Byrd (20 page)
Addie laughed, a loud, raw, ragged, awful laugh.
She wouldn't laugh now. The older she gets, the less funny the thought of falling, especially falling alone.
Peale is evangelical about “spreading the words,” as he calls it. He thinks of bookselling as a helping profession, like therapy or ministry or law or medicine or matchmaking. To be good at it, you have to know your customers.
His first customer this morning is Mr. Olivetti, a small, stooped man who never shops but simply asks Peale to pick something out, buys it, takes it home and reads it. He records the title in a small memo pad he carries in his shirt pocket like a birdwatcher's life list, then comes back in asking for new recommendations, never commenting on what he's just read. Some people just don't know how to talk about books, or think they don't, or that they're not supposed to. That doesn't mean they aren't changed by them. Today Peale sends Mr. Olivetti home with three Vonnegut novels that just came in, old paperbacks in excellent condition:
Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions
, and
Cat's Cradle
. Who better than Vonnegut to change an old man?
Next it's Bunny Miller with her weekly donationâa stack of historical novels and inspirational memoirs, all new titles, the books immaculate.
“Did you actually read these?” Peale asks her, as always. It's hard to believe she could go through so many books and not leave a trace of herself in any of them. A mark or a dog-eared page or a cookie crumb.
Bunny answers, as always, “Why else would I give them to you?”
She always takes payment in store credit, which she never redeems. She could donate her books to the library for a tax deduction; Peale has pointed this out. Apparently she prefers the role of private benefactress.
Peale holds up one of the memoirs from this morning's stack, a critically acclaimed bestseller. “What'd you think?”
“Hmp,” she says. “It's okay. Nothing I couldn't have written myself.”
“You
should
write a book, Mrs. M.”
“What on earth would I write about?”
“Write about everything you've read since Mr. M died.”
Bunny is a widow whose worst fear is having time on her hands and nothing to read. She purses her wrinkled old mouth, looks pensive. “Not a bad idea,” she says. “I could call it
After Albert
. Alliterative titles do quite well, I've noticed.”
As she wobbles out of the shop, a tattooed girl charges past her in a hurry, demanding “anything by Jane Austen.” (“A Jane Austen emergency,” Peale will say during his police interview.) Then a middle-aged mother comes in with her young son. The woman is looking for a book she read as a child, an autobiography, Gerald Durrell's
My Family and Other Animals
. Peale checks the shelf. “Sorry,” he says. The woman's son has dark hair and dark eyes and wears a backwards baseball cap that mashes his ears out to the sides. He isn't one of those glazed-over video-game kids you see. He studies the shop as if it's a foreign country. When he handles books he's delicate, touching them with his fingertips. He slides a volume from the rare book shelf.
The Happy Hollisters
.
“That's a great series,” Peale says, “if you like mysteries. Something happens on every page. I read them when I was your age, when everybody else was reading the Hardy Boys. How old are you? Nine, ten?”
The boy doesn't answer. He is already reading.
“How much for the set?” the mother asks.
Peale is surprised. She doesn't strike him as an impulse buyer or the kind of mother who routinely lavishes expensive gifts on her kid.
“It isn't the complete series,” Peale says, “just the first ten. But it's pretty rare to find them in sequence like this.” He tells her the price and she pays in cash: one hundred and sixty dollars, his biggest single sale of the month. “If you want to leave your phone number,” he says, handing her the pencil from behind his ear, “I'll call you if we run across the Durrell.”
At eleven-thirty, Vivian tells Peale, “I'm taking my break.”
Vivian is in a dark mood. Selling books was supposed to be a temporary job, a phaseâpart of her young, hip, underpaid, intellectual single life. Now she's thirty-two and doesn't even like to read any more. Reading reminds her of everything she doesn't have and probably never will.
She uses her morning break to meditate. Even a few minutes of silent chanting can help. “May I be happy, may I be satisfied.” She sits cross-legged on a small padded bench in the children's section. Once or twice she is interrupted by customers; each time she returns to her chant. “May I have everything I need and want.”
She hears the bells on the front door when the robber enters, but she can't see him.
“May all beings have everything they need and want.”
He is wearing a torn Hawaiian shirt over a turtleneck, khaki pants, scuffed boots. His gray hair is pulled back in a thin, greasy ponytail. He has a cell phone pouch clipped to his belt.
“Where's your Ayn Rand section?” he asks Peale.
“I wouldn't call it a section.” Peale motions toward a shelf on the far wall.
The man walks to the shelf without stopping to browse. He pulls down
Atlas Shrugged
and
The Fountainhead
and carries them to the counter. While Peale is ringing them up, the man reaches for his pouch.
“Sorry, sir,” Peale says, and points out the sign on the counter, “you can't use your cell phone in the store.”
The man smiles. He has a capped tooth (a detail Peale will recall for the police). Without taking his eyes off Peale, he opens his pouch anyway and pulls out not a cell phone but a knife. With one arm, he sweeps the counter clean. The Ayn Rands, the store newsletters go flying. The scrap of paper with the Durrell woman's phone number flutters to the floor. Peale yells to Vivian and reaches for the alarm button, but the man is already behind the counter, flicking his knife across Peale's throat, a quick slice. He growls something Peale can't understand, shoves his hand into the open register, cleans out the cash and runs. The bell on the front door clatters in his wake. Peale, too angry to realize he's been hurt, chases the man, but the man is too fast. He disappears into traffic, leaving Peale in the middle of Hillsborough Street, bleeding furiously.
The emergency room doctor says the cut on Peale's throat is superficial. A nurse cleans it and tapes it with Steri-Strips while Vivian talks to a police officer.
“We're a stupid place to rob,” Vivian says, trying to keep calm. She's glad she was able to get in a few minutes of meditation before the robbery. “We hardly ever have cash. Nothing we sell has any street value.”
“Anyone else in the store at the time?” the officer asks. He is thirty-ish, attractive in a stiff-blue-cap way. He takes careful notes.
Vivian shakes her head.
“Crazy motherfucker,” Peale says, rolling his eyes. His pupils are dilated. His reading glasses are on the tray beside his bed, spotted with blood. “I should have known.”
“How?” Vivian says. She explains to the officer, “It's a used bookstore. Half our customers could pass for thieves.”
“Ayn fucking Rand,” Peale says.
When Addie shows up in the little curtained cubicle, Peale gets even more agitated. “I was selling!” he yells. “I was having my best day ever!” His eyes are wild. The wound on his throat looks like a zipper.
“I know, I know,” Addie says, hushing him. She glares at the police officer and Vivian as if she can't decide which of them to blame. “Unbelievable,” she says. “In broad daylight.”
“Happens all the time, ma'am,” the officer says. His face is pink. Vivian wonders if he is being chivalrous, trying to cover for her. Does he think she needs to be covered for?
“We have an alarm,” Addie says. “We work in twos. What else can we do?”
“Have you considered installing a surveillance camera?”
“Like a convenience store,” Peale says. “And we can start selling beef jerky and plastic roses.” He narrows his eyes. “Crazy little Ayn Rand motherfucker.”
That night with William, Addie is quiet. She is trying not to think about everything she almost lost, could still lose.
She gives him his grab-box. It has a trowel with a broken handle, garden gloves, broken binoculars, a half-empty bag of millet, a shoe horn, and two boxes of bobby pins. Nothing memorable like the terry cloth slippers John Dunn modeled for her. But she will remember tonight anywayâWilliam in her apartment, happily opening his box of stuff, thanking her, putting his arm around her, telling her not to worry, everything's fine, everyone's going to be fine.
Promising not to leave her.
Not leaving.
Dear Byrd
,
I grew up believing that nobody can take care of anybody. I was wrong. People take care of each other all the time. Just maybe not the people you expect, or in the way you expect
.
What Comes, Finally, Part One
Call him, the lawyer said. That was weeks ago. Addie said thank you and hung up, and paid the lawyer's bill when it came, and waited, certain that sooner or later, when he was ready, Roland would call her.
Always let the boy call you
, her mother used to say, advice Addie never followed until now.
She's still waiting. She has rehearsed their conversation in her mind a thousand times. Sometimes when she's alone she speaks the parts aloud.
I'm sorry, baby
. The way Roland begins every conversation.
You? Sorry for what?
Sorry you've had to carry this secret around for so long.
That's my fault
.
Do you know anything about him? Where he ended up?
No. I have a sense he's close byânot based on anything, just a feeling. Maybe we've even seen each other. It happens all the time, you know
.
What does he look like? When he was born, I mean. Did he look like me?
Yeah, but smaller, and his hair was all wet and flat against his head. Not big and fluffy like yours
.
They will laugh, the two of them finally in this together.
What comes, finally, is a postcardâthe first piece of mail he has ever sent her. A glossy picture postcard of the neon arch over Reno, Nevada, “Biggest Little City in the World.” On the back, in careful blue ballpoint, is her address with a blue ballpoint box around it, and to the left of it, this message:
Addie
,
I don't blame you
.
Roland
That's all. In two months he has come up with a single four-word sentence. And Addie has no idea what it means.
I don't blame you for having my child even after you told me you weren't?
I don't blame you for not keeping him?
I don't blame you for not telling me?
She studies his handwriting for a clue, any sign of feeling. It's art, his handwriting. She has never known another man with such beautiful cursive. It hasn't changed since he signed her yearbook in 1974, or wrote on her Gladys Knight album cover in 1989.
Lots of love and luck, Roland Rhodes
. She has them still; she will keep them alwaysâthe yearbook, the album cover, now this cheap, shiny postcard.
They all mean the same thing.
Good-bye.
What Comes, Finally, Part Two
A week later, more mailâa letter this time. The envelope is from the Department of Social Services, but the letter inside is not from Janet. Addie recognizes the handwriting: neat, forward-slanted, school-teacherish. As before, there is no greeting. Byrd's mother doesn't know what to call her.
I'm sorry to hear about your father's passing
.
Our son, I am pleased to report, is healthy. No asthma. He even plays sportsâbaseball and soccer. He doesn't excel but he tries hard, which impresses me more than if he simply stuck to the things he's good at. Science and math and music
.
He knows he is adopted. This is still fresh news. We told him on his birthday. What a day, can you imagine? A bicycle with gears, a new baseball glove, some books, and oh, by the way, you're not who you thought you were
.
Ten seemed the right age. Of course the books all say that's much too late. They say you should start talking about it right away. But he's an unusual child. He has always liked structureâorganizes his toys (to explain his system would take another, much longer letter), eats his meals off divider plates. We were afraid to unsettle him
.
He looked at us like we were reading him a math problem. He asked the questions we were expecting: who were his real parents, why didn't they keep him
.
We said what we'd planned. His parents loved him, we said, and wanted him to have a better life than they could give him
.
Now he seems to be trying to figure out how he's supposed to feel. He has always believed there's a right way to do things, to think, to feel, and that if he pays attention, he can figure out what it is. Lately I've noticed him looking differently at women my age, women who are
old enough.
He studies them in church, in the library, in the grocery store. If a friend's mother cheers him on at a ballgame, he turns his head and stares. He talks to the lady who feeds the ducks in the park. He seems to be testing for some spark of recognition
.
Do I need to mention that this is hard for me?
You must wonder if he will ever look for you. I can tell you: he's already looking
.
IV.
Grown
December 2007
Dear Byrd
,
When my brother and I were young, we thought Christmas would be better if we had a fireplace, so our parents ordered one from Searsâbright red bricks printed on big sheets of cardboard, with a mantel sturdy enough to hold our stockings and a black cardboard fire with holes for an orange light to shine through. My brother did all the perforating and folding and assembling himself. Every night leading up to Christmas he'd say, “Let's turn on the fire,” and we'd sit on the rug and imagine we were getting warm
.