Pages of Sin (6 page)

There were bookshelves, and unlike in the front room, the books here were neatly shelved in alphabetical order. Beneath the scent of the sage that Mom still carried were the lingering aromas of leather and wood and a hint of lemon polish.

Beyond the desk, a wide bay window looked out onto a patch of lush green lawn and a manicured herb garden. A sundial on a pedestal sat in the middle, surrounded by bushes of rosemary and sage. Three birch trees had been planted outside the window and the late morning sun cast a dappled shadow through the leaves and into the room. Against the far wall were more colorful flowers surrounding a neatly manicured and thriving vegetable garden.

More of Wanda’s horticultural artistry.

“This is so nice,” Mom said, gazing around.

“This is where Byron lives,” I murmured, and pointed to a side door leading outside. “I wonder if he usually comes and goes through that door so he doesn’t have to deal with the fussiness of the living room.”

“Or his wife?” Mom asked, sounding forlorn.

“I don’t know.”

Mom sighed. “That is so depressing. I hope they didn’t lead completely separate lives.”

“I hope not, but it sort of looks that way,” I said quietly, knowing my empathetic mother was hurting for her friends. I quickly nudged her out of the room. “Are you ready to go upstairs?”

She frowned, then nodded decisively. “Let’s do it.”

I saluted her. “Right there with you, Mambo.”

A few minutes later, we stood at the first doorway off the stairs. It was another office, but this one was much more cluttered. Despite the clutter, there seemed to be some organization to the room. Two computers on opposite sides of the desk were surrounded by lots of files and stacks of paper and more books. But, praise Buddha, these books were all neatly arranged on bookshelves.

I stepped into the room and walked over to look. With a grin, I turned to Mom. “These are all books by her sisters.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Mom said, and joined me in front of the bookshelves. “I didn’t realize they’d written so many.”

“A lot of them are the same books translated into different languages.” I pulled a hardcover from the shelf. “This is a large print edition of one of Marjorie’s memoirs.”

We didn’t spend much time in that room because it seemed to be filled with healthy vibes. Still, Mom waved her sage around, just for good measure.

We walked down the hall to the open double doors that led into the master bedroom. It was a large, comfortable space. There was no overcrowding of furniture here, no overly fussy antiques. Instead, a California king-sized bed dominated the space with a modern blond wood headboard that matched two large dressers and a wide mirror. A comfy looking upholstered loveseat and chair filled a cheery corner space beneath two picture windows. The entire room was sedately decorated in pale blues, whites and browns.

We walked around the room in silence as Mom waved more sage, its mellow scent wafting into the air.

“I don’t get it,” I finally said. “It’s so normal in here.”

“I refused to sleep with Louis the Sixteenth,” Byron said from the doorway.

Mom shrieked and I admit I might have leapt a few feet in the air, but who could blame us?

“Honestly, Byron!” Mom cried. “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

“Where the hell did you come from?” I asked, my voice squeaking from the shock. I caught my breath and added, “Sorry. We were a little preoccupied. We didn’t hear you coming upstairs.”

“Carpet on the stairs blocks the sound,” he explained.

“You could’ve called out or something.”

He shrugged. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting to see you up here.”

“We were just . . .” Mom feebly waved the clump of incense.

“That’s fine. I appreciate it.” He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. “Wanda had plenty of her family’s rococo crap that could’ve been used to decorate this room, but I drew the line and luckily, she agreed with me.”

“You also drew the line at the office downstairs,” I said, then realized it made us sound like we were snooping. Oh, well, it was too late to try to pretend we weren’t.

He chuckled. “Now, that was Wanda’s idea. She thought I should have one room that was all mine. She used to stock my refrigerator with snacks and beers so I could watch my football games in peace. But most of the time, she ended up watching the games with me.”

“That’s nice,” Mom murmured.

Byron nodded. “Yeah, she always pretended to come in there to check out the view of the backyard, but I think she came to get away from the memories. And the obsessions.”

“Why did she . . . never mind.” Mom shook her head. “It’s none of my business.”

“Why did she wall herself off from the rest of the world?” he finished. “Or why did she kill herself?”

“Really, Byron,” Mom said in a rush. “We had no right to wander through your house. And now we’re bringing up bad memories for you. I think we’d better go now.”

“Anytime I think of Wanda,” Byron said in a hushed voice, “the memories are never bad.”

I sniffled back the tears I felt brewing, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“You know she dressed up every day?” he said. “Even when she was working in the garden. She was so beautiful. You remember, don’t you, Becky?”

“She was lovely,” Mom said.

“She greeted me every morning with one of those soft smiles,” he continued, his eyes warming at the memory. “Every afternoon when I came home from work, cocktails were poured, dinner was made. Despite what everyone thought, she was never depressed.” He chuckled. “She didn’t take drugs. Well, not until that last day.”

“Oh, Byron.” Mom walked right into his arms and they held on to each other for a long moment. Finally she stepped back. “Do you have someplace you can stay for a while? I hate to leave you alone here.”

“This is my favorite place in the world,” Byron said, his eyes clear again. “Please, Becky, don’t worry about me. I might give Marjorie a call. Maybe she and Elaine will go to dinner with me. It’s about time we all got together and made our peace once and for all.”

As he walked with us downstairs, Mom kept talking. “Did Marjorie visit Wanda very often?”

“Oh, sure,” Byron said. “She came by every few weeks, usually dropped off some books or brought some pastries or some kind of gift or goodie for Wanda.”

“That was nice of her,” I said as we reached the bottom of the stairs. But I couldn’t help wondering why Wanda allowed her sister into her home when she wouldn’t allow my mother to visit.

“Marjorie’s a nice gal,” he said. “She’s the one who found Wanda. She came over that last afternoon and saw her lying on her favorite chaise in the garden. She couldn’t wake her up. Tried to give her CPR, but it didn’t work. She went screaming out of the yard and down the street.”

“Poor Marjorie,” Mom said.

Byron sighed. “When she finally calmed down enough to talk to me, she kept saying,
Why? Why?
”

From the way he was staring at the walls and rambling on, it seemed that Byron was still mystified as to why Wanda had killed herself. “Marjorie said she’d called Wanda that morning to let her know she was coming by. Told her she was bringing her some new shoes. She did that sometimes. Wanda appreciated it.”

“Shoes?”

“Yeah. They were nice ones, too. All the Bradford girls have great taste in shoes.”

Byron continued talking but I was lost in my own thoughts. I felt so awful for him, knowing his wife must have suffered so much. But in another part of my mind (an admittedly
shallow
part of my mind), I knew that I never could have killed myself before checking out that cute new pair of shoes.

That evening, I arrived at the library an hour early to set up the room for my book-repair class. It was good to see that the library was a quiet but busy hubbub of activity at this time of day. At the front desk, the assistant librarian handed me a copy of the sign-up sheet, then led the way upstairs to the meeting room. Not that I needed a guide; I knew my way around the Dharma Library probably better than the librarian who was giving me the “guest” spiel as we climbed the stairs.

In the nondescript community room, four long utility tables had been set up in a chevron pattern, all facing one long table at the front of the room. There were enough chairs for twenty attendees and I checked the list again.

“This is more chairs than we’ll need,” I said.

“Oh no, five more people signed up today,” the assistant said, grinning. “This is turning out to be one of our most popular events this month.”

“That’s great.” The more book lovers, the better, I thought. “Good thing I brought some extra supplies and tools.”

“Do you need help setting up?”

I checked my wristwatch. “No, thanks. I’ve got plenty of time to arrange things.”

She left the room and I pulled my small dolly over to the front table. I lifted the two boxes of Wanda’s books onto the table, then laid out and organized my tools and supplies in the particular order I liked them to be.

The busy work kept my mind from playing Byron’s words over and over in my mind. It was pretty obvious to me that Byron had still been deeply in love with his wife. Wanda must have known how he felt. So Marjorie had called her that morning to tell her she was coming over with a brand new pair of shoes. Had Wanda chosen that day to kill herself so that Marjorie would find her instead of Byron? Maybe she didn’t want Byron to be the one to find her because it would hurt him too much.

Any way you looked at it, Wanda’s death was heartbreaking. And it left me with more questions than answers.

I shook my head to get rid of all those sad thoughts. I’d completed setting up my own work area, so I moved to the attendees’ tables. At each place, I laid down a thick place mat that could double as a cutting board. On it, I placed a bundle of supplies and tools each person would use to complete the assignments I planned to give them.

It might sound odd, but this quiet time prior to the students arriving for class was one of my favorite parts of teaching. I preferred everything to be ordered and methodical and I think my attendees appreciated the attention to detail. I had tried in the past to give everyone free access to tools and supplies, but that had proven to be too chaotic, so I’d gone back to setting things up in my own orderly style. It’s not that I was a control freak. Not really. Oh, fine, I was a control freak, but it worked for me.

Once I finished laying everything out, I sat down at my table and studied the list of attendees. I found Robin’s name at the end of the list and was happy to know I would have a friend in the room.

One of the library assistants had typed up the list and next to each attendee’s name, they’d added either an occupation or the person’s reason for taking the class. Eight of them were library employees who were looking for ways to make their inventory last longer. The rest were simply book lovers.
That makes sense,
I thought with a smile. I qualified as one of those, too.

Two women strolled into the room and I stood up to greet them. “Hi, I’m Brooklyn Wainwright. Are you here for the book-repair class?”

“Yes,” the taller woman said. “I’m Celeste and this is Trudy.”

“Hi,” I said, popping open the packing boxes. “Come on over and pick out a book.”

“Cool,” Celeste said, and peeked into the box. “Some of these are beautiful.”

Trudy looked at me with an apologetic frown. “What did you say your name was? I didn’t catch it.”

“Call me Brooklyn,” I said, and added, “Thanks for reminding me.” She laughed, then nodded in approval as I pulled a sheet of name tag labels from my box of supplies, along with two markers. I quickly wrote my own name on one, peeled it off, and slapped it on my jacket. “We’re doing name tags.”

“Good idea,” Celeste said, and filled out tags for both of them. Then they perused the box of books for a few minutes while I checked my watch and wondered where everyone was.

“These look ratty enough,” Trudy said, grinning as she held up two faded classics. She looked around the room, then said, “Can we sit anywhere?”

I smiled. “Sure.”

Within twenty minutes, every student who’d signed up had arrived, including Robin, and my worries about having an empty classroom were over. There was the usual chattering while each chose a damaged book from the box and filled out a name tag.

Once everyone found seats, got comfortable, and introduced themselves to their neighbors, I moved out from behind the front table and waited as they grew quiet and attentive. I caught Robin’s gaze and smiled—and was abruptly hit with a wave of nervousness. I had to take a few quick breaths to calm down.

I’d never been nervous in front of a class before, so I blamed it on Robin’s presence. I decided I’d better avoid eye contact with her; otherwise I’d flub up everything and sound like a knucklehead.

“Let’s get started,” I said, then reintroduced myself and gave them an abbreviated version of my background in bookbinding. “Now, I know everybody hates this part of any class, but let’s take ten minutes and go around the room so each of you can tell us your name and briefly share what you hope to get out of the class.”

“That’s thirty seconds for each person,” an intense young fellow named James said, flashing a warning glance at his fellow attendees.

There were some mutterings and eye rolls aimed at James, but the introductions went smoothly and quickly. The eight librarians knew one another and all worked for the county. I asked if any of them worked in archives or preservation and thankfully, none of them did. Those archival people were an intimidating bunch who often thought they knew a lot more about book restoration than I did.

The last two attendees to introduce themselves were a retired couple named Sam and Rita. They had been holding hands during the other intros and now that it was their turn to talk, they laughed and giggled and patted each other’s hands as they finished each other’s sentences.