The Bookman's Tale (19 page)

“I
t’s a panic attack,” said Francis Leland.

“It’s social anxiety disorder,” said Hank Christiansen.

“Don’t you think it’s normal that I should be nervous about meeting my girlfriend’s parents?” said Peter. The three men sat in Francis’s office drinking coffee and flipping through book catalogs as they talked.

“Yeah, but, Peter,” said Hank, “you don’t just get nervous about meeting girls and their parents like normal people. You get nervous about meeting anyone. I’ve seen you cross the quad to avoid passing a stranger on the sidewalk.”

“How do you know I do that?” said Peter, who thought he did a good job of hiding his anxiety. He felt almost violated that Hank should so accurately know what he was feeling.

“Because I do exactly the same thing,” said Hank, laying a hand on Peter’s shoulder.

“Impossible,” said Peter. “I’ve seen the way you greet strangers in the conservation lab; hell, I remember the way you treated me when we first met. No way were you nervous.”

“Yeah,” said Hank, “in the conservation lab. Ever see me talk to a stranger anywhere else? Ever see me out in a restaurant or a bar?” Peter had never actually seen Hank anywhere outside the library.

“So you have . . .” Peter could not think of how to end his sentence. He simply couldn’t wrap his mind around the possibility that other people reacted to the world in the same fearful way that he did. He had always assumed it was a unique, if unpleasant, facet of his personality.

“I have a social anxiety disorder,” said Hank. “And I also have a good doctor and some excellent drugs, so if I actually want to go to a restaurant, or the theater, or on a date, I can do it.”

“You should see Dr. Strayer, Peter,” said Francis.

“It sounds like yours isn’t as bad as mine,” said Hank. “I mean, you said when you’re out with Amanda you usually feel okay.”

“She’s his natural drug,” said Francis, smiling, and he and Hank broke into laughter.

—

T
wo days later, Peter emerged from his first appointment with Dr. Strayer with a prescription for antianxiety medication and a completely new worldview. Irrational anxiety was not unique to Peter Byerly. This discovery both excited and frightened him. What he had thought of as his personality was now suddenly a treatable disorder. His concern that his identity would somehow be lost when he took the drugs was not strong enough, however, to keep him from swallowing the first of the tiny white pills an hour before Amanda picked him up to go to her parents’ house that Saturday.

The medication did not keep him from being nervous as Amanda drove up the long, winding drive to the white-columned portico of the Ridgefields’ quintessentially southern mansion, but it did keep him from feeling sick. On the wide steps leading to the front door stood Sarah Ridgefield and her husband, the former Charles Middleton. Sarah bore a striking resemblance to her mother, Amanda Devereaux. Her face combined feminine beauty with masculine strength, and although her husband was tall and broad enough to have played football in college—Peter later discovered he had been a linebacker for Ridgefield—it was Sarah who was clearly in charge. When Amanda and Peter got out of the car, Mr. Ridgefield stepped forward to hug his daughter, but it was Amanda’s mother who thrust her hand in Peter’s direction and said crisply, “Peter Byerly, we meet at last.” Her grip was firm, and Peter returned the pressure and met the gaze of her green eyes. He was stunned to find that he felt perfectly at ease as they shook hands. No drug could do that, he thought. There was something in Sarah Ridgefield’s eyes that Peter had seen before only in the eyes of her daughter.

“You look so like your mother,” said Peter. “I’m a big fan.”

“I gather you’re also a fan of my daughter,” said Sarah, dropping Peter’s hand and brushing a bit of lint from his shoulder.

“More than a fan,” said Peter.

“Mother, are you frightening Peter already?” said Amanda, turning to embrace Sarah.

“On the contrary,” said Sarah. “As Peter here is a devotee of Amanda Ridgefield and Amanda Devereaux, I was hoping he might find something to admire in the middle generation.”

“I’m sure I shall,” said Peter, as Sarah Ridgefield winked at him over her daughter’s shoulder. And Peter had a sudden flash, as Sarah took him into her confidence, that here was the mother he had never had. He felt a swelling of love toward Sarah that he had never felt toward his own mother. Was it possible, he thought as they walked up the steps and into the house, that this was meant to be his family all along? And was this warmth inside, this feeling both protected and protective, how it felt to have a real mother?

Dinner was lovely. Peter had half expected liveried servants and silver platters, but they ate fried chicken off plastic plates on the back deck, overlooking a sloping garden that led to a small pond backed by a copse of trees that still retained a tinge of fall color on their branches.

“Won’t be able to eat out here much longer,” said Charlie, “and we do love the fresh air.”

Peter spent the evening plying Sarah for stories about her mother—though it didn’t take much encouragement to get Sarah to hold forth on the topic of Amanda Devereaux. At one point in the evening Amanda took her mother’s hand and said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarah. “I guess because you never asked.” She told Peter about the time when she was a girl and her mother took her to Sotheby’s in New York to bid on a Shakespeare First Folio. “I was so nervous,” she said. “I thought if I moved a muscle the auctioneer would think I was making a bid, so I sat on my hands and stayed perfectly still. The folio was the last item in the sale, so I must have sat like that for two hours. Mother thought she was giving me this great treat, and I ended up with sore muscles for the next week because I had been so tense.”

“And did she buy the book?” asked Amanda.

“She did,” said Peter. “I was reading
Lear
from it just the other day.”

“Were you?” said Sarah with delight. “How marvelous.”

—

T
he next week, Peter and Amanda lay on the floor of the Devereaux Room after their usual Saturday night lovemaking. For the first time ever it had seemed just that to Peter—usual. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed himself, but the act hadn’t connected him to Amanda as it had before. She had seemed passive and eager to get things over with. Now she lay on her back, her fingers lightly entwined in his, staring at the ceiling.

“Is something wrong?” asked Peter at last.

“I’m sorry,” said Amanda.

“Don’t be sorry, just tell me what’s the matter.”

“It’s stupid.”

Peter lifted himself up on one elbow so he could look Amanda in the face. “I’m sure it’s not stupid,” he said.

“I think I’m jealous,” said Amanda.

“Jealous?”

“I spent my whole life trying to find a way to be close to my mother,” said Amanda. “I mean, she was this glamorous society lady always going off to charity balls in Atlanta and New York, and I was trying so hard to just be normal. She didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand her.” Amanda fell silent for a moment and Peter looked at her quizzically. “And then,” she said, pulling her arm away from him, “you waltz in and the two of you are best buddies in five minutes.”

“I thought you wanted us to get along,” said Peter.

“I did,” said Amanda. “But I guess I didn’t want it to be so easy when for me it’s been so hard.”

“Hard?” Peter said harshly, sitting up and pulling away from Amanda. “Having a relationship with your mom is hard? You do know that I’ve spoken about three sentences to my mother in the past year, right? Not that she was sober enough to understand any of them.” He felt an unexpected surge of anger toward this spoiled little rich girl complaining that she had a hard time getting along with Mommy—and Mommy was the lovely Sarah Ridgefield, not some sad drunk.

“I know, Peter,” said Amanda, as she lay a hand on his back. He turned back to look at her, and as quickly as the anger had come it melted away and he pulled her into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “And I’m sorry things have been hard with your mother.”

“Peter, you don’t have to be sorry because of my insecurity. I’ll get over it. And I do love you—God, I love you so much.” A tear crept down her cheek as she grasped his hand again, this time gripping it with all her strength. “But sometimes you’re just going to have to let me hurt.”

Peter enfolded her in his arms and she cried against his shoulder for what seemed like hours, and then they made love again and it was beautiful. It was also different, since Peter now saw that Amanda, like him, was not perfect. He had not realized the extent to which he had idealized her, and while making love to an ideal woman was fantastic, making love to a real woman was even better.

—

O
ver the next few months, Peter made every effort to bring Sarah Ridgefield and her daughter together. He gave Amanda extended tours of the treasures of the Devereaux collection, taught her about rare books, and included her in the many conversations he had with Sarah about Amanda Devereaux. Peter also became friends with Amanda’s father. Though they shared few interests—Charlie was a banker and a golfer—the two developed a backslapping relationship primarily based on drinking imported beer and discussing sports scores. Peter had never followed sports before but found that he liked basketball.

Peter spent most of his Christmas vacation at the Ridgefield house—he had invented a fiction about his parents going to visit his mother’s sick sister to explain why he didn’t return home for the holidays. He slept in a guest bedroom far from Amanda’s room, but not so far that she didn’t creep into his bed on several occasions.

On Christmas morning Sarah served eggs Benedict and they sat down to breakfast next to the ten-foot tree that Peter had helped decorate.

“I’ll bet you miss being with your family on Christmas,” said Sarah to Peter, and he was at a loss for words. How could he say that no, he didn’t miss them, that Christmas at his house—with rarely a tree, few presents, no love—was the most depressing day of the year? How could he explain that, as far as he was concerned, he
was
with his family? And so, finally, he said the only thing he could think of to say.

“Yeah, I sure do miss them. I’ll call them later and see how their Christmas was.”

“Have some more bacon,” said Charlie, and, burning with guilt, Peter heaped another serving on his plate.

On New Year’s morning Amanda snuggled in bed with Peter and asked when she was going to meet his family. He tried to imagine Amanda Ridgefield sitting down for dinner in the tiny kitchen of his dilapidated clapboard childhood home. Of course he knew she could carry that off with aplomb—the problem was his parents would be there, too.

—

I
n early February, Peter walked into the Devereaux Room to find Francis Leland and Hank Christensen huddled over a newspaper.

“Have you heard?” said Hank. “They arrested Mark Hofmann.”

“The guy who found the ‘Oath of a Freeman’?” said Peter.

“Forged it, is more likely,” said Francis.

“He’s been arrested for murder and fraud,” said Hank.

“Looks like a lot of the documents he sold were fakes,” said Francis. “The guy was a brilliant forger. But apparently some of his customers were suspicious about a big deal that he claimed to be putting together, so he delivered pipe bombs to them.”

Peter was stunned. Hofmann’s discovery of the “Oath” had been proof to him that Holy Grails were still out there waiting to be found. Its revelation as a fake would threaten Peter’s dream of one day finding his own grail.

“I’ll bet you never thought the book world was so dangerous,” said Hank with a sardonic smile.

“Well,” said Francis, “forgery is telling lies. And no matter how good a liar you are, if you tell enough of them, you can dig yourself a hole so deep that the only way out seems to be murder.”

—

T
hat night Peter and Amanda had dinner at the Ridgefields’. Struck by what Francis had said, and after fidgeting with his napkin under the table for the entire meal, Peter lay his hand on Sarah’s arm and said, “I have a confession to make; I haven’t been completely honest about my parents.” And it all poured out—the drunkenness and the neglect and the lies that Peter had invented so he could be with Charlie and Sarah and Amanda for Christmas.

“Because, honestly,” said Peter, as he felt tears in his eyes, “you are my family.” And the Ridgefields did exactly what parents are supposed to do. Sarah hugged him and told him everything would be okay and that he could talk to her about anything anytime, and Charlie slapped him on the back and said, “Let’s go watch the Duke game.”

—

I
n the months following Mark Hofmann’s arrest for murder in Salt Lake City, details of his activities as a forger began to trickle out. Any document sold by Hofmann became suspect, including items that had altered the early history of the Mormon Church. Despite the bald-faced deception and the grisly murders, Peter couldn’t help but admire Hofmann’s artistry. He had fooled everyone, even the most experienced document experts in the country.