Daisy’s pink-lipped mouth dropped open and her hand flew up to cover it. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”
For a while, Pippin would have answered that, no, she wasn’t. Her emotions had been spinning. But now she felt oddly removed, if she was being honest. The discovery hadn’t instantly erased all the anger and betrayal she’d had buried inside of her all these years. She would come to terms with it, she knew. She just hadn’t yet. “I will be,” she said.
“Listen,” Daisy said. “I’ve been thinking about the book you were telling me about. Your mom said something about no wife and children greeting him.”
“I don’t know if she said it, but I think I remember it.”
“Did you ever read The Odyssey?” she asked.
Pippin shook her head. She’d heard of it, of course, but reading an epic poem was a challenge she’d never taken upon herself.
“Odysseus is gone, fighting in the Trojan War. That’s the story in The Illiad. The Odyssey is his journey back home to his wife and son.”
“Okay. So why do you think that might be the book?”
Daisy’s eyes grew larger under the lenses of her glasses. She talked with her hands, moving them as she told Pippin her thought process. “Your mom said something about singing, right? No one would be singing to him. No children to greet him.”
That was Pippin’s vague memory, but she’d been so young. Only six years old. Maybe it wasn’t a memory at all, but something she’d made up in her mind. She just wasn’t sure, but she said, “I think so.”
“That’s the warning Circe gives Odysseus before he sets out to get back to Ithaca. He’s being warned about the Sirens.”
“Who are the Sirens?” Pippin asked, wishing now that she had read the book.
“They come from Greek mythology. They sang to passing sailors with hauntingly beautiful voices, but really they were luring the men to their deaths.” Pippin felt gooseflesh raise on her skin as Daisy continued. “It’s the warning that’s relevant here. Before Odysseus leaves Circe behind—that’s a whole ‘other story—she warns him about the Sirens. She’s the one who tells him to plug his own ears, and the crew’s ears, with beeswax so they won’t be lured to their death. The Sirens sing about the past and future truths of the men passing by. For Odysseus, this means the glory he’s had, but also the suffering from the battlefield in Troy. They promise to tell him about his future achievements, but Odysseus listened to Circe so he was prepared. He was tied to the mast and then his crew plugged their ears so they were able to escape.”
Daisy had grown animated telling Pippin the story. She stopped for a breath before continuing. “Here’s the important part. Circe tells Odysseus that if he succumbs to the Sirens, no woman will greet him and no children will be there for him. It’s her warning to him that he’ll never return home if he succumbs to the Sirens.”
As Pippin listened, her vision grew blurry. “Say it again,” she said, her voice low and almost hoarse.
“Circe tells Odysseus that if hears the Sirens’ song, he will not make it home to his wife and children.”
Pippin’s breath grew shallow. She forced herself to slow down. To take deep breaths. Once the heat cleared from her head. “Do you have a copy of the book in the library?”
Daisy shook her head. “We have one, but it’s checked out. Try The Open Door Bookshop.”
Chapter 8
“Don’t you ever mind,” she asked suddenly,
“not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”
~Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Pippin moved her sunglasses to the top of her head, the arms of the glasses holding back her hair and keeping wayward strands from sticking to her face. She stared up at the sign on the building.
The Open Door Bookshop
Purveyor of New, Used, and Antiquarian Books
It was quite a mouthful. She glanced at the two massive pots of colorful spring flowers flanking the door. She absently yanked a few sprouting weeds, discarding them in a nearby garbage can then opened the door and walked in. The air conditioning hitting her like cool evening breeze off the ocean. She’d taken just one step when her foot brushed against something. She stumbled, losing her balance and barely catching herself before she fell.
She frowned at the longhaired light gray tabby in front of her. “Where’d you come from?”
It gave her a haughty look with its translucent eyes.
Pippin stared right back, not backing down. Her grandmother had had two cats, both temperamental and entitled. The cats had only liked Grandmother Faye. Both Pippin and Grey still had scars from the scratches they suffered at the claws of the two felines.
Finally, the cat turned and sauntered away with a distinct swing of its hind quarters. It leapt up to the display window and found a spot between a stack of children’s books and a colorful beach ball. “Ha.” Pippin gloated. She’d stood her ground and the cat had blinked first.
She turned away, looking at the bookshop the cat seemed to reign over. A standing fan stood next to the door, keeping the air in the shop circulating. She took in the details of the shop with a discerning eye. A service counter with an old-fashioned cash register was front and center, a few paces from the front entrance. Knickknacks like book plates, book-themed mugs, bookmarks, games based on books, and stationary lined the exposed brick wall behind the counter. Beneath all the goodies was a shelf stacked with rubber banded groups of books, a white sheet of paper folded around each one. Special orders, she guessed.
The store itself was separated into two sections: new books and used books. Every single inch of every single wall was covered. Center freestanding shelves housed even more, divided into categories. In the nonfiction section, there were books on travel, poetry, nature, religion, self-help. On and on it went. In the fiction sections were books grouped by mysteries, romance, science fiction, fantasy, western, and dystopian. The list went on. Bestsellers. Historical fiction. Horror.
The books were small, large, thick, thin. Different colors. Different shades and tones of the same color. The spines of the books created a muted rainbow across the shelves dominated by hues of brown and yellow, black and white, blues and greens, and reds. Pippin marveled at the vastness of the collection. How many stories did the pages of all these books hold? But not only that, what stories did the books themselves tell? Who had held these volumes? Who had loved them, hidden under a sheet, flashlight in hand, to read them into the wee hours of the morning, or screeched from a shocking twist? Imaginary people came to life through the words on the page. Book boyfriends, best friends, worlds in which people wanted to live.
Worlds like the Shire, Pippin thought, the fictional place her father had loved above all others. She started to slip away into wonderings but was startled out of her thoughts when a man’s voice said, “Can I help you find something?”
Pippin turned abruptly, bumping her shoulder against a freestanding shelf. She prided herself on being aware of her surroundings. Her grandmother had kept a close eye on her and Grey. As a result, they’d both grown vigilant. They’d learned how to sneak in and out of the house undetected. They knew their grandparents’ routines down to the minute. Awareness was an old habit that had stuck with her, but thinking about her father had taken her away from the here and now for a moment. Now she looked at a man who’d started her. He stood at the end of the aisle, a stack of books in his arms. He wore wire-rimmed John Lennon glasses that fit him perfectly. The ends of his dark hair flipped out in a boyish manner, and long lines framed his mouth as he smiled. He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked up in amusement.