“I didn’t let it out of my sight,” he grinned. “It was in my pocket.”
“You know I used to get seasick. How did you know I wouldn’t throw up on the boat?”
“I didn’t.”
“What if I had?”
Shep laughed. “I probably wouldn’t have proposed to you right then.”
My cell rang. “Hey, Mackie. Did you hear the news through the Chatsworth grapevine? I was about to call you.”
“You heard the news?” Mackie asked. My brow furrowed. Huh?
“About our engagement,” I stumbled on. “Shep and I are so excited.”
“You two are engaged?”
“Yes!”
“That’s . . . that’s great,” she said, as if coming to. “I’m really pleased for you.” There was an odd tone to her voice. My stomach flipped.
“Is everything okay? Are you and Jeff all right? How’s Boo? I can’t wait to tell him the news!”
“Yes, yes, we’re fine. Give me a call tomorrow, would you? I should go. Congratulations. We’re really pleased for you,” she repeated before hanging up.
“Do?” Shep asked, glancing over. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. She sounded weird.”
“What did she say?”
“That she’s really pleased for us . . .”
“That makes sense.”
“And something about having news.”
“Oh, do you think it’s about Terabithia being adopted?”
“Maybe,” I replied, my voice cracking.
Shep patted my hand. “That would be good news, right?”
I was silent.
“Right?” Shep said more insistently.
“Yes!” I said, so loudly we both jumped.
Mackie had said “Call me tomorrow,” but there was no way I could sleep until I knew what was going on.
“Dodie, hi. Sorry about before.”
“That’s okay. Was there . . . anything you wanted to tell me? I was afraid maybe you had news and I cut you off.”
“There is news, actually,” she said slowly.
My heart stuttered.
“Jed and Eileen have decided to move forward with the adoption. They’ve already completed the series of home visits, and they’re starting the final paperwork, which means that in three weeks the adoption will be official, and Terabithia will be . . .”
Mackie and I were both sniffling. She never finished her sentence.
Terabithia will be . . . theirs.
Terabithia will be . . . gone.
After I forced out a congratulations and Mackie pretended to appreciate it, I hung up the phone and sat staring at it until Shep pulled it out of my hands.
“It’s going through?”
“Yeah.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
“I know,” I said, standing up to look him in the eyes. We had a lot to celebrate, I reminded myself. Then Shep leaned down and whispered, “We’re getting married,” and it was hard not to smile. He stroked my hair, and I melted, tipping my face up into the kiss of my future husband.
I’d been staring at the ceiling since early morning, changing positions every so often in hopes that I would fall back to sleep. No dice. I gave Shep a kiss on the cheek, and after spending a few delicious seconds remembering what it was like to be in bed with my new fiancé (!), I threw on a dress and headed into the library. The book I wanted was The Crimson Petal and the White. I reread the scenes I was looking for, scenes in which the heroine of the story cares for a little girl who is not her own. Granted, her name was Sugar, she was a prostitute (but with a heart of gold!), and she’d kidnapped the child. No one realized how good of a mother she was when really she was better suited for it than the girl’s parents or anyone else in the novel.
I heard a tap on the window. “She’s in there!” There was giggling and what sounded like a squeal. I stood up.
“There’s the new fiancée!” Kendra and Geraldine cried in unison through the window. “Open the door!”
I smiled. “Come on in!”
The two fell on me in a group hug.
Kendra was grinning ear to ear, toting a bag. “We thought this called for a celebration before you start a wedding diet,” she joked, knowing I couldn’t stay away from caloric food for very long. “It’s from—”
“Billybee’s!” I cried.
“Of course you’d recognize the green stripes on the bag!”
I moved the Lord of the Rings trilogy someone had left on the table to make space for our impromptu party. Kendra pulled out a bowl with plastic wrap over the top. They had bought an entire banana pudding! Shalom, breakfast! She threw a plastic spoon at each of us, and we dug in.
“Are you so excited?”
“Of course!”
“What’s wrong?” Geraldine asked.
“Nothing! I’m just a little in shock.”
“Yeah, I can see how a curly-haired, blue-green-eyed, sexy, book-loving, manly man becoming your husband might do that to a girl,” Kendra teased. “Not that we didn’t see it coming.”
“Really? Cuz I didn’t.”
“Well, you’ve been really preoccupied lately with another little fellow,” Kendra pointed out.
I wondered if she had heard the news yet from Mackie. I studied her expression. Guess not.
“So have you thought about when?” Geraldine asked, dropping a chunk of banana on the table, spooning it up, and downing it.
“Ew,” Kendra said.
“What? Ten-second rule.”
“I’m thinking next fall,” I answered.
“Fall weddings are so romantic!” Kendra crooned.
My friends stayed for an hour, chatting about what style my wedding would be and how we could incorporate books into the centerpieces. My thoughts kept wandering.
I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told them about Terabithia. I still didn’t quite believe it myself. I spent the rest of the day picking at the banana pudding and stressing about the fact that Mackie and Jeff had taken Terabithia to get some paperwork done for the adoption, which meant one less day I could see him out of the short three weeks or so I had left.
When Shep came back over after basketball with the guys, I tried to cheer up and jabbered a bit about wedding plans. Pretty soon, he caught on. “Do,” he said heavily, “I know you’re excited about our engagement. We’ll have time to celebrate that. Right now, it would be crazy to deny you’re grieving. We have months and months to plan the wedding. For now, focus on Terabithia. You should spend as much time with him as you can.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, throwing my arms around him. And maybe it was how considerate he was being. Or the fact that now we were supposed to do everything together, including making decisions. It had been long enough. “Shep, there’s something—”
My cell rang from somewhere in the couch cushions. “Sorry, just a sec.” I dug it out. “It’s Coco. Mind if I get this?”
“Yeah, go ahead,” he said, reaching for the remote and instantly tuning me out in the way that so many people (besides me) have when watching sports.
“Hey—” I started to greet her.
“Her name is Sianeh! And I have her picture!”
“Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. The referral came through?”
“The referral came through!”
“Send me her picture immediately! I’m putting you on speakerphone so I can go to my computer.”
“Do, why don’t you have a smartphone?”
“I know, I know. But just please email it. And tell me more.”
“She’s the cutest ever! Wait till you see her. I can already tell she’s a sweet baby with a fiery little personality from the picture. She’s six months old and from a village in central Liberia.”
“Does this mean you can go meet her?”
“Yes! The adoption agency is going to help us start making our arrangements. Do, I can’t believe it. It’s all happening so fast. I will be meeting her in a matt
er of weeks!”
“Yeah, it seems like you started the process such a short time ago. Doesn’t it take a lot longer to get a referral?”
“Usually, yeah. Liberia has tended to have shorter wait times than, say, Ethiopia, but it still seems superfast.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I’m wondering if it’s because of some of the people we met when we were there. I don’t know how much influence they have, but the day before we left, we definitely ended up at a lunch with some people who were pretty high up in the government there.”
“Wow. How did that happen?”
“You know how Mark’s gramma Bessie was Liberian? She used to tell Mark’s dad and his aunt Rose all these stories about the poverty there and how she would always try to send money back to her family after she came to America, even in the beginning when she and his grampa Kambili had almost nothing. Rose studied abroad in Monrovia during college. She used to go back to Liberia every few years, and she started donating a lot of money to Liberian charities when she got really rich.”
I was clicking like crazy while she talked, trying to get the picture to download and open.
Finally!
Oh, my heart. Staring out from the picture was . . . Sianeh. I saw immediately what my sister meant. Sianeh was looking at the camera with her head cocked a little to the side like she was saying, Gotcha! to the photographer instead of the other way around. There was the hint of a smile around the corners of her lips, and her eyes were warm but serious with a gaze that seemed strong and direct for a six-month-old. My sister’s forever daughter. My future niece.
“What does Sianeh mean?”
“Sweet journey,” Coco said quietly, her voice breaking.
—FOURTEEN—
September 2008
“Hi, Mackie.”
“Am I on speakerphone?”
“Yes, sorry, I’m driving.” I was on my way home from school.
“Oh, okay, be safe. Do you want to call me back?”
“No!” I blurted. “I mean, not to worry, I do this all the time. I’m almost home anyway. Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine, it’s just—Jeff and I need to go to the bank and get some of Sullivan’s paperwork out of the vault there. Do you think you could come here and watch Terabithia till dinnertime?”
I was supposed to open the library. Kendra was on vacation, visiting her mom in Florida, or I would have asked her to fill in for me. Geraldine was at a class for her library science master’s. It wouldn’t hurt for me to miss one afternoon, I decided. I’d nip home, put up a sign, and then head to Mackie’s.
“Sure, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”
By the time Mackie and Jeff returned, I had already fed Terabithia some pasta with sauce and cheese. It was all over his bib, his face, and his fingers. He was waving his spoon around, saying, “Yummy basta Dada, yummy basta Dada. Bissia more! Bissia more!”
Mackie bent down and kissed his ’fro. “Are you having a good dinner?”
“Yeah,” Terabithia said.
“You’re such a natural with him,” Mackie observed as I put another few pieces of penne in front of him.
My heart leaped. Even the slightest hint that they saw how strong the connection was between us gave me hope. Unfounded hope, probably. But still, I couldn’t help it.
“We picked up his passport from the bank vault,” Jeff told me. “Sullivan had to get one to bring him over here from Ethiopia. Of course, it makes sense. It’s just, you don’t think about a baby needing a passport like that, do you?”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.” Jeff pushed it across the table, avoiding pockets of sauce and cheese.
I opened it. Boo was looking slightly up, probably above the camera to where Sullivan was holding a toy or making a face to get him to smile. His eyes sparkled. He looked happy.
A wave of jealousy at Coco’s situation hit me. She could look at the picture of her child, and it was a beginning. Here I was, looking at a picture of Terabithia, trying to prepare myself to say goodbye soon.
How was I going to get through the next few weeks?
Elmira came up to me after school, her eyes wide. “Is the library going to be open today?”
“Yes, something came up yesterday at the last minute.” I was irritated, but I hoped she hadn’t heard it in my voice. It had just been one day. Was that such a big deal? I mean, shop owners and other volunteers had conflicts all the time. And I’d put up a sign.
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Good. Because I need some books for my project on—” She stopped, afraid that she was holding me up. I guessed the expression on my face wasn’t my friendliest. “Well, anyway, I’ll see you there,” she finished.
As she walked away, Benton was coming toward me. He probably wanted a full report on Kendra’s vacation. Which I didn’t have. I’d missed a call from her while at Mackie and Jeff’s and had been too tired to call her back when I got home.
“Hi, Dodie.”
“Hi, Benton.”
“Everything okay at the library?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Oh, I stopped by yesterday and saw the sign. Wanted to make sure nothing was wrong.”
What was this, the Dodie Fairisle Schedule Inquisition? “The library’s fine. And I don’t know how Kendra’s vacation is going. I’m not in charge of everyone and everything in this town. So don’t bother asking me,” I snapped and turned away.
“But I didn’t ask—” Benton protested.
I locked myself in the teachers’ lounge bathroom and splashed water on my face. What was wrong with me? Why was I being so mean? On the other hand, why couldn’t people cut me a little slack?
Mackie, Jeff, and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t catch our breath. Portraits for Little Ones had had a cancellation, so we’d scooped up the slot for a big farewell photo session with Terabithia. To remember him by, at this age, when he was still here with us. And probably, in my case, to gaze at while shooting for the world record in therapeutic ice cream consumption after he was gone.
The photographer had brought out a big stuffed bear. It faced Terabithia, looking at him placidly. Terabithia was hamming it up, looking back at the bear, sitting on its lap, touching its nose, saying, “Hi, Bear. Smi-yuh, Bear. Cheese, Bear. Peez, Bear!” The bear did not seem amused, but we were.
“Oh God!” I exclaimed when the photographer went to change the scenery to a big ABC block Terabithia could sit on. “It’s already four thirty!” It would take me at least ten minutes to get home if I left right away.
“Go, go ahead,” Jeff urged. I kissed them and Boo on the cheeks. Boo started crying as I left, crooning, “Why Dada leave?”
Major chest pains.
I raced home, but it was almost five by the time I got the sunroom unlocked and ready for visitors. A handful of friends waited on the front steps.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Dodie,” Mike said, patting me on the shoulder as his daughter slipped past me and headed for the crayons and construction paper.
“No problem,” Marvela Jeffers agreed, placing her knitting books on the counter to renew them.
I felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe other hopefuls had come by and hadn’t been able to wait. But as more people streamed in and the chairs filled up, that sunny buzz of library love pushed away the darkness falling outside the windows, and it seemed like everything would be all right after all.
The date was fixed: Eileen and Jed were going to take Terabithia on October 3. Not take. Give a new, loving home, I kept reminding myself. It wasn’t very helpful. I contemplated some drastic scenarios including Boo-napping. I couldn’t go through with it. I wished I’d had a chance to adopt Boo myself. I felt like I’d abandoned him in some way. And Sullivan too.
Strangely, what occupied my thoughts when I wasn’t stressing about Terabithia were memories of Not Dad right before he left. One day, when I was reshelving
in the library, the window caught my eye. It had been raining off and on all day, and the trees were suffused in that green freshness that the gray light always brought out. I always thought of those days as English countryside days. I touched my finger to the pane as if I could feel the drops of rain that trembled on the other side.
It reminded me of something. I closed my eyes and saw myself in a green rain slicker with a hood and matching green-and-yellow duck boots. My arm was aching from stretching upward so far; Not Dad was very tall, and his hand was in mine.
“I’m taking you somewhere I know you’ll like,” he said. My heart was beating like a little bunny’s. I never got a day with him all by myself! And now he had a surprise for me too!
It felt like we walked forever. I was sure it was only a few blocks, but time and the distance stretched as it always did when you were small and didn’t know where you were going.
I watched the ducks on my feet as we crossed the street and met the sidewalk.
“Look up,” he said.
Perched next to the sidewalk was a tall red rectangular thingy. A telephone booth! Like the one in my book about the little girl in London who saved dogs from mean owners! I ran up to it, peeking in all the rain-clouded little windowpanes. The paint was so red. Tomato red. Fire engine red. Happy-day-with-good-surprises red!
He pulled the door open for me. Then I could see what the rain had hidden—inside the booth, on almost every surface, books were lined up. Near the bottom were picture books, many of them turned on their sides so they would fit on the narrow shelves. Most of the other shelves held books for adults—lots of paperback novels, a few books with hard covers and pictures of fancy-looking men and women on the spine, even some cookbooks. I clapped my hands with delight and turned in circles inside the space, marveling that someone had done this, had made a library in a little phone booth for everyone to use!
It began to rain hard, and he was standing outside since only one of us could fit. Drops bounced off his umbrella. “Time to go.”
I made an effort to remember all the turns we took to get home. Maybe he would take me back there. It was good to know how, though. Not that I would go by myself at four years old, but in case Mom didn’t know where it was. He was barely speaking to Mom anymore. Something bad was happening between them that I didn’t understand.
The Lending Library Page 17