The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy Read online

  When one’s first great love is so cruelly revealed to be a rodent, recovery is often difficult, and this was the case for Janet. She left the university forthwith and threw herself into the only thing she could come up with to rescue what little self-esteem she had left: an alternative life style. This involved two years of travel on a converted school bus with a merry band of do-nothings who had been deeply influenced by the film Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and who had made the decision to duplicate as much of that adventure as they could, albeit on the west coast of the United States. This duplication was achieved through several very long drives to Burning Man during which the music of ABBA played at a disturbing volume, copious amounts of dope were smoked, and alternative garb was created, dependent heavily upon sequins, beads, bell-bottom trousers, and very tight and very plunging tops. And while the ancient school bus did not, alas, make it to Burning Man for a third go (having broken down repeatedly and finally irreparably in Arcada, California), Janet did ultimately find herself in a welcoming community of earnest back-to-the-landers who reminded her of her own family, who treaded the earth in Birkenstocks and flannel, and who expressed their individuality by changing their names from those chosen by The Birthers, as they referred to their parents, to something more reflective of who they were striving to be.

  Hence, Annapurna. It must be admitted that Janet chose this name merely for its mellifluous nature. She found that it gave her a sense of being more than she was and of hiding away that part of her that had been so crushed by Chadbourne Hinton-Glover. So she remained Annapurna and she remained in Arcada, California, for fifteen more years till the amount of rainfall and the long bleak winters and a letter from her old friend Monie Reardon—now Monie Reardon Pillerton—suggested a change was in order.

  Monie Reardon Pillerton knew about Chadbourne, of course. She knew of the school bus adventure and its final demise in Arcada. She knew that her old friend Janet Shore was no more and in her place was Annapurna. But she also knew of a job that had become available on Whidbey Island, and it was her earnest belief that Janet-who-had-been and Annapurna-who-now-was would be perfect for this position. It must be said that Monie also had an ulterior motive for enticing Annapurna back to Whidbey Island. Married for twelve years to the world’s most faithful man who was, alas, also the world’s biggest dullard, she had produced four children in quick succession thinking they might at least provide conversation in the evening prior to lights out. Unfortunately, Monie soon discovered that the production of offspring alone could not a thrilling marriage make. However, not wanting to divorce the man—for how can one divorce someone whose greatest sin is merely to be boring?—Monie was aching for some kind of excitement and when she saw the position of town librarian advertised in the South Whidbey Record, her memory of dazzling hours spent inside the cemetery potting shed in the company of everyone from Nancy Drew to Hester Prynne was sparked. Oh, to have at least that much escape from the well-meaning but terminally dull Dwayne Pillerton! To have a few hours away from laundry, housecleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, dog walking, and the required attendance at youthful athletic events! To Monie Reardon Pillerton, the return of the long gone Janet Shore in the person of Annapurna was the answer to what had gone badly wrong in her life. So she got herself appointed to the search committee for the new librarian, penned the letter to Annapurna, and set about making absolutely certain that Annapurna was the chosen one.

  Thus Annapurna returned not only to the island of her birth but also to the town in which she had grown up. She had been gone for years, of course, and while she had stayed in communication with her parents and siblings during the long period of her travels and the longer period of her life in Arcada, California, she had no wish to engage intimately in family matters. She longed to live a life she had become used to: one of isolation, contemplation, and self-recrimination. For she had not, you see, been able to forgive the Janet Shore-who-had-been for her youthful errors in love. That young person’s mindless and utterly naïve devotion to matters literary had led her to heartbreak at the hands of a soulless man, and so grave had her heartbreak been that Annapurna had not once allowed herself to become remotely close to any individual—male or female—since. Indeed, she’d kept those Egyptian cotton sheets as a reminder to trust and give her heart to no one, and if they became softer and softer with repeated washings as promised and if their 500 thread-count allowed for their astounding durability, they also served as testimony to the fact that happily ever after can last six months or less and can end in an excruciating betrayal if one does not keep one’s eyes peeled for telltale signs of a fellow human’s fallibility from the moment of introduction to the moment of that fallibility’s inevitable appearance.

  Thus it must be said that she felt no loyalty or kinship to anyone on Whidbey Island despite being the actual kin of at least fifty-two individuals at this point, her siblings having grown up to be a familially ambitious and remarkably fecund group. Her only relationship of any note was with Monie Reardon Pillerton who, over skinny vanilla lattes one late afternoon at the village’s trendiest coffee house, worked what had been a desultory conversation about persistent tooth decay in her eldest child into a reminiscence of Annapurna’s decades-long dormant ability to propel herself and other people into a literary scene of their desire.

  “Oh, I don’t do that any longer, Monie,” was met with a stare of outright incredulity.

  “But … but … but why not?” followed that stare, for it was inconceivable to Monie Reardon Pillerton that such a talent would not be used on a daily basis, especially if one had small children whose continuous squabbling and frequent demands for maternal attention begged to be met either by a quick trip down the rabbit hole with Alice or a tag-along with the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Monie, however, was not likely to say such a thing about her children to Annapurna. Rather she pointed out to her old friend—in somewhat sonorous tones, it must be admitted—the responsibility one had to use one’s God given talents for the good of mankind.

  Annapurna, however, was not to be moved on this issue. She had suffered too much at the hands of her own talent, as we know, having prompted within herself a belief in happy endings following hard on the heals of true love (it must be admitted that she’d never been a great fan of Romeo and Juliet, from which she should have learned much on this topic), which had led her to abject misery.

  For Monie, there was only one recourse. Annapurna had to be exposed to children to enhance her understanding of a mother’s need for blessed escape. Not just any children would do, of course. Annapurna needed exposure to Monie’s own. For surely two or three hours in their company—particularly when they were ravenous with hunger—would be sufficient to encourage within Annapurna a desire to help her old friend—if no one else—through the simple means of a dreamy escape to … Monie had been delving a great deal into Monte Carlo lately, having just completed her tenth reading of Rebecca. Just the scene in which Maxim proposes to the unnamed narrator, she told Annapurna. Really, that’s all that she would ask although she was also partial to the thrilling moment of “I am Mrs. de Winter now,” that so memorably put the evil Mrs. Danvers in her place. Of course, that foul creature ended up setting fire to Manderley as a possible result of this moment of assertion on the narrator’s part, but some things, Monie knew, could not be helped.

  Can it be otherwise than Annapurna’s agreeing to give her old friend a bit of respite from the drudgery of her life? While it took more than an initial two or three hours in the company of Monie’s children to effect a form of harmony between the women on the subject of literary escapes, they reached an accord on the afternoon when Monie’s youngest had a bout of projectile vomiting so severe that nothing other than The Exorcist popped immediately into Annapurna’s mind. Annapurna then began to see the problem in terms of taking her friend—even for a brief hour or two—out of the horror novel in which she was living instead of depositing her into another. And so it happened that Annapurna began to investigate w
here she could—for want of a better term—set up shop. It had to be in the library, naturally. Her days were spent there, and it was only during the day when Monie’s children were in school that it was possible for Monie to escape the chains that bound her to hearth and home.

  Such a location had few requirements beyond privacy and the space for a small cot on which the literary traveler could recline. There was the necessity of a temporal anchor, of course, that would bind the traveler to the here and now in much the same way in her previous life young Janet Shore had used her canine’s leash for her own trips and her hand within the hand of the traveler when she was entertaining her friends. A boat’s line—easily had from the town marina—would do for this, she decided. She would fix it to the door knob of a convenient room so that when she opened the door after Monie’s excursion, her friend would rise as if from a pleasant and refreshing sleep. This would, admittedly, be effected by means of a preemptory and rather rough jerk on her wrist from the boat line that would be tied around it, but some things could simply not be helped. Had she been able to be at Monie’s side throughout her trip to Monte Carlo or Manderley—really, it was up to her, as Annapurna had no thoughts on the matter other than wonder that Maxim de Winter had not disposed of that nasty bit of business Rebecca much sooner into their tormented relationship—nothing more than her hand in Monie’s would have been necessary. But she had to see to the needs of the library’s patrons and as luck would have it, Monie’s choice of traveling day occurred in the middle of the Red-Hatted Ladies’ Book Club Morning, which generally leaked over into the Red-Hatted Ladies’ Book Club Afternoon if the edibles were good enough and the literary discussion was fierce.

  With all of this in mind, only the library’s supply room would offer sufficient space for a cot, privacy from the prying eyes of other library patrons, and a doorknob. Because it contained vast library valuables such as paper stock for the coin operated copier, it also was lockable, a decided plus.

  Thus on the very next morning following Annapurna’s brief, “All right, I’ll do it,” which itself followed soon after the Pillerton offspring’s impressive show of projectile vomiting, Monie presented herself at the library. She’d dressed for the occasion. She’d chosen a form of thirties’ garb that she deemed suitable, considering the time period in which she supposed the book took place: between the two great wars. At the local thrift store, she’d managed to put together an approximation of that period’s dress. That she looked rather like a cross between Queen Elizabeth the Queen mother (that would be the hat and the shoes) and Bonnie of Bonnie-and-Clyde fame (that would be the skirt, the belt, and the sweater), did not appear to concern her. She announced herself as ready and excited and “oh how I’ve longed for this moment since you first came back to Langley,” in rather too loud a voice that caused Annapurna to shush her. The last thing she wanted was a repeat of her early years in which she’d discovered the pedestrian predilections of her peers in matters literary. To know that they had grown into adults whose tastes had not altered …? Life was hard enough, Annapurna thought.

  She stamped three books for a local woman. She answered four questions from a man whose knowledge of how to use the library- provided WiFi began and ended with turning a computer on. When at last she was free, she cast a look round the library to make certain she and Monie Reardon Pillerton were not being observed. Finding the coast clear, she hustled Monie behind the check out counter, through the librarian’s office, and into the supply closet, which she had made ready.

  A camping cot found on Craig’s List would serve as the launching pad. A thin mattress covered it and around this was tucked a quilt purchased at a fund raiser for the town’s feral cats, always in want of a decent meal. Mood lighting was provided by a candle carefully sheltered by a hurricane globe. The line of reality—so Annapurna thought of the boat’s line that would be used to anchor Monie—lay curled at the foot of the cot.

  Monie had brought Rebecca with her as her memory told her to do. She confessed herself so excited that she feared she’d “let loose in her pants.” Disconcerted, Annapurna offered her friend the lavatory at once. “Just an expression,” Monie said with a laugh. “I hope I still have bladder control, Janet.” She winced as soon as she said Annapurna’s birth name. She apologized quickly. It was all due to excitement, she said. She could only imagine what it was going to be like to witness Maxim de Winter’s proposal of marriage to his youthful, inarticulate but nonetheless soon-to-be blushing bride.

  “So you’ve decided?” Annapurna asked her. “You don’t want the Mrs. Danvers scene?”

  “Maybe later,” Monie told her, which should, of course, have warned Annapurna of things to come. But at the moment the bell on the checkout desk rang peremptorily.

  “You’ll have to wait a moment,” Annapurna told her friend.

  “Damn it! But there’s so little time,” was Monie’s reply.

  Annapurna wanted to tell her that it wasn’t an overlong scene in the book anyway: just the narrator interrupting Maxim in the middle of shaving, followed by her wretched and lovestruck goodbye to him, followed by breakfast on the terrace, followed by an abrupt proposal of marriage made over marmalade which, let’s face it, was one of the more forgettable marriage proposals ever made. As Annapurna recalled … Hadn’t the word ninny even come into play? Perhaps not. But the word love certainly hadn’t. For heaven’s sake, even the imperious Mr. Darcy had managed to cram love among the various insults to Elizabeth Bennett’s family. But … no matter. Monie would get her moment in Monte Carlo in which the narrator’s life is turned upside down and in that moment Monie too could dream of what it would have been like to be the wife of the dark, brooding, desperately unhappy but at the same time filthy rich Maxim de Winter.

  First, however, she had to see to whoever was ringing the checkout desk bell. And thus she met Mildred Banfry, the woman who would forever alter the existence that Annapurna had grown to find so personally burdensome.

  It must be said that Mildred Banfry did not for an instant look like a life changer. She didn’t look like any kind of changer at all. She looked precisely the way someone named Mildred Banfry would look, although Annapurna did not, of course, know her name in the moment that her gaze fell upon her. What she did know was what she saw: gangly, potentially suffering from late onset sexual dysphoria, a horrifying dress sense even for this part of the world which was not known for individuals capable of putting together something that might be deemed “an outfit,” hair that looked as if mowing might be the better choice than a mere cutting, and eyebrows that snaked across her forehead in a manner that could only be referred to as threatening.

  Her voice boomed. “Here. You. Are!” she announced at a volume so stentorian that Annapurna felt it very likely that the police department next door to the library and housed within the confines of the town’s brick city hall might have been well informed of the woman’s arrival. The members of the Red-Hatted Ladies’ Book Club certainly were. More than one furious glance was shot from the discussion room in the direction of the check-out desk. “I. Want. A. Library. Card. Do. You. Hear. Me?”

  Well, obviously, was what Annapurna thought. So does everyone else, my dear woman. And like so many people who feel uneasy with correcting anyone’s behavior, she modeled what was a more appropriate volume, for as far as she knew, the poor woman had never entered a library in her life. Her teeth certainly suggested as much, although the absence of five or six molars couldn’t actually make any kind of accurate testimony as to one’s literacy or lack thereof. “Certainly,” Annapurna murmured. “If you have something to show me that you’re a resident?”

  “Course. I. Do,” Mildred hollered. “I’m. Not. Stupid. Do. I. Look. Stupid. To. You?”

  Annapurna lowered her head in embarrassment. “No, no. Not at all. If you’ll just—”

  “You’re. Going. To. Have. To. Speak. Up,” Mildred told her. “Or. I. Can. Read. Lips. But. Not. If. You. Don’t. Look. At. Me.”

 
“Yes, yes, of course,” Annapurna said quickly, as she raised her head. “Only … If there’s any way …?”

  “What?” And when Annapurna looked around the library with a gesture to indicate to Mildred that it was a library and not perhaps what she thought it might be, which seemed to be a hog calling contest, Mildred said, “Oh! Ha! Too. Loud. Am. I? Didn’t. Wear. My. Hearing. Aids. Batteries. Are. Dead. Sorry. Use. This.” And she rooted around in a bag printed with I’ve Been To Disneyland! prominently upon it until she found what she sought, which was a tattered notebook to which a ballpoint pen was attached. “Write. It. Out. Here,” she said. “Mildred. Banfry. By. The. Way. And. You. Are?”

  Annapurna wrote out her name and everything that followed. Did Mildred Banfry have an ID showing she was appropriately domiciled somewhere in Island County? She certainly did. She’d brought along her electricity bill—rather amazingly low so that Annapurna wondered if the woman owned a refrigerator or even turned on a single light—and she had evidence of her checking account as well. This latter wouldn’t do for evidence of her habitation, but it was of no import because the electricity bill did the trick. Annapurna began gathering what was needed to give Mildred her library card.

  It was at this most unfortunate moment that Monie Reardon Pillerton came wandering out of the supply room. As she still had the boat line tied to her wrist and her shoes had been removed for comfort’s sake and the sake of the cleanliness of the aforementioned quilt, she did present a rather startling sight since the reader must recall that she was also dressed somewhat unusually for Langley, Washington. Well, not all that unusually considering the Red-Hatted Ladies in one room and Mildred Banfry in the other, but anachronistic dressing not being what generally went on in the little town, Monie did garner Mildred’s attention. As did the boat’s line tied round her wrist.