Goodnight June: A Novel Read online

  It was my favorite too. I came to love the nursery with its green walls and striped curtains, the sense of love and warmth. The old woman (the mother? grandmother? a great-aunt like Ruby?) hovering near as the child nestles into his bed. She doesn’t leave her child like Mom left us. She stays and knits, rocking in her chair as he sleeps, as the nursery darkens ever so slowly and the stars sparkle out the window. To me, it seemed the epitome of love.

  Ruby hated the way Mom raised us. And for years, she didn’t even know how we lived. Mom told her a different story. And she squandered the money Ruby gave her to help pay for our school clothes and necessities (Ruby, though not wealthy by today’s standards, was very generous, and we were her only family). For a time, Mom spent it on booze and tube tops in every color of the rainbow. One evening Ruby showed up on our front steps and saw the house in its state of disarray. Mom was passed out in the bedroom. Amy and I were watching TV. Ruby had tears in her eyes when she took my hand and then lifted Amy into her arms. “Come on, girls,” she said. “You’re coming with me. I won’t let you live like this. Not anymore.”

  She gave us a warm bath that night in her little apartment above the bookstore. Mom showed up two days later, sober and apologetic. They went downstairs together, and Amy and I heard a lot of shouting. After that, things were different. Sort of. When Mom was home, she paid more attention to us. She even took us to the zoo one day. We came to spend more time with Ruby at the bookstore, too. We’d stay for entire weekends and sleep in her apartment a couple of nights a week. It was an open, loft-style space, with exposed brick walls and high ceilings. Ruby hated being confined by walls, she said, so she kept her little bed in the living space and set up the bedroom for Amy and me. I loved it there. Amy and I each had our own twin bed with fresh sheets and big comfy quilts. I hated going home. I wished we could live with Ruby.

  She’d read to us for hours, feed us picnic dinners by the fire. I feel a funny flutter in my stomach when I think about Bluebird Books. In the mid-1940s, Ruby was a pioneer of sorts, opening the area’s first children’s bookstore on Sunnyside Avenue, just a few blocks up from Green Lake, and building it into a Seattle institution.

  I stand up, and without knowing why at first, I walk to my bedroom and open the closet. Far in the back is a box containing the few remaining relics of my childhood: a diary I kept from the age of ten to twelve; the dried wrist corsage Jake Hadley gave me on the night of the homecoming dance; my baby book, in which Mom only bothered to fill out two pages; and a stack of children’s books from Aunt Ruby. When I left Seattle at age eighteen for college on the East Coast, I had just one suitcase. I’d wanted to pack all of my books, every one of them. But Mom wasn’t willing to pay for shipping—even book rate—nor did I have the money to do it myself. So I picked the books that I loved most, and on top of the stack was Goodnight Moon.

  I pull the book out of the box and hold it in my hands. It’s a full-size hardback, not the tiny board books bookstores sell these days. I flip through the pages, and my heart contracts when I think of Amy’s tiny fingers pointing to the mouse hiding on each page. It was our little game to find him, and we never tired of it.

  I sit down on the floor and lean back against the side of my bed. It’s dark, and I can see an almost-full moon outside my window, outshining the city lights all around. I don’t think of work or the stack of folders on the dining room table requiring my attention. Instead I think of Seattle, Ruby, and the life I left behind so many years ago.

  I think of Bluebird Books.

  Chapter 2

  “You’re going where?” Arthur demands on the phone the next night. The moon is out, and I’m in a cab destined for JFK. In a few hours, I’ll be on the red-eye to Washington state.

  “Seattle,” I say nervously to my boss. “It’s a . . . sort of a family emergency.”

  This confession stops his tirade, momentarily.

  “Sort of? Sort of a family emergency? Did someone die? Because if someone didn’t die, then it’s not—”

  “Someone died,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  “Listen,” I add, feeling my heart beat faster. I riffle through my bag and find the prescription pill bottle I filled at the pharmacy before I left. I pop a blue pill into my mouth, swallowing it with a swig from the water bottle in my hand. “I won’t be long. Just a week, tops. There’s, well, some things I have to sort out.”

  The taxi zooms along, weaving through lanes of traffic. Horns honk. City lights blink from the skyscrapers above. I’ll miss the energy of New York. But in that moment, I wonder if it’s leeching mine.

  “I left the files with Janice,” I say.

  “All right,” Arthur replies. In my eleven years with the bank, I’ve never behaved this way. And I suppose it surprises him as much as it does me.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I say.

  He’s too stunned to respond before I end the call.

  The plane touches down with a bump and a skid at Sea-Tac airport. I peer out the window at the city I left behind so many years ago. The sun is just peeking over the horizon, illuminating the familiar gray clouds, soggy with rain, that hover overhead.

  The passenger next to me, a middle-aged man wearing a blue fleece vest and Tevas with socks, lets out a contented sigh. “Good to be home,” he says.

  “Yes,” I manage to say, biting my lip nervously. The truth is, I’ve spent the entire six-hour flight regretting the trip, turning the decision over and over in my mind. On one side, I hear Arthur’s voice, telling me I’m losing my edge. On the other, doctor what’s-his-name at the hospital, saying, “Slow down. Take a vacation.” And then there’s Ruby. Without thinking, I place my hand on my chest, attempting to quiet my rapid heartbeat.

  “Live in Seattle?” the man asks, extracting me from my inner dialogue.

  “No,” I say. “I mean, I used to. A long time ago.”

  He nods, reaching for his bag under the seat in front of us. “Best city on earth.” He takes a deep breath. “Feel that?”

  “What?” I ask, confused.

  “There isn’t the pressure there is in other cities,” he says. “You can feel the calm.”

  I nod politely and almost forget his words entirely, until my cab drops me off in front of Bluebird Books. I take a deep breath, and just as the stranger predicted, I feel suffused with the very sense of calm he described. Or maybe it’s just my blood pressure medication finally kicking in.

  The store is just as I remember it, though, like me, I suppose, it’s showing signs of age. The brick facade, always a bit rustic, is shedding its mortar. The big white picture windows in front look like they could use a good scrub. Above the old green paneled door is the sign, still hanging proudly. I eye the familiar lettering:

  Bluebird Books

  A Place for Children

  Established 1946

  I reach into my bag and pull out the envelope with the key. The attorney was kind enough to overnight it to me. When we spoke on the phone, he explained that Ruby had been ill for many months leading up to her death. The bookstore had been closed for at least six months, maybe more. “Ruby just couldn’t keep it up,” he said. “But she tried, until the very end.”

  Thinking about his words makes my heart sink. The tingling sensation returns in my fingertips.

  “Ms. Andersen,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly, taking a seat and reaching into my bag for another blood pressure pill.

  I insert the key into the old brass lock now, and the door creaks and jingles as I pull it open. And then I remember Aunt Ruby’s bells tied to the door handle. Jingle bells, she called them. Ruby had a way of making ordinary things seem extraordinary, and I smile as I close the door behind me and venture inside the old store, breathing in the air of my past.

  My heels click on the plank wood flooring, and the room before me blurs as my eyes well
with tears. There is Aunt Ruby’s desk, covered with files and papers. Books are stacked precariously high, anchored by the old black rotary telephone she refused to replace. Beside the desk rests the store’s Victorian dollhouse. I kneel down and pick up a pint-size sofa that has fallen to the floor. My sister and I sat here for hours playing, imagining a dream world where we had our own bedrooms, nice clothes, and a mother who didn’t leave us all the time. I blow a layer of dust off the roof and rearrange the furniture in the library the way I always liked it: sofa on the right, table on the left, with room for the Christmas tree. Ruby made tiny ornaments for it by painting peppercorns red and gluing them on to the boughs.

  I stand and run my hands along the emerald-green walls of the bookstore. The color of pine trees, Ruby always said. The paint is peeling in places, but it’s hard to tell, as the walls are covered with framed artwork. A painting of a cow jumping over a moon hangs beside a signed black-and-white photo of Roald Dahl. He wrote, “To all the children of Bluebird Books, never stop imagining.”

  I pull back the faded old green-and-yellow-striped drapes. Once billowy and grand, they are dusty and sun bleached now, tattered at the hem. I smile to myself remembering the time Aunt Ruby showed me a photograph of a circus tent as her inspiration for the drapes. I flip the light switch and the crystal chandelier overhead strains to light the room. It’s missing a lightbulb, or twelve. I make a mental note to replace them.

  I walk to the back staircase and climb the steps to Ruby’s apartment above the shop. It’s small, but the high ceilings and exposed brick walls make it feel bigger, grander somehow. And even though I know it’s been several months since Ruby passed, the place has a lived-in feel, as if she might have made eggs and toast this very morning before leaving for a walk around Green Lake. The toaster’s still plugged into the wall, a teakettle sits at attention on the little stove, and the faucet drips quietly into the sink.

  I peer through the doorway of the little room off the kitchen where Amy and I used to stay. The two twin beds are still there, as well as the little nightstand. The porcelain lamp with its vintage tassel-trimmed shade holds court on the mahogany side table. I weave my way to Ruby’s bed, through a path lined with boxes of assorted memorabilia and stacks of books, some piled as high as me. The familiar crimson velvet coverlet is pulled taut, perhaps painstakingly so, as if the last time Ruby made the bed she was expecting company. I run my hand along the soft fabric, threadbare at the center, where she sat for so many years, propped up reading a book like she always did after she closed the store at five each evening. She’d wait until eight to eat dinner, “fashionably late,” she’d say.

  I study a familiar throw pillow and my eyes well up with tears. I cross-stitched a pink rose on it when I was ten and gave it to Aunt Ruby for her birthday. She kept it all these years. She looked at it every day when she woke up and when she laid her head down each night. Did she think about me? I didn’t mean to, but I forsook Ruby along with the rest of my past when I left Seattle. My heart beats faster. I can no longer suppress the emotion I feel. “Oh, Ruby,” I cry. I feel my chest constrict as a draft of cool air seeps in from the old double-hung windows. I shiver as I glance down at the nightstand, where there’s a small mahogany jewelry box, a framed photo of me and my sister, and Ruby’s old oval locket on its gold chain. I remember it dangling from her neck so long ago. My sister and I would ask her what she kept inside it, but she’d always give us a secret smile and tuck it back beneath her sweater set. “When you’re older,” she’d say. But we never did get the chance to look inside.

  I pick up the necklace and fasten it around my neck, but I won’t open the locket. No, I don’t deserve to see what’s hidden within. I’ll wear the necklace, and it will be my reminder of Ruby from this point forward. I’ll never forget her. And I’ll keep her secret hidden away. I’ll guard it.

  In the style of Ruby, I tuck the necklace beneath my sweater, and then beside the jewelry box I notice a white envelope inscribed “June” in script that is unmistakably Ruby’s. I sink to the bed and tear open the flap.

  My dear June,

  If you’re reading this, I have passed. I knew the end was growing near. So I prepared this place for you. They’re taking me to the convalescent home. My God, me in a convalescent home. Can you imagine?

  I stop reading, and wipe away a fresh tear, hearing Ruby’s playful voice in my head as I do.

  But it is time, they tell me. So, I’ve put fresh sheets on the bed and tidied the kitchen. I’m sorry the floor is in such disarray. These days, it’s hard for me to part with anything, so I tend to keep it all. It would be an honor to me if you’d stay here. Make yourself at home. I truly hope you will. Because it is your home now, June.

  Bluebird Books was always to be your legacy. You see, my dear, we share the same sensibilities about life. I knew that even when you were a wee child. Your sister would spend hours with her dolls, but you’d sit in the window seat with a book in your lap, wide-eyed. You loved books as I do. I hope you’ve never lost the love of literature, the sense of discovery and wonder.

  It hasn’t been easy for me since you left Seattle. But I understood why you had to go. You needed to spread your wings and fly. And you did. I only wish you’d have flown home every once in a while. I have missed you so.

  I trust that you will love Bluebird Books and care for it as much as I have. It won’t be easy. Children aren’t reading the way they did in my day. And I will confess, I worry that the love of books is dying. Children’s literature today is facing a state of emergency. My most loyal customers are straying for the glitz of media, the lure of this thing called the Internet. Two years ago, a little boy named Stuart and his mother Genie used to come into the store often. He would listen to me read at story time with wide eyes, eyes of an active imagination. But he stopped coming as frequently, and when his mother brought him in last summer, I could see that the spark had died out. His mother lamented that all he’s interested in these days is movies and video games. As a result, literature doesn’t speak to him in the way it once did.

  I’ve done all I can, all I know to do. And now I leave it to you. It is the problem of the next generation to solve. What is childhood without stories? And how will children fall in love with stories without bookstores? You can’t get that from a computer.

  I know that keeping Bluebird Books afloat will be a challenge. But I have faith in you, June. If anyone can save this store, it’s you.

  So I leave this beloved place to you, and with it, all of its secrets. And there are many, all here for you to discover.

  As Beatrix Potter once said, “What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common sense.”

  And this is what you will find here, my dear child.

  With love, always,

  Your devoted Aunt Ruby

  I place the letter to my chest and sigh. She wants me to save the store. I shake my head. How can I? I live in New York. I have a job. I can’t stay in Seattle. I can’t do this.

  I hear Ruby’s voice then: Yes, you can, dear.

  And for a moment, I believe her.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, I wake up in Ruby’s bed at five a.m., which would be eight a.m. New York time, and I chastise myself for sleeping in. Under normal circumstances, I would have been up hours ago. I’d have already run six miles, showered, and would be sitting at my desk with a phone in one hand and the other scrolling through e-mails on my computer.

  I stand up quickly, remembering the way my mom used to sleep late. And when I say late, I mean past noon. My sister and I could hardly rouse her. We’d lie beside her and watch her chest rise and fall, just to make sure she was still breathing. Her hair would always be frizzy and wild from a night of partying, and she’d smell of cigarettes and alcohol. Often there’d be a man in her bed. Amy and I never liked that. Once we took a permanent m
arker and drew a mustache on one guy’s upper lip. He was too hungover to notice when he woke up two hours later and staggered out the door. We never saw him again, but I often imagined him catching a glimpse of his reflection in a window somewhere and trying to rub it off. It still makes me laugh.

  It’s hard to blame Mom for her behavior. Her own mother, Aunt Ruby’s estranged older sister, died when Mom was just thirteen. At the time, Ruby hadn’t even met her nieces and nephews, as her sister, Lucille, had forbidden it. Evidently a longtime rift between the two sisters began when their parents had only enough funds to send one daughter to school back east, and they chose Ruby.

  In her sudden death, Lucille left Mom to care for her younger siblings while her emotionally distant father worked long hours. I remember overhearing Aunt Ruby and Mom talking, when they thought I wasn’t listening. “Janet,” Ruby said to Mom, “it’s understandable that you don’t want to be a mother because you were forced to be one at a young age. But you have two girls who depend on you, and love you dearly. Can’t you try a little harder for them?”

  I wondered a lot about Ruby’s relationship with her sister, Lucille. It seemed heartbreaking to me that a wall of icy silence could grow between two sisters, and yet . . . it happened to me. I shudder, forcing my mind to change the subject.

  The clock ticks loudly on the wall, and I dress quickly. I pull on a pair of running leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt. The sun is just coming up, and through the window, I can see the foggy mist rising over Green Lake. There’ll be time for a jog before I begin sorting through the store.

  I lace up my running shoes and walk down to the shop, where I hear the hiss and spurt of the old radiator. I smile, remembering the way I used to warm my hands over it on wintry afternoons.