The Lending Library

by Fogelson, Aliza

  Benton might have been a third-grade teacher, but he took his duties with the seriousness of a college professor. Come to think of it, he dressed like one too. He definitely had more corduroy jackets and sweater vests and styles of glasses than anyone else I had ever met. And I had spent time in Brooklyn.

  “Sounds like true pleasure reading.”

  It was a running joke with me and Kendra that encounters with Benton in the teachers’ lounge were akin to being locked in a room with a genius parrot. Sometimes we wished we could throw a blanket over his head to silence his monologues. He seemed to have a sort of homing device for Kendra. Almost as soon as we sat down to lunch, he would appear with a story, formula, theorem . . . although to be fair he sometimes came out with a fascinating detail. Like the fact that my house was its own special architectural style after all—Garden Court style, inspired by a section of West Philadelphia architecture that a man named Clarence Siegel had invented.

  “How’s your mom doing?” I asked. Kendra had lived with her mother in Chatsworth for the past seven years, since Kendra’s father died of pancreatic cancer, but her mom had moved down to Florida a few months before I’d gotten to town.

  “Great. She’s adjusting really well. She loves the weather, and there’s plenty of shopping to make up for the fact that she’s not in driving range of New York anymore.”

  “You’re visiting her over Christmas, right?”

  “Yep, for a few days. Then she’s going on a cruise with her new girlfriends down there!”

  “Sounds awesome.” I tried to perk up my voice.

  Kendra wasn’t fooled. “You going to be all right?” She slung her arm around my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  “Well, if you want to talk about it, you know I’m here,” she repeated.

  “Thanks, K. I know.” I stopped doodling and went to open a box of donated books. It was a comfort to think about who would discover them on the shelves or piled on top of the bookcase of randomness.

  —FIVE—

  I was temporarily brought out of my sulk by the arrival of an important addition to life in Chatsworth. A very, very small one who ignited a lot of big crushes. A few weeks after their return from Africa, Sullivan was ready to introduce us to her adopted son.

  About two years earlier, Sullivan had decided she wanted to be a single mother. She’d had a longtime lover named Elizabeth before I came to town, but they had such a big blowup that Elizabeth moved back to the city. When Sullivan had first started the adoption process, Elizabeth disagreed with her choice. Not the adoption in general but the Ethiopia part specifically. Elizabeth accused Sullivan of being selfish for adopting an African child and said that people already saw her as different because she was a lesbian and that now she was going to make it even worse by choosing a child with a different skin color than hers. Kendra had told me Sullivan’s response had been unrepeatable . . . but I think I got the gist.

  Twenty-seven months, a ton of paperwork, and two trips to Ethiopia later, Sullivan was the delighted new mother of an eight-month-old baby named Terabithia. Terabithia! Like Bridge to Terabithia!

  His big debut happened at Sullivan’s parents’ house. Sullivan’s father, Jeff, and her mother, Mackie, were so excited about the new member of their family that they insisted on throwing a welcome party and inviting about fifty people.

  On the day of the party, I was practically bursting. This was not only because I was about to meet Terabithia. Or because I knew Mackie and Jeff would be storybook grandparents who would serve you freshly baked cookies for breakfast and string up fairy lanterns in the backyard on your birthday. It was also because I couldn’t wait to see the look on Sullivan’s face when she opened the second part of my present. The first part was a blanket made of the softest cotton dyed the bright reds and blues of Childe Hassam’s paintings of flags on Fifth Avenue.

  I almost missed the big reveal of the second part of my present. I was playing “This Little Piggy” with Terabithia’s toes, and his giggles were making his stomach shudder like the top of a popcorn container in the microwave.

  Mackie realized I wasn’t sitting in the gift circle when Sullivan opened the blanket. “Dodie,” she called me over.

  Yeees! I thought. I wrapped Terabithia right up and plopped into a chair with him nestled in my arm. He didn’t seem to be disturbed at how abruptly our game had ended. He was making cooing noises into my elbow.

  No one could see what was underneath the paper, but Sullivan laughed. “Pee-pee Teepees!” she cried. “Exactly what I needed.”

  Now, that may not seem like the most essential present, but really. A little blue cone that looks like you could eat Hawaiian ices out of it meant to protect parents’ faces from a wayward stream during diaper changing? What could be more perfect?

  Terabithia stirred from his little nap a few minutes later. It was time for me to hand him back to his mother. I wanted to keep holding him. He was so lovable. So near. I held him up to my eye level. “You are a sweet one. Here’s your mama.”

  Sullivan took him in her arms. He was looking over her shoulder, and his eyes were sad, as if he didn’t want to say goodbye to me either. My heart ached. Poor little guy. So much change in his life in such a short time. Now he had Sullivan, Mackie, and Jeff. But still, being a single mother wouldn’t be easy for Sullivan. I thought about my mom and how tough the first years were before my stepdad, Walter, came along. I thought about the perpetual bags under her eyes as she worried about money and childcare and getting us to school and rushing to and from her job and keeping all the balls in the air. The buried memory of two-year-old Coco’s lost look resurfaced, and I recognized a little of it in Terabithia’s expression now.

  “He really likes you, Auntie Dodie,” Sullivan observed as I said my goodbyes. “He’s been fearful around new people so far.”

  “It’s no wonder—he needs some time to get adjusted,” I said. “It’s a huge change for such a little guy.”

  “True. Thanks for coming.” She kissed me on the cheek. “And for the Pee-pee Teepees. I love those Pee-pee Teepees.” And then for good measure, “Who wouldn’t love those Pee-pee Teepees?” She grinned. I grinned back. As much fun to say as to use!

  “Good luck with that cutie. And if there’s anything we can do, let us know.” I gestured to include Kendra.

  “Awesome!” she enthused. “I’m sure I’m going to need a lot of help.”

  “You’re really not going to be home for the holidays?” Mom asked plaintively for the fourteenth time. Christmas Eve was days away, so she was finally coming to terms with reality.

  “Maddie will be an only child,” Dad added for good measure. Neither of them knew that things were off with me and Maddie. We’d spoken a few times since her birthday, and I had given her a half-hearted apology. I was still embarrassed about how selfish I’d been, thinking only of myself when she was probably pretty sad to have actually reached the no-baby milestone. Yet somehow I couldn’t bring the subject back up again. I would rather pretend it didn’t exist. That wasn’t why I wasn’t going home, of course.

  “I know, but since it’s my first holiday season here, I should stick around and keep the library running. It’s only been a couple weeks, and it’s a time of year when people might feel really lonely and need a good book.”

  It made me sad to think of being away from my family at the holidays for the first time, but I’d started the library, and I couldn’t abandon it at such a critical moment. Not to mention I continued to be as obsessed with the library as a teenage girl with her brand-new star-quarterback boyfriend. I practically sleepwalked into the lending library more than once and awoke to find myself cuddled up in a chair with a book as my pillow.

  “Okay, honey,” Mom conceded after a long pause. “We’re going to miss you. Bundle up and stay warm.”

  I was feeling a little bit down when Anoop rang the bell.

  “Here, these are for you.” I passed him the plate of cookies I�
�d baked.

  In return, he gave me a handful of holiday cards and something from Coco! Her latest postcard had a drawing of Mark on the front. His face was purple as an eggplant, and he was wearing a sheepish grin. He looked a little like Violet Beauregard in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  Dear Do,

  Mark accidentally ate the flower that’s meant to dye the royal chieftain’s robes, instead of the one that’s supposed to go on salads. Don’t be alarmed, though—it looks much worse than it is. Rokiki said this particular flower can dissolve your appendix, but that’s a good thing, right? I mean, I’m sort of attached to the idea of mine, but not having one means it won’t ever explode. Plus Mark said our appendix is an evolutionary vestige. Apparently, our toes are obsolete too, but I’m not about to give those up. Hope all is well in Chatsworth and that you aren’t breaking all the small-town boys’ hearts. Got to go reason with the chieftain. It’s a good thing he likes Tabasco sauce; I brought plenty. xxxC

  The ring of the phone startled me out of my sleep. “Hello?” I grunted.

  “Do!”

  “Co!” I sat bolt upright. “It’s really you! I just got your postcard.”

  “I’m here . . . I’m there . . . I’m everywhere! You couldn’t get away from me if you tried!”

  “If only that were true . . .”

  “Oh, don’t get sentimental on me,” Coco said, but her voice quavered. “Each tear will cost me thirty dollars in phone charges, and I’m standing in a phone booth that smells like the toilet a toilet uses.”

  I laughed and wiped my eyes. “Tell me everything.”

  “It’s been amazing. We’ve helped vaccinate three whole towns for polio. The other day, a patient who’d had a chronic infection for the past year finally got a clean bill of health. It’s amazing to see what we can do here—with the leftover antibiotics that most people would throw away as soon as they start feeling better. And Mark, he’s been building like you wouldn’t believe. He’s tireless. He’s . . . Dodie, I swear every day he does something that makes me think, That’s why I married him.”

  I swallowed hard. “That is so fantastic, Coco.”

  “How are you? How’s Chatsworth? Are you bored? Lonely?”

  I laughed. Coco was always gentle but direct. “No, I’m really happy here. I opened a lending library in my classroom—”

  “Yes, I got your postcard. That’s so perfect. First teaching, and now this.”

  “Well, that’s not even the craziest part. It’s gotten bigger, so I moved it into my house.”

  “Whaaat?”

  “In the back sunroom downstairs, so it’ll be pretty separate. And I am so excited!”

  “I can’t wait to come visit you.”

  “So when do you think that will be?” I gave in to my selfishness.

  “I don’t know yet. We still feel like we have so much to do. I mean, obviously if that were the measure, we could be here forever. But I think we want to head to at least one more country before we come home.”

  “You two are doing so much good. I’m sure it’s hard a lot of the time.”

  “We enjoy it and seeing people’s lives get better, so it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. Except, you know, whenever we have to go to the bathroom. Or try to get clean. And sometimes meals. But most of the time, it still feels like a huge adventure and an opportunity to do something for other people.”

  “It is, Coco. And even though you’re my baby sister, I want you to know how much I admire you.” I said it to her all the time. I was way past the point of worrying I’d overinflate her ego. Coco wasn’t like that.

  “Thanks, Do. Listen, I gotta run. Take care of yourself, and good luck with the library. I’ll talk to you really soon.”

  “Coco, I . . .” I wanted to tell her about Maddie so badly. About the ticking clock. But it wouldn’t be fair. I couldn’t keep her on the phone to talk about my problems. “Speak to you soon,” I said, knowing I had a much sooner “soon” in mind than she did. “Love you and Mark.”

  “We love you too. Bisous.”

  I laid my head back on my pillow and heaved a deep sigh. I missed her already. “One more country” could of course mean months. Years even. I gulped. Wishing for her to come home was definitely selfish, and yet I couldn’t help it.

  The next day was the first-ever story circle at the library! After the kickoff party, I posted the library’s regular hours: it would be open from 4:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m. on weekdays and 10:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. on Saturdays. The first Saturday of each month would be story circle day; one for the kids at 10:30 a.m. and one for the adults at 2:00 p.m.

  By ten thirty that morning, there were eight kids in the circle with their parents. At least, some of them were in the circle sitting on their parents’ laps. A little boy named Guillaume was currently rummaging through my book bag, and two other kids were pulling every book off the shelf in front of them and chuckling with glee.

  “Who wants to hear some books about snow?” I asked. The two kids stopped throwing books on the ground and wandered back over to see what was in my hands. Guillaume’s mother extracted him and put him next to her knees.

  First I read them Oh! A hush fell over them as they looked at the soft colors and listened to the quiet rhymes about the animals in the snow.

  “And this one’s called The Snowy Day.” I thoroughly enjoyed the looks on their faces as I read it to them.

  “Did anyone know this book before?” I asked, closing it.

  “No!” yelled Guillaume. “But I wannit.”

  “We have it at home,” said Lula’s daughter, Margarita.

  I couldn’t read the expression on Jefferson Hendrow’s face, but I was curious about what he was thinking. “Would you like to take a closer look?” I handed him the book. He flipped to the page with the little boy, Peter, and his mother.

  “This looks like me and my mama.”

  I realized he’d never seen a book before with anyone in it that looked like him.

  I smiled at him through a pang of sadness. Jefferson went to Eagle Ridge, not Chatsworth. Kendra hadn’t wanted to wait to go through all the budgetary red tape before buying more diverse books for the Chatsworth Elementary School Library, so she had bought The Snowy Day and a bunch of others herself right after she became the librarian. Eagle Ridge’s library was even smaller than Chatsworth’s, but couldn’t they make room for books that reflected all the kids?

  I’ll have to change that, I thought.

  “I’ll show you some other really good ones on the shelves too.”

  Later that afternoon, the grown-ups’ story circle attendees mingled in the small space between the shelves and the table in the corner. A few people helped me pull over some of the child’s chairs in addition to the ones I’d taken from around my kitchen table and carried into the sunroom.

  “What a lovely idea. A story group for old fogeys like me!” a woman named Roberta joked.

  I gasped, horrified.

  “I’m teasing,” she laughed.

  Kendra was cracking up. So was Geraldine, who had already come several times to the lending library, getting her fix while the Chatsworth Library where she had worked was undergoing much more extensive renovations. Very little progress had happened so far from her account of the situation.

  “Oh, of course,” I flubbed. “Well, help yourself to more of the milk punch and chocolate-raspberry jam squares.” I gestured to where Kendra and I had set them up along the top of the bookcases under the kids’ bulletin board.

  “Dodie, want to start us off?” Roberta suggested.

  “Sure. First of all, has anyone else been to one of these besides me? One for adults, I mean?”

  The other fourteen women who had squeezed into the tight space shook their heads.

  “Okay, well, some story circles have a writing period, and then people take turns reading what they’ve written. We could do that, or we could tell stories off the tops of our head. I mean, top of our heads. Tops of our heads. Whatever!”


  The three other younger women besides Kendra and me were quiet, deferring to the older ladies in the group. “Let’s just start telling stories,” Roberta said.

  “Why don’t you go first?” Kendra encouraged.

  “Okay.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “I first met my husband, Ray, when we were working together at a notions shop. For those of you who were born after 1960, a notions shop is where you sell buttons and ribbons and bits and bobs of that sort. Ray never said a word to me for the first three months we were working there. He was scared to death of girls. Well, okay, he was scared to death of me.

  “I had quite a lot of beaux in those days. They couldn’t wait until I was done working to see me, so sometimes they came into the shop pretending to need something for their mothers. I flirted with them something awful. I never noticed Ray reacting any way or another to the boys. He was steady, steady. At the end of the day, he never left until the place was in shipshape shape.

  “Three months into my time there, I fell ill with an awful cold. The kind that shakes your bones with aches, and you can hardly bear to lift up your head. But I went in to work anyway. I was real proud of having a job.

  “It was one of the busiest days of the year—near Christmastime, when everyone was gussying up their old dresses and suits. Even if I’d been well, I could barely have kept up at the register. At the end of the night, I counted the money. I counted it again. Something was very wrong. Fifty dollars was missing. If it had been in the till like it was supposed to be, it would have been a banner day. A record sales day, even. But at the time, losing fifty dollars’ worth of merchandise was a catastrophe.

  “I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what happened. Had customers left without paying? Had they underpaid? Had someone gotten their hands in the till when I wasn’t paying attention? My head was a fog. I sank down on the stool behind the counter and tried to think what to do. Ray came up and, real soft-like, said, ‘Is something the matter?’