Page 9 of Comfort Read

FOUR

“Maybe I should cancel.” It’s the sixth time Kit’s said it this morning, and for the sixth time, Allison sighs. Every previous time the sigh was followed up by a question, such as, “What are you worried about this time?” or “Do you have any better ideas for getting the bookshop repaired?”

This time, however, he seems to have used up all her patience. In the gaps across the busy Saturday morning thus far, she willingly indulged him as he listed pros and cons, things that might go wrong, reasons to forget the whole idea. She was even interested, at least at first. Kit hadn’t intended to tell her about it, but she’d been in the back office processing returns when Sage came out from behind the shelf, and overheard the whole thing. She’d asked him about it, and Kit’s initial thought was to curse himself for forgetting about the strange path sound takes through vents in the old firehouse.

Tables have apparently turned. This time, she slams both hands down on the counter and says, “That’s it! Enough!”

Because it’s still a busy Saturday morning, several customers whip their heads around and freeze in place, waiting to find out if they are the unwitting wrongdoers. One of them, a teenager, very slowly begins inching the book he’s holding back towards the shelf he got it from. Kit chokes back a laugh.

“Not you,” Allison snaps, waving a dismissive hand, and then, in an undertone, pointing at Kit: “You. That’s enough! Go or do not, I can’t keep listening to this. All I’ll say is: If we lose this bookstore because you can’t bring yourself to go on a few dates with a movie star, sleep with one eye open.”

“Wow,” Kit says, careful to keep his tone mild. Allison’s tongue is generally on the sharp side, but usually it’s in the service of fun. “Duly noted, no more Sage Ballard talk. Unrelatedly and for no reason at all: Are you good?”

“Of course I am,” Allison snaps, and then, grudgingly, when Kit stares her down, “Ugh, fine. I got a text from Jeanette, if you must know.”

“Ew.” This comes out involuntarily; Jeanette is Kit’s least favorite of Allison’s exes, the one from a period of their friendship he privately thinks of as The Dark Ages. Jeanette had been mean and controlling and deeply disapproving of all of Allison’s friends, especially Kit. In the end, she’d left Allison for a man called Roger, whom Kit had very seriously considered sending both a fruit basket and a gift card for a therapist’s office. “What did she want?”

“To tell me she and Roger are getting married,” Allison says, making a face, “and ask if I’ll be one of her bridesmaids.”

“No,” Kit breathes, horrified and amazed by the sheer audacity. “Oh my God, what’s wrong with her? It’s not like the two of you are friends, right? I haven’t missed a really horrible memo?”

“Definitely not friends,” Allison agrees, with an annoyed little nod. “The last messages we exchanged were two years ago, and my final words were, ‘Please stop contacting me. If we must discuss this, we can do so when I see you in hell,’ so. I think that’s a pretty clear message.”

“Maybe she meant to send it to some other, inferior Allison?” Kit suggests.

“Maybe,” Allison says, doubtful. “But my money is on psychological torture.”

She looks so downtrodden that Kit can’t help but take pity on her. It’s her week by rights, but in an act of mercy, he offers, “If you want, I can do the Corner of Knowledge session today? Give you a break?”

He’s rewarded immediately with her most brilliant smile.

The Corner of Knowledge was Kit’s idea, so he has no one to blame but himself.

Well, his college professors—the ones who taught him about educating—probably also bear some of the burden. The school districts he worked for before he bought Sawyer’s, too. In a way, the best teachers he ever had, the ones who inspired him to become a teacher himself, are directly responsible for the Corner of Knowledge, which would be handy if Kit could bring himself to think ill of any of them.

He’d missed teaching when he left it for the bookshop, that was all. He’d wanted something to fill the gap. So he’d put up fliers around the store for Saturday lectures on random interesting topics, designed with kids in mind. He’d made a couple of sock puppets with craft supplies he’d amassed while he was teaching, built a few illustrative models with foam balls and googly eyes, and thrown together a few basic activities. No big deal. He’d figured that at most a couple of kids would come to each session, and that he’d pull a few titles from the shelves at different reading levels on the day’s topic, and maybe once a month or so one of the parents would buy something. The point wasn’t making sales, it was to do something nice for the strange kids who lurked in bookstores, the way he had at that age.

And maybe it was to do something nice for himself, something that felt familiar and comfortable after so much wrenching upheaval. To feel like he was still attached to the old Kit, even if by fraying thread.

He had, however, significantly underestimated the desperation of Cedar Falls’ parents to occupy their children on the weekends. Within a month of the first session, it was a packed house every Saturday, and God help them all if Kit tried to cancel one without weeks of notice. He’d had to beg Allison to pick up one Corner of Knowledge session a month to give himself a little breathing room. She’s good at it and the kids adore her sessions, which are mostly about mythical creatures, costume design, swords, or chemistry. Still, Kit knows it isn’t exactly her favorite thing to do. He always has a few backup ideas waiting in the wings for days she doesn’t have it in herself to face the chaos, like this one.

Putting all thoughts of Sage Ballard firmly to one side, he hurries to the back office and rifles through his Corner of Knowledge filing cabinet. Making a mental note that he’s a bit low on emergency lesson plans, he sighs, accepts his fate, and reaches for the cloud hat he made out of cotton balls one particularly lonesome Saturday night.

Fifteen minutes later, bedecked with a handful of other props and a box full of crayons, markers, and informational coloring pages he drew himself, Kit weaves his way through the customers standing around and chatting, nods to a few people curled up on couches as they stare at him over their books, and makes his way back to the Children’s Corner. He bursts into the room and howls, “Who’s excited to learn about hyperlocal ecosystems?!” in the same tone a wrestler might inquire as to his audience’s readiness to rumble.

Today’s attendees—a collection of children aged roughly five to eleven, nearly all of whom are familiar faces—respond like a wrestling audience, hooting and hollering and stomping their feet. Everyone from Kit’s life who has watched him do one of these has been amazed by the kids’ enthusiasm. Kit’s never totally understood why. Children are, after all, people, if smaller and newer and with a lot more to learn than your average adult. People like to learn, so long as you don’t bore them.

As always, the next two hours are a bright, delightful blur, a glowing escape from what’s otherwise been a strange and disorienting week. Kit hadn’t, in the end, particularly enjoyed being a teacher: So much of it was about interpersonal staff politics, weathering changes made at the arbitrary whims of the school board, being yelled at by parents, and trying to cover the gaps for the students in his own time, or out of his own pocket. It was exhausting, dispiriting, demoralizing work more days than it wasn’t. But teaching, the actual act of imparting knowledge to students—that Kit had loved. He’d loved it enough that he would have soldiered on, borne the politics and changes and covered the gaps, kept doing it until the day they forced him out, if he hadn’t sunk every penny he had into this bookstore. This isn’t the same, but it’s a Band-Aid, at least, over a wound that Kit hopes will stop bleeding eventually.

But today, as Kit talks about remote parts of the world whose unique weather patterns have created almost alien landscapes and wildlife, there’s a shadow over his joy. This will go, too, if the bookstore goes. Rachel, age nine, who told Kit she hated books when they met a year ago and is now an avid reader; Umar, age seven, who can build insanely complicated models with essentially any supplies you give him, but only mastered the pronunciation of the letter R last month. Forget sleeping with one eye open—is Kit really going to let this go? Just because he’s nervous about, as Allison so accurately put it, going on a few dates with a movie star?

About halfway through, Nina, the youngest of the day’s group at five years old, demands, “Why’ve you got a cloud on your head?”

Ezekial, her older brother, grins at Kit from the other side of the room and says, “It’s because of the water cycles.” Six months ago he’d told Kit science confused him so much he would probably fail the third grade. Now he’s jumping ahead of Kit’s lesson plans, and confident enough to look excited, rather than nervous, to receive an answer.

“Right,” Kit says, as much to Ezekial as to himself. Right. He’ll just have to do it, then. It’s the only move he’s got, because closing Sawyer’s isn’t an option.

When the kids have gone, he texts Sage and confirms: coffee bright and early Monday morning.