Waterstone's
by Alcott
Rated PG

Claire grabs the heavy brass door handle attached to an even heavier solid wood door and heaves it open. It takes a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside the bookstore because outside on the street it had been squintingly bright. It is the kind of May day when everything is bursting with new growth. The trees are pushing forth their baby leaves, the flowers are blazing and stoic Bostonians' blood rushes a tiny bit faster having made it through another winter.

The day before, Claire had decided to treat herself to a haircut on posh Newbury Street. She doesn't bother to get it cut that often because she hates to fuss over it once she's home. She's a wash and go young woman. But every now and then she likes to lean back in that chair and let the warm water spill over her scalp, feel the gentle hands of the stylist taking care of her. With her eyes closed, she allows herself to be pampered.

Leaving the salon, the breeze catches Claire's red hair and blows the just-sprayed do into a more normal thick tangle that she tucks behind her ears. She heads up a couple of blocks to Waterstone's Bookstore on Exeter Street, one of her favorite places to browse. It once was an old theater; the bookstore has maintained the grand staircases sweeping up all three floors, red carpet leading her up to the poetry section at the top.

Standing at a table loaded with neat piles of paperbacks, Claire runs her hand over the covers until a favorite name catches her eye. She revels in a volume of Pablo Neruda, Spanish on the left hand page, English on the right. Her grandmother loved Neruda. "His poetry is so vibrant and earthy," she used to say. Sometimes over and over, "Fleshly apple, hot moon. Fleshly apple, hot moon." She and Claire would recite poems while working in the garden at their home in a small Cape Cod town.

Gran wouldn't ever plant flowers in the yard. "Pretty, but useless," she said. Instead, they grew popcorn all along the yard. It grew tall enough to block out the front windows, hiding the house from the street. The neighbors tsked about Laura Scott. They turned away when she spoke to herself in the grocery store. They murmured behind their hands at church, and they told their children to avoid her on the street. And that had extended to Claire as well. The kids in town were not especially mean, but still wary, as if Gran might rub off on her and she could start to babble at any moment.

But Claire knew Gran was still in there even on her bad days. The days the medication didn't help so much. The days the CIA staked out their street and she believed Claire's mother was trying to poison her food. Even after they moved her to a full-time care facility, Gran would read Neruda with her granddaughter.

Claire hears some footsteps and looks up to see a young man walking toward her. He is compact, not too tall, light brown hair and blue eyes that might twinkle if he didn't look so earnest. He comes to a halt on the other side of the table and opens his mouth as if to say something, but then looks down and half-heartedly picks up a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. His hands are square and the nails neatly trimmed, Claire notices.

She returns to Pablo.

He tries again. "Excuse me, I... ," he pauses, his face filling with hope. "I just followed you in from the street." Claire tenses. Followed her?

"I just had to tell you...," he takes a deep breath and finishes in one long exhale. "My name is Leo and I had to tell you how beautiful your hair is. The color in the sunshine, it...it's just so red. I... I had to say something."

Claire doesn't know how to respond. Men don't say things like this to her. (In fact, she doesn't really believe they do things like this for anyone, only in the movies when they have a script to direct their actions.)

"Thanks." She doesn't introduce herself, but just looks at him waiting for something to happen next.

Leo's face washes over with disappointment. He nods once and backs away. Claire watches the top of his bowed head disappear down the stairs.

She sighs and bends her own head back down into the book.

Pablo continues to flow from the pages. Odes and sonnets wash over her as she takes the book to a big upholstered chair near a window and continues to read:

"She walked
like fire, and, like smoke,
when she closed her eyes
she became the invisible, unencompassable night."

Just like Gran, she thinks. When she was aware, she was like fire, radiating frantic energy, and giving off a blinding light that few could stand to look at. But when Gran wasn't present, when the illness took over, she became a black hole in the fabric of their family. Everything else was lost in the darkness of caring for a schizophrenic.

Claire remembers when Gran died the year before. She remembers how her mother came home from the funeral and pulled up all the popcorn from the front yard. Claire tried to stop her, but she was on a mission to remove all the craziness from her own life. The illness had taken over; the illness had won. Claire's mom had lost her own mother. But she reclaimed her home for the side of the sane. Claire saw it as removing Gran from their house, but Mom yanked until they were all gone. More holes, gaping brown in the lawn, where Gran used to be.

Claire swallows hard and looks out on the street. People bustle. She misses her Gran.

"We
the wandering
poets
explored
the world,
at every door
life received us,
we took part
in the earthly struggle.
What was our victory?"

What is her victory? She doesn't know. No, she does know, she's just scared. Don't think too much, she tells herself. Claire scoops up the book and her purse and rushes to the stairs. She is on a mission. The second floor, all through it she is looking for Leo. She hopes she isn't too late. The first floor, she races past the magazine racks and stops in the cafe. Leo is there.

Before she can talk herself out of it, she pulls out the chair across from him and sits down. "I'm Claire," she says to his perplexed face. "I'm sorry, I was rude before. Thank you for the compliment. I'm not used to hearing that."

"That's okay." Leo still isn't sure about her.

"Can we try it again?" She extends her hand across the table, "Hi, I'm Claire Scott. It's nice to meet you." He puts down his paper cup and takes her hand. His fingers are warm. "Leo Brayton." This time his eyes dance. "Claire Scott, would you like to go for a walk?"

"Very much." Claire smiles too.

Leaving the bookstore, they walk over to Commonwealth Avenue and turn west toward Kenmore Square. They talk. Leo is a medical student. He tells her about some of the patients he has already seen on rounds in the hospital. He describes the elderly couples who refuse to part, the young children who fight cancer with more grace than any adult could ever muster. He mentions some of the psych patients he has seen come into the emergency room; his voice fills with compassion for them. Claire thinks she might tell him about Gran one day and he would understand.

The crowds on the street thicken. There is an afternoon Red Sox game today and vendors jam Yawkey Way. Leo asks if she would like anything.

"Yes," Claire says, "popcorn." Leo asks the man behind the popcorn cart for a large bag.

"Sure," the man says, "I'm just popping a new batch right now." Leo turn to Claire and holds up a finger. "One minute." The popcorn man tips a bag of golden kernels up into a large hopper over a heated vat of oil. His shoulder, which he had wrenched thirty years before playing baseball with his buddies (They had just seen Carl Yazstremski play a great game at Fenway.), spasms and the entire bag pours into the vat.

Element + heat = reaction. The popcorn pops faster than the individual bursts can be heard. The din fills the street as the crowd gathers to watch the machine fill up and spill over. Yawkey Way fills with white fluffy warm popcorn. It smells like wonder and everyone smiles. The breeze, still playing with Claire's hair, swirls through the street and lifts the growing drifts. Claire and Leo laugh together, and she slips her hand through his arm.

Amidst the cloud of white kernels, Pablo speaks, "The only thing you remember is your life."