Happy New Year – and for you, a love story

It’s New Year’s Eve. My writing journey is progressing nicely as I have now begun to query literary agents seeking representation. A necessary step toward the hopeful publication of my first novel, A Criminal Act of Heroism. At the same time, I am progressing quickly on my second novel (Dreaming of The Walker), having just hit the halfway mark in the drafting of a planned sixteen chapter plus prologue and epilogue work.

Earlier today, on a whim, I decided to dust off a short story I wrote last year called Finishing Books. Not the best title, so I’ve renamed it Endings. I gave it a new once over, edited it, rewrote some parts, then decided I’d post it. It’s a love story and a tragedy but mostly a love story. I wrote it as an exercise in keeping related but parallel narratives moving forward simultaneously. I would love to hear your comments on the structure and on the clarity of the two couples individual narratives.

Enjoy.

***

Endings

The old man felt free of pain for the first time in years. Still, he lowered himself slowly into the reading chair in the alcove by the window, settling himself with the expectation of a twinge here or an ache there.

He initially seemed not to notice the dark-haired young woman who sat on the arm of the chair with her left hand resting on the back above his head. He hadn’t seen her for many years, except in his nightly dreams. She handed him a torn and tattered book she’d retrieved from one of the many bookshelves that lined the walls of this comfortable home library. The book she’d chosen was expected. He gave her a smile that seemed to iron the deep creases from his face, fill out the sparseness of his hair and darken the greyness of his beard. The book was more precious to him than any of the hundreds of others that lined these shelves.

“Would you like me to read it aloud?” she asked in that perfect voice he remembered so well. The lilt, the love, the clarity and diction. “Henry?” she prompted when, lost in memory, he hadn’t replied.

“I’ll give it a go first, Maria,” he finally said, sliding off the fabric sheath which had enveloped the book’s final chapter, keeping its pages pristine while the rest was falling apart. “Thank you.”

She smiled the lovely smile he remembered so well, the smile from his nightly dreams.

“Chapter sixty-three,” he read. “The front door was slightly ajar…”

The door to the library opened and a young man entered. He ignored the couple in the chair and they ignored him. He had a stack of cardboard sheets which he laid flat on the desk by the door. He took the top sheet and began to fold it into a box. A young blonde woman entered behind him, carrying a small two-step folding ladder, one of those you use in a kitchen to retrieve the fine China from its hiding place in the top cupboard. She kissed the young man tenderly on the ear before unfolding the ladder by the first bookshelf. She climbed to the top step.

Henry continued to read to Maria, ignoring the young couple.

The young couple ignored the readers on the chair.

“Are you okay, Andrew?” the young woman asked. “Are you up for doing this?”

“I am, Sara,” he replied. “Thank you. I’m not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.” He paused, let out a sigh. “Lots of memories in this room.”

“I’ll pass books down and you can pack them away. Set any aside you want to keep. You don’t have to donate the whole collection.” She passed down the first two books.

“I think the smell of his pipe is in every book,” Andrew said as he drew in a deep breath over the first book he packed. “I hate the smell of cigarettes, but his pipe was different. It was still tobacco, but it was the smell of Grandpa.”

Henry looked up at the word Grandpa and smiled. He looked back down at the book in his hands. He hadn’t been able to find his glasses but, somehow, he was able to focus clearly on the page. “Sorry, Maria,” he said before continuing.

Andrew had constructed two boxes. He was placing the books he wanted to keep in one and those to donate in the other. Most were going into the donation box. He wasn’t the reader his grandpa had been.

“It’s funny,” said Sara. “Many of these books have bookmarks in them. And whenever they have a bookmark, it appears at the start of the final chapter. It’s like your grandpa was a prolific reader but just couldn’t finish books. Or maybe he just bookmarked the endings so he could go back to read them again.”

Maria had taken the book from Henry and was now reading to him. She paused and looked toward Andrew and Sara, smiling. “Sorry,” she said as Henry nudged her. “It’s just nice to see young love.”

“Do you want to hear the story?” asked Andrew. “I have to warn you though. Grandpa was a real romantic.”

“I do,” said Sara, looking down as Andrew placed a book in the keep box.

“There’s a book in here somewhere,” said Andrew. “An old and tattered copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. It’s falling apart but it is definitely destined for the keep box.”

“Gone With the Wind?” asked Sara, laughing slightly. “I wouldn’t expect that to be a favourite of your grandpa’s. I mean, isn’t that early chick-lit? It’s a romance, right?”

“It is,” said Andrew. “Well, it’s a romance and so much more. To Grandpa, it was the good luck charm that brought him safely home from war.”

Andrew leaned back against the desk. Sara sat on the top step of the folding ladder and looked into Andrew’s eyes. She smiled as Andrew took both her hands into his.

“As you know, I never met my grandmother. She died while my father was still a young boy. Only about four years old. Grandpa never remarried. He had help from his mother and sisters and aunts, but he basically raised my dad and my aunt as a single father. Not common in the 1950s.”

“How did she die?” Sara asked.

“That is part of the story,” he replied. “Grandpa told me they both loved reading. There was all the new media at the time—the radio, the movies—but they were both academics in their own ways. Grandpa more formally, as you might expect in those days. He was a university professor, after all. But he used to say that his Maria was the smartest person he had ever met. They would read aloud to one another. They always had a book on the go.”

“Go to the beginning,” said Sara. “How did they meet?”

“They lived down the road from one another growing up. They knew each other since they were toddlers. There was never a time in his life where Maria wasn’t centre stage.”

“But she died young?”

“Yes, but she stayed centre stage.” Andrew looked deep into Sara’s eyes. “He would talk when I was growing up as if Maria was just in the next room or had just stepped out for some shopping. I asked him once, I said, ‘Grandpa, it’s till death do you part. Why have you never moved on?’ He agreed. He said, ‘yes, till death do you part. But you see, I’m still alive.’”

“That’s sweet,” said Sara, wiping a tear away.

“They were married in August 1939,” said Andrew, “one month before Germany invaded Poland and ignited the second world war. There were already rumblings of a war being imminent. As a newly minted professor, Grandpa could have avoided the war if he chose to. But he didn’t feel right sitting it out when others didn’t have the option. When Canada declared war on Germany days after the Poland invasion, Grandpa enlisted and went off to war.

“The book they were reading together at the time was Gone With the Wind. Before he shipped out to basic training, they stayed up late night after night reading aloud to one another. Their last night together, they could have finished it. But Maria stopped at Chapter sixty-three. ‘We’ll save the last chapter for your return,’ she told him. It was her way of keeping him safe. They promised that neither would read the final chapter until they were together again.

“The next morning, she sewed a sheath that fitted over the back cover and final chapter of the book. He carried that big hard-cover book with him for the next six years. He read the first sixty-two chapters again and again until the book was nearly falling apart, but he was never tempted to remove the sheath and read the final chapter.

“He would write letters home from the front full of references to Scarlett and Rhett. Late in the war, his Canadian unit would sometimes get paired with Americans and he would fill his letters with tales told to him by anyone with a southern accent. He told me of one letter where he told Maria that the southern accents were so thick around him that he was no longer sure if that was a piece of France burning in the distance or the Tara plantation.”

“I remember that letter,” said Maria softly to Henry. “You do have a certain flourish.” They smiled at one another and returned to the book. “After all, tomorrow is another day.” She closed the book and carefully set it atop the sheath on the other arm of the chair. “Finished,” she said. “Was it worth waiting for?”

Henry reached out with the hand of a young man and took Maria’s hand in his. “You have always been worth waiting for.”

“Grandpa was demobilized and returned home in early 1946,” said Andrew, “still carrying that book. He had read it countless times, but the sheath was still in place. That final chapter was theirs, not his.”

“Did he really think the need to share the ending with Maria protected him?” asked Sara.

“It was a symbol,” said Andrew. “Grandpa wasn’t religious and didn’t believe in God, but said if there was a higher power, it was the power of love. He felt that power with him every day on the battlefield. He was injured once, shot in the leg. His mate, not two feet away from him, was killed. They had walked into the path of a German machine gun nest. Just before they were hit, Grandpa told me once, his buddy was teasing him about the book. He said Maria was probably at the movie house watching the film version with some handsome young man. It was teasing, he knew. But apparently the God-he-didn’t-believe-in was a vengeful God.”

“So, he comes home, they tear off the sheath and read the final chapter. The end.”

“No.”

“So, he comes home, tears off her bodice, they make wild passionate love for days on end, then tear off the sheath and read the final chapter. The end.” Sara was laughing, Andrew just smiled and shook his head.

“I like her,” whispered Maria to Henry. Henry just smiled and shook his head, an exact copy of Andrew’s movements.

“No,” continued Andrew. “They decided the book was a good luck charm. It had kept him safe through war; it would keep them safe through peace. So, they kept the sheath in place. He had been gone for six long frightful years. They decided to wait another six years before they finished it together.”

“But it didn’t work its charm a second time, did it?” Sara asked.

“No,” Andrew replied. “They settled into a normal married life. He returned to his post at the university. My father was born and a couple of years later my aunt was born. Everything seemed perfect. The country was growing, the economy was booming. Then, one day, just as their six post-war years were coming to a close, Grandpa came up to this room. The kids were asleep. Maria was visiting her mother. He took the book down from the shelf, the sheath still in place. He was waiting for her. He was re-reading the first chapter when the police knocked on the door. There had been an accident. A bus had lost its brakes and hit the taxi Maria was riding home in. She was killed instantly.”

Henry looked at Maria, clutched her hand tightly. “That was the most pain I ever experienced,” he whispered.

“That is awful,” said Sara. “Did he finish reading Gone With the Wind? I mean, the spell or whatever it was that was keeping them safe was obviously over.”

“No,” said Andrew. “He always maintained they would be together again, somewhere, somehow, and that he would finish the book then. So, he always kept the sheath in place. In fact, he would watch the movie version and always stop with about fifteen minutes to go.”

“I watched you walk out of at least three theatres early,” said Maria.

“I know,” said Henry.

“Okay,” said Sara. “That explains why Gone With the Wind is bookmarked at the final chapter, but why all these others? And I just noticed you seem to be putting all the bookmarked ones in the keep box.”

“Guilty as charged,” said Andrew. “I feel like he’s still around and if he is, I can’t get rid of the books he needs.”

“He’s a really good kid,” said Maria. “You’ve done well.”

“He’s as much you as he is me,” said Henry.

“Grandpa read constantly,” said Andrew. “And whenever he read a book that he felt Maria would have loved, he would stop before the final chapter. He would just set it aside saying that he would finish it when they were together again. I think he could feel her sitting with him whenever he read.”

“Let’s find Gone With the Wind,” said Sara as she stood up from the folding ladder and turned back to the bookshelves. “Where did he keep it? It must have had pride of place.”

Andrew stood and stared mutely toward the armchair in the alcove window.

“Babe,” said Sara, turning back toward him. “Where did Grandpa…” She stopped when she saw his face and turned to follow his gaze.

“I was in this room yesterday,” Andrew said. “No books were out. No one else has been in the house.”

They heard a faint noise, like the soft release of air from a chair’s cushion when someone stands from sitting. On the arm of the chair atop a homemade fabric sheath sat a tattered old copy of Gone With the Wind.

Sara turned to Andrew and stepped into his arms. They both had tears in their eyes.