The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“I’m not like Mom,” she says, softly. “I’m careful. I read cards, I don’t swim. I don’t tempt stuff. When you come with us, I don’t want you saying anything to Thom or Doyle.” She deals a perfectly balanced row on the chair arm. The Fool, the Eight of Swords, the Queen of Swords among them, startlingly familiar. They’re faded, worn. Familiar is not even the word. I’ve seen these pictures before. This is a hand-drawn deck. Maybe it was hard to recognize because I’d seen them in brown ink, but I remember the curling shoe on the Fool, the tortured expression on the Eight of Swords.

“Found you a coat.” Doyle jogs up the stairs holding an enormous black parka that looks like it’s made from garbage bags. Enola stuffs the cards back in her pocket. He approaches and she hops up, letting him put the ugly thing around her shoulders.

“Simon?” she says.

“What?”

“There’s water coming through the doors.”

Underneath the rubber edge of the glass doors a dark puddle has formed, a black creeping stain on the green carpet. “Shit. Doyle, were there any more coats?”

“Sure.”

“Get them. Coats, sweaters, shirts, whatever’s there.”

There are four exits to Grainger, the main doors, two fire exits, and a service door. Two of the exits are on the basement floor. The lost and found has only an armful of jackets and clothing, barely enough for one door. Doyle carries them all around his shoulders, a human coat rack.

“The rest’s all bags and stuff. Umbrellas.”

Downstairs is filled with children’s books and newspapers, older local documents, and books in storage that no one uses except those writing theses, or me. Downstairs will flood quickly; there isn’t a practical point in trying to save it if water from upstairs is going to rush down. Still. Ruined. Everything on the lower shelves, all those files. I can still feel the edges of each page.

“Simon?”

“Front door. We’ll stop the bottom with coats and figure something else out from there.”

A little boy’s red winter jacket, a dark blue vest, a wool coat covered with cat hair, a stained sweater, a brilliant pink cardigan—I can picture it on Mrs. Wallace. They fill with water, soaking through. Doyle drags two chairs over to hold things in place.

Then comes the painful part.

Reference is sacrificed to the fire exit. A bottom shelf. An encyclopedia is opened and jammed into each crack in the door, volumes stacked upon volumes to make as close as we can to a seal. We tear out pages to fill in the gaps. Push back the water, don’t think about the books. They would have gotten ruined anyway. Don’t think about how tall the stacks felt when I first discovered Grainger. Don’t think about how these shelves held the answers for me, to everything, to what I would be, how they were my own decimal code.

I feel Enola looking at me. “You’re already fired,” she says. “And you’re probably saving books.”

Doyle tears out a page covered in scrawl. “Somebody drew dicks all over it anyway.”

That doesn’t make it better.

When we can push no more paper, when there is no more to do, we climb the stairs to the second floor.

The whaling collection is cold, pristine. Plexiglas cases display scrimshaw, harpoon heads, and a blubber spade. The shelves have worn captain’s logs, ship manifests, drawings, and letters in archival boxes. Sterile. A portrait of a young Philip Grainger hangs by the door; his round wire glasses and close-clipped brown beard convey both wealth and academia. There isn’t a corner of the room that doesn’t fall under his gaze. Alice likes to genuflect when she walks past him. The chairs here are softer than the ones in periodicals; this is where the money comes from and where it goes. If we’re going to stay dry we’ll do it here. Enola curls up in a chair. Doyle slides another chair beside her. She lays her head on his shoulder and tattooed arms snake around her. Somewhere between the car, the coats, and the water, he’s been forgiven.

“Ever think,” she says, “ever feel like the water is coming for you? The house, for sure. Your books.”

“We’re safe here.” I watch her. Doyle’s head begins tipping into the easy sleep of a child. Enola’s eyes dart, eyeing the ceiling for leaks, I presume. “When I first started walking the buoys out, Frank told me that when we were born there were high tides each time, waves so big they washed over the bulkheads, right over the pilings. Everyone thought the docks would break, but they held. Good things can come with the tide.”

She pulls her hood up and tucks her chin to her knees. “Frank is a liar.”

She’s right. I walk out to the stair rail and look over. A black circle has spread beneath the encyclopedias holding the back door.

She falls asleep against Doyle, his tentacles around her, skin embracing, ink embracing. I am out of places to go. Water has taken everything. The storm has even erased the pleasure of the fire. All I’ve done is burn our history and destroy a beautiful book. Then came the rain. Something’s gone wrong.

I get up. The books downstairs may already be ruined but it’s not right to let them go without a witness, and it’s time to check on what Liz Reed found.

Doyle cracks an eyelid. “Where’re you going?”

“Downstairs. I need to watch it go.”

He nods slightly. Enola tosses in his arms, one hand darting out in a spastic thrust. “She’s worried about you,” he says. “That’s why she came here.”