Book Lover, The (8 page)

“Ruth, go change into a gown, I’ll be with you in just a few minutes.”

As she walked back to the bathroom, Ruth watched Dee’s eyes following her in the wall of mirrors, assessing her hair with a look of glee. Oh shit, she thought, as she unbuttoned her blouse and tied the black smock around her waist. Maybe letting Dee at her hair wasn’t such a good idea.

But as she looked at herself in the bright, unforgiving mirror of the little bathroom, her unrestrained hair a long, wild bush around her face, she thought maybe letting go a little was just what she needed.

Having her hair washed and her scalp massaged was heaven, and she closed her eyes. But when it was time to assess the color, as Dee stood there explaining foils and glazes and highlights, Ruth began to get nervous.

“Let’s just give it a trim.”

Dee stood there shaking her head. “How about we take baby steps. What do you say to a temporary color, just to cover the gray? That’s it.”

Ruth hesitated.

“Jesus, Ruth, it’ll wash out in eight weeks. It’s no commitment at all.”

Slowly she nodded.

The phone rang, and as Dee went to answer it, Ruth thought maybe that was her real problem. Except for the bookstore, when was the last time she’d made a commitment to anything? She looked at herself, imagining the gray gone, her dull black hair alive and lustrous as it once was, maybe a little bang, although with her curly hair, bangs were always a disaster. But every women’s magazine said that after a certain age they were
de rigeur.

She realized, suddenly, that Dee was talking quite loudly.

“No. No, she can’t.” A silence. “No, I’m not going to do that.” Another silence. “Fine, but she’ll probably never come back.” Dee turned to her. “It’s for you. The store.”

She walked over and picked up the phone.

“Hey Ruth, it’s Megan.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That author, Lucinda Barrett, is here, and she’s freakin’ out.”

“What?”

“She thinks her signing’s today. I told her she’s wrong, it’s not until next week, and she keeps asking where you are, but…”

“Of course it’s next week, I just finished the ad, remember?”

“Can you hurry please? We’re swamped all of a sudden with kids after school, all looking for things for some weird project, and now she’s locked herself in the loo.”

Sometimes Megan did act twenty-three. Ruth just wished this wasn’t one of them.

“It’s okay, Megan, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“But you have to promise me you’ll go back and let Dee finish then?”

Ruth couldn’t help smiling. Megan must truly be desperate to make her abort the long-awaited makeover.

She pulled her wet hair up in a clip, went in the bathroom and buttoned up her blouse, then walked back to the store, wondering all the way there what she was about to face with Lucinda Barrett.

                            
6

L
UCY CLOSED THE BATHROOM DOOR AND COLLAPSED on a worn brown couch, mortified, her insides vibrating as if she were still driving. Oh God, what had she done? What was she thinking even coming here?

She’d traveled a thousand miles over the past five days with The Book Lover as her goal. This event was a beacon, a tiny shred of sanity that kept pulling her north, because somehow she needed life to make sense again.

The night of her book launch, when she sat in her car in front of David’s office, trembling violently, her first thought was that her husband was dead. That the mad man on the phone had gotten him. When a policeman came out to see who was stopped in the street for so long, he found her retching dry heaves. Gently, he helped her out of the car, sat her on the curb where she pulled in the cool night air. He kept reassuring her that her husband was alive.

It was only later that the rest of what he said, the truth, began to sink in. And as it did, her world began to slowly implode, like a skyscraper that crumples to dust in an unbelievable matter of moments.

If she’d tried to write that scene, and everything else she then learned, she’d probably be lambasted in a workshop:
that’s not believable for that character;
or
it’s too much; revise and take some of it out.
If only she could. Her bitter laugh rang out in the bathroom now as she thought of the old adage—truth is stranger than fiction. Which she should have known because her own childhood was littered with such incidents.

But David, her David…who would have thought he’d be capable of something like this? It was almost worse than him being dead, because this was deliberate.

There was the shock at first, brutal and numbing, as if you couldn’t even feel your face no matter how hard you pinched it. She couldn’t eat, sleep, write, walk, or do anything to function in the days and weeks afterward, except breathe somehow. Then, slowly, the numbness wore off and a brief—at times violent—anger set in, and there was something familiar about it. She recognized, eventually, because she’d gone through this before, the stages of grief from when they’d lost Ben. But this…this was a different kind of grief, one she couldn’t quite wrap herself around. What he had done, all of it, a betrayal.

Staring now at the faded floral wallpaper in the bookstore bathroom, the tiny white blossoms began to swim before her eyes. She leaned back and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes and the room began to spin. Rubbing her temples, she wondered what on earth to do now. But she was too exhausted to even get up, much less make a decision. She’d thought no further than this day, this event, something she could control in her new future alone. Yet she knew that in the eyes of anyone who knew what had happened, this journey would have seemed frivolous and crazy.

She slid down on the couch, laying her head on one arm, resting her feet on the other. Her body felt as if it were still moving. She took another long breath and closed her eyes, and just as sleep enveloped her like a soft, warm quilt, she thought:
Thank God Ruth hadn’t been there.

OPENING HER EYES, Lucy had no idea for a moment where she was.

Oh sweet Jesus, she was in the bathroom at the bookstore. She bolted up off the couch and looked at her watch, horrified to see she’d been asleep for more than a half hour! Still groggy, she gripped the edge of the sink and splashed cold water on her face. These people were going to think she was crazy. Showing up like a ditz on the wrong day. Locking herself in their bathroom and falling asleep like some homeless person. If it weren’t so pathetic she might have laughed at the irony, because she was sort of homeless, wasn’t she?

She ran her fingers through her hair, spritzed herself with the calming lavender aromatherapy spray she kept in her purse now, and opened the bathroom door, praying no one would notice her.

A woman stood there, startled, her hand in the air as if about to knock.

“Lucinda?”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“I’m Ruth Hardaway,” the woman said, smiling hesitantly.

She was tall with beautiful wide brown eyes that narrowed now with obvious worry. Her long hair fell halfway down her back in wet ringlets. Obviously she’d been interrupted at a bad time.

“I’m sorry, I…I…” Lucy felt her throat close.

“Are you all right?”

As she stared at Ruth Hardaway, Lucy felt a tear slip down her cheek, and then another tear, and in a moment she was gasping for breath as she tried to control herself.

Ruth took her arm and pulled her back into the bathroom, closing the door. Lucy sank onto the closed toilet seat, burying her face in her hands. In the weeks since her world had fallen apart, she hadn’t let herself cry, except for that night in front of David’s office. Even then, she had stopped quickly, not letting the policeman see her. And now, in front of this stranger, a bookseller she wanted to impress, she was falling apart.

Ruth’s hand stayed on her arm the entire time, never letting go, which only made her cry harder. But the release felt so good, as every emotion that had been lodged in her chest like a balloon filling with air until she thought she might explode, drained from her body. Finally spent, she looked up at Ruth, who held out a tissue with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m early…” Lucy said, shaking her head in embarrassment.

“Well,” Ruth said, “I’d hate to see what would happen if you were late.”

Lucy’s mouth opened, and then…then she started to laugh, and so did Ruth.

* * *

AT FIRST SHE SAID NO TO RUTH’S OFFER TO STAY OVERNIGHT. But when the skies turned pewter and the wind began to howl and Ruth mentioned there would be storms all night, Lucy finally agreed. But as Ruth closed the front door of her old colonial, which hadn’t even been locked, Lucy stood in the foyer in awkward silence, regretting her decision. It all felt so strange.

A small beagle trotted into the hall and sat at Ruth’s feet, eyeing her suspiciously.

“Lucy, meet Samantha. One spoiled dog.”

“Hello there, Sam.” Lucy bent to pet her, but before her hand touched the dog, she turned and marched back out of the room. “Are you sure about this? I could easily find a hotel.”

“Don’t be silly. I have three empty bedrooms upstairs. And if you don’t mind grilled cheese—it’s what I usually have on Saturday nights because I’m too pooped to think about cooking—then it’s absolutely no trouble at all. It’s nice to have the company. Sam doesn’t talk much.”

“I don’t think Sam’s all that happy I’m here.”

“Oh, she’ll get over it.”

Ruth was nothing like she’d imagined, not the small, prim, bookish-looking woman her writer’s mind had conjured. She had a long face, a wide, thin mouth. Amber crystals dangled from her ears. Ruth was the best kind of character, a paradox—plain, yet attractive in her own way. The Earth mother, a character readers would love. Lucy looked at Ruth now, and it was then Lucy really noticed her eyes, a soft brown surrounded by laugh lines, or worry lines.

While Ruth riffled through her mail, Lucy looked around. Pictures covered the walls: a handsome son in uniform, a daughter on her wedding day, toothless smiles of grandchildren and then school pictures as they aged. They walked through the foyer, past a living room crowded with worn furniture, and then the dining room, where she stopped. On the sideboard enough white dishware was laid out to supply a restaurant.

“Oh, I have my family for brunch every other Sunday,” Ruth explained and with a laugh added, “and there the dishes still sit.”

“You must have a big family.”

“If everyone makes it, my three children and all the grandkids, that makes twelve, give or take. My son Alex sometimes brings his mother-in-law, and my grandchildren might bring a friend or two.”

“It sounds lovely, but it must be a lot of work.”

Ruth shrugged. “It is, but it’s become a tradition. I want to keep my kids close to each other, you know?”

No,
Lucy wanted to say,
that’s something I’ll never know.

As Ruth headed into the kitchen Lucy stood there, imagining the huge family crowded around the big oval table eating and talking, Ruth at the head, flushed with the warmth of what surrounded her. Then she walked into the kitchen. It, too, had a dated but comfortable feel—old pine cabinets, white Formica counters, an oak trestle table with four ladder back chairs with red checked cushions tied to the seats. Canisters with painted roosters on the front were lined up next to the toaster and coffee maker. This was a used kitchen. A loved kitchen.

Under the kitchen table, Sam lay with her head on crossed paws, eyes half closed, watching her.

“What can I do to help?”

“Nothing, it’ll just take a few minutes. Why don’t you go put your things upstairs? It’s the first room on the right. Nothing fancy, but the bed’s good.”

Ruth turned from the stove. “Would you like a cup of tea? Or how about a glass of wine?”

Her hair had dried and she’d pulled it back at some point with a rubber band, but curling wisps of gray framed her face. Lucy imagined what her mother might say. After her father left, her mother had gone to beauty school and supported them working long hours in a beauty parlor. She’d no doubt cluck her tongue and say that Ruth was in desperate need of a makeover. But as Lucy looked at her, Ruth looked more like a Madonna—the luminous face, the kind brown eyes that curved down slightly. Her hair like a halo. Lucy wouldn’t have changed a thing.

“Actually, I’d love a glass of wine. I’ll just put my things upstairs and be back in a moment.”

Lucy had never seen so many books in a house. They were everywhere, and when she went upstairs to the spare room, Ruth’s door was ajar and she saw stacks of books on both nightstands, the dresser, and piles on the floor, as well.

She took a cigarette from her purse, then sat on the edge of the bed in the blue bedroom and looked around, putting it to her lips unlit, taking a drag, then letting it out as slowly as she could. The plaster ceiling was littered with cracks. The walls were navy, a dreary color, and the furniture was old and sparse. And then she realized it was the color of a teenage boy’s room, remembering Jake’s red, white and blue phase so long ago. On top of the dresser sat another assortment of framed photos, a blond boy with a fishing pole, and then older, in a high school football uniform; and there he was in yet another, on the porch steps of this house with an ice cream cone, sitting between a darker-haired boy, no doubt his older brother, who looked like Ruth, and then the blonde sister. She tried to imagine a younger Ruth here in this house with three children. She’d never mentioned a husband.

It was dark out now, and as she sat on the edge of the bed in a stranger’s house far from home, a slippery feeling rose in Lucy’s chest. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes, imagining that she wasn’t here in Warwick, New York. She was sitting on the beach on Anastasia Island. It was early morning, just before dawn, and she was waiting for the sun to break on the horizon. This was the game she’d begun playing since these bouts of anxiety started hitting her.

She could almost hear the calming lap of the ocean, the haunting cry of gulls. The waves, as you stared at them for long stretches while searching for dolphins, could be hypnotic, and she let herself fall into the rhythm of those phantom waves, willing her heart to slow down. She felt the grip of sleep pulling her again, as it had earlier, but this time she stood up quickly and slipped the unlit cigarette back in her purse.

She’d have a glass of wine, maybe two, then plead exhaustion—which was true—and go right to bed. She’d get up early and slip out before Ruth was up. An early departure would be excused, especially if she left a nice note.

After today’s debacle, how could she possibly come back for the signing?