The Librarianist

He entered the Great Room to find Connie’s son sitting alone at the long table and looking at his phone. He wore the same work-worn canvas coat he’d had on before, a bandage on one of his fingers, and gave the impression of a laborer or tradesman on his lunch break. Bob stood on the opposite side of the table; when Connie’s son looked up, Bob gave a small bow and asked if he might sit. Connie’s son nodded vaguely and went back to his phone. Bob sat down. “You favor your father,” he said. Connie’s son had no reaction; he was texting. Bob continued, a little louder: “Your father and I were friends, you see. Ethan. If I may, and in my way, I was responsible for your mother and father coming to know one another.”

Connie’s son again looked up. “My parents met on a bus.”

“Yes, but they were both coming to visit with me at the library. In a way, then, they met under my auspices.” At the naming of the word library, Connie’s son’s gaze sharpened. Actually, he looked somewhat frightened, and he set his phone on the table, sat up straight, and said, “Oh my God, you’re Bob Comet.”

CONNIE’S SON’S NAME WAS SAM, AND HE WAS SURPRISED, IMPRESSED, and a little upset that Bob should suddenly present himself, at this late date and in this particular location. Bob also was surprised, also impressed, but not upset, or only very slightly. Sam wanted to know what Bob was doing there; Bob wanted to know how it was that Sam knew his name and history. They were just beginning to formulate these questions for one another when Maria came by with Connie’s transcripts, lingering as long as she might, to bear witness and generally take the temperature of the summit. But her nearness was an inhibitor, and Sam proposed that he and Bob take a walk. Bob made a counter proposal, which was that they should walk to the diner, and they did this, settling into a booth and each of them ordering coffee and pie. The waitress knew Bob on sight, as he and Linus and Jill had taken to visiting the diner two to three times each week.

“What are you all spiffed up for?” she asked. “You going to a cotillion ball?”

“I am. And I thought you might like to come along with me.”

“Let’s see how you tip first. But I’ll say this: you clean up nicely.” Turning to Sam, the waitress stared. “You could use a little help, sweetie,” she said, and she reached down to smooth his hair. Bob found this uncanny; but he saw that Sam was less aware of the power of his physicality than his father had been — probably a good thing when one considered the misery Ethan had doled out.

The waitress brought them their coffee and pie and left them alone to discuss — what, exactly? Neither knew where they might begin, or what the ultimate purpose of their conversation should be. After a couple of false starts, Bob offered up the photographs, antique visuals that proved a fruitful point of contact. Sam had never seen the images of the era before and he fell to studying them with a keen fascination, while Bob studied Sam’s profile, which was Ethan’s profile, and precisely.

Sam spun a picture around on the tabletop and pushed it closer to Bob. The image was of Connie and Bob, and they were standing in front of the mint-colored house. Bob was bland in the face, his body held at a tilt, hands at his sides, while Connie rested her fists on her hips, elbows out, and she was winking exaggeratedly, a comical, cheesecake pose. Sam was tapping his finger on the facade of the house. “Is this the place with the rope hand railing?”

“That’s right. That’s where your mother and I lived when we were married.” Bob cleared his throat. “For some reason I’m surprised you’d know such a thing as that. Or anything about me at all, really.”

Sam drew the photo back toward himself and shuffled it to the bottom of the stack. He spoke to Bob while still looking through pictures. “I think that if you knew my mother before her accident, then you knew she had a story hidden away in the background. She told me about my dad’s death at whatever suitable age, twelve or thirteen, and that was a piece of the puzzle, but for a long time I’d had the sense of something else, you know, lurking. Then one year at Christmas, I must have been sixteen by then, and Mom’d had some wine and she said, ‘Sam, I want you to know I was married to another man before I married your father.’” He looked up from the photographs, made a face of horror, looked back down. “Not the best news for a young person to hear. And at first I didn’t want to know anything more about it. But then later, when I grew up a bit and got used to the idea, I started asking questions, and the story came together in dribs and drabs.” He pushed over another photograph. It was a picture of Ethan and Bob; they were wearing ornate ladies’ hats, but both were making their faces solemn, dignified.