The Reading Lessons (21 page)

Hadley was so fed-up with Lucinda telling him to hold his horses, he could have swallowed a horn toad backwards. “What the hell is
stamina?”
he asked. He’d read the word somewhere before, but he didn’t know what it was. He suspected it was something hard and uncomfortable to do. 

“Stamina means you got endurance.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Good ‘ole enduring Hadley. I do nothing but hold my horses for you.”

Lucinda squeezed his leg. “Enduring as you are, dear, I’m not in love with you. I love Dickie. I would like for you to take me to bed again real soon, but you mustn’t get any fancy ideas about that. Lust and love are not the same thing.”

“I must be crazy,” Hadley said, cradling his head in his hands. “How can I love a woman who sleeps with her servants behind her true love’s back?”

“Servant,” Lucinda corrected, as if that mattered one diddly bit. “Oh! That reminds me. I’ve got something for you.” She reached into her pocketbook. “Here,” she said. “Merry Phoetus, darling.” 

Hadley had forgotten all about Phoetus Day. “I don’t want anything from you that can be wrapped up in a frilly box, Lucinda.”

“Just open it, will you?”

Hadley peeled off the paper in angry strips. It was a Tiffany shoehorn with his initials on the handle. “I didn’t get you anything,” he grunted.

“Not yet you didn’t, but I know exactly what I want. Now if we hurry, we’ll have a whole half hour before I have to get to my
Upright Citizens for Moral Decency
meeting. Daddy has left for Aunt Arabelle’s house so we can lock the door and get cozy right here. Let’s not waste time arguing.”

“No,” Hadley said. To keep strong, he fixed his eyes on that old mounted buck over the telephone table, a prize that brought life-long unhappiness to a father and son despite the fact that they both men got to share it. If you squinted, you could still make out the seam of glue that ringed the right antler. “I’m gonna need the afternoon off,” he said, and he stood up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

Hadley opened the door. “I have to get out of here.”

Her voice followed him from room to room as he made his way through the house. “I’ll fire you, Hadley Crump. If you don’t stop where you are this instant, I swear to Christ, I’ll fire you!”

Hadley didn’t stop. He had no idea where he was going. There was only one thought in his head, and this was the fuel that drove him forward:
Lucinda loves Dickie.

He’d been so certain that Lucinda’s marriage was a marriage of convenience. The ideas he’d created in his head had all the makings of a
V.I.L.E
. plot. In fact, in almost every book they’d ever read together, true love was tested, denied, and sometimes crushed to smithereens by the mighty wheels of social injustice, and yet, in the end, some small piece endured. In books, that one small piece was usually enough. It never occurred to Hadley that he was just fitting himself into someone else’s love story. His passion for Lucinda, his obsession, it was more than lust. Never mind that there wasn’t a man alive who wouldn’t find Lucinda appealing, her appeal for him ran deeper. Not because she was nice. She wasn’t. He thought about something that Cathy told to Heathcliff:
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. 

 
Lucinda once told him he was the only one like her, and Hadley had believed this with every fiber of his being.

###

He didn’t see the sign that read BOOKS CHECKED HERE blow over and summersault to the floor along with five years worth of
Good Cooking By The Altar Society of Our Lady of Sorrows
that he knocked out of Miss Hazelwood’s arms when he ran into her. He didn’t even see Miss Hazelwood. In fact, Hadley didn’t fully come back into his body until Flora rushed around from behind her desk, and took him by the elbow, and said, “Are you alright, Mr. Crump?”

“No,” Hadley said. “I’m dying.”

“Oh,” Flora said, touching her heart. “Maybe we should step outside . . . ”

Miss Hazelwood was not pleased. Hadley noticed that much even in his state of all-consuming despair. He heard her say something to Flora about staying away from
The Red Book Man
. Flora gave Miss Hazelwood’s bony arm a pat. “It’ll be okay,” she said, and she left the library with The Red Book Man.

“Are you really dying?” she asked Hadley once they were safely out the door. 

“She doesn’t love me,” Hadley blurted. “She never did.”

Flora should have smacked him for saying such words to her. He even flinched expectedly, but Flora wasn’t one to smack anybody. “I’m sorry,” Hadley mumbled. “You’re the only friend I have.”

He thought of Loomis Sackett and old Spitbone, but he hadn’t seen either one of them since Lucinda’s wedding. It never occurred to him to look up Loomis, and talking to Mama was out of the question. 

“I’ve been really stupid, Flora. You can’t imagine how stupid, and it wouldn’t be gentlemanly of me to say much more than that.”

“Oh, now,” Flora said, in that kindly way she had. “I’m sure it was just a little spat. Everybody quarrels from time to time.” She patted his arm in the same consoling way she’d patted Miss Hazelwood.

“Wasn’t no quarrel. I just had things wrong, that’s all.”

“Goodness Hadley, you’re breaking my heart, you look so sad.” Indeed, she looked quite heartbroken. “I don’t get off work until four o’clock, but we could have a cup of coffee if you can wait an hour for me.”

“I’ll wait,” Hadley said. “Thank you.” He lurched forward and kissed her on the mouth, then jumped two steps back. “I’m sorry, Flora. I’m real confused right now.”

“Wait for me, all right? I can bring you some books to read, if you like?”

“I’m just gonna stand by that tree over there.”

“For an hour?”

Hadley nodded. “Go on. I hope Miss Hazelwood didn’t see me kiss you. She’ll think you’re headed down the road of depravity.”

“Oh boy,” Flora said. “Wouldn’t that be something.” 

###

The High Point Diner
was too cold, too greasy, and too sticky. Hell, the coffee wasn’t even a “high point”. Mama was old-fashioned and refused to set foot in the place. She believed a woman ought not to be seen in a diner. Hadley regretted bringing Flora. He hadn’t planned on needing coffee money when he left the house that morning.
The High Point
was the best he could afford in a pinch. He glanced out the nose-smudged Pullman window. You couldn’t see a thing on account of the big pie-slice sign that read: HOT FOOD, CHEAP. 

Flora was a good sport though. She warmed up by curling her hands around her coffee cup and pretended not to notice the crumbs of meatloaf left by the last folks. 

“You know what would really make me feel better, Flora?” He unfolded his napkin and set his knife on the table between them. “I thought I wanted to gripe about my life, but after standing under that tree for an hour and a half, I’m sick of my pathetic self.”

“I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” Flora said. “Miss Hazelwood was threatening to march out there and tell you to get your filthy-book-reading soul to church. She might just as well have chained me to the desk for an extra half hour while she made her case against you.”

“She’s probably right, Flora, but I’m glad you didn’t listen.”

Flora laughed that big, pretty laugh of hers. “She means no harm. My mama and her were children together, and I think she feels responsible for me. It was her that got me this job.”

“See there, I don’t know very much about your life, and if it’s all the same with you, I’d rather hear something about Flora Gibbs instead of crabbing about what a mess I’ve made of my life.” 

“Oh dear,” Flora said, sympathetic as ever. “I’m afraid I’m not that interesting.”

Hadley gave the knife a spin. When it slowed to a stop, the tip of the blade pointed to Flora’s elbow. “Tell me anyway. Tell me all about you.” It seemed like he’d learned almost nothing about Flora during those weeks they’d spent down by the river, and he wondered now how he could have been so distracted that he’d failed to find out even the most basic of facts. 

“I know how knife-spinning works. I play
Spin-the-Knife
with my Daddy, and you only get to ask one question per spin.”

“Really?” Hadley said. “That’s a funny rule.”

She smiled at Hadley. “I thought I invented that game.”

“Nope. It was me, and I think we ought to use my rules.”

“The trouble is, there’s not that much to tell. I like to talk, you know that. It wears on people’s nerves sometimes, but Daddy raised me to be chatty. He thinks shy people are rude. I don’t think that’s true, mind you. If not for shy folks, who would listen to all of us blabber mouths?”

“You’re not a blabber mouth,” Hadley said. “And you listen real good, too.”

“Listening is as fun as talking, if you ask me. Anyhow, what else? I’m too short, I guess, and I work in a library, and that’s really all there is. My mama died four years ago of Diptheria. My Daddy and I live on Dixon Steet in the same house I grew up in.”

Hadley tapped his fingers on the table, trying to think what else to ask. “Oh! How old are you? Do you have any hobbies?”

“I’m twenty-one on the eighth of December, and I keep birds and collect spoons.” 

“Hey, December eighth is my mama’s birthday, too!” Hadley exclaimed. 

Flora gave the knife an expert flick. This time the blade stopped in front of Hadley. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.” Hadley spun the knife again, cheating so that it did a half circle and stopped. “What do you collect spoons for?”
To stir men up?
he thought to himself.

“I buy them at souvenir shops whenever I go someplace new. I have spoons from Tennessee and Kentucky. I’ve got one from Florida too, but I haven’t been there yet. Miss Hazelwood brought it for me when she went to visit her sister last year. It has a little palm tree on the handle, and you’ve never seen anything so cute in all your life.”

“I’d like to see a spoon with a palm tree on it,” Hadley said, thinking that Flora’s spoons weren’t as bad as they sounded. “What kind of birds do you have?”

“A canary, two love birds, one parakeet, and a maniah.”

“Boy, where do you keep them all?”

“Everywhere. The kitchen, the sun porch, and Mr. Peeps stays by my bedroom window. Poor thing’s blind as can be, but he’s good company for me.”

Hadley wiped pickle juice off his arm with a napkin. “I never met anyone who collected spoons before.”

Flora set her cup down with a clink. “Well, don’t go feeling sorry for me now, Mr. Crump. It might sound like I’m an old maid librarian, but I was almost married once.”

“You were? What happened?”

“Countee caught that bad flu four winter’s ago. I lost him and my mama one month apart.”

“Shoot, Flora, how can you stand it? It’s bad enough that the girl I love doesn’t love me back. I don’t think I could loose my mama too. Yet you don’t seem a bit sorry for yourself.”

“We all got heartache inside us, I reckon. But I’m happy, too. I like the library. It’s just about my favorite place on earth, and I get paid to be there. How lucky is that? Do you like chopping firewood and painting stuff for people?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always done it so I’ve never really thought about it. Ain’t much to it really.”

“That’s because you’re good at it,” she said. “I painted the sun porch last year, and boy was that a disaster. My daddy keeps saying we’re gonna have to tear the whole thing down and start all over again, it’s such an eye sore.”

“I’ll paint it for you,” Hadley offered. “I’m dumb as dirt when it comes to women, but I’m good with a paint brush.”

The waitress sloshed more coffee in their cups and Flora warmed her hands again. “I’ll bet your girlfriend is feeling real sorry about your tiff and wants to take it all back. In fact, you can tell her I said not to be so cocky or someone might just steal you away.”

“I wish someone would. Anyway, she won’t take nothing back. She never does. Either you love a person or you don’t. If she don’t love me after all these years, I can’t think what could possibly change things now.”

Hadley had noticed that Flora didn’t finger her hair like Lucinda did. One braid was coming loose and her sweater hung crooked off her left shoulder, but Flora Gibbs didn’t look like a girl who worried about such things. She smacked the table with her palm. “If you love her, you need to fight for her.”

Also, Flora’s nails weren’t the least bit magnolia-colored. They were ordinary see-through nails, and they were short and clean. They didn’t look one bit painful. 

Hadley shrugged. “I’m starting to question my definition of love. Maybe what I call love is really hate.”

“Don’t turn cynical. It makes me so sad when people turn cynical.” 

“It’s too late for that.” He thumbed through the gravy-splattered menu. “Would you like a sandwich or a piece of pie, Flora?” He didn’t have much money in his pocket, but dinner seemed like the least he could do.

“Yes I would. I’d like a nice big piece of chess pie, thank you.”

Hadley looked at the section marked
Specialty Pies
. “Looks like they only serve apple.”

“Chess pie is what I’ll be making for us tomorrow evening. If you patch things up with this woman, we’ll celebrate. If not, well, at least we can enjoy something tasty. I make mighty good pie.”

She gave the knife one last spin and stopped it with the saltshaker so that it landed on Hadley. “Next time we play, it’ll be your turn to tell all.”

###

Hadley wandered for hours, passing Wisteria Walk three times before deciding it was safe to assume he’d missed the nightly show upstairs. Lucinda’s voice caught him by surprise when he tiptoed in the kitchen door. It had a raspy, beat-up sound to it, as though she’d worn it out with yelling. “Where have you been, Hadley Crump?” 

Normally, the only time Lucinda liked cigarettes was when she was getting a Marcel Wave and had to sit still for hours, but loops of smoke hung over her head like words written in the air. IF ONLY the smoke said.

If only his heart didn’t hurt so damned much. But it did.