by Sarah Title
That had been part of his plan, to maximize the natural light. In the summer, they didn’t even have to turn on the lights until late afternoon. Saved on the electric bill.
“It looks like a place people would actually want to come to.”
“That was the idea.”
Joanna turned back to face him. “What did Mrs. Pratt have to say about it?”
Mrs. Pratt had been one of the people who interviewed him, and she’d showed him around the library for a week before gleefully heading off for a blissful retirement with her wife, Charlie. He liked Mrs. Pratt. But then, he had a penchant for crabby old ladies. They were kind of his jam.
“I think she would have liked it.” That probably wasn’t true, but that didn’t really matter now.
“Hmph. You must not know her very well.”
Touché.
She turned the book over in her hands. “Is this good?”
“Uh, I haven’t read it yet.”
“Oh. So you don’t do the book group?”
“No, I do. I just . . . I’ve been putting it off. I’m kind of tired of World War Two books, you know?”
“Sure,” she said, and looked at him funny because of course she didn’t know about the glut of WWII-era fiction being marketed to book groups.
Not that he would judge her if she did. He didn’t judge people’s reading tastes as a matter of professional course.
“So . . . will you be joining us?” he asked, even though he knew she wouldn’t. She surely had much better things to do with her time.
Confirming his suspicions, she snorted. “I don’t think so.” She shoved the book in her bag and he winced for the unprotected paperback cover.
“Well, can I help you pick something out to read? Or a DVD?” Why didn’t he just let her go? She clearly was not interested in being here.
“No, thanks. See you later, Foxy Librarian.”
He waved. Then he processed what she’d said. What did that mean, Foxy Librarian? He turned to ask her, but she was already gone.
Chapter Eight
Joanna shut the book with a watery sigh. She wasn’t crying. Over a book? Ridiculous.
She dropped the book on the floor and stretched her arms over her head, straightening out over the arms of the overstuffed chair until her toes pointed and her fingers twitched. Then she flopped her butt back into the cushion and hung her head back.
She sat there, head pointed to the floor, and let the story wash over her. The fabulosity of 1930s Berlin, the bohemian theater with the mousy costumer, the inevitable swoop of history, hard choices, impossible love . . .
Joanna rubbed her eyes. God, did Granny read a book like this every month? How did she do it? How do you recover from living inside a world like that, then having it ripped away from you by cruel, cruel reality? Ugh, she was even starting to think like the overdramatic narrator in the book.
She blamed Liam. What was he doing, having the sweet old ladies of Halikarnassus read a book that made everyone cry? Everyone but me, she thought, wiping her eyes. (She couldn’t stop thinking about that last scene! With the love and the guy and the—ergh!) Stupid, handsome librarian, with his stupid Clark Kent glasses and floppy hair. Who did he think he was, making her feel feelings and stuff?
“You’re going to get a headache.” Granny, who had been snoring just minutes before, was watching her from the sofa. The sofa was progress, Joanna reminded herself as she attempted to roll her eyes with her head facing the floor. Just yesterday, Joanna had helped her wash and dress, and then the two of them hobbled her onto the overstuffed couch in the living room, where she could receive visitors with a bra on, as Granny said. It gave Granny an excuse to practice on her crutches, which she hated, and to be at the center of all the action that was now her house.
It was a real bonding experience.
But it was that or watch Granny continue to spiral into depression cooped up in her bedroom. Literally watch Granny, because when Granny was bored, she had a bad habit of pretending her leg wasn’t broken and she could do things like straighten up around the house or prepare her own lunch. Apparently, breaking her leg a second time was not enough of a threat to keep her resting. Nor were painkillers.
They were getting on each other’s nerves a lot less than Joanna had imagined they would. And after a painkiller wrangled a confession out of her, a lot less than Granny had imagined also.
Despite endless rounds of gin rummy, though, they were both bored. Granny, ever resourceful, suggested that Joanna read the library book club book aloud to her so they could both enjoy it. This lasted for about half an hour, then Granny was snoring away and Joanna was too caught up in the story to stop reading and now here they were, four hours later, Granny well-rested and Joanna totally not crying over a book.
“Did you have a nice nap?” Joanna said, pulling herself up to a seated position on the chair. She blinked as the blood rushed out of her head.
Granny yawned and stretched and muttered “yup.” “How was the book?”
Joanna looked at the book, discarded on the floor, spine askew.
“I haven’t finished it yet.” Which was true. The epilogue was still unread. She wasn’t ready to find out what happened to the heroine after the war. It couldn’t be as bad as what she had gone through during the war, surely. But could Joanna really expect a happy ending? After the author had put her through all that stuff?
Plus, if she read the epilogue, the book would be over.
Instead, it was just open-faced on the floor.
She picked it up. Mrs. Pratt would have a fit if she saw a library book treated like that.
Good thing Mrs. Pratt was retired.
What would Clark Kent say about the careless treatment of public property?
Maybe he’d spank her.
Whoa. Where did that come from? Too much time cooped up in the house, probably. It was making her brain crazy. There was no other possible explanation for her brain reaching for such an unlikely imaginary scenario.
“Tell me about it.”
Joanna looked at Granny with alarm. It was one thing to know that she and her grandmother apparently had a crush on the same man. It was a different thing entirely to acknowledge it out loud, with words and fantasies that should have grossed her out way more than they did.
“The book?” Granny prompted, and Joanna gave herself a mental head slap. Of course. The book.
She leaned down to retrieve the public property of which she was being a bad steward. Starr came over to sit on her lap, which was her new favorite spot now that Granny’s lap, which was too close to her injured leg, was off-limits. Joanna flipped through the pages, trying to decide where to begin. “So, it’s World War Two, right?” She explained the dressmaker heroine and the Nazi’s mistress who secretly had a Jewish grandfather and the gay neighbor who sacrificed himself to save the dressmaker, which Joanna thought was a little cheap, having a gay martyr and all. And how the dressmaker sort of befriends the mistress, who brings her around the Nazi parties and stuff, and soon this Nazi officer falls in love with her and the dressmaker is all, you’re cute but you’re a Nazi. And even as she starts to develop feelings for him, she has to remind herself that he’s a Nazi and that is bad news, morally speaking. Then the mistress gets jealous and somehow switches up some stuff so it looks like the dressmaker is the one with the Jewish grandfather and so she ends up at a concentration camp, but she escapes to Paris, where she falls in with the Resistance and there’s this guy, Pierre, who smokes a lot of cigarettes and is real broody, and he falls in love with her. But then she meets this American pilot guy and he’s all dashing and charming and on dangerous missions . . . anyway, then the Nazi shows up and is like, you’re a criminal! But I love you! And she’s all, I just want to make beautiful clothes and the American is like, come to America, we have lots of fabric.” Joanna cleared her throat. The memory of that heart-wrenching scene, where the American lets down all his defenses . . . and she didn’t even get to the part where h
er gay best friend risks his life and . . . “I’m not doing a very good job explaining it.”
“Sounds like quite a book.”
“Yeah. It’s messed up.”
“And you read the whole thing?”
“Not the epilogue.”
“Aren’t you dying to find out what happened to her?”
“Yes, but then you woke up and won’t stop talking.”
“And you had to wait for your tears to dry.”
“Hmph,” Joanna said, not admitting anything.
“Sounds like there’s a lot to talk about.”
“Yeah. Like why was the dressmaker such an idiot?”
“Well, I imagine she was just trying to survive. But I don’t know. I haven’t read the book.”
“When’s the meeting?”
“The third Thursday of the month.”
Time had been passing strangely since she’d been back, so Joanna had to think about that for a second. “So . . . two days?”
“Is it?”
“You better get to reading, young lady.”
“You’re supposed to be reading to me. You’re the one falling down on your duty.”
“Typical Joanna Green,” she said with a grin. She’d overheard Mrs. Doris saying that about her once, and it had been her favorite thing to lob out at Granny when she was a mouthy teenager. Apparently it still worked as a mouthy adult.
“Oh, you stop that.”
“Are you up to making it to book group, anyway?” Joanna tried to imagine the effort it had taken them to get Granny to the couch and multiplied it by a car ride and getting into the non-couched library. Of course, they wouldn’t be tripping over Starr at the library.
Of course, they might trip over Kristin Walsh.
Wait, no. Kristin Klomberg.
Either way, Joanna shuddered.
“I’d like to. Doris has a van she can take me in. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.” Granny yawned and leaned her head on the back of the couch.
* * *
Liam put the book down and wiped his eyes. Dang, that was intense. He wondered if his book group ladies were having the same reaction to the epilogue. Then he wondered if that was a good thing. The last book they’d read almost caused a riot. But how was he supposed to know the dog died at the end? All of the reviews said it was a great, uplifting book club pick and there was lots to talk about. Instead, he’d spent the whole meeting fending off accusations of cruelty and heartlessness, as if he was the one who made them care about the adorable, troublesome mutt who saved the owner’s life and then ripped their hearts out when he died in a senseless boating accident. And come on. A boating accident? The only way to assuage the group’s ire was to pen a collective letter to the author, telling her what a jerk she was.
The letter was still sitting on his desk. He hadn’t sent it, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to. It did not reflect very well on the character of the people of Halikarnassus.
Although it was an educational experience, in that he learned lots of clever new ways of telling someone you thought they were not a nice person.
“Pernicious gasbag” was his favorite. “Defiler of horses” was still the most alarming.
He stood up from the couch and stretched, his fingertips touching the edge of the ceiling fan. As a guy who hit his growth spurt late, he still liked to do that. He still liked to prove that he was no longer the little guy, available to be messed with. Although he was still a bit of a dork.
He looked out the sliding glass doors that led to his backyard. He should really mow the lawn. It might burn off some of this nervous energy, too. He was surprised that he’d been able to focus on reading for so long. And really, he shouldn’t have been reading for that long, even though it was technically for work.
He had a town council meeting to prepare for.
He’d done many things to prepare himself for the role of library director. It was a big change, going from an assistant branch manager for the Boston Public Library to running a library himself. Of course, the Halikarnassus Free Public Library was less than half the size of his old branch and served a much smaller population. And he didn’t actually run the library himself. Toni ran the children’s section so smoothly he never felt the need to interfere, his clerks and pages were all well-trained and whip-smart, and one of them, Shirley, had been there longer than he had been alive. Really, they all ran the library. He just ran the book group.
Well, the self-proclaimed White-Haired Old Ladies ran the book group. But he ordered the books.
Unless they were donated, which they frequently were. Or he was able to borrow a set from another library in the county.
Basically, he didn’t do anything.
So why was he the one who had to stand in front of the town council and defend the existence of the library?
Heavy is the head that wears the crown, as Shirley was fond of telling him.
And there would be no Peggy at this meeting to back him up.
It was true, the town budget was a mess. And it was also true that the library was not a revenue stream, not with their five cent overdue fines (which Liam refused to raise when the issue was brought up). But people loved the library, dammit!
Shirley and Toni had banned him from working too late the nights before town council meetings—they said he got overtired and antsy and he got on people’s nerves. He could work from home or from a bar or wherever—they didn’t care, as long as he wasn’t at the library.
He looked at his book, which had slid off the couch and was now spine up on the floor. He picked it up quickly, lest anyone from the town council see him disrespecting public property, and went into his home office to justify the existence of the library.
Chapter Nine
Liam missed Peggy.
He kept meaning to drop in on her, but then he was running late for work or it was late in the evening and he didn’t want to bother her, especially not when half of Halikarnassus seemed to come into the library to tell him that they had just stopped by Peggy’s and that she was doing okay, her spirits were up, that was what was important. This was usually followed by a mention of The Granddaughter, and how they had no idea how long Joanna would be sticking around and wasn’t it too bad that Peggy had no one else to take care of her?
Except for the entire town of Halikarnassus, apparently.
Anyway, he knew better than to take the town’s Greek chorus at its word.
He missed Peggy’s laugh and wisdom and the way she acted all no-nonsense but really offered him unwavering support. He missed seeing her pop up at the library or running into her at the grocery store. She always seemed to show up when she was least expected, but when he most needed to talk to her.
If she had wings, he would have sworn she was his fairy godmother.
Like that time when Mr. McElroy came in drunk and Liam really didn’t want to call the police. The man was harmless and Liam didn’t want to be responsible for adding to his troubles. But Mr. McElroy was starting to sing some pretty salty sea shanties, so he wasn’t sure he had a choice. Then Peggy stopped by, called Craig, who owned the deli, and asked him to come bring Mr. McElroy a sandwich. Which he did. Or the time when Toni was out sick and two moms were fighting over whose kid was going to check out the last Elephant and Piggie book, and Peggy happened to be perusing the new paperbacks and came to see what the fuss was about, and she told them, Solomon-like, that Liam would rip the book and let each of them take half. This made the kids cry (and Liam a little bit, too, on the inside), and the mothers left in a huff with a stack of non-Willems easy readers for their kids.
It wasn’t that Liam couldn’t handle bad stuff that happened at the library. It was just that he was very grateful when Peggy was there to lend a hand.
He should think about putting her on the payroll.
If he still had a payroll. This, unfortunately, was not something guaranteed to be in the next budget year.
He would so rather be alphabetizing his record collection.
Which was already alphabetized.
So he tried not to be too hard on himself for the faux-casual laser focus he kept on the door to the town council chambers. True, Peggy had never missed a meeting since he had been in town—and it sounded as if she barely missed one before that. The old mayor used to joke that she was the conscience of the council, even though she never ran. She had no time for politics, she always said. Except when it came to the town council. And the occasional phone bank for a Democratic senator. And periodically hosting meetings about bond initiative campaigns in her living room. And the League of Women Voters voter registration drive.
Still, it was too much to expect that the Council’s Conscience would become miraculously mobile enough to attend the meeting. Especially since she had called Liam earlier that afternoon telling him that she was not. He thought she might have been crying. Then Joanna got on the phone and accused him of making Peggy cry. Even though he hadn’t said anything! He just listened to her saying she wasn’t going to be able to make it to the meeting and assured her that it was okay, that he would be fine and that he would let her know tomorrow how it all went. He had tomorrow off, he told her. He could bring some lunch and they could complain about the new mayor. He’d take notes and everything.
But now, as he sat here nervously manhandling his notes, he felt sure that a breakdown tomorrow wouldn’t be enough. He needed Peggy there, Peggy and her friends who knit through the whole meeting. The knitters were here, but without Peggy paying rapt attention, it didn’t have the same effect. Kind of creepy, actually. Like a jury of Madame Defarges, knitting in code all of the ways the new mayor had failed to live up to the expectations set by his father.
Hal Klomberg Jr. wasn’t such a bad guy. Well, he wasn’t a great guy, Liam thought, but he hadn’t voted for him. The election was well before Liam moved to Halikarnassus, and anyway, Hal ran unopposed, like his father before him. The way the residents of Halikarnassus talked about Hal Jr., you’d think someone would have stepped up to try to defeat him. Entitled, they said. A bully, they said. Didn’t have any of his father’s integrity or common sense. Never mind that Liam’s library housed the archive for the Halikarnassus Herald, and he had read a few of the letters to the editor. Hal Sr. was not so beloved in his time. But, well, greener grass and all that. People always had a tendency to look at the past with rose-colored glasses. And nostalgia was a powerful drug. The other day one of his teen volunteers came in wearing a Nirvana T-shirt with a beat-up flannel over it. Swap out the skinny jeans (Liam could not get behind skinny jeans) and the kid could have been teenage Liam. It was alarming. Nobody needed to be teenage Liam, that gawky, gangly mess of hormones.
