“Fantastic! Come in at nine and we’ll do the first session together. I’ll have a name tag at the front desk for you, and a blue vest. You can pick them up when you sign in tomorrow.”
A name tag, a vest, and a real job. Mel could hardly contain the excitement racing around inside of her.
One hundred and two dollars, one hundred and two dollars, one hundred and two dollars
. Mel repeated the number over and over in her head all the way to Gladys’s.
Cecily would be back in thirteen days. And then a sudden realization caught Mel in the back:
What if Cecily didn’t want to stay in Riverview?
Mel pushed that thought
aside. Cecily had said there was no going back to Craig’s, and Mel wanted to believe her – and there wasn’t really anywhere else to go, at least not right away.
Mr. Frohberger was looking out the front window of the store, as he often seemed to do, when Mel walked by. Sometimes she wondered if he waited by the window each time the bus stopped on Thirty-Seventh, hoping someone he knew would get off the bus. For Mel, walking up the front steps into Frohberger’s was like coming home. Mr. Frohberger would ask about her day and listen to her stories. Today was no different.
“Well, that’s about the best news I’ve heard all week,” he exclaimed when she told him she’d gotten the job.
Mel reenacted the story about her runners belching and squelching as she desperately tried to walk quietly into the library for her interview. She pulled the soggy toilet paper from her shoes and they both laughed so hard that they cried.
“Gladys will be proud of you,” Mr. Frohberger said as Mel turned to leave the store.
Mel didn’t quite know what to say, and so she said the truth. “I hope so.”
—
“I got the job,” Mel said as she walked into the kitchen.
“I start tomorrow. I’ll be able to give you the money Cecily owes you.”
Gladys said nothing at first. Mel noticed that a small triangle of tinfoil was folded over in the kitchen window, giving Gladys a clear view of the street below and of Frohberger’s.
Mel was about to return to the living room when Gladys spoke. “You hang on to your wages. That’s your money.”
Marilyn greeted Mel as she came in the front door of the library.
“I suspect this is for you,” she said as she held up the vest.
Mel took note of the name tag pinned on the front – “Riverview Public Library Staff,” and below that, her name, “Melody.” Her name tag and her vest and – better than anything – her job. The only thing that could have made the moment better was if Cecily had been there to share it with her.
As Mel walked over to the children’s storytime area, the voice that had yesterday whispered the job offer might be too good to be true was at last silenced.
Lisa was busy preparing for the kids.
“Can I do anything to help?” Mel asked.
“You could set these cushions out in a semicircle. Then we’ll sit down and talk a bit before the crowds arrive.”
“Crowds?” Mel asked.
“Just kidding. Eight, maybe ten kids,” Lisa said as she smiled.
Mel picked up the pile of cushions and set each down on the floor in front of the small chair. Parents and children started to arrive – most seemed to be seasoned veterans of the library storytime.
After a few minutes, Lisa nodded to Mel and then quieted the waiting children. “I want to welcome all of you to our preschool storytime this week. As you can see, we have a special person with us. Please join me in welcoming Melody, our summer student, to storytime.”
The nine little kids, all sitting on their parents’ laps in a semicircle facing Mel and Lisa, clapped wildly. Lisa sat down on the small red chair, gestured to Mel to sit down on the carpet, and she read the first story. Mel noted how Lisa held the book up, how she talked about the picture on the cover and the title, how she asked the kids if they’d read the book. All the kids had stories and all too soon it was Mel’s turn to read a book.
This
, Mel thought,
is not as easy as it looks
. First, there was reading upside down, since she had to hold the book open in front of the kids and look down from the top of the page. Then it was her suddenly dry lips sticking to her front teeth, and then the words to
Brown Bear, Brown Bear
, which seemed to catch between her tongue and the
roof of her mouth. The back of her knee was itching, her face was sweating, and all the little kids were staring and waiting for her to continue reading.
Lisa brought her a glass of water.
“Here,” she said. “Have a sip.”
Mel took a drink and continued. Somewhere between the words “Blue horse, blue horse” and the following page, the kids started reading with her, and then it was fun.
“You’re a natural,” Lisa told her later when the children had gone. “Here is a list of books for next week’s storytime. Most of them should be on the shelf. If you’d like, you can take them home and read them ahead of time.”
Mel methodically went through the shelves, finding all but one of the books on the list. After checking them out under the staff account, she carefully put as many books as she could into her pack, tucked the others under her arm, and headed for the bus stop.
She thought back to when she first fell in love with books, and with that thought and this being the first day of her first real job, she missed Cecily. Mel could never remember a time when they’d been separated for so long. The twelve days until Cecily’s return felt like forever, but there was also a part of her that was nervous. Cecily liked change.
Mr. Frohberger was sitting on the front steps of the store, drinking a soda, when Mel came around the corner.
“So, how’d your first day on the job go?” he asked.
“Well, I was pretty nervous at first, but I think it went okay.”
“Would you like a lemon-lime soda or a root beer?”
Mel was thirsty and she wanted one, but she also felt a little guilty. She didn’t have the extra money to be buying pop, and she also knew she shouldn’t always accept free ones from Mr. Frohberger.
“No, thanks.”
“Are you sure? Because the cooler is full and today is your first day on the job.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Then go ahead and pick one out for yourself,” Mr. Frohberger said. “I’m going to enjoy a bit more of this sunshine before it disappears behind the clouds.
Mel set her armload of books and her backpack next
to Mr. Frohberger and climbed the concrete steps that led into the old store. She liked that he trusted her not to steal anything. But she also noted how easy it would be; he was sitting outside, he’d never know. She took a long look at the neat row of colorful chocolate bars – her eyes settled on a box of Oh Henry!, her favorite.
Mr. Frohberger’s whistling caught her off guard, but it also reminded her that she did not want to steal from him, nor – for that matter – from anyone else ever again. Mel lifted a root beer from the cooler, opened it on the old-fashioned metal bottle opener that hung on the wall by the door, and went back outside.
As she sat next to Mr. Frohberger, the time seemed right, so Mel posed the question she’d been dying to ask him.
“Would you tell me more about Tux?”
She didn’t ask if he’d tell her more about herself when she was little. That seemed kind of silly, but she hoped he would.
Mr. Frohberger’s face shifted. “Like I told you before, he and I were good friends. In fact, we sat on these very steps and drank more than a few ice-cold root beers together. He was a good man.”
“Gladys never talks about him,” Mel said, wanting Mr. Frohberger to continue.
“Hmm, well, it’s hard sometimes to talk about our loved ones when they’re gone. I don’t doubt she misses him; Tux was pretty much all Gladys had, at least until you came back. What do you want to know?”
“Everything. I don’t really know anything about him.”
“Well, isn’t that a shame,” Mr. Frohberger said. “I remember the first day you came in here. I watched you as you walked down the aisle, taking the whole place in, not missing a thing. I saw you stop in front of the curtains at the back of the store and look at them for a while. When you told me your grandmother was Gladys, I just presumed you knew.”
“Knew what?” Mel was almost afraid to ask.
“Well, that you remembered Tux, knew that he performed his magic act on the stage behind those curtains. But then, I guess, that was before you were born.”
“Cecily told me about the magic shows, but I don’t remember the magic,” Mel said, and she felt the huge gaping hole deep inside of her. It was a place between her ribs and her stomach, and it made her sad.
“You couldn’t have been more than about two and a half, three maybe, when Cecily … well, when … you left. Let’s see. One thing your Grandpa Tux loved to do was pull a bouquet of bright orange flowers out from
behind your ear; in fact, he used to make you giggle every time he did that trick.”
Mel tried, but no matter how deep she dug, she couldn’t remember.
“Heck, I once saw him dangle a blank piece of paper from the ceiling. He had a volunteer from the audience write a number between one and one hundred on a different piece of paper, and then he told that volunteer to show the number to the person next to them, and then – believe it or not – with a flick of the wrist that number was written on the paper dangling from the ceiling. All with the wave of a handkerchief! I never could figure that one out,” Mr. Frohberger said, shaking his head and smiling. “Over the years, he pulled everything from doves to chocolate bars out of nowhere.”
All the words found their way into the place inside of Mel that was hurting. They layered themselves over one another. The words didn’t fill the void, but they made it better. It was the feeling a warm scarf gives your neck on a cold day; it was comforting.
“Cecily …” Mel stopped. She was going to say that Cecily could pull a coin out from behind an ear, but she didn’t.
“My wife, Betty, she’s passed on now, fourteen years ago this September. She was a singer. Mostly she just
warmed up the audience for Tux. Your grandfather was the big draw. We’d have chairs set up right down the aisle, practically out the front door some Saturdays.”
Mel could feel a sweet sense of pride stirring within her.
“Those matinees sure were popular, and not just for the kids – it was quite a show, complete with penny prizes. All the neighborhood kids wanted to be magicians, but the only one who learned all that sleight of hand was … well …
that
Cecily.”
Mel looked down at the concrete steps. For the first time, she felt uneasy with Mr. Frohberger. It was the way she felt whenever anyone said anything bad about Cecily. It wasn’t that what he said was bad, it was just the way he emphasized the word “that.”
“You remind me of Tux,” Mr. Frohberger said.
“I do?” Mel couldn’t help but smile. She took a drink of her root beer and let the fizz bubble around in her mouth.
“You always did. Quick to share a smile – both of you.”
Mel kept listening. His tone was not so much serious but something else – she could tell that he thought Tux was special.
“There was something about Tux; he had a way that
put people at ease. He was honest and hardworking.” Mr. Frohberger paused. It wasn’t the kind of pause you make when you are leaving room for someone to respond to what you said. It was the kind of pause you take when you are thinking about what you’ve just said, and letting the feelings that thought brings sit with you awhile.
“He never gave up on people. There was the time when the new all-night chain stores came into town. I almost lost this place. It was Tux’s idea to do the Saturday Magic Matinees, pull people in. It kept me in business.”
Mel didn’t want Mr. Frohberger to stop talking, but she sensed that he was about to. “Did he ever bring me here?”
“Oh yes, he brought you here all the time. You took your first steps on the worn-out floors of this old store.”
“I did?”
“You sure did, and I think you might have eaten your first bit of chocolate here also. If I’m not mistaken, I think it was an Oh Henry!”
Mel felt her face blush with the guilt that she’d even considered for a moment how easy it would be to steal from Mr. Frohberger.
“Tux used to sit you up on the counter and he and I would shoot the breeze. Mind you, once you figured out how to walk, well – you would run, full speed up and down
the aisle, pulling things off the shelves. Tux would be chasing you and you’d be squealing. Those were good days.”
Mel waited, hoping that Mr. Frohberger would go on. “I wish I remembered him.” The words left her lips before she realized that she was saying them out loud.
Mr. Frohberger looked directly into Mel’s eyes. “I’m sure you’ve got a memory of Tux somewhere inside, Mel; you just haven’t found it yet, but it’s there. I’m sure it is.”
A man and his son came around the corner and walked up the steps and into the store. Mr. Frohberger called out that he’d be right with them.
He set his hand on Mel’s shoulder as he stood up. “Want me to take that empty bottle?”
“Sure, thanks,” Mel said.
Mr. Frohberger smiled back at her. “My pleasure.”
Back at the apartment, Mel looked at Gladys and thought about her and Tux and Cecily and about how they had once been a family. It was hard to imagine Gladys loving anyone.
“Mr. Frohberger was saying –”
“I thought I told you not to be bothering Ed Frohberger.”
It was true Gladys had told her this before; what was
different was that this time Gladys didn’t sound as angry.
“He just –”
“I said to leave
him
alone,” Gladys interrupted.
But Mel had started asking about her past and now she knew she wasn’t going to stop. Her need to know was greater than her fear of Gladys. “I just wanted to know about Tux. I wanted to know how he died. I just wanted to know about …” Mel stopped. Her gut was twisting. It seemed like forever before Gladys said anything.
“I’ll tell you this,” Gladys said, without looking at Mel. “He died a broken man with a broken heart, and your mother is to blame for that!”