“So you better change,” she peeks out from behind me to add.
“Change?” He has a funny look on his face. Is he confused or contemptuous? (“Supercilious,” Petra would say.) I admit Monday’s not making sense, and he’s probably used to people making sense. Still. He came over to talk to us, even if he didn’t want to. We’re on his lawn, yes, but it wasn’t his until this week.
“Out of your dance clothes,” Monday explains.
He looks down at his ratty T-shirt, up at me for help, back to Monday. “These aren’t dance clothes.”
“The top hat.” She waves at it, her arm emerging over my shoulder alongside my ear. “The tiny dance cane.”
“Oh.” He blushes again. “It’s not a tiny cane. It’s a wand. I was”—it seems like he won’t finish that sentence but then concludes it’s too late anyway—“practicing magic.”
“You are magic?” Full of wonder.
“No,” he says at once. Then, “Well, you know.”
“No.” She does not. But she’s stepped out from behind me to get a better look at him.
“I’m just practicing. Messing around. An amateur magician or whatever.”
“A wizard apprentice?” Monday’s eyes are open as prairies, splitting the difference between impressed and afraid.
“No, just for fun.” He can’t decide if she’s making fun of him or not. “Or like for little kids’ birthday parties maybe.”
“Is that why your father made you come here?” This is the first on-point question she’s asked yet.
“What? No.” But he answers a different question, the one he thinks she’s asking rather than the one I wish she were. What she actually means is anyone’s guess. “He saw you ride up and thought the well-bred thing to do was come say hello. Dad’s big on well-bred.”
“He wants you to use your dark arts against us.” She scuttles behind me again. I can feel her trying to keep it together. I can also feel little flecks of spit flying out of her mouth onto the top of my head.
He assumes she’s joking, starts laughing, sees he’s the only one, trails off. We have run out of things to talk about already, and I’m glad because I’m ready to leave now. Past ready. Creeping toward desperate.
But then the library front door opens slowly—it’s still wired for wheelchair access to come ajar, ghostly, at the press of a giant square button—and we see Nathan again, standing in the doorway, smiling. In fact, his whole body is smiling. He’s wearing new-looking, tech-flaunting hiking boots, but you can tell that if you could see his toes, they’d be smiling too.
“Guests! Welcome!” He waves from the doorway for us to come in like when the lifeguards hear thunder at the pool, and then he turns and goes back inside, that confident we’ll follow, as the door closes slowly behind him.
I know that talking to Nathan Templeton is my best shot at finding out something my mother could use, but I have exactly no desire to do so. I feel many things, but one of them, embarrassingly, undeniably, is frightened.
River rolls his eyes. Then he reaches into his back pocket and retrieves his wand, waves it over us, makes his voice deep and cavernous. “The Raging River commands you to come inside.”
“The raging river?” says Monday.
“You know”—his voice back to normal—“like the Great Houdini. Or the Powerful Oz. Get it? Because a powerful river is raging, but raging also means—”
“Thanks for the offer but…” I interrupt then trail off with a tone and facial expression which I hope finish the sentence for me. Thanks, but you can’t command me to do anything, and I would rather drink actual tap water than spend my Saturday morning with your family.
But Monday is bouncing on the balls of her feet and doing a little dance with her fingers because, be it from the devil incarnate, or at least his grandson, an invitation to get back into her beloved library is not one she is going to refuse.
Two
It has been two years and three months and some number of days since the last time I was in this building. I study Mab’s pulled-together eyebrows and pulled-down lips and conclude she does not want to enter River’s house, but I want to enter my library so I accept, even though those two places are the same place at the moment. River Templeton taps the wheelchair square with his wand, and the door glides open. If this were my first time here, I might think this is magic, but it is not my first time here, and the door opens with the same little puff and ding as it always did, whether you use a wand or not.
As far as my nose can tell, it is exactly the same: the dusty odor of the books, the musty odor of the carpet, the hot-wood smell from bookcases heated by years of sun streaming through windows. This is the most beautiful, perfect building in our town or probably in anyone’s town.
At the bottom of the staircase up to Reference and Research, River’s father has an expression on his face which I do not know what it means. It is not sad or mad or worried or embarrassed. It is also not happy or excited or surprised. If you do not know the answer to what a facial expression on a facial-expression card means, Mrs. Radcliffe says to first decide is it a happy expression or an unhappy expression, but I look at River’s father’s face and cannot tell. What River’s father looks to me is smooth, but smooth is not an emotion. His face is smooth and smiley, and that smile is smooth and white, and his hair is smooth and shiny and puffy, and his clothes are smooth and neat. He reaches a hand right at me while he is also walking right at me, and that hand is also smooth, but it also wants to touch me, so when he says, “Nathan Templeton. Very pleased to meet you,” I hide behind Mab who does not mind when smooth hands or any hands touch her.
Mab shakes the smooth hand, but she does not say anything, I think because you are supposed to say you are pleased to meet him too and she is not.
Then he says, “Welcome to our home,” very big and loud and smooth.
So I say, “Ha!”
So Mab says, “Monday,” in a tone which means warning.
“River’s father is making a joke,” I inform Mab, “because this is not his home.”
“Please, please”—River’s father holds his arms out and I panic that he is going to hug me, but he just stands there like that—“call me Nathan.”
“Nathan!” I call.
“A teenager who takes direction.” River’s father laughs. “You’re a wonder…”
He trails off, so Mab says, “Monday.”
“Monday? Oh! I didn’t realize when you said just now … well, uh, delightful! What a great name. Let me guess, Monday. Your parents are artist types.”
“Wrong,” I say because he is, and I am about to explain, but Mab says, “Monday,” again in her warning voice.
“Best two out of three,” says River’s father, which is when I realize he plays Truth or Dare and a Lie as well. “You grew up in this library.”
“Lie,” I say. “No one grows up in a library.”
“Not so!” He claps his hands and lowers his voice but not his smile, like he is going to tell me a secret and he is very happy about it. “Some of my best friends grew up in libraries. But I can see that you like things literal. I like that too. What I meant was I bet you spent many happy hours here as a child reading beloved titles.”
“Truth,” I admit. “The insides too.”
He laughs like I have made a joke. “Right you are, Monday. I can tell all those hours reading have paid off. Nothing gets by you. You’re sharp as a tack.”
“Lie.” I am neither sharp nor a tack. He has three lies and a truth so far, which is not how you play the game, but he is laughing and happy anyway.
“River here has been worried about being the new kid. You know, making friends, fitting in. I’m pleased to see he has such fine, smart classmates.”
I look at River’s classmate, who is Mab, but River’s father is still grinning at me. Mab coughs a cough that does not sound like her usual cough.
“Well, see ya,” she says to I do not know who, but it is probably not me. She turns around
like she will walk out the door.
“No, you can’t go yet,” says River’s father. “You know who bought muffins fresh this morning?”
I do not know, but I am preparing three guesses when a woman appears hurrying down the staircase. She is wearing clothes to exercise in and has white and gray smears I can assume are dust all over them and her arms and face and hair.
“Here she is!” River’s father’s voice sounds surprised. Maybe he did not know just like I did not know that this woman was in the library. “How was the attic?”
She shakes her head at him, but I do not know why because “How was the attic?” is not a yes-or-no question.
“Find anything?” He makes his voice lower as if he hopes we will not hear him even though she is still on the stairs whereas we are standing right next to him.
She shakes her head again, and even though I do not know what she was looking for, at least that is a question to which “No” can be an answer.
“You,” I say.
“Huh?” says River’s father.
“I am guessing who bought muffins fresh this morning.”
“Ahh.” River’s father’s face does a big smile. “Nope, not me. Even better.” He points to the dusty woman. “It was this lady here, my wife, River’s mom, the lovely Apple Templeton.”
Except for the dust, River’s mother looks like a woman on television, not a television mother with aprons and cookies, but a television woman with shiny lips, curly eyelashes, and long hair that does not move when she moves. Whereas River’s father looks smooth, River’s mother looks pointy. River’s father smiles at her. She does not smile back.
“Let me tell you”—River’s father is still talking—“she has great taste in baked goods. We’d love to get to know you both, hear a little bit more about Bourne Memorial High. What are the hot clubs to join? Who’s the cool teacher? Where do the popular kids eat lunch? We want the inside scoop.” He turns to Mab. “We haven’t even been introduced.”
River points his wand at my sister like he will turn her into a toad. “This is Mab, Dad. She and Monday are sisters.”
“Mab! What an unusual name. Are you sure your parents aren’t artists?”
“It’s Shakespeare.” This is a truth, and it is the first thing River’s mother has said, but she says it very quietly. She looks surprised, and he looks at her, and then he looks surprised.
But then he claps his hands together and turns back to us. “Mab and Monday! Wonderful! Delighted to meet you. So glad you’re here. Come on in.”
He turns and waves to us over his shoulder which means “Follow me,” and River’s mother does and River does, and Mab and I do not know what to do so we do too, and he walks past where the checkout and return counters and the library card desk should be, but they are gone. And he walks into the Children’s section, and my eyes see what is there, and they cannot believe it because in the Children’s section, a kitchen has bloomed. It has a white-and-navy floor made out of shiny diamond tiles. It has a giant refrigerator with a screen right in the door. It has a range with six burners, two dishwashers, two sinks, two ovens, cabinets so blended right in you can almost not even see them, and countertops covered in appliances that look like no one ever used them before which might be because no one knows what they are because they are not obvious things like a toaster but non-obvious things with chutes and dials I cannot identify.
The Children’s reference desk is still there like when you see a documentary about the Roman Colosseum but there are people with cellular telephones all around it. It has become shiny on top and grown a rack on the side for also shiny knives and hooks with dish towels. There are tall stools along the back like a saloon in a movie. My eyes see the Children’s section they met before they can even remember, and they also see River’s not-even-cooked-in-yet kitchen which looks like a kitchen in a magazine, and they cannot believe it even though they should not be so surprised because Chris Wohl said he saw kitchen delivery trucks, and my eyes can assume this kitchen is what they were delivering.
River’s father motions us to sit on the tall stools, and he puts out three glasses, and he fills the glasses with orange juice, which I will not drink because it is raining and orange is not green, and he puts out a big bowl full of blueberry muffins, which I also will not eat because blueberries are also not green and because I am a baker’s daughter and can tell that these muffins will not taste good. I feel a howl starting to build in the back of my throat.
But before it can come out, River’s father does the most amazing thing. He walks over to the sink and fills a glass with water straight from the tap and drinks it all down!
Mab is staring at him with her mouth open. My howl is shocked into silence.
“Are you a pastor, priest, rabbi, or reverend?” I ask instead.
“Me?” River’s father says or, to be more accurate, yelps. “No one’s ever accused me of that before.”
“I am not accusing you,” I correct him. “But the only person in Bourne who drinks water from the tap is Pastor Jeff, and he has faith as a man of God.”
“Ahh. I see. Well, I don’t trade in faith, but I do believe.”
“In God?” I ask which he must have been hoping for because he smiles.
“I believe in Bourne. I believe the water and everything else here is pure and clean and safe as houses.”
“Are houses safe?”
“Very, Monday. They’re very safe. Clean. Clear. Healthy. Perfect. I believe Bourne’s going great places.”
“Where?” I ask.
He points his finger up, but when I look, all I see is they painted over the mural of rainbows and clouds which is usually on the Children’s section ceiling. Now it is just beige. “The eaves?” I guess. “The roof?”
“The sky, Monday. The sky’s the limit.”
I do not know what this means or what it has to do with the tap water, but before I can ask more questions, River interrupts his father.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll show you my room.”
I do not think Mab will want to see his room, but she gets up so I do too. I have a guess that she follows him because she does not like him less than she does not like his father who sounds kind but feels like something else.
“Thank you for coming by to welcome us, Monday and Mab,” River’s father says as we leave the Children’s section.
“That is not why we came,” I say.
“Then we were both surprised,” he says. “How wonderful.”
“Lie,” I say, but I do not think we are playing anymore.
River leads us past the New Releases section where there are three fat, puffy chairs that sit up or lie down with their feet out, past the Mysteries and Thrillers section where there is a fancy, old-fashioned dining-room table with lots of wooden curlicues and knobbly legs ending in carved feet with actual carved toes, plus three equally old, toed chairs. (You could also shelve mysteries and thrillers in General Adult Fiction, but Mrs. Watson made them a separate section because sometimes people are dead on the covers of mysteries and thrillers, and a lot of readers in Bourne feel traumatized by looking at dead people without warning like if they were just browsing for a book all the characters live through.) In the Audiovisual section are stacks of boxes and pictures in frames and lamps—I guess because the Templetons moved in only recently and have not yet unpacked—separated into three groups. It is like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. It is also like Apocalypse Now. Both of these are movies I checked out approximately four feet away from where I am currently standing. I slide my gaze over to Mab who looks like her eyes are having the same problem mine are, and I am glad to know I am not overreacting or upset by myself. I can feel my howl trying to come back.
“That’s my dad’s office.” River waves as we walk past the big study room. It is the biggest, but it is not the nicest because it is also the smelliest, but maybe his father does not know that yet, or maybe, like Mr. Beechman, he has lost his sense of smell. A more accurate name than s
tudy room would be loud room anyway since what people did in it was be loud. Bourne kids used to hang out and talk in there because you have to be quiet in all the other parts of the library. Bourne adults used it for holding organizing and task force meetings, back when there were more adults besides Mama who still wanted to organize and force tasks. The door is open, and inside I can see a giant chair and a giant desk and a giant painting of a giant.
“Who is that giant?” I ask.
“That’s Uncle Hickory.” River keeps walking and does not even look where I am pointing. He knows what “who” I mean. Maybe he really is magic. “His eyes follow you everywhere. It’s creepy.”
“Why is he a giant?”
“I don’t know. That’s just how portraits were back then I guess.”
“Why is everything in your father’s office so big when your father is a normal size?”
“Overcompensation,” River says, and Mab laughs for the first time since we came inside the library, but I do not know what that means.
“My room’s upstairs,” he says, so we follow him up the grand staircase to Reference and Research where the dictionaries and encyclopedias are, and the tables and chairs are laid out in a grid system of rows with enough spots for many people to sit and read but enough space for wheelchairs or walkers or people with an armload of books to maneuver without accidentally touching anyone. I used to have to borrow one of the dictionaries to sit on, but now my feet touch the floor and my elbows touch the table and my butt touches the chair all at the same time, and this is good because butts put germs on dictionaries.
But at the top of the stairs, instead of the shelves and sets of books and the perfect seating grid, there is a twin bed with a brown comforter and two blue pillows, a dresser with twelve drawers, and a coatrack on wheels that should be downstairs by the elevator in the lobby for winter but instead is up here holding a bunch of flannel button-downs and sweatshirts. The far wall is naked except for the scars where the bookcases were bracketed, and in their place is a television tall and wide and flat as the world map which used to hang up here. (The map was not life-size of course—you cannot fit a life-size map of the world on the world—but I remember when Brazil was taller than I was.) There is one singular solitary beautiful lonely bookcase left, but it does not hold books because instead it holds a cape, five balls, two decks of cards, one stack of boxes, one pile of coins, and ten tied-together red and blue handkerchiefs.
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