Before I Go by Colleen Oakley

Author:Colleen Oakley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books

THE BARNES & NOBLE near the mall is nearly void of people, barring the few navy-polo-shirted employees who are restocking shelves and manning cash registers. I suppose I should have realized that Monday morning isn’t a prime shopping time for book buyers.

“Can I help you?” asks an eager salesman with a head of curls that are burnt orange—one of those hair colors that just look unfortunate on a man but that women spend years trying to reproduce with the help of a box.

“Just looking,” I say. I don’t tell him what for.

With one eye on the door, I scan the tables at the front of the store. New releases by John Grisham, Danielle Steel, Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King. It seems like the names on display never change, just the covers. And I wonder if these prolific authors will ever run out of stories to tell. If one day they’ll just turn off the computer and say, “That’s it. I’ve told them all.”

A cowboy on the cover of a Nora Roberts catches my eye. I pick it up and stare at his bare, plastic-looking chest. When I was growing up, my mom had a stack of these types of books on her nightstand. It seemed like such an adult thing to have, like a travel coffee mug or a checking account, that when I pictured myself twenty years in the future, as an adult, I invariably knew that my nightstand would also be covered with my own stack of lusty books. But when I got older, romance novels never interested me. I eschewed them for psychology textbooks and Jodi Picoult dramas and the latest New York Times best-sellers that everyone buzzed about. Now, holding it, I realize reading romance novels was something I always assumed I’d pick up, like crocheting or flower arranging, when my hair grayed and my skin wrinkled.

But my hair won’t gray. And my skin won’t wrinkle. And I may die without having ever read a romance novel. Without ever knowing what the fuss is about. And this—this!—is what causes water to spring up and fill my lower lashes, blurring my vision.

And it occurs to me if I were to write a “Coping with Terminal Cancer” pamphlet, this is what I would cover. Not the obvious stuff about anger and bargaining, but the ridiculous moments like crying over bodice rippers in a suburban strip mall at 10 A.M. on a Monday morning.

I wipe my eyes and glance around to make sure no one has noticed my silly tears, and then tuck the book into the crook of my arm, realizing that I’m equally concerned to be spotted buying such drivel. But its weight on my elbow—and the knowledge that it will be on my nightstand tonight—is absurdly comforting.

I straighten my spine and lift my head, trying my best to emulate a normal shopper and not a blubbering, dying woman who is looking for a wife for her husband. The bell at the entrance chimes and I look up and see a short woman struggling to push a baby stroller through the glass door.

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