by A. K. Klemm
“What do you think?” she’d asked the nurse one day.
“Excuse me, honey?” the woman had asked back.
“Never mind,” AJ had said. “Never mind.”
The physical therapist was a middle-aged, balding man. He had kind eyes and reminded AJ of Terry O’Quinn.
“What would you do with your rings if your wife was dead?” AJ had asked him one day.
“I don’t know,” he’d said. “I’ve never been married.”
She’d nodded. Back in her room, she’d stared at them and twirled them on the tips of her fingers while watching a rerun of The Price is Right.
When she’d gone back to Lily Hollow, she had been wearing the wedding band but had tucked the engagement ring back into the box Kevin had presented it with. The days of diamonds were over, but it seemed disrespectful not to keep the band on, especially in Lily Hollow. She felt naked without it.
In the kitchen with Matthew, she was hyper-aware of that ring on her finger. The timer on the oven went off, and Matthew took the casserole out while AJ continued to stare blankly into space.
The kitchen was bright, the ring on her finger too shiny. It was a moment in time that she imagined would be imprinted in her memory forever. She was barely aware of what Matthew was doing, and at the same time, it seemed as though he was taking a year to do it. She felt goosebumps rise on her flesh, and she noticed how skinny her arms were, how thin she must look to other people.
When Kevin was alive, AJ had been small, but soft. She’d always had enough weight to be able to spare five or ten pounds if she had to—never plump, but always full and healthy. Now, despite her swollen knuckles from all the broken bones, her wedding ring hung loosely on her finger. She remembered it being snug once.
A plate was placed in front of her on the counter—hot steamy casserole cut into a perfect square. “It smells good.”
“Tastes good, too,” Matthew said, his mouth full. They munched for a few minutes, and when he served her a second helping, he said, “No more wine for you. I’m not cleaning up after you again.”
She nodded. “That’s fair.”
AJ was shelving a stack of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. She remembered a time when she was the only person she knew who had read it. Since Oprah, she couldn’t think of many people who hadn’t. Even Nancy Harrigan’s book club had decided to tackle it. One good thing about Oprah, she got people to read.
The first time AJ had read about the love affair of Florentino Artiza and Fermina Daza, she had been sitting in jeans and Kevin’s letter jacket in the stands while the team practiced for the upcoming homecoming game. The cheerleaders had stood in their warm-ups, doing a half time routine, and she had heard the marching band in the school parking lot.
She remembered reading the line, “No please… forget it,” while wiping tears from her cheeks. She’d stopped for a moment to look up and see Kevin call a play and throw a pass and had wondered if she’d ever be disenchanted with her own boyfriend. It had taken a long time to become enchanted with him. The idea of losing everything she felt for him had scared her.
It was that day in the Franklin Rhys Stadium behind Lily Hollow High that AJ knew she had never loved anyone else and thought that she never could love anyone but Kevin Rhys. Before, she hadn’t given their relationship much thought. It was understood amongst the town, their parents, and between the couple that they would be together forever.
That day on the stadium bench, she realized that she hadn’t been the one doing the choosing before, but now and forever more, she would. She chose to love Kevin as much as everyone assumed she did, and with that, she was suddenly, madly, deeply, and wholly in love.
On the way home that evening, Love in the Time of Cholera in one hand and Kevin’s arm in the other, AJ had been extremely giddy.
“What’s with you today?” Kevin had asked. “I saw you crying on the bench, and now you look like a kid at a carnival.”
“We’re getting married, Kevin Rhys.”
He’d smiled. “I know that.”
“I know, but today, I know that.”
In The Bookshop Hotel, Kevin Rhys’ widow fondled the spines and ran her hands down the Vintage Publishing logo. This is what she loved most about books. It wasn’t just about the story in between the covers. It was about the stories you remember because of the story. Good book, bad book, brilliant book, or terrible, she would always remember what she was feeling or thinking the first time she experienced it.
Matthew came up behind her with a stack of Margaret George’s historical fiction titles. “Thought these should go up sooner rather than later.”
“Ooh, yes, these will go fast.” She took The Memoirs of Cleopatra in her hand. “I haven’t read this one yet.”
“You read those?”
“I read everything.”
“Of course.”
She set aside the one and started alphabetizing the others into place.
“What were you thinking about?” Matthew asked, watching her front the entire shelf of G’s, noticing her hands linger over Garcia.
“Kevin.”
That night, Matthew snuck down to the store after Ivy and AJ had gone up to bed. He took one of every Gabriel Garcia Marquez title up to his room. Going in alphabetical order, he started with Autumn of the Patriarch and started reading. Throughout the first fifty pages, he couldn’t stop wondering what it was about this author that reminded AJ of her dead husband.
When AJ lost her husband in the accident in Chicago, she’d completely shattered her right leg. The first time Matthew noticed was a rainy day when the cold air kept seeping through all the pores of the old hotel. She had begun to limp early in the morning and quickly feigned a headache and left him to run the store alone. He’d been surprised at the time, because he hadn’t been there long, but he was afraid to ask.
Now he’d lived in Lily Hollow long enough, seen AJ disappear into the cemetery often enough, and heard enough rumors to know not to ask. He also knew there were other injuries, but noticing them had come slowly over time, not like the limp—the limp was fairly obvious to anyone who spent even just a few hours in a work environment with AJ or saw her try to trudge through cold weather.
He’d learned about the pins in her left arm from Sam one day and discovered the dimples in her skin only after knowing to look for them. Matthew knew she had broken some ribs, and he’d noticed the ridge in her nose one day when she laughed at something, realizing that she’d probably broken her nose, too. AJ never talked about the accident or the loss of her husband, but all the signs were there—the town had just chosen not to mention it around her.
Still, there weren’t many places Matthew could go without hearing or reading about the legend that was Kevin Rhys. Matthew wondered just how much of the fanfare AJ was oblivious to from being there her whole life and how much she blocked out for self-preservation.
AJ sat on one of the café tables swinging the damaged leg, letting gravity pull it out of the places it seemed to compact itself into while munching her second sandwich. She spun the ring on her left finger, and Matthew wondered how long she was going to wear the damned thing. He sat a table away swallowing his Chicken Humus in large gulps.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry it hurt, but he knew better. She was proud, and she’d shut him down before the words had even passed his lips. She’d been Kevin Rhys’s sweetheart for far too long in this town, and she knew how to put on a smile and a show when it was convenient for her. It was what made her so good at customer service.
“I got a family-sized bowl of the ham and dill casserole,” he said.
She quickly stopped rubbing her knee, as though she had forgot he was in the room until he spoke. “Thanks. I love that stuff. Where’s Ivy? She’d probably like a bite.”
“She didn’t work today.”
“She’s not upstairs?”
“No, she left this morning to go do something—been gone all day.”
“
Oh.” Matthew noticed that she seemed uncomfortable all of a sudden. Ivy was an easy distraction tactic, normally. AJ used her for that often. Ivy was a weird sort of perky and interesting and had stories to tell that weren’t about Lily Hollow or anyone from Lily Hollow. She decided to talk shop instead. “Did I tell you the home school kids are going to start meeting here for some kind of book-club-study thing?”
“No, but I know about it. Nancy came in with Melissa McGrath and Reverend Michaels the other day. They sat in the café and discussed the town calendar, curriculum and appropriate activities to coincide with the book list.”
“Oh.” AJ knew this had happened, she also knew Matthew had been there for it while she was upstairs fiddling with the health inventory in 1G.
Matthew handed her a fork, and she started digging into the casserole. Diced ham, potato squares, dill, and sour cream filled her mouth and momentarily took her mind off the throbbing pain in her shin and knee. She knew that when she got upstairs to her room, her whole leg would be swollen. They finished eating quietly, and Matthew took the trash to the kitchen. He came out to find her limping back toward a display to tweak the merchandise to her liking.
He walked straight to the front door, locked it, and switched the sign to “closed.”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re closing early.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired of you limping around here like a hurt puppy and trying to pretend you actually think I don’t notice or know. I’m taking you upstairs, and you are resting that leg for the rest of the day. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
“Excuse me?”
“Upstairs. Now.”
“I’m—”
“The boss, and no you’re not fine.” He walked over to her, grabbed her good arm, and forced her to the service elevator. He knew that picking her up and just carrying her was out of the question, so he held her arm in such a way that she had no opportunity to put weight on the right side of her body.
She wouldn’t make eye contact with him in the elevator, and her face stayed pinched in an expression of irritation, but once they made it to her door and he guided her to her loveseat, she began to relax. He moved the ottoman over and propped her legs up, then left the room.
Her leg was screaming, and the ache crawled up her limbs, across her ribs, up her spine, and into her skull. The pain was so great, she practically passed out from the raging headache before he returned. He put a warm mug of chamomile and spearmint tea in her hand and a compress on her head.
Her eyes stayed closed while he rolled the pant leg of her jeans up and rubbed her shin with rosemary lotion she purchased from MacGregor’s Nursery on a regular basis. AJ wondered how Matthew knew she had it and where she kept it.
“Thank you,” she sighed.
He lightly touched her head and left the room.
She woke up the next day, alone and smelling like mint, the bitter taste of chamomile on her breath, and without pain.
“Morris liked to share the books with others. Sometimes it was a favorite that everyone loved, and other times he found a lonely little volume whose tale was seldom told.”
— William Joyce
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
“What are you two up to now?” Ivy asked with a yawn, coming out of the stairwell and heading straight for the coffee inside the café. “What did I miss?” Matthew was on a ladder hanging carefully crafted miniature books from the ceiling. He was tired from being up all night reading and was having a hard time maintaining his balance.
The little books fluttered every time he swayed on his toes. Some were open with the pages stiff and visible, and some were closed with the titles beautifully embossed on the cover. They hovered in the varying distances above the main display table where AJ had placed stacks and stacks of William Joyce books. Up front and center was The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.
“I love William Joyce,” AJ said.
“She wanted a reason to make papier-mâché books,” Matthew teased.
Ivy just shrugged and perched herself on the stool behind the register, steaming coffee in hand. “That’s a lot of work for so little merchandise,” she said.
“We can use Flying Books to highlight anything,” AJ said. “We’re in a bookstore. I plan to keep them there awhile.”
“I guess.”
AJ didn’t like their attitudes. She knew Ivy to be apathetic and Matthew a bit of a jester, but the two of them together reminded her too much of Kevin in his unhappy days. When Kevin was in a bad mood, he either didn’t care about anything she did or he poked fun at it. She couldn’t remember him being supportive about anything since high school. Everyone had wanted and expected the girlfriend of Kevin Rhys to be a cheerleader.
Kevin Rhys alone had supported her lack of interest in that endeavor. “If you don’t want to, don’t do it. It’s not who you are.” Thinking of those days helped her grasp onto the memory of him that had inspired this project in the first place, Kevin when he had happy thoughts… happy thoughts that came in waves as if by magic or pixie dust.
“You’re like Tinker Bell with books,” Kevin had told her one day. Self-consciously, she reached to touch her newly cropped hair. Feeling common and small town, she’d chopped it off into a near bob that barely fit in a ponytail. Instead of making her feel better, she just felt worse, like every comment was directed at her hair or the lack thereof.
It took her a moment before she grasped Kevin’s full meaning of his comment. Kevin had a way of reminding her of the things that she didn’t like about herself but somehow made her feel good about them at the same time. Kevin wasn’t calling her Tinker Bell because of her hair. He was trying to pay her a compliment.
That day, they had driven to Briar to visit the bookstore. They had needed books for school, but AJ had come away with a sack of a lot more than required reading.
In the store, Kevin had gingerly held all her purchases one by one. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out.”
“Why’d you grab it?”
“It looks happy.”
“Does reading really make anyone happy?”
“Does football really make anyone happy?”
At that, he’d grown silent. It was the beginning of the solemn moods, that last year in high school. He smiled and played the hero in town, but away, he was more honest.
“Hey now.” She’d picked up a copy of Blaise Pascal’s Human Happiness and shook the book at his head. “Think happy thoughts! Think happy thoughts and fly!”
“You’re like Tinker Bell with books,” he’d said later in the parking lot. If it had only been that easy.
She’d felt foolish after they’d moved to Chicago, because she’d remembered how he had actually read Human Happiness, and the book did nothing but plunge him deeper into solemn speculation. The book had been haphazardly tossed in the dash of the car when he rammed into the guard rail. Often, in the hospital, she’d wondered if it was Kevin making some metaphorical statement. Had he planned the whole thing? Or was it one more of those weird coincidences of life?
Happy thoughts, she’d have to remind herself from now on, trying to steer back to the good parts of that memory. Remember a happy Kevin, and then maybe it won’t hurt so much that you wasted your life on a man who threw his away and almost killed you in the process. Imagine pixie dust being sprinkled around your head. She closed her eyes and felt the burden of bad memories lift. She felt a bit of weightlessness, if only for a minute.
Before coming back to Lily Hollow, she’d sat in countless bookstores contemplating home. One day, she’d stumbled across a display of William Joyce’s picture books, and, reading through one, she’d wept like a baby right there in the store.
Flying books, pixie dust, death, life, and all in between, her thoughts had all been a nonsensical jumble. But that day, reading a children’s picture book, she’d found a bit of peace.
&nb
sp; “It’s supposed to make you feel freed by books,” AJ said to Ivy. “A vision of weightlessness makes people feel weightless.”
Matt heard the change in her voice and softened. “Of course it does. And your vision is beautiful. These are beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Ivy shrugged and said, “Cool,” and the day moved on. But Matthew noticed that AJ’s mood remained heavy. He also noticed her caressing a few titles a little more intensely than usual.
Where Ivy flew by the seat of her pants in the bookstore like AJ had done when she was younger, choosing books seemingly at random, AJ now put heavy thought into each book and could often be found re-reading titles she had read the week before. Ivy must have noticed this, too, because as AJ was stacking copies of East of Eden, Ivy bothered to ask the question, “What’s up with you and that book? Are you going to have sex with it?”
That actually made AJ laugh out loud, something she didn’t do often. She laughed like this more and more frequently with Ivy in the shop, and Matthew often wondered if that’s why she kept Ivy around. Ivy worked, but not with any real zeal. Her zeal came in planning activities to torture Nancy Harrigan, Ivy’s arch nemesis, or so she liked to pretend.
“No, you little perv!” AJ shot back. “It was the first book my husband and I ever read together. We weren’t married at the time. It was for school, but it was something nice that we did together.” AJ remembered the picnic date clearly. Kevin had grabbed sandwiches from Sam’s and headed out to the woods with a Lily Hollow Booster Club quilt. AJ had met him there. It had been one of their spots out behind Rhys stadium where Swan Lane finished its big arching curve around the town and crossed Rhys Avenue.
It didn’t occur to her until after they were in college how pretentious it was that so many of the founding families had named streets after themselves. It didn’t occur to her until after they were married what a toll that must have taken on Kevin’s psyche, living on a street and playing football in a stadium named after his father’s family. It didn’t occur to her then, because there were families all over town like that. After all, she was the bastard daughter of a Carson, who lived a half mile from the Carson family estate on Carson Avenue.