My minimalism went out the window.
Now all that stuff—furniture intended for a three-bedroom house—was stuffed into Miles’s guest room. Furniture wall to wall, all of it butting right up against each other, throw pillows utterly covering my bed, like I was some unhinged Stephen King villain who might handcuff you to the headboard and mother you to death.
I should’ve left all of this shit behind, but I felt too guilty about the money I’d spent, outfitting a home that wasn’t even mine.
Then there was the wedding paraphernalia, shoved into every closet the apartment had, the overpriced dress hanging on the other side of a thin laminate slider door—a telltale heart, a Dorian Gray portrait, a deep dark secret.
In theory, I’m going to sell the dress and the rest of it online, but doing so would require thinking about the wedding, and I’m not there yet.
In fact, I’ve spent the first seven hours of my Saturday morning shift pushing any thought of the Wedding That Never Was out of my mind.
Then my phone buzzes on my desk with a text from Miles: ur working
This is how he texts. With abbreviations, very little context, and no punctuation.
Is he asking me or telling me that I’m working? Neither makes sense. I have a detailed whiteboard calendar in the kitchen where he can clearly see exactly where I’m going to be and when. I check it against my phone calendar nightly, and I invited him to add his own schedule, but he’s never taken me up on it.
Yep, I say.
Another text: U want Thai
I’m guessing that’s another implied question mark, though it’s unclear whether he’s asking about ordering dinner or if it’s more of an existential question.
I’m good, thanks, I write. Every day on my lunch break, I go to one of the three food trucks at the public beach across the street. Saturdays are a burrito day, so I’ll be stuffed for hours.
K, Miles writes.
Then he types some more and stops. I wonder if he’s fishing for an offer to pick up the aforementioned Thai on my way home.
Anything else? I write back.
He replies, I’ll just c u when u get home.
Strange. On Saturdays, he’s usually in his room or out for the night by the time I get back. My phone vibrates again, but it’s just my ten-minute warning for Story Hour. I gather my supplies and head to the sunken-living-room-style Story Nook at the back of the library. Kids and their keepers are already gathering in the little pit, claiming carpet squares or heavily Lysoled gymnastic mats. Some of the older caretakers, grandparents and great-grandparents, ease themselves into the scoop chairs arranged around the outer ring of the nook, the regulars greeting each other.
The library’s back wall of windows bathes the nook in sunlight, and I can already tell who will be nodding off by book two.
Still, a chorus of ridiculous little voices rises as I approach, cries of “Miss Daffy!” and other adorable mispronunciations of my name. In my heart, it feels like little kernels are bursting into fluffy blossoms of popcorn.
One little girl announces, as I walk past, “I’m three!” and I tell her that’s awesome, and ask how old she thinks I am.
After brief consideration, she tells me I’m a teenager.
Last week she said I was one hundred, so I’m taking this as a win. Before I can respond, a four-year-old named Arham I’ve literally never seen not in a Spider-Man costume flings himself at me, hugging my knees.
No matter how foul my mood, Story Hour always helps.
“Sweetie,” Arham’s mother, Huma, says, reaching to peel him away before we topple.
“Who here likes dragons?” I ask, to near-unanimous cheering.
There are a lot of sweet families who’ve become regulars since I started here a year ago, but Huma and Arham are two of my favorites. He’s endlessly energetic and imaginative, and she rides that magical line of keeping firm rules without squashing his little weirdo spirit. Seeing them together always makes my heart ache a little bit.
Makes me miss my own mom.
Makes me miss the life I thought I’d have with Peter, and the rest of the Collinses.
I shake myself out of the cloud of melancholy and settle into my chair with the first of today’s picture books in my lap. “What about tacos?” I ask the kids. “Does anyone like those?”
Somehow, the kids manage even more enthusiasm for tacos than they did for dragons. When I ask if they already knew that dragons love tacos, their shrieks of delight are earsplitting. Arham jumps up, the heels of his sneakers flashing red as he shouts, “Dragons eat people!”
I tell him that some maybe do, but others just eat tacos, and that’s as good of a segue as I’m going to get into Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri.
No part of my week goes as fast as Story Hour does. I get so sucked into it that I usually only remember I’m at work when I close the last book of the day.
Just as I predicted, the energy that greeted me has fizzled, the kids mostly settling into pleasant sleepiness in time to pack it in and head home, except for one of the Fontana triplets, who’s tired enough to devolve into a minor meltdown as her mom is trying to get her and her siblings out the door.
I wave goodbye to the last stragglers, then start tidying the nook, spraying the mats down, gathering trash, returning abandoned books to the front desk to be reshelved.
Ashleigh, the librarian responsible for our adult patrons and programming, slips out from the back office, her gigantic quilted purse slung over one shoulder and her raven topknot jutting slightly to the right.
Despite being a five-foot-tall hourglass of a woman with Disney Princess eyes, Ashleigh is the embodiment of the scary-librarian stereotype. Her voice has the force of a blunt object, and she once told me she “doesn’t mind confrontation” in a tone that made me wonder if maybe we were already in one. She’s the person that our septuagenarian branch manager, Harvey, deploys whenever a difficult patron needs a firm hand.
My first shift working alongside her, a middle-aged guy with a wad of dip in his cheek walked up, stared at her boobs, and said, “I’ve always had a thing for exotic girls.”
Without even looking up from her computer, Ashleigh replied, “That’s inappropriate, and if you speak to me like that again, we’ll have to ban you. Would it be helpful if I printed you some literature about sexual harassment?”
All that to say, I admire and fear her in equal measure.
