Altar
When Pardon the Interruption replays on ESPN her husband snores. She
doesn’t watch much television, but she always keeps the noise on in the
background for him in case he wakes up. Spurred by the thoughts of her creative
writing teacher, June had gone to the library with her daughter earlier and
borrowed some audibooks on CD. Now she
could listen to the classics instead of ESPN. She takes the CD and presses play. Some
milky-voiced narrator reads while a jazzy tune, probably named something like
“Sax in the Night” whines in the background. June had always wanted to read the
classics. As it was, she loved curling up with her half-collection of Franklin
Library books. They were leather-bound and puffy, lined with impressive 24
karat gold-leafed pages. Each book had its own silk placeholder sewn into the
top binding and sent shivers up her spine when she folded the bookmarks over
and rubbed them as she read. When she
opened them and inhaled deeply, the books smelled 47 - no - 67 years old. She loved the idea of reading
them but never had any time. She just carted them around everywhere. She had
taken them when her father died, and no one had objected. They knew she loved
those books more than the rest of the family combined. She also took the best
bookshelf in the whole wide world. Made of cherry wood, it stood about nine
feet. When she was a little girl full of daydreams she would stand in front of
it and stretch her arms way out. That was how wide it was, and the only way she
had ever measured it. It was a simple design. Simple and good. Square, nothing
fancy. You can’t find good old-fashioned, hand-crafted, American-made
bookshelves anymore. Nowadays it’s all Ikea and Ashley’s Furniture. She thought
to herself “particle board had destroyed America.”
The
bookshelf had a cupboard on the left that opened up like a refrigerator, and
was about 2 shelves high. When she opened it there were mysteries of years
placed slightly out of reach - old 35mm
film, loose rolls of undeveloped film that had expired, and projector slides.
Rectangular boxes of slides with the words “Kodak” in yellow sprayed all about.
They were mostly of her, when she was a little girl, making mud pies most
likely. Old-fashioned flashbulbs and light detectors that were alien and fascinating
in her palms peppered the slide boxes. And
games. The old role-playing board games with tons of tiny multi-colored squares
of paper, each of which stood for something - probably different types of
potions and weapons. One box was royal blue and had a picture of a barbarian on
the front holding a club. Another one in a plastic case had something to do
with vampires. 221B Baker Street was her favorite. It was a Sherlock Homes who-dunnit
game.
Then there was the hutch. It was
right above the cupboard and folded outwards and down to form a shelf just
perfect enough to pour a drink on. For as many years as she could remember
there was always a bottle of undrunk Brandy in that hutch. It just had to be
there, she guessed. Some things just have to be where they are. The magnets that held the hutch closed were
very strong, even after all these years,
and it always took her two tries to open it. Above and to the side of
the hutch were the main shelves, the dividers spaced-out just oddly enough to
be perfect. That is where the collections lived. The Classics, of course. Half of them.
Also books on the best museums in the world. Books about fairies, wizards,
knights and dragons. Among the collections lived artifacts, like her favorite
lead dragon that stood magnificently tiny on the shelf like a powerful chess
piece. It usually hung out right next to the generic, apple-green colored leaf-shaped
bowl that had a matching lid (which usually covered fragments of old cigars and
roaches from smoked joints). When June was in Junior High she discovered she
had become quite popular for letting the other boys from the neighborhood come
to her house and plunder its contents.
There was a ballerina too who stood
about a foot tall. She was a bronze figurine who sat upon a wooden chest, hunched
over, always looking down at her shoes, ribbons untied. She was beautiful and
mysterious and despondent. June had
always wanted to ask the ballerina what was wrong and give her a hug. Also, she
had always wondered why the ballerina belonged to her father – did he trap her there? Why oh why didn’t June ever ask him? She recalled her first year in the “gifted
magnet” program when the class had read The
Indian in the Cupboard. After the class had finished they were given an
assignment to write a short story. The assignment was to pick something from
home, a plastic doll or other such toy, and make it come to life like the
Indian in the cupboard did. June can’t remember what the story was about but
she remembers taking the assignment very seriously. And Mrs. Solomon had
noticed, telling her mother she had a talented writer in the family. And Mrs.
Solomon did not hand out compliments easily. In fact, she didn’t think that
Mrs. Solomon cared much for her at all, which made the compliment all the more
meaningful. It was the first time she
had really felt talented at anything except being pretty, which wasn’t really a
talent at all. And so she wrote. But, she had treated this love just like
everything else she had ever loved, finding fault with it however she could and
eventually destroying it.
Despite herself, and in her newest
surge of self-fulfillment, June has
returned to this love and she can’t keep the stories straight now. The one
about a sitcom. The racing horse. Eggplant parmesan. Fencing crabs. Stories
swirl around her as she desperately tries to pin them down. She writes.
June forgot all about the CD
playing in the background. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “This side of Paradise.” It was published in 1920 and was, according to
the back cover, “considered daring an intellectual in its day.” This was no
doubt the line that prompted her to take the story home in the first place. She
had also picked up Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” She restarts the
audiobook from Chapter One. She thinks
about the family who is lucky enough to have that bookcase now, the ones who
probably paid 100 bucks for her storage unit when she couldn’t afford that
month’s rent and lost her bookcase forever. She hopes it has a good home and
wonders if it still has some magic left in it. Maybe, somewhere, it is
enchanting another little girl. Or maybe it has been long forgotten, covered by
the heap of some garbage dump to decay painfully over time.
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