Table of Contents
For Lydia and Heidi
May all doorsand all booksbe open to you both
Acknowledgments
Although Ive had to demolish my childhood fantasy that Penguin Books is somehow run by Mr. Poppers penguins, Ive happily replaced it with the knowledge that it is populated by wonderful people who were willing to arrange an editing and production schedule around the birth of my second child. Boundless thanks to Kathryn Court, Alexis Washam, Tara Singh, Kate Griggs, and Carolyn Coleburn at Viking, and also to Yuki Hirose for her time and help. Nicole Aragi appeared from the sky one day and turned my pumpkin into a chariot, and I still cant believe my luck or sufficiently express my thanks. David Huddle was an early and supportive reader, and Heidi Pitlors championing of my short fiction gave me the momentum to keep working and publishing when I might otherwise have lost steam.
Very few writers thank their mothers for keen editorial insight; Im happy to be the exception. And finally, for most of this books life, its sole audience was my husband, Jonathan Freeman. Only his students, past and present, will understand how fortunate I am to have such a kind and perceptive man as my first reader.
Ian Was Never Happy Unless There Was a Prologue
Imight be the villain of this story. Even now, its hard to tell.
Back at the library, amid the books and books on ancient Egypt, the picture the children loved most showed the god of death weighing a dead mans heart against a feather. There is this consolation, then, at least: one day, I will know my guilt.
Ive left behind everyone I used to know. Ive found another library, one with oak walls, iron railings. A college library, where the borrowers already know what theyre looking for. I scan their books and they barely acknowledge me through their caffeinated haze. Its nothing like my old stained-carpet, brick-walled library, but the books are the samesame spines, same codes on yellowed labels. I know whats in them all. They whisper their judgment down.
The runaways, the kidnappers, look down from their shelves and claim me for their own. They tell me to light out for the Territory, reckon Im headed for Hell just like them. They say Im the most terrific liar they ever saw in their lives. And that one, old lecher-lepidopterist, gabbling grabber, stirring his vodka-pineapple from the high narrow shelf of N-A-B, let me twist his words. (You can always count on a librarian for a derivative prose style): Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what I envied, what I thought I could fix. Look at this prison of books.
Before this all began, I told Rocky that one day Id arrange my books by main character, down through the alphabet. I realize now where Id be: Hull, snug between Huck and Humbert. But really I should file it under Drake, for Ian, for the boy I stole, because regardless of who the villain is, Im not the hero of this story. Im not even the subject of this prayer.
Story Hour
Every Friday at 4:30, they gathered cross-legged on the brown shag rug, picked at its crust of mud and glitter and Elmers glue, and leaned against the picture book shelves.
I had five regulars, and a couple of them would have come seven days a week if they could. Ian Drake came with chicken pox, and with a broken leg. He came even when he knew it had been canceled that week, and sat there reading aloud to himself. And then each week there were two or three extras whose parents happened to need a babysitter. Theyd squirm through chapters 8 and 9 of a book they couldnt follow, pulling strings from their socks and then flossing their teeth with them.
That fall, five years ago, we were halfway through Matilda. Ian came galloping up to me before reading time, our fourth week into the book.
I told my mom were reading Little House in the Big Woods again. I dont think shed be a fan of Matilda too much. She didnt even like Fantastic Mr. Fox. He forked his fingers through his hair. Are we capisce?
I nodded. We dont want your mom to worry. We hadnt gotten to the magic part yet, but Ian had read it before, secretly, crouched on the floor by the Roald Dahl shelf. He knew what was coming.
He skipped off down the biography aisle, then wandered back up through science, his head tilted sideways to read the spines.
Loraine came up beside meLoraine Best, the head librarian, who thank God hadnt heard our collusionsand watched the first few children gather on the rug. She came downstairs some Fridays just to smile and nod at the mothers as they dropped them off, as if she had some hand in Chapter Book Hour. As if her reading three minutes of Green Eggs and Ham wouldnt make half the children cry and the others raise their hands to ask if she was a good witch or a bad witch.
Ian disappeared again, then walked up through American History, touching each book in the top right-hand row. He practically lives here, doesnt he? Loraine whispered. That little homosexual boy.
Hes ten years old! I said. I doubt hes anything-sexual.
Well Im sorry, Lucy, I have nothing against him, but that child is a gay. She said it with the same tone of pleasure at her own imagined magnanimity that my father used every time he referred to Ophelia, my black secretary.
Over in fiction now, Ian stood on tiptoes to pull a large green book from a high shelf. A mystery: the blue sticker-man with his magnifying glass peered from the spine. Ian sat on the floor and started in on the first page as if it indeed contained all the mysteries of the world, as if everything in the universe could be solved by page 132. His glasses caught the fluorescent light, two yellow disks over the pages. He didnt move until the other children began gathering and Loraine bent down beside him and said, Everyones waiting for you. We werentTony didnt even have his coat off yetbut Ian scooted on his rear all the way across the floor to join us, without ever looking up from the book.
We had five listeners that day, all regulars.
All right, I said, hoping Loraine would make her exit now, where did we leave off?
Miss Trunchbull yelled because they didnt know their math, said Melissa.
And she yelled at Miss Honey.
And they were learning their threes.
Ian sighed loudly and held up his hand.
Yes?
That was all two weeks ago. BUT, when last we left our heroine, she was learning of Miss Trunchbulls history as a hammer thrower, and also we were learning of the many torture devices she kept in her office.
Thank you, Ian. He grinned at me. Loraine rolled her eyeswhether at me or Ian, I wasnt sureand tottered back to the stairs. I almost always had to cut Ian off, but he didnt mind. Short of burning down the library there was nothing I could do that would push him away. I was keeping Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing behind the desk to sneak to him whenever he came without his babysitter. Almost every afternoon for the past week he had run downstairs and stuck his head over my desk, panting.
Back then, before that long winter, Ian reminded me most of a helium balloon. Not just his voice, but the way hed look straight up when he talked and bounce around on his toes as if he were struggling not to take off.
