They exchange numbers and chat for a few minutes, Milo interjecting his desire to have the playdate that day, right now, immediately. Megan is a professor of sociology. She lives in Sewanee. She’s younger than Jennifer, Jennifer thinks, though maybe not by a lot. She looks younger, anyway, with her open, freckled face and her wide, far-apart eyes. She looks younger than Jennifer feels.
Megan is talking about the necessity of regular escapes from the Mountain, her family’s weekend jaunts to Nashville, the benefits of a membership to the aquarium in Chattanooga, when Milo leans perilously close to Megan’s nice skirt with his disastrous fingers, and Jennifer catches him gently by the wrist. “I’d better clean him up before he slimes you,” she says.
“Oh, I’m used to it,” Megan says.
“Still,” Jennifer says, holding up Milo’s hand for the other woman’s inspection. “Chocolate.”
“True,” Megan says. She smiles at Milo. “Chocolate is very messy, isn’t it?”
“Mommy can stain it out,” Milo says.
“Stain it out?” Megan repeats. She flashes Jennifer a conspiratorial grin. Kids and their cutely mangled sayings. Something to post on Facebook.
“He sometimes says, ‘I smell like’ to mean he smells something,” Jennifer offers. She imitates the way Milo lifts his head, alert as a hound dog, when he catches a scent. “?‘I smell like garbage.’?”
“I smell like chocolate!” Milo shouts gleefully, wanting in on the joke.
“Yes, you do, bubby,” Jennifer says. She stands, pulling him out of his chair, and at last the other woman releases her, promising a call. “Great!” Jennifer says. She wants to turn to someone afterward, blow out air, share her relief. But there’s only Milo to turn to, and her relief is nothing she can express to him, so instead she proceeds to the bathroom to scrub him clean.
The someone she wanted to turn to, she realizes as she rubs Milo’s reluctant little hands together under the water, was Tommy. She still misses him, which surprises her. She comes upon the feeling from time to time, like when you step funny and feel that particular twinge in your knee. Back again. No matter what you did to get rid of it.
Horrible Deeds
Once a week I go to the library in Monteagle, a brown little institutional box of a building. Sue the librarian expects me. She knows my habits and makes me a stack of books she thinks I’ll like: always five books, always detective novels, waiting for me behind the circulation desk. You might imagine that being an old lady I like the cozy mysteries, but you’d be wrong. Spare me the cats and knitting. It was Sue’s idea to start picking out books for me—perhaps she gets bored—and the first stack she presented me, two or three years ago, was full of such nonsense. I don’t need my murders made adorable. Death in a book is still only death in a book, but give me an author who doesn’t flinch. If a mystery doesn’t walk you up to the abyss before it rescues you, it’s a shallow form of comfort.
At any rate Sue knows better now. When I arrived today she had ready a good solid stack of horrible deeds. “Miss Margaret!” she greeted me, beaming like she always does. “How are you today!” I did not make a mistake with the exclamation point; that is how she talks.
“As well as could be expected,” I said, which is one of my standard answers. What should I say? I’m ninety. Fine would be a ridiculous lie.
“I’ve got some good ones for you,” she said. She got up from her stool to get them, which gave me time to get to the desk and heave my returns onto it. In the past she’s come out from behind the desk and tried to take them from me, but when politeness didn’t work I snarled at her and now she doesn’t do it anymore.
She plopped her books next to mine. This is one of the best moments of my week, seeing those two stacks side by side: something accomplished, something to anticipate. Perhaps it is the best moment. She lifted the top book, by Tana French, and displayed it as proudly as if she’d had a hand in its creation. “This just came in,” she said. “Hasn’t even made it to the shelf yet. I know you like her.”
“I do,” I said. “Thank you.”