Chapter Eight

THE DELI FLIRT showed up at the door to Nan’s office. “Hey, Philly, I came to see you. Show me around, why don’t you?”

Nan wanted to say Don’t call me Philly, but the truth was she loved bearing the city on her shoulders, carrying its name as her own. It made her feel special. At the moment, though, Philly seemed as far away as Reykjavik.

“Why, if it isn’t Thomasina,” Nan said.

“Oh god, don’t call me that. You know I go by T.”

Nan felt a jolt of pure joy to see her there.

“My spacious office, how do you like it?” she said. “You could get lost in here.” She waved her arm around her tiny office, big enough only for a desk and a narrow cabinet. It was a cubbyhole, really, with a curved bow window from where she could almost see Main Street if she stuck her head out and craned all the way to the right.

“Pretty sweet. What else you got?”

Nan walked her around the library, showing her everything she was proudest of: new shelving to highlight the new books because she wanted them to be the first thing people saw when they came in, to dispel the notion that this place was full of old books (which it mainly was, but she was going to do something about that the minute she got off probation); the row of sleek new computers tucked into a front corner; the laptops that could be checked out like books; the reading area with magazines and newspapers, fully occupied at the moment, Nan was proud to see.

This was strange though. There it was again. A book with the title Help Me—a psychological thriller with a cover showing a woman holding on as she dangled off a skyscraper—sat propped up in the middle of a table in the Reference Room. It didn’t belong there, far from the fiction aisles. It was the third time this week that exact book had been carefully placed there. Nan put it back on the book cart to be reshelved yet again.

They went downstairs into the Children’s Room with its brand-new beanbag chairs on the floor and freshly painted persimmon and purple walls. It also held the remains of a jail cell, with bars over small windows high in the wall, left over from when the building had housed the town jail.

It was a strange arrangement, having the Children’s Room in the former jail, in a basement with narrow stairs down to it from the main floor, but they’d added a ramp to the downstairs entrance for people with strollers. It made the whole building accessible for wheelchairs, too, with a small elevator (available only for people with disabilities, of course, for fear of what a crowd of rowdy kids could do to it) to the main floor and mezzanine. Allegedly accessible was a more accurate description of the building; half the time the stinking elevator was out of order and waiting for service.

When they walked into the Children’s Room, she saw an adult hardcover book, this one a memoir entitled Save Me, propped up on one of the tiny tables near the picture books for preschoolers. Next to it, face front to show the cover, another adult thriller showed a woman underwater, entitled I’m Drowning. Nan’s head started to pound. Was someone trying to tell her something?

“Wow, you did good. This used to be so boring-looking in here,” T said.

Nan decided to ignore the message books for now. “You remember?”

“Yeah, we used to have to come here after school all the time, me and my brothers. My mom thought we’d do our homework better if we were surrounded by books.” T sat down at a child-sized table, barely fitting into the tiny chair.

“Did that work?”

“Sure. I was good in school. I like homework; it’s like work. I like work. My brothers used to threaten they’d lock me in the jail cell if I didn’t behave. They were beasts.” T smiled, standing up. “Still are.”

“I have a problem with beasts,” Nan said. “Somebody peed on a bunch of brand-new books.”

“Ewww, that’s as nasty as it gets. We never did anything as bad as that.”

“And these kids keep running over after school and screaming obscenities into the building and then getting away before we can catch them. The cops aren’t doing a thing about it. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Lock the door and stand out there like a doorman for a while. They’ll stop. You can let people in one at a time.”

“I think that’s against the fire code,” Nan said. “You can’t lock a door while people are inside.”

“Stand out there on the steps then. That will send those beasts away.”

“I’d feel ridiculous,” Nan said. “I’m not a security guard. I have a master’s degree.”

“Make one of the others do it then.”

“I never ask my staff to do things I wouldn’t do myself.”

“Rock and a hard place. You’ll figure it out; you’re a smarty pants,” T said.

“Why, yes, I am.”

“The smarter the pants, the harder they fall,” T said.

Oh, god, help me keep my mind off that image. I have a library to whip into shape.

*

NAN STOOD BY the front door for a week as the middle school bell rang for dismissal. She felt like a fool. Nothing happened. Groups of students walked over; nobody screamed; nobody ran. They sat around the bigger tables, doing homework, laughing, talking in waves louder and then softer when Dunkan walked by. As if that guy would shush them. He was incapable of any kind of confrontation.

The very day Nan stopped waiting by the front door, the beasts returned as if they psychically knew she wasn’t there. They screamed the worst obscenities yet, as though they’d been studying up on words during the week when she had waited by the door so they could return with a vengeance. They were the words Nan really hated—the sick words, the words used by haters.

Nan had to make another police complaint, even if they wouldn’t do anything. She had to at least document it, to have an answer to the question of what she had done about the trouble, too big to ignore. “Can you please send the library liaison officer over again? We have to do something about this. It’s getting worse.”

The officer came with her little notebook, said the same things she’d said before, offered no real hope of a solution.

“Do you think they’re the same kids who peed on our children’s books?” Nan asked. Another question she never could have imagined having to utter in her professional life.

The officer shrugged. “No idea.”

“Can’t you investigate? Pay a snitch? Go undercover?” Nan’s throat hurt when she spoke up, as though she had been screaming for hours. Which was exactly what she felt like doing.

“That’s kind of TV stuff, not real-life policing.”

“This isn’t acceptable. You’re supposed to do something. Not just write reports.” Nan decided there was a fierceness in being this old—a take-no-prisoners feeling. She’d never before felt so powerful in her rage. If the police had no solutions for her, she’d damn well make her own and not feel bad about it.

“We’re doing everything we can, ma’am,” the officer said.

You’re doing absolutely nothing. It’s all on me.

The next day, before the middle school bell rang, Nan hid in the bushes—overgrown, thanks to the negligence of the town’s road crew, who didn’t see bush trimming as one of their imperatives when there were potholes and knocked-down stop signs to fix.

She held two fat red tomatoes, one in each hand. Courtesy of Immaculata’s produce delivery to her apartment; she’d finally found a use for it instead of bringing it in to work to give away.

Two more tomatoes were on the ground, her backups. She was definitely right-hand dominant, so she planned to throw with her right hand and then shift the left tomato to the right quickly for the next throw. It was split-second timing, so she’d probably hit the door and the steps before she hit the bad kids, but she had to try something. She hadn’t told the assistants what she was doing; she’d said she was taking a coffee break.

When she heard the pounding sound of running feet on the sidewalk and the HUH HUH HUH grunting, she stood up and aimed, throwing the tomato as hard as she could, yelling like a shot putter, “YAAAA.”

One tomato landed on the side of one head with a satisfying smack, sending red pulp and seeds down in a shower. The other tomato landed on another kid’s buttocks as they turned and ran. Nan jumped up and down, cheering for herself. Two dead-on hits on target, and she hadn’t even practiced. She thought about chasing them, but the point was not to catch them. The point was that they’d have to explain their tomato stains to their parents or wash them themselves in secret. The point was that they’d have to rethink how exciting it was to torment the library.

It was tremendously fun to throw ripe tomatoes; she had no idea what a high that would give her. She was so happy she could have turned cartwheels on the library lawn if she still knew how to. She wanted to throw open the door and yell Drinks for everyone, on me. She wanted to turn on loud music and dance up and down the library aisles.

The door opened, and the assistants peeped out. Tomato juice and seeds were everywhere. Quickly, they brought out a mop and bucket of soapy water.

“What happened?” they asked.

Nan considered telling all, doing a victory dance right in front of the checkout desk. But an adult throwing tomatoes at children probably constituted assault or some criminal offense, so she simply smiled and said nothing. It was a big smile, though, a smile that lasted through the rest of the day and into the night.

“I’m proud of you, you badass superstar of a librarian,” she said out loud into the mirror that night, making ridiculous toothy faces at herself.

*

SHE HID IN the bushes the next three days, loaded with tomatoes, and no bad children came. Then came a day of torrential downpour. She woke up knowing instinctively that they would be back that day, the little jerkoffs. But they couldn’t outsmart her.

She borrowed a long yellow mackintosh from Joe, the kind farmers used when they had to go out in the rain to take care of animals. It had a huge, brimmed hood and fell all the way to her ankles. She was a priestess in it, holy and untouchable.

Before the middle school bell rang, she crouched behind the bush, on the opposite side from where she’d crouched the time before. She visualized her throws over and over in her mind, smashing the children right in their face masks. She tended to her anger like a bubbling pot on a stove, keeping it at the exact peak where boiling rage would make her aim perfect.

She heard the unmistakable sound of running. They had their masks pulled up, hoodies over their heads, exactly as before. One for each of you, she plotted as she tightened her grip on the tomatoes. And what perfect throwing tomatoes they were too. They fit exactly in her palms, so ripe that the smash would be spectacular.

BAM, she threw the first tomato just as the kid put their hand on the door, hitting their right ear. The kid fell over in surprise, slipping on the wet steps, howling like a toddler who’d dropped their ice cream, and landing on their ass on the pavement. BAM, she threw the next tomato at the second thug a little lower, hitting the kid right in the crotch, making them curl up into a ball on the steps and cry in pain.

She stood over them, bellowing, “You had enough? You done now? Want the cops to call your parents to pick you up from jail?” She lowered her voice to sound as menacing as theirs. She reached toward them to pull down their masks, but they rolled away from her, got up, and tore down the street, not looking back.

The door opened a crack. There she stood, in her ridiculous long macintosh.

Mona said, “We made fresh coffee.”

“I can’t talk about it,” Nan whispered as she shed her wet coat inside the door. “I’ll get in trouble. I’m still on probation.”

“Can’t talk about what?” Mona said, winking. “I don’t know what on earth you mean.”

Nan relaxed, smiled, and realized how stiff she was from crouching, how tense her arms had been, waiting.

“Tell you what though,” Mona said. “We all decided we have a craving for tomato sandwiches for dinner.”

“Sounds perfect,” Nan said. “Enjoy.”

The thwack of the tomatoes landing replayed in her ears for hours, as enjoyable as a favorite song. Could she get away with this unorthodox remedy? At the moment, she didn’t even care if it drove away the kids for good. She cared only about the jolt of confidence it gave her. What an unfamiliar, amazingly wonderful sensation. She wanted more, more, more.

*

NAN CALLED FRANNY, her oldest sister, first. It was so fun to rattle her.

“You’ll never believe what I just did. These kids were harassing us at the library, and I chased them away by hurling tomatoes at them. It was a blast.”

“That’s assault with a…” Franny started in. She watched a lot of true crime shows and believed real life was extremely perilous as a result.

“With a what? Not-so-deadly weapon?”

“Assault and battery,” Franny said. “They are going to put you in jail and throw away the key.”

“Let them try and prove it.” Nan enjoyed portraying herself as much braver and tougher than she actually was.

“I hope no one got really hurt. You know, an object can hit someone in just the right spot and disable them for life. I saw a show where a hard-boiled egg, thrown recklessly, took a man’s EYE out.” Franny was full of dire stories with horrible outcomes.

Talking to her sisters was both nerve-wracking and annoying at the very same time; it took girding of Nan’s loins.

Bad nerves were their birthright from a mother who shook and cried. She didn’t only do those things. She also read them fairy tales and poems and took them to libraries, art museums, and parks. But mostly what stays with children are the fears and tears of their parents. Nan had been paralyzed when her mother cried.

“Why is Mom crying?” Nan had finally gotten up her nerve to ask her father when she was very young, so young she didn’t know how bad it was to say that out loud. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes but shook his head no at her. What did that mean? No, Mom wasn’t crying? He didn’t know why she was crying? It definitely meant she should go away and not ask again. Nan never did. Instead, she became a vigilant watcher of her mother.

Regina and Franny had taken their mother’s crying even worse than she had. They’d grown up into nervous wrecks of women, queens of the worst-case scenario. They wouldn’t let their children ride bicycles or play sports for fear of broken legs and concussions. They rarely left the tiny state of Delaware, where every part of it was familiar to them. Mostly they obsessed about the latest calamity in the news. And neither of them drank, which, in Nan’s mind, was a crazy way to live.

Drinking was good for bad nerves. It calmed the jangling right the hell down. Nan never cried or got depressed when she drank; she was always happy and relaxed. She knew so many people who were on antidepressants and antianxiety medications for their nerves, but she’d rather drink. They were always having to get their medication adjusted anyway, sweating profusely, not able to have orgasms, not able to sleep, or not able to wake up. Or it would stop working altogether, and then their doctor would add new ones on top of the others to see what would happen, as if their bodies were nothing but a chemical experiment.

Nan wound Franny up as much as she could before letting her off the hook and calling Regina. Her specialty in worrying was medical issues, so Nan always started off with a list of her own current symptoms.

“My right eye has been twitching so bad. What do you think that could be?”

“Alcohol abuse,” Regina said. “That’s the top cause of eye twitching. How much have you been drinking lately?”

Not nearly enough.

Regina rattled off other possible causes of eye twitch: bright lights, too much screen time, stress, caffeine. How in the world she knew so much to worry about, right off the top of her head, was a mystery; Nan always had to look up symptoms in medical books.

People always think librarians know everything but, really, we just know how to look things up. Talking to Regina is like talking to a hypochondria hotline.

What a brilliant idea. The library needed a hypochondria hotline. What a grabby, splashy, NEW idea. This would seal the deal and confirm Nan as an innovative librarian, not a regular old this-is-how-we’ve-always-done-it librarian.

Nan trotted right into work and started talking it up.

“People won’t call a hotline.” Mona frowned, shaking her head. “They want in-person service. They want to be waited on hand and foot. They want you to pull the book off the shelf, put it in their hands, point to the paragraph.”

“Yeah, then they want us to copy it for them. They think they can’t master a simple copier, but that’s not true,” Dunkan said. “I keep telling them it’s easy, but no one believes me. I show them and I show them, and they say, ‘You do it.’”

Nan thought they were dead wrong about a hypochondria hotline. She pictured insomniacs worrying all night and leaving messages about their strange-looking bowel movements, their itchy inner ears, that black freckle that hadn’t been there yesterday. On second thought, she’d better turn off the message function so they had to call when the library was open, or this all could get out of hand quickly.

Nan loved medical research but only when no gory color photographs of internal organs or deformities were involved. She especially loved finding hefty research studies with the one little fact buried in them that was really the only thing the sick person wanted to know—how many people survived this disease. Everyone wanted to live. Everyone wanted their loved ones to live.

She had quickly figured out she could spend her whole budget buying medical and self-help books—that was how popular they were. She could never buy enough; people were ravenous devourers of books about their back problems, the latest theory on preventing cancer, the new diet to lower cholesterol or reverse diabetes. They were suckers for books with numbers in the title, like Ten Steps to Blissful Sleep, Rewire Your Metabolism in Thirty Days, The One Minute Workout to Add One Hundred Years to Your Life.

Oh, people, you’re going to die anyway, Nan wanted to say. She should know, she was a Stage IV hypochondriac. She thought about death and dying more than she would ever admit to anyone (Stage IV), but at least she didn’t bother doctors with every little pang (Stage V).

She couldn’t wait to get started making library history with her hotline. This could be her claim to the Librarian Hall of Fame. Was there one?