The Book Borrower (37 page)

—Daddy, said Mary Grace, as if to stop something. She was sitting next to her father. Berry was across from her, next to Ruben.

—Well, Mrs. Cooper, said Jeremiah wearily. I suppose you've seen many people die in your lifetime. But for me, my wife Deborah . . .

—I haven't killed many, she said, but I've seen many die.

—You were married several times, I think? I should have asked you this before. He patted his pockets for paper and pen. Are all your husbands dead?

—Now they are, she said. I divorced two of them. The last one died. He was the one I wanted to keep.

—I'm sorry.

Ruben was terribly tired. Her head ached. She would never reach her own bed. If allowed, she'd have lain down and fallen asleep in the aisle of the International House of Pancakes.

—I've known about you for such a long time, Jeremiah was saying. It's strange to know that you're really you.

—I'm me, Berry said.

—I don't even remember that book very well, he went on, but I remember some things. About the trolleys. I'm extremely interested in trolleys.

—Oh, the trolleys, said Berry. The streetcars. Quaint things.

—But the strike—Jeremiah said.

—The strike. We supported the strikers. The company wanted them to work for nothing.

—Surely not for
nothing,
he said. But what did you do to support the strike?

—Well, I was a fine speechwriter, she said, to Ruben's surprise. The main thing I did was write speeches for some of the men in our group. They were better at delivering them, but I was better at writing them. She grinned her wild, untrustworthy grin.

—That's not what it says in Miriam's book, Ruben murmured. Not exactly.

—Oh, she didn't know much.

—But what about the wreck? said Jeremiah. What about the wreck where your sister died?

—Miriam made that up to sell copies. There was no wreck.

—Of course there was, Jeremiah said. It was in the news-papers. There are scholarly articles. You're rather famous, Berry Cooper. You were a famous Jewish anarchist. You went to trial. Have you forgotten?

—I remember everything, Berry said. I remember all of my life. Many lovers. But I don't think I remember a trial.

—Oh, come now, said Jeremiah, and Ruben reached to put her hand on his arm. Oh, come now, he went on. Mrs. Cooper. You were acquitted of murder.

—Of murder? My goodness, Berry said, and she looked sly and wide awake, quite unlike Ruben, who wanted all these people to stop talking and take her home to bed. Berry was still, slowly, eating her toast and her omelet.

—But you did it, Berry, didn't you? said Jeremiah. Didn't you flip the switch and cause the wreck? Didn't you do it? You can tell me. I won't call the cops or anything. But I've always known you did it. The excuse was that sketchbook, but you never sketched scenes in the country like that. I took a drawing course once, just to find out about sketching. I thought about it for years. Berry Cooper, he said madly, I know you did it.

—What was it I did? The grin again.

—You tampered with the signals. You caused the wreck that killed your sister. I think you'd be a nicer person, even now, if you admitted it, Berry.

—And Mr. Laidlaw, Berry said, wiping the last of her egg with a piece of toast and eating it. Mr. Laidlaw. Where was your wife going at the time of her death? Where was she driving?

—What has that got to do with anything? said Jeremiah. She was going to visit her mother.

—But she died on Route 6, Mr. Laidlaw. Her mother didn't live on Route 6.

—She'd taken a wrong turn, said Jeremiah, and Ruben realized she had never known exactly where Deborah's accident had taken place.

—She was going to see her lover, Mr. Laidlaw, Berry said firmly, balling up her napkin and looking around, as if she was the one who'd pay the check.

—Oh, don't be silly, said Jeremiah.

—She told your daughter, who's sitting right beside you, though she never told this supposed friend of hers. She was going to see her lover. She had a lover. Didn't you know? She was going to see her lover, and she told your daughter, and your daughter told Petey, and Petey told me one night, as a bedtime story, to quiet me down. Sometimes I'm hard to quiet down.

—Where's the check here? Jeremiah said. Suddenly he, too, was in a hurry. What kind of nonsense? Of course you're making that up. Mary Grace, tell her to stop it.

—Stop it! said Mary Grace. Of course it's not true! She got up and pushed past him and ran to the women's room, while Jeremiah was suddenly standing and shouting angrily for the check. You killed her! he screamed back at the table, at Berry presumably, but now the waitress was bringing the check and smiling tightly as he took it and threw some bills on the table. You killed my wife! he shouted at the little old lady he'd taken out to dinner. You killed my wife! I mean your sister, he said. I mean your sister.

Mary Grace joined them and said nothing as they drove home. Ruben wanted only silence from Jeremiah and Berry. If she talked all the way home, it might be possible to keep them silent, but she could think of nothing to say. And if she spoke, Berry might reply. What would Berry say to her, if provoked? Oh. She'd say Peter was gone for good. She'd say he was dead.

They drove down the empty street and Berry said, I didn't kill your wife and I didn't kill my sister. It's always love. I was walking out there on the tracks to meet my lover, to try to persuade him to take me back. He'd gone back to his wife. He's the one who flipped the switch. They never even thought of him.

Nobody answered her. Now Ruben knew that nobody wanted anyone to speak. Even Berry, she thought, didn't want anyone to speak. It was always hard to guess what Berry was thinking or what Berry wanted, but Ruben thought that now even she had had enough. Maybe even Berry just wanted to go to bed.

Jeremiah stopped first at Berry's house, and waited while Berry let herself out. Ruben didn't follow her to make sure she'd be all right, but Jeremiah waited until Berry had walked slowly up the walk and onto the porch steps. There was an interminable wait while the lonely old woman stood in front of her own door, and Ruben was afraid she'd have to go and help, but then the door opened, a light even went on inside, and the door closed. Jeremiah drove away. In silence, they continued to drive. Ruben considered saying, I'm sure there was nobody. Could there have been someone in Deborah's life whom Ruben didn't know existed? For her own sake, never mind Jeremiah's, she couldn't endure it.

They reached Ruben's house. She wondered what Mary Grace would do, but the girl got out of the backseat while Ruben got out of the front. As she was about to open the door, Ruben touched her old friend's arm. Good night, Jeremiah, she said. She didn't expect to say anything more, but then she mumbled, Don't worry too much, dear.

As she closed the car door she heard him say, What? What?

She and Mary Grace went into the house together. Inside the door, with the door closed behind them, Mary Grace kissed Ruben's cheek and went silently ahead of her up the stairs and into Peter's room. And that door closed.

Ruben used the bathroom on the first floor, not to awaken Harry. She climbed the stairs. In her bedroom, Harry was asleep, his arms and legs flung out all over the bed. Next to him was a note. Message on machine, it said. Wake me up. I'll go. Ruben went down the stairs. The answering machine was in the kitchen. She turned it on. There were two messages. The first was from Stevie. Mom. Dad. I've got him. He turned up. He's on his way home. I've got him right here. Fm putting him on a bus. It gets in at one-thirty. Go and get him.

Ruben started to cry. Then she looked at the clock. It was two a.m. Harry had meant to awaken, but hadn't. He'd been sure she'd get in before one-thirty, but she hadn't. The second message was Peter's voice. Hey, Mom. Dad. I'm here. I'm at the bus station. I think they'll let me sleep here all night. Maybe you're out of town.

Ruben hurried back upstairs. Harry was fast asleep. She picked up the pencil lying near the note, and wrote, I
went.
Then she reached past the phone and took the copy of
Trolley Girl
lying there. She went downstairs and ate a cookie, for alertness while driving. Her car was in the driveway. As she walked toward it, she saw in the broken light from a streetlamp that Deborah, her blond hair tumbling out of the red-and-yellow woolen hat, was waiting in the front passenger seat, with her frayed gloves in her hands.

It was easy to back the car into the dark, silent street.

—You could write him a note, said Deborah.

—Was it true?

—I love you, Toby, Deborah said.

—Is there a God? Ruben asked, her eyes on the empty street ahead of her.

—Yes.

—What should I do with Peter and Mary Grace?

—I can't imagine.

—I'm making you up. I do know that.

—Just be kind.

Ruben drew up to the curb in front of Deborah's house and parked. Jeremiah, she wrote on a scrap of paper she found in her bag. Thanks for lending me the book. Berry lies constantly. She has been a wonderful woman, but she isn't perfect and she isn't truthful. Love, Toby. She got out of the car and ran up on the porch. She placed the copy of
Trolley Girl
between the screen door and the real door and got back into the car, which was empty. Then she drove to the bus station.

Acknowledgments

Friends, colleagues, students, and family members—most noticeably my husband, my three sons, and my honorary daughter—have put up with me and cared about me as I wrote, and I am grateful. For particular help with this book, I'd like to thank Jessica Baumgardner, Susan Bingham, Ruth Buchman, Rebecca Godwin, Donald Hall, Susan Holahan, Edward Mattison, Andrew Mattison, Zoe Pagnamenta, Joyce Peseroff, Sandi Kahn Shelton, and the tireless Claire Wachtel. Additional thanks go to the Corporation of Yaddo, the New Haven Free Public Library, and the Community Soup Kitchen.

 

The following books have been especially useful:

Avrich, Paul.
Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America.
Abridged edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Cavin, Ruth.
Trolleys: Riding and Remembering the Electric Interurban Railways.
New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976.

Fischler, Stanley I.
Moving Millions: An Inside Look at Mass

Transit.
New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

About the Author

A
LICE
M
ATTISON
is the author offivenovels, four short story collections, and a volume of poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including
Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The New Yorker, The Threepenny Review, Glimmer Train,
and
Ploughshares.
She was raised in Brooklyn and studied at Queens College and Harvard University. She teachesfictionin the Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

 

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Also by Alice Mattison

N
OVELS

 

Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn
The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman
Hilda and Pearl
Field of Stars

 

S
HORT
S
TORY
C
OLLECTIONS

 

In Case We're Separated
Men Giving Money, Women Yelling
The Flight of Andy Burns
Great Wits

 

P
OETRY
C
OLLECTION

 

Animals

Copyright

 

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1999 by William Morrow and Company, Inc.

 

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

 

THE BOOK BORROWER
. Copyright © 1999 by Alice Mattison. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

 

First Perennial edition published 2000.

 

First Harper Perennial edition published 2008.

 

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Mattison, Alice
      The book borrower : a novel / Alice Mattison.—1st ed.
      p.   cm.
      ISBN 0-688-16824-8
      I. Title.
PS3563.A8598B66   1999
813'.54–dc21

99-21961

 

ISBN 978-0-06-115302-0 (P.S. edition)
Epub Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780062232014

 

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