Wonderland Creek

by Lynn Austin

She was gone for nearly three hours. Her mother had fallen asleep in the rocking chair by the time Freddy returned home, but I didn’t know if I should help her to bed or not. I never knew how to help ailing people.

  “What took so long?” I asked the moment Freddy stepped through the door. “What did Gordon say?” Once again we went into the kitchen to talk.

  “Gordon didn’t want to talk about you at all, at first. I think he’s pretty mad. He was just leaving for the movie theater by himself when I got to the funeral parlor, so I asked him if I could tag along. I figured if I spent a little time with him, maybe he’d talk about you afterward.”

  “Good idea. So you went to the movies with him?”

  “Well, first he made me promise that I wouldn’t cause a scene in the theater like you did last week.”

  “See? He blows everything out of proportion. I didn’t cause a scene. I don’t know why the usher asked us to leave.”

  “Gordon said it was because you started talking very loudly in the middle of the movie, saying that it wasn’t at all like the original book, and when everyone started shushing you—including Gordon—the usher got involved. Gordon is still mad because he didn’t get to see how the film ended.”

  “He didn’t need to see the end. I told him how the book ended and it was so much better than the movie. They changed everything in the movie, including the hero’s motivation. Can you imagine? That movie was such a travesty that I couldn’t help getting upset.”

  “Well, Gordon is still upset about it, too. But he said the last straw was seeing you reading a book at Elmer Watson’s funeral.”

  “Poor Mr. Watson. He always loved National Geographic magazines. I know he wouldn’t have minded at all that I read a novel at his funeral. The eulogies did go on and on.”

  Freddy reached across the table to take both of my hands. “The thing is—and please understand that I’m on your side, Allie. We’ve been best friends forever, you know that. But the way Gordon explained it as we walked home . . . well, he just isn’t sure that things are going to work out for the two of you. He and his family are in the funeral parlor business. And that means you’ll be in the business, too, if he asks you to marry him.”

  “We aren’t even engaged, yet.”

  “I know. But he understands all of the unspoken rules in the funeral trade, and he says that you crossed a line. Wouldn’t you be upset if someone came into your library and did something that you thought was disrespectful?”

  “You mean like folding down the corner of the page instead of using a bookmark?”

  “I don’t think the two would be quite the same . . . at least not in Gordon’s mind.”

  “Okay. You can tell him that from now on, I promise I will never read a book at a funeral for as long as I live. Will that make him happy?”

  “I don’t know . . . He says you don’t seem very sympathetic to people’s feelings during their time of grief.”

  “Just because I read one measly chapter at a funeral?”

  Freddy released my hands. She looked uncomfortable, as if the wooden chair had splinters. “It wasn’t only that. He told me about your book scheme. How you wanted him to ask the families of the deceased to donate their loved ones’ books to your Kentucky Project when they came in to arrange a funeral.”

  “Is that so unreasonable? I’m sure most people would be happy to do it.” I had read an article in Life magazine that told how people in the backwoods of Kentucky needed books and magazines to read. When I showed it to the head librarian, she let me put a collection box near the check-out desk for patrons who wanted to donate their used books. “Seriously, Freddy. Why not collect them at the funeral parlor, too? Do you think that’s such a bad idea?”

  “I have to tell you the truth, Allie—it’s a terrible idea.”

  “Why?”

  “When my father died, it was hard enough to cope with my grief and try to plan a nice funeral. It was much too early to think about giving away his books.”

  “But those people in Kentucky have nothing to read. Can you imagine such a horrible life? Who needs books after they’re dead? Why not give them away so they can help living people?”

  “I know, I know. But it’s just a little . . . insensitive . . . to ask someone about it when they’re planning a funeral.”

  “Mr. Watson loved maps,” I mused aloud. “He owned a wonderful atlas. If I had known he was about to die, I could have asked him ahead of time to donate his books in his will.”

  Freddy cleared her throat. “Let’s get back to Gordon. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I was able to change his mind. It sounded like he has been storing up all these grievances for quite some time.”

  “Wait. Doesn’t he know it’s wrong to hold grudges? Did you tell him that?”

  “It’s not a grudge, Allie. He said that when he started adding it all together, he began to realize that maybe you and he weren’t very well-suited for each other.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes again. “He really means it? He’s really breaking up with me? For good?” Freddy nodded. “Can’t you do something to help me patch things up?” I begged.

  “I can try again—if you’re sure that’s what you really want.”

  “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I want it? Gordon and I have been together for almost a year.”

  “Gordon has some legitimate complaints that you’ll need to think about. Are you willing to stop reading so much in order to stay together? And I know you’ve complained about his faults, like the fact that he never reads anything at all, even the newspaper. These things would all have to be worked out. You’d have to make some compromises.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m told that’s what marriage is all about—being willing to make changes for the person you love. Suppose you had to choose between never reading again or losing Gordon. Which would you pick?”

  “I could never give up reading!” The thought appalled me. “I love books, Freddy! Maybe I could agree not to bring books to the funeral parlor, but we’re talking about two entirely different kinds of love—my love of books and my love for Gordon. Don’t you love what you do? How could you choose between teaching or marriage?”

  “If I met a man I loved, I would gladly give up teaching for him,” she said, pulling herself to her feet. “Listen, Allie. Go home and sleep on it. It’s late. Maybe Gordon will see things differently tomorrow.”

  “Will you go back and talk to him again? I’ll stay with your mother tomorrow night, too.”

  “Of course.”

  I went home and got ready for bed, unable to imagine breaking up with Gordon. Everyone said that he was a real catch. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he had a very good job, unaffected by the Depression. People continued to die whether the stock market crashed or soared.

  Gordon and I had been together for so long that people in Blue Island thought of us as a couple. We attended library functions and picnics together, stood on Main Street and watched the Fourth of July parade together. I would be so embarrassed when everyone started whispering and speculating behind my back or asking me, Where’s Gordon? Why aren’t you with Gordon? What would I say?

  And church! Everyone at my father’s church knew I was dating Gordon. He sat beside me every Sunday. How could I ever face the other parishioners or hold up my head again?

  I had a hard time falling asleep that night. And to make matters worse, I had finished my book, and now I had nothing to read.

  I arrived for work the next morning tired and foggy-brained from lack of sleep. I could say that I had been awake half the night crying my eyes out over Gordon, but it wouldn’t be true. I had gone downstairs and borrowed my father’s Sherlock Holmes anthology and ended up reading until nearly one o’clock in the morning. There’s nothing like a dastardly crime and the challenge of matching wits with a clever detective to take a person’s mind off her problems.

  Before the library opened for the day, our head librarian, Mrs. Beasley, gathered the staff
together at one of the conference tables. “Would everyone take a seat, please? Quickly? We need to have a short meeting.”

  I sat down with the other ladies on our staff, yawning as I waited for the meeting to begin. Mrs. Beasley looked staid and unsmiling, but that wasn’t unusual. Librarians are serious people, seldom given to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can’t even imagine the pressure that our head librarian must be under.

  Mrs. Beasley resembled a sturdy little bulldog, complete with jowls. But judging by the way that many of our patrons seemed to fear her, she might have resembled a German shepherd guard dog. I never understood why people reacted to her this way.

  “Are you kidding?” Freddy said when I asked her about it. “Mrs. Beasley acts as if all of the library books belong to her and she begrudges loaning them out. You’d think the library was sacred ground and she was the high priestess the way everyone tiptoes around and speaks in hushed tones.” I disagreed with Freddy’s assessment. Beneath our head librarian’s bulldog exterior was a wise, well-read woman. I didn’t blame her in the least for feeling protective of our books. The way some people abused them was a crime.

  Today Mrs. Beasley began by clearing her throat. Again, this wasn’t a worrisome sign. Librarians are not overly talkative so our throats can get froggy from lack of use. “I met with the library’s board of directors last night,” she began, “and I’m afraid I have some very upsetting news. The board has announced that the library must cut operating costs.”

  Everyone stared. There were no dramatic gasps or sobs. We are a stoic, reserved bunch who hide our emotions well—except when reading a terribly sad or poignant story, of course. I have been known to sob aloud at a tragic ending.

  “The board said that this prolonged economic depression has made cost cutting necessary. With so many homes in our community in foreclosure, there simply isn’t as much revenue from property taxes as there was a few years ago. Businesses are closing, too. Every day we see another empty storefront downtown, so the city is losing tax revenue there, as well. People all over the country have been forced to cut back to the bare necessities, and so we must cut back to the essentials, too.”

  “But books are essential!” the children’s librarian, Mrs. Davidson, said. I had been thinking the same thing.

  “I know. I agree,” Mrs. Beasley said. “And I let the board know my opinion, too.”

  “People will need our library now more than ever,” Mrs. Davidson continued, “especially if they’re unemployed and can’t afford to purchase books. Where else can you find free entertainment nowadays? We should be expanding during the economic crisis and buying even more books, not cutting back.”

  Mrs. Beasley nodded, jowls jiggling. “That is exactly what I told them. But the board believes that the library already has enough books for everyone in town to read if they choose to. They said that our patrons would just have to adjust to shorter library hours. They also announced that some of our personnel will have to be let go.”

  “Who? Who?” Mrs. Davidson asked, sounding very much like an owl.

  “I’m afraid that the last one hired will be the first one to go.”

  “That’s me!” I said with a squeak. “I was the last one hired!”

  “Yes, Miss Ripley. I’m so sorry.”

  I wanted to stand up and shout that this was unfair, but loud voices were not permitted in the library.

  “The cost cutting will affect all of us, not just Miss Ripley. With reduced hours, we all will be working less and receiving smaller paychecks.”

  I had heard about the Depression, of course. I’d seen pictures in the newspapers of shantytowns and Hoovervilles and read about factories closing and men out of work. Several houses on our street stood vacant, including one that had belonged to the Simmons family. Freddy and I had gone to school with their daughters, but when Mr. Simmons lost his job, the bank foreclosed on their mortgage and tossed them and all of their belongings into the street. I wasn’t ignorant of unemployment and breadlines and soup kitchens, but aside from the hoboes who showed up at our back door asking for a handout, I never imagined that the Depression would touch my life. Now I was unemployed.

  Of course, I wouldn’t starve or be homeless since I lived in the parsonage with my parents. My father, safely employed as a minister, heard hard luck stories every day, but my family was warm and well fed. My two older sisters—more sensible than me, according to my parents—had married farmers and lived out in the country several miles south of Blue Island. Their farms supplied us with plenty of eggs, butter, fruit, and vegetables.

  I turned my attention back to Mrs. Beasley. “Let’s all hope and pray that the changes are only temporary,” she was saying. “Perhaps one of President Roosevelt’s social assistance programs will come to our rescue. In the meantime, the library will be open only two evenings a week from now on, and half days on Wednesday, Saturday . . .”

  Blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening. The new hours wouldn’t matter to me. I was unemployed. The news that I no longer had to work every Friday night would make Gordon happy, because we could spend more time together—but then I remembered that Gordon no longer wanted to spend any time at all with me. The accumulated shock of all this bad news was too much. I felt as if I had just collided with another lamppost.

  “When will all these changes begin?” Mrs. Davidson asked.

  “The last day of this month. We’ll need to post the library’s new hours right away and give our patrons time to adjust.”

  “That’s this week!” I shouted, forgetting to use my library voice. There would be little hope of finding another job with so many other people unemployed. Besides, I didn’t want to be a store clerk or a teacher or a telephone operator. I loved my job. “This is awful,” I moaned. I didn’t realize that I had spoken out loud until Mrs. Beasley rested her hand on my shoulder.

  “I know, Miss Ripley. And I’m so very sorry. I fought for you, for all of us. I really did. But times are hard all across the country.”

  It was time to unlock the door and get to work. Library patrons had congregated on the front steps and beneath the pillared porch, stamping slushy snow off their feet. Mrs. Beasley dismissed the meeting. “And let’s try not to have any long faces, ladies. We owe it to our patrons to be cheerful. After all, our reduced hours will be hard on them, as well.”

  I usually spent the first half hour at work “shelf-reading,” making sure the books were in alphabetical order and the Dewey decimal numbers all aligned. Some patrons have a terrible habit of pulling out a book, then shoving it back in the wrong place—sometimes on the wrong shelf! I started straightening the fiction section, but I simply couldn’t concentrate. It was hard to think alphabetically after losing my job and my boyfriend. What was left?

  I switched to typing catalogue cards. I loved this job because it enabled me to peruse all of the new books, straight from the printing press. I could be the first person to open them—and to sign them out and read them, too, if I wanted. The books were stiff and spotlessly clean, with that incomparable new-book fragrance. Is there anything like it in the whole world? I’ve been known to open new books and inhale the aroma like perfume.

  I fed a crisp white catalogue card into my typewriter, then picked up the first book and opened it to the title page, careful not to crack the spine. I am a very orderly person who enjoys typing the required information on the card, neatly and precisely. Where else but the library could I find work that used my special gifts and talents?

  I must admit I wasted a lot of time that morning staring off into space, trying not to cry and splotch the typewriter ink. When I got home from work and told my mother the news, she dried her hands on her apron and wrapped her arms around me. “What a shame, Alice. I know how much you loved your job.”

  “How much longer is
this stupid Depression going to last?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid no one knows, honey.”

  My tears gushed when I went next door to Freddy’s house later that night and told her the terrible news. “Will you please try to talk to Gordon again?” I begged. “Maybe he’ll feel sorry for me when he hears what happened at the library. Maybe he’ll change his mind about breaking up with me.”

  I expected as much. I expected Gordon to come straight over to console me the moment Freddy told him my tragic news. But an hour went by. Then two hours. I couldn’t concentrate on the radio program that Freddy’s mother was listening to. I saw a pile of spelling tests on the table and picked up a red pencil and graded them for Freddy. It was the least I could do since she had sacrificed her evening for my sake. She still wasn’t home when I finished the tests, so I started correcting a pile of arithmetic homework. The tedious work made me grateful that I hadn’t become a teacher. If I had to grade boring papers every night for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have any time to read.

  When Freddy finally arrived home, I knew that her news wasn’t good. I could see that she had been raking her fingers through her thick curly hair the way she always did when she was frustrated.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Allie. I tried, I really did.”

  “Isn’t Gordon ever going to forgive me?”

  “He’s not mad at you, Allie. He just doesn’t want to date you anymore. But he said to tell you that he’s sorry about your job.”

  Freddy let me sob on her shoulder. “Can’t you talk to him some more?” I begged. “Please?”

  “I . . . um . . . I don’t think I should do that.”

  “Why not?”

  She released me and backed up a few steps as if trying to put distance between us. “Well . . . when we finished our milk shakes and I got ready to come home, Gordon started saying how much he had enjoyed talking to me, and . . . well . . . he asked if I wanted to go to a movie with him next week.”

  “What!” I panicked, just like I had when I’d seen the flames racing out of control in my mother’s kitchen. Now it was my life that was out of control.