“This is what Charles Dickens used to open letters,” explained Sadie.
“Is it real?” asked Mrs. Smith, scrunching her turned-up nose. Maybe this had been a mistake.
“Yes,” said Sadie. “The cat, called Bob, was so beloved by Charles Dickens that he had his paw put on a letter opener after he died.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Sadie stumbled through the explanation as Mr. Jones-Ebbing slid his finger lightly along the sharp end of the blade; she barely stopped herself from giving his knuckles a good rap. “It’s an important artifact, one that tells us a lot about Charles Dickens and the time period he lived in. Back then, taxidermy was all the rage. People made hats out of birds, inkwells out of horses’ hoofs. By doing this, Dickens could still touch the fur of his beloved pet every day.”
What else to show them? Sadie replaced the letter opener and looked around. “Over here is a walking stick that belonged to the essayist and writer Laura Lyons.”
“Oh, gosh, I read all about her in some magazine not long ago,” said Mrs. Smith, her stridency melting. “It’s really hers?”
Finally, a hit. “Yes. She had it with her when she died, in 1941.”
Sadie stared down at the stick, as she had many times since she’d begun working there. Sometimes, after hours, when she was alone, she’d take it out and place her bare palm where Laura Lyons’s had once been.
“Simply fantastic,” said Mrs. Smith.
Mr. Jones-Ebbing broke into her thoughts as they retreated into the hallway. “We were told you’re working on the Berg Collection exhibit. Can you give us any hints of what you’ll be showing?”
“I won’t spoil the surprises, but I can tell you it will be the best that the collection has to offer.”
“Cagey, I see,” he said, eyes twinkling. “Can you at least share how you and your colleagues go about curating a big exhibit like this one?”
“We sift through the collection and allow the objects that capture our attention and imagination to illuminate the theme. In this case, the exhibit will be called Evergreen.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“The focus is on pieces that have retained their value to scholars and historians over time. While the Berg has some fantastic manuscripts and first editions and diaries and such, we would also like to showcase the quirkier pieces—the ones that have a different kind of story to tell.”
Mr. Jones-Ebbing leaned in with a mock whisper. “I hope the letter opener makes the cut.”
“I’ll let you in on a secret: it does. But you can’t tell a soul.”
He put his fingers to his lips, and they all laughed.
Maybe this wasn’t going so badly after all.
“Once we know the objects we want,” Sadie said, feeling more at ease now, “we go through them and make sure they’re in good shape, figure out how best to highlight them: what page a book should be opened to, what historical context needs to be explained.” They’d reached the door to the Trustees Room. By now, all three board members were gathered around her, listening. “We’ll consult with top scholars to determine what’s the most important thing to mention, what should be revealed. Then there’s all the work with the designers on the exhibit room itself, regarding the exhibit cases, the general aesthetic. What color paint on the walls? What typeface for the labels? How will we control the climate inside the cases? We’ll also put together the catalog, which needs to be in language that’s both suitable for the average reader and accurate.”
“Quite a job. I look forward to the opening,” said Mr. Jones-Ebbing. “Seems like it’s in very capable hands.” He smiled down at her. “I’ll be sure to tell Dr. Hooper that you impressed us all.”
“Lovely to see you, Claude and Sadie. Please, do take a seat.”
The director of the library, Humphrey Hooper, MLS, PhD, spoke with a quick, flat cadence, something Sadie had noted when she first met him a decade ago. Originally from Alabama, he’d somehow mastered a vocal inflection that couldn’t be pinned to a particular place yet clearly signaled an upper-class upbringing, like Cary Grant in the old movies.
Since that first meeting, Sadie had risen from assistant librarian to librarian to assistant curator of the Berg Collection by learning everything she could about the library, from the genealogy department to the map room to the prints and photograph department, by coming in early and staying late.
Claude, sitting in the chair next to her, had taken a different approach, taking his superiors out to lunch and wooing them with his charm and wit. He wasn’t handsome—his eyes bulged out slightly, and his upper lip tended to sweat when he got excited—but he had broad shoulders and a thick head of hair, and most of the female librarians swooned when he paid them the slightest bit of attention. He’d shone his light on Sadie during the library’s last Christmas party, kissing her in the back-office area and making her feel breathless and beautiful.
That time of year had always been a dismal one for Sadie. Christmas Eve was when her father had passed away, so even decades later the sight of a pine tree aglow with a riot of primary colors induced in her an anxious melancholy. It also happened to be Christmas Eve when, sick with dread, she’d rifled through her now ex-husband’s briefcase and found a bill for a credit card she’d never known about, filled with charges to the Washington Square Hotel and several Greenwich Village restaurants. All conveniently located near NYU, where Phillip was a tenured math professor. Even though that was six years ago, the holidays still filled her with an ominous apprehension that the world might fall apart at any minute.
So it really was no surprise that with Claude’s unexpected kiss, even though his breath smelled like Scotch, Sadie’s yuletide clouds of misery had gently evaporated.
He’d been away for a week after that, during which time she’d let her imagination run wild, thinking of them together, wandering around the city, roaming from bookstore to bookstore. After he’d returned, they’d gone out to lunch together and sometimes dinner, where he held her a little too long when they said goodbye out on the street. At work, he’d made sweet overtures, like sharing a magazine article on the new Tennyson biography, or passing along the Times crossword once he had finished the paper.
But then, one morning, she’d turned the corner near the administrative offices and spotted him deep in conversation with one of the young pages who worked in the stacks. The girl had thrown back her head and laughed—a high-pitched, ludicrous sound like she was being strangled with sleigh bells—and something in Sadie had shut down, hard. The ups and downs of heartbreak were not for her, no way, not after what she’d already been through with Phillip.
That same day, deep in the stacks of the Berg Collection, Sadie had come across an intriguing title she didn’t remember seeing before: a first edition of Surviving Spinsterhood: The Joys of Living Alone, published in 1896, by Abigail Duckworth. She plucked the thin volume from the Berg’s caged shelves and began reading, turning her back so any passing pages couldn’t see what was in her hand. She’d flown through it, delighted at the timeless advice for successfully maintaining independence as a woman, chock-full of pithy chapter headings like “Solitary Refinement” and “Pleasures of a Single Bed.” For decades, women had lived happily, easily, without a man. That was good enough for her.
Claude had made overtures after that and been rebuffed at every turn. If he brought her the crossword, she’d say she’d already finished it. Articles? Read them. These days, she and Claude had maintained a respectful, if chilly, distance, and whenever loneliness threatened, she’d pluck the book off the shelf and turn to a random page for a quick dose of witty inspiration.