“Okay,” Sonia said, clapping her hands together once, “thank you for providing context, but I would like to get back to discussing you.”
“I wouldn’t,” I replied.
Sonia ignored me and instead pronounced, “So, since the book at the center of all this drama is Jane Eyre, we will break it all down in Jane Eyre terms.”
“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Relax. This is very straightforward.”
“You’ve read Jane Eyre?” I asked, still confused.
“Jamie, they were teaching Jane Eyre in eighth grade back when I was a kid in the middle school. I grew up here, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” I made a duh face, which reminded me of Vic. Vic would really like Sonia, I realized.
“I’ve also spent the bulk of my life in a library. I’ve read pretty much everything.”
“Bragger,” I teased.
“Now try to follow me,” Sonia ordered, and then she zoomed ahead. “The school sees it that Trina is Jane, the honest, dignified heroine who does the right thing, Trey is Mr. Rochester, the innocent victim who had no idea what was coming his way, and you are Bertha, the nightmare in the attic who causes all the trouble.”
“I’m Bertha?” I asked, my voice flat. “Didn’t you say you wanted to help me feel better about all this?”
“Of course.”
“I can’t feel better if I’m Bertha.”
“You can’t feel better because you already see yourself as Bertha—you didn’t need me to say it.”
I sat with that for a minute. She was probably right. I had been punishing myself all summer long, hiding at home when I wasn’t working at the library, living like a nocturnal animal. I hadn’t had a sleepover at Aunt Julie’s house once since school ended, and I wasn’t even writing Vic letters the way I promised I would.
It was getting old. In fact, it was way past old.
I cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t want to be Bertha anymore,” I said, and I really meant it.
“Glad to hear it, because Bertha has serious medical issues and was the victim of other people’s cruel choices and can’t help herself, but you can. You are not Bertha. If you are anyone in that book, you are Jane.”
“Oh no,” I protested. “I don’t think I’m Jane.”
“You could be Jane,” Sonia assured me. “Trina doesn’t get to be Jane. In fact, she doesn’t get to be in your story at all.”
“Oh, she’s in it,” I muttered. My eyes started to well immediately, just at the memory.
“Oh no, mami. That bad?”
I nodded yes and told her about Trina posting my apology letter to Trey on a public Instagram account opened just for middle school drama. It was quickly shut down, of course, but not in time to stop a gazillion people from taking screenshots of the letter and sharing it over and over.
Sonia said something in Spanish then that she refused to translate for me.
“And that wasn’t even enough for her.” I swallowed down the lump forming in the back of my throat. “A week after the whole thing, I went to my locker to pack up and when I opened it all these trays, these plastic trays from the lunchroom, came crashing out at me.”
Sonia’s eyes pinched and little lines formed above her perfect eyebrows.
“And then soda cans came rolling out also, cans of Crush soda, and some of them split when they hit the floor and the orange soda went spurting everywhere and I was soaked and everyone in the hallway was dying laughing at me.”
“Trays for Trey, and orange Crush soda for your crush on him.” Sonia processed it out loud slowly. “You gotta give her credit for creativity.” She shook her head in disbelief.
“And then there were the bathroom stalls.”
“Go on,” Sonia urged.
“Vic told me there was graffiti about me in two stalls in the bathroom on the third floor. She tried to erase it, but it was in permanent marker and she couldn’t get it off.”
After Vic told me, it took me two days to build up the nerve to look, but once I did, I found it easily in the first stall, in neatly written black Sharpie: Worried about exams? Need a tutor cheater? Call Jamie Bunn.
The second stall said, in brown marker: Feel CONNECTED to someone who DOESN’T like you back? Join the Jamie Bunn club!
I could still see my name on the wall, glaring at me.
“Okay, this Trina is a real piece of work.” Sonia reached over and hugged me tight to her. I breathed in her sweet smell, a mix of books and coffee and lip gloss.
“But she won’t always be like that, you know,” Sonia said, very matter-of-factly. “It won’t last.”
“Like the pet snake thing?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“You don’t know Trina. It might last.”
“Maybe you don’t know Trina, either.”
I looked at the floor and admitted to myself that it was true—I didn’t really know Trina. But it was because she was too mean to get to know. She scared me.
“So let’s just focus on Trey now,” Sonia advised. “He’s the Mr. Rochester in your story.”
I considered it, but then had to admit, “I don’t think Trey is like Mr. Rochester.”
“Is Trey moody? Or hot-tempered? Or hiding his wife in his attic?”
“No, no, and definitely no.”
“Is Trey someone you can’t get out of your mind, no matter how hard you try?”
I paused.
Then I told the truth. “Yes.”
“Then he is Mr. Rochester. Don’t argue.” Sonia sat up straight and tall, looking very pleased with her analysis, and sipped more of her coffee.
“So that means I’m going to end up with Trey and live happily ever after with him, just like Jane does with Mr. Rochester.”
“No.” Sonia shot me down without a blink, disapproval in her voice. “It means you will live happily ever after with yourself, which is all that matters. Learn from your mistakes and live the life you believe in. The boy in the story is just a side note.”
“The boy in the Jane Eyre story or the boy in my story?” I asked, getting confused.
“Both. Neither. It doesn’t matter.” She waved her hands in front of her as if smacking away gnats. “The story is about you. You made a mistake. You served your time. Now move on. Turn the page.”
I took a deep breath and let this sink in.
Sonia waited, watching me.
“Anyway, that’s what I did, and look at me now.” She hopped off her chair and shook off her serious vibe like a dog shaking water off its fur. Then she struck a pose like one of those gorgeous marble statues from the sculpture books in the 730s.
I looked at Sonia’s pose, how confident she seemed, and thought about what she was saying. I realized that my mom had done exactly what Sonia was telling me to do. She recognized the mistake she made with my dad, so she folded her hand and then she fixed it. She started over and built herself the life she wanted. I guessed my dad was her rite of passage mistake. And when my mom curled up in my bed with me, two weeks after her meeting with Mrs. Shupe, and told me, “You played cards you didn’t have and you lost. I know it hurts, but that’s how you learn. In fact, that might be the very best way to learn,” I knew she forgave me the same way she had forgiven herself, years ago, for my dad.
My mom had turned the page.
So had Sonia.
I could, too.
“Sonia?” I said quietly.
She dropped her pose and looked at me, warmth radiating off her. “Yes, Jamie?” She took my hand in hers. I felt a surge of strength rush from her skin to mine.
I squeezed her hand gently. “Thanks for being my compass.”
“You’re very welcome, mami.” Sonia gave my hand a slow, tender squeeze back and then let go.
Beverly
Later that afternoon, I knocked on Beverly’s office door with my free hand.
“Yes? Come in.”
She was sitting at her desk, a pencil in her hand and
another tucked behind her ear. She was working through a huge stack of papers. She hadn’t emerged in almost two hours, which was unheard-of for Beverly. I was used to her making constant rounds, checking on everything and everyone throughout the building.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Lenny wanted me to bring you this.” I was delivering another homemade treat. This time they were muffins, three on a biodegradable paper plate. The nest cookies had been a huge hit—Sonia loved them—which inspired Lenny to experiment even more. These muffins were made with zucchini and carrot and beet and sweet potato, which sounded suspicious, but somehow worked really well. The brown-sugar crumb topping he decided to add last minute was a smart choice. I told him that.
“Oh, how lovely,” Beverly said. She took the plate from me and said, “Why don’t you take a seat and have one with me? I could use the break.”
“Sure,” I agreed, and sat in the chair on the other side of her desk.
Beverly pulled a tissue from the box on her desk and placed a muffin on it, then slid the plate toward me so I could choose my own. She examined her muffin, squinting as she studied it, inspecting it like it was a rare specimen retrieved from another planet. Still peering at the muffin before her, she asked, “Have you had one yet?”
The way she said it, and the way she was staring it down, I couldn’t help it—I laughed.
Loud.
Beverly looked at me in surprise, then broke into a big smile herself. “Well,” she said. Her shoulders dropped, and the wrinkles around her eyes smoothed out a bit as she relaxed. “You can’t blame me for asking.”
“Actually,” I told her, “they’re really good.”
“Really?”
“I say they’re tied with last week’s lumpy chocolate oatmeal cookies, and those were great, remember?” All of a sudden, it felt like I was talking to Vic at the lunch table, not my fiftysomething-year-old boss at the library.
Beverly started to peel the wrapper off her muffin. “Lenny really has taught himself to be quite the baker. I don’t know where he finds the time.”
I started in on my muffin, even though I had just eaten one downstairs with Lenny before coming to Beverly’s office. Who would have ever thought I would meet my daily vegetable requirements by eating muffins?
“That looks fun,” I said, gesturing to the stack of papers full of dense black print on Beverly’s desk.
“Oh, yes, well.” Beverly glanced at the stack with a sad look on her face. “Policy and regulations and financing.”
“Sorry, that sounds awful,” I admitted.
“It kind of is. But I need to review it all. I have a meeting later today with library directors from two other towns who also had to fight to keep their libraries open. And they won, so hopefully they’ll be able to help us.” She stopped then to gather her thoughts, her gaze locked on her muffin. She pinched a piece of crumb topping between two fingers.
“People here are already mad about us being closed on weekends—I’ve heard them complain,” I said. “Imagine how mad they’ll be if we close completely?”
“Yes, as they should be. It was bad enough when they limited our hours. But this new mayor, Trippley, he never said anything about cutting the library when he was campaigning for office. And now, all of a sudden, it’s one of his main goals.”
“Sonia doesn’t like him,” I said.
Beverly smiled at that. “Well, Sonia loves her library, and I do, too, and it’s my job to take care of it. I’ve been through this before, you know, when I lived in Ohio. I was the director there for six years before the library closed. It was devastating. We all lost our jobs and the town lost its community center. I don’t want to see that happen again.” She gazed out the window for a short moment, then came back, waved a hand at the stack of papers on her desk, and said, “So, I’m not going to let it happen again.”
The fight in Beverly’s voice gave me hope.
She smiled at me and took a bite of her muffin. I was already half-finished with mine.
“Lenny suggested setting up a small café corner in the library, where he could sell his baked goods and we could set up a coffee station, to raise money,” Beverly said.
“That sounds great.”
“Well, possibly.” She tapped the stack of papers. “Everything has its rules and regulations, so that’s another project to research. But I’m working on it. For Lenny.”
“So there’s a lot more to running a library than people know,” I admitted. “It’s not just about the books and movies and magazines.”
“No. I wish it were,” Beverly said.
“Because that’s the fun part. The books and the movies. And the organizing. I had so much fun when Sonia let me check in books the other day. It reminded me of playing house with my friend Vic when we were little.”
Beverly smiled and listened to me ramble on while she chewed.
“We would play house and we were the adults, so we called all the shots, and that feeling, you know, of being grown up and in charge was so great, like we were so important and special. And when I started checking in the books at the circ desk, I felt that exact same way again, at least for a few minutes.”
I could see my reflection in the glassy lenses of Beverly’s eyes and wondered if she could see herself in mine.
She brushed her crumbs into a small pile with her fingertips, slowly, like brushing sand off a fossil. Her hands were small and delicate, the skin so milky pale they almost had a glow to them.
Then she said, “I know exactly what you mean. I used to play library with my little sister. She would push our tea table up to her bedroom door and set her books in perfect rows on it. She’d ring a bell to announce that the library was open. She was always the librarian and I was always the patron. I had to browse the books, even though I knew them all inside and out. Then I would hand her three to check out—she only allowed me three at a time. That was a very strict rule.” Beverly paused here to sigh and smile a half smile. “She loved her rules.”
I smiled, and Beverly continued, “She put index cards in the back of each book and had a rubber stamp, but no ink—my mom was fussy and wouldn’t allow ink—and she would fake-stamp each book and then make me sign a ‘promise to return’ sheet. She was very organized, very systematic about the procedure. She loved the precision, the order, the share-and-return aspect of it. It was her favorite game in the whole world. Even back then, she said she was going to be a librarian when she grew up. And she meant it.” Beverly leaned forward on her desk toward me and nodded. “I’m sure playing library brought her that same feeling, of being grown up and important and in charge. That’s an important feeling when you’re little.”
“I never thought of playing library,” I admitted. “Just house and supermarket. Oh, and shoe store! Shoe store was really fun. But I never did library.” I was making up for it by working in a real library now, though, which had to be just as good. Or even better.
Beverly nodded at me and said, in a distant voice, “My sister would only play library.”
“And now you’re a librarian for real. See how that worked out?” I loved how much sense that made. “Is your sister a librarian now, too?” I asked.
And just like that, the color drained from Beverly’s face and her torso stiffened.
“Is something—” I started to ask, but a loud knock on the door interrupted me.
Lenny poked his head in. “I just wanted to see what you thought of my— Oh God.” He stopped once he saw the look on Beverly’s face. “They’re not that bad, are they?”
Beverly startled, looked perplexed for a quick second, then recovered.
“No, no,” she said.
“Are you okay?” Lenny asked.
“Yes. And the muffins—they’re delicious, Lenny,” she said, nodding first at the crumb-covered tissue before her and then at him. “Very delicious.”
Lenny relaxed into his regular easygoing self again. “Thank you. So, you think people would pay for them?” he asked, excitement
blooming in his voice.
“I would,” Beverly answered, smiling and nodding more. Her shoulders softened.
“I would, too,” I answered.
“Great! There are more down in the kitchen, so please help yourself.” And he disappeared out of the doorway.
I looked at Beverly, hoping to finish our conversation, but before I could say a word, Lenny popped his head back in.
“On second thought,” he said, “you might want to go easy on them. They kind of wreak havoc on your gut if you eat too many at a time.” Lenny put a hand across his stomach to illustrate his point. “There’s a lot of fiber in those babies.” He gave us a thumbs-up sign, and then said, “All right. Thanks.” And he popped out again.
Beverly and I looked at each other.
“I only had one,” Beverly volunteered, relief flooding her face.
“I had two. I’m done,” I stated, pushing the plate with the remaining muffin away from my side of the desk.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Beverly reassured me.
“Two isn’t too much?” I asked nervously.
“Two is perfect,” she said, reaching for her locket and sliding it along its chain before dropping it back beneath her shirt. Then she clapped her hands together and announced, “Snack time’s over! Back to work now for both of us.”
I cleaned up my crumbs and headed back to the circ desk. And so far my stomach felt fine.
Black Hat Guy
The next day at 4:05 Black Hat Guy swung into the library, sort of bouncing in a way I’d never seen him do before. He quickly claimed his quotes chair, leaning his backpack against the leg and plugging his phone cord into the usual outlet under the window. He left the phone on the seat of the chair, resting like a cat in the sun, and walked over to the circulation desk. I watched from my spot by the magazines, where I was putting issues in chronological order.
“Hey, how you doing, man?” Lenny greeted him, reaching over the counter to shake Black Hat Guy’s hand. Sonia was downstairs, refilling her coffee.
“All right, man, all right,” Black Hat Guy answered, his neck straightening up out of his sweatshirt collar like a turtle stretching out of its shell.
A Kind of Paradise Page 11