One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  “Remember when the library was just a room in the church basement?” says Tom.

  “There was also the one at Bourne High”—Hobart laughs—“if fifty-year-old encyclopedias met your research needs.”

  “Donating a library is serious philanthropy,” Frank says. “I mean, I love you guys, but I’m still not donating my home to you. ’Course mine wouldn’t hold a library.” Frank lives in a storage room above the bar. I live in a house which is nowhere near big enough, though it is, in fact, a library, but I take his meaning.

  “Point is, it was a home,” Nora says. “A family residence. So they must have put the stained glass in sometime later.”

  “How do you figure?” Hobart says.

  “Because a family home doesn’t have a wall of stained glass on the front. And even if it did, it wouldn’t be of people reading.”

  “Is that what they’re doing?”

  “What do you think they’re doing? They’re all holding books.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t realize they were reading them.”

  “What else do you do with books?”

  “I dunno. Even the mountain lion has one.”

  “Mountain lion?”

  “Man, that’s a dog.”

  “It’s not a dog.”

  “It’s a dog.”

  “Fine, it’s a dog. Mountain lion, dog, either way, it can’t read.”

  They’re so happy reminiscing. They’re so happy debating something that couldn’t matter less. They feel forgiven maybe, or their sins at least forgotten. Their chatter makes a soft hum, and I might be falling asleep when the door opens and Omar comes in.

  Nora takes him in, takes a deep breath. “Omar. You’ll be able to answer this question.”

  For a beat, a look of pure gratitude sweeps his face—something changed when he told her he signed on to the lawsuit, and it’s stayed changed—then he wrestles his expression back to blasé, everyday; he’s just a guy in his hometown bar, shooting the shit with the bartender.

  She pours him a beer. “Do you remember when they put the stained-glass window in the library?”

  He thinks about it. “Was it right when they converted it or later?”

  “None of us can remember.”

  “Me neither.” He’s trying to think but having trouble concentrating because he’s so happy she’s talking kindly to him. “Must have been expensive.”

  “Must have been,” Frank agrees.

  “So I bet it was part of the original agreement.”

  “What original agreement?” Nora asks.

  “I don’t know the details—it was before my time—but I think the machinations were pretty complex. A lot of money changed hands, and I can’t imagine it was all on the up-and-up.”

  “You think someone was bribed with a stained-glass mountain lion?” This is beyond Hobart’s imagining.

  “It’s a dog!”

  “I think a stained-glass mural like that cannot have been cheap and is not Bourne’s usual … aesthetic,” Omar says.

  “Agreed.” Zach signals Nora for another.

  “So I wonder if it wasn’t part of the terms to begin with, whatever they were.”

  “That’s real weird,” says Tom.

  Omar shrugs. “So is local government. You know who you should ask, though?”

  “Who?”

  “Apple Templeton.”

  Nora takes in a hard breath and holds it.

  “Apple Templeton?” Frank has obviously never heard this name in his life. It’s not a huge surprise Apple hasn’t made her way in here.

  “Nathan Templeton’s wife,” Omar explains.

  “Why?” Nora’s still holding her breath.

  “Before it was a library, it was her family home.”

  Her family home? My mother and I exchange a confused glance.

  “How?” Nora asks. She exhales finally but can’t seem to manage the inhale. Then she revises her question backward a step. “Who?”

  “Her family is the Groves,” Omar says.

  The Groves? Whose name is on the bridge over the ravine? And half the fancy graves in the cemetery?

  “No.” Nora can’t make this make sense. Me neither.

  “Yup. The library’s the old Grove place.” Omar makes his voice sound like the house might be haunted. He’s joking, but Apple said the same and she wasn’t. This must be what she meant, though. Not ghosts, at least not literal ones. Haunted by memories and old relatives and the past, her family’s history and legacy. That makes sense now, but nothing else about this does. Apple said she met Nathan in Boston. It must have been years before the Templetons darkened our doors, and the Groves have nothing to do with Belsum.

  “They’ve been gone a long time,” says Frank.

  “Well, right, she never lived here,” Omar says, “but her grandparents did, her parents for a while maybe before she was born, an uncle, some stray aunts and cousins I think. You should wait a couple days before you ask her, though.”

  “Why?” The crease between Nora’s eyes could grasp a spoon.

  “She came by my office this morning. She was pretty worked up.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Boxes she thought I might have. Said they weren’t in the library attic so I must have them like there’s a law of physics that says anything not in the library is with me. She wasn’t making sense. Wouldn’t tell me what was supposed to be in the boxes, so how am I supposed to help her find them? Ranted on and on about somebody’s father and somebody’s family. I couldn’t follow it, but honestly, I wasn’t trying that hard.” Tom grins and clinks glasses with him. “I finally turned her loose on the filing cabinets and let her see if she could find whatever she was looking for, but I wanted to say, ‘Ma’am, do we seem like the kind of town that keeps cataloged archives?’” A warm laugh from everyone. “I haven’t had a secretary in ten years. Some stuff got thrown away long ago. Some was in the library but—”

  “You’re living in it now, lady!” Hobart cackles.

  “Again!” Zach adds.

  Omar is glowing.

  “Did she find what she was looking for?” Nora asks.

  “No idea. She left empty-handed.” Omar opens his to demonstrate. “Something about the plant, I bet,” he ventures carefully.

  There’s a pause.

  “Different day, same shit,” Tom says finally, and they all crack up, even Nora eventually, even angry as she still is at these guys, even confused as this afternoon’s revelations have left us both, as if this is the truest, funniest, most original sentiment anyone has ever expressed.

  I spend the evening trying to puzzle all this together, but I’m missing too many pieces to be able to see the picture. Duke Templeton is hiding papers. Apple Templeton is looking for papers. They can’t be the same papers. Can they? Is Duke hiding them from Apple as well? His email said deeds and contracts. Apple said letters, but she also said her father used them to conduct business, so maybe they are the same or in the same place or at least connected. Because whatever they are, if they aren’t in Omar’s filing cabinets, if they aren’t in the library somewhere, chances are good that Monday was, of all things, right: she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. Which—she would point out—is not the same as their not being there.

  * * *

  “Apple is also looking for papers,” my Voice blurts as soon as I’m alone with my sisters.

  I’m expecting shock, maybe confusion, possibly incredulity. A smidge of veneration that I was able to make this potentially revelatory connection would not be out of line.

  But Mab says, “That makes sense.”

  And Monday says, “I already knew that.”

  “You did?” My Voice cannot believe it.

  “I did not know I knew it but now I know I knew.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Me too,” says Mab.

  I make a hand motion that means “What the hell are you two talking about?” It’s not a complicated one.

 
“That day we were at the library”—Mab waves at Monday as if otherwise I’d forget I wasn’t part of the “we”—“Apple was up in the attic. She came down covered in cobwebs and dust. Nathan asked her if she found anything. She said no.”

  “And when she came to my library to borrow a book,” Monday adds, “she did not come to my library to borrow a book.”

  “Huh?” Mab can pronounce infinitely more words than I can, but that’s the one we both go with anyway.

  “She did need books,” Monday explains. “However, that is not why she came. She came to look through boxes and files that used to be in her library and now are in my library.”

  “Did she?” Mab demands.

  “Obviously no. I told her not to touch anything. She touched some things anyway, but I found the books she needed quickly so she did not have a lot of time.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” my Voice demands of both of them.

  Mab shrugs. “Didn’t know it was important.”

  “To be more accurate,” Monday adds, “we still do not know it is important.”

  “It is,” my Voice insists. “Look again in your library, Monday.”

  “I do not know what I am looking for so it is impossible for me to—” she begins, but my Voice interrupts her.

  “Look again in your library,” it repeats, then turns to the other sister. “You have to get into the plant.”

  “Why?” Mab says, annoyed.

  “Because I can’t,” my Voice answers, also annoyed, and her face softens.

  “I meant why does anyone have to get into the plant.”

  But I knew what she meant.

  “Apple said the plant is dangerous,” I type. “Leaking, cracked, broken.”

  Mab looks as nervous as I feel. “Then why would I want to go in it?”

  I take a deep breath. “Good place to hide.”

  “You just said it is not safe.” Monday sounds nervous too, more nervous than usual. “Therefore the plant is not a good place to hide. It is a bad place to hide.”

  “Something,” my Voice appends. “It is a good place to hide something.”

  One

  “Do not tip your hat,” Monday warns.

  Mirabel taps the folder that’s supposed to help you tell your doctor where it hurts, then the picture of a severed hand, emphatically and repeatedly, so the Voice sounds deranged in its affectless calm as it reiterates like a skipping record, “Hand. Hand. Hand. Hand,” but I knew what Monday meant.

  “This isn’t something I can just casually work into conversation,” I tell her.

  “Old books say to use your feminine wiles,” Monday advises.

  “I don’t have any feminine wiles.”

  Monday points to her chest with both index fingers.

  I look to Mirabel for help, but she’s in the Body Parts folder already. “Breast,” her Voice intones, and then we can’t discuss anything anymore because we’re all laughing too hard.

  Mirabel thinks the papers we’re looking for might be in Monday’s library, in which case the person to find them is Monday. But she also thinks they might be hidden in the plant, so we need someone who can sneak in and look around without being noticed, in which case the person is definitely not Monday and can’t be Mirabel. In which case the person is me.

  The miracle comes from the unlikeliest of places: World History. Mrs. Shriver long-jumps us from the Atlantic slave trade to the industrial revolution. At first this cheers me up. At least the industrial revolution isn’t enslaving humans. At least it isn’t war. It’s human ingenuity and forward progress, inventions rising up from society, unpredictably, like hairstyles—at least, that’s Mrs. Shriver’s spin on it. But as the lecture goes on, I slowly realize the industrial revolution is a war. Mrs. Shriver wants it to be revolution like the Renaissance we left a couple months ago—great leaps forward made by humans being clever. But the more she talks, the clearer it becomes: the revolution in “industrial revolution” is like the revolution in “American Revolution,” revolution like war. It remapped small towns and big cities and nations, destroyed communities, willfully refused to consider the long term in favor of immediate blood and power, and demanded the sacrifice of scores upon scores of soldiers for the glory of the men getting rich. It was the industrial revolution that conscripted towns like mine and consigned their citizens—us—to the bottom of every pile yet to come.

  So I am thinking of armor. I am thinking of arrows and muskets and cannons. I am thinking of the longbow and the M16, armadas of ten thousand ships, rows of white crosses repeating into infinity, which is why when Mrs. Shriver calls on me to catch me out for daydreaming by the window instead of paying attention in class—“Mab, something on your mind?”—I accidentally blurt out the answer to that question.

  “Why aren’t factories like museums?”

  She’s amused. Bored maybe. Gives me an indulgent smile and decides to play along. “I don’t know, Mab. Why aren’t factories like museums?”

  “No. It’s not a joke. Remember last month when you showed us all those pictures from the British Museum? Helmets. Guns. Swords. All that stuff?”

  “Right. What does that have to do with factories?”

  “Other artifacts of war go in museums. Why don’t punch clocks or conveyor belts or fake emergency exits? Why aren’t munitions factories and mill floors and chemical plants preserved the same way, like for tourists to wander around and have perspective on history and stuff?”

  Mrs. Shriver looks at me for too long before answering. “No one would pay to go in,” she says finally. “Plus, what would you sell at the gift shop?”

  But after class River steals up next to me and whispers, “You want to see the inside of a chemical plant?”

  I am about to tell him that wasn’t the point I was making when I realize the point I was making was entirely beside the point. I nod mutely.

  He smiles then blushes then smiles a little more widely. “I can totally get us a key.”

  * * *

  Two days later I am on my way to tutoring after school—Mrs. Radcliffe and Petra and I have compromised on once a week—when River takes my elbow and steers me to an old, disused classroom.

  “Pick a hand.” He holds out both in closed fists. I hear Mirabel’s Voice intoning, Hand. Hand. Hand. Hand.

  I pick a hand. He turns it over, peels it open. It’s inevitably empty. Obligingly, I tap his other fist. It’s empty too. He grins at me. I grin back. Can’t help it. He reaches behind my ear, comes out with a fist, opens it. Empty. I’m still grinning, waiting patiently for the reveal. He’s patting himself all over, looking confused and increasingly alarmed, but it’s not until he starts cursing under his breath that I realize this isn’t part of the trick. He takes both my shoulders in both his hands, looks into my eyes, and says very seriously, “Can I please turn you to face the wall?”

  “Not a chance.”

  He waves his arms in the air frantically like he’s walked into a swarm of gnats and, when that yields nothing, undoes his top two buttons, pulls both arms inside his shirt, and wriggles around like the weekend Monday and I spent trying to take off our bras without taking off our tops as if this were a necessary life skill. No luck. River looks at me dolefully. I smile.

  And because I do, he smiles back. And because I do, or maybe just because he’s embarrassed already, he doubles down. He yanks off his belt dramatically, lassoes it in the air a few times, and wiggles his hips back and forth, around and around. But that’s as far as he can go.

  “Please?” He twirls his finger in a circle and hopes I will follow suit. “The first rule of magic is misdirection.”

  “Of the audience.”

  “At least close your eyes.”

  “If my eyes are closed, how will I see what happens next?”

  River blazes red, unbuttons his khakis, starts excavating around down there, first in his pants, then in his underpants. I try to pretend the reason I’m blushing is because I’m laughing so hard.


  Finally his hand reemerges from his underwear. “Ta-da!”

  “Neat trick.”

  “It’s all in the sleight of hand.”

  “I can see that.”

  “For you.” He holds it out to me gallantly, offering me the key to, well, everything.

  “Thank you,” I say. “You carry it.”

  So I skip tutoring.

  * * *

  It seems impossible, but it’s true: I have never before followed anyone on a bike. Petra has a car and even when we were little never had a bicycle. “You know how my mother feels about outside,” she always said when I complained. When I ride with Monday, I go first or at least alongside. When I don’t ride with Monday, I ride alone. So it’s all new to me: the way a person’s shoulders and back flex beneath his shirt as he shifts through gears on his handlebars, the way a person’s calf muscles ball like cookie dough and release, ball and release. I have to pedal hard to keep up.

  He slows so I can pull alongside him. “Can I ask you a question?” he says.

  My heart speeds, and it’s not from exertion. Are you flirting with me just to make me easier to manipulate? Are you being nice to me because you’re using me? Are you tricking me into taking you into my family’s lair so you and your crazy sisters can destroy us?

  “How come no one in this town celebrates Halloween?” he says.

  It’s November already today. We’re a week closer to the twenty-second and still have no idea what’s coming.

  “We used to. When I was little.” It’s hard to shrug when you’re leaning over handlebars. “Maybe people figured we had enough demons around here already. Maybe there were too many ghosts to make dressing up like one seem fun anymore.”