The Book Borrower (12 page)

When I reached the square, I learned from bystanders that a second green trolley, with its gold curlicues, bearing a scab motorman and conductor plus three passengers, was making its way into the snow-covered countryside. It must have been beautiful out there. The passengers must have looked out the window at the small shabby houses, which were farther and farther apart, at dogs running in their yards, at children having snowball fights, and bare, wintry trees.

 

 

The baby woke up. Ruben's body was stiff and she was hungry. She would read more that night, or tomorrow. She kissed her baby's face and carried him into the next room to change his soaked diaper. By now everything he was wearing was wet, and she brought him naked into the bathroom and gave him a bath. Squirrel liked to be bathed. He laughed, patting the water. Ruben couldn't remember why she was ever impatient with him. The phone rang. She wrapped Squirrel in a towel, hoping he wouldn't pee on it, and carried him into the other room. It was Deborah on the phone.

—Carlotta came to see me, she said.

—That was nice of her. I thought they were letting you out today.

—Tomorrow. She brought me a bib.

—That was sweet of her.

—She told me what you said.

—What did I say? Ruben's insides began to hurt.

—Carlotta said, You got some funny friendship, said Deborah.

—A funny friendship?

—She said you told her I'm no good.

—That's not what I said.

—Toby, if you didn't want to teach my class, you could have said.

—I was shocked at your class, Ruben said. They aren't doing anything.

—But I care about them. I talk to them, we talk about all kinds of things. I try to help them make sense of the world. They've never thought about numbers. They've never thought about what's in the news. About deciding who to vote for. It's not just a matter of that stupid book.

—But what about the test? Why else are we there?

—If they pass the test, where will that get them? They'll still have minimum-wage jobs changing diapers.

—Deborah, she said, can I call you back? I just took Peter out of the bathtub and I need to dress him-.

—Don't bother to call me back.

—Deborah, she said. I love you.

—You don't know a thing about kindness, Toby. You're dangerous, and I'm scared of you. If Carlotta was any different, I'd be out of a job. You simply went and told her I'm a bad teacher. What kind of a friend does that? Here I am lying here with these stitches killing me, and the baby won't nurse . . .

—It wasn't like that, said Ruben. I'm sorry.

—I can't be friends with you, said Deborah. You think abstract ideas are more important than people. You think the test is what matters. I can't believe that. I can't believe how disappointed in you I am. I wanted to be friends with you forever.

—What did I say? What did she say I said? How do you know she's telling the truth?

—Oh, don't give me that, Toby. The nurse is here. I've got to hang up.

Toby Ruben's hands were shaking. She took Peter into his room and finished drying him, and dressed him in a diaper and rubber pants and his pajamas. She laid him in his crib and then she went back into the bedroom. She was in too much pain to cry. She picked up the book, and her eye fell on a sentence in the paragraph after the one she had just read. What it said was unbearable. She had not realized what was coming. She had not known it was that sort of book, with that sort of pain. She had no interest in such a book. She would read no further. She tore off a corner of a page of a newspaper that was lying on the dresser next to the book. She closed the book, marking her place with the scrap of newspaper. She put the book in a pile of Harry's books on the dresser, three down, so she wouldn't pick it up again soon and upset herself. Then she lay down on the bed, clutched the blanket, and tried to keep her eyes closed.

Chapter 2

D
EBORAH'S
big yellow-haired daughters could recite the rules of games. They made identifiable objects from clay or cloth, while Ruben's boys, Peter and Stevie (such fern fronds, such forest creatures) fooled with sticks and bark; could barely be coaxed to breathe near your ear. Ruben had left her intricate boys alone, though they were only eleven and nine, so she could drink with Deborah, but she wouldn't be gone long, and Harry was coming home soon from the office where, this year, he calculated the cost of fire engines.

She hadn't told Deborah, but later she was going out again. And she'd just come home from teaching. She'd rushed through her house. Peter spoke, as he often did, mysteriously. Steps must not be taken! Stevie, who'd agreed at birth to make explanations, explained: He has a kingdom upstairs.

In the crowd at the bar where they'd come to celebrate, quickly, the forty-fifth birthday of their department chair, Janet Grey, Ruben and Deborah met in the doorway. Now Deborah's freckled shoulders led the way. Janet Grey waved two fingers from a small table. Two years ago, she'd hired Ruben to teach part-time at an odd little college where she timidly ran English. Ruben had told Janet Grey about Deborah. They were adjunct instructors, two courses each, a thousand dollars a course. Ruben and Harry needed more money than that. Now it was September, but hot. They'd begun to teach again. It was the time of year when Ruben believed she'd keep a neat note-book. Deborah wore a bright blue sundress. She didn't mind air-conditioning and wasn't hurrying fall. Ruben liked cold weather.

—Your hair! breathed Deborah to Janet Grey. In the noisy bar, Janet's corner was hushed. That was Janet. Deborah's voice rose and sang. Perfect!

Never mind what Janet Grey had finally done to her hair. Ruben wasn't sure, but she didn't like it. She had a beer.

Deborah fussed about having a beer, as if she didn't know how it would taste. Let's order something disgusting! she said, and ordered something with too much cheese.

Ruben didn't care whether Janet Grey had a birthday all alone, but she didn't mind when Deborah told her what to do—liked being told, and liked doing it—whining, nonetheless, like a little sister. Ruben loved and deplored Deborah's long, solid blond-fringed arm reaching past Ruben's nose for the best cheesy bit. With every gesture, Deborah proclaimed party, but it was no party. Deborah pretended for Janet Grey, but there was something Deborah gave or threw away, to do so, that Ruben wanted her to keep.

Toasts to Janet.

—By the way, my niece . . . whispered Janet.

Deborah with her glorious and irritating kindness probably kept track even of the often-mentioned niece's birthday, the niece's earwax. What if Harry hadn't come home to look after the boys and their kingdoms? What if they had died, falling down the stairs on their heads, while Ruben drank the delicious, bitter beer? But she was used to mothering now. She knew that even if she became slightly drunk, it was unlikely that they had died. They were sensible boys, or at least Stevie was, and meteorites rarely fell on houses. It was good, not bad, to drink beer and talk about tall skinny boots, the present subject, with her friends Deborah and Janet. The niece and Rose and Deborah and Janet had all bought boots or thought about buying boots. Ruben had also thought about buying boots, but she didn't say.

—You're the most interesting person I know, said Deborah, appallingly, to Janet Grey. Do you use a computer? I can't imagine—

—My niece does.

Ruben had enrolled in a drawing course, though it cost money. She couldn't draw. She didn't want to tell Deborah; Janet even less. If the conversation stopped, she'd have to tell. It didn't, but the first class began in an hour and a half, and people must be fed first. If Ruben didn't cherish secrets, it would be easy to explain and go.

Jill, Deborah's oldest, smoked. And was not friendly: the hardest of their children, but the second hardest was Peter, who was friendly and often obedient but seemed not to have heard about requirements others had heard of. Once Peter stole a pie, a cheap commercial pie in a box, from the corner store. He walked out with it in his hands and nobody saw him, or no-body stopped him. He was seven. He claimed he hadn't known about money. He served it to the rest of the children. Rose told. Then he baked a pie, naturally without permission, but with astonishing care: pot holders, rolling pin, baked pie shell, blue-berry filling from a can that the children bought. They had crossed the street in a body behind Jill, the only one who was allowed. Strips of dough over the top.

Peter was never at ease in one way of being for long. These days a pie wouldn't interest him.

—Firsties are like that, said Janet Grey, but she didn't mean unpredictable Peter or imperious Jill, she meant her silly niece, who had learned how to use a computer. Happy Birthday, Janet Grey. Ruben kissed the back of Deborah's obstinate, darling head, standing up fast because suddenly she did need to hurry. But wouldn't explain—probably seemed bored, disdainful, generally a bad person. Kiss on the hard head beneath the fluffy hair, some money on the table, out the door with a squeeze to Janet's birthday shoulder. How could Deborah say Janet was the most interesting?

Nobody had died; quickly Ruben made supper.

The drawing class was at an art school in an old factory: brick walls, new big lights, safe banisters. All afternoon children made pots and painted pictures there, even Peter and Stevie last spring, though they preferred to pile pebbles and speak secret languages in their own backyard. Deborah's enterprising girls had carried home paintings from the art school to be spread with joy on their parents' walls, big paintings like sails for small boats, which they swung by a dripping edge; green and yellow ellipses and parts of ellipses.

Ruben wanted to draw her students, her fern-frond boys, Harry with his flat hands and the wide, flat briefcase that he laid on the table, still wider and flatter. These days, nobody taught her anything. She was nervous, going into a class when she was used to being a teacher. Her fear interested her. In the drawing class, she thought, she would be quiet at a table, looking at the look of something, holding a pencil, feeling a calm she would carefully transfer to the page as a line. Then a second line.

At the art school, Ruben entered a high-ceilinged room in which three classmates already sat. They half smiled and looked away. She sat down. A big, ugly, echoing room, a few chairs. Then a sleek-haired, pink-cheeked man in a jacket and tie hurried in, his jacket open—and of all things he was Deborah's husband, Jeremiah. For a second, Ruben thought if she looked away and he didn't see her, it would never be necessary to speak, but that made no sense. And she had no quarrel with Jeremiah. Jeremiah sat noisily down and looked left and right quickly, as if the instructor might be hiding. Ruben waved like Janet Grey, with two fingers, and when she waved she became Janet Grey and felt to her surprise that Janet Grey really liked having a drink on her birthday with Ruben and Deborah, felt happy to visit but not (heavens!) live in their twoness.

—I know you! called Jeremiah.

—I know you, too.

He snapped his head sideways at a noise. The noise was the teacher, a man with long fingers full of objects: a big white iron dustpan you'd sweep up a factory with, a grayish battered muffin tin for dozens of muffins, an ugly green statue of a naked woman with her arms in curves above her head. It wasn't a muffin tin but part of a machine, and now the teacher went to a closet and brought out a small door with hinges, and two doorknobs. And pieces of ugly cloth in wide gray stripes or big prints that he flopped and draped and hung.

—Ten of you? said the teacher. There were eight. He shrugged and pointed. Heavy, tall easels made of gray-green iron were shoved together in a corner. Ruben seized one and pulled, but it was caught behind another, and the top clanged against a third easel. She hurt her hand. At last she wrenched the easel free and dragged it into the center of the room. She set it up next to another woman's easel. It tipped, and the teacher came over and tightened something. Next the students had to bring drawing boards to the easels: big heavy wooden oblongs, which balanced unsteadily on tiny supports. From a closet came huge sheets of paper. The teacher distributed strips of masking tape with which to tape them to the drawing boards.

When the teacher walked by with the tape, Ruben, already tired, called, I don't know your name.

—Gregory, he said, and stopped and raised his eyebrows, but she couldn't think of another question.

Jeremiah competently brought out an easel for himself and one for a confused young woman. When they had to draw, though they'd been told to bring pencils, he had none. Gregory looked annoyed, borrowed a pencil from another student and handed it silently to Jeremiah. Gregory was a long-armed man with pale hair. He waved his right arm when he talked. The students were to draw the pile of objects, all those pieces of machinery and drapes and vases and the ugly statue and another one. Not what Ruben had expected. Afraid she might suddenly cry with nervousness, Ruben began to draw. She didn't like drawing while standing up. She began with the green statue. The teacher walked behind them.

She heard him talk to Jeremiah. Fill the page, he said. Ruben tried to fill the page. The teacher watched her for a while, then walked on without speaking. She was so bad at this, apparently, that there was simply nothing to say. She was angry at Jeremiah for coming. He would carry her shame back to Deborah, and Ruben would not be able to make this her own funny story when she was ready to tell it. When Gregory spoke to the other students, she could hear him but didn't know what he meant. Ruben filled the page with hurried lines, trying to put everything in. After drawing a vase next to a statue, she noticed that in truth a big ladder stood between them, with ceramic pots on its steps. Ruben drew it in the space above the statue. She was tired of her picture before the teacher told them to stop.

At last he said they should tape their drawings to the wall. He walked the length of the row of pictures, all different. Ruben thought hers was the craziest, with lines all over the place. Several were beautiful. The teacher pointed to a vase on one picture, the draped cloth on another. He said, That's interesting. That's interesting. He thought a chair Ruben had drawn was interesting. Then the teacher asked them to choose the most interesting part of their drawings and to make that part the subject of a whole drawing on a new sheet of paper. Ruben didn't know what he meant by interesting, but she drew the ladder again. In both her drawings, the pots seemed to be sliding off the steps of the ladder.

After the second drawing, the class took a break. Jeremiah walked right over. Toby, let's get coffee, he said. Ruben didn't exactly want coffee, but she followed him. She wasn't sorry he was there, after all, though she didn't know him well, even after all these years. Jeremiah was a lawyer. She thought he worked for a business, an import-export firm. Somewhere, containers were swung by cranes onto ships, their arcs modified by Jeremiah.

He put on his jacket, left it hanging open, and stomped purposefully down the stairs.

—Where are we going?

—Coffee at the greasy spoon around the corner.

—Do we have time?

—Sure.

She caught up. Have you taken classes here before?

—Nah, but I know the routine from waiting for the kids. I've spent hours in that luncheonette.

While he drank his coffee, and Ruben had Sanka, he said, So what brings you here? She was tired and cranky.

—I've thought about taking a drawing class for a long time, she said, sounding phony to herself. What about you?

—So you don't know why you're doing this?

—Well, no. I mean, I don't have some practical purpose.

—You don't know, but I do, he said.

—You know why I'm here?

—No, how should I know why you're here? I know why I'm here. They were sitting at a little table and he put his elbows down on either side of his coffee cup, keeping his hands in the air and his fingers spread.

—Why?

—Funny you should ask. Now, didn't you think
he'd
ask? That teacher? What's his name?

—Gregory. Suddenly they were buddies. Don't you think he should have said his name?

—I don't care what his name is, said Jeremiah. But I think he might have taken the trouble to find out our purpose in coming. Mine is quite specific. Maybe the advice he'd given me would be different if he knew. Fill the page, he said. Well, what I want to draw is quite small.

Suddenly they were not buddies. What is it?

—The markings on model trolleys. You can buy decals, but they're expensive, and they aren't always made accurately. If you study old photographs, you can see that some of the markings are incorrect on the decals you can buy.

—You make model trolleys? She'd never seen them, though she'd often been in his house. Probably he made them in the basement. She thought only a trivial person would make model trolleys, and she tried to recall if Deborah had ever mentioned them. How could Deborah be married to someone who built model trolleys? But it was time to go back to class. He offered to drive her home when it was over, but she had her car. He said, Next week I'll pick you up. It's hard to park here.