The Paris Library(68)

Lord, I loved the calm there. No babies bawling. Not a thing out of place. Newspapers folded in the basket beside her chair. Our books arranged according to the Odile-Lily Decimal system. The small framed photos of her husband and son.

“Tell me about Mr. Gustafson.”

“Buck?” She squinted, as if she hadn’t thought about him in a long time and wasn’t sure who I meant. “A man’s man. Handsome in a rugged way, with stubble on those ruddy cheeks of his. He liked to hunt, which is how he got his nickname. He killed his first deer, a six-point buck, when he was ten. Its mangy carcass was our first fight. Buck wanted the head of that poor animal over the mantel; I wanted it nowhere near me.”

“Who won?”

“Well, ma grande, that was the first lesson I learned as a young wife.” She got up from the table and moved to the sink. “Sometimes, when you win, you lose. I got rid of the stuffed head—the garbage man picked it up when Buck was at work. But he was angry for a good long while.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed.” Her back to me, she tucked the plates on the dish rack into the cupboard.

“What did you and Buck like to do together?”

“We raised our son.”

“And after he was grown?”

She turned to me. “Buck and I didn’t have much in common. He loved attending football games; I preferred to read. But we both liked brisk walks. He was romantic. He never stopped holding doors open for me, never stopped holding my hand. At midnight, we sometimes went to the park and played on the swing set, like children.”

It was the most she’d ever said about her life, and I stayed silent, hoping she’d continue.

“After he died, I donated most of his things to charity—his tools, the truck. But I kept his rifle. I needed something important to him to remain.”

The phone rang. Eleanor again. I headed home. After cooking dinner and cleaning up, I fell into bed still wearing my jeans, too tired to study. Anyway, calculus paled next to Odile’s lesson: Love is accepting someone, all parts of them, even the ones you don’t like or understand.



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WHEN ELEANOR GOT home from the fall parent-teacher conference, she slammed the back door. “Lily?” she hollered. “Where are you?”

In the living room, watching the boys, where else? On my lap, Joe tugged at my hair; lying on the blanket I knit for him, Benjy noticed his toes for the first time.

Eleanor strode in. “Miss White said you fall asleep in class. She made it sound like I was somehow at fault. I’m not a bad mother! Why don’t you get dinner going while I feed Benjy?”

She hiked up her shirt over her sagging belly, past a spidery web of stretch marks. I fled to the kitchen before she undid her bra and released her chapped nipple. Seeing it once had been enough. I wished that Eleanor trusted me less. I wished she’d go back to the aerobics tapes and chatting with Odile, but she spent most of her time making homemade baby food and sobbing at the sink. “You’re a mother but also a woman,” Odile had told her. It seemed to me like Eleanor had given up on the woman she used to be.

Little by little, I had stopped doing homework and hanging out with Mary Louise. Even French was fini. Eleanor needed me. Sometimes, she just sat and contemplated the wall. “Don’t you want to hold Benjy?” I’d say. Or, “Look, Eleanor, Joe’s teeth are coming in.” She would barely nod.

When I got my report card, I realized how the situation had devolved. Math: C-. English: B-. Science: C-. History: C-. “What happened?” Mr. Moriarty wrote in red ink. I trudged home, afraid that like Eleanor, I’d given up on the girl I’d been.

“Lily?” Odile said from her porch.

I continued on.

“Lily, what’s wrong?” She steered me into her house and pried the report card from me.

“Oh, là là” she said.

“I have to go, Eleanor needs my help.”

The aroma of chocolate filled the air. Odile held out a tray of cookies. Hunkered on her couch, crumbs spilling onto my clothes, I gorged, not even tasting them.

She watched sadly. “What’s going on at home?”

“Rien. Nothing.” I didn’t want to complain.

“You must stand up for yourself.”

“Can’t you talk to them?” I asked.

“In the long run that won’t help. You must learn the art of negotiation.”

I snorted. “Like they’d listen to me.”

“Talk to them.”

“Eleanor has a full plate.”

“Tell your father how you feel.”

“He won’t care.”

“Make him care.”

“How?”

“What does he want?” Odile asked.

I considered the question. “To be left in peace.”

“What does he want for you?”

Mom had wanted me to go to college. She almost went, but got married instead. If Dad wanted anything for me, I didn’t know about it. And there was no way I could ask, at least not at home, where Eleanor and the boys ate all his attention. “Maybe… maybe I could go to his office. But he might be mad.”

“He might not. You must try.”



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