The Perfect Book-marker
When I was bored or lonely, I would spend time in the attic. I would look through boxes and find whatever long, lost family treasures were inside. I found my dad's high school wrestling trophies. I found a box of his cassette tapes, all music that I listen to. One box was too heavy to lift so I had to drag it out to the center of the floor. I lifted the cover and saw that it was filled with forgotten paperback books, like V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic. On the first page of each book, my mother had written her name and the date. I leafed through each book, forming a stack beside me. The last book was Stephen King's Pet Sematary. I picked it up and saw a gold bookmarker underneath. I put the rest of the books back in the box, took the bookmarker and book to my room, sat on my bed, and began to read.
I saved this bookmaker; it's hard to find a good one worth keeping. This one is about two inches long; the kind you clip between pages. Brand new, it looked shiny and gold, but now the metal is giving way to rust. The letter "P" sticks out from the book when it is used. Like all bookmarkers, it has its problems. Each time I bump it, pages get ripped. You can spot which books I've used it on with one glance of my bookshelf. I stopped clipping it to the pages; now I just slide it between the pages like any other bookmarker.
My mother encouraged reading in our house. Each night before bed, we would turn off the TV and run up to find a book. Like any kid, I went through the phases. I was read to, I followed along, I picked up a few words and then I was off on my own. We started with Dr. Seuss, Curious George, and the Berenstain Bears. I then moved up to Encyclopedia Brown. My mother took me to a book signing by Donald Sobol so I could get his latest novel, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Mysterious Handprints, signed. I made sure he signed my copy of his first novel as well.
Each time I went to my parent's room to read, I would spot a new book on my mother's nightstand. Most times, the author was the same – Stephen King. I remember walking in at the age of ten and seeing his latest novel. The cover was black. In giant red letters was the author's name. The Tommyknockers, was below it in white, just above a picture of an eerie green light. I picked up the book and saw this gold bookmarker protruding from the pages. I asked my mom what the book was about. She told me it was a scary story that I was too young to read. I was still curious so I flipped through the pages. I was lost. I may have been too young to read something so scary, and my vocabulary was not what it needed to be to even begin to read this novel.
I began to have a fascination with her bookmarker. Each time she read a book from the library, there it was, holding pages together, waiting to make its way to the end of the story. My only bookmarkers were whatever free slips of paper the library was giving out by the counter. I tried using baseball cards and movie ticket stubs. But I wanted something real, something I couldn't just find and stick in a book. When my mom would finish a book, she would leave the bookmarker on the nightstand where I would find it and use it until she was into her next tale of horror. Sometimes she would let me keep it through a whole book of my own. Seeing her bookmarker stand out from the large novels she read did not compare to the look of using it on my one hundred page kid's books. It would stick out of her novels just enough to be seen, engulfed in the pages. But in my books, the bookmarker felt bigger than the book. I felt like I should have finished reading each one after a day and never needed to save my place.
Each month my school would hand out fliers for book orders. I would always pick out around ten. My mom would pick out two. I was at the end of the 5th grade. Summer was about to begin so my mom ordered something for me to read until my graduation into the 6th grade – middle school. Looking over the flier, I spotted a familiar name. I was excited because the flier was telling me I was old enough to read Stephen King. He had written a book, The Eyes of the Dragon, for his own children. This was my chance to read what my mom was reading. This was my first Stephen King book.
Now I needed a bookmarker. I went to the local bookstore. Near the counter they had a small rotating rack of bookmarkers. I went with a normal one with a picture of a penguin and a tassel at the end. I used this to read my first real novel.
After reading The Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King became my favorite author. Starting with his most popular works, I then went back to read each novel in the order they were published. I joined his book club so I could have all of his novels in hardback as well as paperback. As part of joining the club, I received a bookmarker with a skull at the top. I tried to use it but it was too thick; it would leave indentations in the pages. I have moved on to better writers, as well as better bookmarkers, but he will be the author who began my transition from teen books to actual novels.
June 9, 1989. It was two months shy of my twelfth birthday. I awoke to the sounds of my mother getting ready to run errands. I asked if I could go along and she said no. I had to stay home with my brother and his friend. It was raining. On her drive to town, my mom's car hydroplaned into a guardrail. She was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the car. Patricia Ann Blythe died instantly. As word spread around town, people searched for my brother and me, thinking we had been with her in the accident. We were at a neighbor's house, unaware of what happened.
As time passed, my dad began to pack away her things. My cousins and aunts took the clothes and jewelry. My brother kept pictures. I could never find what I wanted to remember her by. Eventually, everything else was thrown out or placed in boxes in the attic.
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