Chapter 45 Peggy
I slept terribly.
I hardly slept a wink.
Drew has already left for his shift.
Sammy is sitting up in his bed rubbing his eyes.
“I’m starving. Any chance of some toast, Mom?”
I stagger past him, my eyes puffy and small. “Sure.”
I open the larder and the cookies have gone. The bread is finished. Some of the cans are missing.
I rub my face. “What’s gone on here?”
“What?” he says.
“Food missing. No oatmeal or bread.”
“Oh, yeah,” says Sammy. “Dad took some things with him earlier. Said he saw a mouse again. Said they weren’t safe to eat.”
I nod, my teeth biting tight together.
I walk outside to check the cold box we keep on deck. No milk. No juice. An empty box of Hamburger Helper and one can of meat paste he knows makes me queasy.
Bastard.
“Not much food, love,” I say to Sammy, stoking the fire. “Your dad took most of it.”
“Vermin,” says Sammy. “Weil’s disease.”
“No vermin in the cans or the locked box outside,” I say angrily. “Is there?”
“Better safe than sorry, Dad said.”
I could scream. I could smash a window. But I swallow down the fury like I have done a hundred times before.
“Can I still have some toast, Mom?”
With his shaved head he looks exactly like the version of Drew I met all those years ago, and that notion almost ends me.
“No bread, Sammy. I’ll get food in later after my interview. In the meantime you can have black coffee.”
“Don’t like coffee.”
“You can have a tin of pears in syrup?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I didn’t mean that to sound so severe. I am so tired I can barely hold it together.
“Pears? I don’t really care much for pears.”
I take two dollars from my purse and place it on his comforter. The money I would have used in the big town today. “Get yourself something extra before school.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“I still can’t get over you looking this way, Sammy. You’re still handsome, but… Don’t forget your hat, will you? You’ll catch your death.”
“I won’t.”
“Bitter out there.”
He smiles. “It’ll grow back, Mom.”
“I know it will, love. In the meantime I hope the principal doesn’t send you home.”
“He won’t. Gunner has his back and sides shaved. Brad Sizemore has a crew cut to impress the recruiters.”
“Recruiters?”
“Army guys.”
“You looking up to Gunner and Sizemore now, are you?”
“No.”
I rub my forehead. “Mind you don’t.”
I eat a tin of peaches and then Sammy changes his mind and eats his pears, sipping the sweet syrup directly from the can.
“Don’t cut your lip.”
“Walkman’s gone.”
“I know it is, love.”
“No, I mean it’s gone from the store window now. Somebody went in and bought it.”
I touch his hand. “I’m sorry, Sam. You’ve got your birthday coming up in a while. I’ll see what I can do.”
Sam kisses me on the cheek and leaves. Then he runs back and says, “Good luck in the interview, Mom.”
I smile at him.
After I clear away the empty cans I get myself ready.
A little blusher to make me look alive. Some mascara, but most of it has dried into a hard paste inside the bottle.
I cannot find one of my shoes. I look everywhere for it.
I have to settle for my other, scruffier pair, the unpolished ones with the loose soles that flap as I walk.
Waiting for the bus my teeth start to chatter but I am hopeful.
If the wind blows twice as fast and snowflakes start to fall from above I will still not give up.
Because I am heading toward something new, something of promise.
Instead of going north to the town I am taking the bus south.
Fifty-five minutes. Going the other way to see what might happen.
The bus is empty save for a half dozen senior citizens and a young Asian couple with three toddlers.
They’ve got their hands full all right. We drive past the chemical plant.
Brick chimneys and factories: some old, some modern.
A food processing plant pumping out steam into bleached skies.
An old man uses an inhaler and then closes the window, but it is too late.
The bus now reeks of whatever root vegetables the plant is frying.
Drew cannot handle the fact that I have an interview. That someone, or perhaps a panel of people, wishes to ask me questions and find out who I really am. He has never been good with things like that.
My stomach rumbles.
When we reach the main bus terminal I help one of my fellow passengers off and then I walk to the library. It is well signposted, unlike my old one. A solid brick building with small windows. I have a spring in my step. They want to see me, after all. They invited me.
I am early so I hang outside. Two men clean car windshields at the lights with a bucket and squeegee each, and a sign. A loose dog runs down the street and a man perches on a curb, smoking a roll-up, talking to himself, a folded newspaper down by his boots.
I will tell them about my experience in our town library. Using the computer, organizing shelves, helping readers. Mrs. Appleby will give me a reference or a letter of recommendation, I know she will. I can rely on Mrs. Appleby. She has never once let me down.
Hopefully Sammy bought himself a sandwich or a milk. He looks more vulnerable than ever without his lovely hair. Like a prisoner of war lost in a forgotten town, his oversize jacket still hanging off his shoulders, his shoes too long for him.
I open the doors of the unfamiliar library.
Three minutes early. I think that is acceptable, isn’t it? I have not done this before. But I sense that even though my book contract is dead and buried, this place might still save Sammy and me in time, it just might. Such is the power of libraries.
“Good morning. Peggy Jenkins for the interview, please.”
Her hair is up in a bun and she has probing gray eyes framed with large black glasses.
“Thank you. Just give me a second.”
She picks up a clipboard with a list of names on it.
Her eye shadow is mauve but it is subtle.
I straighten my blouse.
She looks at the clipboard then looks up at me then checks again.
I smile my most professional smile.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jenkins. I don’t have your name down on the list.”
“Ten fifteen,” I say, clearly. “Quarter past. With Mr. Karim.”
“Just a moment.”
I wonder if they pay weekly or monthly. That might not be relevant to most people but it is relevant to me right now.
She walks away to speak to someone else in a cubicle.
The library is cavernous. It even has a garden with tables.
I can see myself working here, helping people find the books they need, monitoring the photocopying and faxing, the use of the computers.
Passwords and paper jams. Lunch in the cafeteria, if there is one.
I look forward to giving out library cards to kids.
Watching them from afar as they grow up reading Judy Blume and Sue Townsend, Maya Angelou and Stephen King.
Helping them find their favorite authors, and their own voices.
Using the wages to flee. A Greyhound ticket, a few nights in a motel, some food to keep us alive.
“Mrs. Jenkins?” She walks toward me.
“Yes.”
I smile. Hold myself properly. Shoulders back.
“It’s just that, I’m sorry but there’s some confusion. You see, earlier this morning we received a telephone call.”
“Yes?” My voice is small.
“It’s just that, I think maybe there’s been a misunderstanding. Your brother called, Mrs. Jenkins. Said you’d accepted another position out of town and asked for your name to be removed from consideration.”
The air leaves my lungs.
“Are you OK, Mrs. Jenkins?”
He hasn’t.
I can’t catch my breath.
She looks at me, her eyes wide behind her glasses.
“Are you all right? You need a glass of water or something?”
She stares at a dumb fool who turned up to an interview that was never meant to be.
I know I should protest and request another slot and claim there was some kind of administrative error but instead I deflate and whisper, “I’m so sorry,” and then I leave.