“Any good leads?”
“Not yet, but I took a part-time job at Ciao Bella Gelato.”
“Yum! Is that something you’re interested in pursuing, like from a marketing point of view?”
“No, I just like the free ice cream. I’m hoping that if I eat enough of it, I’ll get so sick of it that I won’t end up spending twenty dollars a week there for the rest of my life.”
“Ha. Makes sense.”
Her door buzzer sounded in the background. “Gotta go—Chicken Till You Sicken is here.”
“What . . . ?” She was already gone. I hung up with a big grin on my face. Maddie was back! After a few more peeks at the calendar, I peevishly shoved it into the box and under my bed. Then, only then, was I finally feeling ready to start the New Year.
—SIX—
January 2008
As people trickled back into town, the library started to fill up with visitors each afternoon. Elmira came in the day she returned from her family vacation.
“How was it?” I asked her.
“It was okay. My parents left us with babysitters most of the time. But I got to hang out with my brother, and he’s turning into a cool little guy now that he’s talking more. Plus I finished three books. The Penderwicks was awesome! I can’t wait for the next one to come out in April.”
“I’ll place an order for the collection,” I promised as she handed me back the books.
“What are you reading?”
I held up Edith Wharton’s The Glimpses of the Moon, which I reread every few years. It’s a favorite with its Venetian palazzos and cooling dips in Lake Como and Parisian sojourns and the splendid struggle of Nick and Susy between love or money.
Elmira wrapped her scarf around her head. “That looks fancy. Guess what? I nagged my mom until she let me walk here. I think she was relieved she doesn’t have to take me. Now that she said okay, I can come whenever I want.”
“Oh, good. You’re essential to the success of this library,” I told her. “A founding member, pretty much.”
She flushed to her roots with one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen from her.
The Mediterranean temperatures were definitely only in my imagination. It was full-on winter in Chatsworth, and after several mornings glazed with frost, the first real snow of the year fell on January 8. I was babysitting Terabithia when the blizzard started; Sullivan had finally taken me up on my offer for an evening out to meet some friends for dinner.
“I’ve got to be honest. I could really use a night off,” Sullivan had said when she and Terabithia dropped by the library earlier that week. “Mom and Dad have been great, but I don’t want them to have to pick up all the slack. I want him to get used to other people too. With adoptions, most of the experts recommend the parent and child bond for the first few months before introducing a lot of new people, so I couldn’t imagine leaving him with someone besides family or my closest friends. He seems to feel comfortable with you, Auntie Dodie.”
I loved that name! “Well, I’m honored. Can I call him Boo now too?”
“Sure.”
“Here you go, Boo,” I said, placing a piece of construction paper and some crayons in front of him. He soon had a crayon in his mouth.
“Yech,” Sullivan said to him to get him to understand that crayons aren’t for eating. Boo smiled, a swipe of cranberry color on his teeth. “Thanks, Dodie. I really appreciate it.” She turned her attention to Boo’s masterpiece in the making.
Indira Varma was wandering the stacks, fretting. I approached her.
“Is everything okay?”
Indira leaned toward me. “I don’t know what to do. The other girls in Amisha’s class are always bullying her. She’s a good girl, and I hear her crying sometimes at night.”
“That sucks,” I said, my anger flaring. “I mean, I’m sorry to hear it. I have a book for her. Be right back.”
I went and pulled Blubber off the shelf. I didn’t know what to write on the back of one of my homemade bookmarks. Sometimes, I would write why I chose the book for that reader, hoping to nudge them into considering the lessons they might find inside. I thought about putting, “One good friend is worth dozens of silly people,” but that sounded patronizing. Instead, on the back of the bookmark, cut from Van Gogh’s Poppies and Butterflies painting, I wrote, “Cindy Crawford, Bill Clinton, and Jessica Simpson were all bullied as children.” I figured that covered a few bases, depending on her interests. It wasn’t going to solve the problem, obviously. But if a book could make her feel even a little bit less alone . . .
I handed it to her mom, who read the note and smiled. “Really? All of them? Thank you.”
“I can tell you from experience that things change so quickly, and hopefully she’ll find her group and it will all get better soon. But it does take years for some people. I know ‘Hang in there’ doesn’t really cut it when you’re going through something like that. For her or for you.” I tried to imagine how hard that would be, to be a mom and see your child in pain. Sullivan had told me she was worried about Terabithia being bullied when he was older because of being a minority and because he had a gay single mom and no dad. That was on top of her worry about him having a tough time with the fact that he had been adopted.
“Books seem to be the main thing Amisha connects to these days,” Indira said.
“We have plenty more of them. I’ll think of some for next time.”
“We’re heading out, Do,” Sullivan said. “See you tomorrow night.”
“Yep. See you!”
After Sullivan left for her dinner, Terabithia and I were playing with his obsession, a miniature version of that arcade game with the groundhogs that you bopped on the head when they popped up. At ten months old, he could pull up on almost anything, and he was pretty steady on his feet as long as he had something to balance against, but he got so excited when he was holding the mallet that he would tip over and crack up laughing when he landed on his bum. We took turns bopping away. He would grunt to cheer me on.
The phone rang. “Hello?”
“Dodie, is everything okay?” Sullivan sounded worried.
“Yeah, we’re having a great time. We’re playing the groundhog game!”
“Still? Since I left three hours ago?”
That couldn’t be right. I looked at the clock. Oh. Eight p.m. How did that happen?
“Anyway, I’ve been trying to get through but haven’t been able to get a signal. My car’s stuck in the snow. I tried calling Mom and Dad to pick me up, but their cells aren’t working, and I worry about them driving farther across town to get me in this crappy weather anyway. I left a message telling them to meet me back there so they can help you with Terabithia if you need it. I’ve got a ride, but it’s snowing so hard we might need to wait until it lets up a bit.”
Snow? I looked out the window. Good grief! It was a blizzard out there. Drifts had already formed on the lawn. “It doesn’t look like it’s going to let up anytime soon,” I observed.
“No, it doesn’t. I’ll try to get there as quickly as I can. Could you give Terabithia his bottle and put him to bed?”
“Of course. Don’t worry, and don’t rush. I’ll see you soon.”
Okay. Put Terabithia to bed. I could do this. Sullivan had given me instructions, and I’d succeeded tons of times while babysitting. Of course, that had been years ago. But Sullivan trusted me. Let’s see . . . where would I start? Um, by removing Terabithia’s mouth from the middle groundhog’s head.
“Time for bottle and bed, Boo.” I lifted him gently.
“Waaaa!” he wailed, squirming to get down.
Uh-oh. Sullivan had said he usually went down really easily when he was tired, but maybe Terabithia was a night owl like me. What had she said to do if he wasn’t ready? She’d said to rub his back, and he’d quiet down, take his bottle, and fall asleep soon after.
At first, as he drank, his eyelids got heavy. Yes! He was going to fall asleep easily. Then, as if his milk were lac
ed with coffee, his eyes shot open, and he started twisting on my lap, trying to grab my hair, knock the empty bottle out of my hand onto the ground, and turn over onto his belly. He let out a squall as I tried to keep him from diving off my lap. When I carried him up the stairs, I rubbed and rubbed his back like he was a genie’s lamp, but I sure didn’t get my wish. Terabithia’s wails were getting louder and louder. Poor kid. He was probably confused by the absence of Sullivan. And overtired since it was now past his bedtime.
Hopefully, the familiar surroundings of his room would quiet him down.
They didn’t. My pajama-putting-on abilities came right back to me as if I had babysitting muscle memory. Which was helpful since it was hard to think straight at that decibel level.
Then it hit me: the diaper! It was soaking wet. Clearly, I was out of practice.
Thanks to my patented Dodie Fairisle speed diaper-changing technique, Terabithia was dressed and dry less than a minute later. But still wailing.
I tried singing to him, told him stories, and read him three books, the same ones Sullivan or Mackie read him every night. I gave him his blankie, which he threw out of his crib. I tried to get him to lie down. I put a cold compress on his head the way Mom used to do for me when I wasn’t feeling well, but he threw that at me too. He was like a different person. One I didn’t know how to reach. It was an awful feeling. I kept checking my watch. It was already eight forty-five. The roads must be really bad, I thought, for it to take everyone almost an hour just to go a mile or two.
I brought Terabithia’s face right up next to mine, gently looking into his eyes and willing him to calm down. That sometimes had worked with some of the babies I’d taken care of before. Terabithia’s big brown eyes were full of more than tears. They were full of fear. A shock of recognition rolled through me. Poor sweetie. He was probably afraid Sullivan was never coming back. It had only been a few months since his big transition, after all. He had no reason yet to be sure that the people around him would stay.
Don’t get carried away, Dodie. Terabithia has not been abandoned. It was healthy for his mother to get out, to have a little time away.
At 8:53 (and 41 seconds), the garage door groaned open. It was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard. Help was on the way. Terabithia’s cheeks were flushed, and his forehead was hot. I wasn’t sure if it was a fever or if he’d just gotten himself worked up.
The three O’Reillys materialized together—apparently Mackie and Jeff had pulled up next to Sullivan’s ride, and they’d made the rest of the trip together. When they opened the door to the nursery, Terabithia began to bawl as if with relief to find he hadn’t been abandoned after all.
“Shh . . . shh . . . there, there, now,” Sullivan soothed, picking Terabithia up.
“You all right?” Jeff asked, patting me on the back. I nodded but couldn’t look him in the eye. I had done a terrible job. I had failed. Terabithia would never become president now.
Terabithia gradually proceeded from sobs to snuffles, and soon he was asleep on Sullivan’s shoulder. She laid him gently down, and Mackie, Jeff, and I tiptoed out of the room.
“I’m going to put the kettle on,” Mackie said when we got downstairs.
“The little bug can be quite a screamer, huh?” Jeff was so nice, trying to reassure me.
“Yeah,” I said morosely. “I tried everything—singing, bouncing, walking him around . . . nothing seemed to work.”
“That happens. He’s not used to going to sleep without any of us. And sometimes, the worst nights are the ones on which he has the most fun. He doesn’t want to miss any of the action and kicks up quite a fuss.”
I was starting to feel a little better. Especially when Mackie put a cup of tea into my hands—some of the Surabaya I’d given her from Mariage Frères, my favorite tea shop in Paris. “So the drive was difficult?”
“It was. We began to consider whether it might not be best just to sleep at the hair salon, sitting up, in one of those chairs with the big helmet dryers,” Jeff joked. I appreciated the effort. Despite the tea, I couldn’t help replaying Terabithia’s squinched-up, unhappy little face, over and over in my mind. What if I damaged him irreparably? I fretted. What if he never wants to be around me again?
“I should go,” I said when I finished my tea.
“That’s ridiculous. You can’t go out again tonight,” Mackie tutted. “Sullivan will probably stay in there with Terabithia for a while. You can sleep in the guest room without any fear of disturbing him.”
Mackie laid out some pajamas in the guest room. I didn’t think the pink crocheted collar was my best look, but I wasn’t about to argue.
“Good night,” Mackie said as she began to close the door behind her and Jeff. She studied my face for a moment. “Don’t worry, Dodie. He won’t even remember being upset in the morning. It happens all the time. He’ll be fine.”
Mackie was right. I hadn’t needed to be up half the night fretting that they would never let me babysit again. Or that Terabithia himself would break his silence to pronounce as his first words, “Dodie is inept; please don’t let her near me!” When I woke up and padded downstairs in the morning, Terabithia was sitting in his chair with some form of baby food all over his face, his eyes shining almost mischievously. His face lit up even more when he saw me.
“Did you look outside?” Jeff asked.
“Not yet.” I peeked through a slat of the blind. Wow! It was gorgeous. The whole yard looked like the bun part of a big steamed vegetable bun. Thinking about food gave me an idea. “Mind if I make something?” I asked, already on my way to the kitchen. I grabbed four bowls from the cabinet. After throwing my coat, scarf, and hat on and pulling boots over my pajama pants, I ventured out onto the back porch with the bowls in hand. After pushing aside the top layer of snow, I scooped a heap of the fresh stuff underneath into each of the bowls. A few minutes later, Sullivan appeared, having succeeded in getting Terabithia dressed for the cold. The drifts were practically up to her waist. Terabithia squirmed in her arms, gesturing wildly at the snow. She knelt down so that he could touch it. When he patted it, a look of pure shock came across his face so extreme it was as if he’d never seen snow before.
Which, it dawned on me, he probably hadn’t. He was a baby. Right.
Terabithia had apparently decided he didn’t care for the snow. He was pointing back inside. I followed them, balancing the full bowls. I rushed to the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk and some Hershey’s chocolate syrup, poured a little of each into all the bowls, and mixed everything up well. Snow cream, a Fairisle family tradition! Terabithia’s happy slurps confirmed that he was instantly converted.
When I finally got home, I put on Gossip Girl and forced myself to pay attention to the stack of bills that were almost due.
I always treated bill paying like ripping off a Band-Aid, opening all of them at once and spreading them out in front of me.
Oh. Holy. Halifax. $2,562 on my credit card. $406 on utilities and phone bill. Plus I owed $1,839 for my mortgage. That came to $5,807. That was . . . a lot. That was . . . definitely more than I was expecting. And more than I made in almost two months. What had I bought? I scrolled through the charges.
Almost a hundred each on cans of paint and on toilet paper (it goes fast with all those visitors tromping in and out!). There was a small bathroom next to the kitchen right on the other side of the sunroom door. I’d had to pay to have someone install an extra door to create a teeny bathroom annex that my library patrons could get to without being tempted to continue farther into my house. It was unlikely that anyone would take the liberty, but it seemed worth my peace of mind to be sure that no wayward kid would nick some cooling cookies off my kitchen counter or make themselves comfortable watching a scandalous program on TV in my living room while their mothers or fathers were chatting away obliviously between the stacks.
I’d also spent a few hundred on curtains, another $500 on rugs to warm up the place. There was a scary amount for s
hipping some books and a table from Brimfield Flea Market, and even though the bookshelves had been $50 each, sixteen of those added up to $900.
I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth very slowly.
It’s only this first bill. It won’t ever be this bad again, I reminded myself. There were always up-front expenses in these kinds of ventures. One-time investment costs, if you will. I was obviously never going to need to buy sixteen bookcases again. And I still had a little money socked away from when I was a teacher’s assistant during my master’s program and living off cheap Thai food in New York. My heartbeat began to slow down. The thought of spending a hundred dollars a month on toilet paper was still shocking, but as long as I kept the other expenses under control, I should be fine with a little extra spending.
As it turned out, I didn’t really need to be at an official story circle to get to hear all about the interesting lives and problems of the people in Chatsworth. The library seemed to bring them out all on its own.
“I think you should just call her,” I advised the woman standing on the other side of the circulation desk later that week. She hadn’t told me her name yet, but she had already shared the story of how she and her mother had become estranged. It was really sad, but it was also clearly a misunderstanding. “Here, read this little Maya Angelou book called Mother. It’s so powerful. And I’m sure your mother misses you. You’ve probably both changed since that fight three years ago. Would you give her another chance?”
Her eyes glistened. “Yes, I would. Thank you, Dodie!” She was about to leave, then did a 180. “Almost forgot the book. Can I get a stamp?”
Who needs bar codes? After my own heart, my visitors were partial to checking their books out the old-fashioned way—complete with that cool mechanism that let you move the letters and numbers of the stamp each day to reflect the date.
“Dodie?” the woman said.
I wasn’t looking at the stamper. I wasn’t looking at the book. I was looking out the window at a man looking in. Even though he was wearing a yellow hard hat and his hand was making a little visor to shield out the glare of sunset on the window, our eyes met long enough for me to realize . . . I had seen him before.
The Lending Library Page 8