Page 14 of The Broken Heart Playlist
It’s been a week since my conversation with Laura, Lisset’s teacher. During that week, I’ve alternated between trying to give Lisset her space and not push her, to leaving books on her bedside table and checking in with her the following morning to see if she’d read any of them. She hadn’t.
Laura informs me Lisset is still hostile to any form of reading at school. When a substitute teacher tried to pressure her to read, she became so upset she had to go to the nurse’s office to calm down.
All in all, a crappy, unproductive week, culminating in this urgent, last-ditch trip to the library.
I’m not a hundred percent sure what my plan is here. Maybe I’m hoping Lisset will feel inspired when she’s surrounded by hundreds of books. Or maybe I’m wishing her passion for reading will be reignited by her being around other readers. Worst case, I’ll simply load her down with books and save the problem of getting her to read them for another day.
“I know you don’t want to be here,” I say. “We’re just going to get something to eat from the café and then pick up a few books.”
“Why?” She crosses her arms, looking defiant. “Are you going to read them?”
“Watch your tone, Lis,” I warn.
“Sorry,” she whispers, looking stricken.
Sullenness is a coat my daughter rarely wears. She’s typically cheerful and easygoing. While not quite the unicorn and rainbow girl my sister believes her to be, since Lisset is often on her best behavior for the aunt she adores, this extended stubbornness is definitely not her.
“The books are not for me,” I tell her. “They’re for you.”
“I don’t want them.”
I glance at her in the rearview mirror. She looks so small sitting there. “I thought you liked reading.”
Her shoulders deflate. “I liked it when I was young. Not anymore.”
She sounds like an exhausted, stressed-out, thirty-one-year-old woman carrying too much on her shoulders. She sounds like me.
“Adults still read, you know,” I point out.
“You don’t read.”
“I do read! I have a book on my bedside table.”
I hear the censure in her tone when she says, “Mom, that book has been sitting there since Auntie Tess bought it for your birthday last year.”
I forget sometimes how uncannily observant my daughter is and how incapable she is of keeping those observations to herself.
Honestly, I would love to read more. But between working a full-time job and housework and caring for Lisset, reading a novel is a sad bullet point at the bottom of an endlessly long list.
“I’m slowly making my way through the book,” I tell her. She doesn’t need to know it’s at a pace of one page a month, if I’m lucky. Maybe it’s time to change that. “The point is, I don’tdislike reading. I sometimes don’t have enough time to read.” I gentle my voice. “You have enough time, though.”
She shrugs, looking mulish and miserable. “Reading is just dumb.”
It’s like an alien has taken over my child, which I thought only happened when they become teenagers.
“You’re being silly,” I say as we pull into the library parking lot. “We just need to find you the right book. Come on.”
To my relief, she doesn’t argue as we climb out of the car and make our way to the café outside the library. It’s open late on Thursdays, coinciding with the library’s 9 p.m. closing time. We order juice and toasted paninis, and I keep our conversation centered on neutral topics, like her friends at school and our plans for the weekend.
When we’re finished eating, we push through the double glass doors into the library. The residents of Brown Oaks are proud of their library and justifiably so. They’ve thrown a lot of money at it over the years. The library is spread over two levels. The children’s section is on the ground floor, while the adult section is mostly on the second floor with quiet areas and workspaces for private study.
At the entrance I pause briefly, soaking up the atmosphere. I love the quiet that feels a little like reverence, the smell of paper that teases the intellect with the wealth of knowledge inside these walls, the heady possibility of escaping into other worlds.
Because yesterday was Valentine’s Day, there’s a huge display of romance novels at the entrance. My eyes fall on the rows of bright spines and radiant colors lining the shelves. All those love stories and happy endings.
For some reason, a lump forms in my throat.
I don’t take bookings for Valentine’s Day. Instead, I keep busy catching up on admin, uploading photos to my website, and avoiding people.
