The Librarianist

CONNIE’S FATHER WAS SURPRISED AT HER SUCCESS AT KEEPING HIM in books, but also paranoid the whole operation might fold under scrutiny; he began digesting texts at a mad pace, and so it was ever more common that Bob should see Connie’s knowing face coming in the door at the library. She established a routine of first gathering her father’s books, then lingering at the Information desk opposite Bob, perched lightly on the edge of a stool. She had many questions for Bob, and she asked them, and she found his answers encouraging: he owned a house, he lived alone, he was satisfied in his work and didn’t engage in any of the off-putting pastimes of the young American male. She thought it odd he had only one friend; and then she learned the friendship was quite new. What had he done with his free time before? And why did he smile so strangely at the words, free time? When she accused him of staidness, he made to defend himself by telling her the story of the Hotel Elba, which in brief was that Bob had run away from home at the age of eleven, stowed away on a train and then a bus, traveling clear to the ocean, where he managed to insinuate himself as a guest at the seaside hotel. He stayed several days, one among a cast of human curiosities who seemed in his memory to have existed inside of some enigmatical play. Connie could only just believe that the event had truly taken place, but she liked that Bob had run away, and was moved at the thought of Bob-as-child, entering an unknowable world in search of a superior experience to the one he knew at home.

Bob had his own set of questions for Connie, and she was forthcoming and undramatic in a way that made his asking enjoyable. Connie’s life had not always been so particular; by which it is meant that her father had not always been so unsound. She had attended public school, for example, from kindergarten and through to graduation from high school. It was not until Connie’s mother died during Connie’s seventeenth year that her father veered from the traditional devout suburbanite and into the realm of the zealot. Weeks of polite inquiry gave way to thornier territory, and Bob one day asked, “What exactly is the matter with your father?” Connie didn’t mind the question particularly, but it was not so simple to answer as it dealt in myriad phases, multilayered narrative, and a goodly amount of conjecture. In short, she said, life was what was the matter with him. But the fuller answer came over many visits and conversations.

Her father was disillusioned not by what had but by what had not happened to him; and as with so many unhappy people, he was defined by his failure. He’d known the call of the church from his childhood and when he came of age had approached the priesthood by running leap. The church did not feel he had a place in their ranks, however; he was discouraged in his efforts, and then sharply discouraged. When Connie’s father demanded to know precisely what the issue was it was explained to him by a parish representative that the men and women of the community didn’t like being around him, didn’t like him, and so it ran contrary to common sense that the church would train and prepare him for a position that would inevitably put him in close contact with said community. “Your faith is evident,” the representative told him. “It’s your social talents, or lack of them, that we take issue with.” Connie’s father received this assessment as a blunt trauma from which he could never recover. Even after he achieved a distance from the church, after he’d married and sired a daughter, there still existed in his mind a fixation, a powerful need for any stripe of revenge that did not diminish with the passage of time.

Connie’s mother proved a steadying presence, and talented at diffusing her husband’s less-healthy inclinations; she allowed him his letters to the editor but drew the line at physical confrontations and one-man demonstrations. Connie spoke of her mother appreciatively, but without love. “That she would choose to give her life to a man like my father tells me she entered into adulthood looking to make compromises, so I never did respect her, but she was comparatively down-to-earth, and her influence over my own life was helpful. Looking back I guess I have a lot to thank her for. Because my childhood experience wasn’t half as risky as my home life is now. After she died, my father was let off his leash.”