Queen of the Cookbooks

by Ashton Lee

  Maura Beth was livid and clenched her teeth. “Oh, no, please. Not that again. We’ve had that happen before with shipments of books and even some of our movie posters for our Cherry Cola Book Club meetings. This has to be the worst déjà vu ever. What on earth is wrong with people? Don’t they know the difference between MS and MO? Children in middle school know simple things like that, don’t they? I’m beginning to believe there’s a conspiracy against us.”

  Councilman Sparks sounded sympathetic but kept the self-serving grin on his face all the same. “I don’t think we need to be paranoid about this. But the shipment is definitely on its way here now. We just have to keep our fingers crossed that it’ll be here in time for the Grand Opening.”

  “You mean there’s still a chance it won’t?”

  “I was told it might be under the wire. But the library’s really not about the furniture, is it?”

  Maura Beth was in no mood to be diplomatic and set her jaw defiantly. “No, of course not. We expect the patrons to lie on the floor or stand around until their feet ache. Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? I’m just about ready to sue them for breach of contract. Can we actually do that?”

  “No, I don’t think we need to go that far,” Councilman Sparks told her. “But I understand your frustration. Once you’re up and running, I think the public will forget about any temporary inconvenience they experienced on opening day. Don’t underestimate the ‘wow’ factor.”

  Jeremy spoke up for the first time. “But it sounds like you really don’t expect the furniture to get here. Am I reading you right?”

  “I authorized them to put a rush on the shipment back to us, and they’ve agreed to do that at their expense. I read them the riot act over the phone, believe me. I want our Grand Opening to be as much of a success as both of you do. After all, my name is on the building.”

  Somewhat placated, Maura Beth sat with her thoughts for a while. “Maybe I can come up with an emergency backup plan just in case,” she said finally.

  Councilman Sparks looked somewhat wary. He had been burned before by Maura Beth’s clever schemes—and deservedly so in every instance. “Are you at liberty to divulge exactly what you have in mind, Miz McShay?”

  “Not sure yet. We’ve already sold off the comfortable chairs and the big table we had in our old meeting room, and we still have a few of our creaky folding chairs that we’ve been using for our book club meetings. But even those wouldn’t be nearly enough for our needs. So my thought here is that I ought to get my Cherry Cola Book Club members involved. That’s always seemed to work in the past when we’ve had a problem of any kind.”

  Jeremy nodded and pointed to his wife in exaggerated fashion. “Believe me, when she says something like that, you just have to wait it out. She’ll come up with something.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Maura Beth finally allowed herself to exhale even though the issue still wasn’t definitely resolved. “Meanwhile, Councilman Sparks, would you like the grand tour of what we’ve done for the citizens of Greater Cherico? And by ‘we,’ I mean both you and me.”

  “Okay, then. I’ve got a few minutes. I’ve been out a few times during construction, but there were some things I couldn’t make head nor tail of. As you know, I’ve never been much of a library user. So put on your tour guide hat and show me the way. I almost feel like I’m in a cathedral.”

  “Good description. It’s a cathedral of knowledge. I also like to think of it as the repository of our culture.”

  “You librarians with your vocabulary!”

  They began with a peek into the children’s room, which featured thick, brown papier-mâché trees growing out of the gold carpet all the way up to the ceiling. At the back of the room was an expansive stage with steps leading up to it, and a big backdrop featuring colorfully painted animals, clowns, and famous comic book heroes in the middle of it all. At the extreme left were down-to-the-last-detail drawings of The Cat in the Hat and Horton; at the extreme right, illustrations of Junie B. Jones and the Oompa-Loompas. There were also huge framed posters on the walls of noted children’s authors such as Beverly Cleary, Roald Dahl, Maurice Sendak, Beatrix Potter, Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, and Mo Willems. For all intents and purposes, it was an indoor children’s literary playground that would ultimately give them access to the world as they grew into adulthood.

  “Our new children’s librarian, Miriam Goodcastle, will be doing her morning story hours there onstage. We’ve devoted a generous portion of the Children’s Department’s budget to costumes and props so that Miriam can portray any number of characters for the little ones and their mothers. I’ve tried to do the best I could over the years with story hours here and there, but that’s not really my training. I just had to wear too many hats—doing the ordering, processing, and paying the bills. Miriam is very creative and full of ideas to get the children into reading, and that’s one of the primary missions of any library. Those children grow up to be our much-needed taxpayers, and I’m sure you can understand that.”

  “Yes, I do,” Councilman Sparks said, though his tone lacked conviction. He seemed more animated, however, when they moved along and the bank of gleaming computer terminals came into view in the middle of the library’s sunlit central corridor. “So this is where they can surf the Internet, right? These computers are the bells and whistles everyone is yakking about?”

  “Yes, and they were just installed yesterday. I was on pins and needles waiting for them to arrive. These terminals are what you wouldn’t let me have all those years, remember? I must have gone before you at least five or six times to beg for them, but I was always denied. ‘Everyone has one of these at home,’ you always said. But, you know, that’s just not true. Some people simply can’t afford them. It’s another high-demand service any library should always provide in the millennium.”

  He cleared his throat noisily while fiddling nervously with the knot on his tie, a sure sign he was uncomfortable. “That may be, but I’ve heard that some of these kids can get into lots of trouble watching all kinds of porn on those things. If I had a son or daughter, I know I’d be keeping an eye out for that; and if kids here in Cherico start coming out here just to do that, I know their parents won’t like it at all. More to the point, I’m the one who will have to deal with all the complaints, if I know my constituents. And I think I do by now.”

  “I’m quite sure you do, but, no, you won’t have to deal with any of that. I’ll be the one to field those complaints, and I feel more than competent to handle them. Besides, we have filters that will effectively block those questionable sites, Durden. And we won’t let people have unlimited time on the terminals. They can’t just come in here and stay on them all day. We’ll be fair to everyone, of course, but it’ll all be supervised, I can assure you.”

  Councilman Sparks turned away slightly and mumbled an unintelligible sentence or two under his breath.

  “Did you have a little something to add?” Maura Beth asked him. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “I was thinking . . . uh, doesn’t that amount to censorship? Can you get away with that?”

  Maura Beth thought carefully before speaking. She knew quite well that he delighted in setting traps for her. Time for another application of her Librarianship 101 to put out this latest little fire he wanted to start. “Many libraries want to avoid getting into trouble by allowing certain patrons to hog their computers visiting those pornographic sites you mention. So you can’t have it both ways, Councilman. You either allow the cyber free-for-all and suffer the consequences, or you assign some limits to it according to reasonable community standards. That’s very different from allowing any patron to barge in and decide which books need to be pulled off the shelves because they disapprove of them. That’s the slippery slope of all time, I can assure you. We never want to go there.”

  He was nodding now, however reluctantly. “Okay, I get your point. Let’s move on. I trust you know what you’re doing her
e.”

  “Things would have been a lot easier for me if you’d felt that way from my first day on the job several years ago.”

  “Maybe so. At any rate, I see the deck and the lake ahead. I have to admit—that’s a spectacular view out there. Why don’t we go out and take it in? Maybe we’ll even catch a breeze.”

  “We will sample the deck soon enough. But not before we make the rounds and I show you the teen room and our technical services room where we process all the books, both of which you fought against so hard when we were drawing up the plans,” she told him. “If you’ve never truly understood how a library works before, you will by the time we get through with this tour.”

  Jeremy winked and gave Councilman Sparks a friendly nudge. “There’s no use fighting it, Councilman. You’re here on her territory. But don’t worry—it’s a good place to be.”

  A few minutes later, it was the glitzy teen room, however, that really had Councilman Sparks shaking his head with his mouth wide open. “This looks more like one of those rock and roll-era diners from the fifties with all these booths. Can these kids order food in here?”

  “It’s just the design theme we chose. We thought the kids would ‘really dig it,’ to borrow a phrase from the fifties. For the record, though, there is never any food or drink allowed in the library,” Maura Beth said, watching his facial expression with an amused satisfaction. “That’s always been a hard and fast rule, and if you’d ever come to the library enough, you’d know that. Of course, the exception we make is if a club is holding a meeting in one of the rooms. Like ‘Who’s Who in Cherico?’ or The Cherry Cola Book Club, for instance.”

  “Yeah, I knew you’d find a way to bring your pet project in somehow. You’re nothing if not predictable about that, Maura Beth.” He continued to survey the setup. “And there’s that big-screen TV over there hanging on the wall that you said was absolutely necessary to get these teenagers into reading. But if you don’t mind, I’d really like for you to explain to me again how that works. I really don’t get the connection at all.”

  “One more time, then. Listen closely. The goal is to get the teens into the library and make it the cool place to hang out after school with their friends. That’s the biggest hurdle to overcome. But once they start coming in with their laptops and tablets and smartphones and maybe checking out the DVDs, they might move on to books and actually like them. That’s the strategy, at least.”

  “If you say so. Still seems like a real expensive strategy to me.” He pointed to the framed movie posters on the wall. “You have all these films for the kids to check out? I thought video rental stores had gone out of style. There certainly aren’t any left in Cherico last time I looked.”

  “You’re correct about that. They are definitely passé. But I can assure you that libraries are not, and we can incorporate any technology we need to as part of our mission.”

  He began rattling off the titles. “Indiana Jones, E.T., Close Encounters, Star Wars—” He came to a dead halt. “What, may I ask, is Downtown Abbey? Pardon my English, but that sounds like the adventures of a streetwalker to me.”

  Maura Beth tried as hard as she could to hold back but was unable to suppress a giggle or two. “You really are something, you know that? Look more closely, Durden. That’s Down-TON Abbey. It’s a very proper and popular British series on the order of Upstairs, Downstairs.”

  “Never heard of either of ’em. Besides, I never was much on Brits mumbling incoherent things and calling it culture.”

  “Yes, well, maybe we’re stretching things a mite in putting copies in the teen room, but you never know what will actually trigger someone’s interest in exploring new ideas and new settings. Some high-schoolers need to be stimulated in a positive way. That’s what a good library should be about for everyone, actually. At any rate, I just want you to understand that you’re getting your money’s worth with everything we buy. After all, your name is on the building.”

  At last there was a sigh of resignation. “Okay, okay. I wave the white flag.” He shook her hand limply. “Here’s an imaginary olive branch. You’ve won me over ’til the end of time. I’m officially impressed.”

  Jeremy had the last word on the exchange. “I told you, Councilman. It’s useless to resist a librarian on a mission.”

  * * *

  Maura Beth had high hopes for this particular meeting of The Cherry Cola Book Club, coming as it did a couple of days before the Grand Opening of the new library. The truth was, there had been such incidents as family quarrels, walkouts, a heart attack, false labor pains, and a direct lightning strike to the roof in previous gatherings that had been all too disruptive, ending everything prematurely. When this evening was all over and done with, would she have stumbled onto something by allowing the members to rave about their favorite, outside-the-box novels instead of having everyone review the same dignified classic? Would it even be popular enough to become the new format out at the lake?

  Before the group could help themselves to the buffet table after everyone had arrived, however, Maura Beth took the floor to introduce her new staff members to the group. Miriam Goodcastle, the library’s first true children’s librarian, stepped to the podium first and said a few words about herself.

  “I was born in Natchez and got my library science degree at Southern Miss,” she began, making good eye contact with her audience. That was something Maura Beth had noticed on the job interview. The pleasant-looking young woman who wore her blond hair in pigtails—in deference to fairy tales or nursery rhymes, perhaps?—had no trouble looking her in the face that particular afternoon. In addition, her voice was very warm—even had a playful quality to it. That would be very appealing to children, who would be listening to her intently during her story hours. “I’m thrilled to say that this is my first job out of school, and I will always be grateful to Maura Beth McShay for giving me this opportunity. I look forward to getting to know all of you veteran Cherry Cola Book Club members better in the future . . . oh, and getting your children involved in the wonderful world of the library.”

  After polite applause, Agnes Braud, the tech services librarian, was next up. She was much older than Miriam with a bit of gray in her hair and the results of enjoying her favorite South Louisiana seafood dishes too much hugging her midriff. She, too, surveyed her audience with a smile and immediately put everyone at ease. “I’m from Lafayette, Louisiana, folks, but I was looking for a change of venue after my recent divorce. I have a sweet cousin over in Corinth who told me about the job opening, and I thought to myself, Why not start over completely, me? So, here I am, and it’ll be my responsibility to get your books on the shelves so you can check ’em out. I’ve been doing that down in Lafayette for over twenty years.”

  Standing nearby, Maura Beth felt herself doing a mental backflip. “And let me just say that Agnes will be truly lightening my workload. I’ve been missing someone like her ever since I arrived in Cherico seven years ago and fresh out of library school just like Miriam.”

  Helen Porter was the final introduction as the library’s third front desk clerk and general assistant, complementing Renette Posey and Marydell Crumpton. A very tall, slim, twenty-something whom Maura Beth had found through a Mississippi Library Commission lead, Helen revealed little more than that she was originally from Ackerman “down the road a bit” and was looking forward to “serving the public.”

  “And I know she’ll do it well,” Maura Beth added just as Helen stepped down to perfunctory applause. Then Maura Beth uttered the words everyone with their growling stomachs had been eagerly waiting to hear. “So, shall we attack the potluck buffet table, folks?”

  No one had to be told twice, and soon they were lined up with their plates ready to choose among layered salad, pulled pork with barbecue sauce on the side, sliced ham—everybody’s standby—tuna noodle casserole, green beans amandine, cheese grits, sweet potato fries, dill potato salad, biscuits, jalapeño cornbread, slices of watermelon, fruit salad, pecan pie
à la mode, several different layer cakes, brownies, macadamia nut and chocolate chip cookies, with sweet tea and fruit punch to wash it all down. Here and there, the club may have missed the mark with its book critiques, but it never faltered where the food was concerned. Tonight was no exception, and a good half hour passed before everyone had had their fill.

  Then the real business of The Cherry Cola Book Club began on this free-for-all night. Voncille Nettles Linwood took the podium first and began delivering a paean to Dennis Patrick’s Auntie Mame, insisting that she had always seen something of herself in that madcap woman of means.

  “. . . and there was always a part of me that wanted to travel the world, give the most outlandish parties, hobnob with the most eccentric people, color my hair a different shade every year, and wear the most outlandish fashions that Paris could offer every season,” she was saying. “I had no idea where I would get the money to do all that on a schoolteacher’s salary, but I didn’t worry about it too much. As things turned out—especially after my fiancé went MIA in Vietnam—I just retreated from that adventurous side of me and settled for safe, which meant teaching history in high school until retirement. It was a dependable living, but, alas, I never left the city limits of Cherico. That’s just about as un-Auntie Mame-like as you can get.”

  “We’ll make up for it, since money’s no object now,” her husband of less than a year, Locke Linwood, said with great animation. “You’ll put Auntie Mame to shame by the time we’ve finished our travels together. I’m quite sure you won’t suffer by comparison.”

  Maura Beth giggled softly from her seat on the front row. “Will we ever see the two of you again?”

  “We’ll send postcards from all over,” Locke said with a wink and a nod of his snowy-white head of hair.

  “Locke and I plan to visit every continent before we’re through. Just like Auntie Mame and Beauregard Burnside did. In fact, we’ve already planned our first trip. We’re going down under to Australia and New Zealand in the fall.”