The Facades: A Novel (11 page)

“Certainly we have been mocked. From the very beginning, the Trudians did not understand us. The city that God chose for us.
They wrote us off, turned us into wild-eyed fanatics
in newspaper cartoons. And now the city itself has fallen on hard times. It is exposed to poverty, crime, decay, every form
of depravity. The old, good people have fled and the new, bad people have arrived. So the story goes. Some of us have even
welcomed these developments, as if our church might shine more brightly as the city around us becomes a dire morass, doomed
beyond all measure.”

There were distant cheers from the church steps. Suitcases raised high.

“But wait, my friends.” He raised his hand again, the spider crawled on the ceiling. “Wait. I do not think we can applaud
this turn of events. Because out there in the decaying city are lost human spirits, growing more lost with each passing day,
as they walk down one street, turn a corner, and see only rows of lightless crumbling buildings that look terribly familiar,
as if they will never change.”

His eyes flickered over me and yes, my candle had gone out again. It was a windy night and the candles had clearly come from
the bargain bin. For a moment I wondered if Lilly’s pages had blown off the podium, because he seemed to have lost his place,
or maybe it was just a long oratorical pause; but no, he’d paused to collect himself. When he addressed the crowd again there
were tears glimmering in his beard.

“You see I can’t just write those spirits off like debts on a ledger,” he said, “because I was one of them. As lost as any
of them. Ask Cordelia what today is. Why we chose this day for such a momentous event. She will tell you that it’s our son’s
birthday.” He lowered his head and candles were raised around the tent. “He would have been nine years old today, if I had
been a better father, if I had not been as profoundly lost as I was.
There were no crosses by the highway leading to the church back then. But if there had been, if there had been crosses over
the road in those days of pure blackness, I would have thanked God for giving me a sign so clear. Almost as clear as a hand
across the sky.”

Throughout the speech, the Sherwood Forest mayor had been gripping a large spade with apprehension. Now, amid wild applause,
she forced the spade into the frozen ground. She turned over a small mound of dirt and handed the spade to Lilly. My son was
right up front now, beaming, close to the laborers. With his thick arms Lilly had considerably more success than the mayor
had. He pushed the spade down with his boot and turned out a substantial clump of earth with roots dangling from it. There
were cheers and photo flashes. The mayor, eager to get home, quickly assembled a weary smile, but a disconsolate tremor lingered
in Lilly’s mouth as he considered the little grave he had dug.

A
FTERWARD THE CROWD
drifted toward the bright shoveled square of the parking lot, which was lined with illuminated lunch bags. The concrete dome
of the F.C.O.D.P. loomed in the background, its imposing form indifferent to the flimsy trees Sunday scholars had planted
in the acreage around it. The lot was full of teenagers in heavy coats, caps, and mittens. They unpacked bags and boxes from
car trunks and sat them down on the icy asphalt. Some parents stood between two parked minivans, cooking brats on a miniature
grill. The
Trude at Ten
news van was on the scene. Somewhere in the crowd I caught a glimpse of the girl who looked like Plea, wearing an army jacket
and a
stocking cap. Her cheeks were flushed bright red. When I ventured a tentative smile in her direction, she did not return it
but her eyes lingered on me.

The teenagers, by candlelight, looked muffled and anonymous in their winter clothes, like miners darkened with dust and soot.
The news cameraman seemed to recognize this and made a slow circuit around the parking lot filming them. After unloading his
trunk, Lilly joined a group of burly fire-builders. I went for hot cider, grabbing a second for Kyle. The stack of logs grew
to a tower. Guys in soft sweatshirts kept stuffing logs and firestarters in.

“So what exactly is going on here?” I asked Kyle, handing him the warm cup.

“Ever heard of a bonfire of the vanities, Dad?” he asked.

He’d brought two full paper grocery bags. I did not especially want to know what was in them. Kyle watched the progress of
the firewood tower with intent, gleaming eyes. The tower grew so tall that one of the men had to climb on the back of a pickup
cab to add the final logs.

Lilly nodded to the men, admiring the tower. He stepped to the center of the crowd. His sweater rippled in the cold wind.
A cheer rose up from the crowd. One of Lilly’s men struck a match and handed it to him. Lilly let it burn for a moment, holding
it up to his face. A private smile formed on his lips, in the small circle of light from the match, the most visible point
in the crepuscular parking lot.

Lilly solemnly cupped the match’s small flame in his hand, turned to the tower of logs, and wicked some newspaper. The other
men followed suit. Sparks flew up, a fiery counterpoint to the directionless snowflakes that fell. The fire took hold and
for
a few moments all of us, even the newscaster, stood mesmerized watching it. Then a young girl ran up to the fire with a teddy
bear and an armful of dolls. She threw them in, as the crowd shrieked and whooped, and the cameraman filmed it all for
Trude at Ten
. The taut plastic limbs of the dolls melted to syrup over the logs. Someone threw in their record collection. Someone else
tossed in a pile of dirty magazines. The girl I’d mistaken for Plea approached the fire with a white dress. In the light of
the flames she was clearly too thin, otherworldly-looking, nothing like the girl I’d taken her for. The dress could have been
for her wedding, but she was too young. It was sternly stitched and heirloom-like in its simplicity. The girl took a last
fond glance at it before tossing it into the air—it lay, seemingly inflammable, on the pyre for a moment, as if she had laid
it out on a bed. Then the lace collar curled inward, and the whole dress dissolved in the fire, lingering as an ashen shadow
for a moment before it emerged as gray powder in the air. A blond kid in a reverse baseball cap, who I would not have taken
as a reader at all, threw on a shelf’s worth of thick paperbacks. A model train set went in, a sheaf of glossy posters. A
fizzling television knocked over a couple of logs, destabilizing the whole rank bonfire, which was now disgorging ten different
kinds of smoke. Kyle was hanging back. He had gathered it, all of the sheet music Molly had bought for him, from the shopping
bags. The programs from his recitals, the pictures of him at the piano, the certificates awarding him second or third place
in local competitions. Now I knew why he’d brought me here. I wanted more than anything to try to stop him. He was destroying
something that was not finished, that had not ended. But my body didn’t move. He ran to the fire and flung Beethoven, Brahms,
and Schubert—the scores flailed
weakly over the fire for a moment like lame birds, before their papery wings caught fire, and they fell into the combustion
of dolls, records, and porn magazines. When Kyle turned around, backlit by the fire, his face was bright and flushed, and
he looked directly my way, his face screwed up in a triumphant, bitter smile. I contemplated the bag at my feet. I pulled
out the recital programs, the notes in Molly’s hand, the certificates and photographs. I felt like I was defacing the paintings
in my favorite museum. Kyle nodded to me, gestured toward the fire. Everything moved very slowly, the flames included. I gathered
the tainted relics. I took two steps toward the fire, pushed the papers from my chest, and let them scatter, inhaling the
smoke of my life.

T
RUDE MISSED ITS LIBRARIES.
T
HEY HAD SERVED A NUMBER
of crucial civic functions that became apparent only in their absence. First of all, libraries had sheltered large numbers
of stray individuals who, with nowhere else to go, now invaded office building lobbies, banks, food courts, and other quasi-public
spaces. Idle and bearded men, disconnected from the library’s webbed computers, turned their attentions to the office workers
of downtown with unwelcome results. Some of the individuals were ill in the head. It turned out—and how could the mayor have
foreseen this?—that certain deep psychological needs were being filled by the library. Disorders and manias were being held
at bay. Say you were a severe obsessive- compulsive with no income: could anything be as satisfying as placing hundreds of
requests for library materials, followed by a visit to a branch to pick up some of these items, inquire about the library’s
failure to supply others, and to challenge the inevitable fines and delinquencies on your library card, while at the same
time placing further requests and so on ad infinitum? Could anything else so
beautifully create the illusion of control? Such a person, left unmoored, had no choice but to begin patronizing other governmental
agencies, such as City Records, Social Security, the License Bureau, and the Parks Board. Employees of these agencies began
to chafe at the sheer amount of bizarre attention they were receiving. It was not only the fringe element that suffered. Young
children no longer had a place to let loose. The elderly, deprived of their romance novels and audiobook mysteries, succumbed
to ennui. And of course there were the librarians themselves. They were suspected of vandalism at the former Coty Branch Library,
which had been converted into a luxury loft for a former Fuller aide. Who else would have had the motivation to spray-paint
EX LIBRIS
in bright red across the front windows? The core group at Central, nicknamed the Trude Thirteen by their many admirers, had
proven intransigent and resourceful. They had become local heroes. They were entertaining the public, and no one but the mayor
wanted to see them defeated.

Fuller looked defensive and aggrieved at his televised press conference. Dressed down in a polo shirt and gray blazer, he
gripped both hands on the podium before him, as if to gain a firmer purchase on his office. While admitting that the library
shutdown had been botched, he defended it in principle, arguing that the library was a “soft and socialist institution” and
that it had no role in the more muscular Trude he was building. He cited increased investment, the renovation of distressed
properties in the downtown area, low unemployment rates, and the imminent arrival of two lucrative conferences in the city,
the National Numismatist’s Convention and the Semi-Automatic Gun Show. When he opened the floor to questions, however, the
press did not take
the bait, nor did they respond to his attempts to steer the conversation toward more promising subjects, instead peppering
him with wry inquiries into the library situation. Had the mayor had an unpleasant experience at the library as a child? (No,
he preferred bookstores. He believed authors should be compensated for their work.) Did his policy have anything to do with
the recently revealed delinquency on his library card––$12.50 in overdue fines and a romance novel returned in waterlogged
condition? (“It was that way when I got it,” the mayor barked.) Was he purposely trying to withhold information from the public?
(“Information is a dubious commodity,” he replied cryptically.) Wasn’t it cruel to cut the gas at the Central Library, especially
given the run of subzero temperatures expected in Trude next week? (“The Trude Thirteen are terrorists,” he responded, to
widespread laughter, “and must be dealt with as such.”) Did he plan to persist to the end? (In a headline-making quote, Fuller
said, “This will not last much longer. I have them in a half nelson.”) A wary aide tapped Fuller’s shoulder and whispered
into his ear. The mayor stepped back from the podium with a look of great relief. “Thanks for your interest, gentlemen,” he
said, apparently oblivious to the fact that there were at least a dozen women in the room.

One of the oft-remarked ironies of the library situation was that this building, once the sine qua non of accessibility, was
now one of the most exclusive places in Trude. The Trude Thirteen were obviously still receiving supplies through the leaks
in the police blockade, but this traffic was covert and dusky. By day the windows were shaded and the staircase taped off,
the two gilded owls asleep below. This sequestered quality of the library had been troubling me lately. The Central Library
had closed
its doors only days after Molly’s disappearance, after all, and now that there were signs she was alive—the missing nightgown,
Breeze’s acrostic, the Oracle’s dream—I pictured her sometimes, in my weaker moments, huddled among yellowing tomes in the
vast, subterranean stacks.

T
HAT BOOK OF
Molly’s, the one she had been reading during our last night together, turned up in the last place I would have looked for
it. Already late for work, I was in the midst of a frantic hunt for my keys when I found the missing book wedged beneath the
seat cushion of my very own armchair. Hard to believe that I had been sitting on this important artifact all these months,
but the merits of the old armchair had betrayed me in this case. The ancient cushion was so well-molded, so firm yet accommodating,
that I’d never suspected a foreign object might be sunk deep in its embrace. The book was covered with dust and crumbs, and
a couple of dimes were stuck to the jacket. It was unmistakably the book my wife had been reading the night before she disappeared;
I remembered its slim shape, its black-and-white cover depicting a hippieish woman with long dreadlocks contemplating a female
statue that strongly resembled her. The title, which I had not noticed before, was
Medusa Is Looking Pretty Today
, a collection of short stories. I had to catch my breath when I read the name of the author, because she was someone we knew—or
more accurately, someone Molly knew. Cassandra Clark had been the librarian at Trude U when we were undergraduates, and at
the time I met Molly there were rumors going around that the two of them were involved. As Molly explained it later, there
had been a misunderstanding. The
photo inside the dust jacket showed a distinguished black woman with buzz-cut hair, the large hoop earrings of the era, and
a knowing, pretty smile.

What did she understand that I did not? And was this some kind of message Molly had left me, this reminder of the time before
we met, before we had any connection to one another? The book seemed to open onto a void. The only answer that
Medusa
had for me was scrawled on the title page:
Molly, see
p. 134
. That was it—no signature, no endearment. When I checked the table of contents, the page number 134 was listed next to a
story called “The Defect.”

I located my keys at last, sped to the strip mall, heard the obligatory rebuke from Boggs, and settled in behind the front
desk to read. Two clients, two sprained knees and a broken nose between them, watched me from the lobby chairs. They could
never experience the very precise pain Cassandra Clark’s sentences were causing me, the tanned paper and fogged print. The
reception desk was partially shielded from the lobby by a row of fresh lilies, delivered weekly by a man in a purple visor.
This floral border insulated me from Boggs’s clientele. Their moans of discomfort reached me sweetly scented. I was not a
big fan of those weirdly funereal flowers, but Boggs kept a standing order. The strong floral perfume filled my nostrils as
I read, so much so that I unjustly imported a countertop bouquet to the provincial library where Cassandra Clark’s story was
set. The protagonist of “The Defect” was a nameless librarian who embodied almost every conceivable cliché of the profession.
She wore cardboardy tweed suits even in summer, glowered at children through thick glasses, and amused herself by reorganizing
the card catalog (the story was set in the 1950s). The only pleasure
for this otherwise despotic soul was to converse with a certain young redheaded housewife who visited the library every Wednesday
afternoon to browse romance novels. The young housewife (with her equally familiar 1950s wardrobe of sundresses and cheerful
cardigans) was married to a businessman in the small provincial town. The husband was not particularly relevant to the tale
at hand and was depicted in a few broad strokes. The housewife seemed cheerful on her library visits, and often stayed to
chat. For the librarian, these conversations were the only balm in a life of unvarying, tweedy sadness. She took the new romance
novels home with her to read the night before she would suggest them to the housewife, and as she perused them, stretching
her aging and untouched body out in the tub, the librarian liked to think that the two of them were communing illicitly via
the shared books, which provided a secret fulfillment the vague husband could not. Then one week, accidentally or half-accidentally,
the librarian left a grocery list of her own inside one of the novels she checked out to the housewife. As the housewife left
the small provincial library in a flurry of 1950s pink linen, the librarian made the horrifying, then increasingly galvanizing
realization. The librarian spent several sleepless nights imagining the housewife reading that ascetic list: bread, milk,
chicken thighs, grapes, spinach, oatmeal. For the first time, the librarian had left a trace of herself within the shared
fantasy of the romance novels. When the housewife returned the next week and made small talk as usual, the librarian concluded
that the housewife approved of her accidental intrusion into the romance novel’s forbidden world. Each week now, the librarian
would make some small alteration or addition to the books. Contradicting every premise she had learned in library school,
her whole body thrilled with violation. The librarian might change the name of a character from “John” to “Joan” with a black
pen and a bottle of Wite-Out. She added lines of dialogue to the ends of chapters, revised kisses, edited embraces. The housewife
continued to visit the library, but she began to regard the librarian with wariness. She no longer discussed weather or trivial
events in the provincial town, and she began to take out other kinds of books, presidential biographies for example, accepting
the romances only at the librarian’s absolute insistence. The librarian had transgressed too far, and she could not turn back.
In a frenzy, she tore a whole chapter from the last romance novel she would ever hand to the housewife, adding her own typed
chapter in its place. She put her own feelings for the housewife into the mouth of a brooding Scottish highlander named Fergus.
She pasted the chapter in with book glue and left it on the counter to dry. The librarian waited behind the flowerless desk
on the appointed day, the book shaking in her grip. The lovely housewife faltered but accepted it. The next week was torture
for the librarian—she hardly slept, and her work at the library fell off. She made errors, misshelved books, forgot the names
of authors, and generally could think of nothing but the lovely young redheaded housewife who had so unjustly married the
boring businessman. When the housewife returned at last, the librarian almost fainted. Her body felt like it was being pierced
by a thousand pins. The housewife’s face was flushed almost to the hue of her hair. She slammed the book down on the counter.
“This book is defective,” the housewife simply said, turned, and left the library for the last time. The librarian sat looking
at the book for a few minutes. She did not open it to see if the chapter she had rewritten was still inside. The word
defective
rang
through her head as she vacated her desk and walked out through the back door. The librarian crossed a parking lot full of
“fat beached cars” to throw the book out in the Dumpster; as she did so she looked down the street at the small and now desolate
town, which we were seeing along with her for the first time, its diminishing vistas, its white houses “shrinking into the
distance.” I was disappointed at first with this ending, then realized that this sensation had been brilliantly engineered
by Cassandra Clark, who wanted me to wonder whether the “defect” was in the librarian, the book she gave to the housewife,
the provincial town where the story was set, or in the story itself that I was reading.

T
HE
C
ENTRAL
L
IBRARY
was definitely not open for business. Even in downtown’s nighttime lull, however, there was a lingering aura of grandeur
to it. The imposing windows were obscured by hundreds of posters promoting banned books. Behind the front gate, a pair of
librarians in ski masks were on patrol, their shotguns resting by their sides, staffing a de facto outdoor reference desk
that no one was brave enough to approach. The police also maintained their presence, if somewhat diminished. Half a block
down from the entrance, a squad car idled with its lights on, throwing a monotonous magic lantern show against the library’s
granite walls. McCready and the Oracle leaned on the hood of their cruiser. They were now wearing dark blue polos, dark jackets,
and khakis. It looked like their own shadows had been promoted above them. The Oracle had been chipping ice off the windshield
but the scraper lay just beyond the reach of his hand. He was still wearing his racer shades.

“What brings you here, Norberg?” McCready called. “Want to check out a book? Too bad.”

“Actually I was hoping to see a librarian,” I said.

“That would be strictly against regulations,” McCready observed neutrally. He raised a wadded and frozen handkerchief to his
runny nose. “Which one do you want to see? Not that it matters.”

“Cassandra Clark.”

“Wow,” McCready said. “Straight to the top for Norberg.”

“There would be extensive frisking involved with that,” the Oracle leered.