Wonderland Creek (3 page)

I went home and got ready for bed, unable to imagine breaking up with Gordon. Everyone said that he was a real catch. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he had a very good job, unaffected by the Depression. People continued to die whether the stock market crashed or soared.

Gordon and I had been together for so long that people in Blue Island thought of us as a couple. We attended library functions and picnics together, stood on Main Street and watched the Fourth of July parade together. I would be so embarrassed when everyone started whispering and speculating behind my back or asking me,
Where’s Gordon? Why aren’t you with Gordon?
What would I say?

And church! Everyone at my father’s church knew I was dating Gordon. He sat beside me every Sunday. How could I ever face the other parishioners or hold up my head again?

I had a hard time falling asleep that night. And to make matters worse, I had finished my book, and now I had nothing to read.

I
arrived for work the next morning tired and foggy-brained from lack of sleep. I could say that I had been awake half the night crying my eyes out over Gordon, but it wouldn’t be true. I had gone downstairs and borrowed my father’s Sherlock Holmes anthology and ended up reading until nearly one o’clock in the morning. There’s nothing like a dastardly crime and the challenge of matching wits with a clever detective to take a person’s mind off her problems.

Before the library opened for the day, our head librarian, Mrs. Beasley, gathered the staff together at one of the conference tables. “Would everyone take a seat, please? Quickly? We need to have a short meeting.”

I sat down with the other ladies on our staff, yawning as I waited for the meeting to begin. Mrs. Beasley looked staid and unsmiling, but that wasn’t unusual. Librarians are serious people, seldom given to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can’t even imagine the pressure that our head librarian must be under.

Mrs. Beasley resembled a sturdy little bulldog, complete with jowls. But judging by the way that many of our patrons seemed to fear her, she might have resembled a German shepherd guard dog. I never understood why people reacted to her this way.

“Are you kidding?” Freddy said when I asked her about it. “Mrs. Beasley acts as if all of the library books belong to her and she begrudges loaning them out. You’d think the library was sacred ground and she was the high priestess the way everyone tiptoes around and speaks in hushed tones.” I disagreed with Freddy’s assessment. Beneath our head librarian’s bulldog exterior was a wise, well-read woman. I didn’t blame her in the least for feeling protective of our books. The way some people abused them was a crime.

Today Mrs. Beasley began by clearing her throat. Again, this wasn’t a worrisome sign. Librarians are not overly talkative so our throats can get froggy from lack of use. “I met with the library’s board of directors last night,” she began, “and I’m afraid I have some very upsetting news. The board has announced that the library must cut operating costs.”

Everyone stared. There were no dramatic gasps or sobs. We are a stoic, reserved bunch who hide our emotions well—except when reading a terribly sad or poignant story, of course. I have been known to sob aloud at a tragic ending.

“The board said that this prolonged economic depression has made cost cutting necessary. With so many homes in our community in foreclosure, there simply isn’t as much revenue from property taxes as there was a few years ago. Businesses are closing, too. Every day we see another empty storefront downtown, so the city is losing tax revenue there, as well. People all over the country have been forced to cut back to the bare necessities, and so we must cut back to the essentials, too.”

“But books
are
essential!” the children’s librarian, Mrs. Davidson, said. I had been thinking the same thing.

“I know. I agree,” Mrs. Beasley said. “And I let the board know my opinion, too.”

“People will need our library now more than ever,” Mrs. Davidson continued, “especially if they’re unemployed and can’t afford to purchase books. Where else can you find free entertainment nowadays? We should be
expanding
during the economic crisis and buying even
more
books, not cutting back.”

Mrs. Beasley nodded, jowls jiggling. “That is exactly what I told them. But the board believes that the library already has enough books for everyone in town to read if they choose to. They said that our patrons would just have to adjust to shorter library hours. They also announced that some of our personnel will have to be let go.”

“Who? Who?” Mrs. Davidson asked, sounding very much like an owl.

“I’m afraid that the last one hired will be the first one to go.”

“That’s me!” I said with a squeak. “I was the last one hired!”

“Yes, Miss Ripley. I’m so sorry.”

I wanted to stand up and shout that this was unfair, but loud voices were not permitted in the library.

“The cost cutting will affect all of us, not just Miss Ripley. With reduced hours, we all will be working less and receiving smaller paychecks.”

I had heard about the Depression, of course. I’d seen pictures in the newspapers of shantytowns and Hoovervilles and read about factories closing and men out of work. Several houses on our street stood vacant, including one that had belonged to the Simmons family. Freddy and I had gone to school with their daughters, but when Mr. Simmons lost his job, the bank foreclosed on their mortgage and tossed them and all of their belongings into the street. I wasn’t ignorant of unemployment and breadlines and soup kitchens, but aside from the hoboes who showed up at our back door asking for a handout, I never imagined that the Depression would touch my life. Now I was unemployed.

Of course, I wouldn’t starve or be homeless since I lived in the parsonage with my parents. My father, safely employed as a minister, heard hard luck stories every day, but my family was warm and well fed. My two older sisters—more sensible than me, according to my parents—had married farmers and lived out in the country several miles south of Blue Island. Their farms supplied us with plenty of eggs, butter, fruit, and vegetables.

I turned my attention back to Mrs. Beasley. “Let’s all hope and pray that the changes are only temporary,” she was saying. “Perhaps one of President Roosevelt’s social assistance programs will come to our rescue. In the meantime, the library will be open only two evenings a week from now on, and half days on Wednesday, Saturday . . .”

Blah, blah, blah. I stopped listening. The new hours wouldn’t matter to me. I was unemployed. The news that I no longer had to work every Friday night would make Gordon happy, because we could spend more time together—but then I remembered that Gordon no longer wanted to spend any time at all with me. The accumulated shock of all this bad news was too much. I felt as if I had just collided with another lamppost.

“When will all these changes begin?” Mrs. Davidson asked.

“The last day of this month. We’ll need to post the library’s new hours right away and give our patrons time to adjust.”

“That’s this week!” I shouted, forgetting to use my library voice. There would be little hope of finding another job with so many other people unemployed. Besides, I didn’t want to be a store clerk or a teacher or a telephone operator. I loved my job. “This is awful,” I moaned. I didn’t realize that I had spoken out loud until Mrs. Beasley rested her hand on my shoulder.

“I know, Miss Ripley. And I’m so very sorry. I fought for you, for all of us. I really did. But times are hard all across the country.”

It was time to unlock the door and get to work. Library patrons had congregated on the front steps and beneath the pillared porch, stamping slushy snow off their feet. Mrs. Beasley dismissed the meeting. “And let’s try not to have any long faces, ladies. We owe it to our patrons to be cheerful. After all, our reduced hours will be hard on them, as well.”

I usually spent the first half hour at work “shelf-reading,” making sure the books were in alphabetical order and the Dewey decimal numbers all aligned. Some patrons have a terrible habit of pulling out a book, then shoving it back in the wrong place—sometimes on the wrong shelf! I started straightening the fiction section, but I simply couldn’t concentrate. It was hard to think alphabetically after losing my job
and
my boyfriend. What was left?

I switched to typing catalogue cards. I loved this job because it enabled me to peruse all of the new books, straight from the printing press. I could be the first person to open them—and to sign them out and read them, too, if I wanted. The books were stiff and spotlessly clean, with that incomparable new-book fragrance. Is there anything like it in the whole world? I’ve been known to open new books and inhale the aroma like perfume.

I fed a crisp white catalogue card into my typewriter, then picked up the first book and opened it to the title page, careful not to crack the spine. I am a very orderly person who enjoys typing the required information on the card, neatly and precisely. Where else but the library could I find work that used my special gifts and talents?

I must admit I wasted a lot of time that morning staring off into space, trying not to cry and splotch the typewriter ink. When I got home from work and told my mother the news, she dried her hands on her apron and wrapped her arms around me. “What a shame, Alice. I know how much you loved your job.”

“How much longer is this stupid Depression going to last?” I asked.

“I’m afraid no one knows, honey.”

My tears gushed when I went next door to Freddy’s house later that night and told her the terrible news. “Will you please try to talk to Gordon again?” I begged. “Maybe he’ll feel sorry for me when he hears what happened at the library. Maybe he’ll change his mind about breaking up with me.”

I expected as much. I expected Gordon to come straight over to console me the moment Freddy told him my tragic news. But an hour went by. Then two hours. I couldn’t concentrate on the radio program that Freddy’s mother was listening to. I saw a pile of spelling tests on the table and picked up a red pencil and graded them for Freddy. It was the least I could do since she had sacrificed her evening for my sake. She still wasn’t home when I finished the tests, so I started correcting a pile of arithmetic homework. The tedious work made me grateful that I hadn’t become a teacher. If I had to grade boring papers every night for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t have any time to read.

When Freddy finally arrived home, I knew that her news wasn’t good. I could see that she had been raking her fingers through her thick curly hair the way she always did when she was frustrated.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Allie. I tried, I really did.”

“Isn’t Gordon ever going to forgive me?”

“He’s not mad at you, Allie. He just doesn’t want to date you anymore. But he said to tell you that he’s sorry about your job.”

Freddy let me sob on her shoulder. “Can’t you talk to him some more?” I begged. “Please?”

“I . . . um . . . I don’t think I should do that.”

“Why not?”

She released me and backed up a few steps as if trying to put distance between us. “Well . . . when we finished our milk shakes and I got ready to come home, Gordon started saying how much he had enjoyed talking to me, and . . . well . . . he asked if I wanted to go to a movie with him next week.”

“What!” I panicked, just like I had when I’d seen the flames racing out of control in my mother’s kitchen. Now it was my life that was out of control.

“Of course I refused,” Freddy said quickly. “Honestly, he had a lot of nerve. I’m your best friend, for heaven’s sake.”

“I’m going home.” I grabbed my coat and stuck my arms into the sleeves.

“Please don’t be mad at me, Allie. I told Gordon that he was a cad for dumping you and an even bigger cad for asking me out. I wouldn’t have talked to him at all if you hadn’t begged me to.”

“I’m not mad.” And I wasn’t. I was jealous. “I need to go home and lie down.” It felt like the world was using my heart for a punching bag, and it couldn’t take any more blows.

“Let’s do something fun this weekend, okay, Allie? Just the two of us?”

There weren’t many fun things to do in Blue Island, Illinois, but I agreed. I hugged Freddy good-bye to show her that we were still friends and went home to sulk.

On my last day of work, everyone was sad to see me go. “But we won’t say good-bye,” Mrs. Beasley insisted. “I’m sure you’ll be back to borrow books. And you’re going to continue to collect books for Kentucky, aren’t you?” She gestured to the overflowing box of donated books near the check-out desk. There were four more boxes just like it in the back room, along with three bags of used magazines. “When are you planning to ship these to Kentucky?” she asked.

“Soon, I guess. I’m not really sure.” I had lost my enthusiasm for the project, not to mention my reason to get out of bed every morning. As a parting gift, Mrs. Beasley let me check out one of the brand-new books I had catalogued that day. It would be the last time that I would ever have that privilege.