If I could have one wish for Bourne, it wouldn’t be enough. It would be too hard to choose. But in the running would definitely be a coffee shop. Maybe it would change everything, having a warm, bustly place to sit and chitchat wittily in oversized cushy chairs and make smart observations about the world going fascinatingly by, someplace to get a part-time job, know all the regulars, find yourself the recipient of all the good gossip, and save some money so you can leave one day.
But we don’t have a coffee shop.
We have a donut shop. Ham Roland’s imaginative name for the place was Donut Shop, but the sign he ordered arrived with a typo. They told him they’d redo it or he could have a refund, so he got his money back and kept the sign as is, and now we go to the Do Not Shop sometimes after tutoring. But it’s not the same.
We have a pizza place, but even though I have nothing to compare it to, I still know it isn’t very good. I wave at Lena behind the counter as we drive by, but she doesn’t look up from her book. We have a hardware store and a laundromat, a diner, a drugstore, a grocery, and a church. Donna’s Nursery and the bar and the Fitwit.
Downtown Bourne was modest even before. That was part of its charm I think: compact and cozy and cobblestoned （this was before so many of its citizens needed wheels）。 There was never a coffee shop, but there used to be other kinds of shops—knickknacks, knitting supplies, candy—plus an ice cream place and a couple cafés. Those storefronts are still there, waiting patiently, hopefully. Emptily. What’s left full is threadbare and torn maybe, but still kicking.
At the far end of downtown, the stores peter out and then the asphalt does. The church is the last thing before there’s nothing. It’s got peeling wood siding, a giant white spire, an oddly short red door that must have been put in before the whole building was finished or even planned out all the way because it’s nowhere near center. It’s hard to decide if those long-ago Bourners were so eager and enthusiastic they put the door in first, or more like too clueless to realize you don’t need a door if you don’t have walls yet, but it’s nicer to think of them as just that welcoming.
Petra steers onto the gravel, lets the clutch out with the car still in gear, and stalls to a stop. In front of us is the bridge: stone, weathered and impressive, bearing in iron the name of its benefactors, Grove—the old wealthy family who used to own half of Bourne back when Bourne used to have old wealthy families—and its construction date, 1904, to remind you they built this thing without computers, cordless drills, even a pocket calculator. It spans what we call the ravine, which makes it sound like the kind of place teens wreck their cars trying to leap over when they’re drunk or at least like some kind of picturesque valley with sheer cliffs and dramatic waterfalls. It’s not that. It’s more like a ditch, a greenbelt maybe if you’re feeling generous, with a tangle of vines, thorns, and dead brush. And there, on the other side, is the library.
The library is beautiful but closed now, empty like the storefronts, pretty and vacant like cheerleaders on TV. The building kind of matches the bridge—worn and majestic—and makes you think there must have been a time before. It has a giant stained-glass window like a church, but this one shows people with books: a couple reading on a tandem bike, a bunch of people reading under a tree with books dangling from its branches, a family—mom, dad, and three little kids—all reading on a picnic; even the dog is holding an open book in its paw. It’s a building you would call noble, even historic, but it’s been closed for over two years now, dark and shuttered, its hedge brown and crumbling, weeds commando-crawling up from the banks of the ravine and threatening to consume the place completely.
At least that’s how it was last week. Now suddenly it’s different—except nothing is ever different in Bourne—and even though I’m seeing it, I still don’t believe it. This is why people have reported construction equipment but no construction, delivery vans but no deliveries. The library is on the far side and the opposite shore of a mostly empty town, and since it’s closed, no one comes here anymore, but now we can see that we’ve missed something. The weeds have been hacked away; the desiccated hedge is gone like it was never there. Fresh dirt you can actually smell, dark and damp, surrounds the front walkway and harbors something new and green and blooming. Every light is on, every door ajar. The library looks open, in use, alive. In the parking lot, two enormous moving vans idle like teenagers. We watch out the windshield and cannot say a word, but eventually we have not said a word for long enough that Petra’s engine has cooled, and she climbs out of the car and onto the hood. I follow. The hood is still warm through my shorts as is Petra’s leg where it presses against mine—it’s a very small car—but I can’t stop shaking.