Clearly there was nothing more to be said or done — this small incident was over. And yet I heard myself say, “I asked you a question.”
The man’s response was immediate. He froze, his hands poised over the keyboard, and began to tremble. I could see his eyes; they were darting spasmodically from side to side, as if he were receiving an electric shock. For some reason this reaction made me angry, and I dug in.
“When you’ve invaded someone’s privacy,” I said, “and then that person asks you a question about what you’re doing, you are obliged to answer that question.” My voice, I’m afraid, was quite strident; I was well aware that I was overreacting, but I felt powerless to stop. “I wanted to know if there was anything I could help you with. Is there?”
The man shook openly now; his aluminum-frame chair rattled beneath him and his head hung down over the keys. He was blinking, and his lips moved wordlessly.
“Answer me,” I said, between clenched teeth.
“Sir?” came a stern voice.
“Answer me.”
“Sir!”
I turned. It was the librarian. She was holding a small cardboard box in her hand, and her lips were pale and pressed tightly shut. She looked older than she had at the counter.
“Leave that man alone,” she said. “He is doing no harm.”
I stared at her.
“I found this for you,” she said. “The information you want might well be here.”
She held out her hand, and I accepted the box. She returned to the desk without waiting for thanks, and when she arrived there she glared up at me over the tops of her glasses.
The box contained a roll of microfilm. I closed the internet browser, stood up, and went to the back of the stacks, where the microfilm viewers were kept when I was young. They were still there, exactly as I remembered them, and both seemed to be in working order.
It took me several minutes to recall how the machines operated, but soon I had the roll of film installed, and pages of text and images were zooming across my field of vision. They belonged to the Milan Times newspaper, the only “local” paper Gerrysburg had ever had. This roll was from 1965, and after a few minutes of idly scanning the pages, I realized just how much there was to read, and how long it was going to take me. I heaved a deep sigh, and winced as the pain in my head flared up — I had a large bump, just above the hairline, from my fall into the pit two days before, not to mention my aching ribs — then I scrolled back to the beginning and began, methodically, to read every single headline.
1965 was a year of relative calm and prosperity in the area. There were, of course, war stories, but for the most part the paper focused on local news: businesses opening, a school renovation, a fire, a blood drive. As I read, I tried to remember what my own life was like then. A small child, I must have played outdoors, watched television, listened to adults talk. But nothing came to me. I could remember, vaguely, what my mother looked like — the chignon she wore in those days, and her tired beauty — but I could recall nothing specific. Indeed, the more I thought about it, the less I seemed able to remember. The earliest memory I could come up with was the one I have already mentioned, working in my father’s shed and wondering about the box that contained his gun. But I was very nearly a teenager then. Surely there was something more.
I had to catch myself from falling into reverie — it was easy to lose focus, doing such dull work. In the end, though, it was during such a reverie, when I was gazing blankly into my past, or lack of it, through the still image of a random newspaper page, that I realized I had happened upon the information I’d been looking for.
It was an obituary, its headline no more than a single name: Mary Killian Stiles.Mary Killian Stiles, 37, passed away Monday, at her home in Town of Henford. Mrs. Stiles was born in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and has lived in the Milan-Gerrysburg area since 1958. She is survived by her husband, Dr. Avery Stiles, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at SUNY Milan. She is predeceased by a daughter, Rachel.
TEN
There was no mention in the obituary of how Rachel Stiles had died. But it seemed to me that Doctor Avery Stiles’s story was very sad indeed. I rewound the microfilm and turned off the reader, then went to the circulation desk to return the box to the librarian.
She accepted it and set it aside, then gazed at me with great seriousness over the top of her eyeglasses. “Don’t you remember me?” was her question.
“It was you who gave me the microfilm an hour ago,” I replied.
My answer seemed to take her by surprise. She smiled, and raised a single eyebrow.
“You’re Eric Loesch, aren’t you,” she said.
“Yes, I am.”
“I’ve been working here since you were a small boy,” the librarian went on. “Your mother used to bring you here. I’m Mrs. Hill.”
It was clear from her tone that she hoped this name would ring a bell. But it did not. I have never been comfortable with white lies, but the librarian had been helpful to me, and deserved my good will, so I smiled and took her hand. “Mrs. Hill!” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. It’s been a very long time.”
“You wanted to build a moon base,” she said. “I remember, all one summer, you couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old, all you wanted were books on engineering and space travel. I quickly ran out of books for you — I actually ordered more. Some of them are still here.”
“I never knew,” I said truthfully, “that you had gone to such lengths for me.”
“I would talk with your mother sometimes, as you worked. I recall she said she had no idea where your brains came from. She said you were the smartest person she had ever known.”
This came as a great surprise to me — my mother had never told me anything of the sort. I wondered, briefly, if this Mrs. Hill might actually be suffering from some kind of senile dementia, if perhaps she was confusing me with another patron. She asked me if I had been able to put my smarts to good use.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
Now the old librarian averted her eyes. Her fingers found the countertop and drummed idly there. “Eric,” she said. “I want to tell you how sorry I am for what happened to your poor parents.”
Quite suddenly I wished to leave. “That’s kind of you to say.”
“I… I wish there was something I might have done. I considered your mother a friend.”
“I’m sure she felt the same way about you, Mrs. Hill. But I really—”
“I knew that all was not right. But I didn’t realize how terribly, terribly desperate—”
I brought my hand down on the counter with what I’m afraid was excessive force. The sound made the librarian jump, and I spoke perhaps more loudly than I had intended. “That’s quite enough, Mrs. Hill!”
“I beg your pardon…”
“Thank you for your assistance with the microfilm,” I said, and turned toward the door.
It was, then, the sight of the door itself — large, oaken, and divided into fifteen glass panes — that brought back to me the memory of coming to the library with my mother that summer, the moon landing summer. We would come here, and Mrs. Hill would bring my books to me, and I would make my plans in a marbled notebook, my plans for the moon base which I intended to send to President Johnson. And my mother would talk to Mrs. Hill, or read magazines, or go outside and smoke, and when it was time to leave we would walk through that heavy door, summer sunlight blasting through the panes, and walk to Pernice’s and eat our ice cream cones in the park. We would sit side by side on a bench, and I would tell her about the work I was doing, about the science that I was trying to understand, and the wind would pick up her hair and blow it into my face, and she would laugh and tie it back behind her head. Or it was raining, and we would run from the library to Pernice’s, and my mother would drink coffee and the rain would stream down the window beside her. My sister was off somewhere with her friends, my father was at work, but neither of them ever came up in our conversations; they weren’t on our minds at all.