Neither Present Time

by Caren J. Werlinger

  She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee while Veronica made them both scrambled eggs and hash browns.

  “Veronica, you can cook for me every day,” Cory said, as she said most every day.

  “Miss Cory, I do cook for you every day,” Veronica replied, but she smiled, as she did most every day.

  “What would you like to do this fine morning?” she asked as she cleared the dishes when they were done eating.

  “I’d like to work in my flower garden.”

  “You can’t be getting all sweaty and dirty,” Veronica said. “You’ve got a doctor’s appointment after lunch. You’re seeing the heart specialist at Ohio State today, remember?”

  Cory waved her hand as if shooing away a gnat. “What’s the doctor going to say except I’m old,” she grumbled. “I don’t need a specialist to tell me that. My heart’s as old as I am. It’s not as if he can do anything about it.”

  Veronica chuckled and said, “Maybe. But it’s bad manners to cancel at the last minute.” She’d learned quickly that the easiest way to convince Miss Cory to do something was to point out that it was bad manners not to do it.

  “Young people don’t have any manners nowadays,” Cory frequently complained. “I was never so disrespectful when I was their age.”

  “All right,” she conceded grudgingly now. “I’ll work in the garden tomorrow.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Veronica said soothingly. “How about you sit and enjoy that garden some before it gets too hot?”

  She prepared a pitcher of lemonade and carried a tray outside where a cushioned bench sat in deep shade.

  “Oh, it smells heavenly out here today, Miss Cory,” Veronica said.

  Cory settled comfortably on her bench and Veronica poured her a glass of lemonade, capping the pitcher to keep insects out.

  It did smell wonderful in her garden – lilacs and roses and hydrangea. The blend of flowery scents smelled like Helen. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  * * *

  The room Corinne works in has tall windows, like her mother’s study at home, but these windows surround all four walls to let in plenty of light for the pool of typists sitting row upon row at the desks filling the cavernous room. Unlike her mother’s study, this room is almost uniformly grey: grey steel desks and chairs, grey linoleum floor, even the walls are grey. “They must have had leftover paint from a submarine,” the girls often joke. From their east-facing windows, they can see the dome of the Capitol in the distance.

  Today, it is raining – not a soft rain, but a heavy downpour punctuated by flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder. Their overhead pendant lights have flickered on and off all morning.

  Corinne’s desk is one of the ones nearest the stairwell, and so it is she who is deluged with droplets of water from a flapping umbrella. She flinches at the unexpected shower and then sees that the paper in her typewriter has been splattered as well, the ink running, the entire page ruined.

  “Look what you’ve done –” she sputters angrily, but stops mid-sentence as she glances up.

  The wet umbrella folds to reveal a darkly handsome woman, though she is wet and bedraggled. Her entire lower half – the part not sheltered by the umbrella – is thoroughly soaked and now dripping on the grey linoleum floor.

  The woman, totally unaware of the havoc she has wreaked, glances down at Corinne and then around the room where everyone is now watching her. “I was told to report to a Miss Chalmers,” she says to no one in particular.

  “Over here,” says Miss Chalmers, rising from her seat and inviting the newcomer to the chair adjacent to her desk.

  Corinne pulls the ruined form out of her typewriter and begins to roll a fresh paper into the carriage. She has to realign it three times as she is distracted by the new woman. Everything about her, from her trench coat to her wide-legged trousers and mannish wing-tip shoes, exudes an air of eccentric confidence. And money. As the others return to their typing, the sounds of the machines obscure some of Miss Chalmers’ conversation with the woman, but Corinne is able to hear some of what they say.

  “You’ve been assigned to us,” Miss Chalmers is saying.

  “Where will I be staying?” the woman asks.

  Miss Chalmers is temporarily speechless as she gawks at the woman through her thick glasses. A smile flits across her face as if she has decided the woman is joking. “We do not provide quarters for census workers,” she says. “You were to have arranged accommodations before you arrived. Surely your employment packet mentioned that.”

  The woman gives a vague wave of her hand as if she cannot be bothered with such minutiae. “I’ll find something,” she says.

  Corinne hides a smile. This woman obviously has no idea how scarce rooms are in Washington. Not only are there hundreds of workers compiling the 1940 census, but she has noticed a definite increase in personnel related to the military and war offices. The United States isn’t at war – yet – but the signs are pointing in that direction if you believe the papers.

  Corinne begins re-typing her census form as Miss Chalmers leads the woman to a desk three rows over. Covertly, she watches as the woman takes off her wet trench coat and drapes it over the back of her chair. Miss Chalmers gives her a stack of hand-marked census forms to be transferred to the typed sheets. The woman picks up a blank form, pursing her lips as she tries to figure out how to roll the paper into the typewriter. Bemused, Corinne watches the woman glance sideways at her neighbor, trying to see how the machine operates. She mangles one form badly and pulls it out. Corinne looks for Miss Chalmers, but she has stepped out. Rising, she hurries over to the woman’s desk.

  “Let me show you,” she says in a low voice, taking a new form and threading it onto the roller for her. “You have to line it up like this,” she says, “or nothing will be in the right place.” As she leans near the woman, she catches a scent, light and flowery, intensified by her damp clothing.

  “Thank you,” the woman says, her voice deep and musical. Up close, her eyes as she raises them to Corinne aren’t brown at all, Corinne realizes. They are a hazel – now blue-grey, now grey-brown. Corinne blinks and straightens up.

  “You’re welcome,” she says, feeling a hot flush rise to her cheeks.

  * * *

  “Miss Cory! It’s time for lunch,” Veronica called from the house.

  Cory opened her eyes and sighed.

  “I have to leave after we get back from the doctor,” Veronica said as she came out to collect the drink tray. “Aggie will be by later, after she gets off work.”

  * * *

  “Miss Bishop, can you help me with my story?”

  Aggie glanced up from the papers she was grading. “I’m sorry, Becka. I can’t today.” She glanced at her calendar. “How about tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” Becka said somewhat glumly, picking at a pimple on her cheek.

  Aggie hurried to finish the stack of papers before her and then gathered up her messenger bag containing another set of papers to be graded tonight. Gasping at the stifling hot air out in the asphalt parking lot, she lowered all the windows of her car, hoping moving air would feel cooler. It did not. By the time she drove from the school to her nearby apartment in Whitehall, she was drenched in sweat. She picked up Percival, her scruffy Jack Russell mix, who jumped eagerly into the front passenger seat, his head out the window with his paws propped on the arm rest.

  “Our next car is going to have AC, I don’t care what you say,” she muttered as she drove to Bexley. Of course, as her Accord was going on fifteen years old and still running fine, she could never bring herself to think seriously about buying another car. She pulled into a long, tree-lined drive leading back to a mansion that must once have been stately, but now was in varying degrees of disrepair. The wood trim and soffits badly needed painting, the copper gutters were hanging loose in a few places, looking as if they might impale the unfortunate soul happening to be walking beneath when they finally speared to the ground, and there
were a few broken slate roof tiles patched with cheap asphalt shingles. The yew and boxwood hedges lining the walks were so overgrown that they nearly choked the walks off completely. It looked sad and lonely, Aggie often thought. She drove around back and parked in the old carriage house that had been converted to a garage back when automobiles replaced the family carriages. It was so much cooler here in the deep shade of the trees. Percival ran around peeing on his usual bushes as Aggie retrieved her bag from the back seat. She peeled her damp shirt from her sweaty back and unlocked the kitchen door.

  “Aunt Cory,” she called, but received no response. With Percival leading the way, she found Cory in her chair in the study, a book lying open on her lap, her silver-haired head resting against the side of her wing chair as she napped. The windows had all been thrown open, and the breeze that came in was warm, but tolerable. Without waking her aunt – her great-aunt actually – Aggie took the other chair and quietly began grading her papers as Percival curled up under Cory’s chair.

  Within half an hour, Cory stirred. “How long have you been here?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Hours and hours,” Aggie teased.

  “You’re a bad liar, Agatha,” Cory said. She eyed her great-niece more closely, taking in her polo shirt, crop pants and sandals. “Is that what you wore to work?” she asked disapprovingly.

  Aggie smiled. “It’s summer school, Aunt Cory. They relax the dress code to make it easier for all of us to be there.”

  She stuffed her papers back into her bag. “What would you like for dinner?”

  Cory thought for a moment. “Deep-dish pizza.”

  Aggie laughed. “Deep-dish pizza it is. You and Percival set the table, and I’ll go pick it up.”

  Cory looked at Aggie as she got to her feet. “Don’t you have something better to do with your evening than spend it with an old lady?”

  Aggie grinned. “What could be better than spending time with you?” To herself, she added, “And sadly, no, I do not have anything better to do.”

  Chapter 3

  “I can’t be that out of shape,” Beryl huffed the next morning as she walked to the library from the bus stop.

  She entered the air-conditioned building, wiping the sweat from her face, feeling rivulets running down her back and chest. She shrugged off her backpack which felt much heavier than usual. Inside, she found the books she had taken with her from The Scriptorium. She pulled them out, along with her notes. Her shift wasn’t scheduled to start for another hour, but she planned to begin researching the auction books.

  She went into the back office where her colleague, David Morris, was pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  “You’re early,” he said, glancing at the clock. He held up the coffee pot. “Want some?”

  Beryl shook her head. “Have to cool down first. Need some internet time,” she explained.

  “Why don’t you guys get internet at home?”

  “Claire says we both have it at work, so we don’t need to pay for it at home,” Beryl said, opening her notes.

  “More book appraisals?” he asked.

  “Yup.”

  David came over to shuffle through the stack of books she had set on the desk. “Why are you doing regular library work?” he asked, lifting his glasses to squint more closely at the binding of one of her books. “You have a doctorate in Medieval European literature. You should be working with a rare book collection somewhere.”

  Beryl shrugged. “I like what I do.”

  “You mean Claire likes what you do,” he said cryptically.

  She frowned up at him. “What does that mean?”

  David shook his head apologetically. “Nothing. I’ll let you get to it,” he said as he returned to the reference desk.

  Book by book, Beryl went through her notes and began the process of trying to find similar editions either recently sold or currently for sale. It was tedious work, but she enjoyed it. Every now and then, something really rare and wonderful popped up, but mostly this type of work was fairly routine. This batch of books, because so many were first editions, turned out to be worth more than usual. Mr. Herrmann will be pleased, she thought.

  She turned to the books she had chosen for herself and looked them over more closely. One was a beautiful embossed-leather edition of Wuthering Heights, one of her favorite novels. “You already have three copies,” she could hear Claire saying. Tucked in the middle of the stack was the little book that had nearly disappeared against the side of the box. She hadn’t even realized she’d put it in her stack. It was by Rumer Godden, Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time. Opening the front cover, her eye was caught by an inscription, dated 1945:

  Loving Valentine Greetings to Corinne,

  In memory of a very wet afternoon!

  Helen

  Intrigued, Beryl flipped quickly through the volume, but didn’t see any other notes or inscriptions. She turned back to the inscription in the front, smiling.

  By late in the week, Beryl had come up with estimated values for most of the books on her list. She planned to go over to the bookshop after work to bring Mr. Herrmann her notes, but privately, she had another reason for going. The inscription in the Godden book had captured her imagination. Even now, the little tome resided in her backpack, but it was to keep it safe, private.

  “Oh, God, listen to this,” Beryl had heard as she fed Winston a couple of evenings ago. Beryl had been reading the book and had left it sitting on the couch when Claire and Leslie came in. She heard Claire read the inscription aloud to Leslie, who laughed along with her.

  Angry and humiliated, Beryl had snatched the book from Claire’s hands, which only made Claire laugh more. “Watch,” Claire had said mockingly to Leslie, “before we know it, she’ll have imagined some grand romance instead of an afternoon fuck.”

  Beryl took the book upstairs, away from their derisive laughter, chagrined that Claire had turned it into something tawdry, indecent. Though she couldn’t have explained why, Beryl had become convinced that the inscription spoke of so much more – of passion and promise and…”

  “Romance,” Claire would have finished cynically if Beryl had tried to express herself.

  “No relationship can stay romantic forever,” Claire often scoffed, but “Some can! Some must!” Beryl cried silently.

  So, she turned to her books – not modern romances where it seemed everything revolved around sex – but classic stories where the world could be changed by a look or a touch, where feelings ran deep and remained true.

  That’s the thing, she had thought upstairs, blinking back tears as she stared at her book. Remaining true. Keeping love from fading, from sliding unnoticed into something that’s only comfortable and safe – safer than the alternative… Stop! she thought. Don’t go there.

  Beryl glanced up now at the library clock. Almost quitting time. “David,” she said, “I’m going to the stacks to put these away.”

  She pushed a cart loaded with research journals that library users had pulled and stacked on the trolley, carefully putting them back in their proper places. When she was done, she gathered up her backpack, greeting the next librarian working the evening shift at the desk.

  “You leaving?” she asked David.

  “In a minute,” he said, looking up from his computer.

  “Well, don’t let a minute turn into an hour,” she said, shaking her head. He always worked over his scheduled hours. “See you tomorrow.”

  “See you, Beryl.”

  The heat and humidity hit her like a brick wall as she stepped outside. She walked the few blocks to the nearest bus stop and headed to DuPont Circle. Circumventing the junkies and homeless people panhandling near the ellipse, she made her way to The Scriptorium.

  “Hello, Mr. Herrmann,” she said as the silvery bell announced her arrival.

  “How are you today, Miss Gray?” he smiled as he finished ringing up a sale for a customer.

  She wandered through the shelves, waiting patiently as the cus
tomer inquired about another book he was interested in. Mr. Herrmann took down the information and promised to do a search later that day.

  As the customer thanked him and left, Beryl returned to the counter. She pulled out her notes. “I have values for you,” she said. “Some of these books are worth a good bit.”

  He smiled as he peered through his half-glasses at her notes. “This must have taken you quite a while,” he said. “I think I owe you more for the time you spent.”

  “Well, I do have a favor to ask,” she grinned. “I need to track down where these books came from.”

  “Why on earth would you need to do that?” he asked looking at her over the top of his glasses.

  She had anticipated this question. “I found a letter in one of the books and thought the family might like to have it returned,” she said, thinking this sounded innocently plausible.

  “Let’s see,” said Mr. Herrmann, pulling out an old-fashioned ledger. “George may have all of our inventory on the computer, but if it – how do they say? – smashes, I always have this,” he said often. He ran his finger down the entries. “Here we are. The auction house was Wharton’s in Philadelphia.” He jotted down the date of the sale and the lot numbers of the boxes of books.

  “Do you still have the boxes in the back?” Beryl asked hopefully.

  “Looking for more clues to solve your mystery?” he asked with a wink. “Yes, I believe the boxes are yet unpacked. You may go back if you wish.”

  “Thank you,” she grinned.

  She found the boxes where she had left them. Pulling the wooden chair near, she went back through each box, checking every book quickly. There were no other inscriptions from either Helen or Corinne. Though she hadn’t really expected to find anything, she was disappointed.

  She glanced at her watch. “Oh, crap.” Hurrying to the front door, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Herrmann.”