Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTY
My search for the perfect bookshelves, or even okay bookshelves, remained fruitless.
It looked like I’d have to purchase them new, and they’d probably be veneered, which reminded me of all the flimsy furniture I’d recently discarded.
Mika assured me the quality would be better than that, but she was bummed, too.
We both craved the softness and hardness and life of real wood.
“I keep imagining the shelves from the old store,” I said one morning in her and Bex’s kitchen. “Those rounded edges, all those knots and scratches.”
“Do you remember that unusual display that spiraled?” she asked. “They don’t even sell things like that. Someone must have made it custom for Len.”
“What ever happened to them?” Bex asked. “Did he sell them when he closed the store?”
Mika and I paused with our cereal spoons halfway to our mouths. We glanced at each other and then shook our heads. We didn’t know.
“I have no memories of it,” I said, “but I’m sure he did. They had to have been valuable.”
Bex shrugged. “Might be worth calling Carla to ask.”
“No, I wouldn’t want to bother her with that.”
But Mika was sitting up straighter. “Why not? What’s the harm in asking?”
I didn’t have an answer—it just felt uncomfortable to contact our old boss’s widow.
“I’m calling,” she said. And she didn’t wait. She still had Len’s home number. Carla picked up, and Mika walked out of our hearing range. I looked at Bex in desperation, as if they could still stop her. They shrugged again and poured another bowl of shredded wheat.
Only a few minutes later, Mika returned with a massive grin.
I’d been to Leonard and Carla’s house once before, when they threw a holiday party for the Tick-Tock staff.
None of us particularly wanted to do it, but we felt like we should, and then we all enjoyed ourselves, yet we never did it again.
Socialization can be a lot for book people.
I remembered their house being plain but trim on the outside and cluttered and well loved on the inside.
When Mika and I pulled up, the lawn was scraggly and weedy, and the bushes were so overgrown that they blocked the windows. The old station wagon in the driveway looked undriven. Our jubilant mood turned somber and trepidatious.
The doorbell was broken, so we knocked. To our surprise—it seemed like a house where its occupant would be moving slowly—the door opened straight away.
Carla looked older, yet she was still clearly Len’s spry other half.
She ushered us in and talked over our greeting.
“I can’t believe your timing! It’s serendipitous.
You can see the state of it,” she said, meaning her house.
“It’s gotten to be too much for me to take care of alone.
I’m finally ready to downsize, but it’s so overwhelming.
I’ve been meaning to list all those bookshelves online and dreading it. ”
“I still can’t believe he didn’t sell them with the store,” I said.
“You know Len,” Carla said with a dark laugh. “That man kept everything.”
This was true. His office and back room and registers had been crammed with items that he no longer needed.
“But maybe I will someday,” he’d always said whenever one of us had begged to empty out the entire drawer stuffed with silver paperclips.
Or the cubbyhole jammed with old water bills.
Or the shelf bowing from the weight of dot matrix printer paper.
Mika gasped and softly touched my arm. “Do you hear that?”
Carla led us over to the grandfather clock’s place of honor in her sitting room, pleased to see how excited it made us.
The clock was about head height with a decorated face, and the wood was stained a dark green reminiscent of Hunting Party.
Its rhythmic heartbeat was deep and stately, and suddenly I could smell and feel the bookstore that had surrounded it for so many years.
My farmor and farfar had also owned a grandfather clock, but the pitch of theirs had been high and conspicuous.
The sound of its tick had jumped out of its surroundings instead of melding into them.
But this clock enveloped its listener in steady reassurances.
We stood before it for some time, sharing stories and memories.
“But you girls aren’t here for this,” Carla said.
Even though, in a way, we were. She guided us toward the garage.
When she opened the door, Mika and I startled.
The station wagon was parked in the driveway because there was no room for it inside.
The space reminded me of that first stressful weekend in the micro-studio when everything was piled to the ceiling.
“You’re welcome to anything in here,” Carla said.
“This is all of it,” I said. “It really is still here.”
“I told you it was.”
“We’ll take everything. How much would you like for it?”
“I also told you it’s already yours, as long as I don’t have to help haul it away.”
I’d been stunned when Mika had shared this news, and now seeing the fixtures in person, I felt stunned all over again. “Carla. I can’t.”
She shook her head as if it were nothing, when really it was everything. “I just need it gone. And Len would have been thrilled for you to have it. He would have been so glad to know another bookstore was coming to town—and that the two of you were opening it.”
Those were the words I needed to hear in order to accept her gift.
Because I did believe it would have tickled Len—a lifelong curmudgeon, an elder Macon—to know that his two bubbliest hires were following in his path.
He’d complained about everything, he’d been mean as piss to the people he didn’t like, and he’d stunk of cigarettes from his frequent smoke breaks.
But he’d always had a sweet spot for us because we’d always had a sweet spot for him.
I made arrangements for pickup next month and insisted that Carla call me when she was ready to move so I could help. The least I could do was bestow my free labor on her.
As Mika and I drove away, I imagined being the one to buy Carla’s house. The boxy structure was drab and needed a ton of repairs, but I was positive I could turn it into something brighter and more interesting. But even Carla’s modest neighborhood was too expensive for me, especially now.
“What’s wrong?” Mika asked. “I thought you’d be over the moon.”
I was , so I forced my thoughts to return to the miracle that had just occurred. I tried not to think about how many years it might take for me to be able to afford a house. Or even rent one. Or how if the bookstore failed and I lost everything, the clock would start all over again.