“My grandmother died a month ago.”
“Is there a question coming?”
God, this man is a dick. “Do you have a key? Have you been watering the plants?”
He looks away and takes a drag from his cigarette, letting the smoke drift out of his nose. He holds the cigarette between his thumb and first finger, cupped in his hand like a tough guy in the movies.
“Nope,” he finally replies.
“No you don’t have a key, or no you didn’t water the plants?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? So does that mean you did or—”
“So then, no. Whatever. I don’t have a key and I didn’t do jack.”
I’d feel better if he’d look at me; it’s hard to read a lie in profile. “Okay,” I tell him. “Well . . . thanks.”
“Anytime.” And with that he walks away. At the door, he glances back at me and then his gaze moves upward and for an instant he focuses on something above my head. When he disappears inside, I turn to see what he was looking at. It’s the window of the room I slept in last night.
My grandmother’s bathroom is clean but cramped, the showerhead over the tub so low I have to crouch to get my head wet. There’s a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner, both formulated for thinning gray hair. Great.
I’m sitting on my mother’s bed, toweling dry my presumably thicker and less gray hair when my phone rings. It’s not a number I recognize, but I like to think that I’ve learned something about the foolishness of ignoring calls, so I pick it up and say, “Hello?”
“Good morning.” It’s Luke; I recognize the voice. “It’s Luke,” he adds unnecessarily.
“Howdy,” I reply.
There’s a pause during which I think he’s trying to decide if I’m giving him a cowboy-flavored hello, or if I’m back to the name-calling. In the end he lets it slide.
“I’ve got good news,” he tells me, pausing for effect.
And just like that, I realize I have no idea what good news means to me now. Sitting in Luke’s office yesterday morning, good news would have meant a big fat check, but that’s not true anymore. I feel an echo of last night’s longing, and I look over at the photos pinned on the wall, all those smiling faces, every single one a stranger. Even my mother. I can’t leave yet.
“I’ve found you a job,” Luke tells me.
I take a deep breath. I still don’t completely understand my feeling of relief, but it’s genuine.
“It’s at the library.” He’s pleased with himself; I can hear the smile in his voice.
“Uh . . .” is all I say. I’m trying to picture me working in a library.
“I hope that’s okay,” he adds.
“I don’t have much experience with libraries.” This is an understatement.
“You can read, can’t you?”
“Of course I can read. I can also drive a car, but that doesn’t mean that I should work in a garage.”
“You’ll do fine,” he announces. “You start this morning. Need a ride?”
The answer to that is yes, but what I actually say is “Gosh, I hate to cause you more trouble . . .” I am so coy.
“The library is just a couple blocks from my office. No big deal.”
Excellent. I’ll be within walking distance of my lunch date with Father Barnes. I thank Luke profusely and take him up on his offer for a ride.
I slap on a little makeup and finish scrunching my wild mop of hair into the closest thing to a hairstyle I can achieve without hair gel or a blow dryer, neither of which I have. The fact is, getting ready by eight forty-five sounded like plenty of time until I remembered that I only have one sixth of my belongings with me, and that small fraction is still wadded up in a trash bag.
Last night I hauled the bag upstairs and shoved it in a corner of my grandmother’s room. Unfortunately, even as I stand here surveying the lump of black plastic, I know that I could dig through it all day and still not find anything remotely librariany. Even the bags still in my car don’t have what I need. I’m a low-rent photographer, for Christ’s sake, I don’t own anything except old jeans, tight black pants, funky T-shirts, skimpy club-wear, and one tatty old skirt for situations that absolutely require one. Nary a tweed to be found.
In my grandmother’s closet, however, I find an ocean of wooly tweed. Perfect. The trousers won’t work, they’re way too short, but the skirts fit pretty well, although I suspect a fair amount shorter and tighter than Granny wore them. And a white blouse, the too-short sleeves rolled up, looks fine. It pulls a little across the chest, but I’m not in skank territory.
Her shoes are too small, so I tear through the bag of my stuff until I find a pair of pumps. In the full-length mirror, I analyze the finished product. Kicking aside the pile of clothing and plastic with my four-inch black patent stilettos, I cock a hip, and open another button on the blouse. Not bad. I’ve managed to achieve a reasonably arresting librarian-on-the-skids look.
Just as I step outside and lock the door, Luke pulls up. He grins appreciatively when I sashay down the walk, but is too much of a gentleman to stare as I climb into the car, struggling to keep my too-tight, too-short skirt from showing him the goodies.
Once I get settled and belted he turns to me and says, “You look nice.”
“Thank you.”
“Your hair looks good. What did you do to it?”
“I washed it,” I say.
“Ah . . .” He frowns and chews his lower lip, his face turning an impressive shade of pink. I turn away to hide my smile.
When we get to the T-intersection at the base of the hill, I say, “Help me get my bearings.” I point to the direction I took yesterday to get to the pawnshop. “To the right is toward downtown?”
“Correct.”
“And to the left?”
“To a four-lane loop that goes around this side of Gandy. It’s usually faster than driving through town, but it’s all strip malls and car dealerships. I like to drive through town where you can see stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Normal stuff.”
At the intersection stop sign Luke comes to a complete stop and then looks both ways. Unexceptional behavior, I know, but after the ride with JJ yesterday, I vow to never take it for granted again.
I point at the copse of trees straight ahead where I think I can see part of a paved trail. “And that?”
“The park.”
We turn right, toward downtown. He continues, “It’s wooded on this end, but further along it opens up. There are trails that go under a couple of streets. The whole thing winds along the creek almost all the way downtown.”
“I bet it’s a great place to walk.”
“You’re probably right,” he replies, accelerating with his hand control.
Shit. Now it’s my turn to blush.
“So . . .” I change the subject. “How did you manage to get me a job?”
“The head librarian is sort of my aunt.”
“Sort of?”
“Well, I call her Aunt Fritter, but she’s not my aunt. She and my mom have the same great-great-great-grandparents. What would that make her?”
“I have no idea.”
He slows and waits for a man walking his dog to cross the street. “Anyway, she was a friend of your grandmother’s, so I called and explained your situation. She was . . . um . . . happy to help.”
I take note of the pause in the middle of that last sentence, but I don’t ask for any details. I’ll meet Aunt Fritter soon enough.
We ride in silence for a while, and I notice that Luke is right, coming this way I do see stuff. A lady in a jogging suit pushes a stroller, an elderly man leans over to pick up his newspaper, a rope swing hangs from the limb of a huge tree. It’s all nice stuff, but it’s not normal stuff. I don’t see any cars on blocks, or old ladies walking to the store, dragging a saggy-diapered grandchild behind them. There are no tough kids in hoodies, hands deep in their pockets, eyes narrowed, watching for som
eone’s carelessness to exploit.
“Hey, I was wondering . . . who has keys to my grandmother’s house?”
He frowns and shakes his head. “I’m not sure. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” I reply. “There are a couple plants inside that look pretty healthy. Somebody has been watering them.”
“I’ll ask when I get to the office.”
“Thanks.”
I don’t much like the idea of keys floating around, but I’m careful to keep my tone casual. I’m probably not the only person who’s noticed that most overly suspicious people are themselves untrustworthy, and I don’t want Luke reconsidering his decision to let me stay at the house.
Eventually the residential area gives way to businesses, and as we approach a stately redbrick building with the words Public Library engraved in a pseudo-Latin script above the door, Luke slows the car. We’re here.
“Before you go in . . .” He puts the car in park and turns to face me. “Fritter is pretty scrappy, but she’s getting old. She overestimates her stamina.”
I’m not sure where he’s going with this. I hadn’t planned to challenge the woman to a foot race.
“She’s got a niece staying with her, or actually I think probably a great-niece. Anyway a niece—”
“Sort of.”
He grins. “Exactly. Anyway, every summer Fritter tries to rehabilitate one of the family’s teenagers. Her summer project, we all call it. I don’t know if she watched Boy’s Town one too many times or what, but she seems to think she can cure what ails today’s youth.”
“Tall order.”
“You have no idea,” he says, but he’s wrong. Queeg tried the same thing with me—still trying, come to think of it.
“Anyway,” Luke continues, “from the looks of this year’s project, I’m afraid she may be more than Fritter can handle. I was hoping you could maybe help her out with that.”
“You don’t think the niece will be more than I can handle?”
He laughs softly. “I get the feeling that you can handle just about anything.”
Hmmm. While I appreciate his vote of confidence, nothing could be further from the truth. I look up at the white columns and take a deep breath. I’m actually feeling pretty nervous about this gig.
“Well . . .” He sneaks a glance at his watch.
I take the hint and climb out of the car only slightly more gracefully than I got in. “Thanks again,” I say.
He must sense my worry, because when I reach in to get my purse, he grabs my hand and says. “Mattie, everything’s going to be okay.”
“Dewey Decimal isn’t going to know what hit him,” I reply.
He laughs. “That’s my girl.”
I shut the car door and walk up the wide, shallow steps. Before I open the door I glance back and lift a hand to wave, but Luke is already gone. Oh well. I’m sure Howdy is a nice enough guy, but he doesn’t know a thing about me. I’m nobody’s girl. And it’s much too late for everything to be okay.
CHAPTER 16
I’d always assumed that a job in a library would, if nothing else, at least smell better than a job at a fast-food restaurant, but it seems I was mistaken. Inside I find the expected odor of musty books, but beneath that there is a faint, disconcertingly fecal odor.
There’s a little girl slouched at a desk straight ahead, and five dumpy middle-aged men—the Gandy intelligentsia, I’m sure—sitting at a bank of computers on my right. When the heavy door thumps closed behind me, the computer users lift their gazes, momentarily disregarding whatever research they had just been engaged in—googling the success rate of penile-enlargement surgery, watching YouTube videos of women crushing beer cans with their breasts, hunting for an extra-large camo thong for the little woman’s birthday.
As my high heels clackity-clack on the marble floor, the girl behind the desk straightens, watching me approach. At first glance, with her close-cropped black hair, pale freckled face, and tiny birdlike frame, she’d looked to be about ten years old, but when I get to the desk I reassess my estimate. The surly expression, black lipstick, and the metal rings and studs protruding from her lips, nose, and eyebrow surely puts her age closer to sixteen or seventeen. She’s got one hand flat on the desk in front of her, palm facing up. In the other she’s holding a red Sharpie. This explains the how of the red pentagram on the girl’s palm, but not the why.
“Hello,” I say, and we both flinch at the echo my greeting sets up in the high-ceilinged room. I drop my voice to a whisper. “I’m here to see . . .” At this point I realize that Luke didn’t tell me Aunt Fritter’s last name, and for all I know Fritter could be just an affectionate food nickname given to her by her family, like Pumpkin or Dumplin’.
Satan’s pixie is giving me a doubtful look by the time I finally ask for, “The person in charge.”
“No soliciting,” she says.
“I’m not selling anything. I’m here about a job.”
“We’re not hiring.” She turns and walks to a stack of books on the cabinet behind her.
“Excuse me,” I say in a stage whisper. There is no response from Goth-girl, so I increase my volume just a teensy bit for the next one. “Excuse me . . .”
At this, she spins around with a “Shhh!” that’s much louder than my voice had been, then turns back to her stack of books.
I’ve had enough. “Listen, Morticia, your aunt Fritter is expecting me.”
She lets out an enormous sigh and turns back around. “Great-great-aunt,” she tells me.
“I’m sure she’s spectacular.”
“No, I mean that she’s not really my regular aunt, she’s—”
“I know what you meant. Can I please talk to her?”
“Whatever.” She steps out from behind the desk and shuffles to a flight of stairs.
I follow her up the steps, amazed that her tiny hips can support the baggy black jeans that hang from them and drag the ground, puddling over her flip-flops. As if to make up for the largeness of the pants her black T-shirt looks several sizes too small. I would suspect that it was a child’s size except I’ve never seen anything in the children’s department stenciled with a bloody skull complete with maggots in the eye sockets. If this is the employee dress code I am way, way overdressed.
We stop in front of a door; the girl raps her knuckles three times, pushes the door open, then without a word shuffles back to the stairs.
I was expecting an office, but instead it’s a room with bookshelves along two walls and a table in the center. A small, plump, gray-haired woman bends over the table holding a partially deconstructed book.
She looks up as I enter and lifts a gloved hand to push away the strands of hair that have escaped her bun. For a few seconds she stares at me, seeming to take my measure, and then she nods. “I’m fixing a spine. Come make yourself useful.”
Under her instructions I hold the cover up as she paints glue on two tabs sticking out of a white strip of some kind of cloth tape. She uses a ruler to press everything together, slides waxed paper on either side of the glued area and then wraps a couple of rubber bands around the book and we’re done.
“Thank you for that,” the woman says. “I’m Fritter Jackson. And you are . . .”
“Mattie Wallace.” I hold out my hand. “Your nephew told me—”
“You’re Genie’s girl,” she replies, stripping off her gloves and shaking my outstretched hand. “Luke and I discussed you, but he didn’t tell me your name was Matilda.”
“Probably because I don’t go by—”
“Luke is not my nephew, by the way. Most people would hardly consider us related. He’s my fourth cousin twice removed.”
“Okay,” I say. She’s looking at me like she expects a more elaborate reply, so I add, “I’ve never understood all the numbered cousins and the removed stuff.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It’s not very difficult.”
Yikes.
The old woman opens a filing cabinet, pull
s out a sheet of paper, marks on it, and then hands it to me with a pen. It’s a standard employment application, but she has put an X next to the questions she wants me to answer which are: my name, my social security number, and my birthdate.
“I’ll be paying you off the books. The social is just for me to keep in case there’s any criminal activity. I already know your local address,” she says. “And I suspect that your qualifications are none.”
It’s pretty obvious that she’s feeling a little employer’s remorse. “Listen, don’t feel like you have to hire me—”
“Fill in these blanks and sign it, please.”
I finish with the form and hand it over. She glances at it and then quickly looks back up at me. I get the feeling it was my birth date she was most interested in seeing. I’m starting to wonder if I need to wear a sign that says No, I am not the reason my mother left town.
Fritter spends a few minutes explaining my duties, which seem to be limited to reshelving books and light cleaning. I ask about the hourly pay and she quotes a discouragingly low number, and then she explains my schedule: nine to five with thirty minutes for lunch. When I mention my lunch date today with Father Barnes, she frowns.
“While I do appreciate the impulse to seek out a church home . . .”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what I have in mind, but I nod anyway. Seeking out a church home sounds more respectable than seeking out sexy man-flesh.
“You must take your duties at the library seriously,” she continues. “I’m hiring you as a favor for someone important to me.”
“My grandmother, right?”
Fritter doesn’t reply to that. Instead she studies me for a few seconds and then says, “You favor your grandmother. She never looked much like a Matilda and neither do you.”
I don’t know what she thinks a Matilda looks like, but I’ve always thought that I look a little like Gene Wilder, except with longer hair and a vagina.
Suddenly, I’m worried that this old lady is waiting for me to reciprocate and tell her she doesn’t look like a Fritter. The only problem is, with her rounded, compact build and tanned, wrinkled flesh she actually does look a little bit like a fritter. Or a tater tot.
The Art of Crash Landing Page 10