I give him a taut smile and dip my head in a quiet thank-you. As if the universe delivered these just for me.
My hands skim their wearied spines, a few hardcovers among them, dancing past titles likeIn Cold BloodandFear of Flying. I take a moment to pause and admire an impeccable copy ofMaster of the Gameby Sidney Sheldon, which isn’t exactly an upbeat book, but somehow still feels too light for the occasion. It needn’t be maudlin, of course, my final read. But it should have suitable gravitas. It should have some heft.
And then I see it. A gently faded but otherwise stand-up copy of Sylvia Plath’sThe Bell Jar—a novel about a young woman coming quietly apart at the seams. It’s a hardcover with the jacket still preserved, featuring that fuzzy black-and-white image of a hand and a rose with the beautifully dated font in one corner. My fingers close over it, the memory drifting back to me of reading in the kitchen at Solidago, sitting in the sunlight beneath the window, hands sticky with peanut butter and the room smelling of rising dough. I was safe there. My grandfather would never deign to sully himself with women’s work, and Nina, our housekeeper, kept a tight watch on everything that happened in the kitchen. IreadThe Bell Jarthe summer before I turned sixteen, before my breasts came in and my grandfather’s eyes began to follow me like a roving dog. My mother so rarely let me leave the estate, but Nina would bring me books from the library in Bandon where she sometimes stayed with her daughter, Mira, and two young grandsons. I read it on long afternoons beneath the spiky reaches of the coastal Douglas firs and the feathering habit of the Pacific dogwoods on our property, savoring every word, fancying myself a writer, too, someday. Until the new gardener found it and took the book to my grandfather, who deemed it distasteful and threw it into the fire. Everything at the estate had to first go through my grandfather, who kept the property suspended in a museum-like condition, just as it had been when my grandmother Aurelia was alive.
The recollection sends a shiver of dread up my spine. The graceful columns of Solidago—its white wings outstretched like waiting arms, a field of goldenrods between them—are always a whisper at my back. I clampThe Bell Jarto my chest and swallow down the bile.He’s not here,I remind myself.He can’t hurt you. None of them can.But my grandfather has been the shadow cast over me since the day I was born, even after the fire took his life and my mother’s. Behind him, my grandmother’s spirit rising like the sun, a memory so bright it burns everything it touches.
I sigh and contemplate slipping the book into my bag, breezing out of the store before the attractive shopkeeper notices. It’s the first real urge to shoplift I’ve felt in years, and it arrives like an unannounced friend, both nostalgic and startling at once. Even as a memory, Solidago has a way of bringing out the worst in me. Stealing was a way of life for me at the estate and, later, in the foster care system. The only chance I had at claiming anything asmine. A small scrap of agency in a sea of loss. I tried to leave it behind after getting busted in a Fred Meyer left me with a class A misdemeanor and possession charges for the marijuana they found when they searched me, settling later in Seattle where, despite my best efforts, I had another encounter with a Target security guard. He was kind and let me wriggle out of a public arrest,but after that, I worked hard to repress it (minus a few exceptions). It was never about the item. Possession was the only power left to me.
I loosen my grip on the book, and something slips out, falling to my feet. Looking down, I see a square, black envelope. I stoop to pick it up, turning the thick card stock over in my hand. The shock is enough to cause me to drop it again, a bewildered gasp sliding from my lips. There, in golden script, is mytruename—Judeth Cole.
“You okay?” I hear the good-looking man ask from the box he’s sorting near the register.
Carefully, I lean out from behind the shelf and flash him an embarrassed smile.
“Paper cut?” he asks cheerily. “Those old dust jackets can be sharp as sheet metal. I’ve got a bandage around here somewhere.”
“I’m fine,” I reassure him. “Just a silverfish. Startled me.”
He looks convinced, and I duck back behind the shelf, quickly scooping the envelope up with a shaking hand. My fingers are trembling so much, I can barely tear it open. When I do, a matte black note card waits inside. An invitation.
Judeth Cole:
You are hereby cordially invited
to attend a reception
on your behalf
beneath the Ravenna Park Bridge
September the eighth
at midnight.
Attire—black.
Come if you dare.
Learn what waits in the deep.
Don’t be late.
A scrolling flourish has been drawn at the bottom, like an ampersand and its reflection, tied together with too many loops. I can’t make out where it begins and ends. It rolls into itself like a snake eating its tail, an unbroken continuum. The shape feels familiar, though I’m certain I’ve never seen it before.
September the eighth, at midnight—that’s tonight. Shaken, I slide the card into the envelope and put both in my bag, then slowly approach the register.
“‘At twenty I tried to die and get back, back, back to you,’” the man recites.
“What?” I stumble as I’m nearly there, raw and exposed.
“It’s from ‘Daddy,’ by Sylvia Plath. Are you a fan of her poetry?” he asks, holding out a hand for the book.
“Oh.” My shoulders relax. “No,” I answer a little too curtly. I don’t know how to explain my limited exposure to the outside world growing up. The understanding that I can never catch up to normal; I can never get those years back. “I mean, I’ve only read this book before.”
“Well,The Bell Jaris a classic.” He smiles with his lips closed, and I realize his hand is still waiting for me to deposit the book in it.
“Sorry, there’s no price,” I tell him.
