rosetown was so beautiful and alive. A tall evergreen in the central park glowed with strings of colored lights, and artificial snow had been sprayed on the windows of all the shops to frame displays of sleds and bicycles and elves and candy canes. Green wreaths hung on all the lampposts. Santa Claus was visiting with the little children at the park bandstand every Saturday between the hours of two and four. And Christmas bells played each evening in the old German church.

  Flora even felt great hope that soon her family would all live together again in one house. In the meantime her father continued to be a very good father and photographer. And her mother continued to be a very good mother and part-time shopkeeper.

  But those part-time hours were about to change.

  15

  “Nessy, you will not believe where Miss Meriwether is going,” Flora said as she caught up with her friend on Monday just as Nessy was stepping onto the school bus for home.

  “Where?” asked Nessy, nearly missing the step.

  “Paris!” said Flora. “I’ll call and tell you everything!”

  Indeed, Miss Meriwether had, quite unexpectedly, sailed into the blue by way of a Pan Am jet bound for France. She had phoned Flora’s mother on Sunday night and asked if Emma Jean could mind the shop for several days so that Miss Meriwether might spread her wings.

  “A friend has offered to put me up in the heart of Paris,” said Miss Meriwether. “How can I refuse?”

  Emma Jean was quite encouraging and, in fact, excited for this challenge during the busiest book-buying time of the year.

  So on Monday morning Emma Jean Smallwood awoke much earlier than usual—four thirty—so that she might arrive very early at the shop and be well prepared to serve Rosetown’s used book buyers. She dropped off Flora at the white house so that Flora’s father could prepare her a good breakfast and so that Emma Jean could be at Wings and a Chair Used Books long before the usual nine o’clock opening.

  Of course, this opening of the doors would be anything but “usual,” for not only was it Christmas season, but Miss Meriwether was at present somewhere near the Palace of Versailles.

  After school Flora and Yury walked together to the bookshop to see how everything was proceeding.

  When they arrived, they found seven customers waiting in line not only to pay for their books but also to have them wrapped for Christmas giving. This part of solo proprietorship—the wrapping part—was proving to be somewhat overwhelming for Emma Jean, as it slowed things down considerably.

  “Oh, Flora!” she said when she saw her daughter coming through the door. “You are just the person we all need!”

  Emma Jean set Flora to wrapping right away on the broad table behind the sales counter. And as Flora took on this task, Yury was surprised to find himself serving as a consultant to the other buyers in the store. For there were a few customers, who had not yet made up their minds, staring at the shelves in the Young People’s Nook, quite confused about what to buy for the children on their lists. The sight of a nine-year-old boy—who surely had a useful opinion about young people’s books—was cause for great relief.

  One woman approached Yury. She was holding a book about bugs called Straight Wings. Yury had already read this book on one of his visits to the shop, so he was able to answer her questions.

  “Will my eight-year-old nephew like this book?” was her first question.

  “Oh yes,” said Yury, “especially the part about crickets. Did you know that crickets sing more slowly when it is cold outside?”

  “I did not,” said the woman.

  “And they stop singing entirely when it is freezing,” said Yury, “which helps people know when to cover their tomato plants.”

  “Fascinating!” the woman said. “But this is such an old book, published in 1939. Maybe it is out-of-date for a modern eight-year-old boy?”

  Yury shook his head.

  “I am pretty sure that crickets have hardly changed at all since 1939,” he said.

  “I’ll take it!” said the woman.

  Yury assisted two more customers in choosing one western and one space adventure. Then these book buyers all joined the line at the counter.

  Emma Jean saw what Yury had done, and she gave him a big smile.

  Flora had not noticed Yury as bookseller, though, for her nose was buried in ribbons, tape, and Santa Claus wrapping paper. She lifted her head only to say good-bye as Yury called “Farewell” from the door. He was late to tea-making and had yet to take Friday for his afternoon walk.

  Emma Jean and Flora worked busily all the rest of the afternoon, and when finally they turned the lock of the shop door at six o’clock to walk to the Windy Day Diner for dinner, they were both quite spent.

  Each ordered a malted milk with their meal, as it seemed that nothing else would do for bookselling fatigue.

  “Do you think we will survive the Christmas shopping season?” Flora’s mother asked as they walked slowly home in the dark, the colorful lights of the shops guiding their way.

  “Only if we drink plenty of malted milks,” said Flora.

  “I think so, too,” answered Emma Jean. She was exhausted, but she was also pleased by how exhilarating her day had been. There was just something about being in charge.

  Serenity greeted them at the front door, and after much affection and canned fish, the cat curled up between them on the sofa, and all three fell asleep in front of the television, White Christmas continuing on, its happy ending just around the corner.

  16

  Flora had never seen a gated community until the day when she and her father had given Nessy a ride home for the first time.

  “Why is there a locked gate?” Flora had asked Nessy.

  “My father says that it keeps out the burglars,” Nessy answered.

  “Not the climbing monkey burglars,” said Flora.

  Nessy laughed.

  Flora first felt a little sorry for Nessy, having to live in a neighborhood behind a big locked gate. But once inside the gate, the houses seemed as friendly as any other kin
ds of houses, with warm lamps in the windows and welcome plaques on the doors.

  Yet Flora knew that she herself was a town person. She loved the old sidewalks of Rosetown with their tall old trees. A town person could never be happy in a neighborhood of small new trees like those in Nessy’s gated community. It was the towering oaks and chestnuts of Rosetown that gave Flora a feeling of being really rooted.

  But she did still love visiting Nessy’s home behind the gate. And Flora thought that Nessy might even be a famous pianist one day, at which time Nessy could buy her own house.

  But Nessy always said that she just wanted to be a gardener.

  Yury could not attend the performance of Flora’s Christmas choir, as he was obliged to visit with out-of-town friends of his family that evening. But Nessy wanted very much to attend, so Flora’s mother invited Nessy to come to the concert with both her and Flora’s father and to spend the night with Flora afterward.

  Of course Nessy said yes.

  Before they left for the concert, Flora showed Nessy the postcard Miss Meriwether had sent from Paris. The card was illustrated with a street map of the city, and small drawings on the map located important landmarks.

  “There’s the Eiffel Tower,” said Flora.

  “And the airport,” said Nessy, pointing to an airplane north of the city.

  “Miss Meriwether is there somewhere,” said Flora, “in that big city. I wonder if they have Christmas lights, too.”

  “Probably,” said Nessy. “Paris probably has everything.”

  The girls examined the other points of interest on the card, then turned it over to read Miss Meriwether’s brief message—Bonjour, mes amis!—which Flora’s mother had explained as “Hello, friends!”

  The card made them all smile.

  At the Congregational Church it was exciting for Flora to be in the downstairs rooms of the church with the other choir members, donning robes, finding places in line, smoothing out the choral book in her hand. Flora thought it seemed dreamlike. She knew that this was another memory she would fold away and take out again one day to look at.

  She followed her fellow choir members onto the stage of the beautiful old church. The lights were low, candles glowed in every window, and red poinsettias in baskets lined the aisles. Flora could not see where her parents and Nessy were sitting, but she knew they were out there, somewhere.

  And here she was, inside the singing. She did her best to harmonize. And even if she did not do it especially well, Flora still stood with her shoulders straight, and she sang up to the rafters of the old church and beyond:

  “The first Noel the angel did say . . .”

  17

  On the day that Miss Meriwether was to return to Wings and a Chair Used Books—December 24—the residents of Rosetown, Indiana, awoke to eighteen inches of snow outside their windows. The forecast had been for only three inches, and all of the weather people at the local TV stations were calling one another that morning to frantically compare notes. But it was too late for that. They all had gotten it wrong, and the west wind had blown in a blizzard.

  Indiana is a state accustomed to heavy snow, so no one in town was panicking. Things would get off to a late start, and this late start might be a matter of hours or a matter of days, depending on where City Hall sent the plows. But if everyone just made themselves a nice cup of cocoa and settled in, Rosetown would again be moving.

  This was all well and good for most people. But for Miss Meriwether, who was, on December 24, at the airport in Indianapolis with six bags of luggage and several pounds of Belgian chocolate, a snowfall of eighteen inches was a disaster. She had promised to be back in charge at Wings and a Chair Used Books so that Emma Jean Smallwood could have Christmas Eve off to wrap gifts, make fudge, and watch Miracle on 34th Street at the Lyceum with her daughter, Flora.

  Instead Miss Meriwether would be spending who-knew-how-long in Concourse A, unable to fly out of Indianapolis due to a major weather event, which was announced by an airport employee wearing an antler hat.

  This left Emma Jean trying to decide what to do on the day before Christmas, a day when perhaps many Rosetown residents had “book” on their shopping list and would be happy to come through the door of Wings and a Chair if someone could just shovel a path to get there.

  Flora liked to think that she was always prepared for a disaster, but it was really her friend Yury who had the better survival skills. Yury owned many books on survival.

  So Flora phoned her friend as soon as she saw the eighteen inches of snow on the ground.

  “Rosetown shoppers will never stay home on December 24,” Flora told Yury. “They will ski to the shops if they have to. And my mother needs to open up for business.”

  “You have no cross-country skis?” asked Yury.

  “No,” said Flora.

  “Let me check a book, and I’ll call you back,” he said.

  In five minutes Yury called back.

  “I can make snowshoes,” he said. “I have instructions from Survivor Bob.”

  “Really?” asked Flora.

  “I’ll be over in less than an hour,” Yury said.

  Flora hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen.

  “How do you feel about snowshoes?” she asked the only available proprietor of Wings and a Chair Used Books on the most important shopping day of the year.

  “How soon can you get some?” answered her mother.

  Just about an hour later they heard a knock on the door, and there was Yury, standing on what appeared to be giant pine boughs laced to his boots.

  “Told you,” he said, frosting up his glasses with his cold breath. “All I need is pine.”

  Flora pointed to the large evergreens in the yard.

  “We have plenty of that,” she said.

  And by nine o’clock, just in time to open, Flora, Yury, and Emma Jean reached Wings and a Chair Used Books, courtesy of Survivor Bob.

  Emma Jean unlocked the door, flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN, and within twenty minutes the first customer arrived on snowshoes, real ones. Yury went home to help his father knock ice off the eaves.

  It was an amazing day at Wings and a Chair Used Books. Customer after customer arrived, unstrapping snowshoes or pairs of cross-country skis out front, then coming inside to find that book that had been “at the back of my mind for weeks,” many explained.

  And this is the story of any proudly owned used-book shop: that someone, at some time, has stumbled upon a kind of buried treasure within its shelves. But unlike shiny gold, which is taken instantly, this treasure—a vintage book—in a used-book shop is often left behind, to linger at the back of the mind for a while. Then there arrives the day when it becomes clear that that vintage book should belong to a certain someone. And this day of clarity is often December 24, which is why it was so important to Emma Jean Smallwood to turn over that sign and switch on the lights.

  When Flora was not wrapping books for those hardiest of Rosetown shoppers, she placed herself in the velveteen chair by the window and read The Girl from Tim’s Place, 1906, inscribed to John L.:

  It was a desperate chance—a foolhardy step—a journey so appalling, so almost hopeless, she might well hesitate.

  Flora smiled as she read those words and wondered whether her mother might have had the same thoughts when Yury showed up at the front door wearing tree branches.

  Flora looked out of the window at the shops across the street, where lights had been turned on and coffee set to brew.

  It was Christmas Eve in Rosetown, and there was everywhere more hope than hesitation.

  18

  Miss Meriwether finally arrived in Rosetown on the day after Christmas, having traveled from Indianapolis by Greyhound bus. The Rosetown municipal airport was simply too small an enterprise to be up and running so soon after a big snowfall, so a bus was the only option.

  Flora and her mother were quietly organizing the shelves in the store when Miss Meriwether finally blew in, carrying several
boxes of chocolates and wearing a glamorous red velvet coat. Flora threw her arms around Miss Meriwether and welcomed her home.

  “Emma Jean and Flora, I am so very sorry,” said Miss Meriwether. “I hope I did not complicate your Christmas too much.”

  “Oh, no,” said Flora’s mother, giving Miss Meriwether a warm hug. “We had many adventures we would not have had otherwise.”

  “Thank heaven,” said Miss Meriwether.

  “Thank Yury,” said Flora.

  “What, dear?” asked Miss Meriwether.

  “I’ll explain later,” said Flora.

  “Well, I brought enough chocolates to feed an elephant,” said Miss Meriwether. “And speaking of elephants . . .”

  She reached into her bag and withdrew a small silver box. She handed the box to Flora.

  “For you,” said Miss Meriwether. “Something to wear until you can do your own shopping in the flea markets of Paris.”

  Flora caught her breath. She had not expected anything from Paris for herself.

  She opened the box. Inside lay a delicate silver chain holding one very small charm: an elephant.

  “Elephants are special,” said Miss Meriwether.

  “That is what Yury always says,” said Flora. “Thank you very much.”

  She lifted the necklace from the box. It felt much too important to wear.

  “Is it all right if I save it for a special occasion?” asked Flora. “It’s so beautiful.”

  Miss Meriwether smiled.

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “And there are sure to be many.”

  So things at the bookshop returned to normal. Emma Jean went back to three afternoons a week. And the streets of Rosetown were all plowed, the sidewalks shoveled, and, after New Year’s Day, the colored lights and green wreaths were taken down, stored away until next Christmas.

  During the holiday break from school, Yury helped his father with some light maintenance at the office, between cups of Mo’s 24, and he walked Friday to the central park to make new dog friends. Yury was very protective of Friday, and he never let the puppy off lead when they were out and about, just as the instructor at Good Manners for Good Dogs had taught.