The Book Borrower (14 page)

—She lent it to you?

—I never finished it. It was upsetting. The sister—

—I told you. The history of trolleys is not all peace. Not all cute little clang clang clang went the trolley riding over the hill. San Francisco. Cable cars. Tourists. By no means. Not much has been written about the wreck, but feminist scholars look at it, because she was a radical, a political type. Everybody else wants to be cheerful. We hobbyists are idiots, and historians are cheerful about the trolleys because they correctly think that the interurbans were a marvelous thing that has been lost. But here's this little reality that has always interested me because I'm different from other people, sort of gloomy, although I don't let it show.

They were back in the classroom. That night they made collages, which could be accomplished sitting down. Ruben had forgotten scissors, but she tore paper and glued it to other paper. The teacher liked her collage. He seemed excited, but she felt as if she'd been wasting her time. It was like tearing a napkin in a restaurant, just keeping the hands busy. Drawing never felt like a waste of time.

 

When Archie was out and no customers came to the pottery store, Ruben drew the lovely pots, struggling to show their smoothness and well-proportioned shapes. She couldn't evoke the solid feel of them, their weight. Sometimes she brought Peter along, while Stevie played with a friend or was babysat by one of Deborah's girls. Peter drew, too, or did his homework, or watched her and didn't do his homework. He liked to sit in the back. I never was in the back of anyplace, he said twice. He was docile and shy and lowered his head, smiling. On the way home he was loud and obnoxious. Peter was never the same for long.

Stevie, watching her make supper one night, finished the drawings she'd started at the store, put faces on the pots, wrote captions. A big bowl had a face drawn on it and was saying, If I only had a brain.

—I was going to take that one to class, said Ruben.

—Take it. But she didn't. When she left, the boys were quarreling and Harry was considering pieces of fire engines—hoses, ladders?—in his study. She felt exhilarated, sneaking out, even carrying the heavy drawing pad. Jeremiah said to her, first thing, But Toby, you don't still have that book, do you? I've searched the whole house. Deb says you returned it, but who knows? Ruben promised to look. At the break she asked him, But how do you know that artist is the woman in the book? I forget her name.

—In the book her name is Jessie Lipkin. That wasn't exactly her name—it was Gussie Lipkin.

—How do you know?

—I found something else about her. You can look up these things in indexes.

—But maybe it's a different person.

—No, it's the same person. The way I found out that she was Berry Cooper. Well, I read the book. A dotty old woman sold it to me at a used bookstore on Linwood Road—it's gone now; there's a housing development. Anyway, she told me Lipkin lived around here with a different name. I don't know how she knew. I thought about the book for years. Then someone told me about the
New York Times
index. Did you ever use that?

Ruben wasn't certain.

—Oh, very wonderful! You should take a look at it. Any library will have it. It has a volume for each year, and it's an index of all the articles in the newspaper by subject. Heavy books. I just hauled them off the shelves one by one. I looked up Gussie Lipkin in every single year starting in 1921, when the wreck occurred. That year there were three articles about her. This was in Massachusetts, and the
Times
wasn't too interested. The next year, none. The next year, one. Then none. Then, in the thirties, someone gave a lecture on the trial. And then there was a review of a sculpture show and it was listed under “Lipkin, Gussie. Alias Cooper, Berry.” I looked it up and it said there was a sculpture show in New York at a gallery— this was in the late thirties, some Communist festival no doubt—by Berry Cooper, whose former name was Gussie Lipkin. I don't think she goes out of her way to let people know who she is, but sometimes it comes out. Anyway, there it was. After that, every few years there's something about Berry Cooper. And locally, too. She does live here, or she did. Naturally I looked them all up and there's never another reference to Gussie Lipkin, but I didn't need another reference. Then I found a historical piece in a Jewish magazine that could have told me everything. It said Gussie Lipkin is Berry Cooper. It said she's dead, but I think that could be wrong, because I have references to sculpture shows after the date of that piece. And they don't say she's dead. Of course, by
now
she could be dead.

—Was she a good sculptor? said Ruben.

—She mostly did abstract stuff. I don't know much about that.

On the way home, they passed Gregory on his bike. Even when it's cold, Jeremiah said. That goes beyond fitness. That's obstinacy.

—Maybe he can't afford a car, Ruben said. That's what you said last time.

—Oh, he can afford one, Jeremiah said, as if he knew.

—I'll look for the book, Ruben said when she got out. She was pretty sure she had never returned it.

 

But she couldn't find it. They'd moved twice since they'd lived in the apartment where she'd read half the book and stuck it somewhere. Surely she'd have returned it when they moved. She remembered bringing Deborah piles of borrowed possessions, and Deborah had done the same when she and Jeremiah and the vigorous girls moved to a bigger house with more wall space for paintings of yellow and green ellipses. Ruben didn't remember returning the book to Deborah, but memory is faulty. She remembered toys, baking pans, records, a cookbook, and Deborah's notes for teaching freshman composition, which Ruben had disagreed with anyway.

—Help me find a book, she said to Peter and Stevie, but they wouldn't, and she couldn't remember what it looked like, except that it was old. The boys ran up and down the stairs, fighting and getting along. When she scolded them for fighting they were never really fighting, and Stevie explained anything odd Peter might have done recently. The rooms upstairs, today, were a newspaper office. The boys were reporters. Downstairs were earthquakes and robbers. Ruben thought the book was black, or had a black spine. She'd simply look at every book she owned. She made herself go slowly, acknowledging—all but greeting—each book on each shelf, then each book on the next shelf.

Now Stevie took an interest. Peter had gone downstairs to cover a fire and disappeared; she thought he was reading. She could recognize the change in the air when anybody in her family, anywhere in the house, began to read. The air was roomier, because the reader was elsewhere.

—What's it called? said Stevie.

She'd asked Jeremiah.
Trolley Girl.

—It's about a girl?

—A woman.

—Why's it called girl then?

—People sometimes say girl when they mean woman.

—I don't think I'd like that book. I don't like books about women. But I like books about trolleys.

—I don't think you'd like it, said Ruben.

She couldn't remember the book. She remembered what was upsetting: somebody was killed in a wreck. That was when she could not read any longer. Which was odd. It wasn't the only book she'd ever read in which somebody died! She remembered thrusting the book into a pile of newspapers and other books on the dresser. Maybe, eleven years ago, it had been thrown out with the newspapers. Now that she knew Jeremiah better, it would be unforgivable if she'd thrown away his favorite book about trolleys.

—You spend all your time in libraries, she said to Jeremiah.

—A lot of it.

She told him she was still looking for the book. She didn't say she was afraid it was gone.

The next day, Deborah said, We are finally acquiring a dog, and Ruben said she'd go along to pick him up. Deborah had agreed to adopt a dog her mother had taken in. She likes it, said Deborah, but she doesn't love it, and she doesn't have the energy for it.

It had been ascertained that the dog was a boy dog. And thank heaven for that! said Deborah. I have enough girls, heaven knows! she said, belying her words by scrubbing her fingers all over the heads of the nearest two girls, Rose and Mary Grace, who shrieked and ducked. They were in Deborah's kitchen. Mary Grace sat on Deborah's lap, though she was too big, and gave her mother a wet kiss.

—Moozum, said Jill, walking by.

—What's moozum? said Ruben, though it sounded familiar. Deborah said, It's our word for menstrual blood, I'm afraid. Jill has her period. Ruben was jealous: she'd never have said such a thing to her mother, and she had no daughters.

—What's a period? Mary Grace said, but Rose hushed her. You
know.

On Saturday, Deborah, Ruben, Mary Grace, and Stevie rode north in Deborah's car, forty miles to the small city where Deborah's mother lived. They'd been talking about getting dogs, both of them, for years.

—Oh, mothers, said Ruben.

—I forget when yours died.

—Thirteen years ago. Before we met. But Ruben wasn't ready, yet, to talk about it. Good leaves right here, she said. It was October, and besides acquiring a dog they were inspecting leaves.

—Peak! said Deborah. Peak! Maybe a smidgen past peak. They had left the highway and were riding on a road that got more wind and sun, or was up on a ridge, because here the leaves were redder and browner and in some places nearly gone.

—I like them better this way, said Ruben.

—Too sad, said Deborah. Better when they're crazy and yellow.

They stopped for ice cream and the children ran in the leaves. Nobody could be as beautiful. Ruben's shriveled relatives would have tied red ribbons to keep off the evil eye, and she knew why, watching Stevie of the delicate lashes and eyebrows and blond Mary Grace run toward her, their hands full of leaves. Not Ruben's mother; she wouldn't have tied red ribbons. Her grandmother would have.

—I'm sad, anyway, these days, said Deborah. Maybe Ruben could talk about her mother? At last? They were sitting at a picnic table in the sun, behind the stand where they'd bought the ice cream. It was cool, but not too cold for ice cream. They were in sweaters. Their ice cream was nearly gone. Their legs were stretched out and their backs were against the table edge, and Ruben thought she'd never been so happy, sitting next to Deborah watching the sharply, achingly perfect children, her back intersected by the soft warm wood of the picnic table. A little dog awaited them, and maybe Ruben would mention the death of her mother and it would not be unspeakable, just a death.

—Why are you sad? Ruben said. I'm happy.

—Happiness makes me sad, said Deborah.

Ruben laughed. She thought of Jeremiah's book. Do you re-member—

—I think about Janet Grey too much, said Deborah.

—Janet Grey?

—The boss lady.

—I know who you mean.

—I teased her too hard, said Deborah. Now she's suspicious of me.

—She's boring.

—Oh, no, said Deborah. She's not boring. She just pretends to be boring because life hurts her so much. Or that's what I think. Do you think I've invented that?

—Could be. Ruben was jealous, again. She ran her hand down Deborah's shoulder and arm. Deborah's live mother had knitted the sweater Deborah wore, tweedy gray with flecks of color, cables on the sleeve. It made her look like a Swedish matron, with her light hair. Ruben played with Deborah's arm.

But she liked hearing about whatever upset Deborah. She liked that kind of talk.

—You don't think I'm dumb to think about her? Deborah said.

—Well, how much do you think about her?

—A lot.

—Is this a sexual thing?

—Oh, said Deborah. Oh. I don't think about going to bed with her, she said, but you know the way she carries her purse? She grasps it by the handles as if it weighs forty pounds, picks it up, and I want to just grab her.

—Is all this because she's the boss? Ruben asked.

—Probably. I know that's silly. I went for a long walk with her the other day.

—When?

—After our classes. We carried our papers and books.

—How far did you go?

—Like one of our walks, in the park.

—I wouldn't want to carry stuff.

—I didn't like that part.

—What did you talk about?

—Her love life.

—Recent?

—No.

Behind the ice cream stand was a little woods, filled with leaves and bits of garbage. Ruben could see the children down there, and then she couldn't see them. They were right down the hill. Stevie would go anywhere Mary Grace led him. Mary Grace came back first. She was the chubbiest and blondest of the girls. Her hair was long and wavy. She wore a bright green jacket. There's a dead dog at the bottom of that hill, she called.