The Lending Library

by Fogelson, Aliza

  In New York, my dreams of becoming an artist had just been crushed when my first gallery show was savaged by the press. I’d had my heart broken by my boyfriend, Daniel. As a star fashion designer, he had introduced me to life in the fast lane, but it had felt like a beautiful dress that never quite fit. Now I was in this place that was green and slower—in exactly the right way—and full of friendly people. I felt like I was losing something when I left Chatsworth, some part of myself that had been squished down for a long time. I went back to my life in the city, but I kept visiting and imagining what it might be like to live there. When Sullivan told me three years later that the elementary school art teacher was moving back home to California to help her elderly mother—right as I was finishing my art education degree—I saw it as fate. I intuitively knew that watching kids discover their own talent and creating things would be much more satisfying to me than a good art review would have been.

  Two months into my first year of teaching, I knew teachers were not supposed to favor one kid over another. And I would never in a million years let on to anyone that I had a favorite. But was it any secret that sometimes there was a student that a teacher wanted to look out for? Maybe one that needed a little more care? Because they had selfish jerkface parents who didn’t encourage their talents, who made their kid feel like an inconvenience, who continually forgot to pick their kid up from school so that their kid was left waiting, feeling miserable and abandoned, with whatever teacher happened to be nearby until one of the parents got his or her act together, left his or her manicure/trainer appointment, and got his or her selfish jerkface to the school to take home his or her excellent, smart, sweet kid? Hypothetically speaking.

  “Thanks, Elmira,” I said as my student passed me some books. “How’s Ms. Granger’s class?” Elmira Pelle had taken to helping me put supplies away sometimes after our art class. I liked having lots of art and picture books around for the kids to inspire them.

  “Awesome.” Elmira grinned. “We’re reading Anne of Green Gables.”

  “Really? Isn’t that a middle school book?” Elmira was in the fourth grade.

  “Yeah. Well, I’m reading Anne of Green Gables,” she admitted.

  “That’s fantastic. You have a lot to be proud of, you know that?”

  “My mom thinks my grades should be better.”

  I tried to breathe slowly through my nose. Elmira got all As. Maybe a few A minuses. But no Bs. Cool it, Dodie, I thought.

  “Does she ever help you with your homework?” I asked, keeping judgment out of my tone.

  “No, I never ask. She’s got her hands full with my baby brother, Teddie. She said I’m old enough to take care of myself.”

  Um . . . what? “Did she and your dad enjoy the fall choir concert?”

  Elmira had been fabulous. Before her solo, she had looked like she was going to keel over with stage fright, but when she got to the mic, her clear, high voice rang out, and all our jaws dropped.

  “They didn’t make it,” she murmured.

  I hadn’t seen the Pelles, but it seemed inconceivable that they had missed it. Elmira had one of the only solos.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured back.

  Her brow knit. “It was weird. They said they were going to come, and they got a babysitter for my brother, but I looked for them and they weren’t there. My dad didn’t have a chance to work out last week, and that was his only night to do it. And my mom had to get her nails done while the babysitter was watching Teddie.”

  Breathe, Dodie, breathe, I thought. But it was too late . . . I felt like an anemone at the bottom of the ocean. I could see the light of reason up above, and I couldn’t do any of the cruel and unusual things I was envisioning inflicting on Elmira’s parents. I tried to imagine being a calm, serene, yet colorful anemone. It didn’t work. I was still pissed off.

  The truth was Elmira’s situation struck a little too close to home. Her artistic talent and love of books were not the only things that reminded me of myself. My father had run out on my mom and my sisters and me when I was four. But I had ended up with two loving parents throughout most of my childhood, thank heaven. My amazing mother had always been there for us, even before my stepfather came along. I wished I could spare Elmira the pain I’d felt each time my biological father, now known as Not Dad, had missed the important occasions in my life—birthdays, my bat mitzvah, graduations . . .

  I handed her a stack of books. “You were fabulous. You’re not only a good artist but also a good singer. And a good shelver.”

  As she turned to place more books on the shelves, I thought I noticed her quickly sniffing one, and the hint of a smile returned to her face.

  Anoop startled me when he rang the doorbell the next afternoon soon after I got home from school. He was such a nice postman, and he never seemed to mind coming up the stairs to bring me my mail instead of putting it in my mailbox like he did for everyone else.

  My students had been wild all day, and thinking about Elmira was getting under my skin. I hoped Anoop wasn’t going to cap things off by delivering me bad news like a jury duty summons. I was annoyed, but I slapped a smile on my face anyway. “Hi, Anoop.”

  “Hi, Ms. Fairisle.” He held a postcard out to me, shifting his weight back and forth. I guessed new folks in town were quite a curiosity.

  For the hundredth time, I said, “Please, no need to call me Ms. Fairisle. Call me Dodie.”

  Anoop just touched his ocean-colored Winslow Homer cap and said, “Good day, Ms. Fairisle.”

  “Thanks for the mail.”

  It was exactly the opposite of what I had feared—and what I’d been hoping for: a postcard from my younger sister, Coco! She always drew these amazing little sketches on the front. In this one, she was staring at her arm as if waiting for something.

  Greetings from northern Sudan! Today Mark and I put the final brick into the schoolhouse. It was super hot, so when we were done, we took a delightful swim. Before we got in, they warned us about guinea worm. Ever heard of it? Let’s just say I tried to keep my mouth closed so I didn’t swallow any water during my swim. If I did, a year from now, a 3-foot-long worm might emerge through my skin. I’m already on the lookout. Bisous! Coco

  Mark had come into a ton of money when his aunt Rose passed away, and he and Coco decided to spend the year after their wedding traveling to developing countries to do humanitarian work. Mark had trained as an engineer, so he knew how to build houses and schools. Coco used her skills as a nurse to treat patients and educate the townspeople about basic medical care.

  I missed her so much. She and our older sister, Maddie, were two of my best friends in the world. Chatsworth was a couple hours away from New York City, where Maddie still lived. Both of us were a little less than three hours from the Ulster County town where my mom and my stepfather, who had been Dad since I was eight, lived. Our family managed to see each other every few months; sometimes—in a string of holidays or birthdays—it was as much as once a month. In between, we all burned up the phone lines talking several times a week. Now, it was catch-as-catch-can with Coco’s scant access to technology. I anticipated her postcards like each one was a missive from heaven.

  In just three weeks, she would be in Khartoum, where the phones were more plentiful, and we would finally be able to have a real chat.

  That night, I snuggled down under my covers, taking a deep breath of the crisp, sweet air pouring in through the window, happy to return to the embrace of my pillow-top mattress. Delightfully happy. Almost perfectly happy. Except that I had a queen bed, which was pretty roomy for one person.

  A very small part of me was willing to admit that the blaring background and constant pulse of New York had become like soothing white noise at bedtime during the years I had lived there. I loved Chatsworth. Loved, loved, loved. Like a croissant loves chocolate. Still, I couldn’t help but admit that sometimes the refreshing quiet of Chatsworth could already be a little too . . . quiet. And if I had been the type of person to get
lonely, it was possible that I might have felt a teeny, tiny bit of loneliness now. Which was why it was such a good thing that I wasn’t the kind of person who got lonely.

  Just in case, I thought of the least lonely place I could: the Chatsworth Library. Within its walls were longtime friends whose kindnesses and adventures had inspired me and entertained me as far back as I could remember. Sense and Sensibility’s Marianne Dashwood would not have sulked in her soup about being boyfriend-less. Miss Nelson wouldn’t have gone missing again due to an ice cream hangover from her single lady pity party. Neither would Viola Swamp. And fair Rosalind from As You Like It would have dressed up like a man and found her fellow and . . . well, anyway . . . the library. That’s where I would go tomorrow, I resolved, and I finally fell asleep thinking about settling down in my favorite reading nook surrounded by books and the shafts of light streaming through the windows.

  —TWO—

  I poked at my ringing phone to answer it without running off the road. Managing to open it and hit speakerphone, I heard Kendra’s voice from far away. “Where are you?”

  “Driving to the library,” I shouted.

  “For a change,” Kendra joked. “Dodie, you do realize that speakerphone amplifies your voice, right?”

  “I know,” I said a little more quietly. “And yes, I’ve practically melted my library card in the past two months from overuse. Need anything?”

  “Nah, I think that new five-hundred-page biography of Abigail Adams that I just got there with you on Wednesday should tide me over for a bit.” Kendra laughed.

  “Cool. I’m in the lot now, so I’ll call you later.”

  I could have chatted with her all the way up to the door of the library, but I wanted to enjoy this moment, the feeling of possibility before walking inside, knowing that endless choices awaited me.

  When I lived in Manhattan, I often visited the flower market. I would go first thing in the morning, tea in hand; walk to the very center, where all the heady smells pooled; and then meander from row to row. Sometimes I bought gerbera daisies in just the right shade of red orange, or yellow French tulips with pink veins as I’d planned. Other times, I ended up taking home something unexpected—a branch of cherry blossoms or pussy willows. Either way, whatever I brought home was always perfect. The library was like this too—you could get exactly what you were looking for or surprise yourself. And at the library, you didn’t even have to pay!

  Instead of a brick schoolhouse building like many New England libraries, the Chatsworth one was housed in a sturdy, cream-colored clapboard rectangle with two small additions on either side for the audiovisuals room and the computer lab. The shingles seemed like a little wink on such a big building, especially since the shutters on each window had been painted a subtle but unmistakable pale green. People often approached the building in hushed tones and left it talking excitedly. It is definitely hushed today, I thought. In fact, no one was leaving the building. No one was going up to it either. Except me.

  The interior of the library was in utter darkness. My heart sank as I saw the sign in the window: CLOSED INDEFINITELY FOR RENOVATIONS.

  I stood there for several minutes. The door to the addition opened. The assistant librarian and my friend Geraldine’s bottom appeared, then the rest of her. She was tugging a trash bag.

  I rushed up to her as she hitched it into the dumpster. She lifted the surgical mask off her face and said, without a touch of surprise, “Hi, Dodie. Bummer, eh?”

  “What happened?” I spluttered.

  “Asbestos abatement.” Geraldine squinched up her face.

  “How much needs to be abated?”

  “No idea, but it sounds like a lot. The McClenahan kid went exploring on his own and must have stepped through the floor, which was actually the ceiling, because it started raining asbestos during story circle yesterday.”

  “No one knew it was there? How is that possible?”

  Geraldine shrugged. “Maybe they knew but didn’t do anything about it. Anyway, they have to now.”

  “Why?” I asked plaintively, though of course I knew the answer. I didn’t want to be inside an asbestos-infested building any more than the next person.

  “Because Officer Frederick was in the story circle at the time with his niece.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah, the inspector said the electricity and pipes are outdated, so they’ll probably do a big overhaul while they’re at it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took them until next Christmas, judging by how long it took them to renovate the Derbyshire Library,” Geraldine mused.

  I tried to breathe very slowly through my nose. “The Derbyshire Library?”

  I had been there once after running an errand nearby. It smelled so ascetic—like a new car. The books hadn’t had time to settle in and exude their historic perfume. It had felt like a place doing an impression of a library instead of actually being one.

  “You okay, Dodie?” Geraldine asked. “You look really pale all of a sudden.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  She patted my shoulder. “Derbyshire Library is only forty-five minutes away from here.” Her voice cracked as she said it. “All of our books will be transferred to other locations within the Connecticut system.”

  Forty-five minutes! My breathing grew more rapid again. Forty-five minutes was long enough for someone to give birth to a child! When Mom had Coco, she barely made it from the entrance to the hospital to her room before Coco came and the doctor had to . . . not important! The point was that forty-five minutes was a long time for me and an eternity for parents of most children between the ages of zero and five. Or, in the case of my hyperactive student Jonah Brownlee’s mother, zero and eight.

  “Yeah, good thing,” I murmured. “Okay, I’m going to go now.”

  “See you,” Geraldine said, replacing her mask before heading back inside.

  As I made my way back to my car, feeling nauseated, two other cars pulled into the parking lot. Lula Cabrera and her kids piled out of one. “Hi, Dodie. We’re here for story circle. Are you sitting in?” Lula asked.

  “Um . . . no. There’s no story circle today or for a while, it looks like,” I hedged.

  “What do you mean?” Her son was peeking out from behind her leg, listening to our conversation.

  “The library is closed indefinitely for renovations,” I announced.

  A frown creased Lula’s face. Her daughter tapped her on the arm. “Closed, Mama?” Her lower lip trembled. “But you said . . .”

  “I know, sweets, but there’s nothing Mama can do,” she replied helplessly, patting the two children. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

  “Not your fault. But they were really looking forward to this,” she replied just loudly enough for me to hear. “Their father has been at the new mall’s construction site constantly for the last three months, and the library is the only thing keeping all of us sane.”

  “Good luck,” I offered, feeling lame and strangely guilty. Not that the library closing was my fault or had anything to do with me. I just wished I could do something to help Lula and her kids.

  And what was I going to do now that the library was closed? Well, first of all, I would go to Wendell Wye’s Bookshop to remind myself that there were other places to get something to read.

  I was sitting on the ground in the bookstore, looking at an illustrated history of Paris. Elmira Pelle passed by, trailing after her mother, with a stack of books in her arms. I was about to get their attention when I overheard her say, “Mom, can I have one of these?”

  “No, Elmira. I bought you a new book two weeks ago. If you can’t show any self-restraint and you’re going to read them that quickly, you’re going to have to check them out of the library.”

  I goggled at her words. First of all, was she really reprimanding her daughter for reading too quickly? Second of all, did she have any idea of the burning urgency of reading for a book-loving chil
d, how two weeks was a complete eternity without a new book to dive into?

  They didn’t know yet that the library was closed. I had a feeling her mother wouldn’t be up for driving her to Derbyshire. So what was Elmira going to do now?

  I bought a nice, juicy historical novel to cheer myself up.

  “Here you go, Miss Fairisle.” Wendell handed me my book.

  “Please, call me Dodie,” I replied distractedly, mesmerized by the hair of the man walking out the door in front of me. It was dark with a swirly cowlick. Even seeing his shoulders from the back made me weak in the knees. Who was that? And where could I get one?

  By the time I had paid and gotten outside, he was driving away. I sighed as I watched him brake at the exit, then proceed out into the street.

  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I was still recovering from having my heart crushed by my last boyfriend.

  A few days later, Elmira was sitting on the bench outside the gym reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler—again. Now, I have probably read that book more times than there are visitors on a Saturday afternoon in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the action takes place. But in the months since my arrival, I had hardly seen Elmira reading anything else.

  “Hello there, Elmira. Reading Mrs. Frankweiler again?”

  “Yup,” she said, sticking a bookmark between the worn pages.

  “I love that book. But don’t you ever want to read something different?”

  “Sure, but I’ve read all the books in the school library, and the big library is closed, and it’s difficult for my mom to find time to take us to the one in the next town or to the bookstore with her schedule being what it is.” Everything in the second part of that sentence sounded parroted, I thought, frowning.

  “Listen, what if I lent you some books?” I offered. “You could tell me a bit about what kind you like—besides Basil, of course—and then you can borrow them from me.”

  Elmira looked intrigued. “You have books like this, for people my age?” she asked, ever practical.