“But that’s the point. Wouldn’t it be good if the storewas even a little bit busier?” Toby’s grimace suggests that he doesn’t think so. “Isn’t the point of a store to attract customers? This place is off-putting. The first time Iwalked in, Ialmost turned around and walked back out again.”
“Most people do,” says Toby. “Not a bug; it’s a feature.”
“But it’s not sustainable,” says Clemence. “And all these books with nobody to read them—it’s a tragedy.” She turns back to the shop and looks around.
Toby says, “The books are fine. What can we do about it, anyway?”
Clemence says, “Now you sound like my husband.”
“You have a husband?” His voice rising an octave or higher.
Clemence faces him again, eyeing his expression carefully, which is mainly confusion. “Well, my ex,” she says. “It’s not official yet. But it might as well be. I’ve got to get used to saying ‘my ex.’”
“You’ve never mentioned him.” Is it possible he’s bothered by this?
“He’s not very remarkable,” says Clemence. “My ex. Which was kind of the problem. Imean, you might like him.” This is an outright lie. “Alot of people do.” That part is true. “Iwasn’t the right person to appreciate his qualities.” This is one hundred percent an absolute fact. Clemence says, “Ithink you’re not interested in attracting customers because you don’t like the idea of anybody showing up here to bother you.”
“Well, yeah,” says Toby. “Why do you think Iwork here? And now you’ve disturbed the whole equilibrium, andyou want to find a way to bring in more people? Can you imagine this entire building filled up with people like you?”
Clemence says, “If only.” It’s actually her dream. Abuilding filled up with people who are conscientious in their lifestyle choices, value books, and who would purchase ocean-friendly sustainable tinned fish if given the option. “Can you imagine? Each and every one of those people buying and reading books? Bringing you soup?”
“And rearranging the bookshelves.”
“Iam being the change Iwish to see in the world, Toby. You should be proud of me. And if it weren’t for me, Crampton might be makingyoudo all this reorganizing work. Ifeel like you should be grateful.”
“But if it weren’t for you,” says Toby, “there wouldn’t be reorganizing work at all. And I’d be reading my book. And Iwouldn’t have hit my head.”
Clemence is tired of him now. “Well, then read away,” she says, her hand gestures a little too embarrassingly theatrical. “Don’t let me stop you.” Toby really can be a jerk. And why does she even care? It would actually suit his interests to conform to her fantasies, and it’s not her fault if he doesn’t see that. If he insists on remaining the primary character in his own pitiful life, instead of embracing all she has to offer. Which is, well, mainly, a little excitement, something bright to punctuate the days with, to let the sunshine in. Isn’t that what Crampton is paying her for?
She has removed theWomen’s FictionandLiteraturesigns already, yellowed papers dotted with white spotswhere thumbtacks had stuck them up for decades. She is using damp paper towel to wipe down the shelves she’s clearing, dust that’s been accumulating for almost a century. Made up of shed skin cells of so many people who must be dead by now, and she considers whether she ought to be showing more respect, if there ought to be some kind of ceremony. Most of the ceremonies and rituals Clemence knows are superficial, devoid of meaning.Something borrowed, something blue.As though a rhyme makes up for vacuity. When Clemence married Toad, they’d made arrangements for a blue ribbon to be woven into her bouquet, but at the end of the day she’d realized this detail had been forgotten. And, Clemence wonders, is this why the marriage had gone so wrong? How does a person get to know things, the real things, things that connect one to knowledge and wisdom stretching back for centuries?
Clemence feels a hallowedness in the presence of these books, which is what she’d been missing at the church service. And then, almost as though they know what she’d been thinking, had picked up on her vague blasphemy, the church bells start chiming the hour, all twelve of them, signalling that her shift at the bookstore is over.
Rising, Clemence straightens her clothes, and gathers used paper towels for the garbage. Not intending to say another word to Toby, because he’d been rude. Because, evidently, he didn’t even want to talk to her, anyway. But she has to walk past him at the desk, because it’s unavoidable, and when she does, she’s both surprised and not surprised to see that he’s lowered his book already.
“You’re going home now?” he asks, and she nods. “You want me to walk you there?” he offers.
“Why?” she asks. Now she’s the one being rude.
“That time you bought me a snack,” he says. “It’s only polite.”
“Those aren’t terms existing in perpetuity,” she says. “You don’t have to.”
He says, “Iknow,” laying his book down. He follows her out of the store, flipping to theClosedsign, and Clemence doesn’t feel compelled to fill the comfortable silence as they make their way along the sidewalk, around the corner and down her street. He stops at the bottom of her steps, and shrugs. “Here you are,” he says.
But the next part surprises her. She really hadn’t thought he had it in him … and then he goes and blows her mind by kissing her, on the lips, even. Not even a peck. Eyes clenched shut and he’s kind of lurching toward her so there is absolutely no contact between their bodies, so yes, it’s as strange and awkward as all that, but also it really isn’t. And then it’s finished, and before Clemence has even a moment to process what’s happened, Toby is gone. Leaping up the street like some untamed gazelle, arms flailing, running like somebody who’s being chased.
Seventeen
The next week, the piece about Clemence goes up on Jillian’s friend Sarah’s newsletter, and it sets off a furor, which is the way of the internet. Though the piece, at first glance, appears unprovocative. Sarah has written about Clemence ending her marriage, simplifying her life, seeking out that proverbial room of one’s own. But Clemence ends up getting hate mail, and the post goes viral among certain groups on social media taking umbrage with Clemence’s appropriation of spinsterdom. “Trying it on like it’s a costume,” one person accuses her, and they find it rich that Clemence is being posited as an authority on the matter after having been single for just a handful of months. In the post, Sarah has written about spinsterdom’s new vogue, and the readers are angry about that part, too, because, of course, single women have always been here.
The feedback is not all negative. Other readers email Clemence to say her story is empowering, inspiring. Sarah sends a note reminding her that people hate any kind of woman who takes up space, and this is true, though Clemence can see both sides. It’s different, of course—she has acquired her life, her tiny room, her tinned fish, and borrowed cat all by choice. But that women get to make that choice at all, and that a life unencumbered by a husband and family would be the thing they choose—isn’t that significant? Just one more remarkable way of refusing the question of how to be a woman?
Clemence’s room becomes smaller as the seasons turn, her French doors closed against autumn’s chill. Mrs. Yeung turns on the furnace, an intimidating rumble from the bowels of the house, and for two days, everything smells like burning dust. The heat barely reaches Clemence’s perch, which is fine now, but might be a problem in January. The tree outside her window stays green longer than many of the others in the neighbourhood, but soon it will be changing, too. Nothing in Clemence’s new world ever stays still, which is another difference from her life before. The subdivision where she’d lived with Toad was newly built, the trees spindly and barely there, West Coast weather invariable throughout the year. From where she sits now, Clemence realizes that she’s become cut off from all things cyclical during the years of her marriage. She’d had heriudremoved a few weeks ago, her period properly returning after years of being so light, and she welcomed it, because it was one more reminder that she was alive inside a body that had itsown processes, and she was even conscious of this with every exhalation, the magnificent fact of her breath, her blood, her heartbeat.
Clemence feels like she is bursting with vigour, and it could be her diet—eggs, oily fish, and excellent cheese—or maybe it’s Toby. Could it possibly be Toby? Could ever a person such as Toby have the ability to provoke a reaction like this? To turn an ordinary streetscape into a musical theatre production, Clemence feeling as though she’s dancing on her way to the bookstore,floating,even, and it seems as though everybody she encounters—the butcher, the baker, the artisanal beeswax candlestick-maker—is in on it, too?
“Good morning,” calls out Cindy, the librarian, on her way to work for the day, and Clemence salutes her from across the street, barely resisting the urge to pirouette, to click her heels, but they’re clicking in her mind. The sky is blue and the trees are gold and orange, a psychedelic feast for the eyes. Adelivery van drives by and the driver wolf-whistles out the window at her, which Clemence takes as a message from the universe, that she is here, and she is seen, and she’s connected to the world around her, a world moving, unceasingly. All day long those church bells chime hour upon the hour.
