The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

“I’m listening. Go on,” Tyler says.

“Are you finished with this?” a voice interrupts us.

It’s the librarian, gesturing to the open box of Van Sinderen ephemera. I glance at all the unlabeled photos and letters and birthday cards and things. Generations of Van Sinderens that Annie never knew. I feel like I should have gotten more out of it. More than one word on some star-cut letter.

“I guess,” I say.

“Find what you need?” she asks me. She’s probably wondering what two film guys are doing messing up her archive. She’s probably ready to get rid of me.

“Sort of,” I say, unable to hide my disappointment. “Actually, no. Not really.”

“What were you looking for?” she asks. She sounds like she really wants to know. I’m surprised. Tyler swings the video camera onto her face. “And I’m letting you play with that because I can tell it’s not recording, for the record,” she adds.

Tyler pulls the camera out of his face, waggles his eyebrows at her, and then puts it back. Like me, he prefers seeing the world through a filter.

“If I wanted to look at really old newspapers, how would I do that?” I ask.

“Like how old?”

“Old. 1820s,” I say.

“Sure,” she says, like people ask her that all the time. “Microfilm room downstairs.”

Tyler groans. “Oh my God,” he says. “Microfilm.”

That’s rich, coming from Mr. 16 millimeter guy. But whatever.

“Or,” she says. “You can just check the historic newspapers database.”

“There’s a database?” I’m stunned.

“Of course there’s a database.” She smiles at me. “What do you think this is? 1977?” She beckons me to follow her to her desk. “You can do this at any terminal,” she remarks, fingers flying over the keyboard. In less than a minute she swivels the screen around to face me.

New York Times. Boston Globe. And a bunch of ones I’d never heard of, that probably went out of business. Everything. It’s all there.

“Wow,” Tyler says, peering over my shoulder. “I’ve figured out your focus, by the way,” he says to me.

“Great,” I say to him. To the librarian, I say, “And this will show me the actual newspapers? Like, I can read them this way?”

“I’ll do you one better,” she says, smiling. “What’re you looking for?”

“I want to know if some kind of accident happened a long time ago,” I say. “Or an assassination, maybe. Something bad.”

“Date?”

“October twenty-seventh, 1825.”

Tyler lowers the camera and stares at me. “You in a history class I don’t know about or something?” he asks. “No wonder you’re so stressed out.”

“No,” I say, irritated. “I’ll explain in a minute.”

“Okay,” the librarian says, typing so fast it’s like magic. “Ooooo! The opening of the Erie Canal! Very cool.”

“Boring,” Tyler singsongs. “Come on, man, let’s go. I’ve got tons to tell you.”

“Wait a minute.” I wave him off. To the librarian, I say, “Yes, right. There was this big party for it. On the water. The Grand Aquatic Display. Is there anything about that? Something bad during that.”

“Let’s see.” The librarian frowns at her screen, paging through various results. “You know,” she remarks. “You’re more than capable of doing this yourself.”

“I know,” I say, sheepish.

“Hmmmm,” she says. “Oh! Yep. Here we go.”

She clicks the mouse, and clicks again.

“What?” I say, bouncing on my toes the way Annie does when she’s excited. “What happened?”

“A fire,” she says.

Her printer fires up without warning, deafening in the silence of the reading room, spitting out a few pages in quick succession. She plucks them from the top of the printer pile and hands them to me.