Miriam Toews - Summer of My Amazing Luck

It was June. Terrapin was organizing a solstice party. I had no idea what that was and I was too embarrassed to ask her or even Lish, who groaned when Terrapin told her she was having one. I asked Terrapin when she was having it and she just kind of cocked her head at me like a dog and said, “What do you mean When?” She was wearing a t-shirt that read “Food” on the back, and on the front it had a picture of a ukulele or something and read “Winnipeg Folk Festival.”

Her kids had made some playdough out of salt and flour and carrot juice for colour and wanted to give it to Dill to play with. I guess it was the kind he could eat when he was finished playing with it. From Terrapin’s tone when she said when , I assumed I was supposed to take my cues from her aura or her vibe or maybe check my I Ching to get the answer. What was I thinking being so direct about something so vague and wispy as the solstice? I was determined not to appear ignorant around Hairpin. Besides, I had already given the impression that I knew what the solstice was and I had a pretty good idea that if I knew what it was I was supposed to know when it was. Kind of like a Grey Cup party.

Thank goodness the library was only a couple of blocks away from Half-a-Life. The mosquitoes were bad, so I had to run as fast as I could, pushing Dill in the stroller. At least the sidewalk was smooth the whole way so I wouldn’t run the risk of smashing into shifting concrete and watching Dill get flung out of his stroller. He loved the speed anyway, and the mosquitoes would have to work too hard to get us. They were getting slower and bigger from all the blood they were drinking. They looked more like prehistoric miniature flying dinosaurs now, but they were sluggish and sated. Drinking blood for them had become more sport than survival. Now that they had the city to themselves they were living it up, sitting around in outdoor cafés ordering Bloody Marys and slapping each other on the back. Dill and I managed to get to the library with two bites apiece. Not bad. A greater difficulty faced me: getting to the front doors, gasping for air, removing Dill from his stroller, plopping him on the grass, folding the stroller up, making sure Dill didn’t crawl into the wet dirt of the flower bed beside the grass, and then carrying him and the stroller inside. This process resulted in another half a dozen bites for each of us. Each time I performed this operation I counted the seconds it took to complete: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand.

I had, in the past, removed Dill from his stroller, folded it up, and got in the library with both of them in eight seconds. In a rodeo this is the amount of time you have to tear out of the chute on your horse, rope the little calf, yank it off its feet, leap down from your horse, flip the calf onto its back, and tie its feet together. Then you jump up and back from the calf with your arms in the air. If your cowboy hat is still on your head you can take it off and wave it around and then wipe your brow with your sleeve. I guess after that someone comes around and unties the calf and drags it back to its mother.

So anyway, I could do this in eight seconds, too, not every time, but often enough. If someone I knew came over to talk to me, someone from Half-a-Life or the dole or wherever, I had to forfeit. It would be disconcerting for them if I was moving around like greased lightning muttering thousands , or Mississippi s under my breath and then hurtling myself and Dill and the stroller into the library and slamming the door in their face, peering out at them with a victorious expression on my face and my arms in the air. But with the mosquitoes and the rain I wasn’t meeting many people outside.

The library was one of my favourite places. The building was old and had a lot of dark wood in it. The book stacks were on the main floor. The library had dim yellow lighting and no windows. The floors creaked and the books were sort of greasy. All winter long the rads hissed and banged. A whole shelf of rare books the library had somehow managed to score had been soaked when one of the rads exploded overnight. The librarians took turns blowing hot air on them with a hair dryer. Downstairs was a room for story time and crafts. Lish and some of the others brought their kids to story time every week. It was free and close and a good break. The parents had to stay in the library but they could go upstairs and talk quietly or read, uninterrupted, for one whole hour. The woman in charge of story time was kind and energetic. Her face had a permanent grin on it and she didn’t mind spilled glue and paint as long as the kids were enjoying themselves. Often she’d be a minute or two late. Then she’d come running into the room grinning and panting. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Here I am. I misplaced my glasses, so if I can’t read the words we’ll have to make them up ha ha ha.” The kids would cheer and clap and gaze up at her from their spots on the ratty carpet. When she read, the kids listened. There was also a chess club downstairs. Clusters of old men smoking and playing chess and speaking in different languages.

The only problem with this library was the old librarian upstairs. She seemed to work irregularly, so I never knew when she’d be there. For some reason she hated me. Or at least I thought she did. It might have been because I let Dill crawl around on the floor while I looked for books. Sometimes he’d pull out a bunch of books from the lower shelves and she’d clear her throat and try to catch my eye. After a while I stopped looking at her after she had cleared her throat. I’d just go over to where Dill was and clean up the books like it was no big deal. Silently I encouraged him to keep doing it. Sometimes I met other moms from Half-a-Life and we’d talk and laugh and our kids would run around making too much noise. Usually there wasn’t anybody else in the library so I didn’t see what the big deal was. We’d take out piles of books for our kids, even Dill.

Anyway, this librarian, Mrs. Hobbs, was always on my case. I’d check out books and she’d look at me over the tops of her half-glasses. She’d pull up my file on the computer and then get close to it and squint at it for at least half a minute with her chin resting in her hand. She’d drum her skinny fingers against her slack cheek while she stared at the computer. She’d sigh and look at me again with a very stern expression.

Anyway, I’d found a book that had something in it on the solstice and I wanted to take it out. “You owe twelve dollars and fifty-nine cents in overdue fines,” said Mrs. Hobbs.

“Really?”

“Do you wish to pay for that with a cheque or cash?”

“Uh, could I work it off?” I smiled.

“Cheque or cash?”

In the meantime I had put Dill on the floor and he was heading over to the table with the rare wet books.

“You can’t take any books out until you pay your fine,” said Mrs. Hobbs.

Just then Emily the smiling story time woman came over to the desk,

“No, no, Sadie, don’t you remember? The fine has to be brought down to ten dollars. As long as it’s only ten dollars she can take out the books.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, “I’ll pay two dollars and fifty-nine cents now and then I can take out the books.”

With Emily the Good at my side I felt more confident

“Hey,” I added, laughing, “I could go on bringing my fine down to ten dollars forever. I don’t ever have to pay the ten dollars. When I die my estate would have to take care of it,”

Emily laughed. Just then there was a huge crash. Dill had managed to pull few of the thick hardcovers off the drying table and was standing there chuckling. Then he knocked the hair dryer off the table and a piece of plastic broke off it and flew up in the air. Now Emily was really laughing. Sadie stood frozen to the spot, her half-glasses suspended like icicles on the bridge of her nose. She must have thought they were slipping down because she started flaring her nostrils, I guess in an attempt to widen her nose and create a broader base for her glasses to rest on. The flaring must have upset the delicate equilibrium and the glasses fell. For a second they caught on her lower lip and then clunked onto her chest. They clacked against a peacock brooch she was wearing and then they were still.