Chapter 3 #3
I am in the 800s, on the literature aisle, sliding a copy of Middlemarch back into its place between Daniel Deronda and The Mill on the Floss, when I hear the door bell jangle out at the front, and then the soft heavy footfall of his boots on the carpet, and I do not look up because I do not want him to see my face right now.
He finds me anyway.
He comes up the aisle. He does not say anything. He stops next to me. He looks at the cart. He looks at me. He looks at the cart again.
He says, "Can I help."
I do not look at him. I cannot. I have been crying without knowing I have been crying — there is a tear on the cover of Middlemarch, I see it, a fat one — and if I look at him I will lose the small fine thread of composure I am holding, and I will not have it back for an hour, and I cannot afford to not have it for an hour.
There is a senior book club at six. There are large-print mysteries to put out. There is the rest of my life.
I nod, instead. Without looking at him.
He says, "Where do they go."
I say, "By the call number on the spine."
I say it small, and even, and almost steady.
He picks up a book from the cart. He looks at the spine. He looks at the shelf I am at. He looks at the book again. He says, "This one is a P."
"P is the next aisle over."
He nods. He walks the cart to the next aisle. He starts shelving.
He is — I will say this honestly — terrible at it.
He puts the first three books in the wrong order.
I drift over to his aisle on the pretext of needing a book myself and I quietly move the three of them to where they belong, and he watches me do it, and the corner of his mouth lifts that quarter-inch, and he tries the next one and gets it right. After that he gets them all right.
We shelve for an hour without speaking.
We move through the stacks together. He does the high shelves and I do the low shelves and I show him, by lifting the book onto the cart and then sliding it onto the shelf in front of him, where I want each one to go.
He learns the call number system in the first ten minutes.
He learns the Cutter numbers in the next ten.
He learns, by the end of the hour, the soft particular way I run my hand along the row to make sure a book is flush before I move on, and he starts doing it too, his big scarred hand sweeping along the row of spines in the same little stroke, and the sight of that makes my eyes well up again and I have to turn my face down to the cart for a second.
He sees. I know he sees. He does not say anything. He hands me the next book.
When the cart is empty he pushes it back to the desk.
He puts it in its place. He stands at the counter with his hands in his jacket pockets and he looks at me from across the room.
He does not say are you okay. He does not say what was that.
He does not say who hurt you. He does not say any of the things a different kind of man would have said, the things that would have required me to find a small story to tell that would put him at ease and let him leave the library feeling helpful.
He says, "I'll see you Friday."
I say, "You will."
He nods once. He goes.
I sit down at the desk. I put my hands flat on the wood. They are not shaking anymore.
I look at the empty cart. I look at the door he just walked out of. I look at the dogwoods on Main through the front window, going green and full into the soft early summer afternoon.
I think — for the first time in two years, with a startled small clarity that goes all the way down to my ankles — I do not, actually, have to go to Richmond.
I think — I have a life here.
I think — He is part of it.
I press my fingertips to the corners of my eyes.
I take a long breath. The library is very quiet around me, the way it always is in the soft hour before close, with the late sun coming through the south windows at its slant and lighting up the dust motes over the periodicals corner, and the climbing roses in the back garden visible through the rear window, going fat and pink and white on the trellis I built myself, and the carpet I chose, and the mural of the sleeping fox on the back wall, and the new-arrivals display I refresh on Mondays, and the temporary library card filed away in the cabinet behind me under B for Brennan, and the wingback chair empty in the reading nook with the cushion still pressed down where he had been sitting yesterday.
It is mine.
All of it is mine.
I have not, until this afternoon, entirely understood what that meant.
I put my hand to my throat. I find that I am smiling. I find that I am smiling and crying at the same time, which is a thing I did not know my face could do, and I have to laugh, very quietly, at the surprise of it.
Outside, in the soft May light, a kingfisher rattles past the back window toward the creek behind the orchards.
I let myself feel the smile all the way to my ears before I put it away and stand up to go put out the large-print mysteries for the senior book club.