Chapter 12 #3
“Not really. I had the books I’d read, all the people in them, what they said, the things they did, the places they went.
They were all real to me. You know how it is.
Even when Captain didn’t get me new books, I had all the old ones, even after he took them away from me and threw them out, I had them, you know.
I could live in them again and again. I had friends in them.
I was part of them, those worlds. You know how it is. ”
“That’s just it,” Franklin said. “We don’t know, Alida.
Loretta and I remember books, the stories, characters—but not the way you do.
We can’t open them without holding them in our hands.
We can’t summon one like a favorite dream, summon it in every vivid detail and live in it again.
No one can. What you can do is . . . amazing. ”
“Even that isn’t an adequate word,” Loretta said. “What you can do, this power of yours, is awesome, otherworldly.”
They regarded me as though I was the deepest of mysteries, as though I was stranger than they had realized, stranger than they had imagined anyone could be.
I was small and had vulnerabilities, but I also had this, which I thought was an ability common to everyone, but which evidently was unique to me.
I knew too well how uniqueness can scare people into erecting barriers.
Desire and despair overcame me in equal measure—a sudden desperate determination to hold fast to the life I’d had with them for such a short time, matched by the despondency that follows close upon the sense that hope is quickly slipping away.
My voice broke as I said, “It’s not a power, not a power over others.
It’s just a talent. You know all about talent, making movies.
Even if I’m the only one in the world who can do it, then it’s just maybe a gift .
. . a gift to make it easier to be what else I am.
This doesn’t make me a freak twice over, not twice over, it just doesn’t. ”
Loretta drew me tight against her. “No, of course it doesn’t. Honey, you’re not a freak. That’s an ugly word. I don’t want to hear it ever again. You have differences, disabilities, but we all do.”
“We all do,” Franklin said softly. “Alida, some of us . . . our disabilities aren’t obvious.
They’re internal. In our minds, in our hearts.
That’s not the case with you. Your mind is healthy, and your heart .
. . is pure. The freaks are those whose hearts are full of hate and anger.
Yours isn’t. I don’t know why it isn’t, how you could have avoided becoming bitter.
Maybe the reason is this ability to hold books in the library of your soul—every word—and step into them when this world is too hard. It is a gift. A great gift.”
I held fast to Loretta as she held on to me. “Then I can stay? I can stay here?”
They were genuinely surprised by my question, and they overspoke each other as they assured me that this was my home now and forever, that if I ran off, they would find me even if somehow I got halfway around the world and they had to bring me back kicking and screaming from Sweden or Italy.
Unable to repress my tears, I found myself crying openly, not sobbing wildly or blubbering like a big silly baby, but crying nonetheless and for the second time in five days.
This wasn’t me. I wasn’t a weeper. Or maybe it was me.
The new me. Now that I was free from the carnival and the speakeasy circuit, from daily mortification, maybe I no longer needed to be tough.
I didn’t like that idea at all. My internal library was stocked with novels confirming that the world was beautiful, that life could be lived with grace and happiness, but that life was not always easy, so you had to stay tough, very tough, to make it through the hard times that were sure to come.
I let go of Loretta and sat up straight on the sofa and blotted my eyes with my hands, which is an effective procedure when you wear absorbent gloves.
As I wiped my face, I apologized for misunderstanding and going sloppy on them.
I assured them that I would never be like one of those weird women in some novels, members of the family who lived separate from everyone else, alone in a tower room, sniveling through the night over some lost love or other long-ago tragedy.
“I don’t even know if Bramley Hall has a tower,” I said.
“Probably not. A tower wouldn’t be consistent with the architecture.
” Franklin said that if I changed my mind, if one day I wanted to be one of those sniveling women, he and Loretta would have a huge tower built to accommodate me.
So that was how all the crying turned into laughter from one second to the next.
“Can this be our secret? I won’t tell anyone what I can do if you won’t. I don’t want to be stared at for this the way I used to be stared at for being . . . a biological oddity. I just want to be someone like everybody else, just like everybody else for once.”
“We’ll swear an oath of silence,” Franklin said, “and sign our names in blood if you want.”
I smiled and shook my head. “I believe I can rely on just your word of honor.”
“Then you have it. But I should warn you, Miss Fairchild, that being just like everybody else is no picnic.”
“I suspect as much,” I assured him. “There might not be sharks, but there’ll always be ants.”
Loretta got up from the sofa. “I’m sure you’d be happy to spend the day here in the library, but we’ve got things to do. A tour to complete, children to be introduced. Let’s get on with it.”