An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [3]
After they drove off, I asked Henry where his bags were. We realized then what had happened to them. “All the better,” he said. “She’ll be delighted with the bargain. They don’t call it SaveEasy for no reason.”
Henry and I never went back to the cafeteria for coffee after that day. From then on, we met at 3:30 in my office. I doubt anyone missed us.
CHAPTER THREE
a portrait of the librarian
as a young man
APPARENTLY, I DON’T LOOK LIKE a Newfoundlander. Same reaction when I tell people my father’s French and my mother Spanish. “You’re too tall to be a Latin type,” they say. Sometimes, I’ll respond with, “It was a vintage year.” They usually don’t get it. I don’t resemble a librarian either. “You’re joking.” I’ve heard that response often enough when I tell people what I do for a living. One of these days, I’ll experiment, grow a bun, borrow a pair of round-rimmed spectacles, a turtleneck, put a finger like an oboe reed to my lips for shush, wear a long skirt instead of a tie and see what happens. Not even my colleague Edith is that stereotypical, and if anyone looks like a librarian, it’s her.
I told Papa I was planning to do a master’s degree in library science after I finished my undergraduate degree in computer science. “Nonsense,” he said. “There’s no science to checking in and out books. It’s a woman’s profession, always was, forever will be.”
It was worse when I told him what kind of librarian. He said he didn’t raise me to be a technician. I wanted to say: You didn’t raise me, period. Instead, I said: It’s a science not a technique. He said: Don’t hide behind fancy titles, and I wanted to say: Can’t you pat me on the back for once? But I said: Digital Library Systems is the exact title, and he replied: Worse still.
I worked in a library shelving books throughout much of my first degree. Sometimes I miss those years. Mostly I miss the BC. There’s no other library like it anywhere. It’s where I used to spend my spare time. I had a surplus of it in those days. There was a group of us students working at the public library near campus. We used to play a game to see who could navigate the circulation system the fastest. Losers had to shelve a portion of the winner’s books. It didn’t take me long to master the system. If I saw the number 636.7, I knew the book was about dogs. A few details and I could rhyme off the catalogue number to the decimal. I won the game every time.
While someone else was shelving my books, I went to the basement stacks where they sent the overflow, oversized, underused, and damaged volumes. I spent every minute experimenting with different cataloguing systems – tall books over there, small here, books I fancy on those shelves, ones I’m not interested in on these and so on. After a while, everyone started calling it Brunet’s Closet or the BC for short. I’d hear them say: “New shipment for the BC,” or “Send the volumes to the BC.”
I’ve had a relationship with libraries since I was little. When I was in the elementary grades, Papa had appointments on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On those afternoons, I stayed in the library when classes ended. I sat in the same chair each time. It was big enough for me to lie down on if I curled my legs. One afternoon, I read a storybook about a boy who rushes home from school every day to play with his best friend Marcel. Marcel is a mutt. No cat, no bone, no fire hydrant ever gets his attention more than the boy. Likewise, the boy feeds him before he feeds himself. He rubs Marcel’s belly so much the creature spends more time on his back than on his paws. The boy comes home early from school one afternoon when everyone is anxious to be sheltered from the rain and wind that’s causing the river to flood, trees to fall and walls of old barns to cave