The Librarianist

“Oh, sure, of course,” Bob would answer, then excuse himself to blot the sweat from his forehead in the restroom. Connie saw that Bob was out of his depth and that she would need to give a nudge; at last she dinged the counter bell and said, “If you don’t invite me to your house right this second, I’m walking out the door forever, Bob Comet. How’s that for Information?” Bob touched the brass dome of the bell to quiet it and said that yes, she was officially invited, and on the following Sunday she played at being ill so to excuse herself from her traditional bus-riding rounds with her father. After he’d left for the day, she dressed, picked an assortment of flowers from her garden, and took a taxi across the river to Bob’s house. She knocked on his front door, bouquet in hand; when Bob answered, he was also holding a bouquet of flowers. They exchanged bouquets and moved to the kitchen, where Connie sought out a vase and filled it with water, mingling the flowers together. She set the vase on the table in the nook, then broke off to look about the house. Bob followed behind her, naming things: here was where he read; here was where he also read; here was his childhood bedroom; here was his workshop. Connie walked with her hands clasped at the small of her back, like a museumgoer. She was impressed by the rope handrailing and agreed it had been best to keep it in place. They stood side by side in Bob’s room and Connie said, “I suppose you think I’m going to jump right into bed with you for some wild afternoon lovemaking, is that right?” Bob turned so red that Connie thought he was choking. He’d not thought to prepare anything to eat but had made a pot of coffee, though she wanted tea. “I’ll buy tea for next time,” he said — his stab at flirtation, to reference a future meeting, as though it was understood they’d be spending time together again. They took their coffees into the backyard and sat on a mossy bench among the overgrown tangle of weeds and grasses and bushes. Connie surveyed the area with a stony face. “This garden is a disgrace. Did your mother keep it up when she was alive?”

“No, she couldn’t have been less interested.”

“And you take after her in that way?”

“I think any similarity between my mother and myself is coincidence.” The truth was that Bob had never once even considered the possibility of engaging in the act of gardening. His mind went upward then, and into the trees. Connie wore a red cable-knit sweater and gave off the just-detectable scent of rosewater. It had been raining, and the damp hung on the air, water trickling away somewhere. Connie said, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have all this space to yourself, without anyone to pester you.”

“I do know,” said Bob. “You could always move out of your father’s, though, couldn’t you?”

“I mean, I could, sure.”

“Why don’t you?”

She considered the question. “I used to fantasize about being a professional woman. The idea of a salary, and what I might buy with the money. I was going to have a purple car.”

“What kind of car?”

“Just purple. And I’d drive it to and from my job, maybe stop at the dry cleaners on the way home. I’d have an apartment somewhere, and nights I’d drink a bottle of beer at the table in the kitchenette and I’d have a record player playing. This was how it was going to look when I got away from my father. But I didn’t understand what a job really was, I don’t think. I’d only been daydreaming about the paycheck, rather than the time and effort required to earn it. At a certain point I figured out it was going to be forty years behind a desk typing up some slob’s memos for him, you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Bob said, thinking, naturally, of his mother.

“When I was a child,” Connie continued, “I’d considered my mother and father as two entities in the same caste. But then I saw that she was aging in a way that he wasn’t. He says he works for God. Fine, but he doesn’t scrub God’s toilet, while my mother scrubbed his, and now I do. She worked; I work; he doesn’t. But whereas my mother worked herself literally to death, my work will be finite.” She took a sip of coffee, then told Bob her special secret: “Mother, once, not too long before she died, explained that my father’s health is screwy.”

“Screwy how?”

“His heart in particular is very screwy, and it’s a thin-ice situation. In other words, I’ve come around to the idea that this subservience to my father is my career. I might have to work another year, or five years, but sooner or later, and not too much later, he’s going to go. My father owns his house and has money from my mother and I’m going to get it all after he dies. Then I’ll be able to do whatever I want to do, and without my father looming in every doorway like a ruiner.”

“What are the things you want to do?”

“Tiny little things, Bob. I like being in my room. I take walks and I work in the garden. I like to sew, cook. But also I want to do all the things he won’t let me do. Books, movies, television, travel, you know?”