Leaving the World (51 page)

‘I’d say yes,’ I answered.

‘Excellent. Then that’s how it will be. You have no objections to that, Mrs Woods?’

Geraldine Woods – who always considered Marlene Tucker to be a liability (and someone who was not-so-secretly gunning for her job) – fought hard to suppress a very large grin.

‘None whatsoever, sir.’

‘That’s settled then.’

‘But Mr Henderson . . .’ Marlene Tucker said. ‘It was agreed between us that I would remain Head of Acquisitions until—’

‘That
agreement
, Mrs Tucker, was made on the basis that you would succeed at the job. But what have you achieved to date, except the maintenance of a certain bureaucratic status quo?’

‘I don’t think that’s a fair assessment—’ she said.

‘I’m sure you don’t,’ Henderson countered. ‘But the truth is often unpalatable. Any further questions, Miss Howard?’

‘Would you like me to draw up a list of possible “investments” we could make in the rare-book field in advance of your discussion with the powers that be in the legislature? I could completely research how best to allocate the half a million dollars and what the return on this investment could be.’

‘Now
this
is the sort of forward thinking I like. Yes, I would very much appreciate such a document. Might you have it to me within seven days?’

‘No problem, sir.’

‘Then we’re all on the same page – pun intended!’

And we all laughed at this lame joke.

As soon as Henderson left the room, Marlene Tucker turned to Geraldine Woods and said: ‘I will not be accepting this decision. I will be contesting it – and if that means having to take legal action or go to the board . . .’

‘You are more than welcome to do that, Marlene,’ Geraldine Woods said. ‘But that will mean coming up against our chairman – a man who hates to be contradicted. But if you want to do that, be my guest. I can promise you he will insist you be demoted down to the sorting division, rather than the nice comfortable job in cataloging . . .’

‘Cataloging! I started in cataloging twenty-three years ago.’

‘Then there’s something rather elegant about your returning to your professional roots.’

‘You haven’t heard the end of this,’ Marlene said, then stormed out.

As soon as she had left the room, Geraldine Woods let out a long exhalation.

‘Well, bless you for coming into our lives and ridding us of that woman.’

‘That wasn’t my intention.’

‘Believe me, I know that. And Stockton Henderson knows that too. You were darn impressive when it came to fielding that snarky comment by our chairman. It’s his style, I’m afraid.’

‘You forget, I spent a little time in the business world.’

‘Oh, I’m well aware that you are a woman of many parts, Jane. I also know that you will do this job wonderfully. You’ll be on a salary of thirty-eight thousand thanks to this promotion. Once we get that half a million from the legislature, I will want to go public with the job you’re doing, building up our collection.’

‘Count me out of that,’ I said.

‘But it would be incredibly important for us to have you – a published author, a serious academic – be the public face of this new project.’

‘Sorry, I can’t . . .
won’t
 . . . do it.’

‘Would you, at least, sleep on it for a couple of days?’

‘I’m happy to do all the research, all the negotiations, all the buying . . . and to take on the duties of Head of Acquisitions. Just don’t make me do anything in public. I’m certain you can find someone else to be the front man for all this.’

Stockton Henderson wasn’t too pleased when Mrs Woods informed him I wouldn’t do any press in my role as the Head of Acquisitions, until she suggested that Henderson himself announce this ‘new initiative’ and simply say that the library was working with several rare-books experts who were personally advising him on the best investments to be made . . . but that the final decision was made by himself.

Being both pompous and massively self-important, Stockton Henderson relished this idea. Within two months he had convinced the provincial legislature to part with a further $500,000 to start this new collection.

‘They’re largely such a bunch of philistines,’ Ruth Fowler noted after the money came through, ‘that it takes a fellow oaf like Henderson to muscle the extra funding through.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ I said, knowing that between the two grants I now had close to $1 million to spend on books. And spend I did. On the general-collection side I took on board every recommendation made to me by all the heads of divisions when it came to where their collections were lacking. We had a part-time graduate student from the University of Calgary working in the fiction section – a smart guy named Ron, who seemed to be something of a whizz when it came to identifying our deficits. I commissioned him to see how he could bump up our literature holding – and gave him a budget of $50,000 to work with. He was like a kid in a candy store. Within two weeks he came back with all sorts of ideas – an entire section devoted to the Beats, to Québécois writers (in French and in translation), to forgotten Albertan novelists, to the French
nouveau roman
.

Mrs Woods had to defend many of these purchases to a board of directors who – fuelled by a nasty-letter campaign by Marlene Tucker (who simply refused to speak to me in the wake of her demotion) – were appalled that we were spending ‘good taxpayers’ money’ on ‘beatniks’ and ‘Francophones’ and ‘books that nobody will ever read’ (exact quotes from the meeting). Shrewdly, Mrs Woods had contacted several sympathetic journalists in Calgary – on both the
Herald
and
FastFwd
– both of whom wrote glowing pieces about the vast improvement in the Central Public Library’s collection and how (according to
FastFwd
) it was ‘a tribute to the Library’s Board of Directors’ that they had ‘approved such an impressive overhaul of the CPL’s collections – and one which, with both its eclecticism and depth, makes it one of the best metropolitan libraries in Canada’.

The board loved this flattery – and Mrs Woods threatened Marlene Tucker with summary dismissal if she continued her poison-pen campaign. But the person who most adored all the good press was Stockton Henderson. When I scored a rare edition of Dickens’s
Dombey and Son
in the original parts for a bargain $14,000 from a dealer in London and a numbered Shakespeare and Co. first edition of Joyce’s
Ulysses
for $58,000, Henderson invited a few journalists over to the library to inspect the goods. He also informed everyone that he himself had tracked these finds down. He basked in the journalistic copy that followed: how this big-deal oilman lawyer was, in private, a rarefied bibliophile.

‘Jesus, I nearly gagged when I read that,’ Ruth said the next day. ‘The guy thinks he’s a Medici, when he’s nothing more than a Borgia Pope – of the provincial Canadian variety. “Rarefied bibliophile.” Yeah, and he’s also Pierre Trudeau.’

I smiled a weak smile. Ruth noted it.

‘How’re you doing today?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be sure?’

I could hear the defensiveness in my voice, just as I also realized:
She knows
.

‘You didn’t have to come to work today, Jane.’

‘But I wanted to come to work. I needed to come to work.’

‘Well, as long as you’re OK.’

‘You know, if you don’t feel like being here,’ Ruth continued, ‘you should just go home. Everyone will understand.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong, Ruth. No one will
ever
understand. Nor do I really expect them to. And now if you’ll excuse me I’m going back to work.’

I shut myself in my office for the rest of the day. Ruth was right. I shouldn’t have come in. I had been fretting about this day for weeks. Everyone says that the first anniversary of a bereavement is excruciating – not simply because you realize that a whole year has gone by since your world collapsed, but also because time heals nothing. So I kept the office door closed and I stared into my computer screen and tried to concentrate on tracking down a first edition of
The Scarlet Letter
. I found a dealer in Cape Town (of all places) who had one copy. But he was demanding an exorbitant $30,000. I tried to gauge whether this was a fair market price, and whether it was worth committing so much of my budget on one volume (I decided against it), while also knowing that all this first-edition detective work was nothing more than a series of diversionary tactics, allowing me to sidestep, for a few minutes at a time, the terrible reality that still, twelve months later, haunted every hour of every day.

Finally it was six p.m., and I could get on my down coat, my hat, my scarf, my gloves – all the layers one needs against a Canadian winter – and abandon ship for the night.

It was a cold night – the mercury in the minus teens, with snow beginning to cascade down. There were two films playing at the Uptown which I wanted to see. It was a twenty minute walk down 8th Avenue from the library, and I figured I could time it to stop in a wine bar called Escoba a few doors down from the cinema and have a plate of pasta and several glasses of something red and hearty, then duck into the cinema and kill the evening staring at projected shadows in a darkened room. But as soon as I walked out of the library, I did something rather strange. I sat down on the pavement outside its main entrance and just remained there, oblivious to the cold, the snow, the passers-by who glanced at me as if I was mad . . . which, perhaps, I was.

A cop came by – a middle-aged man wearing a furry hat with ear flaps, the badge of the Calgary police pinned across its front.

‘Are you all right, ma’am?’

I didn’t look up at him, but turned and stared into the gutter.

He crouched down beside me.

‘Ma’am, I asked you a question. Are you all right?’

‘I’ll never be all right,’ I heard myself saying.

‘Ma’am, have you had an accident? Are you hurt?’

‘I did this last year.’

‘Did what, ma’am?’

‘The night after my daughter died, I sat down in the street.’

‘I’m not following this . . .’

‘I went back to where the accident happened and I sat down in the street, and I couldn’t get up again until the police came and . . .’

‘Ma’am, I need to know your name, please?’

I turned away. I felt his gloved hand on my shoulder.

‘Ma’am, do you have any identification on you?’

I still refused to look at him.

‘OK, ma’am. I’m calling for back-up and getting you somewhere safe for the night.’

But as I heard him reach for his walkie-talkie, a man came hurrying over.

‘I know her,’ he told the officer.

I glanced up and saw Vern Byrne. He crouched down by me.

‘Did something happen, Jane?’

‘A year ago . . .’

‘I know, I know,’ he said quietly.

‘How do you know this woman?’ the cop asked.

‘We work together.’

‘Is she always like this?’

Vern tapped him on the shoulder. They both stood up and spoke in low voices for a few moments. Then the cop crouched down again beside me and said: ‘Your colleague has assured me he’s going to get you home. He told me what you said about your daughter is true. And that’s really hard – and I’m sorry for you. But this is my beat – and if I find you again in the street like this I am going to have to get you admitted to the psych wing at Foothills Hospital . . . and, believe me, that would give me no pleasure.’

‘This won’t happen again,’ Vern said.

‘All right,’ the cop said, ‘but you promise you will get her home?’

‘You have my word.’

The cop left. Vern helped me to my feet, putting a protective and steadying arm around me.

‘Let’s get you home,’ he said.

‘I’m
not
going home.’

‘You’ve got to go home. You heard what the officer said.’

‘I am not going home.’

My body stiffened. I was suddenly determined to be immobile.

‘Please, Jane,’ he whispered. ‘If the officer comes back and finds us still here . . .’

‘A drink,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Buy me a drink.’

V
ERN HUSTLED ME
into the first bar he could find. It was located diagonally across the road from the Central Public Library. The wind was scalpel sharp and the blowing snow made visibility difficult. Vern grasped my left arm with the force of a lifeguard pulling a half-drowned swimmer out of deep water. We all but fell into the bar.

‘Jeez,’ Vern said under his breath as he looked around. ‘Kind of fancy.’

The bar was actually a restaurant called Julliard. There were booths. Vern steered me into one. A waitress approached us, all smiles.

‘You guys look like you need some anti-freeze! So what’s it going to be?’

‘What’s your pleasure?’ Vern asked me.

I just shrugged.

‘You like rye?’ he asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Two Crown Royals, straight up, water back,’ he told the waitress.

When she was out of earshot he leaned over and asked: ‘You OK now?’

‘Thank you for getting me here.’

The drinks arrived. I picked up the glass and downed the rye in one go. It didn’t burn the way so many whiskeys do when they hit the esophagus. It had a slight sweetness and a hint of honey that was immediately warming. I put the glass down and turned to the waitress who still hadn’t removed our glasses of water from her tray.

‘Could I have another, please?’

‘No problem,’ she said, then added: ‘You sure as heck must have been cold.’

‘Know what I can’t stand about Canada?’ I suddenly said to Vern. ‘All the goddamn politeness – and the way everyone uses namby-pamby language.
Heck . . . jeez . . . sugar . . . freaking
. Can’t you people swear in this country? Do you all have to be so inanely polite? Know what I think? You all sit on your hands so much you can’t come out swinging. I mean, they broadcast all that politically correct Inuit Throat Singing shit on the CBC . . . and you don’t fucking object. Not “freaking” object.
Fucking
object. That’s right,
fuck
. I’m from South of the Border and I say
fuck
 . . .’