A Literary Dalliance [Part 1]

“Reading is part of your education,” Matthew always said. “That’s why I won’t ever stop you from doing it.”

The bookshelf was most certainly Sybil’s primary destination after she wolfed down her breakfast every morning. Plate in hand, Lydia would watch disapprovingly after her daughter who was already down the hall, sniffing out pages of adventure like a dog to a bone. Her mother had long given up trying to convince Matthew towards a slightly more well-rounded curriculum. What about mathematics? Impossible, Matthew had replied as he reorganized the battered spines of some of his most favourite classics – 80,000 Leagues Under the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Down and Out in Paris and London – and lightly swept their edges with a feather duster. According to her stubborn, book-bound husband, mathematics only bred mechanical children with one-track minds, notorious for their lack of creativity. “I want Sybil to live, Lydia.”

Matthew always had the final say in things when their daughter was concerned.

Sometimes, as she looked into the mirror and prepared for bed, Lydia wished she had never allowed her husband to remove Sybil from public school in favour of homeschooling. At the time, of course, it had seemed like such a good idea. Matthew argued well and particularly well when it was about Sybil’s welfare; Lydia had not had much chance to disagree. Later, in the whispering hours of the night, he won her over with a line of kisses down her neck and sweet, sweet love between the sheets. As Lydia’s hands sweatily, ecstatically, clenched her husband closer, Matthew suggested homeschooling for a second time. He knew that his wife was weak in character, and weaker so in bed. So, between the nocturnal chirps of grasshoppers outside and the muffled, joyful sighs of Sybil’s parents indoors, the issue was settled and the young girl would begin lessons under Matthew’s supervision the very next morning.

The morning brought a table piled high with literary classics and contemporary gems, from Chaucer to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. There was not a single book dedicated to biology or algebra or history – all was fiction. Lydia had walked in, wrapped in her fluffy pink housecoat, whistling and courting a wild plan to make a delicious breakfast for her family. Upon seeing the kitchen table overflowing with nothing but pleasure volumes, her tune quickly changed. Instead, Matthew and Sybil got burnt toast and Can You Believe It’s Not Butter? butter.

Things had changed now because Lydia had come to accept to Matthew’s approach to teaching their daughter, so sometimes she made eggs. There was no other option. Still, she harboured a little darkness in her heart for the man. How was Sybil supposed to make it to college with nothing but a love for books under her belt? Gazing out the window, watching the first of the spring deer grazing the frosty grass, Lydia resigned herself to a future of living with Sybil, an old maid loyal only to her beloved novels. Over the years, Matthew gradually relinquished his hold on their daughter’s education so by the time she reached fifteen, there was now a total lack of direction. Sybil’s days entirely revolved around reading. One for Matthew to loosen his grip on Sybil was because he wanted to preserve his marriage and this what was communicated to Lydia.

The other reason he wanted to keep to himself, but it was so obvious that even the strangest of strangers to the Lesemann household would have picked up on it: Sybil was too far gone.

After breakfast, the willowy fifteen year old would scuttle down the hallway to the very end of the bungalow house where Matthew had built a reading nook for her years before. The room was about the size of an ensuite bathroom, but it functioned for Sybil’s purposes. Anything bigger would have felt too vast for the intimate pleasures of reading. The walls were floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and on the floor was a plum oriental carpet Matthew had picked up during his raging twenties’ stumble across the Middle East. The walls were painted a deep crimson to match the plush armchair that was pushed into the far corner, next to a drafty window whose replacement was long overdue. All of the books in the room belonged to Sybil and, over time, as she collected more and more, they began to exhaust the shelves’ capacity and eked out in piles onto the floor. Volumes old and new towered like literary skyscrapers around Sybil’s place in the armchair.

Today, Sybil settled into her seat with a large book she had serendipitously come across a few weeks back in a thrift shop. It was nothing like she had ever seen before, with a heavy gold cover and thick green embossing on the title and author’s name. Imbroglio by Hugh Lord, it read. The pages were thick and so far untainted by grubby fingerprints; clearly the book had not been read in years, if at all. The shop owner sold it to Sybil for a mere three dollars without a second glance.

Imbroglio was a typical fantasy-adventure novel set in a land complete with knights, damsels in distress, and drunken kings. Axel Heart was the dashing young protagonist, a knight with a lion’s courage and the wit of an eagle, but with a personality only fitting of one too aware of his good looks. Sybil ate up Hugh Lord’s every word, adventuring along with the despicably wonderful Axel Heart as he defeated dragons and wooed fetching young princesses, all in the path of his ultimate aim of overthrowing the astute and furtive Lord Hugo, a crow-like man who meddled too much with the old, naive king. And so it was that Sybil fell head over heels in love with the Axel, the knight constantly impeded by Lord Hugo’s evil plans, who won over the hearts of all.

And so it was the young girl began a beautiful, ridiculous, dreamy dalliance with a character on paper.