The Last Stop on My Book Route

I knew them. I’d read this book. I knew what came next, and when he came to the end of the sentence I knew it was the end before he did, and I was right.

I do not know how long I stood there. He read for fourteen minutes by the kitchen clock, which is two pages and part of a third.

Then he stopped. I heard him close the book. A man closing a book is a particular sound, a soft one, and I think I will be able to pick it out from any other noise in the world.

“That’s my turn,” Emil said.

I could not speak. I had my forehead against the wall by that time, against the wallpaper with the little yellow teapots, the same wallpaper I’d hung in 1986, and my shoulders were going. I made a noise. I have tried to describe it to Lori and I couldn’t.

“Verna,” Emil said, after a good while. “You still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Did you know?”

I said what was true. “I thought so. I wasn’t sure. I was never sure, Emil, I’m sorry. I never said a word.”

“I know you didn’t,” he said. “That’s the reason.”

“The reason for what?”

“For asking you to turn the book that first time.” The line hissed. He took a breath that I could hear. “I said turn it so’s I can follow along. I wanted to see what you’d do. And you turned it, and you put your finger down under the words, and you never said one word about it. And I thought, well. There’s somebody I could learn off of.”

I put my hand flat on the teapots.

“Sound is the hard half,” Emil said. “You gave me the sound. Every Thursday I had the sound of every word on that page in my ear, and your finger sat under it. Nights, after you were gone, I’d sit in here with the lamp and put my own finger where yours had been, and I’d say it. Then the words that came back around. The. And. It took me a year to know the. I never did tell anybody. Frank would’ve laughed at me, and he’s dead.” He waited. “Mim I told, this morning. I had to. I had to ask her who calls who. She’s got all the numbers.”

“You called Mim?”

“You wrote the whole list on the inside of my cupboard door in ’09, in case of a fire,” said Emil. “Mim’s on it. I can do numbers.”

Then he said, as if it settled it, “Same time Thursday. Don’t be late.”

And he hung up.

I stayed there until the kitchen got dark, which at that time of year is about six. I had not turned on a light. I sat on the floor under the phone with my back against the cabinet, in my driving shoes, and I let the evening come into the room, and what I did mostly was say thank you. I said it to the Lord, and I said it to a dead man named Frank, and I said it to the empty house.