Chapter 5 #2
Or, the thought whispered, suggestive as a Garden of Eden snake in the grass, if your mother was so desperate she was ready to ditch you and run off with her tech bro, why couldn’t a door have opened for her? Why couldn’t she have escaped into her favorite book, and taken you with her?
I wondered what book she would have picked—Sherlock Holmes, maybe?
She’d always loved good old Sherlock . .
. but no, I was pretty sure she’d have chosen a battered historical romance by an author I couldn’t even remember, so old it was probably public domain by now.
One of those lurid vintage covers with a beautiful maiden swooning off the prow of a ship into the arms of a shirtless man.
I love historical romance, I remembered her saying, laughing to a friend.
It’s the past, but it’s prettied up just enough.
No one stinks, everyone has white teeth, and the heroes might be pirate captains and dukes, but they somehow don’t make their money from rape and pillage or colonial plantations.
She could have escaped into that book and taken me with her.
I could have grown up stalking the decks of the hero’s pirate ship and swimming in crystal-blue seas and learning to fence, while she seduced the pirate captain’s hunky second-in-command and got all the great sex and financial security she’d never been able to find in her string of shitty real-life boyfriends.
Maybe, that insinuating little voice suggested, that’s exactly what she did. Only she didn’t take you with her.
Was that what had happened to my book-loving mother?
She’d told me she was headed to LA with her latest true love, but that could have been a lie concocted for an eight-year-old.
Had the Astral Library chosen her, and she’d escaped into her book .
. . without me? Was that better or worse than running away to Los Angeles with a tech bro?
Better, I thought instantly. You could hop a plane from LA; you could send an email or make a phone call from LA.
There wasn’t any excuse for dropping off the map when you’d only gone to LA.
But there wasn’t such an easy way to stay in touch when you were on a fictional eighteenth-century pirate ship.
And I could almost—almost—understand if my mother had found herself able to escape into her favorite book world and then was too scared she’d lose it if she came back for me.
I knew what it was to feel desperate (even if I didn’t like admitting it, to the Librarian or anyone else).
Desperate people make desperate decisions—like deciding your daughter was better off without you, maybe.
Making excuses, are we? This voice sounded a lot less insinuating and a lot more tart—more like the Librarian’s, in fact.
Didn’t I just finish telling you a book isn’t a jail, and you can leave whenever you like?
Haven’t I just finished showing you that my Patrons come back once a year to renew the loan of their book?
But maybe for my mom things felt different . . .
I was making excuses, pretty feeble ones at that, and I was well aware I was going to back myself into a corner and get really uncomfortable if I thought about this much longer, so I was almost relieved to look up and see the Librarian standing there with her tablet and her glasses and her cardigan, not looking at all like the semi-ageless guardian of an astral-plane book sanctuary.
She just looked like an ordinary librarian, no capital L. That was the magic of it.
Is my mother here in one of your books? I desperately wanted to ask. Did you help her find a new life, the way you’re helping me? If she’s here, could I—
“Have you decided on your book?” the Librarian asked briskly, breaking my confused swirl of thoughts.
I took a deep breath, swallowing down the spiky question of my laughing, book-loving mother and what had really (maybe, probably not, but maybe?) happened to her. “I think so.”
“Which one?”
I told her.
“Then you need a library card.” Heading back to the broad counter, the Librarian threw the words over her shoulder. “And a dress.”
It was the first time I heard the Librarian sound defensive. “I must admit our Wardrobe Department is a bit lacking. We used to have a proper staff for costuming, but budget cuts—”
“You get budget cuts?”
“Do you know of any library in this world, or the entirety of the multiverse for that matter, that doesn’t?”
The room marked WARDROBE opened just off the big oak counter, and it was crammed: rack after rack of clothes, most looking decidedly tatty.
I picked up a yellowing lace cuff on what looked like an eighteenth-century chemise, dubious.
“Why do I need to be kitted up in a new outfit before going into my book? Doesn’t the Library do that part?
It’s already supplying a character and a home and a new world and possibly a whole new language, and it balks at a dress? ”
“Only someone with Librarian-level access gets an automatic wardrobe change on stepping through. Because the Library knows me,” she said, forestalling my why.
“With new Patrons, it’s better to give the system a jumping-off point.
I had a gentleman heading off to swashbuckle villains in The Count of Monte Cristo, and somehow instead of a doublet and bucket boots he ended up in quasi–War of the Worlds spandex tentacles.
Cataloging error,” the Librarian muttered.
“Now we try to dress everyone to fit in at least a bit before they enter their book. You’re looking at an 1870s rig, I believe?
Nineteenth century is back that way, see if anything fits. ”
I went over and began rummaging through the musty rack of what looked like costume-department remnants and theater trunks, thinking optimistically that it had only taken about fifteen minutes to fit the little girl from West Virginia in gingham pleats and hair ribbons .
. . But I only had the vaguest idea of what 1870s clothing looked like, and most of what I saw patently wouldn’t fit me.
All I could really find was an old serge skirt and a blouse that gapped at the bust. I scowled down at myself, my old stained Walmart bra with the stretched-out elastic showing through the blouse’s straining buttons.
I had to admit, I’d been looking forward to the whole magical-makeover part of this process: fabulous gown, zap of a wand.
When Lucy walked into Narnia, at least she got a fur coat to put over her London Blitz togs.
“I suppose it’ll have to do.” The Librarian looked as dubious as I did when I came out tugging on the uneven black skirt. “You’ll find your way into something better once you’re inserted. Unless you’ve got something to supplement at home?”
I had a sudden, dazzling idea. “You know, I think I might.”