The Book Borrower (25 page)

—I have to give a talk on it.

—It's stupid.

—Parts.

The highway was busy. She thought he changed lanes too much. She didn't think it was safe to listen to a tape while changing lanes on the highway. They would have a fiery crash and end up in the hospital in the room next to Deborah. Leave me alone, Deborah would say. What are you doing, stealing my death?

She asked Harry, Do you think Deborah is going to die?

—I don't know.

The tape went on. Certain fluctuations of this nature . . .

She said, I want you to say, No, of course not.

—I wish I could say that. He sounded like an old rabbi facing tragedy. Ruben tortured herself by deciding how she'd have spent the afternoon if Deborah had not been hurt. She'd have done the grocery shopping and maybe bought herself a sweater. She wanted another long, loose sweater, with winter coming. Maybe she'd have taken everything home and put the groceries away and cooked something, maybe a dessert. She hardly ever did that.

The hospital, an hour away, was in a town where they'd never been. Where should I wait? said Harry.

—I don't know.

—Is there a library?

—How should I know? They got off the highway and found the hospital, a big brick building with curving paths and tame landscaping. He drove past it.

—Where are you going?

—I'll find a place to wait and give you the car.

It made sense, though it seemed silly. They drove through a peeling downtown. There was a library. Harry kept going. I really want a coffee shop, he said, the way he said he'd wanted the walk. Harry always knew what he wanted. He drove into what was obviously the wrong kind of neighborhood—all houses. Then he turned around, but when he found a place, it had shut down. Ruben felt like a passenger trapped on the wrong bus—no, someone in a nightmare. At last they found a little old-fashioned luncheonette.

—That old place will have rice pudding, said Harry. I'm going to have rice pudding.

—Enjoy it, said Ruben bitterly. He waved, as if Deborah weren't hurt, and got out, and she slid into the driver's seat and drove off. At first she got lost, looking for the hospital again, but at last she remembered.

She parked in the visitors' lot. Getting out of the car, she was afraid. She could take a nap in the car, or she could go back and get Harry. But she bravely got out and walked toward the hospital, conscious that anyone looking out the windows in front could see her. Jeremiah? As if the risk were Jeremiah's anger. As if that were the danger.

At the information desk in the lobby, she gave Deborah's name to a young woman with braids who looked like an illustration from a children's book about farmers.

—I'm afraid both passes are out, said the young woman.

—Both passes.

—Deborah's allowed only two visitors, said the woman, as if Deborah was a friend of hers. There are two people upstairs now. She's in intensive care, so it's only family, just a few minutes every hour. Are you family?

—I have to see her, said Ruben. She was going to shout, but the woman would not be shouted at.

—I know how you feel, said the young woman. Once my best friend was sick, and they wouldn't let me in. I went home and cried and cried. I was maybe thirteen. I thought she'd die, but of course she didn't.

Ruben began to cry. I'm afraid my friend will die, she said. That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid I'll never see her again.

—Her condition is guarded, said the young woman. A line had formed behind Ruben, but this girl was in no hurry. Guarded isn't good, but it could be worse. I wish I could tell you more.

—They told me not to come, said Ruben. They'll be angry.

—They won't be. Go sit down. When one of them comes down, you go up. If anybody asks, say you're her sister.

—I
am
her sister.

—Well, there you are. Don't tell anybody I said this. I'm just a volunteer.

Ruben sat on a slippery couch at the side of the lobby, watching people come in and go upstairs. Everyone but Ruben was immediately allowed up, even two toddlers. But the young woman with braids wasn't kind to anyone else. She just handed them passes. Then she left, and was replaced by an older woman. Ruben went to find a ladies' room. When she came back, she saw Mary Grace in a big puffy coat coming into the lobby with a green duffel bag, her long blond hair tangled with the strap of the bag. Ruben stepped forward and Mary Grace was suddenly sobbing in her arms and clutching her, and they were both sobbing while the duffel bag fell against Ruben's leg and settled there.

—Oh, Toby, Toby, did you wait for me? Did you know I was coming? The two of them rocked and cried, and people walked around them. Ruben couldn't talk, feeling the joy of Mary Grace's tangled light hair on her cheek, dragging into her tears.

Ruben said, They won't let me go up. I don't know if they'll even let
you
go up.

—Of course they will. In a moment Mary Grace had a pass. She turned back, hugged Ruben once more, her pudgy, red face looking disheveled and wild, openly terrified but loving, about to abandon Ruben easily. She hurried to the elevator, swinging the duffel bag onto her shoulder. Ruben started after her to say, Tell Jeremiah I'm here! but a guard was in the way, and after all she didn't want to fight with a guard.

She returned to the slippery couch and tried, unsuccessfully, to read
Glamour.
She was angry with herself for all she ob-served coursing in her soul, not just love and pity for Deborah but feelings she didn't want to have: fear of Jeremiah's anger, fear of the girls' anger, jealousy of them all. They would tell Deborah she was demanding and selfish, and Deborah would die angry with her. Sitting in this ugly light green lobby with a bad painting opposite her, she had become ugly.

Suddenly Jeremiah was beside her and she threw her arms around him—she felt his surprise—and sobbed, while he sobbed with her. At last she was behaving the way people should behave here, sobbing with Mary Grace and Jeremiah. She stood up and so did he.

—You didn't get the message? said Jeremiah.

—What message?

—I told Harry we wanted you to come but they wouldn't let you in.

—He just told me not to come.

—Well, it's not so good that you came.

—What's going on, Jeremiah?

He shook his head and looked as if he was trying to speak, and then she saw that in his hand was the pass. Jeremiah had aged faster than the rest of them. He was plump and jowly and gray. And slow. I'm her sister, she said, and while he looked puzzled, she snatched it from between his fingers. It was a large laminated card. Just wait, she said. I'm sorry. Then she flew past the guard, waving it, and opened a staircase door and ran up, afraid to wait for the elevator. She stopped on the landing and looked at the pass. It said 718. She couldn't run up seven flights. She left the staircase and pushed the button for the elevator, terrified of being stopped. At the seventh floor, she walked into the Intensive Care Unit. A nurse looked up and she gestured with the pass. I'm sorry, the woman was saying, but Ruben saw that the room before her said 716 and the one to its left said 714, so she walked fast into the room to its right and there was Deborah, in a twisted hospital gown that left her almost naked. She looked asleep, and had tubes and bottles all around her. I'm very sorry, came the angry voice of the nurse behind her. But Ruben had pushed through the curtain near the bed, and she dropped the pass and put her arms under Deborah's arms. Deborah opened her eyes and looked right at her and reached to hold her tightly and pull her close.

Chapter 4

T
HE
trouble was that Deborah died, and there didn't seem to be a way to figure out that it hadn't happened. Often Ruben let herself imagine that it wasn't true. She imagined herself in the dining room eating supper and marking papers. She ran her mental tongue over the events and licked the spot of time in which she read the next to the last paper. Then the phone did not ring. Ruben listened in her mind to its exquisite silence, and in her mind she picked up Lillian's paper.

Or, it did ring. The phone did ring. The phone rang and it was Jeremiah, but he said, Deborah just called. Her mother died.

Apparently someone had to die.

—Deborah wants me there, said Jeremiah. Would you let Mac out in the morning?

—I don't have a key, said Ruben. Whenever she played this hard game, she said sensibly, I don't have the key. Sometimes, if she was alone, she actually screamed the words aloud: I don't have the key! I don't have the key! Sometimes that was the end of the game. She stopped where she was—carrying laundry down the stairs, in the bathtub, in the street—and emitted small screams.

When it wasn't the end of the game, she talked. In an offhand voice, acting the part of Jeremiah, she said, Oh, I'll drop an extra key off at your house. Or, Oh, I'll put my key under a flowerpot on the back steps. When she got that far she was in a tumult of smiles and sobs. Nobody stopped and questioned her when she cried in the street. Once she sat down on the icy sidewalk to hold herself. Across the street, somebody walked by but ignored her.

She didn't have her hair cut and when the frame of her glasses broke in the middle she taped it together. She canceled one class but held class after that. The students asked about her friend. Some had seen the story in the paper. Deirdre offered to lead the class in prayer, and Ruben accepted, though she didn't usually pray and now she hated God. I think prayer is inappropriate in this setting, said Louise after the prayer.

Ruben had last heard prayer at Deborah's funeral. She was a pallbearer. The coffin was heavy. Arriving early at the church in the car with Harry, she saw men removing a coffin from a van, and she knew Deborah was inside. The men carried it into the church as if it were any box. Ruben made Harry keep driving. He drove as if he couldn't see, straight ahead down the street where the church was, and block after block on that same long street. It seemed as if he'd drive out of the city. At last Ruben said, Go back now, and he made a U-turn.

At the church, people were walking in, and Ruben and Harry joined them. Peter and Stevie came in Berry's car and sat with them. Jeremiah and the girls walked in, holding on to one an-other. All through the service, Deborah's mother, in the front, looked around, over her shoulder, searching the church. Ruben sat between Harry and Peter. Peter's hand, on his knee, shook. At last she took it, but soon he took it back to blow his nose.

At the store, Ruben was sure she'd break things, but she didn't. Deborah's better hands had become hers. Archie teased her when she broke no crockery for a month. He nodded gruffly at her whenever she wiped her eyes, but didn't seem to want to talk about Deborah. Three months after Deborah died, Ruben was working one day at the back of the store, unpacking a shipment of big blue goblets. She liked them. She was careful. Archie called to her that he was going out, and she knew he was taking one of his walks around the block, even though it was a bitterly cold, icy day. He used a walking stick with a point that he jabbed into ice. In a moment she heard the chimes as he left, and a while later chimes again. She finished taking a goblet out of its paper wrapping, holding it by the stem, and set it on a shelf. The glass of the blue goblets seemed to draw in light and make it blue.

Ruben walked to the front of the store. The customer was Deborah. Deborah was dressed in a coat Ruben remembered, though she hadn't seen it for a long time: a blue coat, not warm enough for this cold day in a cold winter. A
dressy
winter coat. Around her neck Deborah wore a yellow silk scarf. Her hair was caught in a red-and-yellow crocheted hat with earflaps. Some of her hair fell forward over her face. Deborah had put her gloves on the counter, and Ruben, sucking in her breath, touched them. The counter was between Ruben and Deborah. The gloves were made of yellow wool. Between the thumb and forefinger of one glove, the knit was worn and stretched, and a broken piece of yarn extended, loose. Deborah's eyes followed Ruben's finger and acknowledged the torn place as if it was something to be slightly ashamed of. Deborah looked steadily at her: pity, love, a warning. She said, I'm wondering if you carry long spoons.

—Long spoons, said Ruben. She could not speak properly. She was happy for the first time in a long time. She suddenly understood that it didn't matter that Deborah had died. People can come back to life. She said, Do you mean for a barbecue?

—Someone I know is pregnant, Deborah said. If I bought her a long spoon, she could stir the soup.

—Who is it?

—Nobody you know.

Ruben said she'd see if they had long spoons. In the winter they did not usually carry barbecue tools. She went to the back room and looked, though she knew she wouldn't find any, and when she returned, Deborah was gone. She was glad it was over, and astonished to be glad. For a few minutes she remembered why it was all right for Deborah to have died, and then she couldn't remember, and it was no longer all right.

Ruben had been afraid to drive that morning because of ice, and Harry had dropped her off. Now, when Archie came back, she could take the bus home. It was Friday. Her hours had changed; she now worked Fridays. She would have to get ready for her class. It was the annual class on structure. Ruben had discovered that people don't think about structure. She wanted her students to know about balance and symmetry and shape; it would make them better writers. It was too bad she couldn't bring one of the goblets to show them. The stem was just the right length. She enjoyed the stem. Seeing Deborah had lightened her, even though Deborah had had to return to being dead. Archie would let her take the goblet home if she asked, but she would slip on the ice and drop it. She heard Archie come in, and she put on her coat.

—I think about increasing your hours, Archie said.

—I'm really a teacher, said Ruben. She still loved the shiny underside of pots, their curved surfaces, the competency of good knives, and the delicacy of small mugs covered with flowers. Best of all she liked heavy metal pots, but there was much to be said—and Deborah had said it—for enamel pots in red, orange, and yellow. Ruben had sold plenty of those, talking to customers as if she were Deborah. This cunning blue frying pan . . .

Ruben said good-bye to Archie and walked to a little store for milk. Ice connected tree to tree. Sections of old sidewalk were planes of ice tilting against different sections like geological strata preparing for an earthquake. In the store window gleamed Ruben's mother: Ruben was closer to old than young. These days she liked remembering her mother. She knew she hadn't killed her mother.

She didn't take the bus but kept walking, carrying the milk, and came to the edge of the park where she and Deborah had walked, the last day. Though it was so cold she walked into the park with the milk, not cold (she should have been cold) except when the wind increased. Ice formed on her glasses, but she walked on the bridge spanning the river, where ice lay in chunks, to the trail where three months before she and Deborah had walked. She walked on brittle, springy iced leaves. In her imagination Deborah was coming nearer, not in the dressy coat but in that silly green raincoat that would be far too light for this weather.

Like any of the dead, Deborah had become naive. Hadn't she even known winter would come? Walking beside Deborah in the green raincoat was her own self, who knew nothing: idiotic, bulky, and grumpy. These two crossed Ruben's path: Deborah picking her way and Ruben arguing too loudly. As they passed, she pinched her own three-months-younger stupid arm: foolish Ruben was leading her friend up to the peak. If she would turn back, Deborah would leave for her mother's house earlier and would not meet the wild man who killed her. Ruben could not get dumb Toby Ruben, who was her own imagining and should be obedient, to notice her.

—Notice me! she shouted in a low but intense voice. It was grisly fun. This time somebody heard: a man with a black Lab stepped out of the woods and looked over his shoulder, then looked away and kept walking. Ruben hurried forward, past him and his dog, with the foolish idea of climbing the North Peak, but she slipped on ice and crushed her glasses against the bark of a tree. The lenses came out and the frame separated at the center, where she'd taped it. The grocery bag fell and the cardboard milk container burst. She took off her gloves to try to put the glasses together, but she couldn't. Nobody heard the noise she was making. The man had disappeared. Milk was all over the icy ground. She put on her gloves, left the milk container where it was, and walked out of the park. She walked, milk on her gloves, to the optician's, which was nowhere near the pottery store, where she'd begun, or near her house, but quite in a different direction.

Without glasses, Ruben could see cars and buildings, but signs on poles were unclear. Objects on the ground might be dead animals or flaws in the sidewalk or leaves. In her pocket lay her disgraced glasses.

The eyeglass store was warm, full of burnished wood surfaces and perfectly shaped clean lenses. The walls were hung with posters of wide-eyed, amazed people in glasses that apparently contained no glass. But the place was closing. The people there spoke impersonally and Ruben yelled and sobbed so they thought she was crazy, but they drew her into the store to fit her with a new pair of glasses.

—The shape of your face, they said, and similar lies. Ruben's face had no shape. Covered with frozen tears, her cheeks slid away from her nose and her chin was gone. In the mirror she saw only frames, no face. A man had now remembered her, knew her for a respectable lady with credit card, tears or no. He brought another pair. These are slightly different. They were metal.

His hands slid the frames into place over her ears, and it was as if the man—a thin man with long grooves down the side of his nose and mouth—had spoken softly in her ears. She wanted to put her arms around him. She and the man would roll slowly on the carpet, stroking and soothing.

—Are you parked far from here? Your cheeks are red. He pointed as if he might touch them. The man had written down numbers and measured what he seemed to believe was the distance between her eyes, which were two miles apart just now. He looked up her prescription. He would make glasses for her, possibly spending the night himself in a basement room forging metal to circle her lenses. She hadn't worn metal frames for decades and now she'd have them again. In the playground, meeting Deborah for the first time, she'd worn gold granny glasses.

—I walked.

—But it's so cold. Maybe someone can give you a ride. I'd take you myself, but I have to pick up my daughter from her cello lesson.

At last she let herself be cajoled, and called Harry at his office to come and get her. The man lifted the phone over a partition so she could use it. The receiver touched her ear as if it loved her. Harry said he'd come.

In the car she said, Deborah came into the store today.

—Good, he said.

It made her furious. Good? He should have said either, No, she didn't! or, A miracle! So she said, You drive as if you hate sex.

—And how would one do that?

She hated
And.
She hated
one.

—Nothing gets to you, does it? she said. What kind of a place do you live in?

—I live here.

—Fools live here.

—What do you mean, what kind of a place?

—Why don't you take off your gloves and hold the wheel tightly? she said.

—It's too cold.

She'd had to wait outside the store, because it closed before he could get there. I'm colder than you, she said.

—Look, you didn't have to walk there. If you'd gone home from the park and called me, I'd have left the office and driven you.

—Now I have to teach without glasses.

—Oh, baby. Don't you have your old ones?

Suddenly he sounded as if he loved her.

—It doesn't matter, she said. Maybe I do.

—We'll find them.

—You think no problems are real, she said. I suppose you think Deborah will come back to life.

—It sounds as if you're the one who thinks that, Tobe.

—I told you what happened, that's all I did, said Toby Ruben. I just told you what happened. Oh, I wish I hadn't! Now I don't have it anymore. She cried, yet again, on this terrible day. Then she said, We need milk.

He stopped at the convenience store. Shall I get something for supper? he said. Do you want to wait here?

—I don't know. I think there are leftovers.

He folded his arms on the steering wheel, not yet getting out. Peter called me, he said.

—What's wrong? said Ruben in a hurry.

—I'm sorry. Nothing's wrong. He's going to Massachusetts.

—To Massachusetts? In what?