Louise’s brows jerk up. “Shh,” she says.
“You’re the one that found her,” I whisper, but Louise is already halfway back down the aisle, her hips swiveling with the speed of her gait.
Crap.
As I walk up to the woman and try to gently explain library policy, my face growing red, I feel someone’s eyes on me. I turn and my gaze meets Michael’s. His mouth cracks into a smile, which he tries to cover with his hand, before he turns back to his computer screen. Great—even the pillow golfer is laughing at me.
AT SIX FORTY-FIVE, Louise appears beside me, coat on, keys in hand. “I know it’s my turn, but can you lock up tonight?” she asks.
I dip my head toward where Aja is still sitting. “Yeah, I’ve got to wait for his dad to get here anyway. I told him I’d watch him.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize anyone was still . . . wait . . . you did what?” She narrows her eyes.
“You said we need more bodies,” I say, offering her my most charming smile.
“Yeah, but we’re not a babysitting service.”
“Well, no. But we’re not a homeless shelter or a video game arcade either,” I say, nodding in the direction of the TP Thief, who’s currently browsing the DVD section, and then toward Michael, the pillow golfer at his standard computer carrel. “You said yourself, the job’s books and community service.”
Her eyebrows disappear beneath the grayish curtain of fringe on her forehead. “True,” she says. “I guess as long as you don’t mind.” She glances at her watch. “I’ve got to go. My oldest granddaughter’s got bingo night at school and I promised I’d be there. Ends in thirty minutes.”
I look at her, wondering how many grandkids she’s got. And then I wonder why I’ve never thought to ask.
After she leaves, I clean the circulation desk, rehoming the stray pencils, paper clips, rubber bands, and other office supplies, and then sit there, glancing at the clock. Six fifty-one. I drum my fingers on the laminate surface and then stand up.
I mosey over near the computer carrels and pretend to be looking for a book on the shelf next to Aja.
“So why’d your mom name you Jubilee?”
I jump, his voice startling me, and turn to look at him.
“Do you think she was a big X-Men fan?”
“Ah, no. Definitely not,” I say. Every year on my birthday, my mom told the story of her labor with me. Thirty-five hours. It was hell. You fought and fought and then at the end when it was time to push—long after that damned epidural wore off—you were trying to come out forehead first, and the cord was wrapped around your neck and the doctor had to go in and grab and pull. Like there was enough room in there for his hands, too! Most pain I’ve ever experienced. I was so goddamned glad when you were finally out and it was over. Pure joy. That’s what I was going to name you. Joy. But then one of the nurses said it was like a jubilee, a reason to celebrate, or something like that. And I thought it sounded fancier. If Joy’s on a wedding invitation, you might get a Kmart gift, but Jubilee? That’s a Neiman Marcus name. High-end.
That’s how I got my name. She was so joyful to be rid of me. So happy I wasn’t causing her problems anymore. But I don’t want to tell Aja that.
So I lie.
“Mom was so happy I was finally there. In her arms. And ‘jubilee’ means ‘a joyful celebration.’?”
Aja nods. “That makes sense.”
“What about you? Why’d your parents name you Aja?”
He’s quiet for so long that I wonder if he’s heard me. And then softly, he says: “They didn’t.”
“What?”
“That’s not my real name.”
“What’s your real name?”
He shakes his head.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
He mutters something.
“What?”
“Clarence,” he says, fixing his eyes on me. “It’s Clarence.”
I try not to laugh, but a small giggle falls out. Aja narrows his eyes at me and I try to compose myself. “Why on earth did they name you Clarence?”
“My dad wanted me to have an American name,” he says. “To fit in.”
At that, the laughter bubbles over. “With Clarence?”
“Yeah,” he says, the left side of his mouth turning up. “Terrible, huh?”
“The worst!” I say, still laughing. “I’m sorry. But that is pretty bad.”
When I finally calm down, I say: “So how’d you end up with Aja?”
He shrugs. “It’s a nickname. From my mom. When I was born, she was trying to learn Sanskrit. My dad’s parents are Hindu—”
“Wait, so Eric isn’t your—”
He shakes his head. “He adopted me, when . . .” But he doesn’t finish the sentence. He just looks down at the carpet, shoulders hunched. When I first saw them, I suspected that Eric wasn’t his biological dad, what with Aja’s slight British accent that Eric doesn’t share—not to mention the difference in their appearance: Aja’s bronze skin and dark eyes versus Eric’s sandy complexion and green eyes—but I didn’t know for sure. It was possible Eric’s ex-wife was responsible for passing along those characteristics. But at the revelation, my heart breaks a little for Aja, at the same time that it swells a little for Eric. At this further affirmation of his genuine goodness in character.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not wanting Aja to dwell on the obviously devastating event, whatever it was that happened to his parents. “So your mom—she was learning Sanskrit?”
He’s quiet for a moment longer and I wonder if I’ve lost him. But then his small voice continues. “She was hoping it would make them like her more. She wanted to be able to talk to them, to show she was putting in such an effort to learn about their culture, or something.”
“She was learning to speak it? I thought Sanskrit was just a written language.”
“It is mostly, but I think actually some Hindu priests still use it and it’s the official language of Uttarakhand in India, where my grandparents were born. Anyway, she said I used to make this noise when I was a baby—not a cry but like this high-pitched mewing sound. Like a baby goat. And the word for ‘goat’ in Sanskrit is—”
“?‘Aja,’?” I say.
“Yep.” He looks down again, kicking an invisible wall with his toe. “So my name is really Goat.”
I chuckle. “It’s better than Clarence.”
“Quite,” he says formally, eliciting another smile from me. He turns back to his comic book and I take it as a signal our conversation is over. I start to walk back to the desk, find something else to do until Eric arrives.
“I Googled you.”
I stop. Turn back to him. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
I cock my head. “How’d you know my last name?”
He shrugs. “It’s on the library website.”
“It is?”
He nods. “I can’t believe you were in the New York Times,” he says, his eyes wide. “That’s like the biggest newspaper ever.”
It’s my turn to shrug.
“You’re lucky,” he says.
“It’s not really that big a deal. It was just one article.”