The Lending Library

by Fogelson, Aliza

  “Do, you ready for breakfast?” Shep called up the stairs.

  “I’ve got to go, guardian angel,” I said to Kendra. “Thank you so much for believing in my art and forcing me to sell it.”

  “You’re welcome. But Do? Take it slow, okay? You’ll need a lot more saved up before you can reasonably tell Mackie and Jeff you are ready.”

  “Of course.”

  —SEVENTEEN—

  November 2008

  Kendra hadn’t been kidding. Within a few weeks, the $8,000 was already disappearing more quickly than I cared to think about.

  I needed a get-rich-quick scheme. What else could I sell from my attic besides paintings? No, wait . . . what if I went back to painting? The art sale had given me enough confidence to think I could do it again.

  I headed to my trusty old Robshaw’s Hardware and Art Supplies. Mr. Robshaw helped me select paints and canvases and an easel that I put in the corner of my study overlooking a big oak tree outside.

  The first time I stood in front of the empty canvas, I felt a flicker of excitement remembering how much I had loved painting, how the hours had flown by as colorful brushstrokes turned into animals and people.

  An hour later, I was still staring out the window watching the sunlight shape-shift between the ice-glazed branches.

  Okay, maybe the problem was that I needed a subject to paint instead of trying to come up with something out of my head. Over the next few days, I gathered a bunch of my favorite photos from my travels and tried to paint pictures of the people in them. The grizzled accordion player on the street in Montmartre, Paris. The children playing chase in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. I couldn’t seem to begin.

  I forced myself to try. The brushes felt like lead in my hand. I didn’t want to paint. I had to, but I didn’t want to.

  Shep would come over to keep me company. “Will you sit in the living room?” I asked him on the first night.

  “I can’t sit here?” he asked, pointing to the comfy chair in my study on the other side of the room from my easel.

  “No, you’re too distracting,” I said, kissing him lightly. But the truth was it was too much pressure having him in the room.

  After a few hours, he came upstairs to check on me. “How’s it going?”

  “Pretty well,” I lied, inching the canvas away from his view.

  “Can I see?”

  “Not yet. I’m pretty protective about my work in progress.”

  That wasn’t true either. Sullivan and I used to look at each other’s paintings all the time. But that was a different situation. A different time. Before . . .

  I missed her so much. And I loved the idea of painting again for Sullivan. For Terabithia. But so far, I didn’t seem to be able to do it.

  Coco and Mark held Thanksgiving dinner. It was the first time any of us saw them since the adoption fell through even though we’d all offered or threatened multiple times to come.

  “Let’s just wait until the holidays,” Coco had said to me. “We’re doing okay. I promise. You can all come then.”

  “Are they sure they want to do that to themselves? Right now? I asked Coco, but she keeps insisting it’s fine,” I had told Mom the week before.

  “I had the same thought,” my mom had replied. “And that’s why it’s good that we’re all only staying until Friday morning. She told me it’ll be a welcome distraction and remind them of all the things they’re grateful for.”

  And when we arrived, we saw that they’d gone all out. There were two kinds of turkey in progress—basted and baked golden brown, and fried crispy and golden brown. It wasn’t the bird but the roasted potatoes with garlic, rosemary, olive oil, and sea salt that my sisters and I were prepared to fight over, though.

  My mom and I sneaked into the kitchen and made her traditional foods—good old green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and fried onions on top and garlicky mashed potatoes—as well as some of Shep’s family’s favorites, including cheddar-and-beer stuffing and chunky cranborange sauce.

  Shep and Mark and Dad were in the living room telling stories about their own Thanksgivings growing up. I caught Shep’s eye through the doorway and smiled; he waved a thumbs-up in my direction.

  “Is Shep behaving?” Maddie stage-whispered. I shot her a look.

  “How was he misbehaving?” Coco wanted to know.

  “He really wasn’t. We’ve been having a difference of opinion lately on some wedding-related things”—sort of true, though not so much wedding related as marriage related—“but we’re okay. How are you holding up?”

  “Better. We’re going to wait until after the New Year to start the process again.”

  “Do you get kicked to the back of the line?” Maddie asked.

  Mom and I shot her a look.

  “What? Is that an offensive question?”

  “It sounds like you’re asking if they’re getting kicked to the curb,” I pointed out.

  “Well . . . I mean . . . they kinda did.”

  Coco managed to laugh. “I know what you meant, Mad. And the answer is I don’t know. This happens so rarely. It’s a pretty in-depth process to put your child up for adoption, and then there’s that lag time of several months. So I don’t know what kind of precedent there is.”

  “I’m so sorry about Sianeh, Co,” I said. I wanted to tell her in person.

  A pained look crossed her face upon hearing the name. “Thank you.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling.”

  “I suspect you can, at least a little bit,” she replied. “You’ve probably had to face some similar feelings about Terabithia’s adoption. It must be so hard to imagine saying goodbye to him.”

  My mom and my sisters were all looking at me as if they knew what I was trying to do. “It is,” I admitted. “It really is. And Coco, you’re going to be an amazing mother.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “I hope so.”

  We heard the bing of the turkey in the oven. Soon our plates were heaped with piles of steaming stuffing, creamy green beans, turkey glistening in skin slotted with feathery herbs, and a crowning of potatoes the golden brown of late-summer sunshine. We took turns saying what we were thankful for. And then—after a wait that always seemed too long but that made everything taste better—it was time to eat.

  “Such a bummer for them, huh?” Shep said when we were eating leftovers back at home on Sunday.

  “It really is.”

  “They seem to be holding up pretty well, though.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you know that Mark invested a big chunk of the money he inherited so he can put it in a 529 savings plan for their future kid?”

  “No, but that makes sense.” What was a 529 savings plan?

  “They also made sure they were in a good school district before they moved into their house.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’ve done a lot of planning.”

  Shep wasn’t the most subtle.

  “So you’ve been thinking about it more?”

  “Do, I never stopped thinking about it. But I don’t know what the solution is. I’m not ready. You’re not.”

  “Hold on,” I said. “I’m working on it. So I’ve had some setbacks. But I’ve got a nice long holiday break starting on the fifteenth. I’m going to use the time to paint.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I got up from the table. Daniel hadn’t thought I had the talent to be an artist. And now it seemed like Shep didn’t think I was ready to be a mother. Or he didn’t want me to be one. Hurt and anger rose up in the back of my throat. “I know I can’t make you want to do this with me. But you could at least believe in me.”

  I slammed the door of my bedroom behind me. A few minutes later, I heard the much softer closing of my front door.

  —EIGHTEEN—

  December 2008

  The day after Thanksgiving break ended, I was heading out of school when I saw Elmira through the window of the principal’s office. He
r mother was with her, which was the first sign that something big was up. The second sign was that Elmira’s face was as white as paper.

  “What’s going on?” I asked the receptionist.

  “She was caught stealing,” he confided to me in low tones.

  “No, I mean Elmira Pelle.” He must have thought I was talking about someone in the waiting area.

  “Yep, that’s the one. Snuck into her teacher’s room and stole a bunch of books. They found them in her book bag.”

  What the deuce? This did not sound—in any way, shape, or form—like Elmira.

  The principal looked up and saw me standing outside the window gaping. When he caught my eye, I gestured to myself. His brow furrowed, but he waved me in.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Elmira stole several books from her teacher.”

  “That doesn’t sound like—” I stopped. It would be better if I listened first. “What do you mean?”

  “Ms. Larezzi is writing a paper for a journal about Louisa May Alcott, and Elmira is doing a report on Little Women, and we found Ms. Larezzi’s books in her bag.”

  “Elmira?” I asked. “What’s this about?”

  “I was just borrowing them. You know I’m a really quick reader, and I was going to put them back tomorrow. I didn’t think she’d need them, and I really did for my project.”

  “I thought you were using the books we have in the lending library on Louisa May Alcott. Why would you need Ms. Larezzi’s books?”

  Elmira wouldn’t look in my direction. That’s when it hit me. My lending library had been closed a lot lately. Her mean-girl mother probably wouldn’t drive her to the Derbyshire Library or the bookstore. Elmira hadn’t been able to get the books she had needed, so she’d borrowed them from her teacher, who happened to be about as charming a woman as Leila Pelle was.

  It was my fault. Elmira had turned to a life of crime because of me!

  I recovered my speech for her sake and took her mother and the principal aside. “Listen, Elmira has a spotless record. I can vouch for the fact that she’s been an invaluable help to me at the lending library and a model student. I’m sure this was a misunderstanding and she meant to ask for the books. Or borrowed them and was going to return them right away. Can’t we look the other way this once?”

  Leila Pelle’s mouth was set in a hard line. “I don’t think that’s appropriate. Expulsion is too severe, but I think she should be punished for her actions. We’ll do that at home, of course, but she needs to associate her punishment with this place as well to be sure it never happens again.”

  “It won’t!” I cried.

  “Well,” the principal mused, “our other options are suspension and detention. That means someone will have to look after her or pick her up late.”

  A red flush was creeping up Leila Pelle’s neck as her desire to discipline Elmira warred with her complete reluctance to have to change her schedule. “Isn’t there some sort of probation you could put her on instead?” she finally asked.

  “Yes, we could do that,” the principal replied, turning to Elmira. “We’ll give her three months of probation. If there are any other violations, we’ll have to consider a more serious punishment. Do you understand, young lady?”

  Elmira nodded. Her hands twisted in her lap.

  “Let’s go,” Leila Pelle ordered. “We’ll talk about my punishment in the car.” She marched Elmira out the door.

  I felt sick to my stomach as I drove home. I headed around the back, unlocked the door of the sunroom, and sagged into a chair to reflect on what had happened. Elmira had trusted me, and I was no better than her mother. Kendra had been right. I wasn’t doing a very good job. It was almost a certainty that Elmira wasn’t the only person in Chatsworth who needed the library and had come to find it closed. These people had become my friends. I knew them by name. I knew some of their troubles, and I knew which books might make them feel better.

  The library had taken on a life of its own. It was a place where people connected. Sometimes, those conversations alone were enough to make a person leave with a smile on her face or walk a little bit lighter. But I had been so wrapped up in my drama with Terabithia that I hadn’t fully recognized the miracle that I had created . . . until it was all on the verge of falling apart.

  I was in danger of losing the library. And Shep. I couldn’t be there for Terabithia—financially or otherwise—unless I closed the library for good or gave it to Kendra. That was not something I could live with. My library was my baby too.

  A few days after the Elmira incident, I was playing with Terabithia at Mackie and Jeff’s after school, and my eyes closed. Only a few seconds later, I felt a gentle tug on my arm; Terabithia’s little face was pinched with worry. “Dada?” he said carefully. “Is you okay, Dada?”

  I gave him a big hug and said, “I’m sorry!” and went on building train tracks for him to tear apart. Falling asleep while Boo was awake scared me.

  Mackie was napping on the couch in the living room. It seemed as though every time I looked at her, there were new worry lines on her lovely face. Even in sleep, her hands were clenched in her lap. Jeff was standing by the counter in the doorway to the kitchen. At first I thought he was reading a magazine. Then I realized he was supporting himself on the counter with one hand, the other pressed against his chest.

  “Jeff, are you all right?”

  His breath was coming in short bursts. I grabbed a chair and sat him down, then reached for the phone and dialed 911. “I’d like to report an emergency at 121 Merryton Road. I think it’s a heart attack.”

  Mackie appeared at the door and rushed over to Jeff. The dispatcher gave me some instructions. Jeff swallowed an aspirin as Mackie held his hand. “Everything is going to be all right, my darling,” she soothed.

  Terabithia’s waking wail greeted the ambulance. “You go,” I told Mackie as the EMTs came in. “I’ll take care of Terabithia.”

  “It’s okay, Boo,” I lied, trying to distract him with his favorite talking octopus toy.

  The sirens quieted. The hours crawled. They had gone to the hospital around 11:00 a.m. A little after 7:00 p.m., when I had put an exhausted and confused Terabithia to bed, Mackie called.

  “How is Jeff? What happened?” I asked.

  “He’s going to be okay. He had a minor heart attack, and they put a stent in.”

  “Oh, gosh!”

  “He’ll be here overnight. If you don’t mind staying another few hours, I’ll plan to stay until they kick me out.”

  “They’re kicking you out? Do you want to stay with him overnight? There’s no rush. We’re fine here, and Terabithia is sleeping away.”

  “There’s really no space for me to stay in his room even if I wanted to.”

  “Is Jeff resting?”

  “Yes. He looks peaceful now; he was in such pain before.”

  “Good. Come get some rest when you can.”

  Mackie got home at nine, her face gray with fatigue. I gave her a hug. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I think he’s going to be fine.”

  “No, I meant are you all right?”

  “Oh, me. I’m okay. But exhausted. I’m going to go check on Terabithia. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “What is that amazing smell?” she asked, peering over my shoulder. I was stirring a pot on the stove. Took a little taste. Needed more salt.

  “I made vegetable soup. Just from bits and pieces in your refrigerator. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, that’s sweet of you. I hope you won’t be offended if I only have a little. I don’t have much of an appetite. I think I need to go to bed.”

  Hint taken. “Is there anything else I can do for you all?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll come back tomorrow and watch him while you go to the hospital. You don’t have to rush. I’ll take care of Boo for as long as you like,” I said.

  There was an awkward pause. “Thank you. My sister will b
e here first thing, so there’s no need. Jeff will probably get discharged in the morning, but I know you have school, and there’s no telling how long we’ll be.”

  “Okay, well, if you need me, let me know, Mackie. And call me if you need anything during the night.”

  Shep had taken on a second shift a month ago, so I knew he still wouldn’t be home. I needed to see him. I needed to make things right after last night. He is doing this for you, I reminded myself. For the wedding and probably for the engagement ring he gave you. I sank into the couch and flipped on the news. “There’s been an accident at the construction site at Trumbull and Sheldron in Chatsworth where the new outdoor mall is going up. There’s no word yet on whether any of the workers sustained injuries, but you can see where the crane smashed part of the newly built walls of the Thai Tower restaurant.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” I kept mouthing over and over as I dialed Shep’s cell. No answer.

  “Honey?” Shep said from right behind me, scaring the daylights out of me. I hadn’t heard the door close.

  “You’re okay!” I exclaimed.

  “Course I’m okay, but are you?” He pulled back and looked at my ghostly face. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, Shep, I saw there was an accident at the site”—obviously news to him based on his expression—“and then you didn’t pick up, probably because you were walking through the door, but I was afraid, and after we fought yesterday—”

  “Calm down, Do—I’m fine,” Shep soothed, stroking my hair. I took deep breaths while he called the foreman. Apparently no one had been hurt. I filled him in on Jeff.

  “I have the day off work tomorrow, Do. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to take the day off too.”

  After he made me a cup of almond tea, I started feeling a little more like myself. Miraculously, I managed to find a sub for school the next day, which was as rare as a winning lottery ticket.

  Shep and I cuddled and watched TV for a little while longer before we headed upstairs to crash. I had barely been around for Shep, and when I was, my mind was somewhere else. I have tomorrow off, I thought, drifting toward sleep. We could have breakfast together and not be rushed. We could go for a walk and get some fresh air. We could do anything we wanted.