Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

by Sue Halpern

  “All what?”

  “Death. Dying. Think about how many times you’ve read an obituary for someone you thought you knew, only to find that you hardly knew them at all. What they’d done, who they were, what they loved, who they loved. Their last name, for heaven’s sakes.”

  “You’ve only known Carl for a couple of weeks,” Kit said, and didn’t know if she meant to console him or criticize him. She appreciated Rusty’s sentiment, but it seemed presumptuous. He had known Carl for what—a month at most? In the scheme of things, that was nothing. Even her four years were like seconds in the life of a seventy-seven-year-old.

  Their ten minutes were nearly up. The nurse came in to tell them.

  “You’re sure you can’t do anything?” Kit tried again. “Look at him. He’s so agitated.”

  Carl was still thrashing around and one eye was open, staring vacantly, tracking nothing in particular. Was it this side that was paralyzed or the other? Kit couldn’t tell.

  “We gave him a sedative,” the nurse said.

  “I think he needs more,” Rusty said. “He’s going to hurt himself.”

  The nurse gave Rusty a tight, tired smirk. “We’re professionals. This is our job. You have your jobs, we have ours.” She turned on the balls of her feet. She was wearing lime-green Crocs that flopped when she walked.

  “Carl, this is Kit. I’m here with Rusty, but we have to go,” Kit said, directing her words to the man in the bed. “They only gave us ten minutes, and you’re a popular guy. The waiting room is like you used to describe Saturdays at the barbershop. Totally packed.” She reached under the railing and put her hand on the skin where his neck met his shoulder and fought to hold it there as his body bucked and jerked. Then, for a brief few seconds, Carl’s second eye opened and he stopped moving. Kit leaned over until her mouth was an inch from his ear. “You’re my favorite,” she whispered. “You probably thought it was one of the others, but it was always you.”

  Chapter Nine

  8.2.10–8.8.10

  Because we live by inches . . .

  —Adrienne Rich

  Dying towns have funeral homes. This was an economic truth Kit had learned in her travels east: even when the last store had been relocated to the mall, even when the elementary school was shut down because there were not enough students to fill its classrooms, the funeral parlor survived. Mill Street Mortuary was around the corner from the library in a compact but strangely grand building; with an arched doorway and ornate Corinthian columns, the place looked like a fraternity house, but a fraternity house on a campus where every other building had been condemned. Carl’s service was called for 2:00 p.m., but by 1:30, when Kit turned off the lights of the library, hung a closed for the day sign on the front door, and slipped through the back alley to Mill Street, people were converging on the chapel from all directions. Closing the library in the middle of the day was Kit’s first decision as director, and it felt good to be able to do that for Carl, who really was her favorite.

  Though she had been in Riverton for four years, Kit had never been inside the funeral home, which she’d always supposed was dimly lit and furnished with brocaded velvet pews from which dust would rise when mourners sat on them. But as she followed the flow of people wearing clothes that came out of the closet just once or twice a year, she saw that the sanctuary was a featureless room sheathed with imitation wood paneling, with metal folding chairs for seating. Carl’s closed blond oak casket was on a riser at the front, a photo of him as a young man in a Coast Guard uniform perched on top, and next to it a portable lectern. Where to sit? Kit looked for someone she knew, but it seemed that everyone there had already paired up or was huddling with friends. This was when she hated being a single woman the most and missed—actually missed—Cal, missed how she would slide her hand into his when they walked into a room like this and how he would fold his fingers over hers, and how it felt protective and safe.

  She caught sight of Chuck, standing in the aisle with his arm around an animated, raven-haired woman with lambent eyes of no particular color, and wondered what such a beauty was doing with Chuck of all people, and immediately felt callous for doubting a woman like that (gorgeous) would choose to be with a man like that (physically impaired). But of course, she told herself, there had been a time before the malignancy had stolen his voice and ravaged his body—but even if there wasn’t, so what? As she stood there, berating herself for being so small-minded, a man sitting in the middle of a row in the middle of the room turned, saw her, and called her over. It was Rusty.

  “I saved us seats,” he said. “If Sunny comes, she can sit there.” He pointed to an empty seat on the other side of Kit. “If not, given the fact that Carl oversold the space, I think we should auction it off to the highest bidder.”

  Kit laughed, loudly enough for the knot of people in front of them to loosen, turn around, and stare.

  “It’s a funeral. Have some respect,” Rusty teased her, and she almost laughed out loud again.

  “Isn’t Chuck’s wife stunning?” Kit said, as much to state a fact as to be on record for saying it.

  “So is she,” Rusty said, nodding in the direction of the door as Sunny passed through and scanned the room. And he was right. The red tips at the ends of Sunny’s bangs were gone, and her hair was washed and held off her face with two silver barrettes that matched the silver choker around her neck. The sleeveless black jersey dress she wore hugged her body, and was so different from Sunny’s usual attire of grubby, oversized T-shirts that Kit was even a little surprised Sunny had a body, and for the first time could see the lovely woman Sunny was going to become.

  “I have something to tell you,” Sunny said quietly as she squeezed past Kit to take her seat as a slow, mournful instrumental version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” was broadcast throughout the room.

  “Okay,” Kit said. “But not now. After.”

  The program called for the mayor to speak first, then Patrick, and then the pastor from the Congregational church. Even though Carl had been born Catholic, he had cut Reverend Musgrave’s hair from the time it was red and short with a rattail hanging off the back till it was white. Carl had no heirs. His friends were his heirs and his clients were his heirs, and much of the time they were the same people. His wife had died young, before they had children, and despite the best efforts of just about everyone who knew him, and his reputation as a flirt, Carl had never married again.

  “I was elected mayor of Riverton,” a chubby man with a state trooper buzz cut said, “but Carl Layton was our real mayor. For better than fifty years he held court on Main Street as he cut the hair of anyone who was anybody, and anybody who wasn’t.”

  Kit surveyed the crowd of mostly bald heads, though she imagined Carl knew them when those heads were downy, too, and was moved by how many people had taken time out of their day to pay respects to an old man who appeared to be solitary, but wasn’t.

  When it was his turn, Patrick walked slowly to the lectern, then called the two Riches up to stand beside him. “At the library, where we’ve been hanging out every morning for at least the past ten years, we were known as the Four.” He looked out in Kit’s direction and gave a slight nod. “But now we are three.” He talked about Carl and their friendship, and how it went all the way back to the first grade. “Barbers used to be surgeons, Carl would remind me when I was in medical school. He’d also remind me that he was making a lot more money than I was—which wouldn’t have been hard. He loved rubbing that in. He loved a good joke. He loved all the guys who came into the shop. Everyone was a friend, and if you were a friend, you were family. Carl didn’t have kids. He had all of you. He had all of us. Indulge me for a minute. Reach out and hold the hand of the people on either side of you. Reach out, hold their hand, close your eyes, and think of all the connections Carl made in his life. Go ahead, even if you’re uncomfortable. Do it now. Obviously, I don’t have all the time in the world.”

  Kit took hold of Sunny’s hand and let Rust
y take hers. She gave Sunny’s a squeeze and Sunny squeezed back, but kept her hand still inside Rusty’s. It was enough to feel his warm skin encircling hers and not reflexively pull back.

  “This is how it happens,” Patrick said, taking a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, unfolding it and holding it up. “Most of you can’t see it from where you’re sitting, but this is a copy of our second grade class picture, mine and Carl’s. I’m the little guy over here,” he said, pointing to the bottom left, “and Carl is two kids over. You might not recognize him because that was about two million doughnuts ago.”

  As everyone laughed, an unsmiling Patrick reached back into his jacket and pulled out a pen. He leaned on the lectern and appeared to be writing something. The room was so hushed, everyone could hear the scratch of the pen on the paper. Patrick held it up again. Carl’s image had been blacked out. So had the girl next to him and four boys in the second row.

  “This is how it happens,” he said again, quietly and near tears. “They go, one by one, and before you know it, the room is empty.”

  * * *

  Again we see the patriarch with his flocks . . .

  —Emma Lazarus

  The reception following the funeral was held in the basement of city hall, which used to be Riverton High School, back when the Four were teenagers. Kit tried to imagine Carl walking down the long, dark corridors, a shy, lanky Carl in his Riverton Bobbins baseball uniform, a Norman Rockwell Carl, but couldn’t. The Carl of the past was always going to be the Carl she had known: voluble, chunky, kind, flirtatious.

  “This place is so old,” Sunny said.

  She was walking between Rusty and Kit, their feet carried along by the current of mourners. Sunny spied Evelyn up ahead, surrounded by a gaggle of children and grandchildren, and Kit realized that one of the people Patrick had blacked out of that second grade picture was the boy who grew up to become Evelyn’s husband.

  “It’s funny to think that I’m walking on the same floor that Carl walked when he was my age,” Sunny added.

  The basement, when they finally reached it, was jammed. Rusty plowed through the crowd to get them something to eat, and as soon as he was gone, Sunny turned to Kit and began talking, fast.

  “I’ve been doing some more research,” she said. Her eyes searched Kit’s face, making certain the older woman knew what she was talking about. To be sure she said, “You know what I mean, right?”

  Kit nodded. “Are you sure this is a good place?” Kit said. “All these people.”

  Sunny considered this for a second and then said, “He’s not that guy, either.”

  “What guy?” Rusty said, coming up behind her.

  Sunny blanched and looked to Kit for help.

  “It’s a boy—it’s a girl thing,” Kit said lightly.

  “I like boy-girl things,” Rusty said, handing them each a brownie.

  “Very funny,” Kit said.

  “I’m completely serious. Look at me.” He made a serious face, then shoved two brownies into his mouth and made chipmunk cheeks.

  “Very funny,” Kit said again, but like Sunny, she couldn’t not laugh at him.

  * * *

  Sunny/imposter

  After we went for ice cream and onion rings, Kit and me and Rusty, I spent the night at Kit’s house. She had been married once, that’s what she said at the drive-in, and I said I knew that. I didn’t, really. I knew only that she’d had a different name, and because it was crossed out in the book she gave me, I didn’t know what it was. Names turn out to be more important than I thought. I’m Solstice Arkinsky, and Arkinsky is completely made up; as Willow says, it was pulled right out of the air, which is a pun I loved when I was little. Now I wonder if it wasn’t pulled out of the air for the same reason Angus Parker was pulled out of the air: because it’s made up. And that’s what I wanted to tell Kit at the funeral: Steve isn’t Angus Parker! He’s not Angus Parker, because Angus Parker doesn’t exist.

  Here’s the thing: Angus Parker did exist. There was a boy named Angus Parker who would be around the same age as Steve if he hadn’t died when he was two. The FBI—yes, the FBI!—believes that the person it thought was Angus Parker is actually someone impersonating Angus Parker. Someone who was using Parker’s Social Security number to obtain a driver’s license and a passport and get work, and then stopped being Parker right around the time of the vandalism at that drug company in Pennsylvania. The FBI bulletin, which I found online, says that Angus Parker, whoever he is, is to be considered “armed and dangerous,” which is kind of hysterical if you know Steve. True, he knows how to shoot. He was on the pistol team at his high school. His father was military. His friends’ fathers were military. Shooting was what they did for fun. Steve says that when it went from knocking cans off a railing to aiming at life-sized pictures of actual people, he couldn’t do it anymore. He kept his grandfather’s Remington because it had sentimental value, but when he began to think about all the creatures it had killed, and probably people, too, he no longer felt that connection, and he sold it. “Armed and dangerous”—I don’t think so.

  I didn’t know this, that night at Kit’s. That night I thought Steve was Angus Parker and Kit Jarvis was Kit S-something, and I wanted to ask her about it, but she didn’t give me a chance. She must have known I was going to ask, because as soon as we got inside her house she said she was tired and was going to go upstairs to bed and pointed at the door to the room where I’d slept before and said, “You know the drill.” That was it. She climbed the stairs and I was back in the room with the notebooks. Back in the room with “that girl.”

  I sat at the end of the bed for a while, staring at the boxes that had the notebooks inside. There was nothing stopping me from taking one off the shelf again and digging through it, but I didn’t. I was curious, but not curious enough. As long as there are secrets, there are going to be mysteries. That’s what I realized, sitting there. As long as someone has something she wants to keep to herself, someone else is going to want to find out what it is. I guess that’s human nature. I shut off the light and climbed into bed. The mystery of “that girl” was not mine to solve.

  Part IV

  The Marriage Story

  Did I blame Cal? I admit it—I did. I blamed him and I blamed his father, and sometimes I blamed myself for listening to them, or for letting myself yield to them, for not saying no, for not standing up for my own body. I wasn’t twenty-five yet, and I’d been pregnant once, and I wasn’t ever going to be pregnant again. I’d find myself crying over nothing, and crying over everything, and it didn’t take long before the words “it’s your hormones talking,” or, even worse, “it’s just your hormones talking,” would send me into a rage or into a tailspin and sometimes both. I would have been impossible to live with then, but Cal was in the thick of his training and was rarely at home. He did a rotation in Los Angeles and another in Cleveland, and I stayed behind, ostensibly because of work, but really to wallow. When he’d surface from a long stretch in the hospital, Cal would e-mail me notes, all upbeat, as if he could change my mood by willing me to mirror his. (He was doing neurology and not being sly about it, writing to me about how the same neurons in the brain light up whether someone is actually running or thinking about running or looking at a picture of running, though I think he may have been overstating the picture part.) Every so often, on the phone, he’d say, “We’ll find another way,” which was supposed to console me, but didn’t. Our marriage should have ended there, but Cal was too busy, and I was too scared: Who would want me now?

  I went home to my mother for a few weeks and slept in my childhood bed, surrounded by my Trixie Belden books and stuffed animals, the way my mother had gone home after my father died and slept in her old bed, sheltered by old, familiar things. I lay there, under the covers, staring at the wall, as my mother rubbed my back and said nothing. She’d bring me lemon tea and make me sit up and sip it while she sipped a cup, too. No words—not from her, not from me. Then she started putting food o
n a tray and leaving it on the nightstand, and though she never told me to eat it, she always described what was there in exquisite detail so that after she left the room, my mind would be filled with the smells and images of lemongrass chicken and Baltimore crab cakes and popovers and Szechuan noodles in peanut sauce. It was the popovers that got to me. My mother left them beside me, left me remembering how, when I was a kid, I’d tear off a piece with my teeth, let it melt on my tongue, and without thinking I reached out and grabbed one and ate it before I could taste it. The next day there was chicken salad on her angel biscuits, and the day after that her ridiculously creamy mac and cheese. She’d bring it up and I wouldn’t even wait for her to leave. I was on my way to regaining the weight I’d lost since I’d lost the baby and everything that went with it.

  And then, nothing. My mother didn’t stop cooking—not at all. I’d hear her banging around the kitchen, smell onions sautéing in olive oil, and lie in my bed trying to discern what would soon be on its way up the stairs to me. She’d come up every so often, empty-handed, and when I asked her what she was cooking, she’d say, “Come down and have a peek,” and when I asked her to bring it up to me, instead, she said, “It will be waiting for you whenever you’re ready.” It wasn’t Lourdes, exactly, but one day I got out of bed and, in a manner of speaking, started walking again. The aroma of the apple pie bubbling in the oven was too much. It was pouring rain outside, and just as I got to the kitchen the power went out, so instead of eating pie, I followed my mother down to the basement where the sump pump was again no longer working, to help bail it out. And that’s what did it: the image of my mother, illuminated by the kerosene lamp hanging overhead; an older woman with jeans rolled up to her calves standing ankle-deep in water, unwilling to surrender our house to the elements. This was a woman who had not only lost her husband, but lost the life she was living and the life she thought she was going to live, when she was about my age. This was a woman who had the good sense and the patience to never tell me to pull up my socks. She knew I’d have to pull them up myself when I was ready. I was ready.