Jeff Abbott: Promises of Home

I shrugged. “Isn’t it awful, Davis? He hasn’t even started and we’re both already sure he’s going to fail again. I ought to have more faith in him.”

Davis shook his head and adjusted his wire-rim glasses. “It’s hard to have faith in Ed’s entrepreneurial sense when you know his history.”

I started to tell him about Junebug getting called away because of an emergency (this isn’t New York, and we don’t have that many emergencies on bright fall Friday mornings) when a tinkling bell announced the early arrival of my newest volunteer, Gretchen Goertz.

Technically, Gretchen is my stepmother, in that she is married to my biological father. However, since most of Mirabeau still regards the late Lloyd Poteet as my dad, Gretchen being my stepmother is not a relationship I’d advertise. Neither would she. We just dislike each other too much. She resents my presence in her husband’s life and any attention and time he pays me. I take exception to the attempts she’s made to blacken my character and run me out of town. It’s a love-hate relationship in that we love to hate each other.

Bob Don (despite his kindness to me, I still have trouble referring to him as “my father”) had come to me a couple of weeks back and suggested that Gretchen volunteer at the library. I’d sooner have invited Jack the Ripper to restock the crime shelf while Genghis Khan minded military history and Joseph Stalin handled psychopathology. But Bob Don pleaded with me.

“I just hate that you and Gretchen don’t get along,” he had said in his most coaxing salesman’s voice, twisting the gaudy diamond ring on his right hand, “and I think if y’all worked together you’d understand each other. She’s trying, Jordy, to accept that you’re in my life. She’s been squeezing in a therapy session over in Bavary between her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and she says it’s helping her deal with her anger.”

“I think she’d like to deal with her anger by eviscerating me, Bob Don.”

“Please, Jordy. I have never asked you for anything, but I am asking you to give her a chance.”

I’d had to consider it, of course. Bob Don pays for my mother’s home health care, which keeps her out of a nursing home and prevents my pocketbook from being pirated. But aside from that-he is my father, and I felt I should endeavor to make the relationship work. I’d counted to ten and, forcing a smile, agreed on a preliminary basis. Anyway, I’d needed a new volunteer to replace Candace, who was resigning from the library to reopen the Sit-a-Spell. I’d just made sure I wore an athletic cup to work the first day Gretchen showed up. I figured she’d appear, grouse, and then I could dismiss her with a clear conscience.

It hadn’t quite worked out that way. Gretchen, to my surprise, proved a conscientious worker and a quick study. Her only failing thus far was her nearly fanatical adherence to every letter of the rules (which I interpreted as I damn well pleased) and an occasional criticism of me, always couched in the most diplomatic and helpful language.

The library’s not so big. With one glance Gretchen took in Old Man Renfro with an empty coffee cup at the periodicals, Bradley Foradory looking at a freshly cracked book, and me having a tete-a-tete with Davis instead of devising an improvement over the Library of Congress system. I could see her whole body frost in about one second.

She stuck her head in my doorway. “Need any help?” she asked. I wondered if she’d left the front door open; seemed a little chillier in here all of a sudden.

“No thanks, Gretchen,” I said.

Davis stood, saying he had to go, but manners made him pause and inquire about my mother. I answered his questions briefly and politely; I know folks don’t like to talk about Alzheimer’s. They act like it’s catching. The niceties completed, he retrieved his son.

“All right, Bradley. Dad’s wasted enough time here. Time to go home.”

And I saw it. For a moment nakedly sharp fear crossed Bradley Foradory’s face. He flinched as his father reached for him. The expression vanished in an instant, replaced by the amiable, empty look Bradley usually wore. He let his father guide him to the counter. Bradley gave me the picture book.

“Thanks, Jordy. That’s a pretty book.” Bradley’s manners are far better than most people’s. “Pretty book.”

Gretchen snatched the book from me as soon as Bradley handed it over. Like I said, his manners are better than most.

“Well, if you want to check it out, you come back by later and we’ll have it all ready,” I offered. He gave me one of his purely happy smiles. He seemed okay. But I felt uneasy as I watched Davis steer Bradley out of the library. Was that boy afraid of his father? A vague apprehension tugged at me as they left.

Gretchen permitted me five blissful seconds of silence before starting. “This book hasn’t been processed, Jordy. You’re not supposed to let anyone have it until it’s processed.” Gretchen would’ve made a great librarian in the Dark Ages, when they chained tomes to shelves to keep them from being stolen. God only knows what vengeance she would have exacted as Bradley’s late fee. Probably she would’ve lopped off his arm and mounted it, book still in hand, above the return desk as a dire warning to all others.

“Gretchen, I’m not in the mood for this. I thought you came in to help, not to lecture me.”

“Well, pardon me, Mr. Lose-the-Taxpayers’-Money,” she huffed. She clutched the book to her blue argyle sweater vest and glared with her steely-gray eyes. “These books don’t grow on trees, you know. That little retard could have wandered off with it or-worse-drooled all over it.”

I glared at her. “I don’t like that word, Gretchen, not one bit. Please don’t use it again in this library.”

She surprised me by looking ashamed. She ran her nail-polished fingers through her short permed gray hair. “I’m sorry. You’re right; Bradley can’t help the way he is. I don’t know the fancy words for his condition, so I call ’em like I see ’em.”

I was still amazed she wasn’t quarreling with me. I softened my tone. “You can say he has a disability without hurting his feelings.” She nodded as though it took an effort. I’d suspected Bob Don had pleaded with her plenty as well. I knew she loved my father, that she wanted to make her marriage work, and that she’d make peace with me for that end. She’d already sobered up-and stayed that way.

I gestured toward the new books. “Since you reminded me-correctly-that the books need processing, go ahead and do the paperwork.”

“Okay, I will,” she said, back to her usual stridency.

“Fine.” I pushed the restock cart toward the shelves. Suddenly, fraught with worries about Junebug wooing Sister, Candace making a go of the cafe, my friend Ed losing his shirt to his female Elvis, having an ill staff, feeling unease over Bradley, and dealing with my favorite volunteer, I had a hell of a headache. If Darwin ended up in the religious section today, I wouldn’t be surprised.

I’d hoped to escape the library for lunch right before noon, but to my eternal regret, I didn’t. Friday at noon is a terror so complete, so utter, and so deep that no adult should have to withstand it.

Friday is Story Day.

The kids start arriving about eleven-thirty. And once they’re inside, their volume controls never seem to get adjusted. Games of tag in the stacks are extremely popular, as are attempts to smuggle in crayons, either for vandalism or for a delicious prelunch snack. The periodical section, usually habituated by the elderly, clears out faster than an after-hours beer joint when the sirens approach. Whoever said old folks crave the company of children needs to come into this library on a Friday and see how spryly these eldsters get away from the little tykes.