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= Romantic Novel =

A New England Love Story

by Jean-Thomas Cullen

2.

Just two or three days later, Marian Charles experienced the shock—it took her breath away—of again seeing that handsome, confident-looking man in the suit. She sat on a stool, kind of awkwardly, placing books from a stack on her lap onto their slots in the shelves before her. Then she saw him. Oh god.

She’d never expected to see him after that exchange of cascading, emotional stares, and had nearly forgotten him amid all that weighed her mind and soul down—but here he was again. Though he pretended to be casual and perhaps looking for a book, his eyes roamed about, seeking her, and lighted up when he spotted her in the opposite end of the library’s main hall, sitting on a foot stool. What was it about him? The world was full of handsome, charming men, and he was certainly in their forefront. His face had such character, and there was depth to his eyes. His look was piercing, and full of understanding, and yet his eyes twinkled with mischief. His lips seemed forever poised for saying something bitingly, cleverly funny. She needed a good laugh for sure. She needed to roll on the floor and roar with laughter while holding her ribs. Fat chance that would ever happen. And there was Lawrence of Arabia, or Eighth Avenue, or whatever his handle was.

Marian was not ready for this. She was still a taken woman, or so part of her mind weakly protested, while her heart cried out for escape and freedom. She had just filed away some silly novel, and dallied over it for a bemused moment, about a young desert princess imprisoned by a cruel monarch long ago and far away. The maiden was rescued by a dashing, handsome young adventurer, disguised in a flowing white garment that blew in the wind, hiding most of his body and face except for his beautiful blue eyes, as he rode across the desert sands on a beautiful stallion to steal her. She jumped from a tower, landed in the saddle with him, and off they rode together before anyone in the towers could raise an alarm.

Seeing the stranger’s glance raking hungrily across her as she sat on her stool, Marian felt an involuntary smile cross her face, which she instantly suppressed. She looked down and pretended to be busy, though this Apollo had stolen her attention for sure. How long had he been staring? At this very same moment, surprised at how rattled she felt, she had an accident, a fumble, and all the books on her lap went flying in different directions.

She’d been sitting on the nearest handy footstool, filing Young Adult books from D to F, when she became conscious of a change in atmosphere around her. That was this handsome, mysterious man with whom she had exchanged just a few awkward words in the hallway days or weeks ago—she couldn’t remember—and here he was again. Could a newcomer have moved to Emery Township? Or was he just passing through like most people, who barely stopped for gas or coffee before zooming on to more exciting places in the great big world beyond Emery Township?

The realization that she was being stared at dawned on her over a period of some seconds, because she was so focused on all the things going on in her mind, between work and home and her troubles. The library wasn’t making her rich by any means, but it was a steady job with books, which she loved, and with children, which she enjoyed equally well. At 28, she had expected to have at least one child by now. It had been her life’s dream, but it—well, it had not worked out the way it was supposed to. Here she was, a young war widow, still haunted by a complete lost life, unable to shake the easy smile and deliciously dominating eyes of her lost Tommy. This stranger would be about Thomas Charles’ age. Stop it, Marian, she told herself. She touched the delicate, black silk bow on her arm. Her friends all told her it was time to move on, and her mind agreed, while her heart was still like a honey bee trapped on a dusty window sill, bumbling and buzzing from corner to corner, longing for the sunshine outside, and waiting for someone to lift the window.

Working at the library helped her keep busy and forget. Her mother had been a librarian, as had her maternal grandmother, so it was a time-honored profession in her family. Sometimes, when her life crept up on her as she worked, she felt her lip quiver. Why me? her inner voice would ask. Marian wanted to be strong, and she kept that inner voice from whining or self-pity. Her troubles were difficult, but fixable. Her mother had consoled her over long-distance by phone: "Time will heal, baby. Time always heals."

"I know, mama," she could picture herself saying, as if she were home again, maybe at the kitchen window holding a cup of hot tea and looking wistfully out at the green Shawnee trees and the garden flowers in colorful bloom. "Just why does it have to be so hard?" She’d have to put the tea down while she held the phone to her other ear, and steadied herself against the kitchen counter. But she could not go home again, not ever; it would be like losing the beautiful dreams that had taken her away into the wide world.

As she pictured herself, in those conversations that almost seemed as if they’d happened to someone else, she’d sneak her wrist up to her eyes. She’d prop a pile of D to F titles under her other elbow, and quickly wipe a tear away when she thought nobody was looking. She did not want the children to think that Mrs. Charles was a cry baby. And she certainly did not want any pity from the other women who worked here. Everyone had their troubles, and it was just fair and decent to keep them to one’s self. With her wrist still damp with a tear, she might press it against the silver roses brooch she wore over her left breast like a military decoration. It was the last and dearest gift Thomas Charles had given her that last, fateful weekend after his orders for duty in the Middle East had arrived.

Everyone had a problem of their own—whether in Oklahoma, or California where she’d been briefly stationed with her husband of a few weeks before he shipped out, or here in his little Connecticut hometown which was now her home. For better or for worse, in sickness or in health, until death do us part, she had promised. All too soon, the contract had been fulfilled, while the spiritual ink was still moist. In a way, the most cruel words—as yet unspoken—could be something like It’s over, and you are free to go. Was that it? After all that hope and joy, this was the slam of the door, the turning off of lights, the bumpy road leading to the edge of cold, murky water?

Yes, Marian had driven her car to the edge of Emery Lake one evening recently when the pain became unbearable, when she was beyond tears, alone in the universe, and at the end of the line. She had driven to the chilly waters of oblivion, ready to drive in and just close her eyes as silvery bubbles rose all about, but she kept seeing sunlight in the high library rotunda, and doves flying in circles amid a shaft of sunlight slanting in through an oculus like the open eye high up in the ancient Pantheon dome in Rome where she had once been on vacation with her family as a teenager. Something inside Marian said No! at that moment. Nobody was around. It was dusk, and people were in their glowing little houses after a hard day’s work, having supper together at family tables and talking or bickering or praying or silent in the way that people lived with each other. She, on the other hand, had nobody. She could not go home again to her parents and siblings out west, and she did not feel totally at home here with Tommy’s parents and brothers. Tommy was not strictly from Emery but from another township twenty minutes away in another world, and Emery was hers to keep if she wanted it. She and Tommy had picked it out together, and in a way it was a continuity Tommy would wish for her. She sat in the growing dusk, with her hands on the wheel and the motor running, looking into the water that would take her under before anyone ever spotted the shimmering car roof way down and figured out who she had been, what she had done, and why. The memory of that beautiful strange man in the library was just one of many fleeting thoughts that passed through her mind, but it was significant. His warm, fragile, hungry gaze pleaded with her in memory, telling her that life would bring her someone or something more. She’d hoped maybe the ghost of Tommy would sit beside her and hold her hand as she drove into the cold lake, but how crazy was that? Tommy was not on board for this stunt. They had done just about anything else together, but he was not going to approve of this. So she put the car in gear, backed in a large U-turn on the seasonally abandoned, gravelly boat beach where people launched their little sailboats on happy summer days, and drove back up the road a block or so, to her empty little house, which she and Tommy had bought together.

She had never expected to see the stranger again, and he would have no idea that his spirit—his beautiful eyes, his warm thoughts—had been with her in the car at that bleak, wrenching moment.

Somewhere, distantly, Marian heard the sound of women laughing uproariously. It was a brief, rowdy laugh but was cut instantly short by some circumstance she did not fathom. Must be quite a joke being told back in the break room. Two older women and three high school aides were working at the moment, all female and capable of sharing a feminine laugh—but about what?

As Marian sat on the footstool, with the pile of books on her lap, she sensed a change in the air. It had an electric feel to it. She was not having one of those teary moments just then. She was happily humming to herself and thinking about the story hour ahead. She was a big hit with the First Graders, who were old enough to follow a story, and innocent and full of wonder, so that it was a joy to see their faces light up and their eyes grow big. At the moment, there were children of various ages sitting at tables over their homework, but the noise level was at a minimum and Marian was contentedly lost in her thoughts.

She hardly paid attention to the steady coming and going of customers at the Help Desk and the Check Desk. The two older female librarians on duty had similar businesslike though cheery voices—sort of like bland book covers, Marian thought.

Then she heard an unmistakable change in pitch as Mrs. Rose Otto addressed a man, whose voice had a certain quality that seemed to make Mrs. Otto’s voice rise in pitch. Mrs. Otto was a thin, blonde (okay, rinse) woman of 50 with large lenses sheathed in pink plastic, and a narrow, thick mouth of dark rose lipstick. Marian was not overly fond of Mrs. Otto, who seemed she could be a bit of a back stabber at times. Luckily, the staff of twelve (mostly part timers) worked for the nicest mother hen in the world, Mrs. Linda Damien, who took no sides and always looked after the well-being of her employees as Chief Librarian.

Marian glanced toward the Help Desk and—as her hands jerked in shock and her body froze—all the books on her lap flew apart with a loud rattle of covers and a fluster of papers. The man standing before Rose Otto at the Check Desk was that same Mr. Suck My Lungs Dry who had caught her attention a few weeks earlier. She had forgotten all about him, yet not forgotten him, which made no more sense than the rest of her life right at the moment. She sat feeling like a fool, surrounded by scattered children’s books, and her bare knees pressed awkwardly together just past the edge of her sensible skirt. Unfortunately, Mr. Evacuate All The Air From My Lungs heard the flying, spinning books, and glanced at her. Or was he already glancing toward Marian? Marian felt a hot flush rise up her cheeks as she pressed her knees modestly together and reached all around to gather the dozen or more books that had gone UFO.

Rose Otto had this talent for looking a bit like a coyote talking to a road runner (in the cartoons), especially when she spoke disapprovingly to a man. Mrs. Otto seemed to be of the opinion that libraries were for children, and adults who ventured in were suspect—especially men.

Mr. Respiratory Arrest seemed to take all this in stride. His body language toward Rose Otto was casual, hands in pockets of his expensive suit that flowed along his long, lean physique like bottled, imported $9 a bottle water, or $199 a bottle champagne.

Marian sneaked glances at him as she leaned this way and that to retrieve books. Two little First Graders in parochial school uniforms rushed to help her, a boy with mussy blond hair and a little dark-skinned girl with a pink bow in her hair. A third boy came up behind and put his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay, Mrs. Charles? Do you need help?"

"No," Marian said, "Yes." She laughed. "Let’s all help Mrs. Charles pick up these books, okay? Thank you, sweetheart. All of you, thanks." Together, they made a fresh stack of books on her lap. The little girl even filed away one book for her, which she studiously (frowning behind horn-rimmed glasses) placed among the E’s. "Are you guys ready for story time?"

"Yes!" they all said, and stood by, waiting for instructions.

Secretly, she was thinking: thanks for rescuing me. She was glad to be able to hide among them. When she next glanced up, it was just in time to see Mr. Anoxia striding toward the main lobby where he disappeared seconds later. Gracefully, he did not look over his shoulder at her. She almost wished he would, but was relieved he didn’t. She released a long, pent-up breath. She must look like a total ditz, she thought. Oh, I don’t care. Needing a drink of water, she rose and walked toward the desk areas. She smoothed down her pink sweater, gray skirt, and white blouse as she did so. Rose Otto gave her a smug, satisfied look. Rose’s hazel eyes had a smoldering look as if to say I showed him a thing or two, though it was obvious he had flustered her. Whoever he was, he seemed to have a gift for shaking up women just by being in the same room. Was that a swipe across Rose’s brow to flick away a few beads of sweat, or just to push back that forehead lock of assisted hair?

As she entered the break room, Marian found the two adult assistant librarians sitting at the table amid piles of books, papers, lunch wrappers, and other bric-a-brac of real life. One was Terie Gill, a dark skinned Afro American woman with glossy hair and a beautiful smile usually wreathed in a special husky rose lipstick. Terie had large, beautiful eyes, almost almond-shaped, white as snow with glistening dark irises. Terie was only a year older than Marian, at 29, and married with two children, the lucky so and so. The other assistant librarian was Lillian or Lillie Donovan, a down to earth, chunky blonde in her late 30s, who favored denim dresses and sturdy work shoes. Lillie was a mother of four, including a teenage girl from her early, premarital adventures in life. The two women were still giggling at the joke that had made them cascade with laughter minutes earlier.

Marian bent over the wall fountain and let a long, cool trickle of refreshing water fill her thirsty mouth. She rose and turned to go back into the children’s hall. Lillie and Terie convulsed with barely stifled laughter. Marian was puzzled.

"Did you see that guy?" Terie asked Marian.

"Mr. Adonis?" Lillie said.

"Did you hear what he said?" Terie said.

Marian, blushing again, shook her head. This wasn’t about her, was it? She’d felt like a dodo while that man was looking at her with a certain probing, intense stare, and a knowing, dark grin. Did the entire world know that he had noticed her, as he had the previous time? What was it about her that, every time he saw her, a look came over his face as though he was standing on a curb looking across the street, watching his car being towed away, and he was afraid to cross the street because the meter maid was still writing his ticket?

Lillie pulled Marian close and said in a giggly whisper: "He walked in and went right up to Rose Otto, who started giving him the third degree. So he looks at her with those icy, dagger eyes and that saucy, wise ass mouth, and asks her—" Lillie doubled over with laughter, unable to continue.

Terie stopped choking long enough to finish Lillie’s thought: "—he looks her in the eye, and says he wants to read about dinosaurs. Rose looks at him like she just woke up from a long sleep in her bird’s nest, and he looks at her like, you old dinosaur, just try messing with me, I’m here to mess right back at you."

Relieved, Marian shared their laugh. Her man was a joker. Wait a second, what was this her man thing? "So did she find him a book about dinosaurs?"

Terie said: "Rose said she would order one from Central, since we don’t have any adult ones that aren’t checked out."

"I did have two children’s books about dinosaurs," Marian remembered. "But he wouldn’t be interested in something so basic." Nor in the klutz filing them on the stool, she thought.

"He said he’d be back in a few days," Lillie said.

Marian took a deep breath, smoothed down her clothes again though they did not need it, and returned to her duties. She resisted an urge to grin behind Rose’s back, as Rose sat obliviously on her high stool, hunched over the check-in and check-out machinery that must give her a sense of omnipotent power.

"He looks like a guy with money," Lillie said.

"And good taste in suits," Terie said. "He drove off in a nice shiny new Jaguar."

"Probably has the same expensive taste in women," Lillie said.

Marian nodded. What was I thinking? Of course he would have half a dozen fashion models wrapped around him at some club, like long-stemmed roses. She sighed while washing her hands at the sink. "Story hour," she announced matter of factly.

Terie pointed to a gaggle of kids hovering around the door to the Fireplace Room across the hall. "Your fans are waiting."

Mr. Hypoxia seemed to drop in about once or twice a week as time went by. Marian would pretend to be busy, and he would find excuses to sidle by. She still wore her gold wedding band, which was however quite thin and might be mistaken for something less serious. The black ribbon on her arm was not readily understandable, she thought; no, she hoped. He’d cough politely and she’d look up from her work. He’d say something inane like "Excuse me," and she would say "Of course." She was very self-conscious about this habit of hers, which was that her tongue got all tied up when she was flustered or nervous, and her voice took on a very faint lisp. Also, she had these like Army issue black plastic glasses with slight astigmatism correction in otherwise nearly neutral lenses, which she sometimes wore for reading, like now; but they made her look like a gadzook, she thought; and getting pretty ones would mean she might as well also take off the mourning ribbon. She wasn’t ready for any of that yet, lost amid the scattered puzzle pieces of her violently interrupted dream.

September had come, and with it that heart-wrenching change in the weather and in the New England soul that she’d gotten used to in this little town she’d started thinking of as home—her new life, so rudely interrupted by an Improvised Explosive Device on a dusty road in Afghanistan, now nearly two years ago. If Marian felt trapped in limbo, she had made peace with one thing. She was never moving back to Oklahoma or to California, which would be like giving up on the freedom she had made for herself. She could not move back to Shawnee—it would be like throwing away the future that she had so much fallen in love with. People were nice here, and the kids loved her. Emery was a wonderful little town in a valley, with a lake, and a small town pace while a million Apollos and Aphrodites flew by on the thruway with their suits and business deals. Tom Charles’ folks were blue collar, the high-end moneyed tradesman kind—air conditioning and plumbing, to be exact, with his own store front and six trucks; but they hoped for something white collar for their son. Marian’s folks had made their money in furniture and drapery sales, so she had grown up humbly in middle class comfort. They could afford an occasional summer vacation in Europe or Canada. Her dreams had matched Tommy’s. He was really Thomas Charles Jr., but everyone called him Tommy to avoid confusion with his dad, and the name had stuck. Tommy had planned to return to college and get an engineering degree after the Army, using his G.I. Bill. He and Marian had planned it all out so nicely. Now, she slowly and reluctantly admitted, she must start over. What better place to do that in than right here in the valley? She’d met a few of Tommy’s old high school friends—they were all married, and they’d double dated a bit, but everyone here worked hard and kept busy, so she spent a lot of time alone. So, as she sorted books and helped the after-school kids, she wondered if she might not have to really move away to someplace with more people and more night life. She had not been out with a man in years, and the thought repulsed her. Mr. Anoxia was gorgeous—a dream—but he did nothing for her beyond being eye candy. It was like seeing a template for what a man should be, if her time ever came again. What would a man like that want with a small town librarian? Probably nothing. The thought was laughable.

Marian’s days passed by like a slow dream. The school year was in full swing after Labor Day, and the kids kept her busy. The library glowed with its warm interior lights like a lantern along the thruway. The days got shorter, and the trees began to change colors. The frost line started in Canada and, with a different cadence each year depending on the weather pattern that fall, would move south in a broad band extending from the Atlantic coast to the Prairie states and beyond. Every day, the weather reports followed the frost line as it moved south, a hundred miles or more a day. As it advanced, the green leaves in a trillion gorgeous oak or elm or other deciduous tree crowns got nipped at the stem and died. The leaves turned brown and dried out, falling along the empty country roads and lonely hillsides. Evening came a little earlier each day. Indian Summer, with its few days or weeks of late, wan sunshine like the left-overs of a great summer meal, came and went. It was a rhythm baked into the very hills, having gone on since Colonial times and before. For two or three weeks in October, the world was ablaze with sunshine in yellow or russet leaves, the color of autumn apples and pears. With the chill weather came winds, sometimes drizzly or sometimes just dry and mysterious, that ruffled the zillions of leaves lying piles. The leaves would lift like talking mouths and make an urgent rustling noise in some language nobody could understand, but you felt it in your bones. You might not speak the language of the leaves, but you understood that there was something as autumn in your soul as the brown. Pumpkin stands began to appear along the roadsides. Teachers and librarians began having the kids put up orange-colored Hallow E’en decorations including all sorts of hideous jack-o-lantern pumpkin designs, witches riding on broomsticks, and a few science fiction robots or fantasy princes and princesses sprinkled in. It was lonely and comforting, crazy and peaceful, all at the same time. Marian wrote letters in the evenings, in her kitchen with the window facing a street, at whose end were the dock lanterns of Emery Lake. She wrote home to her parents and sisters, telling them that she felt at home here. Sometimes she visited with Tommy’s parents, who would do anything for her, though she made a point not to be dependent. So, a little distance grew, and she let it. They were digesting a lifetime of new grief, and preferred to live in the past rather than endure the present she must deal with. Time went by. Soon it would be time for the time change—fall back, spring forward—all in its seasonal rhythms.

Though she was always busy at work, she sometimes looked up in the middle of something, looked through the reflections in the windows of the interior, and saw the fleeting red taillights and white headlights outside on the sunken turnpike and the surface streets. So many people, so many hearts—was there ever a soul who might stop by and bring her a flower or ask her to dinner? What am I thinking, she’d ask herself, and sigh over her work.

When she looked up again just now, when she had summoned her courage and gathered her wits, Mr. Oxygen Deprivation had left. She set her books aside and rose. Smoothing her skirt down, she walked toward the Check Desk. She needed to stretch her legs a bit. In the library’s timelessly soft light, Rose Otto stood busily womaning the checkout. As a little dark-skinned boy brought a stack of kid books for her to check out for him, Rose said in a sidelong way: "What is it, Marian?"

"I just came to look at something."

"Oh?" Rose went through the practiced motions, which included running freshly checked out books over the laser scanner to desensitize them so they would not trip an alarm in the exit, and bring the security officer Mr. Perez running with his walkie-talkie and pepper spray.

"There, I found it." Marian’s long, red-lacquered finger nailed tibbety-tapped on the keyboard nearby, and a plain, antique green screen brought up clunky old bar-game text.

"The Grecian god," Rose Otto said with the utmost dry irony.

"Do you mind?" Marian said sharply.

"I don’t mind," Rose said with a hint of humor—was it cold, or did she actually have a heart ticking somewhere behind that frilly, pinched exterior?

His name was Richard Moyer, and he lived in West Hartford. His address was 351-14 Wanderley Street, which might mean a complex of condos or town homes at Number 341 on a street by that name. Okay, Marian, she asked herself, what are you doing?

Rose said: "If I were thirty years young, I’d do the same."

"I am not doing anything," Marian said sharply.

Rose snapped up a stack of books and stepped away with them under her arm, turning her thin figure in its beige dress, frilly blouse, and sensible shoes back toward Marian. The look on Rose’s face was enigmatic. There had been some horrible abuse in her past, Marian vaguely knew without caring to ever pry, which left Rose kind of like the walking wounded, as an older generation used to say.

Marian lingered one more minute, before Rose turned back to service another client—one of the elderly, who lived in assisted living homes around the area. The library was one of their major outings every day, bless them, along with a trip to some restaurant for senior portions followed—on a daring day, when medications permitted—by a parfait topped with forbidden whipped cream. Or was that whipped dream?

Marian web-searched Mr. Impossible Stud, and came up with Wanderley Street—in a fashionable section of pricey West Hartford, which was almost exactly halfway between Boston and the City, with Interstate 84 running through it, along with old U.S. Route 44. Busy area. Interstate 91 ran through the nearby state capital of Hartford on a north-south axis from New Haven on the Long Island shore through Hartford, Springfield, and north through New Hampshire and Vermont to the French-Canadian border. If he was from West Hartford, at such an address, racing around in a Jaguar in a thousand dollar Madison Avenue suit, he was hardly a slouch.

More than I ever needed to know, Marian thought as she walked away, avoiding any further looks or comments from the X-Ray eyed Rose Otto. The mysterious and unreachable demigod had a name and an address, she now knew. He was Richard, but was he a Rick or a Dick? She almost burst out laughing as she doubled over and choked into one fist. She scolded herself, grinning inwardly: Terrible, Marian, you need your mind washed out with hot soap and water. You go, girl.

What a strange adventure without words or pictures this was, Marian thought, as she went about her day’s work including preparations for story hour in the Fireplace Room. In her heart, she knew he was interested in her. Or maybe she was having a day dream at best, or was crazy at worst. Whatever, it was fun to think it, and she carried a mysterious little glowing smile with her for the rest of the day. The kids picked up on it, and they all had an especially inspirational time as she read them Sleeping Beauty, dated 1812 and collected by the Brothers Grimm from among all the old European tales of love and wonder that they could find.

* * * *

The children all clapped—especially the little girls, whereas the little boys made bemused faces and looked half-hearted. The boys wanted a story about knights and horses battling with swords in far-off lands. Marian picked a story she had read to other children. It had been told in many ways over many years, under various names. This book had it as Sleeping Beauty, but its older German name was The Thorn Rose. It had been told for centuries before that under other names to other children who were now long grown up and gone the way of all roses and flowers in all ages.

In the story, a king and queen wanted very much to have a child, because they had none. When their wish came true, they invited a bunch of guests to a christening feast, including the kingdom’s most important fairie goddesses. Since the king only had twelve gold plates for the table of honor, they only invited twelve fairies.

The thirteenth fairie queen, who was jealous and angry about being excluded, spoke a terrible curse. She predicted that the young princess would one day prick her finger on a sharp needle and die. When the king heard about this, he ordered all spinning wheels in the kingdom to be burned, along with their needles. Like many people without a dictionary, however, the king did not realize that in various languages, a needle may mean some pointed, dangerous object other than a spinning or sewing needle—like, oh let’s say, a rosy thorn.

One day, when she had just become a beautiful young woman, the princess found a strange little door to a tower in the family castle. Out of curiosity, she opened the door and ventured into a dusty passage where nobody had gone for ages. She walked up a circular stone staircase until, under the tower roof, she found a room in which an aged woman was spinning thread at her wheel. "What are you doing there?" she asked the withered fairie goddess.

"I am spinning some golden thread for a beautiful dress," said the Thirteenth Fairie. "Would you like to take a try at the wheel?"

"Oh yes," said the princess, and touched the spinning wheel. So the two sat together, and had fun spinning beautiful thread.

Now the princess noticed an open window, from which she could see the rolling green hills and blue skies of the entire kingdom. Down below, amid rustling forests and tree crowns, nestled the roofs of a hamlet, surrounding the shores of a blue lake.

Growing around the window were thick rose bushes, heavily laden with gorgeous dusky-red roses that filled the air with a rich, nectar-like fragrance that brought honey bees from all around. "Oh how beautiful your roses are!" said the princess.

"Go on over," said the Thirteenth Fairie, "take a close look, and smell them."

The princess went over, leaned out the window, and took a deep breath. "Oh, they smell divine," she said as the sweet, rosy fragrance surrounded her.

"Why don’t you pick one?" said the fairie, with a wicked grin.

"Can I?"

"But of course, child." The fairie queen clapped her withered hands together, and laughed shrilly.

So the princess reached out to snap off a particularly large, wide open rose the color of a desert sunset. As she did so, she felt a sharp pain, and realized that a big, hard thorn stuck from her pale finger. The last thing she saw was a full drop of blood falling slowly from her soft skin. Almost immediately, she fell down dead. The Thirteenth Fairie cackled gleefully and disappeared.

What nobody knew, however, was that the other fairies, knowing about the curse and unable to undo it, instead were able to change it so the princess would not die, but fall into a deep sleep without feelings or dreams.

In this manner, the beautiful princess lay lifeless, like a war widow or a small town librarian living alone in a little home by a lake, while everyone around her went about life as if nothing had happened. They all adored the beautiful princess, and wished she could come back to life. They cared for her, and kept her neat and pretty, but nobody could wake her from her sad sleep.

One day, years later, when the world she had known was long gone, and new people lived in the realm, a handsome prince happened by, and wandered up the stairs in the tower. Seeing the beautiful young woman, he at first thought she was the statue of an ancient and untouchable goddess.

He noticed a large thorn sticking from her finger, surrounded by a still wet drop of blood the color of a dusky rose. He thought to himself: She has lain here for ages, but she cannot be dead, because her blood is still fresh. Her skin looks as if she is still breathing. Maybe she is not dead, but asleep. Before he could think about it, he pulled the thorn from her finger.

The princess opened her eyes, and looked deeply into his.

The prince, captivated by her gaze, felt as if the ground moved underneath him.

The princess sat up from her long sleep. She stretched and yawned, turning this way and that, while the prince stared at her.

His heart was captive, and his life was now hers.

The princess was happy to smell the fresh air once again, and to see birds wheeling about in the blue sky outside the tower. She saw sunlight shimmering on the lake, and among the trees still lay the scattered rooftops of the little town. People went about their daily lives as ever, and the princess was happy she could join them now, and maybe, just maybe, have a new life of her own. Was that asking too much? Hadn’t she slept long enough now?

Most importantly, though, the Little Thorn Rose princess realized that she owed her life to the strange, handsome prince, so she turned and put her arms around him. He had eyes only for her, because he came from a place where he had plenty of troubles of his own, which weighed down his heart. The princess, looking deeply into his eyes, realized her dear prince carried a burden. With a command of her soul, she wished his burden to be lifted from him. At the same time, she also lifted away all the sadness of her long sleep and her losses.

"You are the man I want to marry," she said to him.

If Ovid or Homer were writing this saga, he might add a typical little vignette aside: In the deep, dark, greenly fragrant forest of a feudal manor, a heavy war horse gallops, and on it sits a bearded hunter wielding a bow and arrow. Alongside run the hunting dogs of his estate, while a distant post horn sounds—a deer has been sighted. The hard hammering of the hooves, and the baying of the hounds, and the distant blowing of a horn, cannot hide the frantic thrashing of the hunted deer that runs for her life. At last, she comes to a rocky ledge among the trees and can go no further. For an instant, the hunter and the hunted stand face to face. Each is frozen in surprise, and neither can move. In that instant, they are one another’s captives, before the deer breaks and escapes to her freedom, and the hunter lets her go in his greatest act of love.

To the Little Thorn Rose in the tower, the prince said: "I have fallen utterly and wildly in love with you. Will you make me the happiest man on earth? Do you consent to marry me?"

"I do," she said. So they held each other, and kissed each other, and could never be separated again. They lived happily ever after.

Marian closed the book and looked glowingly over her audience of Kindergarten and First Grade children in the Fireplace Room.

The boys overcame their reserve, and had strangely glowing faces, as if waking from a dream, while the girls held their palms to their cheeks and looked at each other with delight. All the children clapped and cheered, even the boys with all their manly reserve.

Marian joined them in smiling and clapping because it had gone really well today, and everyone lived happily for at least as long as it took them to run jostling and yelling out the door to their waiting parents. Then, Marian once again stood alone in an empty, trashed room where there was not even a fire in the place.

Mr. Adolfo Perez, the sixty-something guard and custodian, came by jingling his keys. He looked at her with a kindly, knowing look and said in slightly accented English: "Time to close up and go home, Miss Marian."

"Oh yes," Marian said. Time to close up. Time to go home.

Everyone had their troubles, she reflected as she cleaned up the disaster and locked up the Fireplace Room. Mr. Perez’ wife of many years had been very ill for a long time, and hardly recognized him or their four children.

Mr. Perez pointed to his eyes and said something in a very gentle voice, as if afraid to step beyond his bounds.

"Pardon me?" Marian said pleasantly.

"You have sad eyes," he said. "You are a very young woman, with your whole life in front of you. Cheer up."

"Thank you," she said with a gush of relief and gratitude, as he pressed on with his late-afternoon locking up rounds. Chocolate, she thought. She would make herself a hot chocolate and sit by the window looking down the street toward the lake.

The good thing about grieving, she reflected, was—for her, anyway—that you could eat anything you wanted and never gain weight. People told her she was too thin. If she ever gained a few pounds, maybe that would mean she was finally done with it. She was, well almost, ready.