The Book Borrower Page 9

  —Enamel ones in colors, said Deborah. Red, orange . . .

  —I like copper and stainless steel better, said Ruben. Before she had children, she had cooked seriously, now and then. Long, happy Sundays with a French cookbook. She said, If Janet would give me a full-time job, I’d shop here. She ran her hand under the bottom of expensive cast-iron pots and up their sides.

  —Not likely, said Deborah.

  The man said, Would you ladies mind the store while I walk around the block? They were surprised enough to say yes. He strode out, already swinging his arms, but cautiously. He was a small, neat man.

  Ruben circled the store as if she planned to stay, and she’d already noticed a handwritten sign near the cash register: Help Wanted: Part-time. If I worked here, she said, I’m afraid I’d break things.

  —You’d work here?

  —We could use the money. I like it here.

  When he returned, she asked him. You’d enjoy it, he said quietly. He was delicate, scholarly, with dry hands and lines around his eyes.

  —What if I broke things?

  —I doubt you would.

  When she went back the next day at the time they’d agreed on, Archie nodded and put her to work in the back, unloading shipments of flowered mugs. Ruben learned to use the cash register. The first time, she sold nothing but a few sets of measuring spoons and salt and pepper shakers, but a woman looked for a long time at a yellow Le Creuset cast-iron frying pan. She walked away without buying, and Ruben was disconsolate, but the woman returned another time and bought it. The next time, Ruben had to gift wrap a hea,vy steel stockpot for a shy, smiling young woman. The store had rolls of colored ribbon to wrap around the packages. When the gift wrapping was done, Archie was dissatisfied. He threw away the ribbons and paper and did it himself. The young woman seemed mortified, but Ruben didn’t mind much; kindly he showed her each step.

  The night of the next drawing class, Jeremiah called to say he was leaving the house, so she’d be out front. What a bully, she said to Harry, who was trying to calculate while Stevie explained something long. But she was glad not to drive.

  —You actually signed up for a drawing course so you could learn to draw the markings on model trolleys? she said as she got into the car.

  —I’m weird, he said. Hey, I’m glad I’m getting to know you better. We’ve been friends for a long time, but we don’t really know each other.

  —Deborah and I don’t go in for husbands much.

  —You don’t like your husbands? I think Deborah likes me. Flustered, she said, We just don’t like those little foursy friendships—the two couples.

  —Oh. I didn’t get it. Well, it’s too bad. I like women, but I don’t meet women except at work, and Deborah’s friends. I’m not going to cheat on Deborah, you understand. That goes without saying. So—

  —I get it. She laughed at him while he drove around a corner and abruptly parked half a block from the art school.

  —You laugh at me. Women do. Even Deborah. Painting curlicues on model trolleys. But I’ll tell you about the inter-urbans. General Motors killed them, did you know that?

  She liked being “women.” It felt sexual, but safe.

  In class they were still carrying heavy easels, filling pages with many ugly objects. Ruben drew a woman who stood drawing opposite her, when there was a blank corner at the bottom of her page and the woman came next.

  —Have you any idea about the interurbans? Jeremiah said at the break. He was the worst student in the class. The teacher spent time on Jeremiah, who seemed to resent it, though even Ruben could see what he was doing wrong. He drew tight little pictures like diagrams, nothing like what she saw when she looked and drew. She was pretty sure what she did was better than what Jeremiah did, but the teacher didn’t praise her.

  Jeremiah was in a hurry for break and seized his jacket as soon as the teacher began to wave his arm toward the door. Ruben hurried after him. Interurbans, she learned, at their fastest could go a hundred miles an hour. The largest number of lines was in Ohio. Farmers put milk cans on the trolley.

  —General Motors destroyed them?

  —Well, there’s some dispute. Of course, the automobile destroyed them. But I think GM made it happen faster, yeah. They bought up trolley lines and shut them down.

  —I didn’t know.

  —All sorts of strikes and trouble, because ridership was down and the lines were losing money. The truth is, the only ones that ever made money were the lines tied to real estate deals. They’d build a suburban development at the end of a line. You know, there are interurban buffs all over the country, just like me. There are trolley museums and fairs and competitions, and you can buy kits and people collect them and share little wheels and so forth. But these are all innocents who do this, like people who think life in the country is pretty cows. They don’t want to think there was ever any trouble. Maybe they’ll admit that GM was bad for the interurbans, but that’s as far as they go. Nostalgia is all right. But if you read your history, there was plenty of trouble.

  —Accidents? said Ruben, thinking she could tell Peter all this. Peter liked trouble. Again she had Sanka. She liked picturing a trolley hurtling through the empty countryside. Think of it, Jeremiah had said, before he got to the subject of trouble: a pasture with cows and a donkey, and a long beautiful trolley zipping through it.

  —Accidents, he said now. Strikes. Stupidity. Oh, it’s like anything else. Now, this art school. Where did they find this teacher? What’s his name?

  —Gregory, said Ruben. I think he might be good, but we’re too stupid for him. She didn’t mean stupid.

  —Speak for yourself, Toby Ruben. Gregory. Why doesn’t he have a last name? said Jeremiah. Gregory sounds like a hair-dresser or a pope.

  —He doesn’t know any of our names, said Ruben, who learned her students’ names during the first class. She was even learning names of regular customers in the pottery store. There were people who bought pots and pans every week. Imagine, she said to Jeremiah. She’d already said it to Deborah.

  Driving home that night, they passed Gregory on a bicycle. Can’t afford a car, said Jeremiah, as if that proved something. Really, Jeremiah was disgraceful. How could Ruben feel chummy with glittery Jeremiah?

  —What kind of law do you do, Jeremiah? she said. Do you work for an import-export firm?

  —Not anymore, said Jeremiah. I used to. Deborah doesn’t keep you up-to-date, I guess. I’m in Woodbury and Dawes now. He gestured downtown, and Ruben remembered seeing the firm’s sign.

  —You do business law?

  —A little. It’s a small firm. We do whatever comes in the door. Mostly wills, small claims, a little p.i.

  She wanted to disapprove of him, but it sounded innocent enough.

  When the teacher had them draw with charcoal, Ruben first hated, then loved it. She was instantly covered with grime; she liked her smudged, childish hands, but then, not thinking, she’d push her glasses up and smudge them, too. She’d fumble in her handbag for eyeglass cleaner, which she never seemed to have brought, and make everything grimy. At home, the children tried charcoal and the house was streaked with charcoal. Peter cried when she took back her charcoal. He was getting old for crying and it startled her. I thought you trusted me, said Peter.

  Ruben loved drawing with charcoal, but didn’t love keeping track of her supplies and carrying them to class. Gregory had them use huge sheets of paper; when Ruben carried her big pad, it flopped open; pages fell. Her fingers tired: she knew no good way to hold it.

  Jeremiah’s jacket, smudged with charcoal, swung open as he walked around the classroom. Ruben wondered why he didn’t take it off. Nobody else dressed like him. Most of the students were younger people, with a couple of gray-haired women.

  If it had mattered at all, thought Ruben, how much this art class would have mattered! When her own class mattered to students—a few each term—they seemed to grip it in their teeth and never let their jaws relax; Ruben sometimes felt a sca
ry power to hurt. Ruben didn’t care about this drawing class, not really, but she couldn’t help feeling competitive, and she never won. The teacher walked past her without comment, though her charcoal shadows, she thought rebelliously, were as murky and spooky as anybody’s. To her surprise, she noted that the class mattered to Jeremiah. She wondered why she was surprised, and laughed at herself for having assumed that people who worked in offices had some protection she lacked.

  One night Gregory explained contour drawings. Ruben thought she would like contour drawings and be good at con-tour drawings. The idea was not to look at the paper, just to look at the object’s edge and move one’s hand. That resembled the old notion she’d had: looking, letting joy make the mark on the page. But she had never imagined herself drawing while standing up. That made everything hard, no matter what shoes she wore.

  In the middle of the explanation Jeremiah said, Could I ask a question?

  The teacher looked.

  —Do you know an artist named Berry Cooper?

  —I know of her. A sculptor. What’s the connection with contour drawing?

  There was no connection. Gregory shrugged. He didn’t even look annoyed with Jeremiah.

  At the break Jeremiah said, I’m naive, I know. I think all artists know each other.

  —Who is that sculptor?

  —Oh, she’s very interesting. You in particular would be interested in her. She’s Jewish. She doesn’t let on, but she is.

  Ruben was startled that her Jewishness was close to the sur-face of his mind.

  —Do you like her work?

  —I don’t know it.

  —Does she make statues of trolleys? She was teasing. They were on their way back to class in a hurry, Jeremiah sloshing coffee and she gulping her sugared Sanka. She thought sugar would give her energy for the second half of the class, but her arms ached anyway.

  —She could have. There’s a book about her. You’d be interested. I should lend you the book. I have it somewhere. I picked it up in a used bookstore years ago. I think she lives around here. If she isn’t dead by now. God knows how old she is.

  —She has something to do with trolleys?

  —She went to prison. She was a Jewish anarchist, around 1920. She was accused of causing a trolley wreck. Her sister died in it. The signals were switched. It was during a strike.

  —This sounds familiar.

  —Maybe you read the book. You English teachers read all sorts of things. Maybe you came across it.

  And then Ruben remembered. Oh, Jeremiah, she said, and stopped in the street, put her hand on his arm. Oh, Jeremiah, I read your copy. I started to read it. Deborah lent it to me the day we met.

  —She lent it to you?

  —I never finished it. It was upsetting. The sister—

  —I told you. The history of trolleys is not all peace. Not all cute little clang clang clang went the trolley riding over the hill. San Francisco. Cable cars. Tourists. By no means. Not much has been written about the wreck, but feminist scholars look at it, because she was a radical, a political type. Everybody else wants to be cheerful. We hobbyists are idiots, and historians are cheerful about the trolleys because they correctly think that the interurbans were a marvelous thing that has been lost. But here’s this little reality that has always interested me because I’m different from other people, sort of gloomy, although I don’t let it show.

  They were back in the classroom. That night they made collages, which could be accomplished sitting down. Ruben had forgotten scissors, but she tore paper and glued it to other paper. The teacher liked her collage. He seemed excited, but she felt as if she’d been wasting her time. It was like tearing a napkin in a restaurant, just keeping the hands busy. Drawing never felt like a waste of time.

  When Archie was out and no customers came to the pottery store, Ruben drew the lovely pots, struggling to show their smoothness and well-proportioned shapes. She couldn’t evoke the solid feel of them, their weight. Sometimes she brought Peter along, while Stevie played with a friend or was babysat by one of Deborah’s girls. Peter drew, too, or did his homework, or watched her and didn’t do his homework. He liked to sit in the back. I never was in the back of anyplace, he said twice. He was docile and shy and lowered his head, smiling. On the way home he was loud and obnoxious. Peter was never the same for long.

  Stevie, watching her make supper one night, finished the drawings she’d started at the store, put faces on the pots, wrote captions. A big bowl had a face drawn on it and was saying, If I only had a brain.

  —I was going to take that one to class, said Ruben.

  —Take it. But she didn’t. When she left, the boys were quarreling and Harry was considering pieces of fire engines—hoses, ladders?—in his study. She felt exhilarated, sneaking out, even carrying the heavy drawing pad. Jeremiah said to her, first thing, But Toby, you don’t still have that book, do you? I’ve searched the whole house. Deb says you returned it, but who knows? Ruben promised to look. At the break she asked him, But how do you know that artist is the woman in the book? I forget her name.

  —In the book her name is Jessie Lipkin. That wasn’t exactly her name—it was Gussie Lipkin.

  —How do you know?

  —I found something else about her. You can look up these things in indexes.

  —But maybe it’s a different person.

  —No, it’s the same person. The way I found out that she was Berry Cooper. Well, I read the book. A dotty old woman sold it to me at a used bookstore on Linwood Road—it’s gone now; there’s a housing development. Anyway, she told me Lipkin lived around here with a different name. I don’t know how she knew. I thought about the book for years. Then someone told me about the New York Times index. Did you ever use that?

  Ruben wasn’t certain.

  —Oh, very wonderful! You should take a look at it. Any library will have it. It has a volume for each year, and it’s an index of all the articles in the newspaper by subject. Heavy books. I just hauled them off the shelves one by one. I looked up Gussie Lipkin in every single year starting in 1921, when the wreck occurred. That year there were three articles about her. This was in Massachusetts, and the Times wasn’t too interested. The next year, none. The next year, one. Then none. Then, in the thirties, someone gave a lecture on the trial. And then there was a review of a sculpture show and it was listed under “Lipkin, Gussie. Alias Cooper, Berry.” I looked it up and it said there was a sculpture show in New York at a gallery— this was in the late thirties, some Communist festival no doubt—by Berry Cooper, whose former name was Gussie Lipkin. I don’t think she goes out of her way to let people know who she is, but sometimes it comes out. Anyway, there it was. After that, every few years there’s something about Berry Cooper. And locally, too. She does live here, or she did. Naturally I looked them all up and there’s never another reference to Gussie Lipkin, but I didn’t need another reference. Then I found a historical piece in a Jewish magazine that could have told me everything. It said Gussie Lipkin is Berry Cooper. It said she’s dead, but I think that could be wrong, because I have references to sculpture shows after the date of that piece. And they don’t say she’s dead. Of course, by now she could be dead.

  —Was she a good sculptor? said Ruben.

  —She mostly did abstract stuff. I don’t know much about that.

  On the way home, they passed Gregory on his bike. Even when it’s cold, Jeremiah said. That goes beyond fitness. That’s obstinacy.

  —Maybe he can’t afford a car, Ruben said. That’s what you said last time.

  —Oh, he can afford one, Jeremiah said, as if he knew.

  —I’ll look for the book, Ruben said when she got out. She was pretty sure she had never returned it.

  But she couldn’t find it. They’d moved twice since they’d lived in the apartment where she’d read half the book and stuck it somewhere. Surely she’d have returned it when they moved. She remembered bringing Deborah piles of borrowed possessions, and Deborah had done the same when
she and Jeremiah and the vigorous girls moved to a bigger house with more wall space for paintings of yellow and green ellipses. Ruben didn’t remember returning the book to Deborah, but memory is faulty. She remembered toys, baking pans, records, a cookbook, and Deborah’s notes for teaching freshman composition, which Ruben had disagreed with anyway.

  —Help me find a book, she said to Peter and Stevie, but they wouldn’t, and she couldn’t remember what it looked like, except that it was old. The boys ran up and down the stairs, fighting and getting along. When she scolded them for fighting they were never really fighting, and Stevie explained anything odd Peter might have done recently. The rooms upstairs, today, were a newspaper office. The boys were reporters. Downstairs were earthquakes and robbers. Ruben thought the book was black, or had a black spine. She’d simply look at every book she owned. She made herself go slowly, acknowledging—all but greeting—each book on each shelf, then each book on the next shelf.

  Now Stevie took an interest. Peter had gone downstairs to cover a fire and disappeared; she thought he was reading. She could recognize the change in the air when anybody in her family, anywhere in the house, began to read. The air was roomier, because the reader was elsewhere.

  —What’s it called? said Stevie.

  She’d asked Jeremiah. Trolley Girl.

  —It’s about a girl?

  —A woman.

  —Why’s it called girl then?

  —People sometimes say girl when they mean woman.

  —I don’t think I’d like that book. I don’t like books about women. But I like books about trolleys.