Giving advice is dangerous. Bernie was drunk enough that he did it. I followed him into the study and on the first take they did, he sang that goofy song about farmers and potatoes and Oklahoma. He sang it like he did in the shower, belting it out like he was on stage. After Bernie finished the song, he bowed. Then he walked out, leaving the director and the camera crew with their mouths hanging open.
Usefulness
I went to the airport with nothing but my briefcase and the clothes on my back, and got on a plane to Kansas City.
I returned to the library with the vow that I would be useful, so on my first day back, I asked Beverly what needed to be done.
“The usual,” she said. She wasn’t sure what to think of me being back.
“No, I mean what really needs to be done around here that isn’t getting done?” She opened her filing cabinet, and pulled out four large manila folders.
“This needs to be put in the database.” It was records of missing and replaced items, changes in volume numbers and editions. It took a week of tedious ten-hour days, but I finished it.
“It’s not in the budget for overtime,” she said when I was done.
“I hope you’re not paying me anymore.”
She blushed, the first time I had ever seen her so out of sorts.
“I forgot. I just forgot that you’re, that you’re who you are.”
“What else needs to be done?” I said.
“You know we’ve been wanting to relocate the children’s section for years.” Beverly suggested it tentatively, not quite daring to hope that I’d take it on. If she had said, There are these thousand horse stables that haven’t been cleaned in ten years, I would have accepted the task. I wanted to do something that offered tangible proof of the effort involved.
I began drawing diagrams of what would have to be moved to make the relocation possible. It required the piecemeal removal and relocation of two aisles of reference books and another four aisles of adult fiction, plus five computer terminals and the ancient card catalogs, which had taken on a Cheopsean aura of immovability. That was to clear the space for the children’s section. The children’s section involved moving nine freestanding bookcases and seven sections of half-shelves, as well as all the tables and chairs. The books of course had to be moved in some orderly fashion, temporarily stacked until the shelves were moved and then re-shelved. Somehow simultaneously, the books from the displaced reference section and adult fiction needed to be re-shelved once the shelves had been relocated to the old children’s section. Additionally, the displacement would disrupt the order of the adult fiction, putting the T—Z section in front of the A’s, requiring that all the books and signs be incrementally shifted to properly order the alphabet again. It had only been talked of for years for a good reason. It was Herculean.
Beverly came out of her office while I was working out my calculations with a tape measure, and I knew she wanted to revoke my commission. She believed I would never finish the job. I decided to view her pessimism as a challenge instead of a prediction.
Spiritual Contract
Meda
Bernie didn’t come back after he walked out on the commercial. The film crew wandered around for a few hours, but he never came back. I didn’t hear from him that night, and when I went to work the next day he still wasn’t there. As much as I didn’t want to, I asked Celeste.
“Oh, he flew to Kansas City after his meeting yesterday. Do you need something?” I didn’t really, except I wanted to see him. It wasn’t a stupid romance novel moment. I just felt sad that he was gone and he hadn’t even bothered to tell me. I hoped he was doing what he wanted.
When he called me two weeks later, I had started to think he was moving on with his life. He acted like we’d been in the middle of a conversation.
“I miss you,” he said when I answered the phone, no hello or anything. “Do you remember what you said about feeling badly that I’d given you so many gifts and you didn’t have anything to give me?”
“Yeah.”
“Because I was thinking there's one thing you could give me that I would really like. A gift you could give me.”
“You can’t ask me that,” I said. It made me crazy the way he acted. “Even some obscenely expensive old diamond necklace and a brand new car don’t give you the right to ask me for something like that. That’s not a gift. That’s a—a—I don’t care if you believe in it or not, but that’s a spiritual contract.”
“Well, that wasn’t what I was going to ask for, but the invitation is still open, as you like to say.”
I wanted to start the phone call over. “I’m sorry. What can I give you, as a gift?”
“Come visit me. I want to see you.”
“Why do I have to go there?”
“You don’t, but I’m asking you to.”
“What about Annadore?”
“I’d like to see her, too. It’s not a romantic trip. I promise I won’t bother you about that. If you don’t want to, just say so.” He sounded a little sad, but not that awful sadness he sometimes had. I think his feelings were hurt.
“It’s not that. It’s just…I’ve never flown before.”
“It’s no big deal. I’ll send the jet for you.”
“Please, don’t. I’d rather fly like a normal person.”
I felt like a big dummy, but I made him tell me about what you do when you get to the airport, and what you do with your luggage and how you get to your plane and all that stuff. He waited while I went to get a pen and paper, and then he walked me through it. I didn’t know how to feel when I hung up. He sounded so normal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ASSHOLE
When I met Meda at the airport, she looked tired, I can only imagine from having to fly with Annadore.
“Take She-Devil, would you?” Meda said.
“Bunny!” Annadore crowed and held out her arms to me. Then in a conversational tone, she said, “Stink, stink, mean Mama.”
All around us were people who seemed happy to see each other. I wanted to hug Meda, but it apparently hadn’t occurred to her. I felt deflated. As we walked down to the baggage claim, however, she leaned into me a little, and then we stood just touching, waiting for their luggage. Annadore’s car seat and a glaringly new suitcase.
“I didn’t have a suitcase,” she said, when she caught me looking at it. “And I bought new clothes to put in it. Celeste and I both think you’re insane for giving me a credit card.”
She waited for me to say something, but I decided not to. In the parking lot, Meda looked around, looking for Kansas City perhaps.
“A Toyota,” she said, when I unlocked the car door for her.
“A librarian’s salary won’t buy a Rolls Royce. Or a BMW for that matter.”
“With the late fines you charge, I’d think it would,” she said with a grin.
She’d had her teeth fixed. Her smile was perfect and uninterrupted.
I’d prepared myself for her annoyance, but she seemed perfectly content to be there until I stirred things up. While we were going into my apartment building my neighbor was coming out and I bowed to the inevitable introduction. “This is Jerry, my neighbor. This is my fiancée Meda and her daughter Annadore.”
“I didn’t know you were getting married!” He glanced down at Meda’s belly, which was larger than I remembered. Of course, it had grown. “When’s the happy day?”
“We haven’t decided yet,” Meda said sharply.
“Well, congratulations.”
“Thanks.” I felt Meda burning holes in my back as I unlocked the apartment door.
“You promised this wasn’t going to be that kind of trip. You promised you weren’t going to bother me about getting married.”
“It isn’t and I’m not and I haven’t,” I said.
She stepped past me into the apartment and turned to challenge me.
“Then why did you tell him I was your fiancée?”
“You know what I think when I see a guy
with a pregnant woman and he introduces her as his girlfriend?”
“That he should have been more careful,” she said, either as general commentary or a personal remark on my behavior.
“I think, ‘what an asshole.’ You’re making me feel like an asshole.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” she said.
Digging a Hole
Meda
I didn’t know why I had to keep upsetting him, but it made him so mad he didn’t say anything. He walked out into another room, came back with his hands in his pockets, and then went back the other way. When he came back on his third trip, he stopped in front of Annadore and me.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said.
“I thought you were already taking one.” Apparently the hole wasn’t deep enough for my taste yet.
He looked at Annadore and said, “You want to see some ducks? Some duckies?”
“Duckies!” She knew which side her bread was buttered on. He scooped her up and went to the door.
“Make yourself at home. I dare you.”
“I dare you,” I said, like Loren.
Once they were gone, I took the suitcase into his bedroom and unpacked some of my stuff onto a chair. I took a shower with his soap and his towels and put on my nightgown. Then I turned the thermostat up and tuned his stereo to a station that was playing country music. I looked in his nightstand drawer and saw his lip gloss, nail clippers, and his book of “erotic paintings.” After I flipped through it, I knew why he didn’t think I was fat. He was jerking off to some seriously fat girls.
The second bedroom had a desk and a toddler bed. I looked at the stuff on his desk. Pens and pencils, his address book (he had me listed as “Miss Meda Amos”), and his bizarre little lists and notes. “Are abductees working toward a linear narrative interpretation of an event that is essentially non-linear?”
Then, because he’d dared me, I went and looked in his closet, but there were just clothes in there. Then I looked under his bed and pulled out the boxes that were under there. There was a box marked “ROBBY” that had a bunch of old letters and some plastic cases of dead butterflies stuck with pins. The second box was full of photo albums and postcards. I put it up on Bernie’s huge bed and made myself comfortable to look through it. That’s what I was doing when Bernie came back with Annadore.
“Hungry duckies,” Annadore said. “They eat it all up. I don’t like big duckies. Big duckies mean.”
“They were big, but they’re swans. The big ducks are swans,” Bernie told her.
“Swans. I hate swans. They try to bited me.”
When Bernie walked into the bedroom he was smiling, but he frowned when he saw me and said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m making myself at home. Did you feed the duckies, Baby Girl? Were they hungry?” He lifted Annadore up on the bed, and took off her coat and hat and mittens. She crawled across to hug me, and her cheeks were so cold I was a little angry with Bernie. She seemed happy and he seemed so bothered by me looking through his pictures that I let it go. He lay down across the foot of the bed while Annadore told me about the ducks.
She made her hand into a duck bill to show how the big ducks had tried to bite her. Bernie made his hand into a bigger duckbill and made it quack at her and nibble on her fingers so that she started giggling and hopping around. I couldn’t help myself, I started crying. Bernie sat up and held Annadore still and dead serious said, “Meda? Are you okay?”
“It’s just hormones,” I said.
“Oh.” He sounded scared instead of relieved, but he lay back down. After a while Annadore petered out and lay down on his chest with her head tucked under his chin. It was strange to see how small she was compared to him. I kept thinking she was getting so big. When I offered to move her, he said, “She’s okay.”
“Girlfriend?” I held up a picture of him looking uncomfortable, and some bored-looking woman who reminded me a lot of Celeste.
“Good eye. That’s Caroline, my ex-girlfriend.” It was cute that he was trying not to get pissed off about it, because he really didn’t like it.
“How old are you there?” I showed him a picture of him and his brother in baseball uniforms.
“Little League,” he said. “Eight or nine.”
“That’s Robby, right? I thought he was your older brother.”
“I was five feet tall in the second grade. As soon as I had enough teeth to eat solid food I was bigger than Robby.” He lifted his head and smoothed down Annadore’s hair.
“Were you good at baseball? I didn’t know you played any sports.”
“I was a good pitcher. Having a long arm helps with that.”
“Do you play anymore?”
“No,” he said and yawned. “My pitching was no good after I was shot.” He’d never talked about it and part of me wanted to pretend it was the first I’d heard of it, and say all shocked, ‘You were shot?!’ Except he looked so peaceful and sleepy that I didn’t want to stir him up. Instead, I leaned over them and gave Annadore a kiss. I gave Bernie a kiss, too, just on the forehead.
“You two have a nice nap,” I said.
His eyes snapped open, and looking down into his face I saw how freaked out he was. He sat up fast enough that his head whacked mine, and Annadore started crying.
“Annadore, it’s okay, shh.” He rocked her until she was quiet again, but he wouldn’t look at me. It made me sad that he was afraid of what I was going to say. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You know, Bernie, nothing bad is going to happen if you go to sleep. It’s safe. I’ll sit right here while you sleep and make sure you’re safe.”
That was what I used to tell Loren when she was afraid to go to sleep because of the aliens. He shook his head and sat there for a long time holding Annadore, looking down at her.
“Do you want me to take her?”
“No, I like holding her.”
“You really do like her?” I said to get him out of his funk.
“Yeah, and she’s a lot better about letting me love her than you are.”
After a while he carried her into the other room to finish her nap. When she woke up, we went out to dinner. Bernie seemed kind of sad and embarrassed. I wondered what he wanted from me, especially when we got back to his apartment. While I put Annadore to bed, he folded out the sofa and made it up. Then he said goodnight to me without so much as a kiss.
Meda’s Inheritance
Meda was gone when I woke up. The clock in the kitchen said it was 2:30 A.M. and the bedroom door was standing open. I tried to think rationally, and went to check on Annadore, who was asleep. I felt a crazy kind of panic, and irrationally did a thorough search of the apartment, like Meda was a kitten that could get lost under the bed. I was putting on my shoes, prepared to go out looking for her, when she opened the front door and came in. I let the adrenaline speak.
“Where the hell were you?”
“I went out to get some potato chips.” She held up a bag of chips to show me. My head suddenly hurt. “That’s how cravings are. I just went down to the gas station on the corner.”
“By yourself, in the middle of the night,” I said.
Meda’s eyes narrowed. Whatever words we said next would be the groundwork for the argument to follow. I wanted to choose wisely, but Meda spoke first.
“I’m an adult, and I don’t appreciate being told what to do.”
“I didn’t tell you what to do. I was just concerned, because I woke up and you were gone and I didn’t know where you were. It scared me.”
“You thought the aliens abducted me,” Meda said.
I felt like a jackass, but a relieved jackass, because the argument dissipated, and she was safe. She sat down on the foot of the sofa bed to take off her coat and boots. Then she opened her bag of chips and ate one. “If you’re going to be so fussy about it, I would sleep on the couch.”
“You know it’s not that I’m fussy, and I’m perfectly happy to sleep out here.”
; “Fussy.”
“You know I can’t sleep with you.”
“I know. Fussy.”
“Is it that important to be able to sleep with someone?” I asked.
“It is. It makes me feel safe, knowing that someone else is there. I think that’s why a lot of people have sex, so they’ll have someone to sleep with.” Meda stood up and went toward the bedroom. She paused in the doorway like a water bird, one foot balanced against her opposite knee. Then she came back and gave me a BBQ potato chip kiss.
Tomato Box
Meda
After we ate breakfast, Bernie got dressed and put on his coat. He leaned over me so that I had to look up at him.
“Do you want me to leave the car? I can walk to the library,” he said.
“No, I think we’ll just stay in and read.”
“I think what you’re looking for is in a tomato box in the office closet.”
I supposed that was some kind of remark about my snooping through his stuff. Then he kissed my cheek and went around the table to Annadore.
“I love you, sweetie,” he said and gave her a loud kiss on the top of her head.
“I love lou, Bunny.”
He smiled.
“I love you, Baby Girl,” I told her after he was gone.
She smiled her gappy little smile and said, “I love lou, Mama.” Things were simpler when you were three.
We spent most of the day painting our fingernails and toenails, reading, and pretending to be different kinds of animals. Since Bernie had put the idea in my head, when Annadore lay down for her nap, I found the tomato box he’d mentioned. It was full of manila file folders of typed reports. It took me a while to figure out they were medical files about Bernie. I thumbed through them and read about one paragraph.
Bernham presents as a courteous and pleasant boy, but struggles when required to attend to something for more than a few minutes, often ignores direct questioning, seems to experience intermittent disassociative states. PTSD. Possible Disassociative Identity Disorder.
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