The Echo of Old Books(6)
Today, her first order of business was to check on several pages from a volume of Tom Swift she’d left soaking in a large enamel tub, in hopes of removing the copious amounts of glue applied during an ill-advised do-it-yourself rebinding attempt. Glue could be a bit of a high-wire act, even for a skilled binder. In the hands of an enthusiastic amateur, it generally spelled disaster.
Using a small spatula, she reached into the water, gently teasing the mixture of glue and old tape from the edge of the top page. Not ready yet, but another few hours should do it. Once she got them dry, she would reassemble the text block, add new boards and endpapers, then re-emboss the repaired spine. It wouldn’t be cheap, but the book would leave the shop with a new lease on life, and with any luck, Mr. Lanier would know better than to attempt any future home repair.
When she was satisfied that she’d done what she could, she dried her hands and flipped off the overheads, her mind already wandering upstairs to her apartment, to her reading chair and the words that had already etched themselves in her mind.
How, Belle? After everything . . . how could you do it?
The words were still with her as she stepped through the door of her apartment and kicked off her shoes. Like the shop, Frank Atwater’s apartment had become a second home growing up. Now, it, too, was hers.
When things were rough at home, Frank and his wife, Tiny, had provided a place to come after school, to have a snack and do her homework or just curl up on the sofa and watch Dark Shadows. When Tiny suffered an aneurism and died suddenly, Ashlyn had done everything in her power to fill the hole left by her absence. In return, Frank left her everything when he died six years later. The daughter I was never blessed with, the will had said. A joy and a comfort in my time of sorrow.
She missed him terribly. His unfailing kindness, his quiet wisdom, his love of all things written. But he was still here, in the old ormolu clock that remained on the mantel, the weary leather wingback near the window, his cherished collection of Victorian classics, each brimming with echoes of a life well lived. She’d done some updating before moving in, resulting in an eclectic mix of Victorian, contemporary, and arts and crafts that worked surprisingly well with the apartment’s high windows and exposed brick walls.
In the kitchen, she popped last night’s leftover kung pao in the microwave and ate it straight from the carton, standing over the sink. She was itching to dive into Regretting Belle, but she had strict rules about food and books—one or the other, never both together.
Finally, after swapping her jeans for sweats, she retrieved the book from her tote, flicked on the funky arts and crafts reading lamp she’d discovered at a yard sale last summer, and settled into the old wingback near the window. She sat a moment with the book balanced on her knees, steeling herself for the emotional storm she knew was coming. Then she pulled in a breath and opened to the first page.
Regretting Belle
(pgs. 1–13)
27 March 1953
New York, New York
You will perhaps wonder why I’ve gone to this trouble. Why, after so many years, I should endeavor to undertake such a project. A book. But in the beginning, it wasn’t meant to be a book. It began as a letter. One of those cathartic outpourings one never really intends to send. But as my pen began to move, I found I had too much to say. Too much regret to fit on a single page—or even several pages. And so I have moved to my desk, to my typewriter—my father’s old Underwood No. 5—where I now sit, pounding out the words I have swallowed for a dozen years, the question that continues to haunt me.
How? How, Belle?
Because even now, after all the mistakes I’ve made with my life—and I’ve made many—you are the one I regret most. You have been the capital error of my life, the one regret for which there can be no absolution, no peace. For you or for me.
In this life, there are losses that can never be anticipated. Grief that comes at you out of the darkness. Blows that land so swiftly and deftly that there’s simply no way to prepare for them. But sometimes you do see the blow coming. You see it and you stand there and let it knock you down. And later—years later—you’re still asking yourself how you could have been such a fool. You were that kind of blow. Because I saw you coming that very first night. And I let you knock me down anyway.
The memory of that meeting is still caught in my craw, a cancer no amount of living has managed to cut out, and while reliving it now gives me no pleasure, doing so may yet bring me some peace. And so I must begin it and step back in time. Back to the night it all began.
27 August 1941
New York, New York
I run my eyes around the ballroom of the St. Regis Hotel, trying not to fidget in my hired suit. Nothing marks one out as an impostor quite like fidgeting, and an impostor I most certainly am.
While studying the assembled company—men of industry and their pampered society wives, washing down crab puffs with chilled Veuve Clicquot—it’s almost possible to forget there was ever such a thing as the Great Depression. Perhaps because it touched this shiny, silky set more lightly than the rest, reserving its worst for those of more modest means.
It’s hardly surprising. Deserved or not, the affluent will always enjoy a soft landing. But to add insult to injury, many of those whose fortunes remained intact now seem determined to flaunt their survival with blatant exhibitions of wealth—like the one I’m witnessing tonight.