Confessions on the 7:45(37)

“I just don’t care,” she said exasperated. Once he was on a topic, you could not get him off. “You’ve seen the kind of men she’s with. What if I went looking and found him? What if he was just another tattooed muscle head, someone with a man bun? What if he worked in marketing?”

Charlie laughed. They were packing up books for return, filling boxes, sealing them, printing address labels. It was always so hopeful when the new shipment arrived and they stocked the bestsellers, the obscure literary titles, the new nonfiction. Every book crisp, unopened, waiting for its reader. Then, after a certain point, the books went back if they didn’t sell. The publisher refunded the money.

It seemed to Pearl that more and more books went back. The store was empty much of the time, despite Charlie’s efforts to increase foot traffic. Mom had a new boyfriend; but Charlie stayed. He manned the store, took care of Pearl—drove her home and made sure she had dinner. He even proofread her homework. He, Charlie, who had been in her life for fewer than six months, was more a parent than she’d ever had. She kept this to herself.

“Your mom didn’t come in today,” said Charlie. The packing tape made a loud hiss as he ran its dispenser over the box, sealing the fate of the books inside. Return to sender.

Pearl had a nightmare last night. Raised voices, some kind of loud bang. A scream. She woke panicked. But when she walked out of her bedroom, the house was quiet. There was a dim light from under the door of her mother’s room, music playing. She knew better than to knock, looking for comfort. In the morning, she hadn’t seen Stella. But she’d heard the toilet flush, water running for the shower.

Pearl ate a bowl of sugary cereal and left for the bus; she hadn’t thought about her mother again.

“Late night, I think.”

Charlie, who was smallish, was very strong. Hauling heavy boxes, stacking them.

“The store is not doing so well, Pearl,” he said. “I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“The store never does well,” said Pearl. “It’s a bookstore. That’s the model.”

“Yeah, but it’s been operating in the red all year.”

Pearl shrugged. The mysteries of how her mother made ends meet did not interest her. It’s your job to be a kid, my job to worry about everything else, which was a very motherly thing that the nonmotherly Stella often said.

“There’s a stack of past due bills,” said Charlie. Then he shook his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. You’re just a kid.”

“She owns the building.”

It was a big warehouse on the bad side of town, an area that was supposed to gentrify but hadn’t. There was someone in Stella’s life who had given her money in the past, a large sum. She turned to him when things got tight and he always came through. Who he was, why he’d give Stella money, Pearl had no idea. Stella called him her “benefactor.” But she hadn’t mentioned him in a while.

“Yeah, but there’s a tax bill she hasn’t paid,” said Charlie.

Pearl shrugged.

“Forget it. I’ll talk to her again,” said Charlie with an easy wave. “She’ll have a plan for how to manage if I know Stella.”

Did anyone know Stella?

Pearl held an unread paperback in her hands. On the cover a faceless woman in a flowery dress drifted dreamily past a beach house. She stacked the book in the box with the others.

Pearl watched Charlie pack and seal, lift and carry. She pretended not to watch him, or to notice that he sometimes watched her. She didn’t know how old he was; he didn’t look much older than the senior boys at school—he was narrow, pretty around the eyes, clean-shaven always. He had a long nose and full mouth that looked very serious until right before he smiled.

“What about your father?” asked Pearl. He rarely talked about himself, his family, where he came from. Just snippets here and there.

“My father,” he said, dropping a box, “was a monster.”

“Really?”

He turned to her, wiped a forearm across the sweat on his brow. “Yes, really. He was a drunk, an abuser. A con man.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He’s dead now.” Another box on the dolly. His face was still; there was no tension to him, as if he was just stating the facts.

“And your mom?”

“She’s gone, too.” He sealed the final box.

“It’s just you.”

“Yes. An orphan. The only child of unhappy people.”

“That—sucks,” she said. Because what else was there to say?

He shrugged. “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset, right? What’s that book? Pinkalicious?”

A book about a spoiled girl who was in a rage over cupcakes.

“But she got very upset.”

Charlie smiled in that knowing way he had.

“And how did that work out for her?” he asked.

“I think she made herself sick—or something like that.”

“So there you go.” He nodded in affirmation and Pearl laughed as he rolled the dolly out to the front door, where the UPS guy would pick the boxes up. The sun was setting, and the store was completely empty. The after-school thing had petered out. The open mic night dried up when they stopped serving free food and wine, which they could ill afford in the first place.