Fran Steuben had freckles and flat hair and was pretty in a placid sort of way. “Wholesome” some said, “plump” said others. Nice, sweet, kind—everything you’d want in a wife but not in a date.
She worked summers at the bookstore on the corner in downtown Smalltown, Ohio. It was perfect for her. She loved reading and had majored in English Lit at Barnard. She started out being an English teacher in high school. Loved the subject, hated the kids. Came home with a headache every day and went straight to bed. She never saw darkness the whole semester. The only good part was that she was too sick to eat and lost 17 pounds. Even so, she quit after finals in December and slept for two straight days.
Her father had died the year before in New York City when he crossed at a red light. For some reason, he thought the city bus would honor it. The next-door neighbors, Wilbur and Sylvia Thomas, did what they could to soften the blow. Sylvia brought over her famous door-stopper meatloaf every week until July when the Hallmark Christmas movies came on. Meanwhile, Wilbur fixed the Steubens’ windows and locks, unblocked their kitchen sink, and even painted the back porch.
But it wasn’t all work and no play for Wilbur at the Steuben home: Fran’s mother, Mary, was a big woman with a large stomach and plenty of handholds. She stayed in bed most of the day. Wilbur was tall and skinny and loved “to climb the mountain”, which is what he called getting on top of Mary while Fran was out and the new Christmas movies were showing in his own house.
Wilbur owned most of Smalltown’s downtown real estate, including the bookstore on the corner. Old Mrs. Fogarty, Wilbur’s late mother’s best friend, ran it for fifteen years, sort of as Wilbur’s ongoing charity project. The problem with Old Mrs. was that she wouldn’t stock any books that had curse words in them. As the years went by, the collection grew thinner and thinner. So did Old Mrs., come to think of it.
The Christmas eve after Fran’s one and only teaching semester, Old Mrs. simply stalled out after unlocking the front door. Her best friend Ada came in with the tea she always brought and Old Mrs. was standing stock still and mid-stride halfway toward her desk in the back. It was the jangle of the front doorbells that jump-started her. She was just turning around and blinking when Ada caught up to her and sat her down. That afternoon, her no-good son and his pretty good wife put Old Mrs. in a nursing home and themselves into her house on Somerset Avenue so they could take good care of her money.
As a kindly gesture and in an effort to stop her constant whining, Wilbur gave Fran the job of managing the bookstore. Fran was so happy that tears came in her eyes. During her first visit to the store as manager, tears came in her eyes for a different reason when she saw everything it needed: new paint, new shelves, new lights, and a whole new stock of books. Luckily, the solution popped up three days later when she came home unexpectedly and found Wilbur on top of the mountain in the master bedroom. Nobody said a word. Fran simply shut the door and went back to the bookstore.
The next afternoon, Fran brought two documents for Wilbur to sign: his agreement to finance all of the store’s needs and a transfer of its title to Fran. A month later, Fran held a grand reopening event that featured balloons, clowns, and contests with book prizes. Everyone was amazed at the transformation of the store, and business began to boom from that time on. The following weekend, Fran moved into the apartment above the store. The next week, Wilbur’s Sylvia packed her things and took off for Evergreen, VT, one of the fictional towns on Hallmark. Mary Steuben continued to stay in bed and Wilbur continued to live in his own house, though from time to time, they got together for a little mountain climbing.