Yours Jean Read online

  YOURS, JEAN

  YOURS, JEAN

  AA NOVELA

  LEE MARTIN

  5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd.

  Ann Arbor, MI 48103

  www.dzancbooks.org

  YOURS. JEAN. Copyright © 2020, text by Lee Martin. All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Dzanc Books, 5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48103.

  First Edition: May 2020

  Cover design by Matt Revert

  Interior design by Michelle Dotter

  ISBN: 9781950539147

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and names appearing in this work are a product of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  In memory of Georgine Lyon, 1928-1952

  “...she will not be alone.

  She will have a book to open

  and open and open.

  Her life starts here.”

  —Naomi Shihab Nye,

  “Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things”

  “What is there sadd’ning in the Autumn leaves?”

  —William Cullen Bryant,

  “The Indian Summer”

  1

  JEAN WOKE JUST BEFORE DAWN to the sound of birds singing in the maple tree outside her window.

  Cheer, cheer, cheer, they seemed to be saying.

  The cardinals’ song, the sweet call of daybreak. A perfect accompaniment to the gladness rising in her heart.

  She’d lain awake long into the night, too excited to sleep, and had finally dozed off in the wee hours. Now the sky was brightening. She gave the window shade a tug and let it retract on its roller. Here at the end of summer, the nights were still warm enough to sleep with the window up, and she felt the morning breeze move over her legs, bare below the hem of the rayon nightgown she’d let the lady at Delzell’s sell her when she’d gone shopping for the sorts of clothes she imagined a woman might wear if indeed that woman were her, Miss Jean De Belle, the new librarian and English teacher at Lawrenceville High—a woman setting out on her own.

  “Rayon will wash and dry much faster than cotton,” the clerk told her, “and I know how important time will be to a busy gal like you.” The clerk was a tall, angular woman who wore cat-eye glasses with silver flowers etched onto the black frames. “Sweetie, just feel it. Now isn’t that soft? Imagine how that’ll feel against your skin. Ooh la lah.”

  Why not, Jean thought. Why not ditch the kid pajamas and wear something more womanly.

  The clerk’s name was Mildred. “But most folks call me Midge. Sweetie, I’m going to take good care of you. I’m going to set you up with exactly what you need.”

  Jean let Midge guide her through the purchase of dresses and skirts and blouses and sweaters—even stockings and shoes and gloves and scarves, and a winter coat she didn’t really need, but it was a swing coat, Midge said. “Very chic, sweetie.” And like that, it was hers.

  Her new wardrobe was now carefully hung and folded in the closet and the dresser drawers inside her rented room at 115 Dubois Street, the home of Mrs. Mary Ellen McVeigh, an English teacher at the high school. A widow with a daughter, Robbie, who was starting her senior year and reminded Jean of herself at that age, when she was impatient for her grown-up life to begin.

  Now here it was—at long last, the start of things for her. Soon Mary Ellen and Robbie would be up, and then the shared bath in the hall would be in demand. She grabbed her robe.

  “Better shake a leg,” she said aloud, and then grimaced at the sound of those words, something her former fiancé, Charlie, had said time and time again. She’d done her best to forget it—and him. Even her parents, who’d liked him at first, finally saw what she’d been trying to tell them. She had to let him go.

  She felt a bit of gloom move over her. Then she laughed it away. The birds were still singing; the sun was up. It was a glorious day at the start of September, and she was ready—more than ready—to step into it.

  “Oh, my,” Mary Ellen said when Jean came downstairs for breakfast. Mary Ellen was untying her apron, and she paused a moment, her hands behind her back, as Jean took careful steps down the stairs. “You look like a million bucks. Doesn’t she, Robbie? Doesn’t Jean...I mean, Miss De Belle...doesn’t Miss De Belle look grand?”

  Robbie sat at the dining table eating a piece of toast. She was wearing the sort of pajamas Jean had worn just a month ago—striped pants and shirt—and she had a head full of rag curlers. She let her toast drop to her saucer and gave Jean an appraising eye. Robbie was a pretty girl with blond hair and a fair complexion, marred this morning by a single pimple on her chin. Jean would wonder later if that was what had her in a snit—a pimple on the first day of school, the first day of her senior year to boot. Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!

  That was the saying among the kiddos that summer. Jean heard it at the drive-in theater, the city pool, the county fair—the teenagers’ cry of anger and exasperation. Hell’s bells and little catfish, hell’s bells and shotgun shells, hell’s bells and buckets of blood! Ever since Jean had moved in and Mary Ellen had latched onto her—We’ll be best friends, Jean. Just you wait and see.—Robbie had seemed to hold her in contempt.

  Now she said, “I suppose. If you like that sort of look.” She brushed toast crumbs from the tips of her fingers and pushed her chair back from the table. “It’s a little too severe for my taste.” She drew a square, her two forefingers coming apart and then meeting again at the bottom. “But I’m sure Miss De Belle wants to make a good impression, this being her first job and all. If she wants to look like an old maid, I’d say she’s certainly turned the trick.”

  “Robbie Sue McVeigh!” Mary Ellen whipped off her apron and threw it at Robbie, but the girl was already running up the stairs, her arm knocking against Jean’s. “I’m so sorry,” Mary Ellen said. “Ever since her father died, she’s been impossible.”

  “No need to apologize.” Jean stooped and retrieved the apron and held it out to Mary Ellen. The apron was organdy with hand-painted red roses. So sheer and pretty, Jean thought, something Mr. McVeigh must have liked seeing his wife wear in the kitchen. “It can’t have been easy for her.”

  “Oh, you know how it is with teenage girls.” Mary Ellen took the apron and folded it nicely. “Nothing’s ever easy with them.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Jean said, uncomfortably aware that only a few years ago, she’d been one of those difficult teenage girls. You’d bite off your nose to spite your face, her mother always told her. Jean Georgine De Belle! You need to grow up. That’s what she was trying to do. That’s exactly what she intended—to grow up and make something of her life that would matter.

  “Sometimes,” she said to Mary Ellen, “I get the feeling that Robbie has no use for me.”

  “Welcome to the club.” Mary Ellen laughed. “You know she blames me for Mr. McVeigh’s death.”

  Jean looked down at her new shoes—a pair of two-eyelet oxfords, red leather, trimmed with blonde. She liked the sturdy heels and the noise they made on the hardwood floor. A smart shoe that would wear well, Midge at Delzells’s had assured her. A shoe for someone whose steps were sure. A shoe that her mother would have chosen. Jean looked down at her shoes to remind herself that she’d need to be confident and strong with the people her life was about to make room for—her students and colleagues. She looked down at her shoes because she hadn’t known Mary Ellen long enough to be comfortable with the intimacy she was about to share.

  For whatever reason, folks with hard-luck stories always felt they could confide in her. Her mother said it was because she had such a friendly smile, but Jean believed people like Mary Ellen could sense that there was a sadness, an inclination toward melancholy, just beneath her friendly smile. It was true; she was a sucker for a sad story, but she was trying to steel herself against sharing too much. She was trying to stiffen her backbone to face all the ways her students would try to take advantage of her.

  “I really don’t need to know that,” she said to Mary Ellen, and then moved quickly to take a seat at the table where a glass of orange juice had already been set out for her. “Really, I have no business in your affairs.”

  Mary Ellen sat down next to Jean and took her hand. “Aren’t we best friends?” she said. She leaned forward, a sad grin on her face. Jean could tell she’d never felt she had a friend with whom she could share the details of her life. Mary Ellen was a woman just past forty, with a streak of gray hair showing in the roll that she backcombed from her forehead, a style Jean remembered her mother favoring a decade before. Now everyone sported shorter cuts with curls and waves. Oh, Mother, Jean had heard Robbie say. You really need to do something with your hair. Not that Jean was any movie star, but she agreed that Mary Ellen could spiff herself up some. That streak of gray? A shorter cut and a box of Miss Clairol would fix that right up.

  Jean withdrew her hand from Mary Ellen’s, with just the slightest difficulty, and looked at her wristwatch.

  Mary Ellen said, “Mr. McVeigh...”

  Jean interrupted her. “Geez, would you look at the time. Wouldn’t want to be late the first day, now would we?”

  There was a flurry of activity: a rumble of a car engine, a series of loud horn honks, a boy’s voice calling out, “Robbie. Hey, Robbie. Shake a leg, will ya?”
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  “It’s that boy,” Mary Ellen said. “Tom Heath and his jalopy. I wish Robbie had never taken up with him.”

  Then Robbie was running down the stairs, the rag curlers out of her hair now—that soft bob—and the pajamas traded for a red circle skirt and a white blouse with puff sleeves.

  “Coming,” she said. “Hold your horses.”

  She was out the door with a slam, and then Tom Heath’s jalopy was roaring away. Mary Ellen said time was wasting and she was yet to finish dressing, and Jean had a few blessed minutes of silence to drink her juice and find some coffee and toast in the kitchen and to gather herself for whatever might find its way to her that day.

  Then Mary Ellen was back with her pocketbook and her car keys, a sweater over her shoulders. Somehow she looked just right. Jean suddenly felt out of place in her new clothes and shoes. Those shoes that were already pinching her toes, a navy blue dress with a Peter Pan collar and a red fabric belt, a Parker 51 fountain pen—a college graduation gift from Charlie that she couldn’t bring herself to throw away—clipped to her breast pocket. She felt like she was playing teacher the way she’d done when she was a little girl.

  “Ready?” Mary Ellen asked.

  “You bet,” said Jean.

  “Well, all right then. Here we go.”

  Jean had looked forward to this moment ever since she arrived in Lawrenceville at the beginning of August and moved into her room at Mary Ellen’s house—this moment when she unlocked the door to the library and stepped inside. She loved the quiet. Soon the hallways would fill with students on their way to assembly. She loved the way the morning sun came through the windows and slanted over the wooden tables. That and the slight crackle of the fluorescent lights as she flipped the switches. There was the card catalog, the brass pulls of its drawers worn smooth and slightly tarnished from years of use. There was the globe in its floor stand, ready to be spun, and there were the shelves and shelves of books, all in their proper place, all of them the domain of Miss Jean De Belle, who took a few steps into her library on this beautiful morning in September and stood there, more convinced than ever that she’d done the right thing when she’d broken off her engagement to Charlie Camplain.

  She’d loved the month she spent learning her new town, even if Mary Ellen had seemed a bit too desperate for her company. She loved the way the sunlight came into her room and the sound of the courthouse clock chiming the hour. She loved the lazy days. Often, she and Mary Ellen whiled away the afternoons swaying back and forth in the porch swing. Or maybe Mary Ellen would say, “How about an ice cream?” and off they’d go to George’s on the square for chocolate sundaes. Afterward, they’d stroll around the square, window shopping, and later they’d drop into the Candle Lite restaurant for dinner.

  “Just a couple of gals,” Mary Ellen often said. “A couple of gals out on the town.”

  There were movies to see at the Avalon Theatre, and some days they went to the city pool and sunned themselves on chaise lounges in their modest one-piece bathing suits. Sometimes they took books to read, and time drifted by, neither of them saying a word.

  One day, Mary Ellen read a short poem to her.

  Without warning

  as a whirlwind

  swoops on an oak

  Love shakes my heart

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Mary Ellen said.

  It was. Jean felt it inside her, that shaking, the way she’d felt when she first fell in love with Charlie. And then, just as in the poem, without warning she was crying. A silent crying, the sort most people wouldn’t notice, but Mary Ellen did.

  “My dear girl.”

  She closed the book and reached out and took Jean’s hand. A group of teenage girls were chattering nearby, and Jean noticed they stopped when Mary Ellen took her hand. They looked on in silence for a moment and then exploded into giggles. They put their heads close together and whispered.

  “My dear Jean,” Mary Ellen said. “You’re crying.”

  “It’s just so beautiful,” Jean said, and as much as she wanted to pull her hand away she couldn’t. She squeezed Mary Ellen’s hand. She held tight. “You know that, don’t you?” she said.

  Mary Ellen nodded. “Sometimes the world is so marvelous it takes us by the throat.”

  “Yes, that’s it exactly,” Jean said.

  That was the moment, Mary Ellen said later, when she knew the two of them were simpatico. “We understand, you and I,” she said. “We know the beauty and the pain.”

  Now, in the library, Jean opened her purse to get a handkerchief, and she saw a sheet of folded paper. On it was the poem in Mary Ellen’s handwriting. A sweet gift on the first day of school. A reminder of how swiftly love can come.

  “It’s all yours.” Mary Ellen’s voice startled her, and Jean turned quickly to see her standing in the doorway. “Your own library, dear. I wish you years and years.”

  Jean folded the sheet of paper and slipped it into her skirt pocket. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for the poem. Thank you for giving me a home. Thank you for this last month. You’ve made me feel so welcome.”

  Mary Ellen smiled. “And you, my dear, have brought me such joy.”

  “I only hope the students like me,” Jean said. “I hope I can help them along.”

  “Don’t let Robbie trouble you.” So Mary Ellen knew what Jean had been thinking. “She’s a hard nut.” Mary Ellen came into the room and stood close to Jean and lowered her voice. “She’s got senior-itis, not to mention Tom Heath-itis.” Mary Ellen grinned, her lips twitchy, and then a single loud “Ha!” exploded from her. She put her hand to her mouth. Then she took it away and said, in a much calmer tone, “You know how it is with girls.”

  Jean did know. Hadn’t she been smitten with Charlie, so much so that she’d agreed to marry him, had worn his engagement ring, had set a date that had now come and gone, had ignored what troubled her about him—his drinking, his temper—because her mother told her no man was perfect and a marriage would always hit a few rough patches along the way, but nothing two people who loved each other couldn’t work through.

  “You do love him, don’t you?” her mother asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” Jean said. Then she added in a whisper, “I guess.”

  “Young girls shouldn’t get all wrapped up in a boy,” she said now to Mary Ellen. “They have their whole lives ahead of them.”

  “Try telling that to Robbie.” Mary Ellen laughed again. “She thinks her whole life is right now.”

  Jean could hear locker doors opening and closing in the hallway. Mary Ellen glanced behind her. “I better get to my homeroom,” she said. “The heathens will be upon us soon. I’ll see you at assembly, Jean. You know the principal will expect you to say a few words after he introduces you to the students, right?”

  “Yes, he informed me.”

  “Okay, then.” Mary Ellen gave Jean a quick kiss on the cheek. “A kiss for luck. I know you’ll do just fine.”

  She squeezed her hand, and then she was gone. Jean felt a wave of panic come over her. The thought of standing in front of the student body at assembly and coming up with something to say about herself momentarily shook her confidence.

  Standing there in the library, her new life about to begin in earnest, she was surprised to feel a twinge of sadness for everything she’d been about to have with Charlie before she decided to let it go. Would she do it differently if she could? She really couldn’t say, and what was the use of the question now? She’d made her decision, and now here it was—the first day of school, the day that in her mind marked the end of one stage of her life and the true beginning of another.

  She turned around once more to take in the splendor of the library—her library—and then she heard a small voice behind her. “Oh, my,” that voice said.

  Jean turned and saw a young girl taking a few hesitant steps into the library. A freshman, if Jean was any judge. She clutched a loose-leaf notebook to her chest. Her hair was raggedly cut into a bob, and she wore rimless glasses. A blond girl with pale skin. Her clothes were out of style—a plain print housedress, a pair of worn oxford shoes—and Jean thought she might be one of those who rode the bus in from the country. Someone who came from one of the two-room township schools, maybe Birds or Pinkstaff. “I just wanted to see,” the girl said in a trembling voice. “Oh, gosh. I just wanted to see all the books.”