IN THE MORNING, I wake with a start, my hair sticking to my face, my pillow damp with sweat. I was having a nightmare. About Eric’s hands. His fingers were swollen, cartoonishly large, and they were touching mine—engulfing them, really—the pads of his bulging thumbs rubbing my knuckles. I was trying to tell him to stop, that I can’t be touched, but I felt as though I were underwater, that my mouth wouldn’t obey my brain, that my words were being stolen right out of the air, unable to fulfill their duty of being heard. The harder it was to move my mouth, the harder I tried, until I was paralyzed in fear and panic consumed every nerve in my body.
I sit up, trying to slow my galloping heart. But as I take deep breaths, replaying the scene in my mind, I can almost feel the rough warmth of his fingers on my skin. Or what I imagine it would feel like—I haven’t been touched in so long. Not since right before Dr. Benefield put me in that plastic isolation room when I was six. Right before he diagnosed me and my entire world shifted. For months and years afterward, I tried so hard to remember that last interaction with my mother. The last time she touched me. Did she clasp my face? Kiss the top of my head? Wrap her arms around my tiny frame and squeeze me tight? I’m sure she said something soothing like, “It’s only a week. I’ll be right out here, baby.” But the words don’t matter. If only I had known it was the last time I would be touched, the last time that I would feel the palm of her hand on my arm, her breath on my face, I would have held on a little longer. Imprinted the feeling of her fingertips on my skin. I would have made sure to remember.
But I didn’t. And now, sitting in my bed, trying to recall the touch of Eric in my dream—to really feel it on my skin—it’s the same fruitless effort I expended for years trying to recall my mother’s last touch. And then, as my heartbeat slows, I begin to wonder if it really was a nightmare. I wonder if my heart’s racing because I was terrified—or because it was so wonderful.
“DID YOU HAVE a good weekend, dear?” Louise asks when I walk behind the circulation desk Monday morning. She turns to look at me and gasps.
“Oh, dear,” she says, covering her mouth with her hand. The rash around my mouth had lessened when I looked in the mirror this morning, but some red splotches were lingering and my lips were still a bit bruised and swollen. I found a tube of lipstick in my mom’s dresser, but it only accentuated the problem, so I wiped it off.
“What happened?” Louise asks.
My shoulders tense and I silently chastise myself for not preparing a response. I was hoping no one would notice. “Allergic reaction,” I say. When that doesn’t seem to satisfy her, I add: “New lipstick,” because it’s the first thing that pops in my mind.
“What brand? Remind me never to get that one.”
“I don’t remember,” I say feebly as Roger approaches the circulation desk, holding a coffee mug.
“Morning, ladi— Whoa,” he says, staring at me.
“It’s just an allergic reaction,” Louise says, waving him off. “And it’s no wonder, really. You know what they put in lipstick? Crushed-up bugs. Bugs! And lead, I think, if I’m remembering right. Read some article about it a few weeks ago.”
I eye a pile of returns on the desk and start scanning them back in, as Louise and Roger’s conversation is devolving into a discussion of weird things in food, like yoga mat particles in sandwich bread. I tune them out, so I’m not sure if I’ve heard correctly when about five minutes later, Louise says: “It doesn’t matter, we’re all going to be fired anyway.”
My head snaps toward her. “What?”
She looks at me. “Oh, you didn’t hear? Maryann’s in another big fight with the city, trying to keep them from cutting our funding again. We used to have four circulation assistants—can you believe it? But that idiot Frank Stafford, city council’s finance chair, keeps funneling money to the rec center, because his son plays peewee football and he’s convinced he’s going to be the next Ted Brady—that’s a quarterback, right?”
“I think it’s Tom,” Roger says.
“Ted, Tom,” she says, waving her hand. “Anyway, she’s been trying to prove how needed we are in the community, but the circ numbers are down and the few programs we do have are so poorly attended—”
“Could we really be fired?” I cut her off.
“Oh dear,” she says, and reaches out to pat my gloved hand. I move it away from her. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.” She sighs. “But I don’t really know how we’ll even keep the doors open and lights on if they cut the budget any more. It’s bare-bones as it is.”
I stare at her, my mind reeling. This job essentially fell into my lap and I can’t lose it. I need the money. And against all odds, I’m mostly comfortable here. I can’t imagine looking for something else, going into all those strange buildings, talking to new people. At just the thought of it, a vise threatens to clamp down on my heart and stop it once and for all.
WHEN I COME out of the break room at four, I’m surprised to see Madison H. standing there, baby on her hip. I wonder why she’s at the library so often when she never seems to check out any books. Maybe it has something to do with being on the board.
“Jubilee!” she says when she sees me, her eyes betraying her horror. I lift my gloved hand to my mouth, willing the redness to just disappear already. “What happened?”
“Long story,” I say, sliding into my chair.
She shifts the baby to her other hip and looks at me pointedly. I sigh and glance behind me, making sure Maryann and Louise are still in the back room. Then I give her the abridged version of the weekend, ending with Dr. Houschka’s visit.
She stares at me openmouthed. “Jesus, I leave you alone for two days and you go and almost kill yourself.”
“That’s dramatic,” I say.
“Well have you made an appointment?”
“With who?”
“An allergist. To get that bracelet thing. And EpiPens. You should be carrying EpiPens! My nephew has a peanut butter allergy and doesn’t leave the house without one.”
“I don’t need an EpiPen. Or a bracelet. It’s not like I’m going around giving people CPR left and right,” I say, reiterating my inner thoughts from last night.
“Well what if there was another kind of emergency?”
“Like what?”
She thinks for a minute and glances down at her baby. “What if a kid drooled on you?”
“I’d get a rash,” I say, trying to make it sound like no big deal. But I shudder at the possibility, thinking of the girl who almost died from a drop of milk on her skin. And then my stomach starts to tingle and itch right near my belly button as if I’ve conjured a rash just by saying the word aloud. The mind is a funny and powerful thing. I start to scratch it through the material of my shirt. “And then I’d stay away from that kid.”
“What if he bit you?”
My eyes grow wide. “Why would a kid bite me?”
She shrugs. “Why do kids do anything? Hannah found a jar of honey and smeared it all over Molly’s face and hair last week when I was in the bathroom. Looked like she had a spa mask on. Do you know how hard that was to clean up?”
I stare at her, trying to decide if I should continue her little game. “I don’t think a kid is going to bite me.”
She sighs. “Look, I’m not taking you out until you get an EpiPen, OK?”