How to Read a Book

by Monica Wood

but here was a woman who clearly enjoyed her meals.

“This table’s popular,”

love mysteries. But, again, it’s a book club. Mysteries are . . .” She waved toward the endcap packed with his favorites. “Once you find out who killed whom, there isn’t much left to discuss, I find.” “I take your point,” he said. His heart made a sparrow-flutter

youthful spirit, he

“Well, Violet, I was also motherless at your age.”

“My mother became ill,” she tells me. “My sister was in college, my father had a farm to run, so it was left to me to nurse her. And nurse my father, too, as it turned out.” She shakes her head. “He wasn’t good at being a widower.”

“and when a kerfuffle ensued over the abutter’s fence lines, Lou Larson cruised into my life like a rescue ship on a cold black sea.” “Wow.”

“But he died, Harriet. You told us in Book Club that Lou died.” “Yes, and then I went to college, and I became a teacher, and if I hadn’t done those things, I would not be sitting here with you

Renys today.” “A Maine adventure,” she says, which is the Renys tagline,

After she goes, my no-rugs no-curtains no-pictures no-books apartment holds the feeling of another person for the rest of the day. But then it fades, and it’s just me again. Me and Lorraine Daigle.

Why was that not obvious to everyone who saw? I scared him.

Lorraine’s longtime lover skulking into a back pew. Handsome enough, faintly disheveled, fighting tears, finally divorced and free at last, which was how Lorraine, exactly one month before the accident, had come to confess. This is your fault, Frank, you’re completely oblivious, you could have headed this off and you didn’t. The man was a know-it-all dog breeder who’d sold them a neurotic and short-lived spaniel years back. He’s strong, he knows what he wants, don’t I deserve to be happy? And now here the man was, a shadow returning, struggling to control his face as the casket rolled down the aisle.

Lorraine had not, in fact, been on her way to L.L. Bean. Lorraine had been on her way to see a divorce lawyer. Her “soul mate” was free now: let the games begin. Since the day she confessed, he’d urged her to recall

Are you glad your wife died, Frank?

Corinne, she thought. I did the best I could. Well, that’s what social-work school was for, to teach what her niece would learn soon enough: People set their husbands afire, they nurse their dying mothers, they rob demented old men, they sing songs that bring listeners to tears, they kill a woman while drunk on love and 86-proof. The line between this and that, you and her, us and them, the line is thin.

thing I learned in prison is that sometimes rotten things fly off people’s tongues because they’re mean, but mostly it’s because they’re scared. Sophie is scared of me. And I’m glad. Because she ruined dinner

“Dad kept them entertained,” she said. “Mom kept them alive.” “Preach,” said Dorothy, who’d raised six kids, and the rest, mothers

“All animal species suffer from jealousy,”

Ten years, no close ties. Like many men of his vintage, he’d let his wife manage the friendships.

“Three corner.” “That’s right. Three corner. Good bird.” To me, he says, “She means triangle. Certain sounds are hard to make without lips, so we offer words they can more likely pronounce.” He glances so quickly at my own lips that later I’ll think I imagined it.

Whom - grammar mistake

All three of us had our mouths open.

We are a continuum of human experience, neither the worst nor the best thing we have ever done. Or, more exactly, we are both the best thing and the worst thing we’ve ever done. We are all of it, all at once, all the time. But here on the Outs, I’ve rejoined the good people, the people who have not done wrong. Who can blame Harriet for preferring that I be one of them?

My mother preferred me, the reader, which Vicki figured out around age twelve, and that was that. If our motorcycle-riding dad had lived, Vicki would’ve been his favorite, and maybe every single thing would’ve turned out different.

Unfortunately, Misha’s not what you’d call photogenic. Or telegenic. I don’t mean his face, which is beautiful. I mean he comes off aloof and arrogant, even in photos, and he’s not a smiler. You wouldn’t be a smiler, either, if you were a former four-year-old who watched the KGB haul your father off to parts unknown and punched your mother in her already broken teeth for good measure. The point is, interviewers get

thrown off their game, and Misha gets irritable and condescending, and then the birds, catching a drop in temperature, go quiet exactly when we most want them to talk. Mrs. Rocha could make Misha behave, but

fainted,” I tell him. “And so will people watching YouTube.” “YouTube,” he mutters. “Circus for unemployed simpletons.”

“Not enough people know your work, Misha. You publish a paper once every three years. You treat reporters like imbeciles. You intimidate visitors. Mrs. Rocha told me the 60 Minutes guy was so offended he never ran the story.”

stand my ground, still looking up at him, smiling. We have a secret—a too-much-kiss-kiss secret—and whenever he recalls it, that certain luscious look, my body catches fire anew. I’ve come to love his moods. They bring him closer to me, not farther away, because I believe he does not love his wife, that his wife does not love him, that I am the only one who understands him. Even now, this part is hard to admit.

Bob and Alan perch nearby, rapt. They adore the shell game, though they’re only two-color trackers so far. This is my favorite part, watching them learn from her. Their bright, inquiring eyes, irises the color of clean straw. Their cocked heads. Those tiny, sparkling brains at full throttle.

love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one.

“The writer writes the words. The given reader reads the words. And the book, the unique and unrepeatable book, doesn’t exist until the given reader

meets the writer on the page.”

do not read novels, Violet,” Misha said. “Why do you tell me this?” “Because life is the same as books, Misha. There’s a story and a meanwhile, and we get to say which is which.”

“Ah, my violet,” he says. “You are young.” He pulls me down, enfolds me. “Life is not the same as books.”

Some of them lived long lives, some short, but after it was over, they chose at last: this was my story. I believe that Misha, whose history emerges in little chapters whispered

the aftermath of our lovemaking, has already chosen. The KGB man who took his father; his journey to America; his work, his papers, his lectures; his house and whoever lives in it; everything that is not us on the Buckingham Palace couch—that’s his meanwhile.

His story is here, twined with mi...

she said, “I made a good life with a man I did not deeply love.” Frank took her hand. He said, “I made a good life with a woman who did not deeply love me.” A dog down the street barked, once. They remained in this magical

He closes his laptop. “You have no parents?” I’m a little stunned, and maybe he is too, to realize that he does not know this essential fact of my life. He, too, was orphaned early. I believe

he often makes me feel motherly. I soothe him; I pet his hair; once he laid his head on my breast

and cried. On the other hand, I sometimes wake on the Buckingham Palace couch with his arms twined around me and believe, in that first waking moment, that it’s my mother’s arms holding me fast.

feel like both Misha’s mother and Misha’s child, so how do I not double-believe when he speaks of love? When Frank and Harriet arrive I sign them in, show them around

because I know how it feels to believe you are loved when you’re not.

love you is new, and he learned it from me. It strikes me then that Misha never gave him enough credit, because Ollie’s old, even in people years. Ollie simply required more time, more patience, and I know

Of all the books we read, over the year and a half of Book Club, Spoon River Anthology stayed with me the longest. I liked that the ordinary dead spoke for themselves at last, even if someone else had engraved different words on their stone. I liked that they told stories about each other. And I liked that so many recalled not how they died, but how they lived.

suppose how I lived after this moment is my real story: a short first marriage to a good man, a long and gratifying second try, three beloved children, a career as a research librarian. I forged a fraught but cordial relationship with Kristy; I made a genuine friendship with Sophie, who spoke at my funeral; I outlived Frank and Harriet and deeply grieved

them. After Vicki died, her son found me and befriended not only me but also my children. And I outlived Ollie, who died at the astonishing age of seventy-four. My children adored him. We kept track of Misha’s work, though I never revealed my connection. I learned to play the piano; I read thousands of books. My life unfolded as most lives do, day upon day of doing my best and occasionally my worst, that human continuum. My passing arrived softly, in the company of my firstborn, and her firstborn, and Dawna-Lynn, who served her extra time and never went back.

Is Vicki her sister?

what Harriet would call the meanwhile, the important thing that was happening while the rest of the story moved along.