The Book Borrower

by Alice Mattison

  —No, don’t cry over it. Ruben felt as if she had been awakened. It was dark in the room. Maybe she’d been asleep. Harry had turned over and fallen asleep again.

  —Don’t you cry about Deborah, Stevie said.

  —I don’t know whether I should or not.

  —Jeremiah will call in the morning.

  She slept again. At least Stevie wasn’t in the hospital. She woke and got out of bed and went to a window. I’m sorry, she told Deborah. I’m sorry I told Janet Grey you are a dull teacher. Oh, you are, you are. Students say it about you. I have seen you teach. But I love everything about you, dull or not. I want to touch your neck and your back.

  She didn’t know what was hurt. Deborah might look different. She might be paralyzed, and Ruben could heroically push her in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.

  In the morning she thought, But I don’t have a key. How could she let Mac out without a key? She was not frightened about Deborah now, but worried about Mac, who would need to go out. Of course Deborah was all right. It was probably just a fracture. Of course the hospital had called Jeremiah, be-cause when you end up in the hospital, they call your husband.

  She took a shower. Harry was still asleep. Peter had gone out late and she hadn’t heard him come home, but things had been moved in the night. His sweatshirt was on the hamper in the bathroom. On the table in the hall was a small cardboard box that looked as if it had held paper clips a long time ago. The writing was rubbed off. She didn’t look inside. She ate breakfast.

  Ruben always walked to the college, for the exercise and because driving still made her tense, and she had to drive to the pottery store day after day. Today she’d need extra time, so she could figure out how to let Mac out. She stuffed her papers into her briefcase. She was trying to teach her students that there are words, she thought wearily. Her students used words, sometimes well, but they had never noticed themselves using words. Every week she gave them a poem to read. They complained that poems were hard, and she laughed at them. By now the giving and receiving of a poem was an act of love, though the women (this year, all the students were women) still made a point of pretending to be outraged. Not another one, they’d say. What’s this one about? What are these oranges?

  —I give you poems because I love you, she’d said last week. Some of them looked ready to cry, their plump middle-aged made-up faces distorted with affection. She’d glanced at Maddy, who looked disgusted.

  Today was colder than the day before, bright and sunny. She walked alone, hearing her own footsteps. Then a runner passed in sweatshirt and shorts, a tall, gray-bearded man she’d seen before who ran with great leaps like a deer, making a scalloped path in air, and like a deer he seemed slow when he was air-borne. She wanted to be that man, or to run with him. She imagined he was a psychoanalyst: at peace with trouble in the soul. I hurt my friend and she is hurt, she would say to him.

  At Deborah’s house she tried the doors, but of course they were locked. She looked under an overturned flowerpot. She walked slowly around the building. She had allowed extra time, but not much. She was worried about Mac. It was as though Deborah were trapped in the house. Mac watched from inside. Mac, she said tearfully, open the door.

  She stood crying and examining doors and windows for a long time. At last she tried the basement windows, which were old. She knew Deborah and Jeremiah didn’t have an alarm. She crouched in the alley next to the house and pushed as hard as she could on one of the low, wide basement windows. But it opened out. It had a hinge at the top and a metal toggle that swiveled up and down into a well on the sill. Ruben laid down her briefcase. She searched in the backyard for a rock. I mustn’t, I mustn’t, she told herself, but she found a broken brick with an edge and saying Life before property, plunged it into the glass.

  The glass tinkled and Ruben sat back and looked around, frightened. N o one came. Her hand was cut, and a shard clung to it. She pulled it out. Deliberately she broke off enough glass to put her hand in, and she reached inside and opened the hasp. The window stuck. She banged the brick on the frame. At last it budged, and opened. The opening was small and dirty. Ruben in her teaching clothes considered whether to go in faceup or -down. Down. She held the window open with one arm and put her legs into the opening. Then she twisted until she was facedown. The window fell on her shoulders, and she cried again, but she was able to reach up, from inside now, and hold it. She was just small enough to squeeze in. She had to twist her shoulders. She turned her face to the side. Her legs found something, but it gave way. She scraped her arms getting in, but then she was inside—elated. She had saved Deborah.

  She swatted at cobwebs on her arms and face. She had knocked over a small table. She righted it, reached up to lock— pointlessly—the broken window, went upstairs, and opened the door into Deborah’s kitchen. She stepped into the yellow room, startled, though she had known where she was going. On the table and in the sink were dirty dishes. Deborah must have left right after supper, and Jeremiah was getting around to cleaning up when the call came. The plates on the table held scraps of lettuce and something dark. Mac came to meet her. He barked once, then wagged his tail and licked her hand. There was blood on it, and now she saw a spot of blood on the floor. She bent to kiss Mac’s yellow head and let him out the back door.

  There was something Ruben ought to do here, but she couldn’t think what it was. She went into the bathroom, washed her hands and face, found a Band-Aid, and tried to brush off her coat. Then she thought of the phone. Maybe Deborah’s mother’s number would be written on the wall next to it. But no numbers were posted. She picked up the phone and looked at it. It was the kind with a memory, but she couldn’t tell whose numbers were in it. Would Deborah’s mother be number one? Ruben pushed the button and heard the extended tune of a long distance number. The phone rang three times and then a sleepy young voice said hello.

  —Mary Grace? Sweetie?

  —This is Jill.

  —I’m sorry, said Ruben. It’s Toby. I’m at your house. Did your father call you last night?

  —It’s pretty bad, said Jill, who sounded rational, as always, but scared.

  —Your mother.

  —They don’t know if she’s going to make it. I’m coming home today. Jill was in law school in California.

  —Jill. I didn’t know—

  —Then why did you call me? Jill said in a clear, puzzled, but not unfriendly voice, as if she welcomed the distraction of a small social mystery.

  —I knew ... I knew something. What happened?

  —Someone slammed into her.

  —You mean she might die?

  —I couldn’t get a flight last night. I’m glad you woke me up. I’d better go.

  —Jill.

  —What? You’re sorry about my mom. I know. ’Bye, Toby.

  Ruben hung up the phone and walked through Deborah’s exuberant yellow kitchen, neater now that the girls had moved out (Rose was a teacher in Boston and Mary Grace was doing badly in her sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), but full of light and funny pottery. Ruben didn’t have time to clean the kitchen. Her body felt insubstantial, bruised from breaking in, but light, as if it didn’t touch things. She opened the door and Mac came in. She locked it again. She would be late to class. She didn’t know if Deborah was conscious. She moved through the sunny, dust-flecked air in Deborah’s house. Everything—even the dirty dishes—seemed expectant. What if she didn’t go to class? But she let herself out the front door, pulled it shut, and tested it. For a moment she panicked about the briefcase, but then she remembered it in the alley. Now she walked so fast her stomach began to hurt. Then slowly. She often waited for her students. Today they could wait for her.

  She had not planned the class. She had not planned it, and now Deborah might die. Maybe Jill had misunderstood, but of course she wouldn’t. Once, when Jill was about six, she had run back and forth between Ruben and Deborah, kissing their legs; later she’d turned serious and withheld. S
he’d spent a year traveling through Asia when she was halfway through college, and her parents hadn’t heard from her for weeks. The day she was six and kissed their legs, she had run faster and faster. Ruben remembered the little kisses on her bare knees. They all wore shorts; it must have been summer. One for you, Jill had called, and you. And you. And you. At last she had slapped them each lightly instead of kissing them, and run away.

  How could Ruben live if Deborah died? Of course it was partly Ruben’s fault. She hadn’t driven the car that slammed into Deborah’s, but she’d delayed Deborah with anger, the sunset, and kisses. Worse, Ruben had been pummeling Deborah’s life for years and years. Everything in it had been at least slightly changed by obnoxious, ever present Ruben. Deborah was her only work of genius, whom she had never appreciated and whom she had made incorrectly anyway. She’d made Deborah wrong, after all, and now Deborah had been hurt, prob-ably for want of right making, and Ruben didn’t know what to do.

  Her students, many of them mothers, understood sorrow. It was the kind of group that could be told, but telling would probably be a bad idea.

  The class was three hours long. That was always scary, but ordinarily Ruben planned it in sections, so it seemed shorter. First, while the students were sleepy and silent, she taught them about apostrophes or run-on sentences. Next she teased and scolded about the papers she was returning. Then came the assignment; then, invariably, an argument about the poem of the week . . .

  It was a long walk. She should have gone home from Deborah’s and taken the car, but it hadn’t occurred to her and now she was too far along. She walked past silent houses, wondering whether people in them were sobbing with grief for someone sick or hurt.

  —God, she said, in the quiet street, and screamed a little. God didn’t care. She stopped and pressed her face into the hard, rough bark of a tree, but only for a moment.

  When she reached the college, a little place, she saw no one. The dorms were elsewhere, the residential students asleep. Some years, hers was the only Saturday morning class. She was ten minutes late. In the ladies’ room she washed her face again. Her shoulders hurt. She didn’t know why, then remembered the window falling on her. She hoped nobody would break into the house through the broken window. Deborah would be proud of her, not angry, for breaking it. They’d joke about Mac’s trials of conscience and bladder control. Or maybe Deborah would tease. They’d walk in the woods again, years from now. You were hysterical, Deborah would say, still making fun of her years later. All I needed was a collar for whiplash. And you’re breaking windows!

  The classroom was plain, with harsh lights and metal chairs, but it had become dear. Ruben liked it, as she had come to love the rolls of colored ribbon and the cranky cash register at the pottery store. The green chalkboard had an aluminum sill shaped in channels so the chalk would not roll. Years of chalk dust had softened the look of the metal so it looked like pewter. She liked resting her fingers in the channels when she stood at the chalkboard. She wrote happily on the green chalkboard and each year was teased for bad handwriting. The students’ writing was always better.

  Another comfort was a lectern made of oak, which sat on the teacher’s desk. Ruben, when she sat, used a student’s desk. When she talked, she stood and walked. She couldn’t stand still long enough to lean on the lectern. Each Saturday she moved it from the desk to the floor beside it so she could dump out her briefcase on the desk. The lectern was the room’s only wooden object, and she appreciated its weight and grain. Today it had already been moved. The students were waiting, their chairs in a semicircle. Maddy looked annoyed.

  —I’m sorry, said Ruben. She counted them. Who’s missing? Rosemary and Chris were missing. One day Maddy had said, If you had a list. . .

  But Ruben liked names. She liked learning and saying their names, and knowing them so well she knew who was missing. Somewhere was a stack of cards. She said, I want to talk about its.

  —I always get it wrong. Did I get it wrong? said small grayhaired Lillian, from the last chair.

  —You all get it wrong constantly, said Ruben. The jokey tone felt phony at first, and her voice was unsteady, as if the joke might turn to a sob, but then she was all right.

  —So maybe we’re right and you’re wrong, said June. Majority rules.

  —A likely idea, Lynne said. She was younger, fat, and cynical.

  Ruben babbled about “its,” half remembering. She said, The poet Milton used the word its twice in Paradise Lost. Before that, people wrote “his.” June’s thoughts, she wrote. She said, They used to write June his thoughts. Was that true? How was it relevant?

  —Why not June her thoughts?

  —I don’t have any thoughts.

  —This is a little elementary, said Louise, a friend of Maddy’s.

  —But Toby says we get it wrong, said Lillian, calling across the room to Louise.

  Most of them called her Toby. A few said Ms. Ruben and one or two said Mrs. Ruben. Norma, the oldest, who left her coat on, called her Mrs. Ruben and she said it now. Mrs. Ruben, can you explain something else I never understand?

  —Of course, said Ruben. Or maybe I can’t. Maybe I don’t understand either.

  —I’m sure you do. You know, your glasses are unusually smudged today. I can see that from here.

  —Thank you, said Ruben. She reached into her pocket, but she had no eyeglass cleaner. She said, I’ll wash them at the break.

  —We can wait, if you want to clean them.

  —Her pants look dusty, too, said someone.

  Someone else produced eyeglass cleaner.

  —What I don’t understand, said Norma, is advertising. I mean the writing in advertising. Why writing like that is allowed.

  —You mean mistaken uses of its, with or without an apostrophe? said Ruben.

  —I just mean the writing. I’m diabetic. I could die from sugar. But some of those ads! Each of the students’ statements seized Ruben’s attention for one second, so she forgot Deborah, and then she’d fall through the floor of the remark and be in a howling place where Deborah might die.

  —Mouthwatering, someone said. Luscious chocolate . . .

  —Or cigarettes. Or beer.

  —Sex! someone said.

  —Sex? said another voice.

  —What about willpower? said Maddy. The ad isn’t making you.

  But someone else was almost screaming—and it was Lynne, her tiny features cramped in her big face. Legal! You listen to lawyers? They shouldn’t be allowed to use words that hurt.

  —Wait, said Ruben. The First Amendment?

  Lynne’s young, skeptical voice was ugly. When people talked that way, Ruben wanted Granny, who didn’t talk. But the thought of Granny was connected to Mac and Mac was connected to Deborah. Are words so dangerous? Ruben said. What if Deborah could hear her? What would she say about hurting with words?

  Ruben wrote on the blackboard, You have taught me language and my reward is I have learned to curse. She said, But I think I’ve got it wrong. It’s from The Tempest. Caliban says it. She told them about Caliban, the monster captured by Prospero. Prospero is a magician, she said, but he uses words. She wondered what she was getting at.

  Frieda—almost as old as Norma, tall and proud—spoke, bellowing: You taught me language, and my profit on’t is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language.

  Everyone laughed with fright and then quieted.

  —Nigger, said Lynne, in the silence.

  —I hate that word, said Deirdre, who was black.

  —Grounds for arrest, said Norma.

  They fought until the break and past the time they usually took a break.

  Maddy shouted, Can you stop and think for a minute? screaming at them all, including Ruben. Ruben was writing on the chalkboard, nothing sensible or legible. Maddy said, If this class had a few rules! The words I want to hear are Ms. Ruben explaining what’s wrong with our papers.

  —I think maybe this discussion matters, Rube
n said wearily.

  —It’s not appropriate, said Maddy. She had medium-length light brown hair and a thin face. Ruben thought she looked something like a donkey, with brown ears hanging down on each side of her face. All my life, Maddy said, I have never used commas correctly.

  —What about pornography? said Louise, Maddy’s friend, who wanted to keep fighting. But commas, she added. Commas also matter.

  Ruben looked at her watch. I’ll give you your papers, she said. We’ll take a break and you can look them over. She was exhausted. Suddenly Deborah, once again, was dying. Ruben took the papers and began walking around the room, inefficiently handing Lynne’s to Lynne, Norma’s to Norma, too tired to call anybody’s name. She had not read Lillian’s. She would explain to Lillian at the break. Lillian, dumb but kind, would tell Ruben not to worry about her paper. Maddy stood and snatched half the papers away, and for a second Ruben thought she was the victim of an assault.

  —June, called Maddy, and June, who had a craggy, good-humored face, patted Ruben’s shoulder as she reached past her to Maddy for her paper. Frieda.

  Ruben fled to the faculty lounge, out of breath, sobbed, gave that up. She could call Harry. Maybe he’d had news. She didn’t. She looked at her mail. Everything claimed importance. She threw away the papers and went for coffee, though she’d meet the students near the coffee machine. She put her coins in and, just as she had described it to Deborah, the coffee came out before the cup. She watched the coffee go by. Ruben so badly wanted the moment when she had told Deborah about the coffee, she reached out her arms for it.

  Maddy watched her. Could I ask you a question?

  —Sure.

  —Would you read a poem I wrote?

  —I’d like to. So Deborah was right. Maddy would be hers by April.

  Together they walked back to class. Maddy said, Some Saturdays, it’s hard to come. I think it will just be a waste of time.

  —It’s not a waste of time, said Ruben. She walked into the classroom and thumped her briefcase on the teacher’s desk like an exclamation point.