Hide in the Library

I rode my bike into town. Everyone stared at me. Did they remember me? What were they saying? I wondered. But it didn’t matter. I dropped the key off at the garage so my brother would be able to get into the house after work, and then I slunk away. I left for the cool confines of the library. The reference section had long oak tables and lamps with green glass shades. I brought a notebook and a pen and started to write. The blue ink ran along each lined row until a page was filled. Each time I turned a page and the paper crinkled, the old man two tables down would peer at me over the rim of his glasses, without altering the angle of his head. Then he would go back to reading. By the end of the day he would be one of the characters in my story.

The high stone ceiling in the reference library opened up a space inside me. This was the only place that would open up my memories of my mother. The more I wrote about her on my lined notebook paper, the more her shape and form would fill in, until soon I even had down the color of her hair and the tone of her voice when she told me I had to get something done, and that she didn’t want to tell me again. But you will tell me again, mom, over and over in this reference library long after you left. Your boy is nearly grown. Perhaps by the end of this notebook I will have filled out, grown to the full height of a man, and whiskers will have sprouted downy soft on my chin. Shit. Fuck. Damn. I can say that now. You’re not here to straighten me out. No matter how much I write you back into existence, you can’t stop me from doing what I want.

I push my chair back and rise up from the table. The man peers at me over his glasses again. I flip him off. I turn and stride down the long foyer, find the back stairs, and quickly spiral down the stairwell into the lower levels of the library. Staff only allowed. I am not staff, but I need the comfort of these buried rooms. I’m tired. I want to sleep. I want to feel the weight of a ton of marble and cement above me.

A barrel-stomached man works the files in the basement. Long wisps of red hair are combed over his baldness. He sees me enter the records room, whistles to himself and stuffs a few files into a drawer, then slams it shut.

“Gonna hide out here this afternoon?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? Now I never did like a man of indecision. A man knows what he’s going to do and then strikes a path to get it done.”

“I just want to be left alone.”

“Then left alone you shall be. Family, friends, coworkers…nobody finds you down here. Believe me. I come down fifteen years ago, and everyone thinks I’m dead. Maybe I am.”

Why was he always being so melodramatic? And what the hell was there to file all day, anyway? I’d named him Dewey. I left him to his filing while I rested my forehead against a cool steel cabinet, imagined my skull emptying out like the great open space of the library foyer.