Louisiana Saves the Library (8 page)

Sal got in his truck and rested his hand on the gearshift. He should have asked why Louise was working at the library. Was it some kind of research for the university? Hope would tell him, of course, but he'd have to be careful. If she and Betta had any clue how interested he was in Louise, they'd make his life miserable. He turned the radio up loud. He felt nowhere near miserable now.

C
HAPTER
9

B
rendan leaned back in his leather armchair and scrolled on his smartphone until he found Louise's number. He'd made himself a scotch before calling her, and it rested in the convenient cup holder built into the arm of the chair. Julia had bought him the fancy recliner for his fortieth birthday. Her father was a retired CEO. Brendan wasn't sure what the company did, but the family had enough money to own a house in Rhode Island as well as a vacation condo in Seaside, Florida. Once he'd found out how wealthy they were—after he'd started dating Julia—he'd gently advised her against marrying him. Her money meant that Louise could argue for larger child support payments. Julia was a traditionalist, though, and she insisted on tying the knot anyway. She didn't seem to mind contributing to his children's welfare. Brendan guessed that was what it was like to always have had money. He wouldn't know. His own father was a history professor, and his mother picked up adjunct classes in the department whenever she could. She'd followed her husband to the University of Nebraska before finishing her PhD, leaving her doomed to a life of academic second-class citizenship. They hadn't been destitute, but his childhood was nothing like Julia's. She'd grown up with a nanny and a maid.

Brendan stared at Louise's number for a moment. She still had an Iowa area code, but it hardly mattered in these days of cell phones. New technology made Brendan feel old and obsolete. He hadn't even wanted the stupid phone, but Julia had talked him into it. She seemed to do everything with hers. He just used his as a phone. He put his finger on Louise's number.

“What do you want?” She sounded irritated, as usual. Another reason to hate cell phones. Louise knew he was on the other end, and she felt no obligation to be polite, even for a moment.

“Nice to talk to you too.” Brendan sipped his scotch. “I got a job at Louisiana A&M.”

“What?” There was a crash on Louise's end. It sounded like she'd dropped the phone.

Brendan felt a tiny prick of satisfaction. This was her fault for moving the kids halfway across the country. When he'd seen the job advertisement, he couldn't believe his luck. The chances that A&M would be hiring in his field were slim. After some nudging, they'd even agreed to pay him more than his current salary. During his on-campus visit, he'd restrained himself from calling Louise. He hadn't wanted to tell her anything until he had the job. “Julia and I are going to get married, and she wants to do it in New Orleans. Her family has never been there and they're excited about a big Southern extravaganza. They already booked some fancy hotel for the reception. I'm not arguing since they're paying for it. And we can look for houses in Saint Jude while we're there,” he said.

“How did you get a job? There's a hiring freeze.”

“The administration made an exception for designated flagship departments. English is hiring eight more lines.” Brendan wasn't surprised that Louise had been laid off from the library science school, something he'd found out only when she'd given him a new address to send the child support checks to. Library science was a useless field in his opinion. Certainly not an area that would qualify as a top priority for the university. He'd tried to talk her into a legitimate area of study—history or even English maybe. But she'd thought she was being practical. Big laugh on that.

“I can't believe it,” Louise said.

“We'd like you to bring Max and Zoe to the wedding,” Brendan said.

“They're too young. No.”

“Louise, I'm their father and I'm getting married.”

“So what? They don't understand that. They barely remember you.”

“I know. That's why I applied for the job.” As he got older, Brendan was beginning to regret not spending time with his children. You couldn't just waltz into a kid's life when he turned ten and expect him to want to go to model train shows with you. Little kids bored him, though. Thus far, he was a complete failure as a father. At least he could admit that.

“In case you didn't know, I lost my job. Besides, do you realize what it's like to travel with two little children by yourself? No, of course you don't. You've never done anything with them by yourself,” Louise said.

“Why didn't you tell me you needed more money?”

“Because you hardly can be bothered to send the child support we already agreed on.”

“I get paid once a month. I have to wait for the direct deposit to go through every time. I can send more if you need it.” Brendan rattled the ice in his glass. Was he supposed to be thrilled about sending money to his ex-wife? Writing the check was like an admission of defeat. The marriage had failed, and now he had to interact with his children through dollars only. Well, that was about to change. For better or worse.

“That doesn't explain it being three weeks late.”

Brendan sighed and got up to pour more scotch. “I'll send you some money for the tux and the dress. Do you think two hundred will cover it?”

“I have no idea. I've never rented a tux for a three-year-old.”

“I'll make out the check for four hundred. Get yourself something nice to wear,” he said. “Look, do me a favor, though. Don't apply for academic jobs. I don't want you moving out of state again.”

“I'll do whatever I want. You can't push me around anymore, Brendan.”

Brendan poked the button on the fridge, and ice cubes clattered into his glass. “I didn't mean it that way. I just want to be around the kids. Is that too much to ask? We'll support you. Julia's family has money.”

Louise snorted. “Good for her.”

Brendan gave up. The job market was terrible anyway, and only a few universities had library science programs anymore. He didn't need to worry. He measured some more scotch into the glass and went back to his leather chair. “When the wedding details are worked out, I'll send you an e-mail. And keep your eye out for houses near campus with swimming pools.”

“Whatever.” Louise disconnected.

C
HAPTER
10

W
hen Louise and Sylvia arrived at work the next morning, a Ford station wagon was parked at a crooked angle directly in front of the library. A white-haired woman wearing a polyester pantsuit stood by the door, a bag of books on the ground by her feet. “Good morning, ladies!”

“Hi, Ms. Trudy. Are you early, or are we late again?” Sylvia picked up the bag and unlocked the library door.

“Oh, no, honey, you're not late. I don't sleep so well anymore, you know. I wake up at five and nothing's open 'cept that Walmart off Fifty-one. I will go there and sit, but I have to tell you, their coffee's not very good.”

“Come on, we'll fix you a cup,” Sylvia said.

Inside, Louise headed straight for her desk while Sylvia started a pot of coffee. They had fallen into the habit of arriving at work before everyone else. Sylvia said she didn't like to deal with anyone except Louise before her second dose of caffeine. She made an exception for Ms. Trudy. Louise liked the old lady too. She knew everyone in the parish and was full of stories about who was having babies, getting married, dying, or moving into a nursing home. Louise's own mother was shy, staying in her own little world of housework and low-key volunteering. In contrast, Ms. Trudy never seemed to be at home. She told Louise that her husband had passed away a few years previously and since then she had tried to stay busy all the time. When she wasn't in the library, she served as a volunteer “grandmother” at the elementary school, took art classes, and worked at the food bank.

Ms. Trudy sat in her usual chair near the periodical rack and perused
People
magazine. When the coffee was ready, Louise brought her a mug. “Don't let Mr. Foley see you with that. He'll be coming in any minute.”

“Honey, I taught your Mr. Foley in high school. Never gave me any trouble.”

“Really? Well, he hasn't changed much, I guess,” Louise deadpanned.

Ms. Trudy sipped her coffee. “Once he realizes who's boss, he's as nice as pie. You just remember that, honey.”

“I'll try.” Louise had a hard time imagining Mr. Foley being nice. During her first month of working at the library, he'd only left his office to complain about the noise the employees—especially Sylvia and Louise—were making or to go to Anthony's for lunch. Louise's nerves stayed on edge whenever he was in the building. Luckily, he came in late and left early.

“Come on, now. That kind of attitude isn't going to help you one bit. I've been living in this town a long time and I can tell you, the old guard here's going to swear up and down that nothing can change. Claim they don't have the money or the support of the community. Don't you believe it. Mrs. Gunderson and her cronies been threatening to shut down this library for years. You stay here, you'll be fighting Mr. Foley's inertia and her antagonism, but there's plenty who will support you.”

“Who's Mrs. Gunderson?”

“You don't know? You'll find out soon enough, honey. She's just a police jury member, but she's angling for to be the next mayor. She hates the library because Hope's cousin Beatrice ran against her in the last election. Nearly won too. Mr. Henry and his family supported Beatrice and she'll never forgive them. She aims to shut down the whole system. She did manage to stop the last library tax from passing.”

“What's a police jury?”

“It's like a city council, but for the parish. You do know what a parish is?” Ms. Trudy gazed at Louise over her coffee cup.

“The Louisiana version of a county. I know that much.”

“Well, the police jury are basically your bosses. Mr. Foley's too.”

“Wow, small-town politics.”

“You got that right. But I'm telling you, don't let them intimidate you. Stand up to them.”

“I will.” When they were first married, Louise had always let Brendan have his way—sitting through movies she didn't want to see, eating food she didn't really like just to please him. Until she had Max. The children made her stronger because she had to be, for them. No one else was going to ask the cashier at the fast-food restaurant to swap out the toy they didn't like or tell the nursery worker that they wanted to watch Elmo rather than Thomas the Tank Engine. Louise's shyness had been put away by necessity. She would have to summon some of that courage to deal with her boss and the political forces in Alligator Bayou.

Louise left Ms. Trudy to her celebrity magazines and went back to her cubicle. A few minutes later, the back door of the library banged against the wall. Louise got up to see who was already in such a bad mood. Nobody's morning could have been worse than her own. Max had refused to put on his shoes, throwing them across the room and nearly hitting Zoe. Then, he'd grabbed Louise's shirt repeatedly while she was trying to dress the girl. Finally, the shirt ripped and she pushed him out the door barefoot. In the car, he'd turned into a sweet boy again, allowing her to put his shoes on and promising to be good. Just another exhausting day with a three-year-old.

The door slammer was Hope. She stomped into her cubicle and tossed her purse on the desk. “That darn Hilda. I swear I'm gonna beat her behind from now till Sunday.”

Sylvia stood, stretched, and went to get her third cup of coffee. “What now, girl?”

“She done put more of them tires in my yard. Where one woman gets so many bald old tires, I'll never know.”

“This is your neighbor?” Louise thought she'd heard about Hilda before, but Hope talked about everyone in the parish and sometimes it was hard to keep track. Louise looked forward to her stories like the latest installments of a soap opera.

“Next door. Crazy witch parks her truck close as she can get to my property. Darn thing blocks the sun to my kidney bean patch. Now, she's taken to dumping tires in my yard.”

“What are you going to do?” Sylvia asked, returning to her cubicle with her Santa Claus coffee mug.

“I done rolled them right over to the bank parking lot on the other side, like I always do. They'll toss 'em somewhere. No sense putting them back in the old bat's yard. She'll just stick them in my flowers tomorrow.”

Louise smiled as she applied a label to another book. The week before, Hope had told them about her third cousin who climbed through the parish jail window to visit a friend. “You gotta be one dumb nut to get arrested for breaking
into
jail,” Hope had observed, shaking her head.

Louise got up for another cup of coffee. As she was returning to her cubicle, Mr. Foley shuffled in, grunting a greeting before disappearing into his office and pulling the miniblinds closed. Sylvia had taken to calling his office “the Man Cave.”

“Do you think he looks at porn in there?” Sylvia said, poking her head above her cubicle to grin at Louise.

“I don't want to know.”

“Nah, he stays mostly on breeding and gambling sites.” Matt slouched up to Louise's cubicle, wearing a rare smile. The skinny computer tech spent most of his time huddled over his keyboard or troubleshooting at the other branches. Hope said he had two young children, which was hard to believe since he looked like he wasn't old enough to drink. Despite the braided belt he wore, his pants always seemed like they might slide down his narrow hips.

“Come on,” Sylvia said. “You can't just dangle that out there and then let it drop. You mean he trolls for prostitutes or something?”

“No!” Matt waved his hands in a warding-off gesture. “Goat breeding. He raises goats and dogs. Shows them too.”

“What is a goat breeder doing running a library system?” Sylvia came out of her cube and stood, hand on hip, waiting for a response.

Matt looked away. Sometimes, Louise wanted to remind Sylvia that she was gorgeous. Not that it would do any good. Even if she stopped putting on makeup and started wearing sack dresses, men would still stare.

Matt focused on the corner of Sylvia's cubicle. “I don't know. I think he was a school librarian for a while. Anyway, he posts pictures of his goats and chats with other breeders. I showed him how to reset his cookies and history, though. I really don't want to know what he looks at.”

“So no weird secret hobbies?” Sylvia leaned against Louise's cubicle, crossing one long leg in front of the other.

“I hope not.” Matt met her eyes for a moment before dropping his gaze again.

The back door opened, letting in a beam of sunlight that illuminated the dust hanging in the air. Mr. Henry came in, holding a travel mug. Matt mumbled a greeting to the assistant director before retreating into his cube.

“Good morning, ladies,” Mr. Henry said, stopping in front of Sylvia's cubicle.

“Mr. Henry, I wanted to ask you something,” Sylvia said. “Why doesn't the library system have any DVDs, CDs, or e-books?”

The assistant director took a sip from his mug before answering. “Mr. Foley thinks that libraries should be about books. It took a lot of doing to get him to order books on tape even.”

“This is the only library I've been to that doesn't have any multimedia stuff at all. I think it would increase our circulation,” Louise said.

Mr. Henry lifted his mug to his lips again. “You can ask him if he'd be willing to order some. He does all the buying, you know.”

“We will definitely bring it up.” Sylvia sat down and began typing, bracelets clanking against the keyboard.

Mr. Henry walked slowly to his cubicle in the patron area. Louise wondered what exactly he did out there. He'd mentioned coordinating the other three branches, each of which had two or three employees. Like Matt, he often traveled between the locations. It was hard to imagine him standing up to the nasty-sounding Mrs. Gunderson, but maybe he'd had more fire in his younger days. He'd visibly declined even during the short time Louise had known him. In contrast to Ms. Trudy, he seemed to be giving up on himself. Ms. Trudy was probably twenty years older than him, but she wouldn't stop until her body forced her to.

Louise took another pulpy thriller from her book cart and typed in the title. During her library science classes, she had learned all the codes and fields that needed to be included for each item. But most libraries simply copied the records that the Library of Congress generated or, barring that, some other authoritative library. She searched through the extant records on the book. As far as she could tell, it was about an attack on Fort Knox by a group of greedy terrorists. The Library of Congress hadn't processed the book yet, but in the meantime, they could use the one from the Saint Jude Parish Library system. As she read the record, she heard Sylvia walking by in her stiletto heels.

The Saint Jude Parish librarian had done a decent enough job with the thriller, so Louise copied the record. She was examining the book again to make sure that everything was correct when she heard a high-pitched shriek. The scream sounded like Sylvia. Louise was afraid to stand up. She didn't know if she'd find another wild animal, a crazy person with a gun, or one of Hope's neighbors.

She pushed her chair back and ventured out of the cubicle. Mr. Foley was standing, hands on hips, shaking his head at Sylvia. She was holding the Santa Claus mug, but most of the coffee appeared to be on her white shirt.

“Don't know what she was doing. Ran right into me.” Mr. Foley shook his head one more time and went back into his office, closing the door.

Sylvia blinked back tears and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Her shirt was soaked through to her lacy beige bra. “I turned around, and he was right there behind me. I don't know what happened.”

“Let's go to my cube. I have an extra sweater you can wear,” Louise said.

Sylvia flopped down in Louise's chair. Louise had never seen her so discomposed. Sylvia's fits of drama were always partly for show. But this time, she was really crying. Not knowing what else to do, Louise reached into her drawer for the sweater.

“He didn't even ask if I was okay. That coffee could have been hot. I'm just lucky it had been sitting around for an hour.” Sylvia took a tissue from the box on Louise's desk and blew her nose. “I hate him. Hate. Hate.”

“He's a goat-obsessed weirdo with a Napoleon complex. He's not worth the effort to hate.” Louise held out the cardigan.

Sylvia removed her shirt and put on the sweater. It was too tight across the chest. “How did we end up with the strangest boss in the whole state of Louisiana?”

“I don't know, but I'm confident that we can deal with Napoleon Junior. He can't be any more of a challenge than our kids, right?”

Sylvia laughed. “I am going to force him to buy some DVDs if I have to go all the way to the police jury to do it.”

“That might not be such a good idea.” Louise told her about Mrs. Gunderson.

“Lord, girl. What have I gotten us into?”

“I don't know, but it's sure not going to be boring.”

 

No matter what she did, the numbers on Louise's smartphone calculator wouldn't add up. Well, that wasn't exactly true. They added up to something; she just didn't like it. The numbers were telling her to sell the house.

“Mommy?” Max wandered out of his room wearing a pair of dog-patterned pajamas that hugged his slender body. “I need a snack.”

“Go back to bed,” Louise said automatically.

“I'm hungry.”

“Oh, all right. Come sit at the table. Do you want a bowl of Cheerios?”

Max nodded and climbed onto his chair. Louise poured a bowl of cereal and sat down next to him. “Would you like to move to a new house?”