Dead Over Heels

reception area and started to go to the doctor’s office with some files.

I had more to think about than I could cram in my brain. I’d dropped Angel off at home, promising to take her prescription for maternity vitamins to the pharmacy on my way home from work. Angel clearly wanted some time to herself, and I could understand why. Telling your forty-seven-year-old vasectomied husband that he’s about to be a dad was not an enviable proposition. I wanted to talk the situation over with Martin, but of course I couldn’t tell him Angel was expecting until she told her own husband. So probably it was just as well I had to go to work.

The Lawrenceton Public Library is a large two-story block with a low addition to the rear of the building for offices. This brand-new addition, achieved mostly by a bequest from an anonymous patron, a few other donations, and matching community improvement funds, is easily the nicest part of the library, and it’s a pity I get to spend so little time in it. It consists of a large employee break room with a row of bright lockers for personal possessions, a microwave, refrigerator, table and chairs, and a stove; Sam Clerrick’s office (with space outside for a secretary, though now he only has a volunteer part-time); and a “community interest” room, where various clubs can meet free of charge if they are careful to schedule it well ahead of time. And there’s a nice employee bathroom.

The rest of the library, where I get to spend my working hours, is a plain old creaky public building, with indoor-outdoor carpeting that resembles woven dead grass with trampled-in mustard, the usual row upon row of gray metal shelves, a two-story entrance and nice staircase up to the second floor, which has a gallery running all the way around with various Dewey Decimal categories lining it, and lots of table-and-chair sets for kids doing homework or genealogists doing research. There’s an area set aside by clever use of shelving and extra bulletin boards, and it’s designated as the Children’s Room.

Whatever its drawbacks, overall there is that wonderful smell of books, and the relaxing, intelligent feeling of being surrounded by generation after generation of thought.

I’ve got libraries in my blood.

Of course, there are a few things I have to put up with to work in this wonderful place, and one of them was bearing down on me. Lillian Schmidt, buttons bulging and girdle creaking, had her eyebrows up in that “Hah! I caught you!” look.

“Late today, aren’t we?” Lillian fired as her opening shot.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I had to take a friend to the doctor.”

“Wonder what would happen if all of us did that? Guess the library just wouldn’t open!”

I took a deep breath.

“I’m late enough as it is,” I said with a smile. “Excuse me, Lillian, but I can’t stand here and chat.” I pulled out the little key to my locker, used it, and stuck my purse inside, pocketing the key in my khaki slacks. I was due to tell a story in two minutes.

The librarian I was replacing, at least temporarily, was the children’s librarian.

Perhaps ten preschoolers were already seated in an expectant semicircle when I plopped down in the big chair in the middle.

“Good morning!” I said with enough glee to raise a hot-air balloon.

“Good morning,” the children chorused back politely. This was the First Church of God the Creator day-care group, with a couple of other loose kids thrown in, story-time regulars. The moms and the day-care providers sat in a little group over in one corner, their expression one of relief that someone else was shouldering the burden, at least for a few minutes.

“This morning, I’m going to tell you about Alexander’s bad day,” I said, casting a covert glance at the book the volunteer for the morning, my friend Lizanne Sewell, had left by the chair: Alexander and the No-Good, Awful, Very Bad Day. Most of the kids turned hopeful faces in my direction, though a few were looking anywhere but at me.

“I’ll bet some of you have had bad days at one time or another, am I right? What happened on your bad day, Irene?” This to a little girl with a wonderful, large easy-to-read name tag. Irene pushed her shaggy black bangs out of her eyes and squashed the slack in her T-shirt in one grubby fist.

“On my bad day my dad left my mom and me and went to live in Memphis,” Irene said.

I closed my eyes.

It was only ten o’clock in the morning.

“Well, Irene, that was a bad day,” I said, nodding soberly to show I was giving due weight to her problem. “Has anyone else ever had a bad day?” I looked around the circle, hoping no one could top Irene’s.

“I knocked over my cereal bowl one day,” offered a little boy the color of ground coffee. I tried not to look relieved. His mother was not so guarded.

“That was a bad day, too,” I acknowledged. “Now, let me tell you about Alexander’s bad day… and if you sit still, you can see the pictures in the book as I tell the story.”

Over to one side, Lizanne was shaking her head gently from side to side, her lips pursed to hold in a giggle. Not daring to glance again in her direction, I began the book, one of my favorites.

The rest of the story time went by without a hitch, and most of the children seemed to enjoy it, which was not always the case. Only one had to go to the bathroom, and only two whispered to each other, which was quite good. Irene was one of the day-care children, so her mother wasn’t there to upbraid me for traumatizing Irene with my probing interrogation.

“It would be better for Irene if he didn’t come back,” one of the day-care workers murmured in my ear as they gathered up their flock to return to the church. “He drank like a fish.” I thought briefly of Jack Burns driving his car into a tree, then forced myself back to the present.

I realized the woman was trying to make me feel better, and I smiled and thanked her. “Come back soon, kids!” I chirped, being perky all over the place.

The little ones all smiled and waved, even the ones who hadn’t listened to a word I said.

Lizanne was ready to help me change the bulletin board, and in fact she’d made most of the items to go on it. With construction paper and some contact sheets, we’d created butterflies, hummingbirds, fish, books, baseballs, and other signs of warm weather. Maybe we were being unduly optimistic about the books, but the summer reading program had always been one of the library’s best features, and Sam was counting on me to start plugging it early.

After we’d commented on the way story time had gone, Lizanne and I began to work together companionably, referring to our sketch of the finished product from time to time, handing each other push pins or border and so on. From time to time Lizanne would stop and press a hand to her protuberant stomach; the baby was moving a lot, since she was in her sixth month. Every time, Lizanne would smile her beautiful slow smile.

“Has Bubba made plans for what to do if the baby comes while the legislature’s in session?” I asked.

“At least ten plans,” Lizanne said. “But maybe it’ll come before he reconvenes.”

Bubba Sewell, Lizanne’s husband, was a state representative and a local lawyer. Bubba was ambitious and intelligent, and, I think, basically an honest person. Lizanne was beautiful and slow-moving and somehow almost always managed things so that they pleased her. I could hardly wait to see what the baby’s character would be.

Lizanne left to eat lunch with her mother-in-law, to whose opinions on the baby’s upbringing she was blandly indifferent, and I helped some preschool children pick out books. One mother of a nine-year-old boy with a stomach bug came in to get some books and videos to keep him amused, and I collected a few natural history books with plenty of gross pictures of frogs and snakes.

My stomach was growling inelegantly at one o’clock when the library aide came to the children’s room to take my place. The aide was a heavy woman with pecan-colored skin named Beverly Rillington, who couldn’t be more than twenty-one. Whether it was because of race, age, or income level, Beverly and I were having a hard time geeing and hawing together. She and the previous children’s librarian had also had personality conflicts, Sam Clerrick had warned me. But Beverly, hired under a job-training program, was efficient and reliable, and Sam had no intention of letting her go.

“How’s it going today?” Beverly asked. She looked down at me as though she didn’t really want to know.

In an attempt to break the ice, I told Beverly about the morning story hour and the disconcerting answer I’d gotten from Irene.

Beverly looked at me as though I should have known in advance I’d hear more than I bargained for. If Beverly