Love, Death & Rare Books

by Robert Hellenga

  “It’s a joke,” I said.

  When she put the book back, I looked at the title: Illinois Star Watching Guide. “If you keep pulling books off the shelves,” I said, “you’ll find pressed flowers, love letters, strands of hair, grocery lists, bookmarks, snapshots, theater tickets, signatures and inscriptions, books inscribed to children at Christmas, book inscribed on birthdays. And sometimes drawings. Books dedicated to the dead, in memoriam. Once I found a letter from a pilot who’d been shot down over Okinawa in World War Two.”

  “How do you know he was shot down?”

  “Because his wife, or his mother, wrote it on the envelope.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Olivia said.

  “Well, somebody shot him down.”

  “I mean the closing. It’s not anybody’s fault.”

  “It’s somebody’s fault,” I said. “We should have computerized sooner, we should have started selling online—at least the used books. Dad couldn’t bear the thought. I guess I couldn’t either. We got too far behind the curve.”

  I picked up a set of bound galleys. It was a translation of The Iliad that was lying open, spread-eagle, on the table where Alex and I used to study together and where I’d been sitting when Shirley asked if I wanted to spend a little time with her. I’d been afraid then—when I was waiting for Shirley—and I was afraid now, afraid that Olivia would turn me down, or maybe afraid that she wouldn’t. I looked at the book. “This doesn’t belong here,” I said. “It belongs on the third floor.” I didn’t recognize the translator.

  “Somebody loved this passage,” I said. “Look how it’s underlined. Book eighteen. Right after the death of Patroklus. Iris is telling Achilles to show himself to the Trojans. Athena wraps a shining cloud around him and they go to the wall. And he lets out a great shout. And Athena stands behind him and she shouts too.”

  I read the passage aloud. It was a prose translation, but I tried to imagine the line breaks, as if it were in verse:

  Achilles halted and cried out, his voice

  Like a trumpet sounding from a besieged city,

  Unmanning the Trojans and terrifying their horses,

  so that they turned their carts. The charioteers

  turned pale when they saw the unearthly fire

  that Athena kindled around the head

  of Achilles. Three times Achilles shouted

  and twelve brave warriors were killed in the

  ensuing panic.

  I laughed. “I know just how he feels,” I said. The shop was perfectly quiet for a moment, as if it were holding its breath. Without thinking about it, I threw my head back and let out a great shout. I shouted three times, and I could hear Olivia shouting behind me. And behind Olivia, I could hear Dad shouting, and Grandpa Chaz. We filled the empty shop with our bronze voices: “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAA-HHHHHHHHHH.” And then Olivia and I looked at each other and started to laugh.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you.” I thought maybe we had come uncongealed!

  XII. EPIPHANIES

  (September 2009)

  We walked over to Blackstone to get the car, Grandpa Chaz’s Cadillac, which now had forty thousand miles on it.

  “I don’t know, Gabe,” she said as we passed Poop Corner Number One. “What about clean underwear?”

  “We’ll only be there two days.”

  “As long as we don’t have an accident.”

  As we drove past the old Moo & Oink on Stony Island—quality meat for the family budget—Olivia started riffing on the radio commercials: “Give me a wave if you like catfish. Jump up if it’s your favorite dish!”

  I joined in: “Wave for catfish—Moo & Oink!”

  “Scrrrrrrrream for ribs,” she sang—“Moo & Oink!”

  We were quiet for a while.

  “Was Stony Island ever an island?” she asked.

  “Thirty-five million years ago,” I said. “A coral reef. Got buried by limestone. When the glaciers receded, they left part of it behind.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Between Ninety-First Street and Ninety-Fourth.”

  “You mean it’s still there?”

  “It got blasted away to make room for sewer and water mains.”

  “That’s something to think about.”

  I was thinking we’re probably going to talk for a while without saying what was really on our minds. But maybe not. As we pulled onto the Skyway at Seventy-Ninth Street, she said, “Feeling better?” It was an invitation to open up.

  “Better, but not good.”

  “I thought for a minute there,” she added, “that you were going to faint. Afterwards, when you were shouting.”

  “You were shouting too.”

  “It felt good, didn’t it? But who was the woman in the straw hat?”

  “Someone I used to know. A long time ago. A friend of Dad’s, actually.”

  We pulled off the interstate and stopped for gas at a truck stop just outside Gary, hometown of the late Michael Jackson. Olivia used the restroom while I filled up the car and checked the oil. The Cadillac was a great car, but it was starting to burn oil. I added a quart and we were on our way.

  Back on I-94, I felt agitated. I told her that Dad wanted me to walk away from the whole thing. Forget about setting up shop on Michigan Avenue, forget about going into business with Marcus. Go to Italy or the south of France.

  She suddenly sat up straight and turned toward me. The idea that I could go into business with Marcus in New York galvanized her. She couldn’t believe that I hadn’t jumped at the idea.

  “Gabe,” she said. “You’re sitting on eight or nine million dollars’ worth of old books. You could buy a condo on the Upper West Side.” She started to poke at her phone. “Let me Google ‘New York condos Upper West Side.’ David knew someone with a condo… we used to stay there… Here’s one on Eighty-Ninth Street, right on the park, for two million three hundred ninety-five thousand. Two bedrooms, two baths.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” I said.

  “We used to take the train down from New Haven. We’d take the Metro-North to Grand Central Terminal and eat in one of those restaurants in Bryant Park. Or just pack a lunch and eat it on a bench.”

  “You and David?”

  “New York is so fantastic.”

  “Two million’s a little steep.”

  “Let me look for something on the East Side. New York is so fantastic,” she said again. “New Yorkers are smarter, more alert, more spirited. And they stay up later. You can walk around lower Manhattan at two o’clock in the morning and there are people everywhere—people, taxies, cafés, bars, restaurants. People dress smarter too. You could get yourself some new clothes at Barney’s and you’d fit right in. It’s a magnet for talent too. And if you want a break from the city, you’ve got the Hudson River Valley, you’ve got the Hamptons, you’ve got the Jersey shore. And it’s not so corrupt. At least not like Chicago. And the food. You can get anything.”

  “You must have spent a lot of time there.”

  “As much as we could. It wasn’t always easy to get away.”

  “I suppose David’s wife was a problem,” I said.

  Olivia flared up. “Gabe, don’t judge me. I was in love. We were in love. You’ve got no idea.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “No maybes about it, Gabe.”

  I could think of a lot of things I wanted to say at this point, but probably nothing that Olivia wanted to hear.

  She’d taken her stockings off in the restroom and put on a pair of sandals with complicated straps that she bought in the convenience store at the truck stop. I admired her painted toenails. And she’d bought a little sign that she pulled out of her purse and propped up on the dash. White background, red le
tters.

  if women can learn to fake orgasms,

  men can learn to fake listening.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  “Go, to, New, York,” she said, enunciating each word clearly. “Now I’m going to take a little nap.” She turned away from me and leaned her head against the window.

  Was she offering to go with me? I wondered, but I didn’t ask.

  It wasn’t till we crossed into Michigan that I began to relax. What I felt, at that moment, was relief, maybe something better than “relief”—surprise. I didn’t have a clear plan, but maybe I didn’t need one. I was driving down the highway at night with a beautiful woman next to me, a beautiful angry woman. Angry even in her sleep. Her head leaning against the windowpane. The sign on the seat beside her.

  She didn’t wake up till we turned off I-94 and passed a new landmark, the Three Fires Casino. All lit up. Blazing like an enormous bonfire.

  “The Three Fires,” I said though she hadn’t asked, “was the name of a confederacy. The Three Fires Confederacy. The Ojibwe were the Keepers of Tradition; the Odawa were the Keepers of the Trade; the Potawatomi were the Keepers of the Fire. They all got kicked out of Michigan, except for the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi. They got to stay because they were Roman Catholics, and because Leopold Pokagon outmaneuvered the federal government. But they didn’t get federal recognition until a couple of years ago, and the new mayor, Toni Glidden, encouraged them to build a casino here: three thousand slot machines, one hundred gaming tables, two thousand jobs, over four hundred hotel rooms, six restaurants, fifteen thousand people a day, eighteen-hole golf course.”

  “Have you been there?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like to gamble,” I said. “Probably corresponds to a defect in my character.”

  “Maybe we could work on that at the blackjack table, give the three tribes back some of the money we owe them. Do they kick you out if you count cards? David and I used to go to Foxwoods in Connecticut. David got kicked out for counting cards. We had to leave.”

  “Too much excitement?”

  She nodded.

  We drove into town and stopped near the Municipal Marina and parked in the boat launch parking area. “This is a town of ten thousand people,” I said, “but it’s got twelve hundred slips. Three marinas, actually. Surrounded by beautiful condos. A fifty-million-dollar development. The New York Times called St. Anne a hot spot, but after the housing market collapsed, the development company went belly-up. The new mayor, Toni Glidden, is a friend of mine. You saw her at the memorial tonight.”

  “She was the woman in the straw hat?”

  “No, that was Shirley, Dad’s old girlfriend. Toni was wearing a blue-black dress with straps. She still has a condo on Lincoln Park West, over the zoo. You can hear the seals barking from her living room.”

  “Then how can she be mayor of St. Anne?”

  After her husband died, she moved to St. Anne, but she kept the condo. She’s been coming to St. Anne all her life, knows everyone, knows how to talk to people, knows where the money is. I guess after her husband died, she was looking for something to do, so she ran for mayor. People were sick of the old guys who were lining their pockets with the development money. She’s been putting things back together. A lot of people are actually glad that the housing market crash put a stop to the development.”

  I had Olivia’s attention. “How’s she putting things back together?”

  “She formed a corporation to refinance the Town Square development. That’s what they call it. And she’s managed to keep a lot of the things that the developers wanted to zone out of business: Vitale’s Italian grocery, Andy’s Fruit Market, Potts’ Hardware, the lumber yard, the old Michigan Central Depot. You can get good espresso at half a dozen places, but you can still get a regular cup of coffee at Atkinson’s. She’s the one who got the grant from the state for restoring the old depot.”

  “How do you know this wonderful woman?”

  “Summers in St. Anne. We took sailing lessons together. She married a petroleum geologist who worked for Amoco.”

  “Is she beautiful too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And when you have a conversation with her, she makes you feel good about yourself.”

  “I see.”

  Olivia disapproved of Amoco Oil; she disapproved of the casino, and she disapproved of all the new condos, but she wasn’t immune to the beauty of the lake, and of the boats: yawls, ketches, schooners, trawlers, cabin cruisers, motor yachts. I knew she was conflicted, hadn’t given herself up entirely to this adventure. But I could feel her lightening up as we walked along the boardwalk and laughed at the names of the boats: Miss Behaving, Wet Dreams, She Got the House.

  “My mother used to make up stories about the names,” I said. “Just like she used to make up stories about the big houses on Blackstone.”

  Olivia took my arm. “Why don’t you make up a story about one of the names?”

  “Which one?”

  “She Got the House.”

  “That’s too easy, don’t you think? Maybe too sad.”

  “A sad tale’s best for winter,” she said.

  “I see them sitting in the kitchen,” I said, “in that condo, the one right across from us, by that big sailboat with the red and yellow flag on the mast. There’s a light in the window, and I’m looking through the window. I see a counter with two stools drawn up. They’re sitting on the stools in their bathrobes. It’s morning and they’re drinking coffee. I see a fancy espresso maker on the counter, not a stovetop pot, but an electric one. The kind you see in all the catalogs now.”

  “Are they mad at each other?”

  “No. They’re sad at each other. Things haven’t worked out. They don’t know why. They thought things would work out if they moved to St. Anne. They bought all new furniture, and the fancy electric espresso maker. They drink their coffee in little Italian cups with blue stripes around the rim.”

  “Is he in love with another woman?”

  “No, but she’s seeing another man. She doesn’t want to, but she can’t help herself.”

  “So why does she get the house?”

  “He’s going to live in Chicago,” I said. “He’s already made an offer on a condo in a Mies van der Rohe building on Lake Shore Drive. He’s going to keep the boat here, at least for now, and rent a pied-à-terre in St. Anne. She’s going to put their condo here on the market and find something less expensive.”

  “I’ve always wanted a pied-à-terre. What a nice phrase. A foot on the ground. Have you ever known anyone who has a pied-à-terre?”

  “Toni. She’s still got the condo by the Lincoln Park zoo. But that would be a big pied-à-terre, more like a cul-à-terre. Your whole butt on the ground.”

  “So what are they doing now? The couple in the story.”

  “Right now they’re talking about the time before they had tons of money, about the time they went to Rome and got locked out of their rental apartment, about the hundred thousand lire bottle of wine they drank at a wine bar on Via Condotti, about their little girl who died when she was only three years old. Anna was her name, and she was born with a full head of red hair. They were going to try to stay together, but she’s changed her mind again. He’s pouring the last of the wine into her glass.”

  “I thought they were drinking coffee,” Olivia said.

  “Right,” I said. “That was in the morning. Tonight they’re drinking red wine. He knows now that he’s got nothing left to lose, so he stands behind her and rubs her shoulders. She puts her hands on his hands as he kneads her shoulders. He leans over and puts his face in her hair.

  “I think that’s enough, Gabe.”

  “He’s going to take the train to Chicago in the morning,” I said. “She’ll see him off at the new Amtrak station, and
then she’s going to meet with a real estate agent.”

  “I thought she got the house?”

  “Can’t afford to keep it.”

  Vitale’s, across from the boat factory on Water Street, was closed. We drove past the Abrams Funeral Parlor on Duval, between the town and the mall, across from Andy’s Fruit Market—“That’s Delilah’s uncle,” I said. “His main operation is in Benton Harbor, but he owns the one here and one over in Three Oaks.”

  She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  We drove out to Harding’s Friendly Market, in a shopping center east of town, where we bought oranges, eggs, bacon, bread for breakfast, and a bottle of wine for tonight. I wasn’t particular about wine, which is more expensive in Michigan than in Illinois, but Olivia was particular and picked out an expensive sauvignon blanc.

  “I thought you liked pinot grigio,” I said.

  “I feel like something a little rougher tonight.”

  “My mother usually drank red wine,” I said, “that she got at Vitale’s, but she liked sauvignon blanc too. I used to go shopping with her. She always dressed up like an Italian woman just to go to the Co-op in Hyde Park. High heels, her fur coat.”

  “She was an Italian woman.”

  “St. Anne didn’t have a shopping center then. Just Vitale’s Market. And Andy’s Fruit Market on the corner of the highway and Duval Street. You had to drive up to St. Joe to find a supermarket.”

  Instead of heading north on I-94, I drove back into town and crossed the river on the LaSalle Road Bridge, which everyone called the Griffon, after LaSalle’s ship—the first ship to go down on the Great Lakes—and headed north on LaSalle Road. We were passing the college—St. Anne—which was on our left, on the lake side, when Olivia’s cell phone rang and she turned away to enjoy some pretend privacy.

  “Saskia,” she said after the call.

  “Everything okay?”

  She nodded. “Checking up on me.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “Dirty weekend.”

  “You told her that? What’d she say?”