Book of Mercy Page 11

  In addition, she had to take a shift at the library. The Study Club members were filling in as temporary librarians until a replacement could be found for Nancy Sandhart. Irene couldn’t believe that woman had resigned and left them with this mess. She heard Cecily, the maid, arrive as Arthur left for the golf course. Although it was November, there was plenty of golf to be squeezed out of the year yet. On a good day, Arthur could play nine holes before his pager started beeping with news of calamity on the construction site. He played golf like he built houses: hell-bent. He drove a golf cart like a backhoe, causing other golfers to leap out of his path. Some days, she just couldn’t deal with Arthur’s energy, oddly enough, the very exuberance that had attracted her in the first place. Arthur spent all day surrounded by “idiots” (one of his kinder terms) who delivered the wrong doors, accidentally chopped through power lines, and nailed their shirtsleeves to the siding—and with each challenge he seemed to grow stronger.

  Irene stretched, shoved her arms into a thick terry robe, and trudged into her dressing room. She couldn’t shake the feeling of foreboding she’d had since last night’s dinner with Arthur’s new business associate and his wife. Irene remembered the wife’s covetous expression as she studied the Italian tiles in the solarium. The husband couldn’t take his eyes off the teak paneling in the library. “There’s something about all that wood,” he had said. “Makes you feel manly.” She knew the signs—the couple would make an offer on the house, in a week, a month, six months, but an offer was coming.

  Irene and Arthur had never officially put any of their unique homes on the market. People just saw them and wanted them. In the paint-by-numbers world of tract housing, an Arthur Crump house was a Gauguin. A lush architectural masterpiece where the floor plans were exciting, the cathedral ceilings soared, and the baths outnumbered the occupants.

  And when Irene complained that they had just moved three years ago, Arthur would pat her bottom and say, “Christ, Irene, they’re offering triple what it cost us. I’ll build you another house.”

  Arthur Crump loved to build houses for his wife—and to sell them out from under her.

  Irene grimaced and tugged on the belt of her bathrobe. In twenty years of marriage, she had maintained a respectable figure, had always voted the same as her husband, and had decorated eight homes. Unlike the early days, she wasn’t involved in the business anymore, except for fiddling with paint chips and selecting tile for Arthur’s next masterpiece. She studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Where had that other woman gone, the one who worked in a crowded trailer on the construction site, who verbally skinned lazy subcontractors without giving it a second thought, who worked with joy keeping accounts and picking up lumber scraps on Saturday mornings? In those early days, all their energy—and money—went into the next house. She and Arthur often had gone without to make payroll for the crew. Her privileged background had not prepared her for that kind of life—so she had no inkling how it would make her feel to build something with her own hands, to sacrifice next to another for the sake of something bigger than you both.

  Suddenly, Irene had the desire for a bologna sandwich on white bread and a beer. That was often dinner in those days, a meal she and Arthur shared, just the two of them, sitting on the floor in the middle of a house, barely framed. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the crickets coming out for the evening, their calls replacing the ringing of hammers. She could smell the fatty luncheon meat and taste the sharp beer. She could hear Arthur telling her his dreams. She could . . .

  Irene walked into the shower—a small pink marble rotunda with a domed ceiling—and adjusted the water temperature. Water blasted from six gold showerheads mounted on the curved walls. She sank down on an ergonomic shower bench curved perfectly to fit the human spine, leaned her head against the wall, and closed her eyes. She often said her morning prayers in this position. “Please, Lord, make sure Cecily doesn’t screw up the puff pastry for dinner tonight, and let this be a quiet day in the library without all those gum-chewing, smart-aleck kids. Finally, Lord don’t let that couple from last night take my house.” She thought of her precious solarium. “Why does everything have to change, God, just when I get things the way I like them?”

  It was while Irene was toweling off that God dropped an idea on her. Sometimes Irene got these feelings, so strong that it seemed someone was talking to her. No voices. She wasn’t one of those crackpots. She could only describe it as guidance, and it usually came when she was feeling low, frustrated, or ready to scream. And she had discovered, through the years, that when she followed this intuition, she almost always felt better, saner, happier.

  Today, she knew she needed to stop by the bookstore, The Last Page. Arthur didn’t like her to shop there. “Stick to the Book-of-the-Month, mail-order; it’ll keep you out of trouble,” he said.

  “But I don’t want all those nasty books about courtroom drama, drug dealers, and dinosaurs eating tourists,” Irene complained. She liked books in which men and women loved each other to the end of time and then some; where a husband didn’t sell a wife’s home and sanctuary. Besides, mail-order didn’t provide the pick-me-up she found in the bookstore. She went to the bookstore to feel some control over her life.

  Still recoiling from the avaricious light in the eyes of last night’s guests, Irene swallowed one of her antidepressants and told herself she deserved a little boost.

  WHEN IRENE ARRIVED AT The Last Page, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She elbowed in between two women who were gaping at the window display. Irene spotted Cassandra, the bookstore owner, through the window. Noticing Irene standing on the sidewalk, Cassandra smiled, waved at her, and pointed to the red button pinned to her chest, which proclaimed “I read banned books.”

  Irene frowned. She focused on the display. The entire window replicated a garbage dump with a banner stretched across the top: “Censorship: It’s a Terrible Waste.” The women standing beside Irene wrinkled their noses in distaste. Books, wrapped in plain brown wrappers, mingled among old wine bottles, crushed beer cans, soiled paper napkins, and other refuse.

  On each brown wrapper was written the name of a book that had been banned and the year it had been challenged. The Sun Also Rises, 1930, 1933 (burned in Nazi bonfires), 1953, 1960.

  Again with the Nazis. Irene wanted to scream.

  The Bible, 1624, 1926, 1952, 1953, 1978, 1986, 1992.

  “I don’t believe it, Evelyn,” one of the women beside her exclaimed. “The Bible!”

  “There’s a lot of fooling around in the Old Testament,” Evelyn said.

  Hansel and Gretel, 1992 (“teaches children to kill witches and paints witches as child-eating monsters”).

  “Well, I always did think those Grimm fairy tales were—grim. They frighten even me,” said Evelyn’s friend. “I won’t allow my son to read them to my granddaughter when he visits my house. Of course, he reads them to her when they get home. And then he wonders why she has nightmares. I’ve always said stick with Mother Goose. I mean, nobody was ever killed with a hot cross bun.”

  Evelyn frowned. “I’m sure these days they can even find something wrong with sweet old Mother Goose. Take that ‘Old Woman in a Shoe.’ With all those kids crammed in there, if that’s not a case for child abuse, I don’t know what is.”

  Irene listened to the two women and pondered what could be done about this disgusting display. Arthur would tell her it was free enterprise and to cool her jets. Irene felt the heat rising in her. This was just plain wrong. She and her club were knocking themselves out to maintain a modicum of decency in Mercy. Didn’t people realize that the civilized world was teetering on an abyss, and it was just this kind of thinking that could tip it into chaos?

  The bell over the door was still jingling when Irene marched up to Cassandra, “What is the meaning of that?” She pointed to the window.

  Cassandra finished with a customer and turned. “Don’t you love the display, Irene? I was at the school board meeting. My daughter
’s in the same grade as Art Junior, you know. Listening to all those people made me think that we really need an open discussion on censorship.”

  “Open discussion?” Irene snarled.

  “I don’t think my customers know how important this issue is. People put their heads in the sand. Of course, no one believed the Nazis burned books either—at first.”

  Irene gasped. “Are you comparing the concerned citizens of Mercy with Nazis?”

  “Of course not, Irene. That’s just crazy talk.”

  “You know what’s not crazy? Wanting to protect our children.”

  Irene was so disturbed by the conversation and the window display that she spun around and stomped from the store. In her car, she sat, gripping the steering wheel. Finally, she took a few deep breaths and opened her purse for the car keys. That’s when she saw the repent cards. She’d forgotten the whole reason she had come to The Last Page. She pulled out the cards and fanned them in her hand. She’d brought enough to place two cards in each book in the New Age section or, as she called it, the devil’s bookshelf. Normally, she stuck only one card in each book. But today, she had planned to plant one sticking out of the top of the books in plain view as a decoy for Cassandra to find and a second tucked between the pages, a booby trap ready to spring on unsuspecting sinners, a bomb of God’s truth waiting to explode and shower the debris of righteousness on its victims.

  Then she’d seen that horrid window. And now, here she was, sitting in the Mercedes with her unused repent cards, feeling even worse than when she started out. And this trip was supposed to make her feel better.

  Something inside Irene snapped. She was not without resources. She would go home and start the Study Club’s phone tree immediately. When Cassandra lost all of the Study Club members’ business, she might not be so smug.

  Chapter 17

  Tofu Thanksgiving

  ON THANKSGIVING DAY, ANTIGONE was up to her elbows in relatives. Jonas and Marian Thorne, Sam’s parents, had driven up from Florida in their white van packed with coolers of “regular” food, as the carnivorous Thornes put it. Antigone’s parents, Annaliese and Henry Brown, had flown in from Massachusetts to the airport in Charlotte and rented a hybrid car. They brought a worn leather satchel (her father’s) and a new rolling briefcase (her mother’s) packed with books, academic journals, and student papers to read. This was the equivalent of two storm fronts converging on Antigone’s dinner table.

  The deer nudged Antigone’s bulging coat pockets, searching for more of the small red apples she and Ryder had brought back from a trip into the North Carolina mountains. The trip to Annie’s Produce Stand was an autumn ritual, roller coasting over narrow roads to buy five bushels of apples and a half dozen jugs of apple cider. Annie, of weathered face and quick smiles, always asked about William and always sent Antigone home with an extra bag of squash. “Tell William I’ll see him next week,” Annie said with a wink. “I’ll deliver those other bushels he ordered personally.”

  In the fall, the menu at the O. Henry Café overflowed with apple pies, baked apples, apple bran muffins, apple pancakes, applesauce, onion apple soup. William tried any recipe that called for apples and included apples in many that didn’t.

  Apples were also a favorite treat of the deer. While William cooked Thanksgiving dinner, Henry and Annaliese Brown laughed as the young ones bumped against their daughter. “All right,” she said, pulling out two apples. The apples were balanced on the flat of her palms for only a second before they were snatched away. Of course, the fawns’ daring emboldened the others, which had been hanging back because of the unfamiliar scent of Antigone’s parents. Soon, all three of them were surrounded by apple-crazy, core-crunching deer.

  Antigone contemplated her parents with a smile. Although the traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner at her house was noted on the Thornes’ calendar, probably years in advance, her parents played it loose when it came to holidays. Some holidays they had blown off entirely, phoning at the last minute, making excuses in preoccupied voices that Antigone recognized from years of benign inattention. This year, however, it was different. They were going to be grandparents, and their only child was having her first child. The ardent researchers and popular lecturers suddenly, and unexpectedly, found themselves obsessed with things requiring cuddling and cooing.

  The deer crowded closer, sniffing Henry’s tweed jacket and licking Annaliese’s black designer pants. Neither seemed to notice. Antigone came from people who seldom concerned themselves with domestic details. Henry ignored the state of his clothes, and Annaliese never understood why she should be concerned about laundry when there were maids and dry cleaners.

  Henry Brown, grandson of an affluent New England merchant, was sturdy and straight. His hands were small for a man and quick, the better to work a calculator. His eyes were kind, if somewhat distracted, behind round tortoise shell glasses. They were an unusual shade of hazel, a hue he had passed on to his daughter. He’d lost his hair at an early age; in fact, Antigone couldn’t remember ever seeing a photo of her father with hair. Annaliese’s sleek bob, on the other hand, was that champagne shade that disguised gray effortlessly. Antigone’s sun-streaked tresses wereearly the same color. She and her mother came from a long line of well-preserved Southern women, but they looked nothing alike. One was a well-tended English park, orderly, soothing, untouchable, and the other was a wild forest, where woodland spirits and practical woodsmen warred in the deep darkness.

  Antigone’s mother calmly pushed a cold snout out of the empty pocket of her gray suede coat. “Are you feeling all right? I mean, with the baby. This is what, your seventh month?”

  “Yup. I’m just peachy. Some leg cramps, swollen feet, endless fatigue.”

  Annaliese tapped a white-tipped French manicured nail against her lips in thought. “When I was seven months pregnant with you, I remember I had the strangest dreams. They were quite beautiful in the beginning, full of handsome Greek warriors, beautiful sirens, and magnificent ships. I must have been teaching The Odyssey that semester. I quite enjoyed them until everything started turning into food. Boats became banana splits. The women’s flowing cloaks were mounds of mashed potatoes. I was always hungry,” Annaliese mused. “Are you famished all the time?”

  Antigone nodded.

  “I used to order huge meals when I was pregnant and only be able to eat a few bites,” Annaliese said.

  Henry, studying the deer, said, “Our refrigerator was packed with leftovers and doggie bags. I always had something for lunch the next day.”

  “The point is,” Annaliese continued, “pregnancy does something to your perspective, darling. It makes you think you can take on more than you can chew.”

  “Ah,” Antigone said, understanding. “And you think this book situation might be too much for my plate?”

  “Not necessarily,” Annaliese said. She had that protective look she gave students who were carrying an impossible course load and just discovering it in mid-semester. “I just don’t want it to upset you—at this time in your life.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother, it’s just given me a little indigestion, or maybe that was the Greek warship I ate at the Dairy Queen.”

  “The thing is,” Annaliese frowned, “people in these situations—heated situations—seldom take the long view.”

  Henry nodded. “The historical perspective.”

  Annaliese said, “They’re afraid of ideas. They don’t want to let them out of the bag because then how will they control them?”

  “Control is the main diet of the Mercy Study Club,” Antigone said.

  “Well, I don’t blame you for not wanting to eat at their table,” Henry said. “The whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies. People having to watch what they read, what they say, what they think.”

  “You were right to challenge them,” Annaliese said. “Although I imagine the Thornes don’t agree.”

  “I’ve been avoiding any deep intellectual discussions with Marian.”

  “T
hat’s my wise daughter.” Absently pulling her sleek coat away from Fancy’s nibbling lips, Annaliese caressed Antigone’s cheek. She tugged the coat closer and shivered. “Temperature’s dropping. I’m going in. There’s a chapter I want to finish before diving into William’s gastronomical explorations. Don’t stay out here too long, you two. You’ll catch your death.”

  Antigone nodded. She watched her mother gingerly cross the yard, her high heels wobbling on the uneven ground, her long legs as beautiful as ever. Out of courtesy, as a guest in her daughter’s home, Annaliese would be on time for dinner. This was not always the case when Antigone was growing up. Sometimes her parents forgot about dinner completely, unable to tear themselves away from their books, from the words and ideas of strangers long dead. When she was young, Antigone fantasized about snatching the books that held her parents’ attention when she could not, those books full of words that would always defeat her. She would grab them out of her parents’ hands and fling them into the fireplace. But every time the same thing happened in her daydream: The books put out the fire.

  Now, anxiously awaiting being with her own child, Antigone realized that while she had often been jealous of books, she also had prized them. They pictured so prominently in the wonderful moments in her life—the times her mother or father had stretched out on the bed beside her, shoulder to shoulder, and read to her. She could almost hear them. Her mother whispering of a little girl all alone in an orphanage in Paris. Her father chuckling at the antics of a curious monkey.

  “You know,” Henry said, as the deer searched the ground for remnants of apple. “I kind of like William’s cooking.” William with his kick-ass cobra tattoo—“the result of one helluva bender in Calcutta”—claimed to put the spirit of India into every dish at the O. Henry Café.