The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections(56)

The office had a 1950s stink. Vivek had been dumped among the dusty deceased houseplants and dog-eared academic journals of his predecessor. Scuffed, ink-stained, wobbly furniture that had been used by the generation before Vivek and would be used decades after he was gone. In this case, it fit. Vivek’s despair would have been out of place had the room been furnished by IKEA.

Behind the couch, closer to the heavy wooden desk, was a red duffel bag. Liesl didn’t think that Vivek had been taking breaks from his bouts of weeping to go swim some laps. A blue shirt, similar to the blue shirt Vivek was already wearing, peeked out of the red bag.

Liesl waited for a break in the crying so she could ask Vivek why he was living out of his office.

“Well,” he said, “I have no home to go to.”

“I thought you had been staying with your parents.”

“I broke them when I married a white lady.”

“I thought they loved Miriam.”

“Can you imagine proving them right?”

“But your apartment? Why not stay there while Miriam isn’t there?”

“Would you?” Those red-rimmed eyes looked up at her, and she had to acknowledge that in his position, no, she wouldn’t.

“What was going on?” she said. “You two had separated before she went missing; you told me that yourself. Was it before you moved back from London? Could it explain why she’s disappeared?”

“You must have noticed?”

“No. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Miriam could be a difficult woman.”

“Most people are difficult at one time or another.”

“Miriam’s difficulty had to do with illness.”

“Her illness was difficult to deal with, or her illness made her difficult?”

“Miriam was depressed.”

He was absorbed by the crying again. She helplessly looked around the office for a box of tissues or a tranquilizer. There were none. Men never had tissues. She waited again for the crying to stop.

Liesl adjusted the damp collar of her shirt and tried to decide how much of this revelation was a revelation at all. Not long before Liesl’s book leave, Miriam had moved her desk in the work space. Liesl had come to work one day to find that Miriam had relocated from the center desk where she had sat for years to a corner desk where she faced the wall.

“Your desk?” She had stood in front of Miriam’s new work space, talking to Miriam’s back, which was the only way to address her in the new configuration. “You moved your desk?”

Miriam had turned around. Not before completing the sentence she was typing and adjusting the collar of her blouse. “Is it a problem?”

“Was the other one?” Liesl asked. “A problem, I mean. You’d been in that desk since you started working here.”

“And now I’ve moved,” Miriam said.

Liesl tapped her fingernails on the filing cabinet that was being used as a divider. Miriam’s eyes were pocketed in dark circles.

“Is it a problem?” Miriam repeated the question, and her voice quavered like a violin string that was pulled too tight. Liesl decided that an office move wasn’t worth making someone upset, so she shook her head, indicating that no, it wasn’t a problem. She decided not to ask if the tears that were welling were really about the desk. She wouldn’t have framed it that way at the time, but stasis is a decision too. No one ever said anything to her about it again. The corner desk had been empty. Miriam took a lot of sick days—that was true too—but in an office full of elderly people, that didn’t stand out. Even though Miriam was not herself elderly.

“To call her a thief,” Vivek whispered.

Liesl was ashamed. She shouldn’t have entertained the possibility for even a minute. She shouldn’t have let the police entertain the possibility.

“You should get up and have a drink of water.”

“She was too sick to be a thief,” he said.

Pacing the office like it was a prison cell, Liesl tried to conjure Miriam in her mind. The only picture that came to her was that of the back of Miriam’s head, the familiar posture at the desk pushed in the corner, begging for privacy, begging for help.

“What do you mean, too sick?” Liesl said.

“Being a thief takes work,” Vivek said. “She could barely get up and shower most days.”

“That isn’t true.” She thought of John. In bed for two weeks at a time. Hannah eating dry toast for dinner when there was no one around to cook her soup.

“You weren’t paying attention.”

“Maybe not,” Liesl said. “But I think I’d have noticed if it were that bad.”

“It was that bad. You didn’t notice.” He lay on his side on the couch. Curled in on himself. His despair didn’t allow him the energy to sit upright any longer.

“I’m sure she was sad,” Liesl said. “But people have ways of hiding that.”

“Depressed isn’t sad.”

“Of course, I know that,” Liesl said. “But it’s part of it.”

“Some days she would sit on our bed and stare at the wall for hours. Not move. Not cry. Just stare. That isn’t sad.”

Liesl sensed his need for comfort and stopped her pacing. She dropped to a squat on the floor in front of the couch. Put her hand on his head like he was a feverish child.