A Novel Death (16 page)

Why did I love this book that had misled me about life? Why could I still recite my favorite paragraphs by heart? Go figure.

I finished reading a little before ten, closed my eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

By morning both Raj and Miss T had found body crevices and settled in. When I slitted my eyes open, I saw that the red and white cardboard box was shamefully overturned, like an empty wine bottle, on the floor. Next to the box was a chicken bone picked clean. I could not remember leaving much chicken the night before except for the skin, but undoubtedly both cats must have enjoyed that.

Sleeping in the wing chair, crashing in the den. I consoled myself with what my friend Gail had told her kids: "When I'm old, if I stand in front of the refrigerator eating ice cream out of the carton, or if I sleep in my clothes on the living room couch, just remember-I've been doing it all my life!"

Slowly I began to orient myself. It was time to mail books, and then see Margaret.

The Port Lewis Post Office, although dating back to the 1930s, is not particularly picturesque. There are no WPA murals or old oak counters. You enter through a vestibule lined with ornate brass mailboxes with tiny windows, and go into an office with a vinyl counter that was updated in the 1980s. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time here mailing books and chatting with the clerks.

As I stepped inside, I wondered what it would be like to have a post office box here. The smaller boxes had combination locks, something I was not particularly good at, but the larger ones looked like they had keyholes set in their elaborate brass designs.

Brass keyholes. As my son, Jason, would say, Earth to Mom, calling Earth to Mom.

No wonder Margaret had assumed I would know where the key belonged. She had written the box number in the return address.

It meant having to drive home again, but I knew the empty carton was still beside the wing chair. I raced to my house, left the engine in the van running, and was back at the post office in ten minutes.

Although mail had begun crowding in, I could see a small package in box 738. I turned the key and removed everything, discarding advertising circulars and catalogs. I put the rest of the mail back and dropped the unaddressed package into my woven bag.

My van was parked in front of the post office in a 15-minute zone, so I drove to Shore Road where I could sit by the water. The only homes there were set far back from the road, overlooking the Sound. I doubted that anyone would notice me.

I parked by a strip of low dunes and sand, turned off the engine, and opened the windows so I could smell the salt water. On a morning like this, you could see Connecticut clearly, although it was over an hour away by ferry. I decided that I was looking at Westport.

I reached into the envelope and pulled out a bubble-wrapped package. Through the plastic I could make out a small, pale green book with vertical stripes and a title in darker green. It was a thin book, light and comfortable in my hand. But when I unwrapped it and looked at the title I almost laughed: The Story of Little Black Sambo. My favorite childhood book.

Could this be Margaret's great discovery? You're no Emily Dickinson, I told the little volume. You're just a kids' book that everyone already knows about.

I pried the cover open gingerly, as if the contents might fall out. But they didn't. If any book could be called pristine, this one could. I would defend it as "Fine" to the severest critic. The corners were not even bumped and the binding was tight. I checked further. The book had been published in London in 1899 by Grant Richards.

So. At least a first edition?

I took in the book slowly, not allowing myself to look at the illustrations yet. As a child I had been giddy with excitement when the tigers chased each other so rapidly that they turned into butter. But I had also loved Sambo's green umbrella and purple shoes and his mother who made him as many pancakes as he could eat.

Finally I chose a page at random as if it would have a personal message for me. Patsy and I had done that with the Bible when we were thirteen, opening it blindly and jabbing a finger on a verse to tell our fortune, laughing hysterically when it was either uncannily accurate or wildly off-target. When had we stopped being friends and become rivals? Was it when we went off to different colleges? When I suddenly got married and became a mother when she was still immersed in pre-law at Barnard? I never realized how much difference it would make.

After opening the book I looked down, and then jerked back. Instead of the smooth-haired, brown-skinned child of India that I had been expecting, Sambo, with his thick mouth and prickly curly hair, was the worst kind of stereotype. Choosing another page, I found Black Mumbo flipping pancakes, the sure forerunner of Aunt Jemima.

What did it mean? These illustrations were close to caricature! Was this book some kind of joke, a cruel parody of the innocuous original? Or was memory playing me false? I went back to the front and looked at the opening pages, and then caught my breath. On a blank front leaf, across from an illustration of Sambo taking a bow, and so faint that you could almost miss it, was an inscription: To JRK, One who has felt the tiger's pounce, Helen.

A signed book, a detail that sent its value skyrocketing. This was no parody. I closed the book and pressed it between my palms. I had no idea who JRK was, but Helen was certainly Helen Bannerman. The browned ink had started out boldly, and then faded as she finished writing, but the inscription felt authentic. Having handled thousands of books, I could tell the difference between a facsimile edition, a Shackman reprint, and the real thing.

Talk to me, I whispered, closing my eyes. Tell me your story.

The book did not yield up its early history, did not tell me where it had spent the last hundred years, but it confided that Margaret had been fearful of someone stealing it from her. She had not even thought it would be safe in her house. But why hadn't she told me about it when we were having coffee and I brought up the mysterious seller? She must have bought it from him. But then something happened. Perhaps he had called her, threatening her and demanding the book back.

Something else was puzzling. This was certainly a first edition, inscribed by its author. So why would Margaret have contacted Marty for further information? Did she think it would help her discover who JRK was and how the book had traveled across several oceans to arrive here?

I rested my head against the back of the seat and watched a gull swoop down to the sand. How, in the mildewed, abandoned house I had been imagining, had this book remained so perfect? It must have been stolen from a collection. And if there was one stolen book, there had to be others. Perhaps it was one of the others that Margaret had been trying to research. Marty had said it was American, which this one wasn't, though he had told Roger it had "black interest"-which this one did.

I didn't like my next thought: that Margaret would buy stolen books and not tell me about them for that reason. I didn't believe it anyway. Margaret was a proper bookseller with a code of ethics even more stringent than mine.

In any case, my only responsibility now was to keep this book safe from harm.

But safe from who? Who was keeping Margaret's other books safe? As long as no one knew I had Little Black Sambo, it could stay in the barn. But what about fire? Then I remembered Colin's safe in the basement. Irreplaceable family pictures were stored inside, but he had actually bought it for his volumes of poetry. Wanting to make sure that Bluer Mountains, Voices We Don't Want to Hear and Earthworks would survive him, he had researched safes and bought the finest, the one reputed to withstand the Devil's own flames. We never kept it locked-presumably no one would want to steal his poems or my New England ancestors-and I didn't even know the combination. But since no one knew that I had Sambo, fire was all I had to fear.

Yet I did not immediately drive home. Instead I opened the book again carefully and read it all the way through. There were about twenty-five illustrations that looked like hand-colored woodcuts, all charming, all stereotypes. Little Black Sambo lived with his parents, Black Mumbo and Black Jumbo. She was a loving mother and made him a red jacket, blue pants, and purple shoes. Dad gave him a green umbrella.

Dressed in his new clothes, Sambo went for a walk in the jungle where he encountered a series of tigers who threatened to eat him. Each time, he offered one a piece of his finery in exchange for his life. But as he sat weeping when his treasures were all gone, he heard a terrible growling and crept over to see what it was. The tigers, who had been arguing about which one was now the grandest in the jungle, had put aside their new accessories, gotten hold of each other by the tail, and started racing around a palm tree. They raced so fast that they eventually turned into butter.

Sambo retrieved his outfit, his father scooped up the tiger butter, and his mother made pancakes to celebrate. The little family ate a total of-I did the math-251 pancakes.

On the inside end page I discovered something else. A pale red stamp stated that it was an "Author's Copy" There had probably been only a handful, making the book even more valuable.

I pressed the book against my ribcage. Despite everything, I still loved the story. It spoke of familial love, plenty to eat, and a logical magic. There was the appeal of a frightening object turned into something benign. For little children, the thought of turning four mean tigers into something as harmless as butter was thrilling.

And who wouldn't want a beaming Mama who made you all the pancakes that you could eat?

I thought of the inscription again: To one who has.felt the tiger's pounce-someone who has felt it, perhaps been scarred by it, but survived. Maybe, if Helen Bannerman were living in India, she might not have wanted to set her book there. By choosing African characters, she would not be giving offense. Why would she think that her tiny book would ever wash up on distant shores anyway?

Or maybe I was just making excuses for her.

Checking my watch, I saw that it was nearly ten. Time to see Margaret!

This time the pink-smocked volunteer at the desk downstairs gave me a pass for Margaret's room. I felt as anxious as someone meeting a friend after a long separation. When I joined a cluster of other visitors at the elevator, I saw, dismayed, that I was the only one who was empty-handed. The people around me were holding paper cones of flowers, gift bags, and magazines. Next time, I promised myself.

My next jolt came when I found that Margaret was not in a private room. Blame too many old movies, but I had expected to find her motionless in an all-white chamber, worried faces hovering over her like Raphael's angels; the whole hospital waiting for her to reclaim her life; classical music playing softly in the background in an effort to tempt her senses into waking and remembering.

But there were two names outside the door, Cassidy and Weller.

Margaret's roommate was in the bed closer to the door. She was plump, black-haired, and grimly jovial, flanked by what could only be her son and two teenage grandsons. They had identical pudgy faces and shiny blue-black hair, as if the woman in the bed had just cloned them.

I murmured hello, and moved toward the bed next to the window.

"You here for Margaret?" the son asked.

His knowing her name gave me hope. "Yes! How is she?"

"Still pretty out of it. They brought her in yesterday afternoon." He didn't seem to realize that she had been moved there from the ICU. "She must be important though."

I gave him a blank look.

"All those cops guarding her?"

"What cops?"

"They're probably using the remote camera now. But they've been in and out. Two guys came and tried to ask her questions last night."

"Really? What kind of questions?"

"They pulled that green curtain around the bed. I couldn't hear anything," he confessed.

"But he tried hard!" the woman in the bed called out, and they all laughed.

I moved quickly to Margaret. Against the white sheets, her face looked warm and healthy again. Her hair, loose around her face instead of pulled back, made her look younger, more like the girl in the painting in her bedroom. I wondered about her brief marriage and why she had never married again.

With her full lips parted, she looked peacefully asleep. Only the vinyl tubes doing her body's work told me that this was more than a nap. With a jolt, I thought about the prospect of brain damage; why had it not occurred to me before?

Moving aside a cart on wheels, I leaned in close. "Margaret? It's Delhi. I've been trying to see you for days, but they wouldn't let me."

"She can't hear you," the son advised.

I spun around, annoyed. "You don't know that. Why do you think they talk to people in comas and play their favorite music?"

His mouth drooped a little; to make amends, I said, "Look, her legs are moving!"

He gestured toward the end of her bed. "Look."

Tentatively I lifted the lower covers and saw that Margaret's calves were covered in furry gray legwarmers with bright orange trim. As I watched, first one and then the other inflated, squeezing her leg like a blood pressure sleeve.