An Imperfect Librarian - Elizabeth Murphy [86]
Papa opens a suitcase for her. I hear the clicking of the clasps.
“Open your eyes now,” she says.
I grab her outstretched hand.
“Come closer. Touch, touch!”
The suitcase is filled with books. I take them out one by one. TinTin and Asterix books are on the top layer. Underneath them I find two bundles of Jules Verne’s books. I finger quickly through the tightly bound pages with their black and white engravings. In the very bottom layer, she put the smaller volumes. There’s The Song of Roland, Renard, The Fables and Tales and many others.
I stare at them, almost incredulous. “You kept them all. I don’t believe it.”
“I had to fight to save them. Georges complained they took up too much space in the closet, as if we had anything else to put in there. Remember? You’d say, ‘Tell me the moral, Tatie, tell me the moral.’ It’s time, like you, that they had a home where they belong but if you don’t have the room right now, I can return them to France. It’s no trouble–”
All this time Papa has been sitting quietly. He jumps up suddenly out of his seat and shouts. “We’re not returning with them. I’ll dump them to the bottom of the sea before I’ll lift one hundred and fifty kilos of books halfway around the world again.”
Folio is frightened. I call her to my side. She wags her tail and settles by my legs.
Tatie takes my hand. I help her up off the floor and onto a seat on the couch next to me.
“It’s the Atlantic Ocean, not the Atlantic Sea. It’s twenty-five kilos for each suitcase. Furthermore, it’s not halfway round the world, it’s only a quarter. Your Papa never listened to me when I used to tell him, ‘Learn your lessons, Georges.’”
I can see it coming from Papa. He won’t let a comment like that past him. “Why should I have listened to you?” he says. “You were always pretending to be my mother. You weren’t my mother any more than you were his, isn’t that so, Carl?”
Tatie holds a delicate hand to my face. I rest my head in her palm and close my eyes. There’s no harshness in the touch, no solicitation or admonishment. I open my eyes again then take her hand in my own. “Of course she’s my mother.”
Tatie leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. “Of course.”
Papa throws his arms in the air. “Why are you speaking English? That’s enough, don’t you think? If it continues I’ll be heading home sooner than planned.”
Tatie slides a tissue out from her sleeve. She wipes her eyes and nose then says the very word I had on the tip of my tongue. “Promise?”
EPILOGUE
HENRY CLAIMS IF IT WASN’T for him I’d have a permanent curve in my back from bowing to Francis. He also says I’d have a brown tongue. He still comes by in the afternoon for coffee, although not as often. I vacated the office not long after I moved out of Mercedes and Cyril’s basement. “View’s no better than the LAB’s,” he says in comparison to the Reading Room. The last time I offered him cookies with his coffee, he glanced at the packaging then scolded me for buying biscuits with a high fat content. Apparently, Goddess helped him lose twenty-four pounds. Lately, he only ever talks about Goddess and whether they should buy a house in or outside of town. Sometimes I feel a tinge of nostalgia when I think about those afternoons over coffee and cookies. We’re still in touch regularly. He came with me when I bought my new car. I was surprised how civil he was with the salesman. He even gave me a housewarming gift. It’s the book House Repairs for Dummies.
Edith is so busy in her role as Interim Head of Special Collections, she’s lost interest in telling me what I should be doing. I went by her