Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

The library’s glass front door opens. She straightens in her station. An elderly man in silver-rimmed glasses and a woolen cap shuffles in and up to the desk. He lays a well-worn copy of The Sensuous Man on the counter.

“Good evening,” she says brightly, keeping her expression steady and professional. The effort not to laugh is almost painful. “Do you want to return this?”

“Yes.”

She flips the book open and checks the card in the library pocket. “Sir,” she says, “this book was due at the end of January.”

The old man frowns and scratches his neck. The skin there is sun-stained and deeply etched, like the earth after one of Phoenix’s rare but violent sudden rains. “Are you saying I need to pay a late fee? Because I didn’t receive a notice from the library telling me when February started.”

She’s not going to laugh. She’s definitely not going to laugh. She inspects The Sensuous Man for any new damage, turning it over in her hands. “The library doesn’t do that, sir. Individuals are responsible for keeping track of how long the months go.”

“Harrumph,” the man says, opening a battered wallet. He counts out a couple of dimes from its coin compartment. “The library used to send out notices. I’m sure they did.”

She opens the metal box and drops his change in, biting the inside of her lower lip. “Thank you, sir. You have a good evening.”

“Thanks, Barbara,” the librarian says, returning, glancing at the book, then tactfully looking away. “I guess it’s time for you to go now. Did you check that in? Would you mind shelving it before you go?”

“Not at all.”

The Sensuous Man: The How-To Book for the Man Who Wants to Improve His Lovemaking . The author is simply “M.” Well, just “M” is easy enough to find. But which category? History? Science? She stifles a giggle. Sports and entertainment?

Maybe she should check the book out herself and leave it on Ronnie’s bedside table. How was the library today, hon? Ronnie will ask when she gets home, giving her his nightly peck on the cheek. Great! she’ll say. I brought a book home…

Sociology and anthropology: 301.41. She slips The Sensuous Man into its place on the shelves.

Back at the circulation desk, she gathers up her coat. “Good night, Barbara,” the librarian says. “Thank you for your help. Will you be back next Wednesday?”

“Of course.”

Her first lifeline after moving to Phoenix was the library’s weekly Spanish class. ¡Buenos días, señor! Within a few months, she could almost communicate with the housekeeper. And at Ronnie’s favorite Mexican restaurant? For a change, she was the smart one in the family: Take the sopa . It’s soup . Tortillas? That just means “corn pancakes.” Not that there are so many more Spanish speakers in Phoenix than in Southern California, but it felt like a way to make a place for herself in this city. Even Luke — before he went off with the hippies — would turn to her to explain stuff. It was nice to know something none of the others knew — something educated, not just about cooking or cleaning or taking care of babies. That Spanish class was the first bright spot of her new existence in Phoenix.

She still felt like one of those Apollo 11 spacemen here, though, bouncing over the moon’s surface, unable to plant her feet on the ground. All her life, she’d lived by the sea. Suddenly, she was a castaway in an ocean of sand. The Spanish class helped her interpret what was going on, but it didn’t make her part of it. So when the Spanish teacher mentioned that the library was looking for volunteers, she put her hand up immediately. Anything to find her way into the heart of Phoenix. They’d bought a house here. The kids had begun in new schools here. She couldn’t give up.

It’s two minutes before 6:00 p.m. A lady wearing a thin-brimmed felt hat, her coat draped over a chair beside her, sits at one table, flipping through a magazine — waiting, perhaps, for someone to pick her up. At the other table, deep in a novel, is a girl wearing a miniskirt so short it’d be almost impossible not to see her panties.

Look, she feels like saying to the girl. I see you in here all the time. Don’t sell yourself short. And for God’s sake, don’t get into trouble.

The hardest part about leaving Los Angeles, when it came down to it, was not the prospect of having to find her way in a new city. It was leaving Patty Ann. Saying good-bye to Mike was easier; he was likely to get sent over to Vietnam soon anyhow, and the army would take care of him. But who would take care of Patty Ann? She’s asked Francis to keep an eye out, now that he’s nearby, at UCLA, but Francis is useless for stuff like that. She hears more about Francis from Patty Ann than she does about Patty Ann from Francis.

“That looks like a nice book,” she says to the girl. “Are you enjoying it?”

The girl looks up, her face like the light at an intersection: surprise, suspicion, shut. “I checked it out with the other librarian already.”

“I’m not a librarian,” she says and slips her handbag over her wrist.

She hasn’t brought the car. With winter settled over the desert, it’s cool enough outside to walk the half mile home in comfort, and she likes that fifteen minutes of being untethered. Tonight she’s especially glad for it; she’s felt oddly out of sorts all afternoon, as though on the verge of having a terrible headache.

Cars roll past her, their lights catching on the front windows of ranch houses, illuminating the bright yellow brittlebush, casting its herbal scent into the evening. She doesn’t know why she’s felt so strange today, lost in thought half the day, going over all the old stuff. Luke tried to convince her before he followed that raggle-taggle group of hippies into the desert: It’s real, Mom. They’re building a self-sufficient city, a utopia in the desert. I want to be part of it . She never thought he’d really do it. She looked the word up. Utopia: An imaginary place in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect.

Imaginary, indeed. Any place where life is perfect is imaginary. America is a utopia, she told Luke, or at least as close as we can get on earth. Would you rather live in the Soviet Union?

The strange waterless undersea landscape of the desert lured him. And the kids, the wrong kids. Until the army did what she couldn’t and found him and dragged him back out. After his tour is done, he’ll get his GED and follow his younger brother to college. Then he can go build his utopias if he still wants to.

“Hello, kiddo,” Ronnie says, already in the kitchen, mixing pink liquid in the old white pitcher. He pecks her on the cheek. “Feel like a strawberry daiquiri?”

“Practicing already for when Nancy and George come over on Friday?”

Ronnie laughs. “Practice makes perfect.”

She turns the oven on. “Dinner will be ready in a jiffy. I’m just going to check on Sissy. She in her room?”

“Yes. You know, she looks a little pale.”

She smiles. “Sissy always looks a little pale.”

But Sissy, lying on her bed with one of her notebooks open, does look even paler than usual. She sits down beside her nine-year-old daughter and touches her broad freckled forehead. “Heavens, Sissy. You’re burning up.”

Sissy pulls away. “I’m okay. I mean, I feel a little bad.”

“Hmm.”

Back in the kitchen, she takes the meat loaf out of the fridge and puts it in the now-warm oven. The night before library days she prepares a dinner she can heat up when she gets in. “Sissy’s come down with that flu that’s going around.”