The only problem with this library was the old librarian upstairs. She seemed to work irregularly, so I never knew when she’d be there. For some reason she hated me. Or at least I thought she did. It might have been because I let Dill crawl around on the floor while I looked for books. Sometimes he’d pull out a bunch of books from the lower shelves and she’d clear her throat and try to catch my eye. After a while I stopped looking at her after she had cleared her throat. I’d just go over to where Dill was and clean up the books like it was no big deal. Silently I encouraged him to keep doing it. Sometimes I met other moms from Half-a-Life and we’d talk and laugh and our kids would run around making too much noise. Usually there wasn’t anybody else in the library so I didn’t see what the big deal was. We’d take out piles of books for our kids, even Dill.
Anyway, this librarian, Mrs. Hobbs, was always on my case. I’d check out books and she’d look at me over the tops of her half-glasses. She’d pull up my file on the computer and then get close to it and squint at it for at least half a minute with her chin resting in her hand. She’d drum her skinny fingers against her slack cheek while she stared at the computer. She’d sigh and look at me again with a very stern expression.
Anyway, I’d found a book that had something in it on the solstice and I wanted to take it out. “You owe twelve dollars and fifty-nine cents in overdue fines,” said Mrs. Hobbs.
“Really?”
“Do you wish to pay for that with a cheque or cash?”
“Uh, could I work it off?” I smiled.
“Cheque or cash?”
In the meantime I had put Dill on the floor and he was heading over to the table with the rare wet books.
“You can’t take any books out until you pay your fine,” said Mrs. Hobbs.
Just then Emily the smiling story time woman came over to the desk,
“No, no, Sadie, don’t you remember? The fine has to be brought down to ten dollars. As long as it’s only ten dollars she can take out the books.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said, “I’ll pay two dollars and fifty-nine cents now and then I can take out the books.”
With Emily the Good at my side I felt more confident
“Hey,” I added, laughing, “I could go on bringing my fine down to ten dollars forever. I don’t ever have to pay the ten dollars. When I die my estate would have to take care of it,”
Emily laughed. Just then there was a huge crash. Dill had managed to pull few of the thick hardcovers off the drying table and was standing there chuckling. Then he knocked the hair dryer off the table and a piece of plastic broke off it and flew up in the air. Now Emily was really laughing. Sadie stood frozen to the spot, her half-glasses suspended like icicles on the bridge of her nose. She must have thought they were slipping down because she started flaring her nostrils, I guess in an attempt to widen her nose and create a broader base for her glasses to rest on. The flaring must have upset the delicate equilibrium and the glasses fell. For a second they caught on her lower lip and then clunked onto her chest. They clacked against a peacock brooch she was wearing and then they were still.
I didn’t really need a book on the solstice. I could just have asked Lish. Or I could have looked up the meaning of solstice and then left without checking out the book from the library. Or I could have paid the full amount of twelve dollars and fifty-nine cents. Well, actually I couldn’t have, not then, but I could have been nicer to Mrs. Hobbs. And in the future I was. We had established an unspoken truce. She smiled at me. I smiled back. I brought my fine down to ten bucks every time and she checked out my books. Dill pulled books off the shelves. I put them back. Mrs. Hobbs did not clear her throat as much.
If I had made a movie about me and Mrs. Hobbs, it would have had a lot of dream sequences of me blindfolded and sitting on a cement floor in the basement of the library. And Mrs. Hobbs would be lighting a cigarette for me and putting it in my mouth. You know that hostage phenomenon where you grow fond of your captor? That’s what would happen.
“I hate asking you to pay your fines, Lucy,” she’d say. “But until you do, I can’t release you.”
“I know, Mrs. Hobbs, I know. You’re just doing your job,” I’d say. “You’re as much of a prisoner as I am. Here, have a drag of my cigarette.”
“Thank you, Lucy. I’m glad we’ve had these seven hundred and thirty-one days to get to know each other.”
“Me too, Mrs. Hobbs, me too.”
Credits roll, orchestra starts up. I told Lish about my movie idea and she said, “God Lucy, give her a break, she’s a fucking librarian! What do you know about her life anyway?”
And I said, “Me? You’re the one who’s always freaking out whenever someone tells you what to do! I was simply trying to illustrate the nature of our relationship!”
“I would not pay to see that movie, Lucy,” she said.
Lish and I went on like that for a while. It was our first stupid fight.
Day after day of rain and bugs kept us virtually imprisoned within the walls of Half-a-Life. Lish wasn’t cracking as many jokes. Terrapin had lost some of her glow. Sarah was looking sad again and not doing as much talking anymore. Emmanuel’s visits had been cut back to once a month. Sing Dylan was still trying to scrub the graffiti from the wall. Naomi was fighting more than ever with the fireman for sole custody of their son. She hit him once when he came over and he charged her with assault. She was worried about the charge affecting her custody case. Every day was more or less the same: trying to get by, keep the kids amused, and not lose our minds. We could hole up inside our apartments or we could wander around the halls, talk in the laundry room or in someone’s kitchen. It was difficult for those of us with hobbies and jobs to concentrate on them because of the heat and the constant interruptions from restless kids and restless moms looking for someone to talk with. Joe and Pillar were fighting an awful lot even though neither one of them was working. Lish told me that Pillar had told her that one of the reasons why she had married Joe was because he had reminded her of her old best friend, back when she was a kid in a town called Sarto. Especially his profile and the way he smelled. Pillar told Lish that when Joe was drunk and sleeping she tilted his head just so he looks more like her old friend, Peggy, and then she would lie there looking at him looking like her and smelling him smelling like her and remembering her childhood. And Pillar thinks Sing Dylan is weird for not drinking. Life is strange. But life in Half-a-Life is even stranger.
During that June I looked forward to the time of the day Mercy and her daughter came home just for something to watch outside other than the rain. Watching Mercy and her girl get off the bike, drag it over to the lockers and then get into Half-a-Life was like watching a choreographed performance: every move was precise and it never changed. Getting the mail was another high point of the day, even though most of our mail consisted of library fines or disconnection notices or advertising for places and things none of us could afford. Samples of shampoo were nice.
One afternoon Lish trekked downstairs with Alba and Letitia to get the mail. The twins were singing. “It’s raining. It’s boring. The old man is scoring.” Lish looked tired. Her skin was breaking out around her chin and her black hair was greasy. It was bread day for her. Every Tuesday she had to pick up the bread at Prairie Song and deliver it to the co-op. In return she got member prices on the stuff at the co-op. But it meant putting the twins in the wagon, walking four blocks to the Wheat’s End Bakery, loading the bread in and around the girls in the wagon, and in a big hockey bag that she draped over her shoulder, and then walking another four blocks to the co-op to deliver the bread. It also meant either getting soaked or eaten alive when the mosquitoes were bad. I don’t know why she didn’t ask one of her boyfriends to help her. One of them must have had a car they could lend or give her a ride in. But she said, “Men are a nighttime indoors thing.” Going outside with them during the day with kids and bread and problems to solve would ruin it for her. Nope. She’d rather do it on her own. Teresa and I were standing around the mailboxes in the lobby talking about Marjorie. Teresa had a gut feeling Marjorie had started seeing that guy again, the father of her son and of Teresa’s, and not telling Teresa, who didn’t want to care, and who didn’t want to appear suspicious, either.