The Art of Crash Landing (11 page)

I
'd always assumed that a job in a library would, if nothing else, at least smell better than a job at a fast-food restaurant, but it seems I was mistaken. Inside I find the expected odor of musty books, but beneath that there is a faint, disconcertingly fecal odor.

There's a little girl slouched at a desk straight ahead, and five dumpy middle-aged men—the Gandy intelligentsia, I'm sure—sitting at a bank of computers on my right. When the heavy door thumps closed behind me, the computer users lift their gazes, momentarily disregarding whatever research they had just been engaged in—googling the success rate of penile-enlargement surgery, watching YouTube videos of women crushing beer cans with their breasts, hunting for an extra-large camo thong for the little woman's birthday.

As my high heels clackity-clack on the marble floor, the girl behind the desk straightens, watching me approach. At first glance, with her close-cropped black hair, pale freckled face, and tiny birdlike frame, she'd looked to be about ten years old, but when I get to the desk I reassess my estimate. The surly expression,
black lipstick, and the metal rings and studs protruding from her lips, nose, and eyebrow surely puts her age closer to sixteen or seventeen. She's got one hand flat on the desk in front of her, palm facing up. In the other she's holding a red Sharpie. This explains the
how
of the red pentagram on the girl's palm, but not the
why
.

“Hello,” I say, and we both flinch at the echo my greeting sets up in the high-ceilinged room. I drop my voice to a whisper. “I'm here to see . . .” At this point I realize that Luke didn't tell me Aunt Fritter's last name, and for all I know
Fritter
could be just an affectionate food nickname given to her by her family, like Pumpkin or Dumplin'.

Satan's pixie is giving me a doubtful look by the time I finally ask for, “The person in charge.”

“No soliciting,” she says.

“I'm not selling anything. I'm here about a job.”

“We're not hiring.” She turns and walks to a stack of books on the cabinet behind her.

“Excuse me,” I say in a stage whisper. There is no response from Goth-girl, so I increase my volume just a teensy bit for the next one. “Excuse me . . .”

At this, she spins around with a “Shhh!” that's much louder than my voice had been, then turns back to her stack of books.

I've had enough. “Listen, Morticia, your aunt Fritter is expecting me.”

She lets out an enormous sigh and turns back around. “
Great-great
-aunt,” she tells me.

“I'm sure she's spectacular.”

“No, I mean that she's not really my regular aunt, she's—”

“I know what you meant. Can I please talk to her?”

“Whatever.” She steps out from behind the desk and shuffles to a flight of stairs.

I follow her up the steps, amazed that her tiny hips can support the baggy black jeans that hang from them and drag the ground, puddling over her flip-flops. As if to make up for the largeness of the pants her black T-shirt looks several sizes too small. I would suspect that it was a child's size except I've never seen anything in the children's department stenciled with a bloody skull complete with maggots in the eye sockets. If this is the employee dress code I am way, way overdressed.

We stop in front of a door; the girl raps her knuckles three times, pushes the door open, then without a word shuffles back to the stairs.

I was expecting an office, but instead it's a room with bookshelves along two walls and a table in the center. A small, plump, gray-haired woman bends over the table holding a partially deconstructed book.

She looks up as I enter and lifts a gloved hand to push away the strands of hair that have escaped her bun. For a few seconds she stares at me, seeming to take my measure, and then she nods. “I'm fixing a spine. Come make yourself useful.”

Under her instructions I hold the cover up as she paints glue on two tabs sticking out of a white strip of some kind of cloth tape. She uses a ruler to press everything together, slides waxed paper on either side of the glued area and then wraps a couple of rubber bands around the book and we're done.

“Thank you for that,” the woman says. “I'm Fritter Jackson. And you are . . .”

“Mattie Wallace.” I hold out my hand. “Your nephew told me—”

“You're Genie's girl,” she replies, stripping off her gloves and shaking my outstretched hand. “Luke and I discussed you, but he didn't tell me your name was Matilda.”

“Probably because I don't go by—”

“Luke is not my nephew, by the way. Most people would hardly consider us related. He's my fourth cousin twice removed.”

“Okay,” I say. She's looking at me like she expects a more elaborate reply, so I add, “I've never understood all the numbered cousins and the
removed
stuff.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. It's not very difficult.”

Yikes
.

The old woman opens a filing cabinet, pulls out a sheet of paper, marks on it, and then hands it to me with a pen. It's a standard employment application, but she has put an X next to the questions she wants me to answer which are: my name, my social security number, and my birthdate.

“I'll be paying you off the books. The social is just for me to keep in case there's any criminal activity. I already know your local address,” she says. “And I suspect that your qualifications are none.”

It's pretty obvious that she's feeling a little employer's remorse. “Listen, don't feel like you have to hire me—”

“Fill in these blanks and sign it, please.”

I finish with the form and hand it over. She glances at it and then quickly looks back up at me. I get the feeling it was my birth date she was most interested in seeing. I'm starting to wonder if I need to wear a sign that says
No, I am not the reason my mother left town.

Fritter spends a few minutes explaining my duties, which seem to be limited to reshelving books and light cleaning. I ask about the hourly pay and she quotes a discouragingly low number, and then she explains my schedule: nine to five with thirty minutes for lunch. When I mention my lunch date today with Father Barnes, she frowns.

“While I do appreciate the impulse to seek out a church home . . .”

I'm pretty sure that's not what I have in mind, but I nod anyway. Seeking out a
church home
sounds more respectable than seeking out
sexy man-flesh
.

“You must take your duties at the library seriously,” she continues. “I'm hiring you as a favor for someone important to me.”

“My grandmother, right?”

Fritter doesn't reply to that. Instead she studies me for a few seconds and then says, “You favor your grandmother. She never looked much like a
Matilda
and neither do you.”

I don't know what she thinks a Matilda looks like, but I've always thought that I look a little like Gene Wilder, except with longer hair and a vagina.

Suddenly, I'm worried that this old lady is waiting for me to reciprocate and tell her she doesn't look like a
Fritter.
The only problem is, with her rounded, compact build and tanned, wrinkled flesh she actually does look a little bit like a fritter. Or a tater tot.

“I go by Mattie,” I say.

“Well, you don't really resemble your mother,” Fritter tells me.

“Just around the edges.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You'd have to ask Mr. Penny at the bank. That's what he told me.”

Fritter shakes her head. “Gordon Penny was a little shit as a child, and he grew up into a big one.”

I nod, but Fritter seems to be waiting for me to say something more. If this is a job interview it's the strangest one I've ever had.

“While we're on the subject,” I say, for lack of a better idea. “Do you guys have a plumbing problem or something? Because it smells pretty bad downstairs . . .”

“Oh, not again! Come with me.”

I follow her out of the workroom and we start down the stairs. She is surprisingly nimble for an elderly fritter-shaped person.

“This is the fourth time, damn it.”

“Fourth time for what? Wait . . .” I'm struggling not to fall with these stupid high heels on the slick steps.

At the foot of the stairs she stops and waits for me to catch up. “That a visitor has done this.”

“Done what?”

“Believe it or not, they aren't unheard of in the world of public libraries,” she tells me. “One librarian's blog refers to them as
rogue turds
.”

“Librarians blog?”

“Shhh,” she replies.

I follow Fritter as she walks toward the spooky girl at the desk.

“I, however,” she whispers over her shoulder, “have been referring to them as UFOs.”

“Unidentified . . . ?”

“Fecal Objects,” she explains. “Seems classier than turds.”

I can't argue with that. Just about everything is classier than turds.

“The last one was in the Reference section. On a shelf next to the OED.”

“On a shelf?”

At this point we've reached the counter and Fritter raises a finger at me just like my first-grade teacher used to, and it still works. I play the quiet game. Fritter walks up to the desk; it's almost chest high to the squat woman. She gestures to the teen, who leans forward to hear. “Tawny, can't you smell that?”

The girl's name is Tawny? Oh, my. If there was ever a word less descriptive of the vampirically pale teen at the desk, I can't think of it.

“Smell what?” the girl replies.

“Sweet Jesus on a Triscuit,” Fritter says, walking through the
little swinging half-door at the side of the desk. “You need to stop smoking.” The woman puts her hands on Tawny's shoulders and pushes her out from behind the checkout area. “Go on. You know the drill . . . bag, gloves, cleaner, and paper towels. Chop chop.”

Fritter and I watch as Tawny slouches her way past some bookshelves and around a corner.

“Now,” Fritter turns to me. “What was your question?”

“How could someone take a . . . leave a
fecal object
on a shelf.”

She shakes her head. “Good question. Of course it was on one of the lower shelves.”

When Tawny reappears with the cleaning products, Fritter announces, “Follow your nose.”

With the old woman leading the way we begin to weave through the library.

“Should we split up?” I say.

“Excellent idea,” Fritter replies. “I'll take Reference and Audio. Tawny, you and Mattie take Fiction and make a quick run through Periodicals.”

Tawny and I dawdle a bit in our search efforts; the speed of the hunt does depend on whether or not you want to find what you're hunting. Unsurprisingly Fritter locates the prize.

We hear a quiet “Ah ha!” from a few aisles over and head in that direction with the cleaning supplies.

“It's not very large,” Fritter says, frowning. Indeed it is an unexceptional poo, on the floor immediately in front of a large window looking out into a coffee shop parking lot.

“The culprit is not modest,” I say.

“Perhaps one of you could speak to the people at that shop and see if anyone saw anything unusual.”

Tawny and I look at each other and in that instant we find a tiny patch of common ground. She may have a bad attitude and
five or six more holes in her face than I do, but on one thing we agree—neither one of us is going to go into a coffee shop to ask if anyone happened to look this direction and see a naked ass.

“We'll take care of it,” I say.

“The last one was quite a bit larger.” Fritter dons the gloves and places the turd in the bag, then sprays the floor liberally with cleaner. “Perhaps we have more than one miscreant.”

“Really? You actually think there is more than one person in this town who would take a crap on the floor of a library?”

Fritter shrugs. “Lots of people urinate outdoors.”

She's hitting a little close to home now. “Only when a bathroom isn't available. You do have a bathroom here, don't you?”

“Of course.”

“Then this is not an act of necessity,” I say.

“You're right,” Fritter tells me, her blue eyes now twinkling with either anger or amusement. Or both. “This is an act of war.”

“Cool,” Tawny says. It's the first time I see her smile.

A
t eleven forty I make my escape from the library's fluorescent gloom. Even in my too-high heels, the sunshine puts a spring in my step. It is a beautiful day here in the armpit of America. I turn left at the corner and head downhill toward the Episcopal church. There's a crowd gathered in the church parking lot for some reason, and I have to weave my way through it, garnering a couple of wolf-whistles from the motley crew.

I push open the main door and slip inside the cool, dark sanctuary. It's empty, but I hear voices drifting up from somewhere, so I retrace yesterday's steps through the small side door. Since Father Barnes's office is empty, I continue to follow the noise until I reach its source: a large kitchen.

My empty stomach rumbles as I survey the scene: steaming pots on an industrial range, stainless-steel counters with tray after tray of rolls, paper cups and plates stacked along one side, and, in the far corner, Father Barnes, holding court with a group of hairnet-wearing women.

One sturdy middle-aged woman working at the stove looks in my direction. Even through the steam on her glasses, she sees me standing at the door. “Sorry, hon. Fifteen more minutes. You'll have to go on back outside.”

“No, I'm here to—”

“Hon, we can't have folks in the kitchen.”

The woman looks a little familiar. I take a step closer saying, “But I was invited to—”

She pulls off her fogged-up glasses, saying, “Health regulations, h . . .” and then her voice dies out and she stops smiling. I think she might have been going to add another “hon” but at that moment we recognize each other. It's the woman who wrestled with me over the bike yesterday. The one I called Pork Chop.

“Listen, I'm sorry,” I say, “but Father Barnes—”

“Is busy at the moment.”

“But—”

“And he'll remain busy until after we finish serving today's hunger outreach lunch.”

I'm not liking the direction this is heading. “Wait a minute, I'm not some homeless person.”

“Not all the people we serve are homeless. They're just down on their luck, perhaps unemployed, and every Tuesday and Thursday—”

“I'm not some unemployed deadbeat.” I don't add
anymore
. “Father Barnes invited me to lunch.”

“And lunch you shall have. But you need to go back outside and—”

“Ladies?” Father Barnes has come up behind us. He is beaming. “I see you two are getting acquainted. You remember Tilda Thayer?” He's asking Pork Chop this. She nods.

“She was one of our favorite congregants,” he says to me with a wink. Then he turns back to the other woman. “This is her
granddaughter, Mattie Wallace. Mattie, this is Karleen Meeker, one of our tireless custodial engineers.”

Karleen stares at me for a second, then turns to Father Barnes with a fawning smile. “I was just explaining that we're not serving yet.”

“And I was just explaining,” I say, “that I don't need to wait outside, because you and I are having lunch together.”

Father Barnes puts his hand on my shoulder. “When you called yesterday, Mattie, you sounded like you needed a little fellowship and perhaps a hearty meal. We're providing both here today for a group of folks just like you.”

Learning humility is never fun, and for the last couple days the lessons have been coming hot and heavy. There's only one way to handle his embarrassingly correct assessment of my situation. I start lying.

“I'm so sorry we had a misunderstanding,” I say with a smile that certainly outsparkles Pork Chop's. “But I'm doing great. I'm working at the library, and I'm staying at my grandmother's house. Everything is fine. I was just a little upset yesterday.”

“Oh, well I'm glad to hear that.”

“I just thought it was important for me to find a local
church home
,” I say, grateful to Fritter for providing the lingo.

“Wonderful!” he says. “This is one of our most active ministries. Volunteering here you'll meet some of the outstanding women at this church.”

And that's how I go from an intimate lunch with a dishy man to dishing out lunch to strangers.

I'm stationed next to Pork Chop and, frankly, am surprised at how nice she is to all these people in stained T-shirts and dirty work boots. She exchanges a few friendly words with each, calling a few “hon,” but obviously remembering most of their names. There's Frankie with a porn-star mustache, and Juanita missing
a lens in her glasses and a couple of teeth. There's even an Elvis, a feral-looking older man with twigs and leaves twisted into his matted hair. He leans in and asks quietly if he can have a little extra for Colonel Parker. I laugh, but Karleen just gives him a wink and serves up another small chunk of meat loaf.

Over and over again, I drop a blob of mashed potatoes on the paper plates passed to me and do my best to smile even though the body odors mixed with food odors turn my stomach.

By twelve forty the crowd has passed through the line. Karleen puts a hand on my arm and says, “Why don't you make yourself a plate and sit down. I'll finish up here.”

“I'm fine.”

“You're looking a little peaked. You need to eat something.”

I would argue, but she's right. She hands me a plate with a slab of meat loaf and I serve myself some potatoes and green beans. There are empty tables, but I need to get away from the oppressive food smell, so I take my plate outside. There's a picnic table by the door, but it's occupied by a group of men having a quiet conversation in what sounds like Spanish. So I walk past them out to the parking lot and perch carefully on one of the air-conditioner units.

The meat loaf is as bad as it looks, and the instant potatoes are like rubber, but after a few bites my nausea recedes. The sun feels good on my back and shoulders. The metal is warm under my legs. A hearty weed that has forced its way through a crack in the cement tickles my left calf with each breeze.

I've eaten what I can—about half of what was on my plate—when I see Karleen coming around the building toward me. She's carrying a glass of milk.

“You didn't bring out a drink,” she says.

I'm not a big milk drinker but I nod my thanks and take it from her. She's not wearing her plastic gloves anymore, and I notice an angry, red circular mark on the back of her hand.

I look up at her, surprised. I've seen that sort of mark before. “Cigarette?”

She pulls a pack from her apron pocket, taps one out, and then holds the pack out for me. I shake my head and look pointedly at the wound on her hand. “No, that burn.”

“It's nothing,” she says, angling herself away from the wind to light her cigarette.

“I bet it hurts.”

She shrugs and sucks in a lungful of smoke. “God,” she says, exhaling. “I hate how much I love to smoke.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Sure you don't want one?”

I shake my head.

“So, you quit?”

“I guess,” I reply.

“How?”

“Just lost a taste for it.”

“Lucky . . .” she says taking another long drag, “Even when I was pregnant I loved smoking.”

“Who said anything about me being pregnant?”

“Not me,” she says, looking at me with a smile. “Are you?”

I hold out my hand for her cigarette, and she passes it over. I take an experimental puff and hand it back. Fuck. It's awful.

“I'm sorry about that whole thing with the bike yesterday,” I say. “I was rude.”

“Me too. I don't know what I was thinking. My granddaughter won't be old enough to need a bike that size for years.”

“I shouldn't have left it parked in the middle of all that shit for sale. And the jewelry box was my grandmother's. I should have just explained. I apologize for the whole situation.”

“Me too.”

The air conditioner cuts on and we both startle. I hop off the
unit, and we step away from the blast of warm air. Karleen leans over and puts her cigarette out on the ground and then slips the butt into her apron pocket. “You were good help today,” she says, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard above the noise. “I'm glad you came.”

“Well, it was nice to discover where Elvis has been hiding all these years.”

She laughs. “You know, he told me once that his name really is Elvis, but I don't know that I believe him.”

“And Colonel Parker?” I'm remembering the extra serving of meat loaf.

“Well, if your name is Elvis, what else are you going to call your cat?”

We look at each other, grinning. I don't know what she's thinking, but I'm thinking about how fluid the border is between
crazy
and
interesting
, and how hard it is to decide who belongs where. Hell, most of the time I can't answer that question about myself.

“You coming to help again Thursday?” she asks.

I'm not sure why, but I say, “Okay.”

She takes the plate, plastic ware, and cup from my hand and smiles. “Have a nice afternoon.”

“Thanks.” I turn and take a few steps and glance back. She's still standing in the same spot, looking at me.

“I knew your mother,” Karleen says.

“Me too,” I reply, wishing it were true.