Chapter 4
PATTY
Friday morning I had the interlibrary loan queue up on the screen, which is the one hour of my week nobody is allowed to interrupt and which everybody interrupts. Emily called at nine forty.
"Hey — are you working today?"
"I'm at work right now."
"Right, but like, could you — Ridge fell through and the Kellermans want to see the Third Street place at two thirty, which is exactly pickup. Dan's in Columbus until Saturday."
Any other Friday I'd have said yes before she finished. I'd have gone to Denise and asked her to cover the desk. She would have said of course, and I'd have owed her one more thing on a stack of things I've owed her since 2019.
I looked at the queue. Forty-one items.
"I can't today," I said.
There was no plan attached to it. The sentence arrived the way a sneeze does.
A pause came back down the line. Not an angry one. A recalculating one.
"Oh — no, totally. That's fine. Okay. Um."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry."
"I'm still sorry."
"No, God, don't be, you're at work." Papers moving on her end. "Okay. I'll figure it out. Maybe Dan's mom. Or aftercare, they've got the drop-in thing, I think you can just show up."
"You can. You have to call by noon."
"See, you know that." She laughed. "How do you know that?"
"Because I called them in March when Maddie had the thing with her tooth."
"Is it bad that I didn't know that?"
"No."
"It's a little bad."
"It's on the magnet," I said. "The one on your refrigerator. Under the pizza place."
"Oh," Emily said. Then: "Okay. Love you. Thank you anyway."
She hung up and I put the phone face down.
A man was waiting at the counter to renew a card he'd had since 1998, so I renewed it.
Then he wanted to tell me about the card, and I let him.
After that I sat back down in front of the queue and waited for the guilt.
It didn't come. I had said no, and the world had produced a solution inside of fifteen seconds.
There was a drop-in aftercare. There was a Dan's mother.
All of it had been sitting there the whole time with nobody using it.
I finished the queue by eleven for the first time since June, which nobody noticed but me, that being the nature of the queue.
Denise came by at twenty past with two coffees, which she does on Fridays.
"You're done."
"I'm done."
"With the queue."
"With the queue."
"Say it again."
"With the queue, Denise."
She set the cup down. "Did somebody die?"
"Emily needed pickup and I said no."
She sat on the corner of the desk, which she is not supposed to do, and looked at me over the top of her glasses. Instead of what I expected, she said, "Good."
"It's not good. She had a showing."
"She's a grown woman with a phone and a car." Denise picked up her coffee. "You know what you said to me in August? You said, I'll be back by five if the light on Sixth cooperates. You've been saying that sentence to me since 2019."
"You've never complained."
"I'm not complaining now. I'd cover your Wednesdays till I retire." She stood up. "I'm saying it's the only thing in your life you have never once asked anybody to help you carry."
Then she took her cup back to the workroom. I sat there with two coffees in front of me and drank neither one.
I ate lunch at noon like a person — a sandwich and half a pear.
Denise came out at twelve fifteen to tell me something about the copier, which turned out to be fine.
The whole thing felt strange the way a shoe feels strange on the wrong foot.
At two fifteen my body went now, go now, then didn't go, then had nowhere to put the alarm.
That evening Jack asked about it, which meant Emily had mentioned it, which meant it had registered. He asked the way he asks things, sideways and at the sink.
"Em said you had a busy one."
"I had the loan queue."
"She got aftercare."
"Good."
He ran the water, shut it off, turned around. "You've never said no to that before."
"I've said no."
"Not like — " He gestured, meaning the whole day. "I'm not criticizing."
"You're doing something."
"I'm asking."
I was slicing an onion, which gave me a reason to be looking down. "I had forty-one items in that queue."
"Okay."
"That's true, by the way. That's not a cover story."
"I didn't say it was."
"You thought it."
He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, which he does when he's decided to be reasonable at somebody. "I think," he said, careful about it, "that on Wednesday a teacher wrote a name down, and by Friday you're not doing pickup."
I put the knife down. "Say the whole thought. Don't leave the second half in your mouth."
"That's the whole thought."
"No it isn't. The second half is that I'm sulking. That I got my feelings hurt over a word, so now the grandkid pays for it."
"I didn't say that."
"You said it in a nicer order."
He rubbed his jaw. Fifteen years, and the tell is still the jaw. "Fine. Yeah. That's what it looks like."
"I know what it looks like."
"So what is it?"
Noah's drawing of the dog that's a horse was on the refrigerator behind his head, and I looked at that while I found the words. I picked the knife back up because my hands wanted something, then put it down again, because that isn't how you have a conversation.
"Do you know what I do on Wednesdays?"
"You get Noah."
"I leave at two fifteen. I have to leave at two fifteen because of the traffic on Sixth, which means I take my lunch at eleven thirty instead of noon, which means I eat before I'm hungry, every Wednesday, for two school years now.
Denise covers the desk from two fifteen to five.
Denise has a daughter with a hip thing, and she has never once said no to me, so I cover her Thursdays in March when the girl has appointments, which is fine. That's how it works."
"Okay."
"There's a booster seat in my trunk. I put it in there in August of the year he started kindergarten and it has not come out since. When I bought the Corolla I told the man I needed a trunk that fit a booster and a folding chair, because of soccer."
"I know about soccer."
"I know you know. I'm not doing a list to make you feel bad." I'd gotten hold of the counter, so I let go of it. "I'm doing a list so you'll understand what I noticed today."
He waited.
"I noticed that none of it counted."
"That's not — "
"Let me finish. I'm not saying nobody appreciates me. Emily appreciates me. She thanks me constantly, she brings me coffee I don't like, she tells people I'm a saint. That's not the thing."
"Then what's the thing?"
"The thing is I did all of it for six years thinking it was building something. And then on Wednesday a woman I like held a pen over a piece of paper, and the six years didn't come into it at all."
He didn't say anything. The rice was going to boil over. I watched it come up the side of the pot and didn't move.
"So no," I said. "I'm not letting a title change my behavior. I'm noticing that my behavior never had a thing to do with the title. There's a difference, and it matters to me."
"You've never said any of that."
"I know."
"Not one time in six years."
"No."
"So how am I supposed to — " He stopped himself, which he does; he's not a man who finishes that sentence. "I didn't know about the lunch thing."
"There's nothing to know. It's a sandwich at eleven thirty. Turkey, mostly. Sometimes egg salad, which Denise says smells like a crime."
"Patty."
"It's a sandwich, Jack. I'm not asking you to feel terrible about a sandwich." I swept the board off with the side of my hand. "I'm telling you I've been keeping a ledger for six years without ever once looking at the total, and on Wednesday somebody handed me the total in a parking lot."
The furnace kicked on, which is the only reason I know how long we stood there, because the furnace runs about four minutes in September and it ran the whole time.
"I don't know what you want me to do," he said finally.
At the time that landed on me like a shrug.
"I haven't asked you to do anything."
"You're asking me something."
"Not yet."
I went back to the onion. It was a bad one, soft down one side, and I cut around the soft part instead of pitching it, which took longer.
He stood there a while, then went out to the garage, and I heard him moving things around for about forty minutes, which is what Jack does instead of thinking with his mouth.
I got the rice on. At some point the noise from the garage stopped, which is how I knew he'd quit moving boxes and was out there holding one.
He came back in with a booster seat. Not mine — the spare, off the shelf, the one I keep for when Maddie brings a friend. He'd wiped the dust off it and there was a stripe across his shirt where he'd carried it against himself.
"This one's got the strap thing broke," he said. "The clip. I'll get a new one Saturday."
"Okay."
"I'm just saying I noticed it was broke."
"When did you notice?"
He looked down at it. "Today."
"It's been broke since June."
"I know that now."
"Okay, Jack."
He set it by the door and looked at it a second like it might say something back. Then he went to wash his hands again, even though they were already clean.
"You want a beer?"
"No."
"I'm having one."
"Then have one."
We ate at seven. He told me about the Bickle building, which he does not usually bring home. I asked questions about footings I did not care about, he answered them at length, and we got through a meal.
Around nine he said from the living room doorway, "The soccer thing's the fourth, right?"
"The fourth."
"I'll drive."
"I always drive."
"I know you always drive," he said. "Are they doing the pictures again?"
"They always do the pictures."
"Then we should go early."
He went up, and I heard the drawer that sticks. I sat there with the television on, thinking about the fact that he'd just offered me a car ride. Fifteen years ago that would have got me. That night it mostly seemed slow.