by Sarah Jio
And, that was that. We parted ways, and of course you know what was to come. I asked around, and learned that he’s married, to the socialite Victoria Gerhardt Magnuson. According to my sources, she has more money than God himself and her fortune practically saved the Magnusons from financial ruin. I believe it’s why he married her. From what I’ve heard, it seems their union was, more or less, a carefully constructed business deal.
A girl who works at the bookstore here once made a delivery to Victoria, at their home. She said she was cold as ice to her; didn’t even say thank you. If you ask me, they’re as well paired as a dog and a cat. She’s firm and rigid, he’s kind and soft. I fear that he’s terribly unhappy with her, but who am I to interfere? He made a vow.
Still, when Anthony comes to the bookstore, I positively light up. In fact, it would be quite an embarrassment to admit how many times I look up when the door opens. I’m always hoping it’s him, at every hour of the day. He visits as often as possible, with May, and even without her. Honestly, those are my favorite times, when he pops in during his workday (his office is two blocks from the shop; he owns a manufacturing company). The little girl has the temperament of her mother, clearly, and does nothing but boss him around. “Father, I’d like this,” and “Father, I need that.” And yet, I feel for her. She’s obviously terribly unhappy, even with all that wealth. I can’t help but think that if I could just get through to her, show her the type of interest, love, that her mother doesn’t give her, maybe she’d turn around.
Oh, Margaret, how I wish the circumstances were different. For as long as I live, I don’t think I’ll meet anyone like Anthony. Even in our brief encounters at the store, I feel as if I know him, really know him.
But there’s the unspoken, of course: his life with Victoria. I can’t deny my curiosity, and I will confess that on Tuesday night, I put on my overcoat and followed him on the streetcar to his home on Queen Anne Hill. You wouldn’t believe the opulence of this place. It was almost off-putting in its grandeur, with its gold detailing on the cornices, a Grecian statue in the driveway. But then I remembered that it wasn’t Anthony’s doing. It screamed Victoria. Anthony wouldn’t live this way on his own.
The lights were on in the front room, and I saw her. It gave me quite a shock. She is beautiful in a severe sort of way: sharp features, ebony hair. Of course, she was exquisitely dressed, which made me doubt the plain skirts and sweater sets I wear.
And then I saw Anthony walk in the room. He placed his hand on her shoulder, and the moment his hand touched her, a part of me died inside. I couldn’t bear it. That’s when I knew I was in love with him. Am in love with him.
So, this is the place where you are allowed to judge me—abhor me, really. I love a married man. There, I said it.
I don’t know what will become of us, if anything. But I know I am beginning to fall in love, and I feel that he is too.
Well, here I am, going on and on. I hope I haven’t annoyed you terribly. You have always been able to temper your feelings about men. I wish I was more like you. I wish I could control my heart.
I should sign off for now. I have to open the bookstore tomorrow, and I’ll need to be up early.
Oh, and yes to Madagascar, or better yet—Seattle!
With love,
Ruby
P.S. I adore that you spent your entire royalty check on flowers. There never was and never will be another like you, Brownie.
I look up from the letter with tears in my eyes. Ruby was in love with someone. All these years, I never knew. And like me, both she and Margaret struggled with sister relationships. I take a deep breath. I can identify with Lucille. I felt betrayed by my sister, and rightly so. But Ruby didn’t make an intentional choice to hurt her sister. Amy did. For a moment I feel the familiar anger rising up in my chest, and the sadness of losing someone I loved. Past tense. Ruby and Margaret may have wanted to make amends with their sisters, but no, I would never. Sometimes you have to close the door, and lock it.
With burning curiosity to know more about this friendship between the two women, I quickly pull the next few books off the shelf and search for more letters—none—before scanning the upper and lower shelf for any signs of pages tucked inside, which is when I hear the sound of the jingle bells on the door. Did I forget to lock it?
“Hello?” I say quickly, standing up. “Is someone there?”
I see Gavin and instantly feel relieved.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He’s holding a couple of takeout boxes. The scent of garlic and basil wafts in the air. “I thought you might be hungry, so I brought over some lunch.”
I look at the clock and realize that it’s almost noon and I’ve had nothing but espresso today.
“Thank you,” I say, walking toward him. The letters are still in my hands, and I quickly tuck them in my back pocket.
Gavin looks around for a place to set the food down, finally settling on the only available surface: a tiny children’s table flanked by two pint-size blue chairs. He grins at me. “This OK?”
“Yeah,” I say, smiling as I cram myself into one of the minuscule seats. He does the same, and we both can’t help but laugh at ourselves.
He opens up the first box and hands me one of the plates under his arm, then pulls out a cloth napkin wrapped around a fork, spoon, and knife. “Hope you like pasta puttanesca,” he says.
“My favorite, actually,” I reply, grinning. “How did you know?”
He points to his head. “I’m kind of psychic when it comes to food pairings.” He’s wearing a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and a pair of dark straight-legged jeans. “Show me a person, and I can find the perfect meal for them. It’s all in the face.”
I grin. “Oh, is it?”
“Sure is. See, when I met you this morning on the lake, you looked a little sad. I would have served you spaghetti pomodoro then.”
“Spaghetti pomodoro?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Spaghetti works wonders for curing the blues.” He nods. “But the puttanesca, that’s for new beginnings.”
I busy myself with my napkin as Gavin looks around the shop and smiles. “But if you had come to me and told me you had a bad day, that things had gotten stressful, then I’d make you Bolognese sauce.”
I can’t help but smile. “And what do you make for harder cases?” I consider Ruby and, according to the letter I just read, the prospect of her broken heart. I also can’t help but think of the way my own heart shattered five years ago. “What about broken hearts?”
“Now,” Gavin says, “those are harder. But I find that in most cases, eggplant does the job.”
I let out a little laugh. “Eggplant?”
“Nothing better,” he says.
I smile as he dishes a helping of pasta onto my plate, then dip my fork in to take a bite.
“Wow,” I say. “It’s very good.” I dab the napkin to my mouth. “Do you cook, or run the business side?”
“I do a little of everything, my business partner and I. Cook, wait tables, bus tables.” He grins. “It’s what you have to do when you run a small business.”
I nod, thinking of a little Italian restaurant in Queens that I had to close down. The owner was just like Gavin, a jack-of-all-trades. He was sprawled out on the floor, fixing a faulty oven door, when I came in armed with legal papers.
“Then I give my compliments to the chef,” I say, shaking off the memory.
His face twists into a look of discomfort for a moment before his smile returns. “So what do you plan to do with the place?”
I grimace inwardly, thinking of how the locals will take the news. I can almost write the headline: NEW YORK BANKER INHERITS BELOVED BLUEBIRD BOOKS; CLOSES ITS DOORS FOREVER.
“I, uh—”
“I imagine you’ll want to do a little remodeling,” he says, standin
g up and running his hand along a nearby bookcase.
“Yeah, I—”
“I can help,” he continues. “I have a ton of tools in the basement. We had to do a full renovation before we could open the restaurant. I got pretty handy with a table saw.”
“Thanks,” I say. “But, well, I’m not really sure how much heavy lifting I’ll need to do.”
Gavin seems undeterred, even excited, by the challenge of fixing up the store. “You could refinish the bookcases,” he says. “Strip them down and sand down the tops. A bit of paint here and there, and some new moldings—oh, and maybe a new checkout counter—and this place will be grand again.”
I can’t tell him the truth: that Bluebird Books will never be grand again. I can’t tell him that I plan to call a truck, tomorrow, maybe, and pay someone eight dollars an hour to load up all the books and boxes and most all of Aunt Ruby’s worldly possessions and cart them off to a local library. What can’t be donated will be taken to the dump.
The dump. It casts a sad, hopeless shadow on Aunt Ruby’s legacy. What would she think of me now? If I look carefully, I can almost see her patting the locket around her neck, which is when I remember that it’s now around my neck. I touch the gold chain nervously.
“I can tell this place means a lot to you,” Gavin says, his words jarring me back to the moment. “You grew up here, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I say, a little startled. “How did you know?”
“Just a guess. I assumed your aunt would have left the shop to someone who loved it as much as she did.” He grins. “And also, you seem more Seattle than the New York type.”
His comment surprises me at first. New York has made me tougher, smarter, more driven. Can he not see that? “And I take it you know both types very well, then?”
He smiles playfully. “You might say that.”
I wonder, for a moment, if Ruby knew Gavin, and if so, what she might have thought of him. “Did you get to know my aunt much?” I ask.
“A little,” he replies. “We’ve only been here a year. Ruby closed the store about six months after Adrianna and I opened the restaurant. We, all of the business owners on the street, felt so bad for her, because we knew the depths of her loss. But she just couldn’t keep up. Lillian and Bill convinced her that it was time to move to a retirement home.”
I feel a pang of guilt. I could have called. I didn’t even call. My heart beats faster, and I place my hand on my chest and take a series of deep breaths. My medication is upstairs; I’ll take a pill later. “Lillian and Bill, the owners of Geppetto’s, right?” I remember the way Lillian regarded me on the street earlier.
He nods. “She had a fall.”
I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand.
“I started checking on her in the afternoons, just to make sure she was doing all right,” he says. “And one day, I went in to say hello and she wasn’t sitting at her desk. I heard a faint cry from the back hallway, so I rushed over, and there she was, lying at the base of the stairs, where she’d been since she fell that morning. I called an ambulance, and they took her to the hospital. She came back a few months later after a stay at a rehabilitation facility, but she’d changed by then. I could see the look in her eye. She was more frail than ever. I helped her move a few things around the shop. She was very particular about where she wanted things to be.” He pauses for a moment. His eyes are serious, and they stare ahead at Ruby’s desk. “It sounds funny to say, but I just had this deep feeling that she knew she didn’t have much time left.”
I dab the corner of the cloth napkin to my eye.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“No,” I say quickly. “It’s just that I loved her so, and I—I just hope she knew how much.”
Gavin places his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure she knew.”
“I wish I’d come home to see her, before . . .” I look up at him and our eyes lock.
“But you’re here now,” he says, pointing up at the ceiling. “And I’m sure she’s looking down in anticipation of all you’ll do for the store.”
“Yeah,” I say nervously. “I . . .” I take a bite of breadstick.
“So you spent a lot of time here as a kid, then?”
I nod between bites. “Our mom was . . . well, she was kind of out of it in the early part of our childhood, so my sister and I were here a lot.”
“Oh, you have a sister? Does she live in town?”
“Yeah, she does now, but I . . . but we”—I shake my head decisively—“we don’t talk.”
Gavin looks more saddened than I’d expect. “Oh,” he says. “That must be so hard for you. What happened?”
“Listen,” I say, smiling a little nervously, “it’s a long story, and I have a lot to get done today. I—”
“Forgive me,” he says, standing. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, you weren’t,” I say. “It’s just kind of a long story. Another time?”
“Yes, definitely,” he says, collecting our empty plates and the silverware, before walking to the doorway. He turns back to me once more. “If you’re ever up for a walk around the lake sometime, just come find me.”
I smile, at first because I find the very idea of walking quaint, and quite frankly, sort of a waste of time. I’ve structured my life around making the best use of time. It’s why my daily jogs are more akin to sprints. It’s why I schedule my workday in fifteen-minute increments. But Gavin smiles at me expectantly, and I remember that people go about life at a slower pace in Seattle. I remember that I used to be one of those people. I take a deep breath. “A walk,” I say. “Sure, maybe sometime.”
He waves good-bye, and then closes the door behind him. Ruby’s jingle bells reverberate in my ears for a long time after.
Chapter 5
Ilook up at the cuckoo clock on the wall and see that it’s already four thirty. I’ve spent a fruitless afternoon sifting through Ruby’s boxes for more letters, and now the sunlight is waning. I’ll need to replace the lightbulbs in the chandelier if I’m going to be able to work past dusk.
In all of my sorting, I’ve accumulated fascinating artifacts from Ruby’s life: a set of blue china, a Cartier watch that looks as if it stopped ticking decades ago, and a pristine red gingham swimsuit, wrapped in white tissue paper inside a tan Frederick & Nelson box with a burgundy lid. I think of Ruby wearing it and smile, then my practicality kicks in: The tiny one-piece would fetch a pretty penny in a vintage shop.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the letters between Ruby and Margaret. Margaret Wise Brown. My aunt, the confidant of arguably one of the greatest children’s book authors of all time? Ruby did have secretive tendencies. The prospect of discovery makes me think about holding off on closing the store for good, at least until I can determine the real story Ruby’s letters tell. Still, I’ll need to review the store’s financial records and begin making plans. I make a mental note to research the developers in the area and set up a few meetings.
I feel a chill come over me, and I stare at the old fireplace. Ruby used to keep it roaring from October to April, and sometimes even through May. I remember the supply of chopped wood, and I venture out to the alley. And there, under the eaves, the logs are stacked high, as if in her waning days at home Ruby arranged for one last delivery. For me.
I smile to myself as I lift a log from the stack, but I turn around quickly when I hear movement behind me. The alley is dim now that the sun has set, but I have the distinct feeling that I am not alone. “Hello?” I say in a shaky voice. But my call is met with silence until a cat cries in the distance.
I scan the shadowy corners behind the Dumpster: no one. Quickly, I pick up another log and carry the wobbly stack inside the shop, pausing to lock the door before setting the wood on the hearth. On the mantel, I find matches. Atop a stack of old newspapers blares a
headline from January 7, 1963: MAGNUSON FAMILY DONATES $1 MILLION FOR NEW ART MUSEUM. I save the front page, wad up the brittle newsprint, and tuck it beneath a log in the fireplace, then light a match and watch as the fire takes on a life of its own, spreading to the log. I listen as it hisses and crackles, and then I make the connection.
The Poky Little Puppy! Of course. Ruby mentioned the book in her last letter. If I can find it, will there be more letters tucked away inside its pages?
I rush to the bookshelves again and search for the book I remember reading as a girl. “Five little puppies dug a hole under the fence and went for a walk in the wide, wide, world.” I smile to myself. I went for a walk in the wide, wide world, and got a bit lost along the way. After an hour, I’ve almost given up on the search, but then in the firelight, I see the glimmer of a Little Golden Book spine on a high shelf across the room. And somehow, I just know.
I wheel the ladder over to the shelf, thinking of how as a child I loved climbing on that ladder and pushing myself from one side of the wall to the other. When Ruby went upstairs for any reason, my sister and I would take turns pushing each other, and when our aunt returned she’d pretend to be oblivious to our antics, even though the wheels rattled loudly enough to make that impossible.
I reach for the spot on the shelf, and there it is, The Poky Little Puppy. One copy. And sure enough, there’s a bulge inside its pages. I open the stiff spine and reach for the two envelopes inside.
By the fire again, I lift the flap of the first envelope, from Margaret to Ruby.
February 22, 1946
My dearest Ruby,
I can’t tell you how cheering it was to receive your letter. It cast a ray of light on my week, which has been otherwise atrocious. Where to start?
While I had invited my sister, Roberta, over for lunch in good faith that we were trying to forge ahead with our relationship, she used the hour as a time to lecture me about my “lifestyle.” Why don’t I get married, she asked. Why don’t I start a family? Why don’t I stop associating with all these artists and bohemians? But what she was really getting at was, why don’t I be more like her? Well, I don’t want to be like her, and I told her so. As you can imagine, my words were not well received. She reached for her coat and bag and stormed out of the apartment. I feel bad, of course. I do not want our relationship to come to this, and yet I long for the day that we can accept one another for who we are, she in her world of pressed and proper domesticity, and I in my unconventional one. I suspect this is how you feel about Lucille. Perhaps one day we’ll all be able to forgive, accept, and move forward with the kind of love we all shared as girls. This is my hope, anyway.
