An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [17]
CHAPTER ELEVEN
d is for duckies
THE DAYS DRAG INTO WEEKS, the weeks drag into months, the months drag me forward. I pretend to be listening during meetings where they ramble on about e-solutions, e-learning, e-searching, e-libraries when all I care about is e-lsa. I adjust to life on a barren island, to the foreign Newfoundland accents, to the unconscious kindness of the locals. I don’t adjust to being so far away from Elsa, yet so close to knowing that she may never leave Brutus. I’m tired of opening my email to find the usual Message blocked for this recipient.
Six months on the opposite side of the ocean and the closest I’ve come to an email from her is one with an E in the sender line. The sender is Edith.
We should go for a beer after work today. What
do you say?
Edie
xoxox
P.S. Careful. In your last email, you had “there”
books. Should be “their” books.
We meet in the library lobby then walk to the Campus Quaff where it’s standing room only. Edith nudges so close to me you’d swear we were two of twenty sardined into an elevator. Before long, a group of people leave. Edith swoops down on two vacated chairs. We sit together, elbows touching.
“See her?” Edith says. She reaches her hand in front of my face to point at someone at the opposite table. “Remember Paul Hiscock? The man I introduced you to in the campus cafeteria? The one who’s married to the secretary of the director of the library’s financial section? That’s his wife.”
“How can she be his wife if he’s married to the secretary of whatever?”
“He’s married to the secretary of the director of the library’s financial section.”
“Is this a conversation about bigamy?” I joke.
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking you?”
“You’re asking me if the conversation is about bigamy?”
“Forget it, Edith. It’s not important.”
I do speak the same language as people in Newfoundland, at least in theory, so I should be able to get my meaning across but I don’t. It’s worse when I try to be funny. I’ve been trying hard since I arrived in Newfoundland. Everyone else here seems to be a natural with it. Cyril’s been giving me lessons. He thinks I’m catching on.
Edith and I watch the crowd while we wait for a waitress to serve us. A group of people is heading towards the door. That’s when I notice her. “Do you know that woman just leaving? The one with the shoulder-length black hair and yellow raincoat?”
“Norah Myrick?” Edith says. “The last time I laid my eyes on her, she was downtown, in a bar, smack dab in the centre of the dance floor slithering like a snake. Mr. Myrick wouldn’t have approved.”
“Her husband?”
“Jesus, Mary and Smallwood! No. Her father, William Myrick. Patron saint of Newfoundland books. That man knew more about the millions of items in the archives and Reading Room than all of us put together. God love him. He was working on a book. He’d say, Edie dear, tell me the truth, Edie, what do you think of this title? My favourite was Memories of a Silent Voice: The Written Tradition in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rural Newfoundland. He used to travel to the outports collecting every scrap of written material he could put his eyes on: diaries, ships’ logs, journals, pamphlets, store ledgers, notebooks, letters, you name it.”
The waitress interrupts. We study the menu: deep-fried cod, deep-fried shrimp, deep-fried cod tongues, deep-fried chicken, deep-fried squid, deep-fried onion rings. We place our order.
“Have I ever seen Mr. Myrick in the library?”
“Not unless you’re seeing ghosts,” she says. “You might hear stories about him though.”
“You mean he was a saint with a sin?”
“I didn’t bother signing things out for him when he came to the archives. I knew what he had. He liked to work in the evening. We closed at five so he’d bring home what he needed. He’d been coming to the archives for years. He donated huge amounts