Part 18 (1/2)

The closest librarian is a young woman, and I automatically skip over her to look at the man at the other end of the counter. He has a sheaf of dark hair falling over his forehead and a pierced nose. His eyes are as black and s.h.i.+ny as oil slicks.

He looks up at me as I pause a few feet back from the counter with my mother's book clutched close in one arm. He sees me, and his shoulders tuck in and his spine bows slightly, as if a little bit of breath has been pressed out of him by an unseen hand.

A pretty woman is a Christmas tree, my mother told me in the airport. This fella is hanging things on my branches as his gaze sweeps from my face all the way down my body to my hips and then back to my face. Ideas fly from his widened eyes and land on me like teeny, decorative burdens. He is giving me shyness, maybe, some book smarts, and a certain yielding sweetness in the bed. The oil-slick eyes get me, and I find myself hanging a few ornaments myself, giving him deft hands and a sense of humor.

Ro Grandee would go lean over the counter and touch her hair a lot of times, maybe touch his. She'd pinch and wheedle information out by turns. Rose Mae Lolley would simply hop over to his side, get herself a fist full of t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e, and twist until he spilled. I pause, uncertain, and then do the one thing that comes least naturally: I step straight toward the female librarian.

She looks soft, as if she's been raised in a box and purely milk-fed, like veal. A line of teeny blue b.u.t.terfly tattoos flutter out from behind her ear, cross her collarbone, and disappear into her blouse. I give her the most friendly, open smile that I can muster, put my hand out, and say, ”Hi, I'm Ivy. Ivy Rose Wheeler.”

She takes my hand and says, ”All Swan.”

I blink. ”All what?”

”All swan,” she says, smiling, then explains, ”that's my name.” She spells it for me, Alswan, then cranes her long neck at me, trying to look like she's at least some swan. She's got a good yard of extremely rumpled golden brown hair, wild, like she's spent the afternoon having cheerful jungle s.e.x with Tarzan in the stacks. Tarzan kept her bra, looks like.

She's for sure younger than me and maybe prettier than me, which makes her about the last creature alive any of my former selves would go to for help; score one for the new girl. I plant myself in front of her and I say, ”I found this book of y'all's. In an airport.”

I hand over the Stephen King book, and Alswan flips open the cover to read the stamp. ”This is ours all right. Thank you.”

”The woman who left it, she also left something in it. Inside it. Something important. Or valuable, I mean.” I'm practically stuttering. I'm not sure what kind of person Ivy Rose will turn out to be, but sadly, she's a terrible liar. At least to women. Perhaps, I think, this is because I weathered adolescence without a mother to practice on. Something else to put on Claire Lolley's long, long tab. ”I need to get in touch with the woman who checked it out.”

Alswan's eyebrows come together. ”I can't give out information about our patrons. That's not... We don't do that.”

”I understand,” I say, nodding. ”But I was hoping you could contact the person and tell her I'm here with the book.” Alswan regards me with a healthy skepticism. I soldier on. ”The thing I found, it's not something she can easily replace. She must want it.”

Alswan's mouth purses up into a prim wad, as if, under the s.e.x hair and the tats, the spirit of my hometown librarian is rising up inside her. Mrs. Blount once gave me this exact face back in Fruiton, when she caught me reading D. H. Lawrence at thirteen. Alswan clearly has not bought what I am selling, but she humors me and says, ”I'll take a look.”

She turns her monitor, canting it so the back is squarely facing me. She looks back and forth from the book to her screen, typing in the numbers on the spine. She waits, squinting at her screen, while the old computer grinds its way to an answer.

I can't see the information that comes up, but Alswan says, ”Oh,” in such a tone that I know at once she recognizes the name. This girl knows my mother; she softens toward me immediately. As she turns back to me, she looks me up and down, fast. It's as if she is trying to see through my clothes, but not like her male colleague did. There's no s.e.x in it. Curiosity, maybe some pity, but no s.e.x. Her voice is considerably warmer when she says, ”You're one of Mirabelle's girls! You should have said so.”

”Mirabelle,” I say, flat, so it could be a question or a confirmation. My mother's name is Claire, and as far as I know, I am her only girl. Still, the name goes with the gypsy clothes and long strings of hair, and the first thing people in hiding change is their name. My heartbeat picks up.

Alswan says, ”Yes. Our book club meets at her house. Just wait over there, okay? I'll call her and tell her you are here.”

”Okay,” I say. I blink at her, suddenly short of breath, and she blinks back, all earnesty. I say, ”Tell her it's Ivy Rose Rose. From the airport. Tell her I'm the one who has her book.”

”Don't worry,” Alswan says. Her smile is now so warm and encouraging that I find it slightly creepy. ”She'll remember you. She does this all the time.”

”Thank you,” I say, wondering what it is my mother does all the time. I have some doubt curling up from my stomach like a growing vine, trying to close my throat. What if this mysterious Mirabelle is not even my mother? Perhaps my mother stole the book from her. her.

I step away from the counter as Alswan picks up the phone. I do not go far. There's an ”Our Book Club Recommends...” table just to the right, where some industrious soul has set up a display of novels. I pick one up and stare at the cover, straining my ears to pick up Alswan's soft voice.

”Mirabelle?” I hear her say. ”It's Alswan, down at the branch.” I try to look as uneavesdroppy as humanly possible, but Alswan turns her back to me and I can't hear what she says next.

After a minute, she turns back to look at me. I pretend to be lost in the book I am holding. I don't even know what it is. h.e.l.l, it could be upside down. I'm listening so hard, I've gone half-blind to compensate. I catch Alswan saying, ”... five one sounds about right... Ivy... yes, dark hair.”

Alswan turns away again. I wait until she hangs up, and then she's busy, writing something down on a piece of sc.r.a.p paper. When she's finished, she gestures me over.

”Mirabelle's been expecting you.” The breath rushes out of me in a whoosh whoosh, and I realize I have been holding it. My mother is Mirabelle is my mother. ”See, I told you she'd remember! Her house is a short walk away, not even five minutes. I put her number down in case you get lost.”

The paper says, ”Mirabelle Claire,” and then a phone number. Under that, Alswan has written detailed directions. I skim them. I am less than six blocks away from my mother's house.

Alswan is still talking. ”She says she is about to start a reading, so you'll need to wait outside. She's sending Parker out to meet you...” Alswan falters. ”That is, I didn't think. Do you mind a man?”

”Do I mind a man who what?” I ask.

”Oh, you know,” Alswan says, and now she sounds a touch embarra.s.sed. I look at her, puzzled. It's clear I don't know. ”I thought you might be gun-shy.”

A little Rose Mae Lolley gets out then, and I find myself smiling at her, showing quite a lot of teeth. ”I'm not gun-shy.”

”That's good!” Alswan says, almost as if she's proud of me. Like I'm two and I just took a brave bite of my peas. She adds in a rea.s.suring tone, ”And anyway, it's only Parker.” She dismisses Parker as a s.e.xual threat with a wave of her hand, and I think this Parker must be eighty-five, or gay, or five feet tall with no arms. Or maybe she only means Parker is taken.

It suddenly occurs to me that Parker might be taken by my mother. She is sending Parker outside to wait for me, so they must be living together. They may even be married. They could have children for all I know, and everything in me recoils at this idea, my mother off in California raising a herd of babies that she liked enough to keep.

”Are you okay?” Alswan says.

”I'm sorry, yes,” I say. I've fallen down a rabbit hole. I start to go, but Alswan puts her hand on my arm, stopping me. I freeze beneath it. I've never understood girly-girl friends.h.i.+ps, all that hugging and squealing and air kissing. Girls can be so touchy-feely with each other. Me, I'm just touchy. But she seems sincere, and I'm so dizzy with hate for this Parker and my mother's imaginary children with him that I don't mind it. Much. She says, ”You're going to be fine. I know Mirabelle. All you have to do is follow her rules, and she'll do anything for you. Anything.”

I nod, solemn, though I haven't the faintest clue what she is talking about: One of Mirabelle's girls. Do I mind a man. Her rules. I'm wondering now if my mother has shed her gypsy clothes and become a madam. Or a matchmaker for lesbians.

Outside, Gret is sitting up waiting for me, her nose pointing straight at the doors she last saw me enter. ”I didn't forget you, silly dog,” I say. I unhook her and we fall into step. Alswan's directions are easy to follow, even with a detour to get my bag from the VW. I could drive the rest of the way, but as hard as it seems to park around here, I decide to leave it and tote the duffel.

We walk down the streets, my feet moving faster and faster. Gret drags. A thousand dogs have peed out greetings onto the strip of green by the sidewalk, and Gretel wants to pause and sniff-read them all. I click my tongue at her, tug her along. I am close. I will see my mother-or at least her house and her maybe-husband-in four blocks. Then in three. Now I am almost running, questions stacking up with every step.

Alswan said she was about to start a reading; I a.s.sume this means she has some hapless new age seeker paying her to lay her weathered cards. Hurrying will only mean waiting longer outside with this Parker fellow, but I can't seem to slow. I am desperate to see the house where she lives, the man who shares it. Even now, accepted and on my way, I can't quite believe this Mirabelle is my airport gypsy, my long-lost mother.

It strikes me again how small the world can be and how hard it is to get truly and permanently lost. A couple of phone calls gave me Arlene Fleet. A library book is taking me directly to Claire Lolley, though she was all the way across the country hiding under a new name. My spine tingles, and I wonder how thick a trail of bread crumbs I have left for Thom Grandee to follow. I shove the thought away. He's seeking Rose Mae, and there is no Rose Mae anymore. There is only a girl named Ivy Rose Wheeler, running to her mother, now a scant two blocks away.

Questions from Alabama and Amarillo and new ones from the library are piling up into an avalanche that propels me forward toward her, fast, in spite of my heavy bag. Gret breaks into a cheerful three-legged canter to keep up with me, panting.

I come to Belgria, the street where my mother lives. It's an actual place, and I have found it, and now I am turning and now my feet are walking down it. I scan the sidewalk in front of the houses for Parker, her nonthreatening quasi man, the lover she's sent outside to wait for me.

All I see is a young woman, standing about four houses down, facing a sky blue house with a chain-link fence running around it. I'm at number 24, so that makes the blue house number 30. My mother's house. I slow and Gret tugs at the leash, but I want to study this woman before she notices me.

She's not looking down the sidewalk, watching for me. All her attention is on the house. She is in profile, her long hair hanging down her back, and she looks part Asian and part a lot of other things. She's leaning forward like a supplicant, and I read desperation in her tense shoulders. Her hands clutch and knead at the fence top.

As I get closer, I see she's talking to a man in the yard. Parker. Has to be. He's standing inside the fence, a few feet in front of the narrow, covered porch that runs the length of the house.

I give Parker the once-over, and I understand at once why Alswan wasn't worried that a gun-shy girl might get spooked. He's a long, narrow, pale fellow, his posture so slouchy that he's the droopy definition of nonthreatening. He's wearing a long-sleeved jersey over khakis and, G.o.d help him, mandals. He has a sharp, attractive face, but his heavy-lidded eyes and laid-back expression say he's about to carefully catch a porch spider in a Dixie cup and walk it out to the garden. Then he'll recycle the cup.

He has a couple of mutts lolling at his feet, Lab mixes, both floppy-eared and jet black. A third dog is standing on the porch stairs, a teeny Boston terrier with pugnacious shoulders. The terrier is the fiercest thing in the yard, man included, and he wouldn't even come to my knees.

I draw closer, trying to get a read on my potential stepfather. He's young, I realize. Closer to my age than my mother's. A lot closer. I find my lip curling up, wondering what the h.e.l.l she's doing living with a fellow who is young enough to be her- I stop abruptly. Maybe Parker is is her son. He looks Irish, with high, flat cheeks and a narrow jaw, his skull so angular that it looks like it has a few extra bones in it. her son. He looks Irish, with high, flat cheeks and a narrow jaw, his skull so angular that it looks like it has a few extra bones in it.

I come closer, close enough to hear Parker say, ”It's Mirabelle's call, Lilah.” His voice is set low, as mellow as his posture. He calls her Mirabelle, not Mom or Mother, but maybe children call their mothers Mirabelle in California. As for Claire Lolley, she didn't like motherhood enough the first time around to keep the job. Maybe the second time she kept the kid but not the t.i.tle.

”Please,” Lilah says. Her voice breaks in the middle of the word. ”I can do it right this time.” She sounds breathless and sorry and eight years old.

Just then Gretel clues in that we are approaching a yard full of dogs, and she jerks me forward, tail wagging.