Stir reet stir reet, he thought the wrens said, and then stir reet stir reet again. Not music, he suspected. Not conversation. Only pronouncement. Cheater, the cardinals insisted. Cheater cheater cheater.
Calamint, till frost, dainty of bloom and tart of odor.
A stinging wind brought tears to Joey’s eyes when Joseph looked down on Miriam’s garden filled with captured leaves. They flew just above the mums to be caught in hedges that had lost theirs and whose briars were now eager to seize any debris the wind blew in. I still have mine, Professor Skizzen thought, fly stuck and fluttery, though I’m not evergreen. Angered by the blurred vision in his watery eyes, Skizzen brought his fist down on his right thigh. The blow couldn’t reach through the cloth to cause a bruise.
29
We giggle together, that’s a good sign, Marjorie said.
•
She stole nickels, she stole dimes. That’s no way to run a store.
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She was the head librarian once, now she’s just the basement dunce.
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I don’t know what I’d do without me.
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That Portho person took out a dirty blue bandanna to wipe the chair he’d chosen as if it were the seat of a public toilet.
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The pencil’s point should not be too fine. Otherwise it will scratch the paper and leave a trail that no eraser can rub away.
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I don’t like weather you can’t put a name to.
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Nobody has worked harder to get nowhere than I have.
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I hear that during the Depression famished poor kids used to eat library paste in their art classes. If you’re hungry enough you’ll eat earth. I wonder what sort of sounds they make, those inflated bellies? Do they growl? squeal? Can they catch cold? Can they cough? Not in the library. Of course anything you can hear in here I hear.
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I’m told your concerts in the church basement are pretty pop, Marjorie said, with an inquiring smile. I’m told you play gospel, too, as if you were born to be black.
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Good boy.
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I’m not sure I like the way you listen, Joey. You let me talk about myself until I feel bad.
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I never had it in for her, you know. My eye just caught her picking up the pennies and peering at the dates on them … or she was looking for Indian heads. So what, I thought. Until I caught her sneaking a dime from the overdue box. I bet she bought gum. We used to chew a lot of gum in here, we got so bored sitting at the front desk like an ink pad, you could have filled sacks with our yawns, but when I took charge I put a stop to it because it set a bad example for borrowers, you know, put ideas in their heads, we had enough trouble without aiding any of it, it didn’t need any aiding, so I put a stop to it. Full stop. To it.
•
I hate Kleenex. If you blow your nose you put your blow in your purse. But no. Into a library book the soiled fold goes, stuffed between pages and infecting the words. Tissue with lipstick on it wedged between pride and prejudice. Pardon me, Joey, but you know what they can wipe with it.
•
Before me, nobody thought about things. She didn’t. She sat here and smiled, stamped your book and smiled, said, Have a wordful day. Her smile was wan, though, with no conviction to it, not even a smile-filled smile, just a little twitch that widened the mouth, disturbed the lips. Wan, I would say it was. And have a wordful day was said in a whisper, as if it were between her and the book. Me — I have my great gray eyes. I look you in the face to say my say and I say sometimes, Have a nice day, okay, sometimes that’s what I say, I remind the moms, the kids, the occasionals — This book is due the twenty-first, remember — but you never know, I might say, Go away and jibber your jabber elsewhere, babble to your chums of your little life and loves, make out in the car, Carl — was that the skinny redhead’s name? who taught — would you believe it? — fencing.
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I aspire for you, Joey. I have hopes.
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I hate hairpins. I’ve got plenty of hair. People who come in comment on how plenty. No pins. Not anywhere. So where do these little wires end up? They end up keeping somebody’s place in somebody’s book. Put a crimp in the page. Scratch the paper. Ugly things to find in the midst of your reading like a fly in the ear. They don’t own the book. It’s not theirs. So what the hell, they think. No need to care.
• •
I took out a penny for a postcard. And that Marjorie Bruss slithers over and says, I saw you, I saw you take money from the overdues. I say, I need a penny for a postcard. Not from the overdues, you don’t, she says. Just consider it, I say. Just consider what you’ve said — how silly it is, how childish, not to say cheap, how niggling, that is the word, niggling, petty, that is the word, how petty — and aren’t you sorry now you’ve said it, because it shows off your soul, as if your soul were out walking and it were Easter.
But she says she’s going to report my actions to the library board, so I inform her that there was only one action in question, but her plural suggested others. Well, she did have others in mind, plenty of others, my improprieties, to report. That’s another reason why I call her Major. Oh, do they? don’t they? will they? won’t they? put people on report. They wear white gloves that hunt for dirt like pigeons peck crumbs. Have you a dossier, then, on me, I ask her, and she says right back and boldly in my face, Oh yes, I’m keeping accounts. That’s in the plural, too, I remind her. Neither of us has ever married. Notice that, dear, I ask of her, which sets her back, back in surprise she is rudely taken. Her face starts to redden, and I understand reddening to be a warning. Everyone knows why I’m not married, why I’m a librarian. They look at me and know, but you, Missss Brussss are well made, have hair, and speak easily to the world. What could the reason be? For our joint chastity? I am a witch, Missss Brussss, as anyone can see, but you are a bitch, as everyone will learn. Well, Mr. Joey, at that she screams that scream she screams, and I know I have added one more rude word to her report.
• •
You think you know what the life of an old maid is like because we are well represented in commonplace literature, in commonplace movies, in lady mags. We are leftovers from the Victorian family album, the homely sister who never hears a marriage proposal, who sits at home for dances, at parties leans against floral walls, is always a help around a complacent house, hair in a net as if each strand were a fish.
Yes, well, we aren’t alone there, most of us, at home sweet home, we are taking care of Mother, whom we have to dislike, it’s tradition. Father always dies first, like the first-picked fruit, and Mother languishes for years in an upstairs chair while her virginal daughter sits by her tatting and occasionally chatting but mostly glumly waiting out the silence through which Mother dozes between jolts of blackberry brandy.
Well, I like my little lonely world where I can keep my secrets and my skirts and my scrapbooks to myself. I liked sitting at the front desk, filing for future reference what everybody in my community was reading and noting who is a sound loan risk and who is always tardy and who tries to escape the overdues even when only a few pennies are at stake. I didn’t shush. The Major does that. I didn’t stalk the stacks like a policeman on patrol. The Major does that. I didn’t read the riot act to every moist-nosed grubby-fingered kid who comes within my hearing. The Major does that. I lacked a stamp.