The Good Sister(4)
‘Yes. My sister gives these to me whenever she returns from international travel. Do you know they give them out for free on airplanes?’
‘I did know that,’ he says, which makes me wonder about the accuracy of my assessment that he is homeless. I have, in my lifetime, been known to get things alarmingly wrong. I examine him more closely. His jeans are both too loose and too short and appear to have been cut off by hand, judging by the frayed ends. His buffalo flannelette shirt is in better nick, nicely buttoned right up to the neck. And while he has an overall look of grubbiness, I haven’t detected an odour, even in this small vestibule. I look at his fingernails, which are clean. Spectacularly clean, in fact. Buffed and pink and round, each cuticle a perfect crescent moon. The man could be a hand model.
‘I apologise, I thought you were homeless.’ I don’t smile now, to indicate this isn’t banter, but a serious comment. ‘I’m afraid it was your jeans that gave me that impression. And the hat, obviously.’
He stares at me. Not being one to duck away from a challenge, I stare back. A few years ago, I read a book of tips for people who find eye contact difficult. It suggested staring competitions as a form of exposure therapy. To my great surprise, I excelled at it. As it turned out, staring competitions were nothing like the discomfort of regular eye contact. There is no need to wonder how long you must look at someone, when you should look away or how often to blink. With staring competitions, all you have to do is fix your gaze on the person and let your mind wander. I can do that for hours if I feel so inclined. In fact, I once beat Mr Robertson, a library patron and good contender, at thirty-seven minutes. I expect Wally, younger and wilier by the look of him, to be a better contender, so I’m disappointed when after less than ten seconds, he looks away.
‘Amateur.’
Wally opens his mouth at the same time as the door swings open, forcing me further into the vestibule. The boy in the orange jumper from Toddler Rhyme Time pushes his way inside. On his heels are his grandmother and another woman pushing a double stroller. Clearly, Rhyme Time has finished. Outside, the swell of toddler racket intensifies.
‘What’s wrong with my hat?’ Wally asks, as the door opens again and a small girl and her mother file into the small space. It’s getting quite cramped in here now. The boy in the orange jumper jumps up and down and announces, ‘I’m busting,’ to no-one in particular. Then he notices Wally. ‘It’s Wally!’ he cries, marvelling.
Wally looks at me and I shrug – a non-verbal gesture I’ve seen people use to indicate, Told you.
There are a lot of people in the little vestibule now and the acoustics are particularly irritating. I place my hands over my ears. ‘It’s a compliment,’ I yell over the din. ‘Wally is universally beloved, even if he is an odd sort of fellow. Though maybe he isn’t odd, maybe he just looks that way? Like you!’
Wally pushes his glasses back up his nose and I lip-read him saying, ‘Excuse me?’
‘You don’t need to ask to be excused,’ I shout, moving toward the door. ‘The library is a public space; you can come and go as you please.’
The door opens yet again; this time an elderly man, pushing a walking frame, comes through it. I grab the door and manoeuvre around the double stroller. I’m almost out the door when a thought occurs to me and I swivel around.
‘And if you belched or farted, I didn’t hear it, so no need to excuse yourself for that either!’
And with that, I give a little wave and take my exit.
When we were five, my mother took my sister, Rose, and me to the library every day for a year. A better education than school will ever give you, Mum used to say, and I quite agree. If it were up to me, every child would have a year in the library before they went to school. Not just to read, but to roam. To befriend a librarian. To bash their fingers against the computers and to turn the pages of a book while making up a story from their superior little imaginations. How lucky the world would be if every child could do that.
I was that lucky. These days, researchers seem to be saying that we don’t form explicit memories until the age of seven, but I have a number of memories from the year I was five. Memories of Mum, Rose and me waking up with the birds, scrambling into our clothes and racing out to the bus stop. Because of our eagerness, we nearly always arrived before the library opened, then passed the time by sitting on the bench out the front, or, if it was raining, huddled under the awning finishing our books while we waited for the doors to open. When we got inside, Rose and I took turns sliding our books into the return slot and then racing to select our beanbags for the day (I preferred the cotton ones – the vinyl could get so sticky after a while). Mum never sat on a beanbag, she preferred the armchairs or seats on the other side of the library. Often, we didn’t see Mum for the whole day. That was part of the fun. We went to the toilet by ourselves, we went to the water fountain by ourselves. At the library, we were in charge of what we did and when.
We’d been doing this for a few weeks when one of the librarians, Mrs Delahunty, began taking an interest in us. First, she gave us book recommendations. Then, she gave Rose and me worksheets on which to write the names of all the books we’d read. If we got to a hundred, she said, we’d be gifted a book from the library to keep! It was through filling out that worksheet that Rose and I learned to write. Some days, when we deliberated on what to read next, Mrs Delahunty, would come over and make suggestions.