Chapter Three #3
If it’s unbearable, you can quit. Kat’s promise returned to me like a guiding mantra. If it’s unbearable, you can quit. If it’s unbearable, you can quit.
I glanced back, and our eyes met across the full length of the stacks. My gaze dropped straight to the floor. I slowed my steps in an attempt to calm my palpitating heart, but as soon as I picked up the receiver again, I realized I’d returned to the desk without checking the chairs.
“You’re in luck!” I said, too enthusiastically. “One of them is empty.” If they were all occupied when she arrived, I could pretend it had just happened.
“Thank you, dear,” she said. “I’ll be right down.”
I hung up, not daring to look at Macon. “Sorry I’m late,” he said to Alyssa. “Edmond showed up again this morning.”
Edmond showed up every morning. He was Macon’s almost-cat who belonged to a neighbor but preferred Macon’s house.
The cat’s real name was Phish, with a ph the neighbor was careful to specify, but Macon called him Edmond Dantès after the wrongfully convicted protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo , who makes a patient but determined escape from prison.
Edmond had arrived last autumn, entering Macon’s house through a previously unknown gap in the foundation.
Macon had discovered the cat grooming himself on the couch.
He’d patched the hole, but then the cat hopped in through a tear in a window screen.
Macon patched that, too. Then the cat slipped in through the back door while Macon was fetching a tool from his shed, then through the front door while his arms were filled with groceries.
To make his point, Edmond began planting himself on the welcome mat every morning until Macon finally gave up.
Now Edmond spent all day at Macon’s, napping and snacking, and was sent home only at night.
Apparently, he always protested vehemently, and Macon always argued back that the cat didn’t belong to him.
Someday Macon would have to accept that he did.
I once asked why he’d named the cat after an escapee and not, say, a burglar. (A cat burglar! It was right there.) Macon said if I knew this particular neighbor, I would also think of Edmond’s house as an unjust punishment worthy of a triumphant escape.
“Of course he showed up again,” Alyssa said. “You feed him.”
“If I didn’t, he’d starve himself,” Macon said, incensed.
“You buy him the expensive food.”
“Because the cheap stuff is garbage. It’d be like feeding him a Happy Meal and then grinding up the plastic toy to go with it.” Macon was anti–fast food, so none of us were surprised when his opinions on diet extended to cats. I suspected that he spent more money on Edmond than he did on himself.
“Oh, sorry!” Alyssa popped up. She’d noticed me standing around awkwardly and assumed it was because she was still sitting in my chair. “I’ll get out of here.”
The previous summer, she’d jokingly referred to Macon and me as “work husband and work wife,” and instead of acknowledging our indisputable closeness as colleagues, we’d grown flustered with overlapping denials that sounded more like confessions.
For months afterward, we’d been instinctively less chummy when she was around, as if we had something to hide.
But we’d never had anything to hide. Not until now.
If only I could have begged her to stay.
I took my vacated seat, still unable to look at him.
Our silence was loaded. The situation was unbearable, and I would have to quit.
Today. This morning. Right now. I would tell Sue how sorry I was, but that I couldn’t stay, and I couldn’t explain why, though I was grateful for everything she’d done for me and—
Macon cleared his throat. Then again, as if it hadn’t worked the first time. “What, uh, how was… yesterday?”
The shame burned, more painful and intense than ever.
“What did you do?” Any trace of prickliness had vanished. He sounded nervous and polite. Gentle, even.
I couldn’t ignore him. I owed him that much. My gaze flickered over to him for an instant only, but I’d never forget what I saw: a man pushing through his extreme discomfort out of genuine concern. I felt foolish and mumbled something unintelligible back.
“I made that kale salad, the one I told you about? With the lemon and ricotta salata. It was good.” He paused here because usually I would comment. “Went through some seed catalogs, narrowed down my picks for the year. Uh, went to bed early. Read.”
Silence returned, swift and all-consuming.
“Not very exciting, I guess,” he said.
It was an exceedingly un-Macon-like effort to put me at ease. It was what I wanted—he was doing exactly what I had asked for, pretending like I hadn’t done what I had done—but I was too ashamed to accept his kindness. I had forever tainted our friendship with my misdeed.
“I…” I had to get this one thing out, at least. “I’m so sorr—”
He weakly lifted an embarrassed hand and waved, cutting me off. Don’t worry about it. Let’s not talk about it. And that’s how we left things for a long time.
My self-consciousness had infected him, and we worked in excruciating silence.
But I didn’t talk to Sue either. The wave had been enough to hold me back.
Instead, I monitored my phone for updates from Brittany and mentally scanned through all the Adams I had ever known, trying to find universal personality traits among them.
I typed his name into the library’s system.
He had an account, but his card had expired.
The system didn’t allow us to view a patron’s checkout history unless they had overdue fees related to a specific item.
The policy was good for privacy but bad for my curiosity. Adam had no overdue fees.
If I didn’t hear from Brittany by that evening, I’d send her a text.
I texted Brittany on my lunch break. She didn’t respond, but twenty-three messages pinged back and forth between Riley and our mom in our group text re: potential weekends for the wedding.
By the afternoon, the only snow that remained was in the shadows.
Kat had asked for a photo, but I’d forgotten.
We often traded pictures of the ocean for mountains, kangaroos for black bears.
I darted outside and snapped a sad photo of a glistening white patch in our mulch.
When I returned, Alyssa was hanging out behind the desk again.
“Photo for Kat,” I explained, still avoiding eye contact with Macon. I talked about her often enough that they both understood.
“Hey, you know those teens who live next door to me?” Alyssa asked, and we did.
She complained about them regularly, but for some reason her complaints felt pettier than Macon’s.
Or perhaps the things that bothered her just weren’t the same things that bothered us.
“They had this garland in their window that said LET IT SNOW , but yesterday they switched around the letters, and now it says WET SNOT . Can you believe that?”
Macon and I let out the same surprised snort, which was immediately uncomfortable because we were unable to share anything right now, even a joke or an opinion.
“I said something to their mom,” Alyssa said, “but she just laughed. She didn’t even make them change it back.”
“Why should they have to change it back?” I snapped. “It’s funny.”
Alyssa looked surprised. Even Macon seemed taken aback by my sudden crossness because normally I was the peacemaker. “Weird vibe over here today,” Alyssa said, eyeing us suspiciously and grabbing a stack of damaged graphic novels to repair.
Sue’s head popped out of the annex doorway. “Ingrid, would you mind coming in here for a minute?”
Relieved for an excuse to escape yet still feeling like I was being sent to the principal’s office for something she surely wasn’t even aware that I’d done, I followed her back into her compact office.
Stacks of jumbled books, papers and review publications, and framed photos of her husband and twin sons cluttered every available surface.
Afternoon light streamed in through the stained glass, casting rainbow shadows across all of it.
Obviously the annex’s windows weren’t original to the building, but a craftsman in the seventies had done a remarkable job of matching their style.
Sue sat behind her desk and gestured for me to take the extra chair.
“I was just on the phone with Constance, and she asked me to remind you that this is the final year you can apply for library school and still receive the full financial reimbursement. The deadline is this spring if you want to start classes this summer.”
Well. Shit.
Constance, the library director, had been encouraging me to apply ever since I’d been hired.
A few decades ago, a local wealthy book lover had bequeathed his estate to the public library, and part of the endowment had been earmarked for continuing education.
If I returned to college full-time through a distance learning program, I could receive my MLIS, master of library and information science, in two years.
The money would run out in two and a half.
I wasn’t keen to return to school, and I’d been putting it off.
Every time I thought about it, it felt like trying to swallow a pickled egg.
A master’s wasn’t required for the lesser-paying jobs in our system, but obtaining the degree was the only way to advance into a higher position.
I wasn’t sure I actually wanted any of those positions, but if I didn’t get the education now, I might regret it later, and I would have to pay for it myself.
What kind of person turned down a free education? It felt like I had no choice.
“The deadline is at the end of April, right?”
Sue nodded. “I know you’re not looking forward to it, but I agree with Constance that you should do it. You’re a great candidate. You could have a good future here.”
“Thank you.” And I meant it, even as my heart sank.