The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (6 page)

Sara said nothing. She hadn't thought of Caroline as being someone who would ever bow to anyone else's expectations. Aside, perhaps, from the expectations she had of herself.

 

 

 

 

Broken Wheel, Iowa

January 14, 2010

Sara Lindqvist

Kornvägen 7, 1 tr

136 38 Haninge

Sweden

Dear Sara,

A bookstore! That must be a very nice place to work. We've never had a bookstore in Broken Wheel, but we did once have a mobile library on a cargo moped. Miss Annie, our schoolteacher, decided to start a school library and take it out to the community every Saturday. There were never many books, and those we did have got in a complete mess on the moped Miss Annie drove. But what adventures! I borrowed
Little Women
from there, I suppose the good Louisa's slightly sanctimonious tone was a good fit, and
Uncle Tom's Cabin
too, which I think must have been a mistake on their part. A lot of people in Broken Wheel had abolitionists in their family, but I don't think they realized just how liberal the values I picked up from Harriet Beecher Stowe were. For some people, there's a hair's breadth between Christianity, Liberalism and Communism. There was a copy of the Bible too, naturally, but I'd already read those stories by that point.

Book lending in town survived until the school itself closed. But the school library hadn't been the same toward the end in any case, when we were given a government grant for buying in prescribed books. There's something uninspiring about school libraries, I think. Class editions of twenty copies of the same book, as though everyone should be reading the same thing, and that special scent of obligation that goes along with it. We've never been a town of readers. We're too practical, I guess. You've got to be something of a dreamer to enjoy books, at least to begin with. But I suppose it's different in slightly bigger towns. There was a library in Hope, but never a bookstore. There's something strange about a town which has three stores selling home furnishings but no bookstore, don't you think? Hope, that is. We don't have a single home furnishing store here, not since Molly's Corner closed, but she only sold porcelain figurines anyway.

A good friend of mine, Caroline Rohde, was just here. She's very nice, but very active in the church. She tells me that we've got a kind of bookstore there, since the Bible Society (Caroline is chair of their division in Broken Wheel) has a room in the parish house. They've got twenty Bibles that you can buy for five dollars each, or take for free if you can prove you don't have one at home.

Excuse my long-windedness. I'm under orders to stay in bed at the moment and I've got much too much time to feel the need to express myself concisely.

There's not so much to say about my own life, but it's kind of you to ask. When I was younger, I was convinced that all old folks had a dramatic life story of their own. I think it's because I grew up in the countryside. All the families around here seem to have their dark secrets, unexplained pregnancies, near-misses with tractors and combine harvesters, or natural disasters. Often of biblical proportions, sometimes literally, like in 1934 and 1935 when we were hit by swarms of grasshoppers. But nowadays, our lives seem so ordinary. I'm much more interested in our youngsters' lives – now
there's
some drama.

There aren't so many young people left in town nowadays, of course, and those that I see as ‘mine' are all grown up by now. My youngsters are those who were young when I was already an adult. Claire, Andy and Tom are all over thirty now. Tom is my nephew, my brother Robert's son. Claire has a daughter who is seventeen, one of those unexplained pregnancies. I don't think it was Tom, I've never believed that, but I've wondered whether it might've been Andy. Though he moved to Denver at around the same time (there were some people who thought that was a bit suspect – sometimes I think his father spread that rumor deliberately, not that it helped him in the long run). Andy came back with a very good friend called Carl, who is very nice despite the fact that he's almost unbearably handsome. There aren't many people I'd forgive for that kind of appearance, but Carl is one of them.

Caroline was wondering whether you had a Bible. I took the liberty of saying I thought you did.

With kind regards,

Amy Harris

IF SARA HAD
known just how much talk she was causing in the town, she would have been surprised. She wasn't interesting. She wasn't exotic. She definitely wasn't pretty.

She would have been the first to admit she was unremarkable. As young as seven, she had been forced to accept that her hair was mousy. There was no escaping it. Not even with the best will in the world could you call it
strawberry blonde
or
chestnut brown
or any of those other colours used to describe the hair of heroines in the books she read. Besides which, she had never had even the slightest sense of style. The nicest thing her mother had ever said about it was that she was, at least, clean and tidy.

In reality, her eyes were her greatest asset. They were big and expressive, when they weren't wide with fear or hidden behind a book.

But Broken Wheel had never had a real tourist before.

The day after Sara's visit to Amazing Grace, she was the main topic of conversation between two of the town's elderly inhabitants. They had gone to the diner for a quick cup of coffee purely so they could find out the latest gossip about the newest addition to town.

‘She definitely came at the right moment,' one of them said. From a distance, it was hard to make her out, sitting there at one end of the counter – partly because her slight frame had shrunk with age and partly because she seemed to be surrounded by a constant cloud of smoke. Despite appearances, smoking in public spaces had been prohibited for years, but while Grace made an exception for herself, Gertrude refrained as a courtesy to Grace. But even when Gertrude wasn't smoking, it never really left her. Gertrude drank, too. Neither that nor her cooking (she was fond of additives and fat, ideally a combination of both) had managed to kill her yet, to the despair of her two husbands. Until the food and the passive smoking had put a stop to them. She had been widowed twice.

‘A funeral,' Gertrude continued. ‘A town's always at its best at a funeral. Always nice when something happens.'

Her friend, May, waved her hand to break up the smoke.

‘And so neat,' she said. ‘Everyone in smart, black clothes. And so much food.'

‘I took my corn casserole,' Gertrude said. ‘With extra bacon, of course.'

Both women looked expectantly at Grace.

Grace leaned forward against the counter. ‘Nice woman,' she said. ‘She came by yesterday, stayed at least an hour. I met her when she'd just arrived, too.'

‘Oh?' said Gertrude, which was about as much encouragement as Grace needed to tell a story.

‘Nice, but probably a bit weird. She was clutching a book when she came in. Hugging it like it was her only defence in the world. I saw her first, so I should know. What in hell is a book meant to be able to protect you from? A good shotgun, on the other hand …' She let her voice trail off knowingly, but both Gertrude and May knew better than to provoke yet another of her anecdotes. ‘Well, I'll say nothing about that,' Grace continued when no response came. ‘Us Graces have had our own obsessions. One of the first Graces was even obsessed with a sheriff. Didn't end well, that one, but anyone could've worked that out. She ended up being chased out of town.'

May made no comment. Instead, she said: ‘But is she going to stay?'

‘Why wouldn't she?' Gertrude asked in an irritated tone, since she herself hadn't thought of any other eventuality.

May had thin white hair, fastened up in a loose bun. She looked like a sweet old grandmother and had done for the past fifty years. She wasn't married – one of nature's cruel whims. It was all fine and well looking like a grandmother if you actually had grandchildren, but it was hardly the right look if you still wanted to go about
getting
some. Ironically enough, May had always been more interested in the men than the children. Children were so unromantic.

‘I think she's going to meet someone,' she said.

‘Meet someone?' Gertrude sounded alarmed.

‘They always do, you know,' May said defensively.

‘They?'

‘Single people arriving in a new town. In stories, I mean. Even the men.'

‘Men,' said Grace. It didn't seem as though she thought the men were worthy of further comment. ‘If she's got even an ounce of sense, she'll be off like a shot. This town isn't worth staying in.'

‘Which town is?' asked Gertrude. ‘We're better than
Europe
, in any case.'

A GAS STOVE.
How, exactly, do you turn on a gas stove? And what happens if you do it wrong?

Sara had never come across a gas stove before. She had lived at home with her parents, where they had a perfectly normal but clearly expensive cooker, a gleaming marvel of black and chrome. And then she had lived alone in her flat in Haninge, which also had a perfectly normal but much older cooker with old-style electric cooking rings and which had, at one point, been white.

She had hovered around the gas stove in Amy's kitchen for a few days now without daring to turn it on. She had a vague notion that doing so would involve matches, and in a fit of bravado she had even managed to find a box of them in a drawer in the kitchen. Then her courage had deserted her.

Sometimes it felt as though the house itself was working against her. Perhaps it was just her guilty conscience over not having paid any rent colouring everything, but she couldn't escape the feeling that most of the rooms had been unhappy long before Amy died. There weren't even any books in the living room, just a black leather sofa which could never have made anyone happy.

She had almost come to the conclusion that it would be best to eat dinner cold again when the phone rang. She froze.

Think, Sara
.

It continued to ring, shrill and insistent.

Whatever she decided to do, it would be painful. A lot of people knew she was staying there, but there must also be others who had no idea. If it was someone who didn't know, it would be fairly awkward if she suddenly answered the phone. And if it was someone who didn't even know that Amy was dead, that would be unbearable.

The ringing stopped.

She regretted not having answered. She was almost entirely certain now that she should have done. Then the phone started ringing again, and she was thrown back into indecision. Eventually, she answered with a ‘Sara', just to avoid having to think about it any more.

A warm, cheerful voice greeted her at the other end. ‘Sara, it's Andy here. We met at the funeral.'

‘Andy!' she said, immediately fearing that she had probably sounded a bit too familiar. She didn't remember him from the funeral, but she knew who he was from Amy's letters.

‘D'you fancy swinging by the Square tonight? Have a drink or two with a few of the guys here in Broken Wheel. Really laid-back. Cold beer, good people.'

She looked at the gas stove. It didn't give her any answers. She ummed and ahhed instead.

New people were terrifying, of course. Though in a way, it was a bit like she already knew them. Plus it would mean getting out of the house.

‘Thanks,' she replied. ‘I'd love to.'

‘Great. We'll pick you up at six. No, no, it's no problem at all,' he added before she had even considered that it might have been.

By five, she was as ready as she would ever be. She had completely forgotten about dinner and spent the time going through her things instead, looking for something which was nice but not too nice, pretty but not too pretty. She was quite pleased with the result. Her grey trousers were sharply creased, making her look almost elegant. Her black V-necked sweater was nipped in slightly at the waist, and showed off her slender build, her clavicle and a hint of cleavage. She had even put on a little mascara and some eyeshadow.

Now she was sitting in the kitchen, straight-backed, trying to keep as still as she could so that she didn't crumple her trousers or smudge the mascara. But underneath she was beside herself at the prospect of meeting Amy's youngsters. Part of her excitement and her racing pulse might actually have been down to nerves, but if that was the case then it was different to the fear she normally felt about meeting people. This time, she suddenly felt as though anything could happen, as though Amy had, in some way, returned through her youngsters. Sara knew them in the same way she knew Lizzy Bennet, Jack Reacher and Euthanasia Bondeson. None of them had ever let her down, and she was convinced that Andy and the others wouldn't either. Her disappointment over Jimmie Coogan Street had vanished into thin air.

When a red pickup pulled up outside, she got quickly to her feet and told herself not to act like an idiot. They don't know you, she reminded herself. To them, you're just a stranger who knows nothing about them, about Amy or the town. The thought made her smile.

The man who stepped out of the car wasn't Andy, she was certain of that. There was something tense and reluctant in his movements which didn't tally at all with the warm voice on the phone, or with the descriptions in Amy's letters.

‘Tom,' he said.

‘Sara,' she replied automatically, blinking at him in confusion. There was a web of fine laughter lines around his eyes, but he wasn't smiling. His eyes were the same deep greyish-green colour as the sea in November, and they were radiating about as much warmth. His body language exuded distance and irritation. She didn't know what she could have done to make him dislike her already, but there was no doubt about it. Dislike her he did.