The Giver of Stars Read online

  “I mind because your family and your neighbors are harping on about it all the time! And they’re going to keep on unless you explain what’s going on! Or just . . . do something about it!”

  She had gone too far. Bennett rose abruptly from the swing seat and strode off, slamming the screen door behind him. There was a sudden silence in the parlor. As the male voices slowly picked up again, Alice sat on the swing seat, listening to the crickets and wondering how she could be in a house full of people and also in the loneliest place on earth.

  * * *

  • • •

  It had not been a good week at the library. The mountains turned from lush green to a fiery orange, the leaves forming a coppery carpet on the ground that muffled the horses’ hoofs, the hollers filling with thick morning mists, and Margery observed that half her librarians were out of sorts. She watched Alice’s uncharacteristically set jaw and shadowed eyes, and might perhaps have made an effort to sway her out of her mood, but she herself was antsy, still not having heard back from Sophia. Every evening she attempted to repair the more damaged books among their haul, but that pile had grown to a teetering height, and the thought of all the work, or all those wasted books, dismayed her even more. There was no time for her to do anything but get back on the mule and take another load out.

  The appetite for books had become relentless. Children followed them down the street, begging for something to read. Families they saw fortnightly would beg for the same weekly allowance as those on the shorter routes, and the librarians would have to explain that there were only four of them and they were out all the hours of the day as it was. The horses were periodically lame from the long hours up hard, flinty tracks (“If I have to take Billy sideways up Fern Gully again I swear he’s going to end up with two legs longer than the others”), and Patch developed girth sores so that he was off work for days.

  It was never enough. And the strain was starting to show. As they returned on Friday evening, mud and fallen leaves treading in on their boots to add to the mess, Izzy snapped at Alice after she had tripped on Izzy’s saddlebag and broken the strap. “Mind yourself!”

  Alice stooped to pick it up as Beth peered at it. “Well, you shouldn’t have left it on the floor, should you?”

  “It was only there a minute. I was trying to put my books down and I needed my stick. What am I supposed to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Get your ma to buy you another?”

  Izzy reeled as if she had been slapped and glared at Beth. “You take that back.”

  “Take what back? It’s the damn truth.”

  “Izzy, I’m sorry,” said Alice, after a moment. “It—it really was an accident. Look, I’ll see if I can find someone to fix it over the weekend.”

  “You didn’t need to be mean, Beth Pinker.”

  “Shoot. Your skin’s thinner than a dragonfly’s wing.”

  “Can you two stop bickering and enter your books? I’d like to be out of here by midnight.”

  “I can’t enter mine because you haven’t done yours, and if I bring my books over we’re just going to get those mixed up with the ones by your feet.”

  “The books by my feet, Izzy Brady, are the ones you left yesterday because you couldn’t be bothered to shelve them.”

  “I told you Mother had to pick me up early so she could get to her quilting circle!”

  “Oh, well. We can’t get in the way of a damn quilting circle, can we?”

  Their voices had reached a pitch. Beth eyed Izzy from the corner of the room, where she had just emptied her own saddlebags, along with a lunch pail and an empty lemonade bottle.

  “Ah, shucks. You know what we need?”

  “What?” said Izzy, suspiciously.

  “We need to let our hair down a little. We’re all work and no play.” She grinned. “I think we need to have us a meeting.”

  “We’re having a meeting,” said Margery.

  “Not this kind of meeting.” Beth strode past them, stepping neatly over the books. She opened the door and stepped outside, where her little brother was sitting on the steps, waiting. The women occasionally bought Bryn a poke of candies in return for running errands, and he looked up hopefully. “Bryn, go tell Mr. Van Cleve that Alice here has to stay late for a meeting on library policy and that we’ll walk her home when we’re done. Then head over to Mrs. Brady’s and tell her the same—actually, don’t tell her it’s library policy. She’ll be down here faster than you can say Mrs. Lena B. Nofcier. Tell her . . . tell her we’re cleaning our saddles. Then you tell Mama the same thing, and I’ll buy you a twist of Tootsie Rolls.”

  Margery narrowed her eyes. “This had better not be—”

  “I’ll be right back. And, hey—Bryn? Bryn! You tell Daddy I was smoking and I’ll rip your damn ears off, one after the other. You hear me?”

  “What is going on?” said Alice, as they heard Beth’s footsteps disappear down the road.

  “I could ask the same thing,” said a voice.

  Margery looked up to see Sophia standing in the doorway, her hands clasped together and her bag tucked under her arm. One eyebrow rose at the sight of the chaos. “Oh, my days. You said it was bad. You didn’t tell me I was going to want to run screaming back to Louisville.”

  Alice and Izzy stared at the tall woman in the immaculate blue dress. Sophia looked back at them. “Well, I don’t know why you all are just sitting there catching flies. You should be working!” Sophia put down her bag and untied her scarf. “I told William, and I’ll tell you. I’ll work the evenings, and I’ll do it with the door bolted, so nobody’s going to get aerated about me being here. Those are my terms. And I want the wage we discussed.”

  “Fine by me,” said Margery.

  The two younger women, bemused, turned and looked at Margery. Margery smiled. “Izzy, Alice, this is Miss Sophia. This is our fifth librarian.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Sophia Kenworth, Margery advised them as they began to get to grips with the stacks of books, had spent eight years at the colored library in Louisville, in a building so large that it had divided its books not just into sections but into whole floors. It served professors, lecturers from Kentucky State University, and had a system of professionally produced cards and stamps that would be used to leave date marks when anything came in and out. Sophia had undergone formal training, and an apprenticeship, and her job had only come to an end when her mother died and William had had his accident within three short months of each other, forcing her to leave Louisville to look after him.

  “That’s what we need here,” Sophia said, as she sifted through the books, lifting each to examine its spine. “We need systems. You leave it with me.”

  An hour later the library doors were bolted, most of the books were off the floor and Sophia was whisking through the pages of the ledger, making soft sounds of disapproval. Beth, meanwhile, had returned and was now holding a large Mason jar of colored liquid under Alice’s nose.

  “I don’t know . . .” Alice said.

  “Just sip it. Go on. It’s not going to kill you. It’s Apple Pie moonshine.”

  Alice looked at Margery, who had already declined. Nobody seemed surprised that Margery didn’t drink moonshine.

  Alice raised the jar to her lips, hesitated, and lost her nerve again. “What’s going to happen if I go home drunk?”

  “Well, I guess you’ll go home drunk,” said Beth.

  “I don’t know . . . Can’t someone else try it first?”

  “Well, Izzy ain’t going to, is she?”

  “Says who?” said Izzy.

  “Oh, boy. Here we go,” said Beth, laughing. She took the jar from Alice’s hands and passed it to Izzy. With an impish grin, Izzy took the jar in two hands and raised it to her mouth. She took a swig, coughing and spluttering, her eyes widening as she tried to hand the jar back.
“You’re not meant to be glugging it!” said Beth, and took a small sip. “You drink like that and you’ll be blind by Tuesday.”

  “Give it here,” said Alice. She looked down at the contents and took a breath.

  You are too impulsive, Alice.

  She took a sip, feeling the alcohol burn a mercury path down her throat. She clamped her eyes shut, waiting for them to stop watering. It was actually delicious.

  “Good?” Beth’s mischievous eyes were on her when she opened them again.

  She nodded mutely, and swallowed. “Surprisingly,” she croaked. “Yes. Let me have another.”

  Something shifted in Alice that evening. She was tired of the eyes of the town on her, sick of being monitored and talked about and judged. She was sick of being married to a man whom everyone else thought was the Good Lord Almighty and who could barely bring himself to look at her.

  Alice had come halfway across the world to find that, yet again, she was considered wanting. Well, she thought, if that was what everyone thought, she might as well live up to it.

  She took another sip, and then another, batting away Beth’s hands when she shouted, “Steady now, girl.” She felt, she told them, when she finally handed it back, pleasantly squiffy.

  “Pleasantly squiffy!” Beth mimicked, and the girls fell about laughing. Margery smiled, despite herself.

  “Well, I have no idea what kind of library this is,” said Sophia, from the corner.

  “They just need to let off steam, is all,” said Margery. “They’ve been working hard.”

  “We have been working hard! And now we need music!” said Beth, holding up a hand. “Let’s fetch Mr. Guisler’s gramophone. He’ll lend it to us.”

  Margery shook her head. “Leave Fred out of it. He doesn’t need to see this.”

  “You mean he doesn’t need to see Alice all inebriated,” said Beth, slyly.

  “What?” Alice looked up.

  “Don’t tease her,” said Margery. “She’s married, anyway.”

  “In theory,” muttered Alice, who was having trouble focusing.

  “Yeah. Just be like Margery and do what you want when you want.” Beth looked sideways at her. “With who you want.”

  “You want me to be ashamed of how I live my life, Beth Pinker? Because you’ll be waiting halfway to the heavens falling down.”

  “Hey,” said Beth. “If I had a man as handsome as Sven Gustavsson come a-courting me, I’d have a ring on my finger so fast he wouldn’t even know how he’d found himself at church. You want to take a bite out of the apple before you put it in the basket, that’s up to you. Just make sure you keep hold of the basket.”

  “What if I don’t want a basket?”

  “Everyone wants a basket.”

  “Not me. Never have, never will. No basket.”

  “What are you all talking about?” said Alice, and started to giggle.

  “They lost me at Mr. Guisler,” said Izzy, and belched quietly. “Good Lord, I feel amazing. I don’t think I’ve felt like this since I went on the Ferris wheel three times at Lexington County Fair. Except . . . No. That didn’t end well.”

  Alice leaned in toward Izzy, and put a hand on her arm. “I really am sorry about your strap, Izzy. I didn’t mean to break it.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry. I’ll just ask Mother to go get me another.” For some reason they both found this hysterically funny.

  Sophia looked at Margery and raised an eyebrow.

  Margery lit the oil lamps that dotted the end of each shelf, trying not to smile. She wasn’t really one for big groups, but she quite liked this, the jokes and the merriment, and the way that you could see actual friendships springing up around the room, like green shoots.

  “Hey, girls?” said Alice, when she had got her giggles under control. “What would you do, if you could do anything you wanted?”

  “Sort out this library,” muttered Sophia.

  “I’m serious. If you could do anything, be anything, what would you do?”

  “I’d travel the world,” said Beth, who had made herself a backrest of books, and was now making armrests to go with it. “I’d go to India and Africa and Europe and maybe Egypt and have me a little look around. I got no plans to stay around here my whole life. My brothers’ll have me minding my pa till he’s dribblin’. I want to see the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China and that place where they build little round huts out of ice blocks and a whole bunch of other places in the encyclopedias. I was going to say I’d go to England and meet the king and queen but we got Alice so we don’t need to.” The other women started to laugh.

  “Izzy?”

  “Oh, it’s crazy.”

  “Crazier than Beth and her Taj Mahals?”

  “Go on,” said Alice, nudging her.

  “I’d . . . well, I’d be a singer,” said Izzy. “I’d sing on the wireless, or on a gramophone record. Like Dorothy Lamour or . . .” she glanced toward Sophia, who did a good job of not raising her eyebrows too far “. . . Billie Holiday.”

  “Surely your daddy could fix that for you. He knows everyone, don’t he?” said Beth.

  Izzy looked suddenly uncomfortable. “People like me don’t become singers.”

  “Why?” said Margery. “You can’t sing?”

  “That’ll do it,” said Beth.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Margery shrugged. “Last time I looked you didn’t need your leg to sing.”

  “But people wouldn’t listen. They’d be too busy staring at my brace.”

  “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Izzy girl. Enough people got leg braces and whatnot around here. Or just . . .” she paused “. . . wear a long dress.”

  “What do you sing, Miss Izzy?” said Sophia, who was arranging spines into alphabetical order.

  Izzy had sobered. Her skin was a little flushed. “Oh, I like hymns, bluegrass, blues, anything, really. I even tried a little opera once.”

  “Well, you got to sing now,” said Beth, lighting a cigarette and blowing on her fingers when the match burned too low. “Come on, girl, show us what you got.”

  “Oh, no,” said Izzy. “I only really sing for myself.”

  “That’s going to be some pretty empty concert hall, then,” said Beth.

  Izzy looked at them. Then she pushed herself up onto her feet. She took a shaky breath, and then she began:

  My sweetheart’s murmurs turned to dust

  All tender kisses turned to rust

  I’ll hold him in my heart though he be far

  And turn my love to a midnight star

  Her eyes closed, her voice filled the little room, soft and mellifluous, as if it had been dipped in honey. Izzy, right in front of them, began to change into someone quite new, her torso extending, her mouth opening wider to reach the notes. She was somewhere quite distant now, somewhere beloved to her. Beth rocked gently and began to smile. It stretched across her face—pure, unclouded delight at this unexpected turn of events. She let out a “Hell, yes!” as if she couldn’t contain it. And then, after a moment, Sophia, as if compelled by an impulse she could barely control, began to join in, her own voice deeper, tracing the path of Izzy’s and complementing it. Izzy opened her eyes and the two women smiled at each other as they sang, their voices lifting, their bodies swaying in time with the beat, and the air in the little library lifted with them.

  Its light is distant but it warms me still

  I’m a million miles from heaven but I’ll wait here till

  My sweetheart comes again and the glow I feel

  Is brighter than the stars above Kentucky hills

  Alice watched, the moonshine coursing through her blood, the warmth and music making her nerves sing, and felt something give inside her, something she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge to herself, something primal to do with
love and loss and loneliness. She looked at Margery, whose expression had relaxed, lost in her own private reverie, and thought of Beth’s comments about a man Margery never discussed. Perhaps conscious she was being watched, Margery turned to her and smiled, and Alice realized, with horror, that tears were sliding, unchecked down her cheeks.

  Margery’s raised eyebrows were a silent question.

  Just a little homesick, Alice answered. It was the truth, she thought. She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.

  * * *

  • • •

  Margery took her elbow and they stepped outside into the dusk, hopping down into the paddock where the horses grazed peacefully by the fence, oblivious to the noise inside.

  Margery handed Alice her handkerchief. “You okay?”

  Alice blew her nose. She had begun to sober immediately, out in the cool air. “Fine. Fine . . .” She looked up at the skies. “Actually, no. Not really.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I don’t think it’s something anyone else can help with.”

  Margery leaned back against the wall, so that she was looking up at the mountains behind them. “There’s not much I haven’t seen and heard these thirty-eight years. I’m pretty sure whatever you have to say isn’t going to knock me off my heels.”

  Alice closed her eyes. If she put it out there, it became real, a living, breathing thing that she would have to do something about. Her gaze flickered to Margery and away again.

  “And if you think I’m the type to go talking, Alice Van Cleve, you really haven’t worked me out at all.”

  “Mr. Van Cleve keeps going on about us not having any babies.”

  “Hell, that’s just standard round here. The moment you put a ring on that finger they’re all just counting down—”

  “But that’s just it. It’s Bennett.” Alice wrung her hands together. “It’s been months and he just—he won’t—”

  Margery let the words settle. She waited, as if to check that she had heard right. “He won’t . . . ?”