Amanda Ward - Love Stories in This Town

My mother meets my gaze. “I am happy,” she says.

“Why don’t you come with me?” I say. “Why don’t you go instead of me? I don’t care.”

“Breakfast is my treat,” she says, and I watch her count change from her purse. On impulse, I grab her soft fingers. She looks up, startled, but does not pull away.

The masturbator has already left by the time I return to the library. This time it was Mrs. McKim who saw him in the Newspaper Nook. He was working himself into a frenzy by the stacks. Mrs. McKim didn’t get a gander at the whole package. She saw the leather jacket and the loafers and ran screaming before he even turned around. He had gotten away by the time the police arrived. “Secure all the doors!” the police say to us. Nobody shelves the whole afternoon, and the books are not in order on the cart. All the peepers who have started hanging around begin to pick up books, look at the covers, and then drop them somewhere else. I find a Young Adult novel in the Reference Room! That night, I can barely sleep. I have my mother tell James I’m too sick to go dancing. In bed, I listen to the sounds of my house: the clink of silverware going in drawers, the hum of the TV. The creakings of two old people moving around each other in the night.

The next day, I take the ring off and put it in my pocket. It’s getting in the way. I’m at the counter when they come in: three little kids brandishing pens. “We,” says the tallest one, throwing her shoulders back, “are the Future Problem Solvers of America.” I recognize her—she’s Katie, the granddaughter of one of my dad’s miner pals. She has black hair parted in the middle and combed behind her ears. She wears glasses, and through them, her eyes are wide and blue. I know Katie’s mother, June, who dropped out of Butte High and drinks too much.

Another kid chimes in. “We are working on deforestation,” he says.

“Check the card catalog under ‘forest’ or ‘woods,’ ” I say. The Future Problem Solvers of America look sheepish.

“We can’t read,” says Katie.

“No worries,” I tell her. I spend all afternoon helping the kids. We find pictures of clear-cut forests and pictures of lush, green ones. We find pictures of log homes, and rugged men with axes. The FPS of A leave satisfied. They promise to return next week, when they will begin to cure cancer. When they open the library entrance, the late-afternoon sun makes Katie’s hair shine.

I tell James I have the flu, and watch television with my father. I wrap myself in an old blue blanket and laugh so hard that my father tells me to shut my piehole.

By Thursday, things have settled down at the library. The masturbator has not returned, and James has stopped coming by and asking what’s wrong, what’s wrong.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong. It took me all day to get that library back in order. What’s wrong? People and their ability to mess everything up. Disorder always increases. That’s the rule, according to Einstein or whoever. Well, I’m no Einstein, but I’ll tell you this: I tape my knee every day. It won’t get worse, and that’s a promise.

I like being a librarian. I like the peace and quiet, and the smell of old paper. I like listening to Old Ralph and paging through magazines. Each book is stamped with a history: who’s read it and when. Who needed a renewal. Nowadays, everybody loves mysteries, but I can prove that people used to like history books.

My kids are going to know all about history. Pocahontas to Columbus to Marcus Daly, who took all the copper out of Butte and left us with his empty mansion and a cancer pond. I’m going to teach them to be a part of history, like the Lady Griz and their championship. Like the masturbator, even.

At three or so P.M., I hear the front door open. It makes a click sound and by the time I turn around, someone is climbing the stairs. I know without seeing that it’s him. But I keep filing for a time. Really, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Finally, when nobody else goes about catching him, I climb the staircase. It’s a wooden staircase, and it makes a creaking sound with each step. Outside the door to the Periodicals area, it’s silent, and smells like chicken soup. I push on the door, and of course, there he is, the masturbator, whacking away.

“Hey!” I say, and he turns around. His face is red. His hair is neatly combed, and his shirt is white and pressed. He looks like somebody’s lawyer, or somebody’s dad. Granted, his dick is hard and he’s got his meaty hand around it. But the expression on his face is not panic. He looks relieved, or like I had walked in with a present all tied up in a bow. He says, “Oh.”

What is there for me to do? I am eighteen years old, and a grown man is standing between me and the weekly periodicals and he’s got his pants unzipped. I am a librarian, and a Montanan.

I recognize the look in his eyes.

“Go home,” I tell him. “Can’t you just go home?” And something changes in his face. His eyes fill up with tears.

Rosie comes through the door. She has been fixing her hair and she smells like Aqua Net and a new dose of perfume. Her mouth opens wide, and she grabs me. The man (dick completely soft by this time, and swinging wildly) pushes us to the ground and heads for the door. Old Ralph tackles him downstairs, and when the cops arrive, the masturbator is tied to the card catalog with packing tape.

It turns out that the masturbator has a name: Neil Davidson. He lives in Helena with his wife and two kids. He’s a mortgage broker. His picture is on the front page of the Friday paper, along with my name and the name of our library. It is an old picture: his hair is thick, and he wears a tie. His smile is full of hope.

“What a sick, sick man,” says my mother, looking at the paper over my shoulder. Her hair is still pinned in curls, and she has given me my toast with honey. She is rotting from the inside, I can smell it.

“You got that right,” calls my father from the living room. His oxygen tube almost drowns out the television. I can see my father’s face, and it is gray and resentful.

I don’t say anything, but I know they are wrong. I saw Neil Davidson in the flesh. I knew the look in his eyes. I wish my parents would just be quiet. I will call James today, and I will give him back his ring. “Please understand, James,” I will say. And then I will tell him what I should have told the masturbator: There are plenty of things worse than having a home, and doing what you have to do to stay there.

They told us the baby was dead, and two days later we were on a plane to Texas. We were moving, and had to buy a house. We’d always rented, and all our furniture was from Goodwill. We’d never had a realtor before. We were going to be rich.

In my carry-on bag, I had three magazines, an apple, and two bottles of prescription pills: an antibiotic and a painkiller. I swallowed one pill from each bottle as we taxied down the runway, leaving Bloomington, and my dead baby, behind.

It hadn’t even been a baby, my doctor said, despite my morning sickness, tender breasts, and anticipatory purchases from A Pea in the Pod. It was just a mass of cells, the wrong egg fertilized. Though my husband, Greg, knew more than any of us about chromosomal abnormalities, he was superstitious—he was convinced it was because he was drunk or stressed out from his pharmaceutical company interviews when we conceived. That night had been a heavenly memory: the smell of a fire, snow falling quietly outside our bedroom window. Now it was just a storm and a mistake.

We landed at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Joe, from Lone Star Realty, picked us up in his mother-in-law’s gold minivan. He wore a Mexican wedding shirt that would be soaked through by the end of the day.