The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison

Author:Alice Mattison [Mattison, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction, C429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780688177867
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Published: 1980-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

THE trouble was that Deborah died, and there didn’t seem to be a way to figure out that it hadn’t happened. Often Ruben let herself imagine that it wasn’t true. She imagined herself in the dining room eating supper and marking papers. She ran her mental tongue over the events and licked the spot of time in which she read the next to the last paper. Then the phone did not ring. Ruben listened in her mind to its exquisite silence, and in her mind she picked up Lillian’s paper.

Or, it did ring. The phone did ring. The phone rang and it was Jeremiah, but he said, Deborah just called. Her mother died.

Apparently someone had to die.

—Deborah wants me there, said Jeremiah. Would you let Mac out in the morning?

—I don’t have a key, said Ruben. Whenever she played this hard game, she said sensibly, I don’t have the key. Sometimes, if she was alone, she actually screamed the words aloud: I don’t have the key! I don’t have the key! Sometimes that was the end of the game. She stopped where she was—carrying laundry down the stairs, in the bathtub, in the street—and emitted small screams.

When it wasn’t the end of the game, she talked. In an offhand voice, acting the part of Jeremiah, she said, Oh, I’ll drop an extra key off at your house. Or, Oh, I’ll put my key under a flowerpot on the back steps. When she got that far she was in a tumult of smiles and sobs. Nobody stopped and questioned her when she cried in the street. Once she sat down on the icy sidewalk to hold herself. Across the street, somebody walked by but ignored her.

She didn’t have her hair cut and when the frame of her glasses broke in the middle she taped it together. She canceled one class but held class after that. The students asked about her friend. Some had seen the story in the paper. Deirdre offered to lead the class in prayer, and Ruben accepted, though she didn’t usually pray and now she hated God. I think prayer is inappropriate in this setting, said Louise after the prayer.

Ruben had last heard prayer at Deborah’s funeral. She was a pallbearer. The coffin was heavy. Arriving early at the church in the car with Harry, she saw men removing a coffin from a van, and she knew Deborah was inside. The men carried it into the church as if it were any box. Ruben made Harry keep driving. He drove as if he couldn’t see, straight ahead down the street where the church was, and block after block on that same long street. It seemed as if he’d drive out of the city. At last Ruben said, Go back now, and he made a U-turn.

At the church, people were walking in, and Ruben and Harry joined them. Peter and Stevie came in Berry’s car and sat with them. Jeremiah and the girls walked in, holding on to one an-other.

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