Our Missing Hearts (59)

He was half laughing again, as the memory of it swirled around him, pulling him back into the past.

Finally she calmed down and she just lay there. Catching her breath, looking at the ceiling, big smile still on her face. Marie, I said again, what’s so funny? She let out a big sigh. She looked so happy. Everything, she said. Everything.



* * *



? ? ?

She left Marie’s family with a request, and a name.

Put her in a poem, Mr. Johnson said, she’d like that. You put her in a poem, okay? Make other people remember her.

I’ll try, Margaret said, though she knew, already, that no poem could encapsulate Marie, just as no poem could encapsulate Bird. There would always be too much left unsaid.

Mrs. Johnson said nothing, just hugged Margaret, even tighter than Margaret hugged her. They would never speak again, but they were linked now, as those who’ve been through something terrible together are forever fused, in ways they don’t always understand.

The name was the librarian’s, though the Johnsons only knew her last: Mrs. Adelman this, Mrs. Adelman that, that’s all that came out of Marie’s mouth all of high school, her mother said, she spent all her free time over there. Across town; catch the bus on the corner. Margaret walked instead, following the trail of bus stop signs, the bus itself lumbering past her at encouraging intervals, reassuring her she was still on the path. By the time she reached the library, six buses had passed her, and perhaps it was because of this that she had the feeling, ascending the steps of the library, that she had been here before, that some previous version or versions of herself had already arrived, were already within, had already discovered what she herself was only now entering to find.

The library was not the vast marble hall she’d expected, but warm and cozy, the carpet and walls and shelves all the honeyed tan of an old leather armchair, like a great-aunt’s living room, and at the desk in the back corner sat only one librarian, an older woman with a streak of white slicing through her graying hair right at the temple—a lightning bolt emanating from her brain—and penetrating eyes, and the most regally upright posture Margaret had ever seen, and she had let her instinct guide her.

Mrs. Adelman? she said. I’m here about Marie.

The librarian said nothing at first, just studied Margaret in silence for a long time. As if they’d met in a past life and she was trying to place her. Then a change came across her face, like clouds in a strong breeze shifting across the sky.

Oh yes, she said. I know you.

Then, after a moment of quiet: I gave her your book, you know.

It was one of many books the librarian had given Marie over the years. They’d first struck up a friendship, the two of them, when Marie came in trying to trace her roots. Mrs. Adelman had helped her find the right archives and historical societies to contact, and she had been there, too, when Marie had reached the hole in the records where the rest of her lineage had been erased. Her own grandparents had fled Munich in the 1930s, but the rest of the family had stayed, and though it wasn’t the same, she knew the pain of fault lines in family history that you could not see across. Then, as Marie grew older and her interests broadened, Mrs. Adelman had loved following her mind, feeding this girl whose appetite to know was omnivorous and insatiable. Notes of a Native Son. Biographies of Gandhi and Grace Lee Boggs. Books on ecology, on tarot, on space exploration and climate change. And poetry, too: Marie had started with the poems from school, Keats and Wordsworth and Yeats, and had come looking for more, and the librarian had helped her find it: Lucille Clifton, Adrienne Rich, Ada Limón, Ross Gay. All of these books the librarian had given to Marie and Marie had dutifully returned each two weeks later, never once overdue. The week Marie headed off to college, she’d come to the library one last time and Mrs. Adelman had slipped a slim parcel in blue wrapping paper across the counter. Written inside the flyleaf: You never need to give this one back. On the cover, a close-up photo of a split pomegranate, seeds glistening like jewels.

We’ve removed it, Mrs. Adelman said. Not my decision. After Marie, people started calling in. Some of them wanted to borrow it. But then, once the talk-radio shows and those cable guys went after you, people got scared. How could we keep such a book, they wanted to know. If you were really a subversive, how could we risk letting young minds see it? In the end the higher-ups decided it was easier to just remove it. The mayor was nervous. Same thing’s been happening other places, according to my friends. Not just your book; anything with the remotest ties to China. Anything Asian. Anything that might be a risk.

It’s cowardly, Margaret said, and Mrs. Adelman said, Well, they’ve got children, too, you know.

There was a long silence.

Your son, Mrs. Adelman said. The news said you had a son. How old?

Nine, Margaret said. Ten in the summer.

In silence she tried to imagine Bird’s birthday. Would there be a cake? Candles? What would they celebrate? Would he miss her? All she can picture is a dark room.

So before they removed him, you removed yourself.

Margaret nodded dumbly.

It devastated Marie, Mrs. Adelman said. Those children taken to silence their parents, and the news not even mentioning it. Everyone staying quiet, pretending it didn’t happen, saying they deserved it. All those families, split apart.

On the news they showed only a few, the cases where it seemed clear-cut, the right answer obvious and uncomplicated.