Mary Collins

The Bookcase

The antique Globe-Wenicke stackable oak bookcase with glass panels and brass knobs sits in the corner of my living room where the rest of the décor of ill-matched furniture always makes me feel as though I’m moving through someone else’s yard sale. I can’t remember when I stopped using the case to hold my favorite books and instead used it to hold titles that have the most personal meaning for me. I do know that my mother gave it to me after I finished graduate school, a profound gesture that far outweighed anything else she could have offered me, even her wedding ring.

My father, a judge in Connecticut, died when I was 14 and this case once stood in his judicial chambers filled with tan bound legal tomes. My collection of books has a more motley hue: black, shocking red, glossy white, orange. I know a lot of novelists.

There are plenty of Pulitzer Prize winning titles in my collection of signed first editions, but that exalted stamp of approval is not what earns them their place behind the glass. Somehow the story behind the book must resonate with me to the point where I feel joy, sadness or longing simply because I touched the dust jacket.

In my autographed edition of David McCullough’s 1776 I have a picture of my mother leaning her petite body into the reknowned historian’s bearish torso. She’s landing a smooch on his cheek as his wife, Rosalee, stands to the far right of the frame letting loose with a full throttled laugh. The entire photograph radiates teenage passion, even though they are all over seventy.

Pressed between the book’s back cover and jacket flap, I also keep copies of letters my mother has sent to McCullough and a postcard that Rosalee sent her.

My mother does not know the McCulloughs personally; she’s just an impassioned fan of his books and has gone to so many of his signings and talks that he now recognizes her face and knows her name. At one point during the chirpy exchanges people have with authors at book signings, my mother thanked him for all of the joy his books had given her in her quiet hours.

If you would like to read rest of this story, please order your print copy of the Potomac Review issue #43 now.

 

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