Translation: I’m totally ticked off with you, and I’m going out for a cigarette.
O sat at the table for a while, rehearsing her apology for being impertinent as her tea grew cold. An hour later, her aunt still hadn’t returned.
As she waited, O slipped off the elastic from the bundle of mail that had been delivered to the shop that morning and went through it. Junk mail and bills. Then, at the bottom of the pile, a letter addressed to her. It was from her father. She retreated to her room, where she could read it undisturbed.
He thanked her for her letter and was glad to hear she was doing well and adapting to living with Emily. He reminded her that Emily might be a little crusty on the outside, but that she had a heart of gold underneath it all.
O read happily along, hearing the sound of his voice in the words and missing him. In her letter to him, she’d mentioned that, though he was in Italy, Emily had recently seen him staring in the shop window one afternoon, looking not as he did now but as he’d looked as a boy. She also mentioned seeing the same boy on the wall.
When she wrote the letter, she’d wondered whether she should mention it at all. She didn’t want him thinking they were both losing their minds. So she’d just tossed off a couple of sentences at the end, making light of the whole affair. His response surprised her.
On your last birthday I gave you a little silver pendant in the shape of a hand. I told you that someone had given it to me a long time ago, when I was about your age. That someone was a mysterious girl I happened to meet one summer day. She’d somehow lost her memory, and I walked with her through Caledon, hoping something we saw might jog it back.
It was a hot day, and at one point we stopped under the awning of a bookshop to get some shade. That shop was the Green Man. As I was looking in the window, I noticed someone at the back of the shop – an older woman, smoking a cigarette and carrying an armload of books. She glanced toward the front and saw me there.
The woman I saw was Emily – not as she was then, a young woman in her twenties, but as she is now. I think she must have recognized me, because she walked toward me. But just then I realized the girl I was with had wandered off. There was no telling where she might go, so I hurried after her.
I found her at the end of the dead-end street that ran beside the shop. She climbed on top of the wall there and went over. So I followed her. But as I was sitting on the wall, I took one last look back toward the shop. All I could see from there was the back of the building. A door opened on the top floor and a girl came out onto the deck, carrying a box. She looked down and saw me, and a strange expression came over her face. I didn’t know why then, but I do now. That girl was you, looking back through some seam in time at the boy who would one day become her father.
The girl I was walking with finally did remember who she was. When we said good-bye, she gave me the pendant that I gave to you.
All these things that I was sure were lost down a tunnel of time forever have suddenly come back. My grandmother once told me that nothing ever vanishes. Everything is always here, is always now. I didn’t know what she meant then, but I think I do now. I told you the Green Man was a remarkable place. Take care of yourself, O, and take care of Emily. Write again soon.
Lots of love,
Dad
She folded the letter and tucked it away in her journal. The room had begun to fill with shadows. A sense of strangeness lay over everything. She had the sudden awareness of things existing not only in space, but also in time. From the pictures on the wall to the paperweights on the dresser, from the books on the shelves to the curtains in the window – everything was steeped in time. The door that separated past from present had, for some reason, opened here. She wondered what else might slip through.
The spell was broken by the sound of Emily returning from her walk. She called up the stairs to say that she’d picked up a tub of ice cream from one of the shops down the street and it was melting fast.
O realized this was Emily’s way of saying she was sorry for the wedge that had come between them. She hurried downstairs, and soon they were sitting together at the table, basking in the bliss of Chocolate Delight.
16
The call that was to change everything came a week later, while O was on duty at the shop. It was Saturday, and Emily had gone off in the car to do a sweep of the local yard sales, searching for treasures. The panic O had first felt at being left alone in the shop had diminished to a vague unease.
Good-weather days were as bad for the book business as bad-weather days. And today the weather was sunny and warm. Across the street, Tiny, the owner of the Mind Spider Tattoo Parlor, was sitting shirtless outside his shop, catching some rays while he read the latest Gothic romance he’d picked up at the Green Man.
Tiny was a pretty scary-looking guy, as were many of those who frequented his shop. He looked as if he might have been a biker in a former life; but, in this one, he was a total pussycat. He and Gigi had taken Emily under their wing and watched out for her. They both dropped by the shop on a pretty regular basis.
Tiny made quite a sight. His upper body was completely covered in tattoos. He was a big man, so he was wearing a lot of ink. Between that and the piercings, he attracted a fair bit of attention from passersby. He waved in greeting as O dragged out the bargain bins and rolled down the awning.
The bookshop was definitely in better shape than it had been when she first came. She’d spent the last several days clambering up and down the ladder, hauling armloads of books for Emily to weed through, giving the shelves a good cleaning while they were empty, then putting the books that had passed inspection back into place.
The rejects were consigned to empty boxes – some for the bargain bins, some for the rehab hospital, the rest for Goodwill.
It was hard for Emily to part with her stock, even things she knew had sat untouched on the shelves for years. But, as the days went by, she began to relax her standards a little. So far they had filled close to two dozen boxes. Suddenly there was space on the shelves for the books that had been multiplying on the floor.
Much was still to be done, but today it was simply too hot to bother. The shop was like an oven. The least exertion caused streams of sweat to start pouring down O’s face. She sat at the cluttered desk, cleaning and pricing a stack of paperbacks Emily had left for her, sipping on a can of iced tea. It had been refreshingly cold when she first opened it an hour ago, but now it was warm and sweet, with a disturbingly chemical aftertaste. The fan, ancient and definitely lacking the Safety Association stamp of approval, sat on the windowsill beside her and blew the warm air halfheartedly around. Even the music drifting from the radio seemed weary with the heat.
She sprayed a little Windex on a cloth and wiped down the covers. Then she fanned through the books to check for markings and for anything that had been left behind. After erasing a few light pencil markings, she wrote the selling price on the first page. Generally, they charged half the initial price of the book. She set the books aside for Emily to check later, before they were put up on the shelves.
The night before, O had started working on a poem. A few random lines came to her as she lay down to sleep. Words often decided to come then. She tumbled out of bed, sat at the desk, and wrote them down. She crossed some words out, tried others and crossed them out as well. A pool of light shone on the page. She felt the silence pressing in like darkness all around. She pierced it with the pen, and words trickled out.
Now she took the folded piece of paper from her pocket and looked at the poem in the clear light of day. She called it “Garden Sculpture.”
Winter has not been kind to you.
Frost has crept into the crevices
Of your features,
Worn the fine details dull.
From a distance you are snow,
Impossible survivor of the lost
Kingdom of zero.
She changed a word here, added another there. With a little fiddling, she was able to find a way
past the impasse she had reached the night before.
You bear disfigurement
Without complaint,
Look skyward with blue amaze,
Oblivious of blinding sun,
Like one long shut in prison
Dreams of day – then wakes
To find it come.
Something in the musty, dusty perfume of the Green Man inspired poetry. Perhaps it was because this was a place where poetry had happened, and happened over a good many years. It was a place the muse knew and visited with some regularity – even if no one else did. The phone rang. It was an old phone. Emily preferred her machines old. New things made her nervous. As if to compensate for its age, the phone had a very virile ring. It had just launched into a second one, when O plucked up the receiver and stopped it short.
“Hello. Green Man bookshop.”
“Hello. May I speak to Emily Endicott, please?” It was an older woman’s voice. Very proper, with the whisper of an accent O couldn’t place.
“I’m sorry, she’s not in at the moment. May I take a message?” She grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil.
“Yes. This is Lenora Linton speaking. Miss Endicott doesn’t know me, but I should like to speak to her about a personal library I would like to sell.”
“I see.” Just what they needed – more books.
“I’ll leave my number with you. She can call and arrange a time to see the collection, if she’s interested.” She gave a local number.
“There’s just one more thing. Time is of the essence in this matter. The collection must be sold within a month.”
“I understand,” said O. She glanced up to check the calendar for when that would be. There was a bare space on the wall where the calendar should have been. Emily must have taken it down for some reason. She wrote Must be sold in a month’s time on the piece of paper, along with the rest of the information.
“Very well, then. I look forward to hearing from Miss Endicott at her earliest convenience. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said O, but the phone had already gone dead.
She put down the receiver and stuck the message to the arm of the lamp, where Emily would be sure to see it.
She had just turned back into her poem, when the bell above the door chimed. She glanced up to see who the first customer of the day might be. Her heart gave a little flutter. It was him – the boy she’d seen browsing through the bargain bins last week. Now here he was inside the shop, and she was alone with him. She thought she might faint.
He was younger than he’d seemed the first time she saw him. She realized with a shock that he couldn’t be much older than her – sixteen, seventeen at most. He was very good looking, but not in your typical buff, blue-eyed, chisel-chinned, fashion-model sort of way. No, he was more exotic than that, with a smoldering edge to him.
He wore black pants and a black jacket over a white tee shirt. His backpack hung from one shoulder. He had a cool rumpled look about him, his hair all this way and that, like he’d just tumbled out of bed.
His features were finely tooled, his mouth full and red against the almost marble pallor of his face. He was almost too good looking. As he ventured farther into the shop, he glanced her way. She caught a glimpse of those dark dangerous eyes and realized at once she was in the presence of mystery.
Her heart raced. Part of it was the nervousness she felt whenever she was alone in the shop, but more of it was because she was alone with him. She tried to calm herself, breathing steadily, evenly. She didn’t dare look his way. Instead, she pretended to be busy. She fussed about the desk, wrapped the dust jackets of a couple of hardcover books in plastic, walked a couple of paperbacks she’d just finished pricing to the racks at the front of the shop. In fact, though, she was busy only with him.
The boy took no notice of her. Despite that, perhaps because of it, he compelled her attention. She watched closely as he climbed the ladder and stretched to see the stock on the highest shelves, quietly moving with the poise and assurance of someone much older. She couldn’t explain it, but the air in the shop was charged with a palpable tension that set her all on edge. He drew her, yet frightened her at the same time.
He settled finally in the poetry section. This immediately piqued her interest, for here was the beating heart of the Green Man. Emily kept the poetry section where she could keep an eye on it. So as the boy browsed through the several shelves that made up the collection, O was able to observe him through a gap between two piles of books on the desk. She watched him take down the volume of Keats, the little paperback of Milton in the mottled cover, the Rilke odes, Rexroth’s translations of Chinese poems – all things she herself had looked through.
She watched him leaf through them, pause here and there to read a few lines, then return them to their place on the shelf. He handled books with the care of someone who loved them.
You could tell a good deal about a person from their hands. And this boy had the lean veined hands of an artist. They were pure poetry to watch. She wondered where he had come from, how he happened to stumble on the Green Man. He didn’t strike her as a local, but an outsider, like herself.
While she sat watching him, she spun a story about him. He had lived in the country, a lonely child suffocated by the affections of a doting mother. But he was an artist, and when he couldn’t take it anymore, he’d fled. For whatever reason, his travels had taken him to Caledon. She imagined he had only recently arrived. There was still a fluttery look about him, as though he had not yet settled his feathers.
She wondered how she would react if he came to the desk to buy a book. She wished the desk were not so cluttered, so chaotic, but at this point housekeeping was not an option. She looked down at the little poem she’d been working on when he came into the shop. Afraid he might catch sight of it if he headed her way, she quietly tucked it under a book and busied herself with clearing a little space in the clutter.
The boy stood in the poetry section for a long time. He had stopped going through the books and was just standing there. She sensed something was wrong. She was summoning her courage to wander over and ask him if he needed help finding anything, when suddenly, in one quick fluid motion, he plucked a book from the shelf, flicked open his jacket, and slipped it inside. Bending down, he picked up his backpack and sauntered out of the shop.
O watched in stunned disbelief. Emily had warned her to keep her eyes open for book thieves. With the desk positioned as it was, at the back of the shop, there was ample opportunity and easy escape for anyone who might want to pocket a book.
She told herself she must have been mistaken. She got up and walked over to the poetry section, her legs wobbling, her heart beating like a bird’s. There was a gap in the middle of the P section. Emily was bound to notice. The woman had some kind of weird radar when it came to such things. O shifted a few books over to close the gap on the shelf, then went out the front door of the shop and looked up and down the street. There was no sign of the boy.
For the rest of the day, she could think of nothing but him.
17
“Lenora Linton? The Lenora Linton? I thought she was dead.”
“Well, that would explain the bad connection.”
Emily gave her a look.
“Who is Lenora Linton, anyway?” O was up on the ladder, shelving the batch of books she had priced that morning, now that Emily had given them her stamp of approval.
“Lenora Linton is the great-granddaughter of Lawrence Linton.”
“And who was he?”
“Lawrence Linton was one of the most important architects in Caledon’s history. There are examples of his work everywhere: the old city hall, St. Bartholomew’s Church, many of the buildings at the university, in addition to a good number of the grand old houses around town. The old Caledon train depot was his as well, come to think of it.”
“Not the depot I saw.”
“No, there was another depot before that, in a different part of town. It burned to the
ground.” She dropped down one of those mind chasms for a moment and was somewhere far away.
“It was Lawrence Linton who brought the Gothic Revival to Caledon,” she continued. “Caledon was a little backwater town when he arrived. But soon towers and turrets and pointed arches were everywhere. Over time, tastes changed. Gothic architecture fell out of favor, and Linton’s work was eclipsed by newer, more modern styles. He came to a curious end, as I recall.”
“Curious? How do you mean?”
“Something happened to him. He spent his last years living alone in the big old house he’d built as a monument to the Gothic style.”
“What was it that happened?”
“I’m not sure. There may be something about him in the local history section in the back room, if you’re interested. In any event, I’d better call Lenora Linton and see what she has to say.”
While Emily made the call, O finished shelving the books. She thought about what Emily had said about Lawrence Linton and wondered what had happened to turn him into a recluse. But apart from a couple of references to his buildings and a grainy photograph of Linton in middle age, there was nothing in LOCAL HISTORY to shed any light on it.
Emily was clearly excited when she hung up the phone. “It was the Lenora Linton – still very much among the living. She was very complimentary. Said I came highly recommended to her. By whom? I wonder. All very curious, but flattering nonetheless. At any rate, I’m to get first look at the collection. It could be a gold mine.
“She wants me to come around tomorrow afternoon. She still lives in the old family house. Just to see the inside of that place will be well worth the visit. Perhaps you’d like to come along. I could probably use your help.”
For the rest of the day, Emily walked around on cloud nine. And it wasn’t just the prospect of seeing inside the Linton house that made her that way; it was the dream of hitting the mother lode – something all book dealers dreamt of. It would be the answer to all their troubles. It would take the business from the edge of the cliff, where it teetered now, and set it back on solid ground.
The Green Man Page 8
