A Northern Light(49)

Miss Wilcox raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not. I don't like any of the boys around here."

"Why not?"

"I suppose it's hard to like anyone real after Captain Wentworth and Colonel Brandon," I said, trying my best to sound worldly wise. "Jane Austen ruins you for farm boys and loggers."

Miss Wilcox laughed. "Jane Austen ruins you for everything else, too," she said. "Do you like her books?"

"I like them some."

"Just 'some'? Why not a lot?"

"Well, ma'am, I think she lies."

Miss Wilcox put her teacup down. "Does she?"

"Yes, ma'am, she does."

"Why do you think that, Mattie?"

I was not used to my elders asking me what I think—not even Miss Wilcox—and it made me nervous. I had to collect myself before I answered her. "Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths...," I began.

"Go on," she said.

"The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that. Like Sense and Sensibility ox Persuasion. But the second kind, they show you life more like it is. Like in Huckleberry Finn where Huck's pa is a no-good drunk and Jim suffers so. The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up."

"People like happy endings, Mattie. They don't want to be shaken up."

"I guess not, ma'am. It's just that there are no Captain Wentworths, are there? But there are plenty of Pap Finns. And things go well for Anne Elliott in the end, but they don't go well for most people." My voice trembled as I spoke, as it did whenever I was angry. "I feel let down sometimes. The people in books—the heroes—they're always so ... heroic. And I try to be, but..."

"...you're not," Lou said, licking deviled ham off her fingers.

"...no, I'm not. People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way ... and I feel, well ... hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way?" I asked too loudly. "Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books, Miss Wilcox," I said, pointing at a pile of them, "and I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like. I can, though. It stinks. Like meat gone bad and dirty clothes and bog water all mixed together. Why doesn't anyone tell you that?"

No one spoke for a few seconds. I could hear the clock ticking and the sound of my own breathing. Then Lou quietly said, "Cripes, Mattie. You oughtn't to talk like that."

I realized then that Miss Wilcox had stopped smiling. Her eyes were fixed on me, and I was certain she'd decided I was morbid and dispiriting like Miss Parrish said and that I should leave then and there.

"I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just ... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay."

Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry."

She glanced at Lou, set the whole plate of cakes before her, then rose and beckoned me to her writing table. She picked up a glass paperweight shaped like an apple and took two books from under it. "Thérèse Raquin," she said solemnly, "and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Best not tell anyone you have them." Then she took her writing paper out of its box, put the books in the box, covered them with a few sheets of paper, and handed the box to me.

I smiled, thinking that my teacher sure was dramatic. "Cripes, Miss Wilcox, they're not guns," I said.

"No, they're not, Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous." She stole another glance at Lou, then asked me, "Has there been any progress?"

"No, ma'am. And there's not likely to be."

"Would you consider working for me, then? I need help with my library, as you can see. I'd like you to come and arrange my books. Sort them into nonfiction and fiction, and then sort fiction into novels, plays, short stories, and poetry, and shelve them alphabetically. I'll pay you. A dollar each time."

It was only the first week of May. If I worked for Miss Wilcox one day a week throughout the summer, I'd have sixteen dollars or so by the time September came. Enough for a train ticket and then some. I wanted to say yes so badly, but then I heard Royal asking me why I was always reading about other people's lives, and felt his lips on mine. I heard my aunt telling me to get down off my high horse and Pa saying I didn't need to go to Miss Wilcox's to find work, there was plenty for me at my own house. And I heard my mamma, asking me to make a promise.

"I can't, Miss Wilcox," I said. "I can't get away."

"Surely you can, Mattie. Just for an hour or two. I'll drive you home. Come this Saturday."