“I know that you and Marie are not the best of friends,” my dad said, tidying up a stack of bookmarks that rested by the register. When the store opened, sometime in the sixties, my great-uncle who started it had commissioned these super cheesy bookmarks with a globe on them and an airplane circling it. They said “Travel the World by Reading a Book.” My father loved them so much that he had refused to update them. He had the same exact ones printed time and time again.
Whenever I picked one of them up, I would be struck by how perfectly they symbolized exactly what I resented about that bookstore.
I was going to travel the world by actually traveling it.
“But one day, sooner than you think, the two of you are going to realize how much you need each other,” my dad continued.
Adults love to tell teenagers that “one day” and “sooner or later” plenty of things are going to happen. They love to say that things happen “before you know it,” and they really love to impart how fast time “flies by.”
I would learn later that almost everything my parents told me in this regard turned out to be true. College really did “fly by.” I did change my mind about Keanu Reeves “sooner or later.” I was on the other side of thirty “before I knew it.” And, just as my father said that afternoon, “one day” I was going to need my sister very, very much.
But back then, I shrugged it off the same way teens all over the country were shrugging off every other thing their parents said at that very moment.
“Marie and I are not going to be friends. Ever. And I wish you guys would let up about it.”
My father listened, nodding his head slowly, and then looked away, focusing instead on tidying up another stack of bookmarks. Then he turned back to me. “I read you loud and clear,” he said, which is what he always said when he decided that he didn’t want to talk about something anymore.
Sam came out of the back and joined us up by the registers. The customer reading the book came over to the counter with the book in his hand and asked us to keep it on hold for him. No doubt so he could come back and read the same copy tomorrow, as if he owned the thing. My father acted as if he was delighted to do it. My father was very charming to strangers.
Right after the man left, my mom came out of her office in the back of the store. Unfortunately, Dad didn’t see her.
“I should tell your mother it’s time to go,” he said. I tried to stop him but he turned his head slightly and started yelling. “Ashley, Emma and Sam are here!”
“Jesus Christ, Colin,” my mom said, putting a hand to her ear. “I’m right here.”
“Oh, sorry.” He made a scrunched face to show that he’d made a mistake and then he gently touched her ear. It was gestures like that, small acts of intimacy between them, that made me think my parents probably still had sex. I was both repulsed and somewhat assuaged by the thought.
Olive’s parents always seemed on the edge of divorce. Marie’s friend Debbie practically lived at our house for two months a few years earlier when her parents were ironing out their own separation. So I was smart enough to know I was lucky to have parents who still loved each other.
“All right, well, since you’re both here, we will take off,” my mom said, heading toward the back to grab her things.
“I thought you weren’t leaving for your date until later,” I said to my father.
“Yeah, but why would we hang around when our daughter is here to do the work?” he said. “If we hurry, we can get home in time to take a disco nap.”
“What is a disco nap?” Sam asked.
“Don’t, Sam; it’s a trap,” I said.
Sam laughed. I never really made people laugh. I wasn’t funny the way Olive was funny. But, suddenly, around Sam I felt like maybe I could be.
“A disco nap, dear Samuel, is a nap that you take before you go out and party. You see, back in the seventies . . .”
I walked away, preemptively bored, and started reorganizing the table of best sellers by the window. Marie liked to sneak her favorite books on there, giving her best-loved authors a boost. My only interest was in keeping the piles straight. I did not like wayward corners.
I perked up only when I heard Sam respond to my father’s story about winning a disco contest in Boston by laughing and saying, “I’m so sorry to say this, but that’s not a very good story.”
My head shot up and I looked right at Sam, impressed.
My dad laughed and shook his head. “When I was your age and an adult told a bad story, do you know what I did?”
“Memorized it so you could bore us with it?” I piped in.
Sam laughed again. My father, despite wanting to pretend to be hurt, gave a hearty chuckle. “Forget it. You two can stay here and work while I’m out having fun.”
Sam and I shared a glance.
“Aha. Who’s laughing now?” my dad said.
My mom came out with their belongings and within minutes, my parents were gone, out the door to their car, on their way to take disco naps. I was stunned, for a moment, that they had left the store to Sam and me. Two people under the age of seventeen in charge for the evening? I felt mature, suddenly. As if I could be trusted with truly adult responsibilities.
And then Margaret, the assistant manager, pulled in and I realized my parents had called her to supervise.
“I’ll be in the back making the schedule for next week,” Margaret said just as soon as she came in. “If you need anything, holler.”
I looked over at Sam, who was standing by the register, leaning over the counter on his elbows.
I went into the biography section and started straightening that out, too. The store was dead quiet. It seemed almost silly to have two people out in front and one in the back. But I knew that I was here as a punishment and Sam was here because my parents wanted to give him hours.
I resolved to sit on the floor and flip through Fodor’s travel books if nobody else came in.
“So what did you think of Charles Mingus?” Sam asked. I was surprised to see that he had left the area by the cash register and was just a few aisles down, restocking journals.
“Oh,” I said. “Uh . . . Very cool.”
Sam laughed. “You liar,” he said. “You hated it.”
I turned and looked at him, embarrassed to admit the truth. “Sorry,” I said. “I did. I hated it.”
Sam shook his head. “Totally fine. Now you know.”
“Yeah, if someone asks me if I like jazz, I can say no.”
“Well, you might still like jazz,” Sam offered. “Just because you don’t like Mingus doesn’t mean . . .” He trailed off as he saw the look on my face. “You’re already ready to write off all of jazz?”
“Maybe?” I said, embarrassed. “I don’t think jazz is my thing.”
He grabbed his chest as if I’d stabbed him in the heart.
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “I’m sure there are plenty of things I love that you’d hate.”
“Try me,” he said.
“Romeo + Juliet,” I said confidently. It had proven to be a definitive dividing line between boys and girls at school.
Sam was looking back at the journals in front of him. “The play?” he asked.
“The movie!” I corrected him.
He shook his head as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“You’ve never seen Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio?” I was aware of the fact that there were other versions of Romeo and Juliet, but back then, there was no Romeo but Leo. No Juliet but Claire Danes.
“I don’t really watch that many new movies,” Sam said.
A mother and son came in and headed straight for the children’s section in the back. “Do you have The Velveteen Rabbit?” the mom asked.
Sam nodded and walked with her, toward the stacks at the far end of the store.
I moved toward the cash register. When they came back, I was ready to ring them up, complete with a green plastic bag and a “Travel the World by Reading a Book” bookmark. When she was out the door, I turned to Sam. He was standing to the side, leaning on a table, with nothing to do.