The Book Thing (4 page)

“Really?” Tess said. “That’s a book that needs to be liberated?”

William looked at her with pity, as if she were a hopeless philistine.

“He spent five hours there, selecting his books,” Tess told Crow that evening, over an early supper. Crow worked Saturday evenings, so they ate early in order to spend more time together.

“Did you feel guilty at all? He’s just going to tear them apart and destroy them.”

“Is he? Destroying them, I mean. Or is he making something beautiful, as his brother would have it? I go back and forth.”

Crow shook his head. “An emotionally disturbed man with scissors, cutting up books inside his home, taking a walk with you and our daughter, whose middle name is Scout. And you didn’t make one Boo Radley joke the entire time?”

“Not a one,” Tess said. “You do the bath. I’ll clean up.”

But she didn’t clean up, not right away. She went into her own library, a cozy sun-room lined with bookshelves. She had spent much of her pregnancy here, reading away, but even in three months of confinement she barely made a dent in the unread books. She had always thought of it as being rich, having so many books she had yet to read. But in William’s view, she was keeping them confined. And no one else, other than Crow, had access to them. Was her library that different from William’s?

Of course, she had paid for her books—most of them. Like almost every other bibliophile on the planet, Tess had books, borrowed from friends, that she had never returned, even as some of her favorite titles lingered in friends’ homes, never to be seen again.

She picked up her iPad. Only seventy books loaded onto it.
Only.
Mainly things for work, but also the occasional self-help guide that promised to unlock the mysteries of toddlers. Forty of the seventy titles were virtually untouched. She wandered into Carla Scout’s room, where there was now a poster of a bearded man living in a pile of books, the Arnold Lobel print from The Children’s Bookstore. A payment/gift from a giddy Octavia, who didn’t know how Tess had stopped her books from disappearing, and certainly didn’t know that her crush had anything to do with it. During Carla Scout’s bedtime routine, Tess now stopped in front of the poster, read the verse printed there, then added her own couplet. “It’s just as much fun as it looks/To live in a house made of books.”

It’s what’s in the book that matters.
Standing in her daughter’s room, which also had shelves and shelves filled with books, Tess remembered a character in a favorite story saying that to someone who objected to using the Bible as a fan on a hot summer day. But she could no longer remember which story it was.

Did that mean the book had ceased to live for her? The title she was trying to recall could be in this very room, along with all of Tess’s childhood favorites, waiting for Carla Scout to discover them one day. But what if she rejected them all, insisting on her own myths and legends, as Octavia had prophesied? How many of these books would be out of print in five, ten years? What did it mean to be out of print in a world where books could live inside devices, glowing like captured genies, desperate to get back out in the world and grant people’s wishes?

Carla Scout burst into the room, wet hair gleaming, cheeks pink.

“Buh,” she said, which was her word for book, unless it was her word for ball or, possibly, balloon. “Buh, p’ease.”

She wasn’t even in her pajamas yet, just her diaper and hooded towel. Tess would have to use the promise of books to coax her through putting on her footed sleeper and gathering up her playthings. How long would she be able to bribe her daughter with books? Would they be shunted aside like the Velveteen Rabbit as other newer, shinier toys gained favor? Would her daughter even read
The Velveteen Rabbit?
William Kemper suddenly seemed less crazy to Tess than the people who managed to live their lives in houses that had no books at all.

“Three tonight,” Tess said. “Pick out three. Only three, Carla Scout. One, two, three. You may have three.”

They read five.

Author’s note: The Book Thing is a very real thing and its hours and policies are as described here. The Children’s Bookstore on 25th Street is my invention, along with all characters.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Laura Lippman

cover design by Mauricio Diaz

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