Aurora 08 - Poppy Done To Death (10 page)

Phillip nodded. He seemed a little dazed.

“Here’s the remote control for the TV. Here’s the remote for the DVD player.” I went over to the television cabinet and opened a door. “Here are my DVDs.” I went into the kitchen, opened a drawer, extracted a key from a plastic tray. “Here’s another key to the house. If you leave, please write a note saying where you’ve gone and when you’ll be back. Do you have a watch?”

Phillip shook his head.

“Okay.” I handed him a watch that had been Martin’s. I’d come across it that morning when I was putting on my makeup. It wasn’t an expensive watch; it was the one he’d been wearing when we got married, and I’d given him a fancier one our first Christmas together. Martin had chucked this watch in a drawer and I’d automatically packed it when I moved. It was just a mass-produced watch; there were probably millions identical to it. It was absurd to feel a pang over a bit of assembly-line metal that ran on a battery.

Phillip gave me a sharp look as he slid the watch on his arm. “I won’t break it,” he said defensively. My face must have been showing more than I’d thought.

“I don’t think you will,” I said, and hugged him, much to his surprise. “And the world won’t end if you do.” I hoped I wasn’t being too demanding. Not only would someone performing all those little tasks be genuinely helpful; I would know where Phillip was. I’d given him a key because I wanted to show I trusted him. I wasn’t sure I really did. I could not stop Phillip if he decided to leave while I was at work, and it would be ludicrous to try to find a baby-sitter for him. No, this was sink-or-swim time for my brother and me.

I just hoped we’d both survive.

Janie Spellman was working the check-in desk when I came out of the employees’ lounge, my lipstick fresh and my mind preoccupied. Janie gave me a brilliant smile as she loaded books on the cart. I regarded our newest staff member with both grudging admiration and envy. When Janie had gone to school, she’d learned computer systems as a matter of course, and she could help younger patrons far more knowledgeably than I. But Janie should have gotten a job somewhere else for a couple of years before she came back to Lawrenceton. She was always getting shocked. People who had been her revered elders when she’d been in high school and college were always startling her by checking out reading material that didn’t jibe with her idea of what they should be reading. People she’d gone to high school with were not always particularly happy to see her. And children said and did things that could horrify the most jaded librarian, much less a young woman who’d so recently been a child herself.

Janie was also quite anxious about her single status. Though there was no discernable reason for her to be desperate, she was, and spread her nets unwisely. For one thing, Janie had cast her eyes at Perry Allison. Perry was at least fifteen years older, and I knew he was gay, but this was something Janie had not yet figured out—to be honest, it was fairly recent news to Perry himself.

Perry wasn’t the only male Janie had set her sights on. Robin Crusoe was another. I was getting a little miffed about that. In fact, I was miffed at this very moment. Robin, who was supposed to be completing his postconvention book tour, was standing with his elbows on the desk behind which Janie stood, and he was smiling at her entirely too broadly. And she was simpering back at him.

I felt a rush of irritation, chased by a big dash of insecurity. I turned on my heel and went back into the employees’ lounge. My hands were balled into fists and I was breathing deeply. I was being childish and unreasonable. Jealousy was beneath my dignity, and it was unattractive, too. What was wrong with me? I was one big emotional storm. This truly didn’t seem like me, yet I was undeniably enraged. Janie’s and Robin’s shared smile had given me an utterly baseless sense of betrayal. I was so angry that I wished, not for the first time, that I were a lesbian. But a female couple probably had their share of lovers’ spats, too. After all, it wasn’t
men
I was unhappy with; it was vulnerability. I’d just had enough pain for a while.

I knew that I had a better life than maybe 90 percent of the women in the world, and I wasn’t trying to be Pitiful Pearl. But after the little hurts of life that almost everyone sustains, I’d more or less just gotten through the staggering shock of losing my husband. More pain was something I hadn’t signed up for when I’d succumbed to—okay, welcomed—the revival of my relationship with Robin.

“Eff him,” I said. My spine straightened. That felt good. I swung a fist up and shook it. “
Eff
him.” That felt better. I was pleasurably shocked at myself.

“Eff who?” asked my boss.

“Robin,” I said after I’d jumped maybe a mile. “He’s out there flirting with Janie. I just don’t need that today. Actually, I don’t need that any day. I need
security
. I need
devotion
.” I couldn’t believe I was saying this to my boss. I had known Sam forever, and I won’t say we hadn’t experienced some mind-to-mind talks, because we had. But he had never been anywhere close to the top of my list of confidants.

Sam patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Sorry about your sister-in-law,” he said. I came out of my selfish absorption to register Sam’s appearance. He looked awful. He was drawn and pale, and he’d visibly lost weight.

“What’s up with you, Sam?” I asked with well-merited concern. I realized for the first time that Sam’s problems amounted to more than missing his secretary. Sam looked really sick. In a way, I wasn’t surprised.

Sam, who was in the neighborhood of fifty, had to juggle more balls than I could ever keep in the air. The city, the county, the state, the employees, the patrons—all of them had a stake in the library, and all wanted to have their say. The building maintenance, the book budget, hiring and firing . ,. and on the home front, two girls who must be in their early twenties by now, and a wife named Marva, who could do simply anything, which I found almost unforgivable.

“I didn’t sleep well,” Sam said. Maybe if he hadn’t slept well for a month, I might have accepted his appearance, but not after one night. “Marva is stenciling a design around the top of our bedroom walls, which she just finished painting.”

See what I mean?

“So I had to sleep in the guest bedroom, and the bed there leaves a lot to be desired. Plus, even with the bedroom door closed, I could still smell the paint, and it just makes me sick.”

Marva had been married to Sam for thirty years, so I was willing to bet she knew that. And yet she’d painted the bedroom in November, when the windows couldn’t be opened. Big message there.

“I don’t expect we can give each other any advice,” I said, for lack of anything else to say.

“I guess not,” he said. “Good luck to you, and again, I’m sorry about Poppy. She taught with Marva for a while and came over to the house from time to time. I liked her, no matter what anyone said.”

That was typical Sam. Mr. Tactful.

I trailed back out into the library, determined to earn my money. I was supposed to be checking people in and out as they used our computers, and giving them extra direction if this was needed. I’d also be filling out the paperwork for our next book order while I sat at the desk.

That part was fun, the little gush of excitement at all those wonderful books coming into our library, just waiting to be picked up and read. (See, I really am a librarian at heart.) But someone had to deal with questions like how much would be charged for printing out information our patrons had found on the Internet, or how to find out the greatest ocean depth recorded, or the best way to look up whether dromedaries have two humps and camels one (or vice versa).

Robin was still there, still leaning on the desk. See, this is why I believe in gun control; because if I’d had a gun, I wouldn’t have had much control over my actions.

“Roe,” he said, aiming his beautiful crinkly smile at me. It would have meant more—in fact, it would have melted my heart—if I hadn’t seen him grinning at Janie just moments before. “I canceled the rest of my signings and came home last night.”

“Robin,” I said coolly. True librarians stay calm in the face of adversity.

He looked considerably taken aback.

“I thought you’d be happier to see me,” he said uncertainly. “I thought I’d surprise you.”

Janie was checking out books a little farther down the big desk.

“You seem to have found a way to keep busy while you waited,” I remarked, and picked up the ringing phone. Porter Ziegler wanted to know how to get scum off the surface of his pond. I told him I’d find out, but I was registering Robin’s reaction.

Robin looked a little guilty instantly. Not my imagination, then.

“Just passing the time till you came in,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t just come in and chatter to the librarians when they’re at work. I guess I don’t know that many people here in Lawrenceton yet.”

And he was in Lawrenceton because of me was the subtext to that subtle plea for sympathy.

“Here I am,” I said after considering several possible responses.

“Are you okay?”

He was sounding so sympathetic and caring, I felt like I was being a big idiot. Then Janie, having finished with the patron, sidled over and reached across the desk to finger Robin’s coat, which was a very nice suede. In what I could only characterize as a coo, Janie said, “You’re so snuggly in that coat!”

Gun control, I thought. Gun control.

“Let me leave you two to your discussion,” I said lightly. I smiled at both of them with all the warmth of an alligator, then went to ask the reference librarian if she could find out about pond-scum removal. She thought for a minute and then gave me the phone number of the county agent. Porter Ziegler would surely find the answer from that individual, a man who seemed to know everything about the out-of-doors.

When I went back to the main desk, Robin was gone. Janie, looking a little sullen, was checking out some books for a bearded man who had made the library his second home. We had often speculated about Horton Aldrich. He was clean, and he never smelled, but he was noticeably shabby, and gaunt. The address he’d listed when he’d gotten his library card had turned out to be the address of the local Salvation Army store. Mr. Aldrich was prone to laugh to himself while he read the paper, which was maybe not so odd, considering the state of the world. He seldom talked directly to anyone, staff or patron, but he was nearly always through the doors right after they were unlocked, and he trotted out of them when the closing employee walked toward them with the key.

Today, Mr. Aldrich seemed to be in a jittery mood. I wondered what had happened to upset him. But he was so peculiar, I would have asked about his well-being only if he’d been bleeding or sobbing. My policy—my chickenhearted policy— about Mr. Aldrich was, Let him be. I always tried to smile at him, I tried not to look nervous when he decided to have a conversation with me, and I made sure no other patron hogged the Atlanta paper, thus preventing Mr. Horton from reading it right away, because I’d noticed that really made his day bad.

Everyone in the world wanted to use our computers today, and the phone rang every time I put it down. I got about halfway through filling out the book order, when it should have taken me thirty minutes to do the whole thing. Phillip called at eleven o’clock, right on time, to tell me who’d phoned the house. He’d met Sandy and Marvin Wynn, who had come in briefly to retrieve an address book. Kind people had dropped off a cold-cut platter so the Wynns could have sandwiches whenever they were hungry, and a pie, though Phillip anxiously told me he didn’t know what kind it was. But he swore he had the name and a description of the dish written down.

“You better have a sandwich and a piece of pie. Then you’ll know what kind it is,” I said.

“Shouldn’t I save all this for Mr. and Mrs. Wynn?”

“Honey, I would say ‘Sure’ if I had any idea they were going to be eating, or caring what they ate,” I said. “And you know there’s no way two skinny older people like the Wynns are going to eat a whole platter of cold cuts, or a whole pie.”

“Okay, that’ll be lunch for me.”

“Good. Who’s called?”

There was a long list, including my mother (naturally), Melinda (no surprise), and Sally Allison, my friend, who was also a newspaper reporter. (Maybe I should say Sally Allison, the newspaper reporter, who was sometimes also my friend. That was definitely more accurate.) I remembered that I’d called Sally to ask her out to lunch, and I’d left a message for her to call me back. Cara Embler, Poppy’s back-fence neighbor, and Teresa Stanton, president of the Uppity Women, had also tried to reach me. And, to my surprise, so had Bryan Pascoe.

Phillip seemed to be pleased that he’d been useful, and he was also happy to have HBO and MTV and lots of food. When I asked him about the state of the bathroom, there was a long moment of silence.

“Um, it’ll be picked up within about ten minutes,” he said defensively.

“Okay,” I said, reminding myself again that I was not his mom. However, I was his older sister, and he needed to do what I asked of him. But for now, I backed off.

“I hope it’s okay that I made a long-distance call on your phone?” he asked.

“Did you call your mother?”

“Okay, make that two long-distance calls.”

“You called your mother and who else?”

“Um, Britta—you know, the girl who gave me a ride?”

I tried to give a mature, balanced answer. “Hell no” would not do. “Phillip, unless you’re calling your parents, I don’t think you should run up my phone bill,” I said, keeping my voice calm and even.

“Hey, if I had any money, I’d pay you back!”

Okay, hostility alert.

“I know you would.” Keep the voice calm and even, Roe. “But since you don’t, you’d better hold off on the phone calls. Does Britta have an E-mail address?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, fine. E-mail her to your heart’s content, but don’t visit any Web sites you have to pay for.”

After a silence, Phillip said, “Okay, I’ll do that from now on.”

I smiled at the patron standing at the counter, who beamed back. So that was a double-purpose smile. I was really pleased at ending the conversation with Phillip on a good note.