First Editions.

She remembered vividly her first sight of him:  second grade, riding the school bus along a dusty gravel road in rural South Carolina.  Brakes screeching, it stopped to pick up a student, waiting by the mailbox at the end of a long farm driveway.  The doors opened and there he stood, “a tall, handsome drink of water, with the bluest eyes you ever saw.  My heart fairly leapt out of my chest!  I was smitten from that day forward.”  He was 8 years older than her and initially, they were like brother and sister but as she developed, romantic attraction blossomed. They would meet at a great oak tree exactly halfway between their houses, sit against its trunk, shoulders touching, and read books to each other in the cottony southern summers. Dismayed by the age difference, their parents forbade their relationship, “but we snuck around anyway – for years! They never found out.”  Like Romeo and Juliet, they’d found their soul-mate – nothing could keep them apart.

                On graduation, he joined the Army and was shipped to Italy to fight the Nazis.  They wrote long letters to each other every day for 18 months, great stacks of letters - tied with twine and stowed neatly in his duffel, piled messily in her dresser drawer.  The letters detailed the war effort, farm conditions, Italian scenery, family events, books they’d read, future plans and, of course, their undying love.  Until one day, when he received a letter from a mutual friend back home full of the latest hometown gossip, including his lover’s activities. The letter was short, but it contained one small sentence that he interpreted as meaning she’d been unfaithful. Jealousy engulfed him, his heart shattered; his eternal love for her morphed into rage, and the light went out from his cobalt-blue eyes.   He stopped writing and when he did, her heart shattered too.  Ignorant of the friend’s letter and innocent of the charge against her, she flooded him with entreaties damp with tears, begging him to explain the silence.  The silence remained, unexplained, for 42 years.

                After the war he returned to the states but not to his home, finding work in Ohio as a book-binder.  Within a decade he’d saved enough to open his own bookstore, gluing his splintered heart with soothing prose and dusty pages.  He married after a while, a sturdy, mid-western girl – a help-mate - and shuffled around his shop for 30 years, occasionally attending an out-of-town bookseller’s convention, dull blue eyes taking endless inventory and always on the lookout for a rare first-edition.

                She rebounded more quickly; two years of despair boiled her heart to a soft, throbbing jelly, tender toward the first man to ask for her hand. Determined to put the mystery and heartache behind, she wed a merchant from the metropolis of Columbia and went to work in his bookstore.  Under her business acumen, charming personality and literary knowledge the store did well, although both her husband and loyal customers sensed a haunting beneath her lively banter.  She threw herself into the store’s success, gluing her fractured heart with hard-bound classics and the ring of the cash register.  She chattered and sold for 40 years, attending the occasional out-of-town bookseller’s convention, dodging quickly through the crowds, silently scanning for a valuable first-edition.

                The convention in Charlotte held the largest display of books on the eastern seaboard that year – vendors had combed attics and estate sales across the country to bring the rarest and best to market; the air was redolent with old cellulose and lignin.  Thousands of buyers thronged the tables, some for love, most for money, two for glue.  She grew tired of the jostling crowd, saw a side hall with few vendors and fewer buyers and slipped toward its sanctuary; he wearied of the noise and fought his way toward a temporary oasis – a nearly empty hall off to one side.  Back-to-back they scanned the selection, enjoying the respite. Moving at the same unhurried pace, they arrived at the last table together.  With nearly a century of experience in their field between them, it took exactly the same breath to recognize a first-edition Robinson Crusoe and exactly the same heartbeat to reach for it.  Their hands met and they instinctively looked at each other, apologies on their lips but buying on their minds.  “I’m sorry, I…” he began; “No, that’s OK… I…” she started - then stopped, mouth agape.  He looked at her, quizzically at first; his head jerked back, eyes wide with shock.  She put a timid hand on his chest; he put a tentative hand to her cheek.  Her eyes filled with tears and she began to smile; his smile bloomed in return and his dull blue eyes lit with cobalt fire.   

                They never bought Robinson Crusoe - they never even left Charlotte – they’d found the only first-edition they ever really wanted.  Distant attorneys handled the sale of his bookstore and both their divorces while they held each other, forgave the past, and glued their hearts back together.  Twenty blissful, inseparable years later he suffered a stroke while gathering flowers.  She never left his side, sleeping in the hospital chair next to his bed, holding his quiet, papery hand through the bedrail.  I was his nurse in the intensive care unit; she told me their story while I kept him alive.  He only woke up once when I was with him and when he was awake all he did was gaze at her, brilliant eyes alight with love.  With her story echoing in my head I could see their bond stretching over 70 years, still as fresh as that morning in South Carolina: a young girl on the bus, door sliding open, her heart fluttering out to land on a tall, handsome drink of water, with the bluest eyes she ever saw.