by A. K. Klemm
At the time, it was just nice to join Kevin in the woods and read through East of Eden and its companion book, Journal of a Novel. It was nice to sit with a stack of notebooks and jot down references for their project as Kevin read aloud. He had an unexpectedly pleasant reading voice, and bits of sunlight came through the trees and shone against his eyelashes and onto the page.
Sometimes they would lie down, and her head was on his chest or in the crook of his arm. Sometimes they were opposite each other, catching glimpses of the other from across the blanket. Sometimes he laid his head in her lap while she twisted his wavy locks against her fingers. But always, for every second of the book, every discovery, every plot point, every beautiful word, they were together.
After that, they began doing all their assignments this way, and not just in the woods. When it was too cold, they would stay at each other’s houses. Kevin’s grades had always been great, but they improved anyway, and AJ started to fall in love with the boy she’d been dating for months.
Books were magical, and Kevin was magical to AJ when he had a book in his hands. After reading John Steinbeck, AJ didn’t think her life would ever be the same. Looking back, it was the truth, not because of John Steinbeck’s undeniable brilliance, but because of Kevin Rhys’ undeniable magnetism. Those trips to the woods to do homework were what instigated their trips to the bookstores later. Those trips to the bookstores were what gave them the chance to bond outside of Lily Hollow.
AJ pulled herself out of her own thoughts to offer Ivy a smile. “You should read it. It’s excellent.” She handed Ivy East of Eden, and Ivy tossed the copy toward the register and said she’d take the week to look it over.
Matthew had made his way over to the café kitchen and, though listening, was setting up another batch of coffee in the French press. He did a few other odds and ends to get ready for the day as the coffee grounds steeped.
“Have you read it, Matthew?” AJ asked.
“Yes, it’s pretty good.” He had picked it up in college, already a fan of Steinbeck after reading The Grapes of Wrath in high school. He’d read East of Eden on a summer break one year while visiting an old girlfriend’s parents’ beach house in North Carolina. They hadn’t been that serious, and she’d mostly ignored him and listened to music in the sun while he’d mostly ignored her and enjoyed the ocean and a good book.
She’d brought him along because her parents liked him, not because she did. They were technically still together, but she had already expressed interest in another guy, and Matthew had surprised both of them by saying, “Ok, that’s cool.”
He remembered her curious facial expression. “Gee, thanks, Matt. Not even a little bit of a fight?”
“Not really. I just… don’t care.”
He knew those words stung her, but not enough to apologize for them or for it to keep her from throwing away the other guy’s phone number. She liked the people in her life working for her attention. He remembered her telling him this over a drink one night in a bar. They were both underage at the time, but the bartenders all knew her name, and she’d ordered him a scotch before he could protest.
It struck Matthew as funny how a book could help him remember his whole life, even the parts he’d rather forget. He wanted to make new memories with his new friends. So far, all he’d done there was partake in Ivy’s little book club upstairs with the youth of Lily Hollow and attempt to snoop through AJ’s memories by reading stuff she cherished. He wanted to read something for the first time with his new friends, not re-read old school books and sort through someone else’s cobwebs.
“The three of us should read a book together,” Matthew said.
“Isn’t that pretty much all we do?” Ivy was skeptical.
“No, that’s what you do at the register. The three of us together, as in the same book at the same time. We should post the big chalkboard stand up on the Green out front, lie out in the grass, eat sandwiches, and read together.”
“And the chalkboard?” AJ asked, not following.
“Have Ivy draw an invitation on the board saying, ‘The Bookshop Hotel will be closed for lunch. Join us on the Green for an hour of reading.’ Then, actually do it, every day. It’s fall, the weather is perfect for it. It would be different from the book club, because it’s not about discussing the book. It’s about reading the book together—the fellowship of reading.”
“Sometimes, Matthew, I think you live in my head,” AJ said. That was a pretty intense confession coming from AJ, and for a second, he found himself grinning like a fool. “It’s done. We’ll start today.”
“What book?” Ivy asked.
AJ looked at the book she was shelving. “Franny and Zooey. I have ten copies of J.D. Salinger’s little book here. We’ll each take one and put five at the register. People will impulse-buy them without realizing why if we’re reading them on the Green every day.”
“But luxury has never appealed to me. I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
— Daphne Du Maurier
Ben
At noon, they did as they’d planned. It was cool out, so they laid a few blankets on the grass, wore sweaters, and ordered a vat of soup from Sam’s. Matthew looked up at AJ periodically, who seemed unexpectedly content. He had begun to think of her as a walking contradiction—so people savvy, and yet a loner.
But here, reading outdoors, sharing a blanket and soup, she seemed like she was finally getting a bit of what she needed. If this was the kind of thing that she and Kevin had done in high school, no wonder she had run off and married him. Ivy was picking her teeth and twirling her hair, her fidgeting such a stark contrast to AJ’s stillness.
Matthew was at the part where Lane kisses Franny’s coat, as if it were an extension of her body, and there on the green in the cool air and sun, all Matthew could think about was how much he would love to graze his lips past the knit collar of AJ’s sweater.
At 12:45, he’d just made it to Zooey, about fifty pages in, when a car pulled into the circle drive of Aspen Court’s cul-de-sac. A gentleman popped out. He saw the sign on the chalkboard in the path of the door on the sidewalk saying they’d be back at one, and he sauntered over to the blankets.
He wore spectacles. Matthew would normally refer to them as glasses, but they weren’t just glasses. They were old-fashioned spectacles that scholars wore in the 1800’s. Apparently, he kept books in his back pocket and radiated a nerdy chic that annoyed Matthew, because he pulled a copy of Wordsworth from his pinstriped slacks and joined the trio. He popped an unlit cigarette into his mouth.
At one, a little bell rang from AJ’s cell, and she looked up. “Oh, this was lovely.”
“I agree,” spectacle man said. His hair was peppered gray, but he wasn’t any older than AJ or Matthew.
“Benji!” AJ lunged toward him with a hug. Matthew was instantly even more annoyed with him.
“Hey, watch it. It’s just Ben now.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Grams said you opened this place up as a bookstore and I should come check it out. I’m checking it out.”
Matthew was folding up the blankets, and Ivy had already gone inside and was positioned at her register post, still reading, from the looks of it through the glass window.
“Um, I’m sorry, Ben. This is my assistant manager—well, my partner, really.” She corrected herself, trying to give Matthew the credit he deserved. “I couldn’t have opened this place without him. Matthew, this is Ben. You know Sue? From Nancy’s Book Club? Well, Ben is Sue’s oldest grandson. He went to school with me.”
Matthew just nodded politely as they all made their way into the Hotel. AJ was unusually peppy when she asked, “What have you been up to?”
“Well, I got a position last year teaching English at the community college in Briar. Not long, um, after the funeral.” His voice broke a bit, more out of uncertainty than anything else.
“Which one?” AJ half smiled, trying to make
light of her bad year.
“Kevin’s.”
“I know.”
“I thought I’d see you then, but I didn’t, so I came as soon as I heard you were back and turning everyone’s lives upside down.”
“Mmmm.”
Matthew held the door for them, and the moment Ben stepped inside, all the awkward funeral talk passed as he exhaled in awe.
“Oh, AJ, it’s amazing!”
“Please send your students my way. And colleagues and, well, everyone you know.”
“Oh, yes, a thirty minute drive is nothing to spend a day in here. Oh my god.”
“Where was this place when we were in high school, right?”
“Still here, just had a much more interesting function.” He laughed out loud.
“Like you ever came here.”
“Oh yeah, all the time. With Amy, actually.” Ben walked the place, touching a beam here or there, thinking of when the building was an old, drafty, rotting thing where kids went to make out and tell ghost stories.
“No way, I never knew.” AJ grinned a little.
“You were all wrapped up in Kevin, how could you? Man, Grams wasn’t kidding when she was raving about this place.”
“She raves?” AJ smiled.
“Oh yeah.”
Matthew interrupted, “I can give you the tour.” Anything to separate them and their mutual gushing.
“Oh yes, please do. Thanks, Matthew. I’ll wait down here.” Matthew was surprised that she seemed so grateful. He’d expected to be blown off, but she quickly disappeared into the downstairs office. As he gestured for Ben to follow, he realized the cool air outside may have chilled her bad leg. It hurt more when it was cold.
“This is Ivy, our cashier.”
Ivy winked at Ben. “Hello, professor.”
“Umm, no.” Matthew led Ben away, up the customer stairs. He guided Ben through the whole building, and Ben made comments here and there about how he’d never been upstairs—the wood floors had never seemed safe—and how he was amazed how fresh the building smelled even though it looked like a lot had been salvaged. On the third floor, Matthew showed him the upstairs work room and how they all lived in the hall together in the old hotel suites.
“You’ve got to know her pretty well, then, living together and all.” Ben became suddenly blunt outside the earshot of AJ. Now, he seemed more like a relative of Sue’s.
“Sure, I guess.”
“Is she ok? I mean, is she…”
“She’s sad. Withdrawn, but she’s a-ok. She’s a trooper.”
“You had to be to belong to Kevin Rhys,” Ben said.
This was new. No one in town ever talked about AJ’s husband with that tone. It was usually all reverence and awe.
Ben poked his head into Ivy’s room and gestured at Ivy’s mess. “That girl. Man, she’s something else.” When he brought his gaze back to Matthew, he saw the look on his face. “Oh, no, they’ve got you brainwashed, thinking he was God’s gift to mankind, too, and you never even met the bastard.”
“What was he like?” Matthew felt a bit of shame in asking this stranger questions about AJ’s past life. Although curious, he wasn’t big on prying.
“He was too good to be true,” Ben said. “Everyone loved him, and every girl but AJ wanted him. And for some reason, he picked her, like it was a mission to ensure he was adored by all. He couldn’t handle not being the best.”
“Were you guys close?”
“Me and AJ, the best of friends, known her my whole life. Kevin, on the other hand, I don’t think he was truly close to anyone. You like her, huh? How could you not? AJ deserved better than running off with the town hero. She needed someone who actually cared, who was actually heroic. I’m glad she has this place now. She needs something magical to believe in that’ll actually turn out to be magical. This place is so awesome.”
Matthew nodded, letting Ben carry the conversation. He imagined this was how his and AJ’s friendship had been when they were young, Ben the chatterbox and AJ the quiet gal pal. He had no way of knowing that once, AJ was quite the talker and it was she who had brought Ben out of his shell.
As they headed to the employee stairwell, Ben asked, “Going all the way to the top?”
“No, it’s still a junkyard up there. We’re fixing it up as we go. AJ wants to open it up and maybe let it be—”
“What’s taking you boys so long?” Ivy popped her head in the stairwell at the bottom and called up to them. “AJ’s ordering cheesecake from Abigail’s and says to get your asses down here.”
“The lady beckons,” Ben said, and the two men headed to the lobby.
Franny and Zooey was such a short book that by the third day of reading on the green, not only had several of Ben’s students come to join them from Briar, but a new book was in order.
“Les Miserables has been on my list for a while,” Matthew said.
“Mmmm, no,” Ivy protested. “That’s like three years of lunches.”
AJ let them bicker it out, glad that Ivy wasn’t up for Les Miserables. AJ had read Hugo the last year of Kevin—not the wisest choice when your husband was on the verge of suicide, daily.
She remembered turning to volume four, Saint Denis, and feeling especially lonely when Kevin came home from work. He had spied her on the couch and sat down beside her.
“I’m sorry. I could do better.”
She’d let him put his arms around her, and they’d sat there for a long time just holding each other. It wasn’t all bad, she reminded herself. Kevin wasn’t perfect, but he had been the love of her life.
Matthew offered several bulky titles to Ivy, and she kept shutting him down. “Oh my god, Matthew, we’ll be here for years!”
“Is anyone actually planning on leaving?” He raised his voice a bit.
“Just pick a shorter book,” AJ said, her patience wearing thin. She felt like a parent of two teenagers sometimes, except Matthew was her age. Matthew. She stared at him then, smug and uncharacteristically angry. He looked so frustrated. Is he in love with Ivy? she wondered. Is that why he wants to read a longer book? Is he trying to pin her down? He had been awfully quick to join her book club.
When Ivy had challenged the Nancy Harrigan book club, she’d quickly gained members, but the club never grew large. It was perfect for a little group of anarchists and revolutionaries. AJ had seen the club in session, six members sitting in a circle around a hand-tied area rug.
She mostly remembered their state of depression after reading Crime and Punishment and Matthew lurking in the corner of the meeting room. Lurk wasn’t the right word. Matthew was observant and mostly quiet, and she liked that about him. He was in tune and good natured, not to mention handsome. So no, he never lurked. He just statuesquely occupied space.
Matthew had chuckled at the four high-school students and Ivy, whose shoulders were slumped, each with a copy of Dostoyevsky’s book laying open to some Post-it, underlined quote, dog-ear, or some other book abuse.
Ivy’s little club had somehow become the platform for students to air out all the feelings they couldn’t share in their literature class at the risk of their grade. That’s partly why the club had flourished in the spring, died in the summer, and now, come fall, would reemerge. The other part of its success was because Matthew was so supportive of it.
Now that he wanted something, AJ could tell he just wanted Ivy to go with it. After all, he’d never tried to interfere with her book club selections. After a bit more arguing, Ivy and Matthew finally settled on The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor.
“We need fun, and this looks fun.” Ivy slapped the book into Matthew’s chest.
AJ had walked off, having lost interest in the conversation around the point they started to be overly stubborn. Essentially, it didn’t matter what they read, as long as the three of them read it together.
“Ok, whatever,” he conceded.
“Our houses are where we go to find order and certainty against the disorder and uncert
ainty of the world at large. In our houses, we’re surrounded by familiar things, familiar people. We have comforting routines.”
— James Morgan, If These Walls Had Ears
Sidney
Sidney slipped her boots back on after parking the car. The old hotel loomed invitingly over the circle drive, a much different effect than the building had all those years ago, the night she got pregnant. How funny that her daughter had inherited that place of all places.
Sid could see a dark-haired girl at the register inside. She tried to catch a glimpse of AJ, but she couldn’t see past the gorgeous hunk cleaning the windows. No wonder AJ stuck around this hole of a town. That guy could stop traffic in Paris.
She was nervous about going inside. She’d never been a good mother. She’d wanted to take AJ with her when she fled Lily Hollow to go see the world, but she’d decided it would be better for a small child to stay in a solid and stable home like Granddaddy Jack’s.
When AJ was older, she just didn’t want to leave. Sid had asked, via a phone call from Australia (she couldn’t go her whole life without living in the city with which she shared a name), but by then, AJ had friends and, well, Kevin. Kevin Rhys. Sidney had nearly died when she’d heard her daughter was getting married. She’d shown up to the wedding in a purple silk she’d picked up in Bali. She’d stood near the back smoking a cigarette.
Jude Carson had made eyes at her from across the back row, both there to pretend they were better people than they were. Had they been good people—better parents—they’d be up there with the people who raised AJ. But Jude had rarely acknowledged the child, and Sidney had run away.