Chapter 21
Board meetings: after fifteen minutes you fear the boredom will kill you; after half an hour you’re actively hoping it will.
“And that concludes the reading of the quarterly report,” a woman in a pink cardigan said happily after droning for a solid quarter hour in one long, unbroken sentence.
She looked like an ambulatory muffin, the overly frosted kind, and she had a voice like a bumblebee on helium.
“There is only one item on today’s agenda, which would be the modernization of the entity known as the Astral Library. Do we move to discuss?”
“I so move,” said a broomstick of a man with a face like a wet wipe.
There were eight of us: seven Board members and me all seated around a long table that the Library had grudgingly conjured, along with a handful of supremely uncomfortable metal chairs.
I had a plushy leather throne of an armchair at the head of the table, but the Library clearly had no interest in making our guests comfortable.
Dennis floated a pot of Darjeeling and the familiar blue Wedgwood cup over to my elbow and I sipped, not offering any to Elizabeth opposite me at the foot of the table.
Beau also had a teacup where he stood lounging with superb grace against the bronze globe, and he was making sure to slurp from it with obnoxious loudness at regular intervals as he watched the proceedings.
“I have a complete list of titles I would like to cross-check immediately with the Astral Library’s catalog,” a sheep-faced woman volunteered at once, waving a packet at least fifty pages thick.
She had Coke-bottle glasses and a baby-blue sweatshirt that said Support Your Local Library!
and something told me the irony was completely lost on her.
“Titles deemed inappropriately salacious or profane for a library space where children could potentially be exposed to—”
“Not now, Darla,” Elizabeth said, businesslike, and the woman subsided resentfully. “The primary matter before the Board today is the Astral Library’s current model of operation.”
“If you can even call it an operation. Does it have any use at all?” said a very pretty brunette in a sleek designer suit who had been nodding like a bobblehead at everything Elizabeth said.
There were titters around the table. I could feel my blood start to heat in my veins, and there was a corresponding rustling from the books on their shelves.
“I think we can skip the discussion and call for an immediate vote on the basis of Subsection 3339567—” Elizabeth began, but I interrupted her.
“Excuse me, but the meeting’s host must levy approval of any vote that would summarily conclude the meeting. I so exercise my rights as host and call for a full discussion of the matter at hand.”
They looked annoyed at having to hear me out. I looked around the table, refusing to back down, until Elizabeth finally shrugged. “Discussion will proceed.”
“If we’re being picky about hosts, I question if we must demand the presence of the Librarian,” Pink Cardigan continued, sounding peevish. “Since she would be the usual host—”
“She’s recovering from your attempt to have her blinded,” I said.
“And while we’re on that subject, I would like to enter a complaint into the record under Article Five, Subsection C, registering my belief that the Board has acted with complete fucking barbarism.
” I smiled. “If you’ll pardon my French. ”
“Using that kind of language is utterly inappropriate in a library setting where children might be unduly influenced,” sniffed the woman named Darla with the Coke-bottle glasses.
“Just what authority do you have here?” Wet Wipe asked me before I could retort, See any children around, lady? “Miss Watson, if you have any right to speak for the Librarian—”
“I’m so glad you asked. Under Article Two, Amendment Seven, the Library may appoint an internal representative to speak on its behalf if the Librarian is incapacitated and unable to perform her duties.
” I gave Beau a nod, and he passed copies of the bylaw around the table.
The book-drop slot had acted like a copier for me, spitting out what I needed, and I had an entire stack of papers ready to be deployed.
“I would also like to invoke representational privilege to address the Board first, as per Amendment Fourteen.”
They didn’t look too pleased that I knew my bylaws.
I saw shiftings and mutterings, and little notes being taken—of course these people were notetakers.
All except for Elizabeth, who had recovered that beaming smile of hers, and it made me feel queasy, but here I was.
Beau gave me an encouraging look, and I plunged in.
“I was hoping I could lead you all on a tour of the Astral Library so you can properly understand it,” I began.
“You’ve debated this place’s future, but none of you have ever seen what it is.
” I was convinced that no one who walked the shifting halls of this place the way I’d done last night could ever vote against it. “If I could just show you—”
But all around me I saw shaking heads. “Unnecessary,” Elizabeth said. “We’ve all been briefed on the full functionality of the Library and its capabilities.”
“The Library keeps entry and exit logs—I know none of you have ever been here, because before today you always held the annual meeting off-site. Are you claiming expertise on a place you’ve never once visited?”
“We have been briefed—” Elizabeth began to repeat, but broke off at a loud slurp from Beau. She cast him a brief irritated glance, then looked back at me. “Proceed to your next point, Alix.”
No tour. Disappointing but not unexpected.
I took a fortifying slug of Darjeeling and moved on.
“You ask what the Astral Library’s usefulness is, in its current model.
I would like to offer testimony from those the Library has aided.
” I had written statements from both the Gallerist and the Programmer, detailing the work the Librarian had done in making the Library a sanctuary as well as a repository for knowledge, and I passed copies around the table—but I had something else up my sleeve.
Taking a deep breath, I rose and smoothed the front of my vast book skirt.
“Beau, will you please escort our witnesses forward?”
He was already moving down the endless length of the library.
A short pause as the Board looked on impatiently, and then the sound of footsteps—so many footsteps.
Beau at the head of a small crowd, holding the hand of a little girl in braids and an apron.
Behind them were familiar faces: Larry in his Huck Finn overalls; Elaine in her garnet-red pleats and dark glasses, small smile hiding her fangs; Sarah back from the Thomas Cole painting in her twill dress and cameo worn from Sherlock Holmes’s world, not the villain I’d imagined she might be, just a scared woman hoping to go home to 221B Baker Street.
Behind them, so many more: Masako in her Heian court silks; the elegant Black woman the Librarian had plucked out of Sanditon; a weathered-looking sailor in a salt-stained coat with a spyglass in the gold-braided pocket; yet another woman in a Regency spencer and bonnet . . .
I was shocked by how many had come. When I’d put out the call to the Library’s Patrons, and had the Gallerist and the Programmer get word back to those we’d sheltered in games and paintings, I’d expected written statements.
Those had arrived too, sifting down through the book drop like snowflakes—but then the knocks had started.
And the Patrons had come—grim-faced, angry, scared—to tell me they would testify in person.
I stepped forward, extending a hand to the little girl with the braids and the apron.
She looked different from the waif with the bruises on her arms and the West Virginia twang whom I’d watched the Librarian usher into Anne of Green Gables—even just a short time in her book world had put roses on her cheeks, filled out the hollows under her eyes.
Beau gave her hand an encouraging squeeze, and she stepped toward me.
“You’re safe here,” I told her, putting an arm around those thin shoulders and turning her toward the long table.
“Remember, you’re under sanctuary. Just tell them what you told me. ”
She took a deep breath, one I could feel resonate from her shoulders down toward her brass-toed boots.
“I’m eleven years old and I live in Anne of Green Gables with the Gillis girls, and I think I would be dead if I hadn’t come here.
My dad was—” She stopped. I squeezed tighter around her shoulders.
Last night when we’d gone over her testimony I’d taken her hands and said, You don’t have to do this, and she’d jutted her chin and said, Yes, I do.
So I just squeezed as hard as I could now, throat thick, and she said in a rush, “My dad was beating me up and my mom was letting it happen, and the last time he wasn’t happy hitting me with his belt so he got a plank from the shed.
He hit my head so hard I blacked out, and now I’m living in Avonlea making raspberry cordial and I’m supposed to go to the church picnic on Sunday.
Please—” She gulped. “Please don’t make me go home. ”
The silence around the table was absolute. One or two of the Board members looked down at the table.
“You’re very brave,” I whispered to the girl, and the books rustled at that. She nodded, swallowing, and Larry in his Huck Finn overalls stepped forward next, jaw jutted at a pugnacious angle.