The Book of Eleanor (2 page)

“I don’t know,” I let her go, twisting my hands together anxiously. “I just wish I could meet her, is all.”

Mama’s gaze softened as she studied me. “What do we say around here, Angela Rose?”

I sighed. “If meant to be, it’ll be,” I said.

Mama pressed a hand to her heart. “Amen. Now, I’ve got to get back to work and you do too. We got a business to run, baby girl.”

She hurried off. I stole a final glance out the small window, then moved to fold a box for Melvin’s pie. The harsh sizzle of bacon reached me as Mama worked the grill. It smelled delicious. Gail, over by the huge brick and mortar pizza oven, withdrew a large “everything” pizza with extra green peppers, Melvin’s favorite. The pie was cooked to perfection, still bubbling on top. I held out the box and Gail slid the pizza inside.

“You know where he is, right?” she asked.

“Yep, conference center today.”

“Mmm hmm, by the front door, south side,” she answered, slapping a new lump of dough onto the board.

I tossed in packets of cheese and red pepper flakes and closed the box as I walked toward the kitchen door. I saw that Willie had his ice truck pulled up to the stoop. He was busy unloading, so I waved to him before executing a quick U-turn, excited that I would get to see the woman up close when I passed through the dining room.

I made it all the way through the swinging doors before I felt it. I paused in twisting my car keys out of my pocket, but couldn’t stop my feet and their forward motion.

Hasty raced past me toward the kitchen, and then it happened: disaster. Our feet tangled for a brief instant, but it was just enough for him to fall into the kitchen buffer wall and me to pitch headfirst into the woman.

 I saw big green eyes widen in surprise as I descended, and all I could think about was
if meant to be, it’ll be
when the pizza box exploded, showering us both with hot pizza and colorful packets of condiments.

My right hip hit the table hard, but I ended up sort of in her lap and on the table at the same time. I lay there for a long, shocked moment, watching a slice of Melvin’s pizza ooze its way down the front of her shirt. Time seemed to stand still as the woman and I regarded one another. The entire dining room went silent, customers watching in amazement. There was a smear of sauce on her left cheek and a slice of green pepper on one shoulder.

“Are you burnt?” I finally asked when I could speak.

“No,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “I ordered the pasta primavera, though, not the pizza.”

The hilarity hit me. I slid from the table and onto the floor, laughing. Though limp from merriment, I moved to lift the twisted slices of pizza off her, the table, and the floor. I lifted a silverware setup from a nearby table and used the napkin to mop up as best I could. Her salad had exploded as well, sending lettuce shrapnel everywhere. By some miracle, the bowl of garlic and olive oil rested undisturbed on the table, although the bread basket had tumbled.

I tried not to laugh, but every time I met her twinkling eyes, it set me off again. She kept smiling, thank goodness, and helped straighten up the mess, using a napkin to sweep salad into the pizza box. We worked in silence while the normal restaurant chatter resumed around us.

I fetched another napkin and moved to wipe the sauce from her cheek. Our eyes met. When one of my knuckles touched her soft, cool skin, a swift current ran up my arm. In my vision, her eyes darkened with pain and loss. Grief pressed against my heart, threatening to still it. I pulled back reflexively, glad to see the bright, merry green eyes of this moment return.

“Angie! What in the world?”

I sighed and shrugged at the woman. Mama had heard the ruckus, or maybe the sudden silence, and come to investigate. I turned to her, trying to squelch my overwhelming amusement. It did little good. I answered chuckling.

“I tripped over Hasty and fell…fell into this nice woman here.”

Mama turned her attention to the customer and began mopping at her with a dishtowel. It was hopeless, smeared cheese and sauce everywhere. “Oh, Lord, honey, I am so, so very sorry this happened. You listen, we will pay for every bit of this dry cleaning. You just bring the bill right on here and we’ll take care of it.”

Hasty, too, descended on the customer, promising a new salad and stating that lunch was, of course, on us. He ignored me completely, using his elbows to push me aside as he and Mama hovered. I moved back farther, the crushed box filled with accident debris held to my chest.

I took a deep breath and staggered into the kitchen to clean myself up, haunted by sad jade eyes and filled with remorse because I never thought to get her name.

After Mary was taken, I found myself wishing for light to shine on me. I was in such a dark place when her daily glow subsided from my life, I worried that I would become, from that point onward, a curved, pale grub buried beneath the soil of my sadness. Heading south toward the sun seemed like a good idea, so I left the Central Texas home we’d shared and moved as far south in the Lone Star State as possible, to endless warmth and brightness.

The welcome sun bathed my face with necessary heat as I stood in a parking area next to the wild, untamed beach of South Padre Island. I’d checked out of the small Los Fresnos hotel after a restless night, passed right by my new, as yet unexplored, home at Lighthouse Square in Port Isabel, and pushed headlong toward the broad expanse of ocean and unhindered sunlight. There’d be time enough, too much time, I was sure, for dealing with the settling in. What I needed now was the healing energy of water and hot, hot light on my skin.

I walked around my parked car and looked through the partially open passenger window at Oscar Marie. Her cat carrier rested high on a stack of suitcases. Her broad, flat face was pressed against the metal door grate, eyes wide and nose twitching as she took in the unfamiliar sights and smells of beach and ocean.

“Will you be okay for a few minutes?” I asked, reaching through the grate to scratch the heavy black hair around the scruff of her neck. “I’m just going to walk down and put my feet in the water. I’d take you with me, but you wouldn’t like it. Too much wind.”

She ignored me, but I think it was more curiosity about the noises coming from a nearby hotel than her being miffed at me.

“I’ll be back. Stay put and be good.”

She looked at me finally, her eyes made golden by the harsh sunlight. She blinked slowly.

Taking this as permission. I slipped my flats from my feet and held them in both hands as I strode onto the hot sand, leaving the towering hotels behind me. I was grateful for the scorch of the sand against my tender feet, which woke senses numbed for the past six months.

I glanced left and right, surprised to see only a handful of beach-goers. The lakes I had frequented in the Dallas area were usually packed shoulder–to–shoulder, even this early in the spring, so the lack of crowds was a refreshing change.

Looking back at my car parked close by in the small, beach access lot, I mentally noted the proximity and walked left, my route moving diagonally toward the water. Roiling waves pounded the sand, which had cooled considerably beneath the soles of my feet. Foam peppered my clothing as I pushed toward the waves, and the rampant, unceasing wind snatched wildly at my unbound hair. I walked a long time in wide, elliptical circles, my mind blank, simply reacting to the environment. Gulls begged loudly above me, and some brave fellows even walked haphazardly beside me, as though I were simply hiding food from them as a tease.

A rebel wave soaked the hem of my jeans, and I paused.

I closed my eyes, battling vertigo as I experienced fully the magnitude of the new life I was making for myself. I realized that this place of water perfectly reflected my emotional turmoil. Me, who had real problems trusting others, had, after many years, let down my walls of emotional isolation and loved fully.

Mary had been taken from me brutally, as suddenly as my mother almost two decades earlier. How does one come back from that new betrayal? What kind of cruel universe would allow me to open my wounded self, allow me to lay down my arms, and then attack me anew? My bitterness rankled.

It had been hard selling our home, but harder still to stay there, expecting to find Mary glancing up at me in every room I entered. I was lucky and sold the house quickly, packing what I felt I had to keep, and selling or donating the rest of my old life.

Letting go of Mary’s things was not easy. Both her sisters came over while I was closeted in my office working, and thankfully, they handled the bulk. I kept just one of her shirts in the office with me. It still smelled like her, peppery and fierce.

Mary had worked for a company called Fellingworth Art which created and choreographed beautiful firework displays. Pyrotechnics, she called them. I regret to say I never really learned very many details about her job during our ten years living together. She would leave home in the morning, all dewy from her shower, and come home in the evenings grubby and smelling spicy from something she called black powder.

Though I loved going to the many fireworks displays we attended, the points of light on Mary are what fascinated me the most. I will always remember that about her.

The first time I saw this side effect of her job, we’d only been dating about two weeks. We had arranged to meet at a local bar where our mutual friend, Carmen, was performing her stand-up comedy routine. I got there first and cribbed a good table, stage side. I talked with Carmen while I waited, standing between Carmen and the table, and glancing impatiently toward the front door.

Time passed. Carmen left to go backstage, and then, just as the lights dimmed for the show and the spotlights came up, Miss Mary Leigh Banks entered the club. It was the first time I’d seen her come directly from work and I was awed by her beauty.

Although I made out her form, clad in her usual T-shirt and jeans, the metals and chemicals she worked with had created a shimmering cloak of iridescence over her body that took my breath away. Each movement as she crossed the room toward me held me entranced. I could not take my gaze away.

When she approached even closer, I saw that metal powder exquisitely framed her sparkling brown eyes, nestling into and defining each laugh line. Her mouth and cheekbones bore a similar outline. I leaned into her, wishing to take some of that beauty for myself.

Our lips met in our second real kiss as we fell into our seats. I felt Mary’s dynamic energy fill me. Was that when I fell in love with her? Maybe. The falling into love was such a gradual, natural thing that it would be hard to pinpoint.

I do know that the next ten years with her would define my life in a brand-new way. Oddly enough, even after her passing, my life was still changing.

Though Mary’s sisters helped me deal with the dispersion of most of her possessions, they had not wanted her books. Younger sister Elizabeth wasn’t interested. Not surprising since she lives in a small studio apartment in downtown Cedar Springs and works as a busy bankruptcy lawyer. Brynna, the eldest, hemmed and hawed a bit, but eventually asked me to do something with them, perhaps sell them if I could. She did pick out two favorite books that she and Mary had read as children. That still left thousands of volumes for me to deal with.

I paused in my frantic strides on the beach, remembering the first time I’d walked into Mary’s library after her death. The room had felt so strange without her in it. She loved books. No, understand me, she
loved
books like most people love air.

I take that back. Air is taken for granted, and Mary would never take a book for granted. Each volume was like a beloved child to her. She knew its name and history without a moment’s hesitation. She had collections by specific authors that she liked or stood in awe of, and the books ranged through every genre and every time period. The author collections not only decorated her shelves with hardback first editions, but also trade paperbacks and even cheaply made imports from other countries. She had them all. One of her favorite pastimes was browsing through used bookstores.

It used to annoy me, I admit it. No matter where we were or what we were doing, if there was a bookstore nearby, Mary was in it. She even had her entire collection listed in her BlackBerry, with an additional list of the books she needed to buy to round out her various sub-collections. I can’t begin to list the stores I waited outside, reading to pass the time yet growing ever more impatient. I sincerely regret that impatience. Especially now that I am alone and have so many empty hours to fill, knowing she won’t return to me.

I may have been able to let go of most of Mary’s things but her beloved books...well, I found it impossible to let them go in one fell swoop to some anonymous dealer—a type of guilt, or maybe an apology, I suppose. Thus, I was forced to spend a lot of time pondering what to do with, and how to evaluate, several thousand valuable books.

I wasn’t as big a reader as Mary, nor loved the books for their very essence as she had. I did want to keep them close, though. I felt I could, over time, use them in some mysterious way as payback for having been allowed to keep her presence in my life for as long as I did.

After stopping for coffee while running errands one day in Dallas, I’d been surprised to find books scattered around the coffeehouse. I realized it was a reading room as well as a coffee shop. People came in and read while having coffee, but left the books behind where they belonged. I decided such a business would be a perfect venue, providing a way for other book lovers to appreciate and enjoy Mary’s collection. She would have been pleased. So the idea for Mary’s Bookmark, a combined coffeehouse and reading room, was born.

It was a great way to invest Mary’s money as well. I was suddenly and unexpectedly wealthy because Mary, bless her heart, had—unbeknownst to me—named me as beneficiary on her life insurance and retirement accounts at work. In addition, Fellingworth Art generously included me in the customary accidental death benefit they paid to Mary’s sisters. Mary and I had been together openly almost eleven years, and they knew we were our own small family.