Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

by Sue Halpern

  “Look,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands together. “You use the word ‘drama’ like it’s a bad word. But here’s what you need to understand: stories are not just in books or movies. Everyone’s life is an unfolding story, and all stories have good guys and bad guys, and all stories have conflicts and resolutions, and all stories—if they are interesting—have drama.”

  “And what I’m saying,” Kit said, “is that I would have liked my story to be less interesting. Way less interesting.”

  “And what I’m saying,” Dr. Bondi said, “is that there is no such thing as less interesting for anybody. Somewhere in the unfolding story, something is going to happen that will change everything that happens after it. In a sense it’s happening all the time, but it’s visible only at those dramatic times—someone gets sick, or twins are born, or your job moves to Mexico, or you get mugged on the bus, or you meet your future spouse on the bus. What you’re thinking of as the end of the story now, Kit, is only the end of a chapter. And there are many more to come.”

  “Unless I get mugged on a bus,” Kit said.

  “So Bondi was right,” Kit thought. “And this is the chapter in which I assist an eccentric, nearly feral child in alerting her fugitive father to his imminent arrest, while at the same time lending a helping hand to a man who, through no fault of his own, has hit rock bottom, while also running a public library on a frayed budgetary shoestring that threatens to snap at any moment. So much action.” But the real story, she knew, was more sensational and more uncertain: she had let—no, invited—Rusty into her bed to sleep next to her. True, it was chaste and expedient, but it was real. The die that had been cast once she understood her husband had betrayed her (and with a girl—a repulsive, unattractive girl), causing her mind to separate from her body, had been rolled back.

  * * *

  Sunny/home

  I thought that Kit might slam on the brakes when I told her I was coming to live with her, but she kept on driving, and when I turned around to see if Steve was running after us, or at least waving from the porch, all I saw was the house where I’d lived for most of my life getting smaller and smaller and disappearing.

  “Stop!” I said, and then she did hit the brakes, hard, and we both lurched forward and back, and our heads hit the headrests at the same time and made a thunking sound as dirt from the car’s tires rose up from the ground and pieces of gravel rained down on the hood.

  “Sunny,” Kit said sharply, and at the sound of my name I started crying again.

  “He doesn’t even care about me,” I wailed, and she said, “Of course he does, he’s just worried and confused.” I said I was scared, and she said, “Of course,” and I said, “I don’t know what to do,” and she said, “Of course you don’t,” and I said, “I don’t want to go into hiding,” and she said, “Of course you don’t,” and I said, “But I don’t want to lose my family,” and she said, “No one wants to lose their family,” and she began to wipe away tears, too, which made me feel better.

  We sat together like that for three or seven or ten minutes, and got so hot we had to roll up the windows and turn on the air-conditioning even though, as I told Kit, we don’t believe in air-conditioning.

  “Well, you know what they say,” she said. “The only completely consistent people are dead,” and at that very moment we heard the Subaru coming up fast behind us, and though I was pretty sure Steve could see us, sometimes when he’s going down the driveway he’s looking through his CDs and not paying attention to what’s ahead of him, so I braced myself for impact.

  He didn’t hit us. He pulled up next to us, and I rolled down my window and wondered if he’d feel the cool air exiting Kit’s car and if he’d say something critical.

  “Sunny,” he said, obviously confused. “I didn’t expect to see you. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t know what hackles are exactly, but whatever they are, mine stood straight up when he said this. “You’re sorry to see me?” I said, and not nicely, but like I was accusing him of something.

  “No. No,” he said, looking flustered. “I’m sorry for what happened back there. You caught me by surprise and I didn’t know what to say and I—” He looked at his watch and said, sounding desperate, “I’ve got to go get Willow.”

  He looked scared. I’d almost never seen him look scared. Not Steve. Steve was strong. Steve was tough. I think it’s because he grew up military. “Army of one.” “Deeds, not words.” “With courage and knowledge.” Like it or not, he knows all the mottos.

  “I need to get your mother,” he said. His voice was shivery. His eyes were distant, but intense, like he could almost see what was ahead.

  “Wait! I’m coming with you!” I said, and leaned over and put my arms around Kit and gave her a big hug, because who knew when I might see her again, and practically jumped out of her car and into ours. “Your mother,” he said, and that’s what did it. It reminded me—trifecta, troika, triplicate, trio—whatever happens, that’s what we are, Steve and Willow, and me: a totality.

  * * *

  “Faith” is a fine invention . . .

  —Emily Dickinson

  Kit drove home in a daze. It was shocking to hear Sunny say that she was coming to live with her, and Kit hadn’t even begun to process that idea when Sunny changed her mind and went with—went back to?—her father. She knew Sunny had said the words; she remembered hearing her saying them, but they were a wisp of smoke now, lost to the air. And it was flat-out a crazy idea. She was in no position to take in a teenage girl. She lived alone. Her house was her refuge, the place where no one could unsettle her, a place apart. And there were rules, rules she’d mastered in the days and months after the fault line she hadn’t known was under her split her life into before and after. Rule number one: The only person you can count on is yourself. Rule number two: Given the chance, other people will always disappoint you—or worse. Rule number three: If you share, they will take. Rule number four: Don’t open the door when someone knocks.

  “The only completely consistent people are dead,” Kit said again, out loud to herself, remembering how she opened the door for Rusty, not once, but three times in less than a day, and nothing bad happened. Yet. In her imagined conversation with Dr. Bondi, she would tell him this, and he would tell her, once again, how much stronger she was than she knew, and she’d question what that had to do with anything.

  “Here’s the challenge, Kit,” she knew he’d said, “when you go to the door, don’t stand there staring at it, and don’t pretend that whatever is on the other side of it isn’t real until you open it. It’s real. It’s there. Would Cal be a different person, making different choices, if you hadn’t opened the door to the police? The door is an illusion. You can try to hide behind it, but sooner or later it’s going to blow open, if only in your mind.”

  He’d give this speech and she’d argue with him, and bring up counter-examples, and talk about moats and barbicans.

  “Fine,” he’d say, “if you want to live in a fortress,” and she’d say, “That’s a good question,” and he’d say, “It’s not a question. It’s a fact, Kit, and here’s another: it’s not a coincidence that a lot of ancient fortresses were also prisons.”

  * * *

  One wants a teller in a time like this . . .

  —Gwendolyn Brooks

  Kit wasn’t home when Rusty got back to her house, so he sat on the porch swing, dozing, waiting. If nothing else, the fire was clarifying. He had watched almost everything he owned disappear. He had watched the Patels pull together as a family, then feel them pull him in, too. He saw people, strangers, put themselves in harm’s way. And he saw in all that activity that Patrick was right—the promise of free money was a trap. In his case, it was a trap that kept him at arm’s length from making decisions about his own life.

  There was no reason to stay in Riverton any longer, and he wanted to say good-bye to Kit and thank her before heading out, maybe to Duluth, maybe to New York, maybe to India
to track down his sister, maybe into the mountains. He thought he’d been free when he’d left Hoboken in June, but freedom, he was learning, was not a set point, like the temperature at which water freezes, but something mutable, a moving target. He was freer now than he had been then, and why not embrace that? Go somewhere. Do something. Get a life.

  He must have been sleeping, because when Kit arrived the air had grown cooler and the sun was no longer overhead.

  “Hey,” he called as he heard her come up the path so she wouldn’t be startled to find him there.

  “You could have let yourself in,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you’d like that.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, sitting down next to him. “What a day.”

  “What a night,” he said, and for a second she thought he meant sleeping in the bed with her, but before she could embarrass herself by acknowledging that, she realized no, he meant the fire.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “I came to say good-bye,” he said after a while. “I’m leaving.”

  “You can’t!” Kit said with an intensity that surprised even her. “You have no place to go.”

  “That’s the great thing,” Rusty said. “I can go anywhere. I’m free.”

  “Very funny,” Kit said.

  “Very funny what? What do you mean?”

  “I mean that’s a very funny way to describe being homeless and out of work. It’s very . . . creative.”

  “Are you trying to burst my very fragile bubble of self-confidence and resolve?” Rusty said, pretending to frown.

  “That’s me,” Kit said, “burster of bubbles.” She was sorry he was going, yes, but relieved, too. Whatever might have happened between the two of them, and whatever might not have happened, was off the table. Whatever conflicting feelings she had would be rendered moot. Should she stand up, put out her arms for a good-bye hug? Should she stick out her hand for him to shake? Kit was unsure of the protocol, so she sat there, waiting for Rusty to make his exit. Yet having declared he was leaving, Rusty didn’t budge. The balls of his feet stayed planted on the porch floor, gently pushing the swing back and forth, and him in it, like a cradle.

  “So if you are really leaving, you’ll want to go up to the top of the house so you can get a final, panoramic view of our fair city,” Kit said finally, when the rhythmic creak of the swing had slowed, and she was no longer sure if he was still awake.

  “What?” he said, rousing himself.

  “Follow me,” Kit said, and stood up and pushed on the front door, and held it open as he stepped in.

  “This is amazing,” Rusty said, when they were standing in the belvedere. Rusty moved in a slow circle, taking in the view. “You know,” he said, facing the park behind Kit’s house, “if my grandfather is who the guys think he was, he could have lived over there. Before they tore the house down, of course. He could have walked on that lawn.”

  “If he did, he probably came over here,” Kit said, “since this is where the servants lived.”

  “Where my grandmother lived, you mean,” Rusty said quietly.

  Kit nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Like she could have stood up here and looked out over the town, too,” he said. “Though it would have looked different.”

  “Possibly,” Kit said. “You never know.”

  “Nope,” Rusty said. “I guess I won’t.”

  Rusty leaned over and ran his fingers over the grain of the wood floor. “Her DNA might still be here, in the cracks,” he said.

  “Her DNA is in you,” Kit said. “It is you.”

  Kit closed her eyes. She was so, so tired.

  Kit jerked awake. The sky was darkening. Bats were beginning to stir.

  “You looked very peaceful,” Rusty said. “It was nice. I almost left, but then I decided that that was the coward’s way out.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that when I told you yesterday—just about twenty-four hours ago, to be exact—that I liked you, and you blew me off—”

  “I did not blow you off—” she interrupted.

  “—and you blew me off,” Rusty continued, “before I left I wanted to ask you why, because otherwise I’m always going to wonder. I’m not saying that I’m the best person in the world, but I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that right now I’m kind of a loser. Like you said. I don’t have a job. I don’t live anywhere.”

  “I did not say you were a loser!” Kit was indignant. “You are putting words in my mouth.”

  “Quote, ‘That’s a very creative way to describe being homeless and out of work,’ unquote, she said after he described his own situation as being, quote, ‘free,’ unquote.”

  “I did say that,” Kit admitted. “But I didn’t mean to suggest you were a loser. And if you remember, last night when you were here you did live somewhere. We didn’t know about the fire.”

  “Right. I was living in a mom-and-pop motel on top of a hill overlooking the highway. Please be serious.”

  Kit felt herself color. She was toying with him. She didn’t mean to, but she was.

  “If you are going to give me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech,” Rusty said, “don’t bother.” And when she didn’t say she wasn’t, when she didn’t say anything at all, he stood up. “I’m going to get on the road now,” he said, and started down the stairs.

  “Wait a minute,” Kit called out as he approached the second-floor landing. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to show you something. So you’ll understand that it really is me, not you. I wouldn’t want you thinking otherwise. It’s—it’s in my room.”

  Kit came down the stairs, and he let her pass and stood in the doorway to her bedroom as she retrieved a sheaf of unbound papers in a file folder from the back of her closet.

  “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “Read this.”

  He looked at the first page of what she’d handed him. “The Marriage Story, Part 1” it said.

  “Don’t ask, please—just read. But do me a favor, do it downstairs. I’ve got to lie down. You can leave it on the table when you go out.”

  * * *

  men have power / and sometimes one is made to feel it . . .

  —Marianne Moore

  She had opened the door. She had opened it for Rusty, and he walked in, and soon he would walk out, but she had opened it. “Small steps, baby steps, that’s what you’ll be taking for a while,” Dr. Bondi said in the aftermath, when every step was an effort, and all she wanted to do was curl up in her bed, but she couldn’t, since it had been Cal’s bed, too, and as many times as she washed the sheets and aired out the blankets, she could still pick up his scent and it infuriated her.

  “Listen, Kit,” Dr. Bondi said to her, “what you’ve got to understand is that you didn’t lose your life. You lost the life you thought you were living. And those are two different things. You are alive. It may not feel like it, but you are. And part of being alive means experiencing loss. We lose things every day—I’m not talking about eyeglasses—yes, we lose those, too—I mean things like eyesight. Our eyesight diminishes over time, our hair falls out. That’s natural. It’s so natural that we chalk it up to inevitability. But that’s loss. Loss is inevitable. It comes in many sizes. Yours is huge—don’t think I’m discounting it. But the small, everyday losses help us deal with the big ones. It’s muscle memory. And the fact that you are in so much pain is actually a good sign. I’d be worried if you were numb. It tells me that you are alive.”

  “So I should be grateful for the pain?”

  “I’m not saying that, Kit. I think you know that.”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said, expecting him to contradict her. But he didn’t. “And the pain? The loss? Does it go away?” she asked.

  “No,” he said carefully, “but it will get less bad.”

  “So that’s what I have to look forward to—that my life will be less bad,” she said, making it clear how inadequate she found th
is.

  “Yes,” he said. “It will get less bad.”

  But he was wrong. It got worse. She had been the wife of someone everyone, it seemed, considered to be a great man. A hero. A saint. Brilliant. A risen star. They said so, over and over, on the TV and radio the morning that Cal’s boat was found, drifting and unoccupied, its captain missing and presumed dead.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Kit told the police officers when they knocked on her door in the early morning. “He’s at a conference, in Chicago. He left yesterday.”

  But they insisted. The boat was sighted by the crew of a lake freighter before sunrise, jerking drunkenly this way and that, its sails luffing like laundry hung out to dry. The Coast Guard boarded it, checked the registration, and hauled it back to the marina, where the harbormaster said yes, he remembered seeing Cal take the boat out the day before.

  “I don’t understand,” Kit said more than once. “He was a good sailor.”

  And each time the police officers would remind her that anything is possible out on the water.

  “This is crazy,” Kit said. “Cal went to Chicago. He’s in Chicago. He’s a doctor. He’s at a doctors’ conference.”

  “Well, if he went there, Mrs. Sweeney,” one of the officers said, “he must’ve went in a sailboat.”

  “We’re sorry,” his partner said.

  Cal, dead. Those words cycled through her head; that’s where the storm was, in her head. The phone was ringing, and Kit rushed to answer it, sure it was Cal, hung up when it wasn’t, and then it rang again and she rushed over, and again and again, and each time it was a reporter wanting a statement. And then she picked up the phone and it wasn’t a reporter, it was Sally Jahron, calling to report that all four of her kids came down with a stomach bug during the night and did Kit know when Beata would be back from that choir retreat with Cal.

  “Choir retreat?” Kit said, dumbfounded. “I thought . . .” she began, then stopped. Sally must not have listened to the news and didn’t know about the boat yet, and the reporters didn’t know about the girl yet, and once they did, the story was going to change. Kit, operating on instinct and adrenaline, wanted to give herself as much time as possible between story number one—hero husband—and story number two—what? Pedophile?