Chapter Thirty-Five

THIRTY-FIVE

OCTOBER 1987

Augusta desperately needed some air. While Jackie phoned her husband and children in New York, Augusta decided to walk to the clubhouse and return the book she’d borrowed from the library.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” she told Jackie, grabbing the paperback from her bedroom nightstand. “Tell the kids I said hello.”

Inside the library, she was surprised to find Irving, so engrossed in the book he was holding that he didn’t even look up when she entered.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “I thought you had cards on Friday afternoons.”

He blinked at her from behind his glasses. “Sorry, Augusta, I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Don’t you have your poker game now?”

“I gave up my game for a couple of months. I’ve got too much else to do.”

“Like what?” she asked, narrowing her eyes, a hint of suspicion in her tone.

Irving tapped at the pages of his book and held it up so she could see: The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. “This, mostly. I have a lot of reading for my FAU class.”

Augusta knew that Florida Atlantic University offered continuing education classes. But she never would have guessed that her old beau—the boy who swore that he’d never go to college—would have signed up for any of them.

“What are you taking?” she asked carefully, trying not to sound too shocked.

“I almost took ‘The Tragedies of Shakespeare, Part Two’—I did ‘Part One’ in the spring, and it was terrific. But I signed up for ‘Modern Poetry’ instead.”

She had expected him to say something practical—like a computer class or a lecture series on the history of the Cold War. But Shakespeare plays? Modern poetry? Augusta was positively speechless.

He smiled at her then, the fluorescent lighting reflecting off his slate-blue eyes. “You’re the reason for the class, you know. I’m writing my paper on Robert Frost.”

The mention of the venerable poet stirred a long-buried spark in the back of her mind.

“ New Hampshire, ” she whispered. “The poetry collection I gave you for graduation.”

“I didn’t think you’d remember.”

“I didn’t think you’d ever read it.”

Irving chuckled. “To be honest, I didn’t—not for a few years, anyway. But I took it with me to Chicago, and I read from it every night to my boys. I still have the book—it’s in my apartment.”

“You kept it? After all this time?” It was almost too much for her to take in, the way the echoes of her past were increasingly finding their way into her present. The air in the library felt thick with wonder; dizziness made her sway to one side.

Irving leapt from his chair and steadied her by placing both hands on her shoulders. “Whoa, there, Gold— Augusta . You okay?”

His face was so close to hers that she could count the wrinkles on his forehead. She could see the silver hairs in his eyebrows. She could feel his breath on her lips.

There was so much she could have said in that moment, so much that she wanted to tell him. I still have the gift you gave me, too—the silver necklace with the rhinestone that broke the first time I wore it. But instead, she pulled away. “I’m fine,” she said. “Of course I’m fine. It’s stuffy in here, that’s all.”

When she remembered the paperback book in her hands, she scanned the crowded shelves behind him. She couldn’t find any room, so she shoved the book into the narrow space between the tops of three Jackie Collins hardcovers and the shelf above it.

“One day,” she said determinedly, “I’m going to organize all these shelves so that the books are properly arranged. It’s impossible to find anything now. If I put everything in order, people will be able to find what they’re looking for.”

Irving shrugged. “I dunno. I think people like it how it is. This way, there’s always a surprise on the shelves, a book you’ve never heard of before.” He patted his small patch of thinning hair. “In my experience,” he continued, “people come into this room thinking they know what kind of story they want to leave with. But at the end of the day, most of them have no idea. The book they first start flipping through isn’t usually the book they end up choosing.”

To Augusta, his words sounded like an excuse. “You don’t need to remind me how easily people change their minds,” she snapped. “You know what, Irving? I have to go. Jackie is waiting for me at home. Good luck with your paper.”

As Augusta scurried into the hallway, Irving’s smile flattened like a cake when the oven door gets opened too soon.

“Augusta, wait. Please don’t leave. What did I say? Augusta! Wait!”

Despite his near-pitiful distress, Augusta didn’t turn around. She fled down the carpeted clubhouse hallway, through the glass-edged double front doors, and out into the afternoon sunshine.

“You’re studying poetry, aren’t you?” she shouted over her shoulder. “They should have taught you about metaphors !” She didn’t care that passersby were staring. She didn’t care about the scene they might be causing.

“That wasn’t a metaphor!” Irving shouted back. “I’m not smart enough for metaphors! Please, Augusta, stop for a minute. Jesus Christ, you’re giving me a heart attack!”

She could hear the heaviness of his breathing as he struggled to catch up. “Do you know…” he wheezed, calling to her from behind. “Do you know the last time I was this winded? It was after I carried you home from Bess’s wedding. In the snowstorm! Do you remember that ?”

The mention of that afternoon stopped her cold. Despite the heat, Augusta swore she could feel phantom snowflakes on her arms.

Slowly she turned around to face him.

Even after he reached her, it took a few moments before he caught his breath. “Thank you for stopping,” he said. He coughed a few times, straightened his shoulders, and clasped both of his hands in front of him. “Augusta. I hope you know that the last thing I want—the very last thing —is to upset you. Arrange the library shelves however you want. Hell, I’ll help you, if you’ll let me. I swear I’ll learn the whole Dewey Decimal System if that’s what it takes for you to forgive me.”

Faced with this absurd apology, Augusta could not maintain her anger. This was a man who had carried her home for six long blocks in the middle of a blizzard. This was a man who had kept the book she had given him for over sixty years.

“All right,” she said, trying not to smile. “But alphabetical order will be just fine.”