“I figured things couldn’t get worse at that point, so I told him.
“‘That’s real bad,’ Ray said, but in a kind way. ‘Let’s think on what to do tonight. We don’t have to tell Mr. Bell anything until the morning when we give him the count anyway.’
“That was the first time Ray had spoken to me, and I felt so reassured. Not reassured enough that I wasn’t up all night wringing my hands (and blowing my nose) anyway, but enough that I could talk myself into walking through that door the next morning instead of calling in sick to postpone my firing.
“When I showed up, I stared right at the floor. Ray was straightening some baskets of buttons stuck on cards that didn’t need any more straightening, and when Mr. Bell came through the door from the back room, his face lit up like the sun. ‘Good job, Roberta!’ he said. ‘I’ve already told Ray I’m taking you two to lunch.’
“There was a great little diner with a soda fountain in the middle of town back then. We went there, and I ate a tuna melt with cheddar cheese and drank a black cow milkshake. I will never forget how great that day was as long as I live. And Ray smiled at me over his chicken and rice plate and soda pop, and then I knew that even though we’d hardly spoken a hundred words to one another in three months, he’d made things right. I admitted to myself that he’d been part of the reason that I came to the shop even though I was sick as a dog. I also knew, from our record-breaking night of sales and our months of quiet, steady work together before then, that we made a good team.
“Ray was a gentleman through and through, and even though I asked him dozens of times over the next few weeks—we had become inseparable after that day—he refused to say how he’d gotten the fifty dollars. I told him that he had given me the best Christmas present I could have wanted. He replied that he hoped I would change my mind about that, and then he held out his mother’s ring and asked me to marry him.
“The first night we were married, he said, ‘Okay, my beloved wife, here’s what happened. I noticed Mr. Slocum and Mr. Barnes both bought scads of notions for their wives but hadn’t remembered either of them paying. So I went to their homes and said, real polite-like, that it seemed there had been a misunderstanding and that they might not have realized there are no running accounts at the store. That’s all I needed to say; each of them paid me straightaway, cash in hand, and that’s how the money came to be back in the drawer and the count all square by the time Mr. Bell got in.’”
Roberta paused to look at us, her expression dreamy. “I tell you, ladies, I just about married him again right on the spot.”
Afterward, Kendra and I agreed that it had been a pretty fantastic story circle. Our expressions might have been a teeny bit dreamy too. “Can you imagine falling in love with someone you’ve known for three months all of a sudden like that? Especially not having talked to them before?” Kendra asked.
“Well, I suppose it could happen,” I mused.
“I think I’ll know when I find my fish. I’m not much of one for the slow-building romance,” Kendra said. “Lightning strikes, or the storm is over.”
“Yes, it’s always been pretty black and white for me too,” I agreed.
Even so, Roberta’s story sure was romantic. I loved story circle. I wanted to go to one every single day! Or better yet, two—just as I had today.
“You went to the Christmas Craft Market again?” Kendra marveled when I called her on my way home. “You are Jewish, right?” I could practically hear her shaking her head in disbelief through my newfangled hands-free setup.
“Yeah, so what? I like the mulled wine and the speculoos cookies! And the trees and the garlands and the ornaments . . .” I was actually shopping for decorations for the library. I had some Hanukkah stuff of my own to put in there, but since most of the population of Chatsworth was Christian, I wanted to make it nice and homey for the visitors who would come in around Christmas. Anyone who was at the library a lot in late December might need a bit of holiday cheer, I figured. I would have to borrow some Kwanzaa stuff too. I didn’t think anyone in Chatsworth celebrated the winter solstice, but I would have been happy to put up some of those decorations, too, if I learned otherwise when I asked around.
“I got to go, Kendra. I’m meeting Sullivan and Terabithia now.”
“Ooh, have fun! Tell them hi for me.”
“Will do. Bye!”
When I got to our meeting place, the playground at Little Duck Park, Terabithia was already in one of the swings, and Sullivan was pushing him. Seeing me, she slowed him down to a stop.
“Hi, Sullivan. I’m so excited to see you guys!”
“Hey,” she said, looking down at Terabithia. He was eyeing me as if he vaguely remembered me. He looked a teeny bit scared. Then he gave me a gummy smile.
“Hey, Terabithia.” I patted him on the ’fro. It had gotten bigger. I was amazed at how happy that made me—that and the fact that he was wearing overalls with the cuffs turned up at the bottom and a pea-green shirt under a matching wool cardigan. He patted me back on the arm, sending my heart jetéing for joy.
“Can I push him?” I asked Sullivan.
She nodded and stepped aside, shading her eyes with her hand. I started out slow, then pushed a little harder when he let out a pleased hoot. After a while, the pleased hoots were replaced by grunting noises.
“That means no,” Sullivan explained, catching the swing to stop the motion quickly and to steady Terabithia. She lifted him out of the seat. His little face was puckered like he’d eaten a lemon. “He loves it but then starts to get kind of seasick.”
“Oh.” That hadn’t occurred to me.
“I’m going to put him in his stroller, and we’ll push him around until he recovers,” Sullivan said, a tiny smile around the edge of her lips.
“So tell me, what’s he like?” I asked while we were circling the pond. The water looked green from far away, but when we approached, it was clear. Long reeds grew from the bottom, swaying gracefully like mermaid’s hair. A few ducks circled lazily, their feathers glistening as they plunked their heads under the surface looking for fish. Water streamed off their backs as they brushed them with their bills.
“What’s he like?” she echoed.
“Yeah, what are his favorite foods? What’s his favorite book? Stuff like that.”
“Well, he really likes mashed sweet potatoes. And pear-and-apple baby food. He’s still pretty small, so I haven’t introduced him to too many things yet.”
“Sure.”
“For books, he makes me read The Bumblebee’s Bed over and over. And parts of Where the Wild Things Are. He’s got a good growl going at this point. It’s pretty funny.” We grinned at each other. Terabithia was making a sort of humming noise under his breath; the cool air by the water and the sight of the ducks seemed to have rejuvenated him.
Sullivan made a visor again with her hand.
“You okay?” I asked. It was bright out, but she was wincing.
“My eyes have been sensitive today.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No big deal.” She shrugged. “I keep losing pairs of sunglasses.”
I got in front of the stroller and walked backward, covering up my face to play peekaboo with Terabithia. He kept laughing a wicked little old man laugh, as though he was seeing it for the first time.
“You have a way with kids,” Sullivan noted. “I mean, I’ve heard you talk a ton about them and your teaching and babysitting and au pairing, but it’s really cool to see it in action.”
“Thanks, Sullivan. That’s nice to hear.”
“You’ll be well prepared to be a mom when your turn comes.”
“If it comes” popped out of my mouth.
She put her hand on my arm. “It will. First of all, we’re young.”
My frown deepened as I thought of Maddie’s news.
“Second of all, if it doesn’t happen for you naturally, you can always do what I did.”
“It’s incredibly brave, what you did.”
“Well, I knew what I wanted. So I went for it. I’m determined to be the best mother I can be to Terabithia. And you know me: I’m a pretty stubborn person.”
We both laughed.
“I hope I’ve done the right thing for him and not just myself,” she said quietly.
“I’m sure you will do everything you can for him.”
Sullivan knelt in front of Terabithia’s stroller, her serious tone lightening to playful. “What do you think, Boo? Are you happy to be here?”
Terabithia waved his arms up and down wildly in reply.
Dr. Len had agreed to squeeze me in on December 23 to go over my blood work results.
“Your hormone levels indicate that getting pregnant could potentially be challenging for you. The one that’s supposed to be low is on the higher side for someone your age, and we’d like to see a higher number for the other one for someone your age.”
“Is there something to do to reverse them?”
“No, I’m afraid not. But I do want to caution you not to take these numbers as any kind of determinative diagnosis. There’s no telling what will happen. And usually, as I said, success rates correlate with age rather than strictly with these numbers. You’re a healthy young woman, and you may not have any problems at all.”
“What about my family’s issues?” I protested.
He shrugged again. “Not any clear indicator that you’d have that problem. Could be coincidence. Or not. There’s not much you can do but see what happens when you’re ready to try. Or freeze your eggs.”
My head snapped up. “Freeze my eggs? Should I think about doing that?”
“That’s up to you. The younger you do it, the healthier the eggs are likely to be. You’re still quite young yet, as far as that goes. But it is an option that might be worthwhile to consider if you’re not ready to try conceiving in the next couple years and if you’re worried about potential genetic obstacles to conception.”
In other words, he wasn’t going to reassure me that Maddie’s news was definitely a silly fiction.
“H-how much would that cost?”
“We charge eight thousand dollars for one cycle.”
I felt my paper nightgown flap open dangerously as I steadied myself on the examining chair. Freezing my eggs was definitely not an option I could consider. I didn’t have $8,000. I had a mortgage. A new library. And a lovely but not very plush salary as an art teacher. “I’ll think about it,” I managed to force out, producing a festively beribboned zucchini chocolate chip loaf for Dr. Len and his wife from my roomy purse.
After that, I barely went out over the holiday. I called Sullivan once to check in on Terabithia; she told me he was doing great and that they were staying at Mackie’s sister’s house till after the New Year. “When you’re ready for a night out—or a daytime escape or even a little time to run errands—let me know. You have a wide-open babysitting IOU,” I told her.
I spent all day in the library mostly moving books around (and sometimes sniffing them). Kendra and Geraldine took turns dropping by to keep me company—as it happened, not that many other people came in after all—and tried to enlist me in fun activities. I begged off, claiming sometimes that I had stuff to do for the library, other times that it was too cold to venture out. But when I wasn’t distracting myself in the library, I would find myself sitting on my couch, watching sappy movies, or—even worse—spending hours looking up the causes of infertility on the web, trying to figure out how important a role genetics played.
I had my mom’s hair, which generally cooperated unless there was even the tiniest hint of dampness in the air, in which case it puffed up like a soufflé. And all my life, every one of our relatives had remarked upon the fact that I had my grandmother’s eyes. Did I have their ovaries too? Did Coco? And was it really already too late for Maddie?
It was as if a kitchen timer had been set and I could hear its ticking. Stop with the pity party, I ordered myself.
Sometimes when a song got stuck in your head, the only way to get it out was to play it over and over until it ran its course. I decided to embrace my obsession in order to get rid of it. After closing up the library one night, I drove to Robshaw’s Hardware and Art Supplies.
“Hi, Dodie,” Mr. Robshaw greeted me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here now. Not home for the holidays?”
I had been a frequent visitor during the fall. The school’s budget was never close to enough to support my sometimes rather ambitious kiddie art projects, so I supplemented my stock with regular trips to my friendly local craft store.
“Nope. Actually, I need a calendar,” I said.
“Right over here. Postholiday sale.” He led me to the aisle. I picked out a five-year one. I wouldn’t even need two years’ worth for the purpose I had in mind. The thought depressed me. I grabbed some paint pens from the bins next to the cash register. Motivating colors like red and orange and gold.
When I got up to the cash register, Mr. Robshaw waved me through. “On the house,” he said quietly so that the people in line behind me wouldn’t hear. At one point in the past few months, he had tried to explain to me that he was keeping track in his mind, like an unofficial rewards card, and giving me free stuff when I’d earned it.
As his generosity began to increase in velocity, it eventually started to occur to me that if I added up my purchases versus the freebies, the stuff he gifted me would far outweigh what I had bought. When I had tried to suggest that to him, he waved me off and threw another handful of Mrs. Grossman’s stickers on top of my pile of goodies.
“Thanks, Mr. Robshaw,” I said, waving my bag at him.
At home, I spread out the calendar and some sheets of paper on my kitchen table. I pulled down the blinds and shut off my ringer. And then slowly and arduously I called upon my very rusty math skills to make some calculations.
Okay, I thought, it is now December 30, 2007. I turn thirty-five on February 17, 2010. So I have more than two years to fall madly in love, get married, and get pregnant. That’s not so bad.
I was about to highlight February 17, 2010, on my calendar. Then I could put it under the bed and forget about it for a long time.
But wait. My mother and grandma both had their children by the time they were thirty-five. When they tried after that, they couldn’t get pregnant anymore. So maybe they had to get pregnant before they were thirty-five. Maybe if they’d tried any time after they had actually gotten pregnant, it wouldn’t have worked because they were too old.
All these hypotheticals were making my brain hurt, but this was serious business. I wanted a child. Better to be safe than sorry. So I counted backward nine months from my thirty-fifth birthday. Then I remembered seeing a program about baby otters on the Discovery Channel, and it had said how pregnancies were actually more like ten months long (for humans, not for otters, although it was actually really surprising how long the otter gestation period could be because of delayed implantation of the egg and . . . well, that wasn’t important). To be safe, I counted ten months back from my birthday, which put me at May 17, 2009. That was a year and a half away. Which suddenly sounded a whole lot shorter than before.
I gulped down a glass of water, trying not to panic. What was I going to do?
I was going to do exactly what I had intended. I was going to mark the day of importance, then put this calendar away and not think about it or take it out again for as long as possible. I would know it was there, but I wasn’t going to fixate on it. Definitely not. I was going to think about other things. Like all the library visitors that we’d have after the holiday! And all the fun wintry activities coming up! Where I might meet a wonderful man who would want to conceive with me in the next seventeen months.
I was panicking. But in one way, the calendar exercise had been clarifying. I could blame the mess on my ovaries, my DNA, my Y chromosome or whatever the one is that makes you a lady, but I couldn’t blame the messenger anymore. Besides, it was the holidays. Granted, I had a feeling the only c
andles my sister lit during Hanukkah were scented with red quince and meant to be an aphrodisiac for her latest conquest . . . but I hoped she missed me and could forgive me too.
“Hey, Mad,” I said when she picked up the phone.
“Hey, Do,” she replied. “What’s up?”
“Listen, I’m sorry things have been weird between us. You were right. It doesn’t help to obsess. It’s not fair to blame you for what happened with Not Dad or for my own freak-outs about what you told me. I’m here, and I care, and I know you’re probably sad about what this milestone might mean. I want to talk about you and how you’re feeling about it.”
“Thank frickin’ hell you’ve come to your senses,” Maddie said. “Listen, I thought a lot about the circumstances, and I realized it really did come as somewhat of a relief. I don’t feel pressure anymore. But thanks for asking. So what else is up? Any sex?”
Well, then, I guessed we were going to put the past right behind us.
“Only in my mind,” I replied desultorily.
“Ooh . . . color me intrigued. Tell me about him.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Well, make something up. I’m so bored waiting for this damn glacial take-out place to deliver my food that I could eat my shoe.”
I smiled at the non sequitur and filled her in on that one brief, shining hair sighting at the bookstore.
“It’s really odd, Mad, because I have this feeling he and I are meant to meet.”
“That is really odd, Do. But then again, you subscribe to baby magazines, and you have no baby, so I guess there are stranger things.”
“I do not,” I huffed, nosing my copy of Happy Child magazine underneath the sofa with my toe as if she were watching. It was free at the supermarket, and I was curious!
“Whatevs. Listen, maybe it is a sign. Maybe you two are meant for a future of dorkiness.”
“Very funny. So what about you? Have I missed anything exciting on your end recently?”
“I’ve taken a vow of celibacy while I focus on my career,” she said solemnly.
The Lending Library Page 7