An Imperfect Librarian (26 page)

“Torque is a measure used in physics so I can't very well torque your meaning or torque anything for that matter.”

“I'm not in the mood for this today, Henry.”

He abandons my desk and moves over to the coffee stand. He opens the lid of the cookie container then slides a cookie into his mouth like a child stealing a sweet. He turns side on. He's wearing the longest shirt I've ever seen on him. His belt isn't even visible.

I place my hand on the doorknob. “I'm not in the mood.”

Henry chews without paying attention to me. “You should try repeating yourself less.”

“Some people can't understand you no matter how often you repeat things. That's why this conversation is such a waste of time.”

“You're the one doing most of the gabbing. Change the subject.”

I open the door to close the conversation. “Goodbye, Henry.”

He looks down to his belly, swats off something from his shirt, shakes his head, then, for his parting line, says, “Bloody biscuit crumbs.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

C
YRIL TELLS ME ABOUT THE
Sheila's Brush that hit the city less than twenty-four hours ago. “It's the wife of St. Patrick sweeping away the last of the winter storms,” he says. We travel to the pond on borrowed snowshoes. There's no sign of Norah anywhere. I hardly recognize Cliffhead in the snow. If it wasn't for the strips of orange plastic that Norah tied to the trees during the summer, Cyril and I would never be able to follow the trail.

The gulls and crows are scarce. Cyril says if you sit still with some seed on your hand, the chickadees will eat out of it because there's so little food available to them now. We don't have time to feed the birds. I want to walk across the pond to retrace the route Norah made me swim from the beaver's house to the shore. Cyril holds his arm out to stop me. “Where're you going? See there where the stream runs in, the grass by the bog with the condensation? Mercedes would have my head if she knew we were traipsing on the ice this time of year. There's nothing here anyway. Where's this meadow you were telling me about?”

My last visit to the meadow was in the fall. We were on our way back to her house from berry-picking. Norah had filled two five-pound buckets with berries. I had two ice cream containers full. We sat near the cliff's edge. She laughed at me when I accidentally threw a handful of sour partridgeberries in my mouth then chomped down on them thinking they were blueberries. There are no berries in sight now, not a peck on the virgin snow. “Don't be worrying about her,” Cyril says. “She's a smart woman. She's gone off to some friend's house till it all blows over. Have faith.”

In the evening, Mercedes and Cyril are holding a Paddy's Day celebration. “We're expecting you there. Nancy and Henry are coming. Wear green,” Cyril tells me. I've managed to avoid Henry lately. Every day at 3:30, there's his knock on the door. I don't answer. There was a giant-size Swiss chocolate bar in my office mail slot one day.
Don't eat it all at once. HK
, the note read. I had the secretary return it to his mail slot.

He arrives wearing a plastic green leprechaun hat with a
kiss-me-I'm-Irish
button. His arm is wrapped around Nancy's waist. He grips a bottle of beer in his hand and points it in Cyril's face as he talks. I take shelter in the kitchen. Either way, I can't escape Henry. If it's not a conversation with him, it's a conversation about him.

“Nancy would have gone out with you but now she's hooked up with him,” Mercedes says.

“They seem happy.”

She wipes her hands in her apron, pokes her head through the kitchen door then returns to the sink to tend to the cabbage soaking in a bowl. “If they were any happier, they'd be doing it on the floor in front of us. Nancy's never been so taken by a man in all her years. I don't know what she sees in him.” She lowers her head and whispers, “He's on pills to keep his blood pressure down, pills to keep his penis pressure up, he's overweight and a
fine candidate for our cardio ward. Nancy can't be expected to care for him the rest of her life.”

“A nurse is probably what he needs. He would never put any faith in what I have to say to him.”

“You're a fine one to be preaching. You're so skinny, the wind would blow the milk out of your tea. Go on out of my kitchen. Have yourself a beer. And not one of them light ones.”

I wander into the living room away from the smell of the curried lamb. Cyril and Henry are talking. Nancy's listening. The news is playing in the background.

“It's a light version of rugby,” Henry says. They're comparing refereeing in hockey with football, or soccer, as Cyril calls it.

“They're some fine crowd of soccer players in St. Lawrence.”

Henry agrees with Cyril then tells him how he drove to the town to see a game. Fights broke out in the stands. He says he hasn't enjoyed an English game as much as the Newfoundland version since then. Nancy listens patiently, smiling or laughing anytime Henry speaks. He turns to face her at the end of each sentence. Every so often she bends down so they can kiss.

The news report is about Y2K. “The amount of money wasted on preparing for the worst is estimated in the millions, our sources tell us...”

The local news comes on with a pretty female news reader who's as expressionless as a statue. I recognize the sign to Cape Spear. Ray Harding is talking then Norah's picture appears. I turn up the volume: “Harding spotted the snowshoe sticking out of the ice. Divers were called to the scene, where they found only a moose carcass. The investigation into Myrick's disappearance is ongoing. Police would like to remind people to stay off the ice this time of year.”

Mercedes comes into the room and asks why everyone is so quiet. Cyril turns off the television then takes her by the arm into the kitchen. Nancy follows.

Henry sits by my side, crowding me on the chesterfield. He lays his arm around my shoulders. I brush his arm off and leave the room. The hallway is dark but I know the way to the basement. I lock the door from the inside. I don't bother with the light on the stairs or in my bedroom. I pull the blankets up and around my neck. I feel myself sinking, like during those last uncountable seconds before falling asleep, or like an object floating slowly to the bottom of a pond.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

I
MOVE MY CHAIR FROM MY
desk to face the window. I picture her in the carrel, the first time I really took notice. It was a distant image, back on, out of focus even with the binoculars.

There's a knock. “Open up. It's me.”

I ignore it but he keeps knocking so I open finally. He walks in, examines my desk and flicks papers around as if he's searching for something. “How are you?” Henry says.

“Not well.”

He glances at the coffee pot where there's nothing brewing. “It didn't turn out how we expected.”

“I'd say. Not for me, you, Norah...”

“Sure you're not leaving anyone out?”

I haven't moved from the door since I opened it for him. “If you're going to make fun of me, you might as well leave now.”

Henry talks to the coffee pot. “A little humour might be exactly the remedy, under the circumstances.”

“There's a time and place for everything, Henry.”

“You're right.”

“I'm surprised to hear you say that.”

“Me too, but it's easier than admitting I was wrong,” he says.

“Admitting you're wrong won't change what happened.”

He walks from there to the window. “Never does.”

I sit in my chair in front of the window. “I'm glad you finally believe I'm not wrong all the time.”

“If you weren't wrong now and then, you wouldn't be human.”

“What's to appreciate about that?”

“If we weren't human, we wouldn't need each other.”

“You don't need me, Henry.”

“If I had a finer accent, a rounder belly, a more sardonic wit, I wouldn't need to be grateful to Carl Brunet, of all people, for wrangling and dangling behind the scenes to unite me with a woman as divine as Nancy.”

“There was no wrangling and dangling.”

“You did more than anyone else has done for me since I've been here. You can't make a decent pot of coffee, you're too preoccupied with details and numbers, you don't read enough, you haven't got any sense most of the time, but who else at this library tolerates the likes of Henry Kelly with his chronic complaining, brazen manners, filthy tongue and damning advice? Not to mention that he waddles more than a duck.” He laughs then coughs.

“I'm glad you believe I have a stray redeeming quality.”

“At the minimum, one. Maybe one and a half. You did win an award this year, don't forget that.”

“I'm surprised the cuckolded-husband award could qualify for half of a redeeming quality.”

“We might be able to bend the rules under the circumstances. I'll see what I can do.”

“The qualities haven't done me much good.”

“They have for others.”

“I hope you don't mean Norah.”

He waves a dismissive hand at me. “That wasn't your fault. If you'd ignored me, she might still be with you.”

“It's too late now, but I appreciate the apology anyway.”

“It's not an apology,” he says. “It's the facts. You're the one who claims to be Cartesian. You should be able to recognize facts when you see them.”

“Chalk it up as one of my imperfections.” I glance over my shoulder.

He's sitting at my desk, squinting at the screen, poking at my keyboard.

“I almost forgot why I came by,” he says. “It's time I started brushing up on my computer skills. You should see Nancy with the Internet. She's a whiz. Why don't you show me a few tricks?”

“I thought you despised computers and the Internet.”

“Nancy says it will come in handy to have some computer skills for my bookstore. She's right. Besides, it's important to keep up with the times. Libraries are changing. Best to go with the flow. As they say, you can't hold off the deluge with a finger poked in the dyke. How about a spot of coffee and some biscuits before we begin?”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

S
OMETIMES, WHEN ONE OF THOSE
waves of missing her swells up inside me, I hop in my new hatchback then drive out to Cliffhead. The place feels quiet without her. The windows on the house are covered with sheets of plywood. One side of the garden fence is broken down. There's no evidence of any recent bonfires on the beach. In the meadow, there's no sign of the three-legged fox, but over by the pond the beaver is still active. It feels good to revisit the pond and remember how we used to lie side by side with our toes touching on that greedy strip of sand. I miss sharing a seat with her in the rowboat. I certainly don't miss the tannic, boggy taste of pond water. I miss the fruity, earthy smell of the mini rhododendrons, the blueberry and marshberry bushes. I miss the patient call of the white-throated sparrow in the quiet of a Cliffhead afternoon. When I'm there, I like to shut my eyes and listen to the wind. I could swear there's meaning in the sounds the gusts produce,
with the surrounding spruce trees for their voice box. At times, it seems excited and happy. Other times, it's tender and affectionate. Then there are those moments when the sound reminds me of a child crying for a parent. In the early morning, the crows mimic the sound but with a harsher articulation and a telling or demanding tone. The sound's never angry, even though I expect it should be.

When I told Henry about the Cliffhead wind and how it makes me think of Norah, he glanced at me from the corner of his eye and said, “Write it all down and call it
Wuthering Heights: The Newfoundland Version.
” I might consider that as a project for another day. For now, I have my hands full.

Campus Voice

August 6, 2001 Report Released

The External Committee on Operations and

Procedures at King Edward University Library

released its report this week. Chair Edith Peddigrew

told the Voice that the Committee found “gross

inadequacies and numerous irregularities in the

management of Special Collections.”

The report's recommendations include an initiative

to investigate how knowledge and information

analysis can inform administrative decisions without

compromising the privacy of individuals. Dr. Carl

Brunet will head up the new initiative entitled

Project Jabberwocky. On September 8th, Brunet will

officially launch the web site “A Room with a View,”

which he told the Voice will provide “online, public

access to Special Collections materials.”

The Campus Voice will be in attendance at the

launch. Pick up your copy next week to hear more

on this story.

When I'm not busy with “Jabberwocky” and “A Room with a View,” I'm working on my house. It's in a sheltered nook of a bay near the ocean with a road between my land and the beach. Folio seems to like it. She's been with me ever since the day I ran into Walter by the pond. I heard someone shouting at the dogs, followed the voice and came upon him as he was checking on the traps Ray had set for the birds. Walter was trying to free a crow. Octavo and Quarto were jumping up at the bird. Folio sat nearby watching the spectacle. Walter kicked Octavo away when the dog's jaws grazed the feathers of the crow, almost catching him. I asked if I could help with the dogs.

“They're on their way to the SPCA,” he said.

I couldn't imagine Folio in a cage or adopted by city people and living in some suburb, so I offered to take her. Later that afternoon, I stopped by Walter's house for her bed and food.