Love, Death & Rare Books

by Robert Hellenga

  Adam was networking with old customers and had made our presence felt at the Chicago Book and Paper Fair, and then again in the Twin Cities, where he’d acquired almost four hundred ASEs (Armed Services Editions). If we put them together with the ones Dad had accumulated during a short stint in the Merchant Marines, right at the end of the war, we might have a complete run. The individual books wouldn’t bring high prices, but a complete run would be something else. He’d be representing us in Boston in November, California in February, and New York in March, as well as at local fairs in Lansing and Ann Arbor.

  Carla had started blogging—one book a week—with The Tale of Peter Rabbit. A first edition, first printing, would sell for about $70,000. Our copy—Mrs. Marckwardt’s copy actually—was a first commercial edition that we’d priced at ten thousand. A bargain. Carla laid out the familiar story of Peter Rabbit appearing in an illustrated letter that Beatrix Potter wrote for the son of her former governess when he was sick; of the privately printed editions, which Beatrix Potter paid for herself; and then the first commercial editions, with thirty-one colored illustrations, of which our copy was a good example. Carla included several of the illustrations on the blog—Peter helping himself to lettuces and French beans and then some radishes in Farmer McGregor’s garden, Beatrix Potter’s portrait of herself as Mrs. McGregor, which did not appear in later editions. And the all-important (for collectors) page 51: “Peter gave himself up for lost and wept big tears.” In later editions, “Peter gave himself up for lost and shed big tears.” The blog ended with an invitation to anyone who had a copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit with “wept” instead of “shed” on page 51 to contact the shop, and a note saying that our copy had been sold to a private collector.

  And the frosting on the cake was that the summer people, desperate for something to read, wandered in and bought detective novels and cookbooks and books of local history. We had to scramble to keep the shelves stocked with books from The Warehouse.

  I thought Olivia would be very pleased when she got back from the retreat. But, in fact, I had been right to worry about her, and when I saw her get out of Sarah’s dark blue Alero, I swallowed hard. Her shoulders were sagging; she was holding on to something—her large Italian purse—as if it were too heavy to carry. Her eyes were as dark as if she applied kohl. She’d lost weight.

  “Didn’t they feed you?” I asked.

  “Mom, what’s the matter?” Saskia said. “What’s happened to you?” She turned her anger against Sarah, though I knew she was angry at me too. “How could you do this to her? She needs to see a doctor.” She turned to her mother: “What did they do to you?”

  “Don’t scold me. I’m just tired, Sasky. That’s all. I just need to lie down for a while. Please. Don’t turn your back on me, not now.”

  Saskia and I got her into bed. When we came back down, Reverend Sarah was waiting for us, but Saskia asked her to leave.

  Olivia rallied the next day but was very irritable, consumed with details about the wedding that distracted everyone from the real drama: the florist couldn’t come up with the wildflowers that Olivia wanted; Stefano was planning to serve a red wine with the salmon at the reception instead of pinot grigio; Olivia had lost so much weight that her rings had to be resized, her wedding dress altered. She couldn’t sit still.

  When Marcus arrived, he assured me that it was always this way before a wedding. He and I would drive into town and see about different flowers; he was quite sure that a light red wine would make a perfect pairing for a meaty fish like salmon, but he would speak to Stefano about it at the rehearsal dinner; we’d take Olivia into town with us and have a drink somewhere while the jeweler resized the rings. It was really quite a simple matter. He’d spoken to Reverend Sarah, who would take in the darts just above the waist on Olivia’s dress, a simple white sheath.

  In the morning, Marcus and I went fishing on a charter boat and came back with six large chinook, which we took directly to Stefano’s. We ate some lunch at Stefano’s and drank some wine and talked the easiest talk of all, book talk.

  By five o’clock, the church was full of friends and well-wishers from the congregation, Signora Vitale and her four sons, collectors and customers too. Marcus stood next to me in the front of the church. Augie managed to walk down the aisle with Olivia, following Delilah. Augie gave Olivia away and sat down by himself in a pew at the front. Olivia did not promise to “obey” me, but we promised to honor and cherish each other; Reverend Sarah pronounced us husband and wife. “You see,” Marcus whispered in my ear after I’d kissed the bride. “It all worked out.” I had to agree.

  On the church lawn, we enjoyed a simple but elegant reception. Marcus proposed a toast, and the Vitales uncovered the antipasti—prosciutto, olives, and cheese—and served prosecco and Lachryma Christi, which went down very well with the chinook, which Stefano grilled right in the churchyard.

  About eight o’clock, I drove Augie back to The Dunes.

  “She looks like hell,” Augie said. “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’ll figure out something,” I said.

  He snorted.

  When I got back to the house, everyone—Marcus, Sarah, Saskia, Carla and Adam, Delilah and her husband, Jack—was sitting on the deck on the north side of the house, drinking the last of the wine. Delilah was reading an advance newspaper account of the wedding in which every single detail was wrong. But it didn’t matter. Olivia had already gone to bed. Booker had gone upstairs with her.

  When I went upstairs, Booker was asleep next to the bed, one hind leg behind the other, Olivia was lying on her side. She’d left a half glass of prosecco on the side table. Her underwear had been wadded up on my side of the bed, along with a lace chemise. Her high heels poked out from under the sheets. I took her shoes off and lay down beside her. She wasn’t asleep; she was crying into her pillow. When I put my arm around her, she pulled away.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t have anything left to give you,” she said. “Nothing.”

  “You’re overtired, that’s all.”

  “That’s not all.”

  “Can I get you something?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Wine? Tea? A sleeping pill?”

  She shook her head, still turned away from me. “I’m so sorry. Sorry for everything.”

  “You don’t need to be sorry for anything.”

  “Let’s not talk,” she said.

  I kept my arm over her for a while, as if that might dispel the shadows, and then she said, “Say that poem that you say in the shower every morning. The one that’s taped up on the refrigerator.”

  “‘At Least’?”

  “I don’t know what it’s called. Just say the ending.”

  “‘I hate to seem greedy,’” I said. “‘I have so much to be thankful for already. But I want to get up early one more morning, at least. And go to my place with some coffee and wait. Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.’”

  “That’s what I want to do, Gabe,” she said. “Tomorrow, and every day from now on. Get up every morning and go to our place with some coffee, and just wait to see what’s going to happen.”

  I thought it was a good plan. As least I couldn’t think of a better one.

  XXII. THE REGATTA

  Everyone had an agenda. Reverend Sarah had an agenda. “Jesus commanded his followers to go out and preach the kingdom and heal the sick,” she insisted. She’d called to see how Olivia was doing.

  “I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “We should take her up to Kalamazoo to see the bishop, start a dialogue with the Healing Touch Spiritual Ministry. It’s a Judeo-Christian perspective, Gabe. Nothing freaky, just rebalancing the body’s energy, assisting its natural healing processes, building a bridge between the Church and the World. I can call and make the ar
rangements. I’ve already talked to the director.”

  “I’ll talk to her about it,” I said.

  “Seriously, Gabe,” she said.

  “I hear you.”

  “I don’t think you do,” she said.

  Saskia also had an agenda. She’d been surfing the Web and had discovered a miracle drug that was being used in England to treat both HL and NHL—Hodgkin’s lymphoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

  “A cancer patient in Manchester, England, was given two weeks to live. He had seventy tumors. They gave him something called Brentuximab Vedotin. It flushed the cancer out of his system. He’s fine now. It’s a kind of antibody that targets the cell membrane. It destroys the cancer cells from the inside. I can’t explain it, but the thing is, it works. It’s been granted accelerated approval by the FDA. We may not be able to get it here, but we could go to England. It works for anaplastic large cell lymphoma. I don’t understand why she won’t even think about it.”

  “Your mother’s not about to start taking some miracle drug. One miracle was enough.”

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  David had an agenda too. The strangest agenda of all. He kept calling. He was taking part in a test in Ann Arbor. The government had shut down all research in the seventies, but now things were changing. Psychedelics were back in the frame. He could try to get Olivia into the program. Or he could maybe get his hands on some psilocybin. He was sure he could, in fact.

  “Are these tests,” I asked him, “being conducted by scientists at the University of Michigan?”

  “Not exactly, but some of the scientists are connected to the U of M.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “It’s mostly just psilocybin, from mushrooms. It’s been used since prehistoric times in religious rites. Psilocybin semblance. Liberty caps.’ You know. The Doors of Perception? Used in a lot of Native American religions…”

  “Aldous Huxley,” I said. “You want to buy a copy? I’ll sell you a signed copy for two thousand dollars.”

  “Ordinary consciousness gives us only a small fraction of what we can perceive.”

  “And how is this going to help Olivia?”

  “It’s the ultimate Romantic trip. Wordsworth getting high on Nature, but a hundred times more powerful. ‘That elevated mood in which the burden of the mystery is lifted.’ Let me talk to her.”

  “Maybe later.” Maybe never.

  “You chop them up and put them in a teapot with boiling water and some lemon juice and let it steep for about thirty minutes. Or you can get it powdered and take it in a gel cap. That’s what they give us in the study. And a little ginger to prevent nausea. There’s a questionnaire, too, that they want you to take first. I know it’s got to be tough right now. I think this could help. It could help you too. It can be a little scary, but I could come down and walk you through it. Help you to experience the scary parts as pleasurable. Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s asleep right now.”

  “Tell her to call.”

  “I’ll give her the message,” I said.

  “I could FedEx you some,” he said. “I don’t understand why you don’t want her to try it. It’s just like LSD, only much safer. Huxley wanted to administer LSD to terminally ill cancer patients to make dying a more spiritual experience. He even had his wife inject him with LSD on his deathbed.”

  “David, she doesn’t want it.”

  “I need to hear her say it. Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s asleep now.” Fuck off.

  “At least show her the questionnaire. You have to take it online. I sent her the link. I’ll send it to you too.”

  What about the dog? Did Booker have an agenda? His agenda was to go out and rendezvous with Whitefoot and Barley in the morning and then to stand by Olivia’s bed with his chin resting on the covers, and then, if she gave him the signal, to climb up on the bed and lie down next to her. He had his own blanket, in a corner, which he would drag up onto the bed and wrap around himself. He could do it in two or three seconds, leaving his head exposed so Olivia could scratch the top of his head or run her finger around the clockwise whorl on the side of his neck.

  At the beginning of August, after a difficult week, Olivia declared her independence. She was not going to go up to Kalamazoo to see the bishop and get in touch with the Healing Touch Ministry; she was not going to go to England to undergo a series of injections of the miracle drug, Brentuximab Vedotin. She was not going to start drinking tea laced with psychedelic mushroom powder. She had her own agenda. “We need to start getting up early,” she said, “or earlier, and go to our place with a cappuccino. And wait to see what happens. We said we’d do it, and now we’ve got to really do it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  In the morning, the LED display on the alarm clock read 4:30. Olivia was already awake.

  “I feel better already,” she said. “But you’ll have to run interference for me.”

  “Will do,” I said.

  It was 5:30 by the time we’d eaten boiled eggs and gotten ourselves arranged on the balcony outside our bedroom. Well before first light, well before the birds. The weather had been hot, but it was cool now. I made two cappuccinos in Duralex glasses instead of cups and brought them out on a tray, with sugar and a little Ghirardelli cocoa powder, and little glasses of sparkling water. I’d tried to make a leaf on the top of each cappuccino, the way the baristas do in Italy. I wasn’t very successful, but the glasses were beautiful anyway, with the dark chocolate sprinkled over the milk froth, and the little silver spoons that I’d bought in Rome when I was living with Franco Arnulfo, and the folded paper napkins. No e-mails, no computers, no telephone. Just the two of us, trying to stay in the present moment. I was happy, but not sure how to show it.

  “What shall we talk about?” I said.

  “The geraniums need to be deadheaded,” she said.

  We’d planted the geraniums in June, in two window boxes that hung over the railing.

  “Do you want me to do it now?”

  She shook her head.

  There’s always a kind of awkwardness about deliberately setting out to “talk.” When someone says, “We need to talk,” you know it’s not good. And maybe that’s the way we felt now. Setting out to talk as opposed to just talking.

  “We don’t really need to talk,” Olivia said, lifting her shoulders. Not-talking was hard too. But after a while, thoughts started to bubble up, like messages at a Quaker meeting.

  “The manuscript of an unfinished Jane Austen novel,” I said, “was auctioned off at Sotheby’s. The Watsons. The reserve was two hundred thousand pounds, but it was knocked down for nine hundred ninety-three thousand.”

  “Who bought it?”

  “The Bodleian.”

  ”Have you read it?”

  “Another lovable but flawed heroine.”

  “I’m sure she’ll discover her flaw and become a better person by the end.”

  “Except it doesn’t end.”

  She laughed. “I had a dream about Jacques Derrida,” she said. “I’m sitting in one of the little classrooms on the third floor of Linsly-Chittenden Hall. In the old campus.”

  I’d been in New Haven at the Beineke and the William Reese Company, though I couldn’t place Linsly-Chittenden Hall. But it didn’t matter.

  “We’re sitting at a long table with some people and Jacques Derrida is there, on my right. He’s wearing a blue sweater, and he gets up and swings his arm way out, as if he’s reaching out to shake my hand, and he says, ‘I undermined your first point, but probably in a way too subtle for you to understand, but your second point was a good one.’ And he shakes my hand and then leaves.”

  “You should put that in your book,�
� I said.

  “Too late,” she said. “It’s in the hands of the copy editor.”

  The silhouette of a large ship had appeared on the horizon. I could barely see it with the binoculars.

  “I’d like to see them take a man off one of the big ships and put another up on board. Like in the poem. Who are the two men? Who’s the one they take off the ship and who’s the one they put on board?”

  “I think they take the captain off the ship and put the pilot on board to bring the ship in. Or maybe it’s the other way around. The pilot takes the ship out of the port and then the pilot boat brings out the captain and he gets on board, and then the pilot boat takes the pilot back to the pilot station. Something like that.”’

  “What kind of a boat is it?”

  “Maybe an ore boat,” I said.” “I can’t see the lights anymore. The sun’s coming up.”

  “What’s ‘ore’ anyway, and where are they taking it?”

  “It’s a mystery.”

  “Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean it’s a mystery.”

  “Like the pipe bomb in the store,” I said. “No one ever figured that one out. Maybe the night watchman kept him from trying again, but the FBI thinks he made it to Iran.”

  “Look,” she said, “a sailboat. We’re not the only ones up early this morning.”

  The boat was tacking into an offshore wind, sails filling and then emptying out as it came about.

  “I love to watch them,” she said.

  “We can watch for the regatta on Labor Day weekend,” I said. “If we’re lucky, we may catch sight of some of the boats from here. They leave St. Joe on the second leg in the morning and get to Michigan City—I don’t know, probably seven or eight hours. There are about ninety boats. I missed it last year. I don’t remember what I was doing.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “If I’m still around in September.”

  “What about the pilgrimage—going to Jordan in December and then Jerusalem?”