Great Expectations

The Books Story

By Cindy Rae

Now, it must be said that the book belonged to Vincent.

This must be said, or the story has no meaning, really, no
conclusion, no great poetry at all. So the book belonged
to Vincent, and that must be established.
It was not Father's, not Mary's, not Peter's, and not
Smythe's. It was Vincent's.
It sat on his shelf as surely as his Shakespeare did, or his
Milton. Hardbound. An off-white cover with maroon
lettering, a stylized CD for the authors initials, and
maroon scrollwork, to match. Watercolor pictures inside,
and end pages and the usual acknowledgements. With a
gold colored medallion on the spine listing the title and
the author, as many higher quality tomes sometimes
have, and this one was one of those.
And it belonged to Vincent.
But it's fair to say it did not always belong to him....

No, oh no. Once, why it had been part of a set. Indeed, a

very expensive set, one that had included A Tale of Two
Cities and Little Dorrit and David Copperfield and The
Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist and even the
comparatively tiny A Christmas Carol. All by Mr. Charles
Dickens, of course.
Not that they were first editions, mind you. Oh, no, never
think that! The sturdy volume that held the lines no
shadow of another parting from her in its well-stitched
(and originally slip covered) body never graced Mr.
Dickens' hand, or even his time.
Dickens was as cold as Marley come 1870 or so. Famous,
but famously deceased.
The book, at least this copy of it, didn't see the light of
day until 1939, though many of the illustrations in it were
the inimitable Edward Ardizzones, rest his soul. Some
fifty of them, all told. But I digress.

No, the book sat a long time in Cambridge, don't you

know, not so far from Radcliffe, as it happens, though
Radcliffe would mean something else to a Miss
Catherine Chandler. Who wasn't born yet, anyway, and
wouldn't be, for quite a few years, when the book was
published.
The book and its fellows took up residence on the shelf of
a professor Sheffield. A nice enough fellow, who, like
Dickens himself, rather liked David Copperfield for a
story, and A Christmas Carol for the fluff of it.
They were a gift from his wife, a present she rather liked
for their style and weight. She knew he would like them.
She just did. So she bought them on more than a whim
and less than a plan. Sometimes, great things happen, or
begin to happen, just that way.
Dr. Sheffield, (or Adam, dear, as Patience, his wife of
many years referred to him) had a tendency to keep his
books on the shelf in alphabetical order. That meant
Great Expectations sat just after David Copperfield, and
right before Little Dorrit. (The latter of which never did
get read by Dr. Sheffield, though one summer, to his
credit, he tried to find the time.)
It must be said that A Christmas Carol was his favorite,
and that it was near his bedside when he passed at the
ripe old age of eighty-four.
That is something of an important thing, don't you know,
because it meant the set was never restored, or entire.
Patience Pennywhite Sheffield (a Dickensian name if ever
one had the potential to be) kept her late husband's

favorite book in his bedside drawer, always. It never did

rejoin its fellows on the shelf.
Which rather led to their next set of adventures.
As so happens with people of literary note, (Dr. Sheffield
taught literature on weekends at the college, and Bible
during Sunday school to children) his own children had no
great love of the classics, minor or major.
So it was after the passing of Patience, some time in the
1960's, that every book and statue, every stick of
furniture and article of merit was packed into boxes,
pawed over, auctioned off, donated, and simply, well,
heaved into the rubbish.
Now, that's not to say that the books endured that fate,
no, no! Even bohemian savages like the Sheffield clan (a
group old Charles himself would likely have loved to write
about, and may have, some, in Nicholas Nickleby),
recognized quality when they saw it. And so they sold
the remaining six (Copperfield through Tale of Two Cities),
fobbed off for some twenty dollars or so, a not
unhandsome sum in the sixties.
The buyer, a Miss Marian Haversham (and yes,
Haversham is a name in Expectations), was a spinster's
spinster, a one who would have done Mary, (whom she
never met but could have duplicated) proud. And in this,
the books were fortunate.
Because while Miss Marian never really was much of a
bookworm, she was an immaculate housekeeper and a
wonderful collector of sets of things. (Though she
never did realize one volume was missing, having never

bothered to open the first one to see the set listed,

entirely.)
She dusted the books, and kept them in a nice cool room.
Kept them away from too much dry air or too much sun,
to fade the covers or crack the bindings.
She occasionally even opened them to thumb through
them a bit, when she felt that she was in a literary
mood. She'd look at the pictures, and skim the text,
even though her true taste in novels tended to gothic
romances and the occasional bit of Poe. (Who, by the
way, sat a few shelves below Dickens in her parlor.)
Miss Marian always referred to the room as the parlor,
not much caring for the more mundane sounding living
room. So the parlor it was, and there Great Expectations
sat, not knowing there was a train trip about to bring it to
Manhattan.
Now, Miss Marian was one to travel now and then, short
trips for the sake of adventure. And Miss Marian liked a
good show. She might not be the most literate of souls,
but she was a good sort, and an afternoon in the Park and
a taxi to a Broadway show was as fine a treat as any.
And so it was, one afternoon, that Miss Marian primmed
herself up, and took down a nice bag that perfectly
matched her brown leather shoes, and prepared herself
for a train trip into that metropolis simply known as The
City.
Now, that bag is important to our story. Important, mind
you, because it was not Miss Marian's largest bag. Had it
been Miss Marian's largest bag, the one that did not

match her brown leather shoes, that might have been

bad, you see, because into that bag, Marian Haversham
might have put David Copperfield for her train trip.
Miss Marian was always of the opinion that one must
have something to read on the train (of course), and also
be seen reading something of worth. The slightly tawdry
but often thrilling romances she favored would not do for
this, don't you see, so it was to her well organized and
well dusted bookshelf, the one in her parlor, she went.
The 'D' in 'Dickens' meant these books were just about
right at eye level, you understand, with Miss Marian. The
Louisa May Alcotts (No relation to Dr. Peter; he looked it
up.) were up high, as were the Anthologies, and bits of
Byron, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Poe was much
farther down, along with the rarely touched Shakespeare.
(You actually had to bend for Will, Tennyson, and
Wordsworth.) But the Dickens shelf was right at eye
level.
So, Dickens it was. It was either that or Clemens, and she
did not feel like a Southern story. No, she felt like an
English Classic story (though she would scarcely get
through a few dozen pages before the train stopped), and
it was David Copperfield that came off the shelf.
It didn't fit. Plain as that, that with her trim wallet, her
theater ticket, her train ticket and money for lunch and a
treat, the larger volume simply would not fit comfortably
in the brown leather bag that matched her shoes.
So David Copperfield came out, and in went Great
Expectations. The story of Pip and Estella, and Magwitch,
and even a Miss Haversham. And that was that.

Off to New York went Great Expectations. There was no

help for it. That was its fate. Had Marian Haversham
chosen her camel skirt and jacket for that day, things
might have been different. Then Devin might have stolen
David Copperfield, instead.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, of course.
The Park was busy that day, and the weather most clear.
Again, this is most fortunate for our book, because had it
been raining at any time, it might have been lost forever,
to the weather.
But it was sunny that day, sunny and clear. And Miss
Marian Haversham sat on a bench not too far from a
certain drainage culvert, as 1965 happened all around
her.
Not too terribly far from her, (but far from sight) a young
boy named Vincent was learning to read more fluently,
as a middle aged man named Jacob was taking him and a
boy named Devin through their literary paces.
But Marian would never meet Vincent, or Jacob, or even
Devin. Oh, no. You mustn't think that. These things are
never so easy!
The book was open to the sun, some thirty seven or so
pages in (not counting the copyright, acknowledgments,
and the rather longish description of How this Book
Came to Be in the beginning), when a little girl dropped
her two scoops of ice cream off the cone, not more than a
dozen paces from where Miss Marian sat.
Well, the howling was ferocious from such an indignity,
and Miss Marian, having raised no children of her own,

thought the child must be seriously injured. Her brown

bag still over her arm, she rose to check.
And the book lay face down on the bench.
Now, it takes a bit of doing to sort out a child whose
emotional apocalypse is at hand, and Marian Haversham
was a sorter-outer of the first magnitude. After all, it's
what you did when you had small collections of things.
You kept things sorted.
The little girl, (whose name was Jenny, and who would,
coincidentally, become a good friend of Catherine
Chandler's one day) needed sorting out. And that's just
what Miss Marian aimed to do.
No easy feat, since not only had Jenny lost her two scoops
of chocolate, she'd also lost her mother somewhere
between the ice cream vendor and the park bench. It's
why shed lost the ice cream. She'd been turning around
in frantic circles, looking for her mother.
There was no help for it. Miss Marian would just have to
sort it all out.
A wipe of a napkin, a stroll of a good distance, and a
much-relieved Debra Aaronson later, Jenny was
deposited. Miss Marian was satisfied that she had done
her good deed for the day.
There was even a cab right close by, and the matinee
now only some twenty minutes away. She would make it,
if the cabbie hurried. She would not even remember the
book until later that evening, when she returned from
seeing Something Funny Happened on the Way to the
Forum."

Content that she was a good person who had done a

good thing, Marian Haversham passed a beautiful woman
named Margaret Chase, who exited the cab as Marian
entered it. Life was funny, that way.
And the book still sat on the bench, the breeze not strong
enough to lift its pages, given the sturdy cover that held
it.
Now, here is where Mr. Smythe comes in, gentle reader,
and most exceptionally, too, as he would look almost
identical to the Mr. Smythe Catherine would meet some
twenty-five or so years later. Dapper yet rumpled.
Middle aged. Portly. Refined. Bespectacled. Mr. Smythe
always looked dapper, rumpled, middle aged, portly,
refined and bespectacled, even when he was very young.
And he was not very young in 1965. Or at least, he didn't
look like he was.
Mr. Smythe was opening an antiquarian bookstore not far
from an array of expensive shops in the Village. And
though this particular copy of Great Expectations was not
exceptionally valuable, it was, at least, a splendid and
undamaged version of it, minus a bit of wear to the
corners where it had obviously been stuffed into a bag.
You see, Devin, who would acquire it (but was by no
means about to acquire it yet), had no knowledge of the
book, gentle reader. Indeed, he was as clueless as a
titwillow to its existence. Devin was a few months away
from a date with a carousel, yet. And that indeed has
something to do with our story.

Mr. Smythe rescued the book from the elements, and like
any good merchant who obtained something for nothing,
set about to sell it.
So the book was carried away from the tunnel entrance.
But don't you fret, reader. It would soon be back.
Mr. Smythe's shop at number 777 was one of those that
had far too many items and far too few shelves. And
while he seemed to know the title and edition of
everything he had and where it sat (as it collected refined
dust), his customers often had few such advantages. And
so it was that Mr. Smythe often kept a rolling cart near
the street (a common enough practice for book
merchants), to entice customers to come inside.
It is patently true that Smythe deemed much that was on
the cart to be of little worth; the old, the battered, the
non-first editions, and the (ahem) free residents of his
shop often held court on the cart, trying to woo
passersby.
And so it was that Devin Wells, age 13, strolled near
number 777, searching for a way to either make a dollar
or steal one. He would have done Fagins gang in Oliver
Twist proud. But of course, even though Devin had
something of an Artful Dodger in him, that was not the
book he was about to cross paths with. (Or, the book
with which he was about to cross paths, as C. Dickens,
the last great mythologist would have written it.)
The book usually sat far above the others on the cart,
standing higher by virtue of it being a rather impressive
hardback amongst at least four paperbacks, a termite

chewed book of Coleridge's, and a crack-binded copy of

The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others.
While the portrait of Dorian Gray (no pun on the title
intended) looked far more interesting than the plain
covered Expectations, the Dickens copy had a couple
things going for it.
Firstly, by the time Devin spotted it, it was on the second
shelf, and on the outside edge, laying longwise.
Someone had picked it out, leafed through it, and set it
back. (A slender man with a hawkish nose and a taste for
fine things, but no desire to spend his pocket money on
fripperies.)
But he hadn't shelved it; he'd left it laying across the top
of the other volumes on the middle shelf, where it was a
bit out of sight of Smythe.
Secondly, it just plain looked more regal in stature. It was
larger than the Wilde work, and the off-white, heavy,
cloth-over-board binding looked more impressive. If
Devin was about to steal a gift, he at least wanted it to be
a nice one. The size of it was no problem. It was going to
ride under his jacket against his abdomen, anyway.
Then there was the title. What was that again? Great
Expectations. Oh, that was indeed the book for Vincent!
Devin had great expectations himself, for him and his
little brother. Devin hoped it was a bit of a how to book,
in that case.
It wasn't, but Devin didn't know that. And after one halfhearted attempt in his late teens, he would never actually

read the book. That's all right, though. It was destined to

change Vincent's life forever, not Devin's.
Devin knew better than to stand there, look at the
pictures, then try to palm it. The longer he stood still, the
more he would draw Smythe's eye. So it was with a
casual saunter and a deft flip of the wrist that Devin
committed a bit of petty larceny. Thus, Great
Expectations found its way under his patched corduroy
jacket, the one with a working zipper, but a hole in each
pocket. (He needed the zipper to work more than the
pockets. It was how he planned to conceal the book.)
Mr. Smythe, tending a customer with the delightfully
Polish last name of Kazmarek, had no idea the book had
been taken. Maybe. He looked after the retreating back
of the young boy. Slender. Tall for his age, and in good
need of a beating, if not at least a haircut. His elbows
had patches. He would not come around again, Smythe
knew. That was enough.
Smythe smiled a little as he rang up his purchase for a
Mr. Kazmarek, Stories of the Brothers Grimm. A gift for
Mr. Kazmareks son, Stosh.
There was no better gift than a good book, for a child.
Even one who would one day change his name to Elliot
Burch.
Damn, Devin thought, looking at the book in his room,
later. Too wordy, too long. Only the pictures were worth
much. At least some of those were cool.
The book stayed hidden under Devin's bed, gathering
dust (not necessarily the refined variety, but who knows,

with dust?) and the sounds and ambience of the tunnels.

It stayed there for many weeks when the night of the illfated carousel ride occurred.
At this point, the book was mostly forgotten and
genuinely fated to go mostly unread, all its life. But then
the carousel ride happened, and the punishments that
followed.
The two boys lay in their beds, both elated from the ride,
and soundly and roundly reprimanded by Father for their
adventure. More consequences would be forthcoming,
not to mention one of Father's more famous lectures.
Vincent's night had gone from one of exhilaration to one
of despair. He snuffled into his sleeve, trying hard not to
cry. Devin had included him. It had felt wonderful, been
wonderful. They were both in trouble. Devin more than
him. But Devin because of him, that much Vincent knew.
"It's okay, Little Brother." Devin called him one of the
names the wolves called Mowgli, in The Jungle Book.
The Jungle Book. Book. Free association, and there it
was. Devin remembered the book beneath his bed. "I
got you something. I was going to save this for
Winterfest, but..." he passed the book over to Vincent.
"You probably can't read it yet, Devin admitted. It will
be a long time. But you can keep it with the other ones
on the shelf. Or give it to Father if you like. Maybe he
won't be so mad."
"You should give it to him, then." Vincent shook his head,
wanting Devin to be back in Father's good graces.

"Nah. I got it for you. See the title? Great Expectations.

Like us, huh?" Devin smiled and so did Vincent, for a
moment at least.
Devin was encouraging as he offered the wondrous (and
wondrously travelled) book to Vincent. "It's got some
good pictures. You can look at it, if you want."
Vincent took the book.
It felt heavy. And it felt good, in his hands. The cover felt
smooth, and though the dust was there, to be sure, and
the corners were showing a bit of wear from having been
bumped around, the binding was utterly intact and the
pages were nearly pristine.
It looked like a good book. He liked the title. He liked the
gold medallion on the binding. He ran his clawed fingers
across the smooth, illustrated pages. It was pretty.
"Thank you, Devin." Vincent told him solemnly. He
flipped though the pictures for the next hour or so, then
set it amongst his things. The things that he would keep
with him once Devin left, and the chamber belonged
solely to him.
He read it at least once, well before Lisa. Liked it, though
he didn't pretend to understand all the words, and could
barely keep up with the Dickensian penchant for odd
names and mysterious benefactors. He did not quite
understand the nuances of the English class structure,
but he knew what it was to be excluded because of what
he was, so Pip rang at least a bit true for him.

By age thirteen, he understood pining for a girl, like Pip

did for Estella. By fifteen, that sensation was a spear in
his heart.
The book was now a bit more than well read, Father
having borrowed it twice, each time faithfully returning it,
and Mary having enjoyed it at least once, the echo of
Marian Haversham whispering across the pages.
After Lisa, during his time of the first madness, when he
mourned and cried and raged, Father sat with him as his
fever peaked and valleyed, reading to him.
Shakespeare, ByronDickens.
By the time Vincent was himself again, he was a scholar.
And Father settled the book high on Vincent's shelf,
clearly placing it with the things Vincent valued. It would
be read, borrowed, and returned many more times.
It always found its way back to Vincent's chambers
eventually, even though he never inscribed his name
inside. No one had. In spite of its many owners, it never
bore an inscription. Never one owner or another.
But it was surely Vincent's, now. As surely as his vest, his
cape, his journal, or his work boots. It was Vincent's. It
was his own, and he treasured it, and considered it a
thing worth sharing.
Then, Once Upon a Time in New York...

-fin-

No matter where you are in your own fairy tale, I wish you
love. ~Cindy
Originally submitted for Winterfest Online 2014.