Miriam Toews - Summer of My Amazing Luck

I didn’t really need a book on the solstice. I could just have asked Lish. Or I could have looked up the meaning of solstice and then left without checking out the book from the library. Or I could have paid the full amount of twelve dollars and fifty-nine cents. Well, actually I couldn’t have, not then, but I could have been nicer to Mrs. Hobbs. And in the future I was. We had established an unspoken truce. She smiled at me. I smiled back. I brought my fine down to ten bucks every time and she checked out my books. Dill pulled books off the shelves. I put them back. Mrs. Hobbs did not clear her throat as much.

If I had made a movie about me and Mrs. Hobbs, it would have had a lot of dream sequences of me blindfolded and sitting on a cement floor in the basement of the library. And Mrs. Hobbs would be lighting a cigarette for me and putting it in my mouth. You know that hostage phenomenon where you grow fond of your captor? That’s what would happen.

“I hate asking you to pay your fines, Lucy,” she’d say. “But until you do, I can’t release you.”

“I know, Mrs. Hobbs, I know. You’re just doing your job,” I’d say. “You’re as much of a prisoner as I am. Here, have a drag of my cigarette.”

“Thank you, Lucy. I’m glad we’ve had these seven hundred and thirty-one days to get to know each other.”

“Me too, Mrs. Hobbs, me too.”

Credits roll, orchestra starts up. I told Lish about my movie idea and she said, “God Lucy, give her a break, she’s a fucking librarian! What do you know about her life anyway?”

And I said, “Me? You’re the one who’s always freaking out whenever someone tells you what to do! I was simply trying to illustrate the nature of our relationship!”

“I would not pay to see that movie, Lucy,” she said.

Lish and I went on like that for a while. It was our first stupid fight.

Day after day of rain and bugs kept us virtually imprisoned within the walls of Half-a-Life. Lish wasn’t cracking as many jokes. Terrapin had lost some of her glow. Sarah was looking sad again and not doing as much talking anymore. Emmanuel’s visits had been cut back to once a month. Sing Dylan was still trying to scrub the graffiti from the wall. Naomi was fighting more than ever with the fireman for sole custody of their son. She hit him once when he came over and he charged her with assault. She was worried about the charge affecting her custody case. Every day was more or less the same: trying to get by, keep the kids amused, and not lose our minds. We could hole up inside our apartments or we could wander around the halls, talk in the laundry room or in someone’s kitchen. It was difficult for those of us with hobbies and jobs to concentrate on them because of the heat and the constant interruptions from restless kids and restless moms looking for someone to talk with. Joe and Pillar were fighting an awful lot even though neither one of them was working. Lish told me that Pillar had told her that one of the reasons why she had married Joe was because he had reminded her of her old best friend, back when she was a kid in a town called Sarto. Especially his profile and the way he smelled. Pillar told Lish that when Joe was drunk and sleeping she tilted his head just so he looks more like her old friend, Peggy, and then she would lie there looking at him looking like her and smelling him smelling like her and remembering her childhood. And Pillar thinks Sing Dylan is weird for not drinking. Life is strange. But life in Half-a-Life is even stranger.

During that June I looked forward to the time of the day Mercy and her daughter came home just for something to watch outside other than the rain. Watching Mercy and her girl get off the bike, drag it over to the lockers and then get into Half-a-Life was like watching a choreographed performance: every move was precise and it never changed. Getting the mail was another high point of the day, even though most of our mail consisted of library fines or disconnection notices or advertising for places and things none of us could afford. Samples of shampoo were nice.

One afternoon Lish trekked downstairs with Alba and Letitia to get the mail. The twins were singing. “It’s raining. It’s boring. The old man is scoring.” Lish looked tired. Her skin was breaking out around her chin and her black hair was greasy. It was bread day for her. Every Tuesday she had to pick up the bread at Prairie Song and deliver it to the co-op. In return she got member prices on the stuff at the co-op. But it meant putting the twins in the wagon, walking four blocks to the Wheat’s End Bakery, loading the bread in and around the girls in the wagon, and in a big hockey bag that she draped over her shoulder, and then walking another four blocks to the co-op to deliver the bread. It also meant either getting soaked or eaten alive when the mosquitoes were bad. I don’t know why she didn’t ask one of her boyfriends to help her. One of them must have had a car they could lend or give her a ride in. But she said, “Men are a nighttime indoors thing.” Going outside with them during the day with kids and bread and problems to solve would ruin it for her. Nope. She’d rather do it on her own. Teresa and I were standing around the mailboxes in the lobby talking about Marjorie. Teresa had a gut feeling Marjorie had started seeing that guy again, the father of her son and of Teresa’s, and not telling Teresa, who didn’t want to care, and who didn’t want to appear suspicious, either.

It was really none of her business anyway. Out of her control. I agreed. She didn’t love this guy anymore and certainly didn’t want him hanging around her place. But I knew Teresa was wondering if maybe Marjorie was getting more cash for her son than she was getting for hers. If Marjorie was sleeping with this guy again, it would stand to reason she was also reaping fringe benefits like take-out food, new clothes, occasional movies, a new toy for her son. Their son. At least while the bloom was still on the rose. If he was spending money on Marjorie, he was, in Teresa’s mind, spending more money on Marjorie’s son too, even in a roundabout way. That would make his son with Marjorie better off than his son with Teresa simply because he was having sex with Marjorie instead of Teresa. That is, if his actual presence could be considered an advantage to Marjorie’s boy. Both boys knew he was their father but neither one had really known him and so couldn’t really miss him. It was complicated. Teresa was trying to put a price on time and affection. If in her opinion, Marjorie’s son reaped some extra benefit, then Teresa’s son should too. Just because Marjorie and this guy were having sex didn’t mean that Teresa’s son should have less money than Marjorie’s son, did it? That was what we were talking about. Or rather what Teresa was talking about. While she was talking I was running up and down the stairs. Dill went up. I brought him down. He went up. I brought him down. It was a good form of exercise, and when I was up, it gave Teresa time to formulate her next thought on the whole mess with her ex and Marjorie.

“What are you guys talking about?” asked Lish, coming down the stairs.

“Men and sex and money,” answered Teresa, her red lips pursed.

“Jesus Christ, is that all we ever talk about? Bitch bitch bitch let’s change the subject.” She rammed her key into her mailbox and flung it open.

“To what?” Teresa slapped a mosquito that had landed on her arm and her own blood smeared her skin. Alba and Letitia picked Dill up and started fighting over him. “Men and Sex and Money. Men and Sex and Money,” they chanted while they tugged at Dill from opposite sides. I noticed we were all barefoot.

That’s when Lish grabbed my arm hard. “Oh my god. Oh my god. I can’t believe this. Oh my god. This is too weird,” That was the day she got her first letter from the busker. He had stolen her wallet from the hotel room, he had written, and had carried her address around with him since.