Prose and Cons

by Amanda Flower

  A crow gripping a perch in the shop’s large bay window cawed.

  I jumped, and my hands flew to my chest. I had thought the crow was stuffed.

  The bird glared at me with his beady black eyes. He certainly wasn’t stuffed. “Grandma Daisy!” he mimicked me. “Grandma!”

  I sidestepped away from the black bird. I thought parrots were the only birds that could talk. The crow was the only one who spoke. None of the customers made a peep. A few slipped out the front door behind me. “Escape from the crazy lady” was written all over their faces. I couldn’t say I blamed them.

  A slim woman stepped out from between packed bookshelves. She wore jeans, a hot pink T-shirt with the bookshop’s logo on it, and, despite the summer’s heat, a long silken scarf. Silk scarves were Grandma Daisy’s signature. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen her without one intricately tied around her neck. Today’s scarf was white with silver-dollar-sized ladybugs marching across it. Her straight silver hair was cut in a sleek bob that fell to her chin. Cat’s-eye-shaped glasses perched on her nose. She was a woman in her seventies, but clearly someone who took care of herself. Clearly someone who was not dying.

  My mouth fell open, and I knew I must look a lot like those tourists I’d frightened. “Grandma!” The word came out of my mouth somewhere between a curse and a prayer.

  “Violet, my girl.” She haphazardly dropped the pile of books she had in her arms onto one of the two matching couches in the middle of the room at the base of the birch tree, which seemed to grow out of the floor. “You came!”

  I stepped back. “Of course I came. You were dying.”

  More customers skirted for the door. They knew what was good for them. I wouldn’t have hung around either. The only one who seemed to be enjoying the show was the crow. He was no longer in the front window, but on the end table to my right. Great. A crow was loose in my grandmother’s bookshop. I wished I could say this surprised me, but it didn’t.

  Grandma Daisy chuckled. “Oh, that.”

  “‘Oh, that’? That’s all you can say?” I screeched. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through? I left school. I left my job. I left everything to be with you at your deathbed.”

  Grandma had the decency to wince.

  “Look at you. You look like you are ready to run a marathon. When I spoke to you on the phone last night, you were coughing and gasping. You sounded like you were at death’s door.”

  Grandma Daisy faked a cough. “Like this?” Her face morphed into pathetic. “Oh, Violet, I need you. Please come.” Fake cough. Fake cough. “The doctor said I don’t have much more time.”

  Heat surged up from the base of my neck to the top of my head. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this angry. Oh yeah, I did—it was the first time I’d left Cascade Springs, twelve years ago. I had promised myself that day I would never come back, and look where I was, back in Cascade Springs, tricked by my very own grandmother.

  “You were dying,” the crow said.

  “Quiet, Faulkner,” Grandma Daisy ordered.

  The large black bird sidestepped across the tabletop. Seemed that the crow was a new addition to the shop. It’d been twelve years, but I would have remembered Faulkner. I wondered why Grandma Daisy had never mentioned the bird. I would have thought a talking pet crow would have made a great conversation piece.

  Grandma Daisy searched my face. “I may have fibbed a bit. Can you forgive me?” she asked, giving me her elfish smile. It wasn’t going to work, not this time.

  I spun around, ignored Faulkner, who was spouting “You were dying!” over and over again, and stomped out of the shop.

  Behind me the screen door smacked against the doorframe. I stumbled across the front porch and gripped the whitewashed wooden railing. Charming Books (“where the perfect book picks you”) sat in the center of River Road in the middle of Old Town Cascade Springs, a historic part of the village that was on the National Historic Landmarks list. Every house and small business on the street was more adorable than the last, but none were as stunning as Charming Books, a periwinkle Queen Anne Victorian with gingerbread to spare and a wraparound porch that was twice the size of my studio apartment back in Chicago.

  The tiny front yard was full to bursting with blooming roses and, of course, daisies—Grandma’s personal favorite. On the brick road in front of me, gas lampposts lined the street on either side and prancing horses and white carriages waited at the curbs, ready to take tourists for a spin around the village and along the famous Riverwalk at a moment’s notice. The horses’ manes were elaborately braided with satiny ribbons, and their drivers wore red coats with tails and top hats.

  It was charming. It was perfect. It was the last place on planet Earth I wanted to be.

  I had half a mind to jump in my car and head west for Chicago, never looking back. I couldn’t do that. My shoulders slumped. I was so incredibly tired. Coffee wouldn’t be any help. Coffee had lost its ability to keep me alert my third year of grad school. And as much as she vexed me, I couldn’t leave Grandma Daisy without saying good-bye. For better or worse, she was all the family I had left in the world. And then, there was the whole pom-pom hair situation, which could be tolerated for only so long. I’d need a hairbrush and maybe a blowtorch to get that under control.

  The screen door to the Queen Anne creaked open. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was my grandmother. The scent of lavender talcum powder that always surrounded her floated on the breeze. “Violet, I know it wasn’t right for me to lie to you.”

  I folded my arms, refusing to look at her. I knew it was childish, but I was going on two hours of sleep and tons of betrayal. Being a grown-up wasn’t on the top of my priority list.

  She placed her hand on my shoulder. “It was wrong of me. Very wrong, but it was the only way I could convince you to come back here.”

  She was probably right in that assumption, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “So you pretended to be dying?”

  She let out a breath. “What I said about needing you to come back was true. I do need you here. I want you to stay.”

  She had to be kidding. She knew what had happened to me in this town. She knew why I’d left the day after I graduated high school. She knew better than anyone. “Well, that’s too bad,” I said. “I’m not staying.”

  “Can’t you stay a little while? For me?”

  I felt a pang in my heart. I didn’t want to leave Grandma Daisy, and despite the whole lying thing, it was wonderful to see her, but I couldn’t stay. It was too hard. “I’ll wait until tomorrow, but I’ll leave in the morning.”

  Of course that last statement came to be known as “famous last words.”

  TWO

  “Well, then,” Grandma Daisy said, her face breaking into a smile. “You should come inside, and I’ll fetch you a cold drink.”

  My shoulders slumped in defeat. She got me, and she got me good. “Okay.”

  I followed Grandma Daisy back inside the shop. We were the only ones there besides Faulkner the crow.

  I nodded at Faulkner. “What’s up with the crow?”

  She chuckled. “He showed up in the garden during the winter with a broken wing. He was a young bird then, barely more than a chick. I nursed him back to health, and he decided to stay. Every bookshop needs a mascot.”

  “What’s wrong with a cat?”

  “You know I’m not a traditionalist,” she said with a smile.

  I frowned as I looked around the shop. “I’m sorry I scared away all your customers.”

  She smoothed her silky bob. “It’s no matter. If they needed something, it would have found them.”

  My eyes slid to her. “You mean they were just browsers?”

  She gave a small smile. “You could call them that.”

  I wanted to ask her what that meant, but she scurried aw
ay, muttering about lemonade. As Charming Books was an old converted house, there was a full kitchen in the back. I almost followed her, but my surroundings stopped me. Charming Books was, well, charming. There was something about it that was beguiling. I had been to dozens of other bookstores in my life and never felt the same jolt of wonder as I did while in my grandmother’s shop. It was a feeling of warmth and understanding I got as I looked around the room, like the books were alive and old friends. I knew that was ridiculous, and I would never say that aloud to anyone. The villagers of Cascade Springs thought I was a lot of things. I didn’t need to add peculiar to an already lengthy list.

  Now that I wasn’t blinded by the fear I would find my grandmother dead, I was able to take in my surroundings. The bookshop looked exactly as I remembered it. A vaulted ceiling spanned half the room, stopping in the center of the shop at a metal spiral staircase that led to the second floor. The staircase wrapped itself around a live birch tree with three trunks, each as thick as a grown man. Once a year, grandmother had a tree service come in to prune the tree so that it didn’t break through the historic building’s slate roof. Currently, its branches stopped six inches from the ceiling.

  Sunlight poured into the shop from the windows and the large skylight on the second floor and reflected off the birch tree’s white, silver-flecked bark. The tree, just like the house, had belonged to my family for generations, since my ancestress Rosalee Waverly built the home at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the structure had shifted over the last two hundred years, the most notable change occurred at the turn of the twentieth century when one of Rosalee’s descendants transformed the home into a Queen Anne Victorian, as was the fashion at that time.

  At the top of the staircase, I could see through the black iron railing into the children’s room, which was decorated as a wood sprite’s palace that would have put Tinker Bell to shame. It had been the perfect place to hide during my mother’s chemo treatments.

  For the moment, I would have to wait to visit the fairy room. Faulkner the crow stared at me from one of the tree’s branches as if daring me to climb the stairs. I wasn’t up to facing him. I hadn’t been the least bit surprised that my grandma had nursed Faulkner back to health. When I was a child, she had a revolving door of injured and sick animals going through her house. She was just kindhearted. I sighed. If she was that kindhearted, why would she lie to me, her own granddaughter, about being sick? What was so important that made her want me to move back to Cascade Springs? Part of me was afraid to ask, because Grandma Daisy could be very convincing when she wanted to be, and apparently, after the “I’m dying” speech over the phone, she could be quite an actress too.

  It was beginning to ebb, but adrenaline still pulsed in my veins from fear that Grandma Daisy was ill. Even though I hadn’t been back to Cascade Springs since I was seventeen, I saw my grandmother at least twice a year. She visited me in Chicago for Christmas, and every year we met somewhere in the world for our annual girls’ trip. People might think it was odd I vacationed with my grandmother, but those people didn’t have a grandmother like mine. I was the one ready to call it a day at eleven. Grandma could party the whole night through. Last year, she drank me under the table in São Paolo.

  The front bell jangled, notifying the shop that someone had entered. Grandma Daisy rushed past me with a tray holding a lemonade pitcher and glasses. She shoved a sweaty glass of lemonade into my hand on her way to greet her customer.

  As beautifully crafted and enchanting as the shop itself was, the books were the most eye-catching aspect. They were everywhere. Along the walls, bookshelves rose eleven feet high. In the middle of the room, much shorter shelves held even more volumes, and soft chairs were tucked in every corner for a quiet place to get lost in a book.

  I walked around the shop, sliding my finger across the spines of all the lovely books. Charming Books had been the place where I had fallen in love with literature. When I was a child, I ran here every day after school, eager to see what new novels and plays my grandmother had in stock. Back then, I daydreamed of running the shop myself one day, and helping shoppers find the perfect book for themselves and their family or friends. That was before. Now I poured my love of the written word into my PhD program in American literature. After years of scholarship, I was one dissertation away from my culminating degree, and after that, who knew what would happen? I’d started submitting my vita to colleges and universities, but as of yet haven’t yielded much more than a lukewarm reception to it. In the world of academe, a PhD in literature was easy to come by and the competition was fierce for the few open professor jobs in the country. I wasn’t panicking. Or at least I wasn’t panicking yet.

  I heard muffled voices as Grandma Daisy chatted with the shopper about a book, and I smiled at the sound of her energetic voice. Nothing made my grandmother happier than talking about books. I stepped out from the bookshelves and found Grandma with a white-haired man in riding pants and a red jacket with tails. His riding boots were polished to a high sheen, and he tucked his black top hat under his arm. His and my grandmother’s heads were suspiciously close together, much closer than in a typical bookseller-and-buyer transaction.

  I cleared my throat.

  Grandma Daisy jumped back from the man. “Oh, Violet, you gave me a start.”

  The man beamed at me. He had straight white teeth that sparkled against his tanned skin. “You’re Violet. I’ve heard so much about you. I’m so glad to finally meet you. My, aren’t you the spitting image of Daisy?”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I still had the crazy pom-pom do on the top of my head. It couldn’t have been more different from my grandmother’s sleek and smooth bob. I frowned. “I haven’t heard about you.” Usually, I was a much friendlier person, but it was hard to be polite with a crow looming over you.

  He laughed. “I see you get your spunk from Daisy too.” He held out his free hand. “I’m Benedict Raisin, the best carriage driver in Cascade Springs or on either side of the Niagara River. Don’t let anyone else tell you different.”

  I shook his hand and smiled despite myself. “Nice to meet you.” Self-consciously, I touched my hair. “I have to apologize for my appearance. I just arrived.”

  “Aww, what’s to apologize for? I thought that’s how all the young girls wear their hair nowadays,” he said, releasing my hand.

  I laughed.

  “There, now, I see you have your grandmother’s beautiful smile too.”

  I glanced at Grandma Daisy, and her cheeks pinkened. My suspicion returned. Who was this guy, and why was my grandma acting like a twelve-year-old girl with a crush around him?

  “How do you two know each other?” I asked.

  “He’s a customer,” Grandma Daisy said a little too quickly.

  A customer? Just a customer? I wasn’t buying it.

  Benedict chuckled. “Seems to me you’ve been in the big city far too long. Everyone knows everyone in our little village.” He dusted off the top of his hat. “I’m one of Daisy’s best customers. I’m here to restock on my reading material. Being a carriage driver means that ninety percent of my time is spent waiting for the next tourist. It’s good to have a book handy for the slow times of the day.”

  “What are you looking for?” I was always interested in what people were reading.

  He cocked his head. “I’m not sure. I do like action. A good thriller keeps the blood pumping in my old ticker.” He rested a hand on his chest. “Poor old thing doesn’t work quite as well as it used to, but I get by.”

  Grandma Daisy smiled. “Don’t let Benedict fool you; he is the picture of health.” She turned back to her friend. “Why don’t you browse a bit? Would you like some lemonade?”

  “I never turn down your lemonade, Daisy.”

  Again, I looked from Benedict to my grandmother and back again. There was definitely more to their relationship than my grandmother wan
ted me to know.

  Grandma Daisy went to the tray on the counter and poured Benedict a generous serving of lemonade.

  “Your grandmother tells me you’re studying literature,” he said.

  I nodded. “At the University of Chicago. I’m working on my dissertation in Transcendentalist literature.”

  He frowned as if he wasn’t sure what I was talking about. I got that look a lot when speaking about my dissertation. I supposed it wasn’t a good time to share my interpretation of Walden.

  “You must have gotten your love of books from Daisy,” he said.

  I smiled. “I did. In fact, if it weren’t for Gran—”

  A book flew off the shelf and nailed Benedict on the kneecap and fell open.

  “Ouch,” he cried.

  “Where on earth did that come from?” I searched the room for Faulkner. I half expected the crow to be responsible for the projectile book. I was wrong. Faulkner sat silently in the tree, not moving a feather. He made eye contact with me, and I was the one who looked away.

  Benedict leaned over to pick up the book. “Oh my. Emily Dickinson. You know I used to be a bit of a poetry buff as a young man. Here’s my chance to brush up a little. I have always enjoyed Dickinson. ‘The Carriage,’” he said, reading the poem that the book had fallen open to. “Doesn’t that sound like the perfect poem for me?”

  “I’m a fan of Dickinson myself,” I said. “She was a contemporary with many of the Transcendentalist writers.”

  He cocked his head as if he considered that bit of information. “It will do me good to get some culture, then. It’s been a long time since I read anything without an explosion in it. This seems to be a good place to start.” He read from the book: