The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman Page 0,11

not to talk about them, whereas the girls were all about the chatter. These little girls were strong and confident, mostly, because of when and where they were growing up, and because puberty hadn’t smacked them across the head yet. They unapologetically and voraciously read books about fairies and witches and female heroines who didn’t need rescuing, and would open a book to check it out and then still be standing there reading an hour later when their parents reappeared. It was wonderful to watch a kid get tugged ineluctably into a different world.

Nina had developed a special fondness for these kids, because she knew the world would soon begin telling them other things were more important than the contents of their heads. So she started the elementary book club, and once a month after the store had closed at seven, she would sit there with a group of eight-to-twelve-year-old girls and talk about books for an hour. It was the club she wished she’d had when she was their age, and if she occasionally sat there making friendship bracelets and talking about A Mango-Shaped Space with even more enthusiasm than the ten-year-olds, what’s your point?

Young Adult Book Club: This one was all Liz. She loved a darkling teen.

There had been some discussion of starting a regular, adult book club, but Nina didn’t have time, because she already belonged to a weekly adult book club—of which more later—and that commitment, along with the elementary book club, her exercise regime (if you can call sporadic exercise classes and fervent promises to do better a regime), and of course the trivia team, meant she had no free time. Liz refused to do it, and the part-time girl who worked there, Polly, hated reading. Why does she work in a bookstore, you ask? It’s a long story.

Anyway.

Despite not having a child herself, Nina enjoyed watching other people handle the unsuspected responsibilities of parenthood. The baby wasn’t the biggest problem at all, it turned out; it was the other parents. There was a definite learning curve over the first few years, and Nina had a ringside seat, because so many of Larchmont’s parents were parishioners at the Church of the Dust-Jacketed Hardback and brought their kids in all the time. She’d watched dozens of little kids graduate from Goodnight Moon to Bedtime for Frances to Junie B. Jones to whatever YA series was trending, and with them went their parents, learning to navigate the intricate social networks of neighborhood and school.

Take when two moms met in the store at reading time. Standard school-mom rules of engagement applied: If your children were friends and you met while both of you were standing, you hugged, of course. If one of you was sitting on the floor already and your kids were good friends, with an actual, out-of-school playdate under their tiny rainbow belts, then the one sitting would start to stand but the other would wave her back down and bend from the waist to half hug. If your kids were really good friends, with multiple playdates and maybe a sleepover in their shared past, then the one sitting would scooch over to make room for the other, and they would hug once both were down. Nina studied these things, because they didn’t come naturally to her. And working in a store where people tended to aimlessly wander around looking at books gave her ample opportunity for observation.

Nina’s special favorite was watching people handle introductions. It played out like this: A woman would be browsing in the store, trying to decide whether she had the balls to get something vaguely pornographic or if she’d have to stick with something worthy (note: this is where that online bookseller really triumphs, undercover purchasing), and notices someone she knows has come in. In a split second she has to decide whether or not to acknowledge their existence, the decision depending on how well she knows them, how well they know her, and whether or not she can get away with ignoring them (i.e., they definitely haven’t seen her yet, or she’s disguised as a pirate).

Their eyes meet, and now she has to decide whether to say hi and keep browsing, or actually approach and greet. She decides she can’t get away without actually greeting, but then realizes the other woman has someone else with her, someone who looks vaguely familiar, but she can’t remember why. Nina had seen this scenario so often she’d gotten used to the flicker of