If I had known then about his three marriages and five children? Well, I’ve got to admit, I still would have been interested in Glenn Albertson. Maybe if I’d known before the first dance, things might have been different. But after the second night? At that point, there was no turning back. Even as we got to know each other over the coming weeks, and even as his life unspooled before me, I never doubted his character. One divorce is a mistake. Three divorces? That’s when you stop pointing the finger at other people and start looking at yourself. But Glenn had done that work. That’s why, the more I found out about his life, the more extraordinary he became. I had met plenty of guys who were closed off, who ran from their emotions and couldn’t talk about much beyond sports. Glenn had gone through more than any of them, and yet he was willing to share that pain with me. He could lift me like a feather; he could take apart and repair my car; he could give me a wonderful massage and even cut my hair; he could give me a rose and a kiss and make me feel like the most beautiful woman in Iowa. But most important, he could be honest with me. He could show me his heart.
To ponder Glenn’s life, though, is to ignore the biggest obstacle to our relationship: I was dead serious about my single life. I had lived it for so long, I had no intention of leaving. As my old saying goes (or went): “I only want a man if I can hang him in my closet, like an old suit I can pull out when I want to dance.” And I meant it. At almost sixty years old, with more than thirty years happily single, I didn’t even want to contemplate bringing a man into my life. I had given the library and my daughter everything I had, and I felt pride and satisfaction in what I had accomplished. I was close to my family, especially my father, who needed me more than ever since my mother’s death. I had great friends I’d known for decades, and who I could count on for love, support, and a belly-busting laugh. I had my daughter. And grandchildren. I made shadow boxes and had planned fourteen weddings (and counting), from the flowers to the invitations to the first song. I was retired, but I still served on several statewide library boards, so I traveled regularly. I will always remember tumbling into a taxi cab in New Orleans after a night of drinking and dancing with professional friends. The driver, after a few minutes, turned to us and said, “I can’t believe you’re librarians. You’re having so much fun.”
Of course we had fun! Librarians aren’t ladies with bun hairdos who always say shush. We’re highly educated men and women who manage businesses. We fight censorship. We are early adopters of e-books and computer networks. We market, we educate, we create. Our jobs are challenging and complex, even more so with a cat on staff, and that’s why we love them so much.
I may not have been a working librarian anymore, and I may not have had Dewey anymore, but as long as I had my health, I was content. I had always packed as much living as I could into my days and appreciated my privacy at night. I could eat when I felt hungry, go to bed when I felt tired, and watch whatever I wanted on television. Why, oh why, would I want to risk all that for a man?
And yet, I was being swept away. And enjoying it! Sure, I tried to pull back a few times, to convince myself I didn’t need this kind of relationship, but that feeling never seemed to last more than an hour or two. Glenn would call (we were up to seven calls a day at one point), and I’d always give in. Not to his pressure, or even to his charm, but to his tenderness. To his understanding. To his obvious love. When I talked about Dewey, I knew he didn’t just listen. He asked questions. He understood. Some men would have been turned off by my love of a cat, but I always had the sense Glenn saw who I really was, and he liked what he saw.
And, of course, he had an important cat in his life, too. I knew that because of how much he talked about Rusty. He was a smart cat, he told me. He knew his name. He would come when called. I would like him. He always snuggled with strangers, guaranteed. And he wasn’t just a shy house cat. Oh no. Rusty was quirky. He slept in a guitar case and ate nachos. He fought pit bulls but caught and released butterflies. Whenever Glenn yelled, “It’s time for a bath, Rusty,” he ran. Not away from the tub but toward it. Rusty loved water. Rusty would spread out in a bathtub full of water and luxuriate.
“You gotta see it,” Glenn said. “It’s something.”
I think that’s how he coaxed me to his house the first time, with the promise of meeting Rusty. I was still weak from my illness, and as soon as I sat down on Glenn’s sofa for a rest, Rusty came right up and started rubbing against my legs. Soon, he was in my lap. He was a massive boy, at least three times the weight of Dewey. But he was a teddy bear, too, just like Glenn. Meeting Rusty confirmed all my instincts about the man I was, dare I say it, beginning to love.
After getting the nod from Rusty, Glenn took me to meet his mom. She was in her eighties, still living in her own house, still mowing her own grass. It could have been awkward, I suppose, meeting my boyfriend’s beloved mother, except for one thing: She had followed Dewey’s life in the newspaper for years. So I told her stories about Dewey: how he climbed into the jacket of a disabled girl and made her smile; how he entertained the children left in the library “day care” by their working parents; how he rode the left shoulder (always the left!) of the homeless man who came to the library every day for the sole purpose of talking to our cat. She listened. She smiled. She offered me coffee and homemade cake. I could tell Dewey’s Magic was still at work, and it was working on both our hearts. How could I not love someone who loved Dewey? How could she not trust Dewey’s mom?
When spring finally arrived, Glenn drove me to Pierce, where he had spent his childhood summers. He showed me his grandmother’s old house, and the auto repair shop where he’d fallen in love with cars. We parked under the town’s one big tree, near the intersection where Glenn had run to watch the train blow its huge cloud of steam as it crossed downtown, and kissed. We drove to Storm’n Norman’s for a dance, and Glenn told Norman he was sorry, but he was too busy to bartend anymore. After dinner one night, he drove me to a big beautiful house in a suburban neighborhood.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“My first ex-wife and I used to live there,” he said. That was the one moment I was taken aback. The moment when I remembered, suddenly, that I didn’t want a serious relationship with a man, and I remembered why: because they were unpredictable and complicated.
But it only lasted for a second. Because I knew the man beside me. Maybe not every fact, maybe not every decision in his life, but I knew his heart, and I felt more comfortable with him than with any man I’d ever met. I was reading the last drafts of Dewey that spring, and I could feel the confidence I always felt when that cat was near me. I read for the twentieth time the last page of the book, where I talked about the lessons Dewey taught me.
Find your place. Be happy with what you have. Treat everyone well. Live a good life. It isn’t about material things; it’s about love. And you can never anticipate love.
I invited Glenn to Spencer for Memorial Day. For every date, he went to the florist and chose the healthiest and brightest rose in the store, just as he had on our first “date” at Storm’n Norman’s. I kept each one, drying them in my craft room for my curio boxes. This time, though, he arrived with two red roses. We were planning to visit my mother’s grave near the town of Hartley, Iowa, so I assumed the second rose was for her. Glenn said he wanted to make another stop first. He drove to the library and walked to the large window where Dewey’s grave was marked by a simple granite plaque. It was a cold December morning when, just as the sun rose, the assistant librarian and I had broken the frozen ground and laid Dewey’s ashes to rest.