“How about a book on how to sew car parts?”
“I do not think that book has been written.”
Like everything else in Bourne, the church is underfunded, but because it was built a long time ago by Bourners who were richer than we are, it is also very big. Therefore there is enough room inside for God and fundraising. On Saturdays, Pastor Jeff does not have clinic services or service services, so he teaches yoga and aerobics classes in the back of the nave. In the rectory, which is attached to the church, he has machines which you can use for a small fee to copy documents, keys, and old videotapes. In the church basement, he has a wheel and a kiln and teaches pottery classes. Every summer, he goes on a thrift-shop tour around the state, and this summer he bought an old sewing machine. He was going to teach sewing classes, but it turned out he did not know how to sew.
“Ham Roland needs snow tires for his walker before it gets cold,” he tells me. “Donna Anvers is having trouble reaching the bag on the back of her wheelchair. I’m sure Tom has something at the depot that would work, but I thought I could help. A hubcap bag that fits over the wheels instead. Some kind of extra-grip, anti-slip device I could stitch.”
“Those are good ideas,” I compliment him.
One thing that is good about librarians is they listen to what you need and want and think of a way to help you which sometimes is by ignoring what you need and want. Maybe they do not have the book you requested because their library is nothing but leftovers. Or maybe what you requested is wrong—people often are, even smart people who read—but it is okay because librarians have witchlike librarian magic to pick the right book for you.
For instance, Pastor Jeff’s cheeks show red which means he is embarrassed because he does not know how to sew. Pastor Jeff’s belt shows holes which means he is skinny and should eat more. Pastor Jeff’s hands show twisting all around themselves which means he is worried, so even though he did not ask for cheering up, I know cheering up is what he needs and wants.
“Wait here,” I say and return four and a half minutes later with a book on decoupage which is the closest thing I have to sewing, an owner’s manual for a 1995 Honda Civic which has sections on both snow tires and hubcaps, and a novel about a woman who finds inspiration in fattening and joy-inducing (and, it can be assumed, non-embarrassing) pies. That is how to be a good librarian.
When I get back to Pastor Jeff in the kitchen, he is at the sink where he fills a glass with water, drinks it down, refills it again, drinks it down again.
Just like books, there is no right way to systematize the categorization of people. But in Bourne, one good way is by water usage. Or, to be more accurate, lack of water usage. Some people use their tap water for laundry but not for cooking. Some people use it for washing their bodies but not their carrots. Some people will flush toilets with it but not wash their hands in it afterward. I do not do sports because there are germs in locker rooms, and when Mrs. Radcliffe said I could shower afterward at home instead, I could not do that either because I only shower for three point seven five minutes at a time, and that is enough to wash off a regular amount of germs but not an athletic amount of germs. Petra and her mother shower for as long as they like but only on Wednesdays and Sundays. They separate their laundry not by lights and darks or delicates and regulars but innies and outies, like belly buttons. If the garment hardly touches their skin like it is a sweatshirt or a cardigan or a skirt they wear with tights underneath, they wash it in their washing machine with Bourne’s own water. If it is underwear or socks or T-shirts or a bra, they wash it in their bathroom sink with bottled water. If it is jeans, they just let them air out and wear them again, even though they only shower twice a week. (Petra’s mother does not leave her house but does not care about germs that might be in there in her jeans with her already.) Our mayor, Omar Radison, has the water tested every year, and he prints out the results and posts them all around downtown so we can all see it is safe now, but even Mayor Omar drinks bottled water.
Not Pastor Jeff, though. Pastor Jeff looks both ways before he crosses a street, wears his seat belt in his car, applies sunscreen in summer, and chooses pretzels instead of chocolate bars from the vending machine. I know. I have seen him do all of these things. I have seen that he jogs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings which he must do to increase his longevity because that is the only reason a person would jog. All of those things are doctor things. But when you ask him why he drinks tap water, he says he has faith, which is a pastor thing. He says he knows God would not send poisoned water to Bourne. I ask him if he means God would not send poisoned water to Bourne again, since he already did once.
“That wasn’t God, Monday,” says Pastor Jeff.
“Well then how do you know whoever it was will not do it again?”
“Because I believe,” says Pastor Jeff.
“In God?”
“Yes, in God.”
“But what about last time?” I ask.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” says Pastor Jeff and all pastors everywhere when presented with completely logical but impossible-to-answer questions like mine.
“But if God will protect you from poisoned water, why will he not protect you from getting run over by a car?”
“I believe he will,” says Pastor Jeff.
“But if God will protect you from getting run over by a car,” I press, “why do you look both ways before you cross the street?”
“Because, Monday”—he winks at me—“that’s just common sense.”
Mab says you cannot argue with people about religion, and this is why.
After his tap water, Pastor Jeff turns, looks at the books I chose for him, and chuckles. “Impressive selections as usual, Madam Librarian.”
“You are welcome,” I say politely. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
I meant something having to do with library business, but he replies, “Yes, now that you mention it: I was hoping you could warn your mother about something.”
Warn her? My toes and knees start to buzz. “Why do not you do it?” I ask him. Pastor Jeff works in the room next door to my mother so sees her a lot almost every day.
“I don’t want to tell her at work.”
“Tell her what?”
“Well … word is we’re getting new neighbors.”
“Neighbors?” The buzzing catches fire. I am immediately alarmed, and Pastor Jeff looks worried because he has seen and heard me in all my states including the alarmed ones.
“No, no, not like next-door neighbors. Sorry, Monday. I mean we’ve heard there’s some new people moving into town. I don’t know who but—”
“Why?” I interrupt.
“Why don’t I know who?”
“Why are they moving here?”
Sometimes I ask the wrong question because the point is not what I think it is. But Pastor Jeff nods slowly. “I have no idea.”
I think of the other W questions you are supposed to answer at the start of an essay and ask, “Where?”
Pastor Jeff winces. “The library.”
“The library!”
“That’s what we heard.”
“My library?”
“That’s the one. That’s where the moving trucks went.”
I am dancing now, the buzzing flames in my toes turned to happy sparks. “You saw moving trucks at the library?”
“I didn’t. But others did.”
“It is reopening!” I am jumping and spinning. If it did not mean touching him, I would hug Pastor Jeff.
“No, Monday, that’s not—”
“They are moving all the books back in. They must be.”
“All the books are here.” He waves his hand around at them.
“The ones they took.”
“They sold those.”
“They bought them back.”
“Monday, I don’t think they’re reopening the library.” He is being very gentle of me. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on her
e. I think—”
I am ready for Pastor Jeff to leave, but it is rude to say so, so I put on yellow oven mitts so I can push him out the door without touching him. “I will tell her.” I wave both yellow mitts goodbye as he stumbles outside. “I will tell my mother and everyone. They are reopening the library!”
* * *
There is still cereal in the cereal box, but it is in a bag and the bag is clear, so you can see what is in it and do not need a box to tell you, so I remove the bag and cut the box into an extra-large postcard. I do not put anything on the front because I plan to tack it up on our door so no one will be able to see that side.
On the back I write:
Dear Citizens of Bourne,
Good news! The library is relocating to the library.
Then I think that sentence might be unclear or confusing for some people so I cross it out and clarify:
The library is re-relocating to the library.
Your librarian,
Monday Mitchell
Many of the things that happen next can be chalked up to the fact that Pastor Jeff, a representative of both science and the Lord, has gotten my hopes up.
Three
Norma’s Bar is owned and operated by a man named Frank Fiedler. He doesn’t know why it’s called Norma’s. It was called that already when he bought it. From a man named Todd. It is why he hired my mother, though. He said she had no experience, too many little girls (we were kindergartners at the time), and a face that did not inspire people to drink. Is that a good thing or a bad thing, she said. He said wasn’t it her job to talk people out of drinking away their problems. Only during the day, she said. He said she would have to take off her dead husband’s shirts and wear a uniform and he knew she wouldn’t do it. She said bartenders don’t wear uniforms. She said Frank, I need the money. She said my name is on the place. He said off by a letter. She said closer than Frank.
She’s been working here ever since. Her second job.
When we were little, we all three used to hang out at the bar in the afternoon. There’s no one here who cares about underage kids in bars and no one to enforce it if anyone did. Besides, Nora had to work—everyone understood that—so we had to come along. Now though, Mab tutors after school, and Monday runs the library, but much of the time I still come in with my mother because this is my second job too. After I finish my first (homework), I do Frank’s accounting. They started as one and the same, in fact—I assigned myself Frank’s books as math practice in eighth grade—but now he pays me a little bit, and, Nora observes, every little bit is a little bit.
“Maybe you’ll be a CFO or something when you grow up,” Frank says this afternoon as I get organized.
I think of Chris Wohl saying maybe I’d be a therapist. Everyone’s thinking about me growing up today. There’s no way I’ll be a CFO either though. Too boring. I’d never do it as a career, only as a favor. If I didn’t do his books for him, Frank would do them himself—he doesn’t have enough money to hire someone who’s actually qualified—and he’s lousy at it.
It’s a quiet evening, good for bookkeeping. Ours is the sort of town where there’s only one bar, and it’s as likely to be packed at eleven a.m. as eleven p.m. Nora works only a few hours on weekdays, filling the ones that come between getting off work at the clinic and getting home to eat a late dinner with the three of us and get me ready for bed. She picks up more hours on the weekend, but these quiet afternoons hardly seem worth doing. That’s the deal she made with Frank though, and the guys who are here are always glad to see her.
And it’s always guys. Other times of day, the bar could be filled with anyone. These twilight hours belong to her boys.
Zacharias Finkelburg works the night shift thirty-one miles away at the Greenborough 7-Eleven, so he comes in late afternoons for one for the road. I used to object that that was like having beer for breakfast, which seemed gross, or beer for driving, which seemed worse, but Nora would say, “It takes the edge off,” which is what she always says. Zach used to be a line supervisor, so you can see where 7-Eleven night manager is a job with edges that could use removal. He got some kind of rare bone cancer in his ankle and lost from his left knee down. The doctors said he had to find a new line of work where he wasn’t on his feet all day, and Zach replied he needed a new line of work where he wasn’t on his foot all day, that maybe he would get a peg leg and start calling himself Zach-arrr-ias. We always laugh when he tells these stories, but he says the doctors never did. They gave him an ordinary prosthesis, and the Greenborough 7-Eleven gives him a stool to sit on behind the counter.
Here, the stool next to his is empty, and on the one next to that is Tom Kandinsky, almost always, except for the hours he’s in his depot soldering old wheelchair parts to older wheelchair parts to get new wheelchair parts or making the talking calculators talk slower and louder. Tom also has only one foot—nerve damage—and he and Zach like to quip they should pair up for the two-legged race. That Bourne could actually hold such an event does not make this joke funny to anyone but the two of them.
Tom nods to me when we come in this afternoon. “How’s that new caster wheel working out for you, Mirabel?”
“Love it,” my Voice sings.
“Ooh, new speakers too?” Zach asks.
“Better.” Tom’s thrilled he noticed. “I put a DSP into the audio to eliminate noise and enhance the sound quality. You know how much math it takes to do voice? It’s not like you can just roll off a few dBs at 250 hertz. Much clearer, right?”
Why a chemical plant employed an electrical engineer, I do not know, but I also can’t imagine what we’d do if Tom weren’t one.
Hobart Blake sits a couple stools farther down. I find this strange, but Nora says it is the way of men everywhere, not just here. She says in any empty bar anywhere, three women will pick a table in the corner and squeeze into it all together, lean in to hear one another over the music, close as possible. Even if they’re strangers, she says, they’ll sit at neighboring tables and exchange shy glances that turn into awkward smiles that can be dispelled only by one getting up, introducing herself, and joining the other. But men who are lifelong friends, who have been—are still going—through hell together, will still leave an empty stool between them if possible. When I ask her why, she says she has no goddamn idea.
Hobart has what would be a rash if it ever went away, but it never does. He won’t call it a skin condition, though, because it’s only permanent going forward. He didn’t use to have it, wasn’t born with it, didn’t grow up with it, only developed it after the water in his shower started coming out brown and putrid. That he’s stuck with it now does not turn it into a condition, he says. That appropriate rash terminology is a perfectly reasonable discussion to have over beer and pretzels tells you everything you need to know about Norma’s Bar.
When I was little and learning about the body, I used to worry for their livers. But when I told Nora, she snorted. “Nothing can kill these guys. Trust me, they tried.” The male species is endangered in Bourne. The plant employed more men than women, so more of them died, quick and early and before my time. Or theirs. But the other sad truth about Bourne is anyone who’s here is here because they couldn’t leave. That was another thing I didn’t understand when I was little, why you wouldn’t just pack up and move somewhere else. “Lots of people did.” Nora nodded. Then added, “Some could not.”
Hobart stays because raw pink lesions and welty skin would draw stares in any town but this one. Zach and Tom stay because Bourne has lots of accommodations that make life with only one leg easier than it would be other places. And because here they have each other. Frank stayed because he owns the bar. Predictably, it’s the most profitable business in town (though still nowhere near profitable enough to hire a real accountant). When you ask Nora why she stayed, she says Bourne is her home. She says she has happy memories here. She says she’ll be damned if she lets those bastards run her out of her own town. But really it’s because of us. Bourne
is a good place for Monday to be Monday. It’s a really good place for me to be me.
And never mind all that, she stays not just for us, but for all of us. For Nora’s fourth job—for which she also does not get paid, for which, in fact, she herself pays handsomely—is truth-prover, justice-seeker, retribution-guarantor, and wreck-herder. Every hour she is not working or baking or mothering, she is holding Bourne’s class action lawsuit together with both hands. She has a fancy, big-city lawyer, Russell Russo, and a crowd of plaintiffs—nearly everyone left has signed on at some point or another. She has piles of research, interviews and testimony, documents, affidavits, and absurdly high hopes. What she does not have, however, in sixteen years of trying, is sufficient admissible evidence to prove what she absolutely knows to be the case. Not yet, anyway.
When the old oak door opens and a little light spills into our dankness and with it Bourne’s mayor, Omar Radison, everyone holds their breath, but I am the only one who sets off an alarm. My apnea monitor starts shrieking like a banshee on the moors, and this is a good thing actually because it reminds everyone to breathe again and gives Nora something to do.
Omar comes running over to help me, but Nora beats him there. Still, it was sweet of him to try.
“Christ, is she all right?”
“She’s fine,” Nora snaps.
“Are you sure?” Omar’s hands are out to help, but he doesn’t know where to put them. Nora’s propped my head and checked my airway and is fiddling with the monitor, trying to get it to stop shrieking. I am telling her with my eyes I’m fine.
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Some days Nora is too tired for sarcasm. Today is not one of those days.
“Okay, jeez, just…” Omar trails off. Making sure? Trying to help? Unable to muster the will to live with that alarm pummeling my eardrums? Who knows how he meant to finish that sentence. But the pealing finally ceases.
“She’s fine,” Nora says again.
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