The Librarianist

One does not anticipate premature death by disease, but his mother wasn’t surprised by the news. She asked Bob into the living room one morning to speak about what she called a few things, but it was only one thing, which was that she had cancer in her brain and would soon be dead, and this proved accurate: she retired in February and was gone by June. The last time Bob saw his mother alive was at her bedside in the hospital. She’d lost nearly half her body weight and had the attitude of someone distracted by an imminent voyage. But there was a gravity to her diminished stature that she wore well, Bob thought. Her illness was impressive, and she held in her eye a curious glimmer that hinted at the understanding of a mystery. A nurse stuck her head in the room and told Bob, “Five minutes.” The way she’d spoken these words, slow and throaty, and the way her eyes met Bob’s, he felt she was telling him it was likely time for a final goodbye. And perhaps Bob’s mother was thinking along these lines when she said, “We’ve never discussed your father.” Bob had wanted to know about his father in the past, especially when he was a young boy; but each time he had brought it up his mother had shied away. Now, as an adult, and in the context of the hospital room, he thought he didn’t want to know at all. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he told her.

“No, I don’t mind it,” she said.

“Okay, but if it’s a bad story then I’d rather not hear about it.”

“It’s not bad. Or I’ve never felt that it was.” She went quiet for long enough that Bob thought she’d forgotten what she was talking about, but then she began. “It was right in the middle of the Depression, and I was sharing an apartment with two girlfriends, and every Friday we went out somewhere, anywhere, and tried to figure out a way to have fun with about a dollar between the three of us. This night we went to a saloon that served a shot with a short beer for a nickel. So, okay, we had a few, and everything was fine until one of the gals got sick to her stomach, so that the other gal had to run her home, and now I’m all alone, and I noticed a fellow looking at me from over in the corner, there — stealing glances when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. But I was paying attention. He was kind of usual-looking, but he had a nice enough suit of clothes on, respectable — but sad. Well, he did look that way, Bob.”

“Sad.”

“Yes. Like something was the matter in his life. For all I know he was always like that, but I had a hunch he was only blue that night, or that week, and I found myself wondering what the problem was, and if there wasn’t maybe something I could do to cheer him up. So what I did, I got up and took my last ten cents and ordered us a shot and chaser apiece, then went over with the drinks on a tray and I set them down on the table and told him, ‘Hello, I’m buying you a drink. Because buster, you look sadder than an old bandage floating in a cold bathtub!’” Bob’s mother was grinning at her memory of this. “Oh, I got him laughing. He had a nice laugh. And you know, sometimes that’s all it takes to make a person funny — to have someone laugh at what you’re saying. But I hit a streak, the way you sometimes do, and it got so that he was slapping the table, and this was how your father and I made friends. Well, he bought the next couple rounds, then he says he’d like to see me home.” Bob’s mother paused to cover and uncover her eyes. “Next morning, and we were not at our best, but there weren’t any sour grapes there, you know what I mean? I was never any grand romancer, but this young lady lived somewhat, and I can tell you that the next morning sometimes is damned awkward, and even awful. Because there are nasty, unhappy men walking around out there, Bob, and they like to trick you into thinking they’re one way, then when it’s too late they show you who they really are. But this guy? He was still the same in the morning as he was in the night — he was himself, and he was, just, good. So, we talked through the morning, and I made him a little breakfast, and we shared a cigarette and there was the question of, what was going to happen? But then the spell of us sort of blinked off, and he stood up and said he should be going — he had to go, he said. And probably it was wishful thinking on my part but it seemed like maybe he wanted to stay longer, for us to spend more time together.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do I look like him?”

“No, not really.”

“Why didn’t you see him again?”