“The name, Verona Bonn. Wonderful sounding. Half the charm in old books is the marks of living they acquire; the way the name was written seemed to imply ownership. It was too lovely to destroy or let rot any further, yet I couldn’t keep it. So I did a bit of research on the name. A circus high diver — how extraordinary. I discovered a death notice, which led me to your mother, and in turn to you.”
“I doubt it was my grandmother’s,” I say. “From what I know she lived out of a suitcase.”
“Well, another family member’s perhaps? Or maybe a fan of your grandmother’s — people do love a good story.”
Yes, a story. We are of course a good story. My hands slip and suddenly my coffee is on the kitchen floor, pooling in the cracked linoleum. I grab for a paper towel to mop it up and knock over the sugar canister. The old sour feeling settles in the center of my chest, a familiar sensation that comes with being the town tragedy. A mother who drowned herself, a father dead from grief, a young man raising his sister alone.
“Do you do this kind of thing often? Track down families of people who used to own your books?”
“More often than you’d think, Mr. Watson — Simon. May I call you Simon?”
Blood wells from the bottom of my foot, a dark red bloom mixes with the coffee and sugar. I must have stepped on a piece of the mug. “If you like.”
“Wonderful. I just last year came across a lovely edition of Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. It had a beautiful padded and embossed cloth binding. Inside there was a pressed violet that was forty years old if it was a day. A little piece of magic. The owner, Rebecca Willoughby, had written her name on the inside cover. Rebecca was deceased, of course, but I managed to find her niece, who was delighted to receive a book that her aunt had obviously treasured as a girl. She said it was a bit like meeting her aunt all over again. I’d hoped to have a similar experience with this book. Has it stirred anything at all?”
The conversation has jostled memories, but not pleasant ones. “You found me, so you must know my parents are dead.”
There is an awkward cough. “I’m terribly sorry. I apologize if I’ve caused any unpleasantness.”
“It’s been a long time.” I exhale. And the book is fascinating, and somehow connected to someone with an interest in my grandmother.
“If you don’t want it, I understand. I’d just ask that you send it back to me rather than disposing of it — I’ll happily pay the shipping. It’s just such a pretty book, and so old. I suppose I can convince Marie to let me keep one more.”
The thought of disposing of something that has survived so much is abhorrent. “No, I’ll hang on to it. And I’m perfectly capable of keeping it safe. Weirdly enough, you’ve sent it to the right person. I’m a librarian. I work with archives.”
“How perfectly apt.” Churchwarry laughs, and I begin to understand some of his delight in passing books on. There’s a certain serendipity, a little light that’s settled in my sternum.
He asks a favor of me, gently, as though expecting my refusal. “Will you let me know if you find out why your grandmother’s name is in it? It’s not important, of course, I just love to know my books’ history. A quirk of mine.”
I will look into it, not because he’s asked, but because I should. Too much of my family has been lost to the haze of time and forgetting. “I will,” I assure him before hanging up.
My hands feel large and clumsy. I stick a Band-Aid to my foot, shove on my shoes, and watch the sun climb over the water. I don’t mop up the coffee or the sugar mess. Later. An hour passes after hanging up from Churchwarry and the unsettling conversation. How I spend it, I can’t say.
* * *
Closing the door requires an abrupt tug, surprising it into shutting, another side effect of an aging house and slipping-away land. I’ll have to rehang it. Maybe Frank can angle it with a lathe. I toss the book onto the passenger seat, then wince. It’s a crime to abuse anything this old.
The drive to Grainger Library runs the long way through Napawset, through the three-block historic district, where all the houses are from the Williams family — colonial boxes built by brothers who divvied up the town in 1694—curving around the harbor road, past the marina and fiberglass boats Frank hates, winding through Port and the captains’ houses that tourists call charming. Port is packed with cars lining up for the ferry to Connecticut, and the big boat, huge jaws open, is swallowing sedans and sports cars. The harbor road climbs a hill crowned by a monastery, then dips down, following the salt marsh before turning toward the center of the island and a flat stretch of land, in the middle of which is the Grainger.
Leslie and Christina at the circulation desk confirm I’m late. No one is ever in first thing in the morning and the children’s reading groups don’t start until ten o’clock, but the ignominy of lateness is still present as I walk past the director’s office to my desk in reference. I hear the hollow thudding of Janice Kupferman’s heels pacing her office. Yes, she saw me.
Sliding into my chair usually feels like coming home, but today it’s troubled. I set the book on my desk and stare at it. I should start on grant applications, or the never-ending stream of purchasing requisitions that inevitably get denied. After a few attempts at a statement of need for an update to our electronic catalogs and reading lists, I find myself gazing at the reference stacks. The Grainger feels like mildew and has a mood of disrepair.
The library’s mainstay is the whaling history archive. Though Napawset never saw much in the way of actual whaling, Philip Grainger, the library’s founder, was a man obsessed. Upon his death he willed his entire collection of documents on whaling and Long Island to the library. Shipping records, art, nautical charts, market prices for whale oil and soaps, manifests — some sixty years of collecting housed in two large windowless rooms on the second floor. It’s Janice’s pet project and the source of our funding, though most of us wouldn’t mind seeing it go.
Over by an ancient microfiche machine, Alice McAvoy restocks shelves. There’s something hypnotic about her thick red braid. Not quite red — strawberry blond. I watch it sway, timing my breath to her hair. I can almost hear the gentle swish, almost disappear into the sound.
Alice turns toward the scratching rustle of a tweed suit headed in my direction. Janice Kupferman on the move.
“Simon? May I see you in my office for a minute?” Janice asks.
“Absolutely.”
Janice’s office is low ceilinged and fits her fireplug build, which leaves me distinctly out of place. Sitting in her office chair requires me to eat my knees.
“Sorry,” she says, seeing my predicament. “There’s never any money for furniture.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to it.”
“Yes, I suppose you would be.” A tired smile rounds the just-forming jowls that indicate passage through middle age. “How long have you worked here? Ten years, at least.”
“Could be. I’ve lost track.”
She sits across from me, putting three feet of wood-grain laminate desk between us. “I hate this,” she says. Each word is punctuated with a head shake that makes her earrings jiggle — dolphins, hung by their tails, peeping under a precise brown bob. “I really hate this.”
I’d sink into the chair but it’s too cramped. I know what’s coming. “Budget?”
“The town cut us this year. Badly. I’ll try and fight them as much as I can, but—”
“Blood from a stone?”
At her nod, any hope of a bonus to fix the bulkhead dries up.
“There must be something, a grant somewhere we haven’t gotten.”
“I’ll keep trying, but the realities are what they are.” She doesn’t need to say it. Recessions don’t breed interest in whaling history. “I don’t want to, but I may have to let someone go. It isn’t personal; I’m having this talk with everyone, but provided the town doesn’t budge, someone has to go.”