It hadn't been funny at the time, she
thought, as the laughter of co-workers and friends encircled her
like the plaiting of a holiday wreath. She must tell the story again
they insisted, so-and-so hadn't heard it yet. So-and-so was new. New
to Sophie's Christmas party for librarians, an annual event which had
been held in her flat on Esplanade Avenue for the last eight years,
and at which Melisande had first related the story with great
dramatic energy, and a panache that had surprised, and later
embarrassed her, due to the absurdity of it, and the underscoring of
cathartic joy at having left the environment in which it had
occurred, a story which now, in its eighth holiday incarnation, had
withered somewhat, at least to her, before the bureaucratic
expectations of saint-hood when it came to dealing with library
patrons. She sipped her wine, smiling at the laughing faces around
her as she remembered the actual day, when, on her first job at a
downtown public library, one frequented a great deal by the homeless,
the drug addicts, the mentally ill, the eccentrics, the local
characters, and those with time and nothing else on their hands,
she'd been called to the circulation desk from the office and told
that there was a disturbance in the reading room. It had been a
Saturday. She'd been in charge. The circulation staffer had pointed
out the individuals involved and had whispered to her that the young
man had complained that the person facing him across the table had
been looking at him and giggling. The individual in question, a
youngish woman with her head wrapped in tin foil, was sitting very
low on her chair, her arms on the table, her head resting on the back
of the high wood chair. Melisande had conjured up a sentence she
hoped would be sufficient to ease the situation: “I'm sorry Miss,
if you could refrain from laughing, you're disturbing the other
patrons.” She had approached the table, the two patrons looking up
at her, the young man with relief, the young woman with uncertainty,
and she had said, “I'm sorry Miss, if you could refrain from
laughing, you're disturbing the other patients.”
It hadn't been funny at the time.
The young woman had looked up at her, a
smile breaking upon her face like the reflections of florescent light
upon her aluminium foil, and, having caught the Freudian slip, had
begun to laugh quietly which had made the young man indignant. In
that moment of embarrassment, having reduced everyone to a patient of
a psychiatric ward, she'd managed to look around the reading room at
all the faces turned her way, many haggard and weary, beaten down by
life and circumstances, their bodies frozen in the act of reading
papers, magazines, books, a nightmarish vision of reverse judgement,
and not knowing what else to say, she'd turned around and made her
way back to the office, made a pot of tea to sooth her nerves, and
thought a job in a private or university library would suit her
better, feeling that her undergraduate degree in religious studies
and her graduate degree in library science had not prepared her for
dealing with such encounters.
“It hadn't been that funny at the
time,” Melisande said over the thinning laughter around her,
feeling that every ounce of amusement would be accounted for in some
grand Karmic register and there would be hell to pay as her
Father used to say.
“Patients,” Sophie said, tapping
the new girl's arm with her hand, “It's still funny after all these
years Melisande. What a wonderful transposition of words.”
“In the library I'm working at,”
the new girl said, “we've been instructed to call library users,
'customers.' They think library user, patron, and client are
outmoded. Customers. Sometimes I think I'm working in retail.”
The sound of Randy Travis's rich voice
singing Meet Me Under the Mistletoe overlay the awkward
silence that settled upon the party goers as they struggled to
respond to this rather mundane remark.
Jonathan, a subject specialist at the
university, came to the rescue: “At least that'll keep the word
patient out of the equation.” A wink to Melisande. “Here's to
customer,” he said, raising his glass, “may the Walmart greeting
be soon to follow.” Having saved the party from a minor denouement,
everyone raised their glass, and after they drank, a scattering of
ideas for conversation, like the multiple trajectories of a fireworks
explosion, spread through the room, their voices reduced to more
intimate levels,
“So Jonathan, how's Frank doing these
days?” Melisande asked, trying not to stare at his expensive
mock-tortoiseshell—at least she assumed them to be mock
turtle—glass frames.
“Well my dear, he's working away on a
new book, provisionally entitled The Rake's Profit, or Tally Hoe:
John Cleland and his Publishers. He's up to his earlobes in
research. Just last night he was regaling me with details of one of
Cleland's bookseller publishers and his stint in the pillory for
publishing Fanny Hill.” Jonathan rolled his eyes.
“I guess Fanny Hill seems
pretty tame compared to reading material these days. I overheard a
woman at a bookshop tell a friend that she'd been reading one of
those Fifty Shades books and how she had laughed her way
through it.”
“God knows where all those millions
of copies will end up. Elderly pensioners burning them in their
fireplaces for warmth perhaps. Throw on another Fifty Shades
Darker, my dear,” he said imitating an elderly voice, “I
feel the draft on my back like the frigid breath of Dr. Freeze .”
“So, when do we get the wedding
invitations Melisande?” Sophia asked from across the living
room.”We're all looking forward to the day.”
Trying to appear her regular organized
self, not wanting to let on that she and Pavor had yet to choose from
the examples available, with their plethora of fonts, shapes, sizes,
colours, embossing, ribbons, lace, textures, and photograph options. Pavor had
offered to write a short short story to include with the invitation
as well. A keepsake. “January, the month of Janus, the doorway to
the new year, looking back, looking forward” she said, not wanting
to commit to a specific day, “it will be a simple wedding.”
Sophie raised her glass, “Here's to
Melisande and Pavor, may their wedding day be blessed with good
friends and good weather.”
Jonathan gave her a squeeze with his
left arm and whispered in her ear, “So, since it was a leap year,
did you propose to Pavor or did he finally man up?”
Melisande slapped his thigh and gave
him a playful nudge with her shoulder. “On bended knee between the
pews of the McGill Chapel no less.” As the memory came back to her,
she recalled the dual nature of the proposal, the confession before
the request, the past before the future, the revelation of a
predeceased wife and child, and how their ghosts had thrown a shroud
over the proposal, one she hadn't noticed at first, but later had felt settle round her like a gloaming mist upon a farmer's field.
© Ralph Patrick Mackay
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of my imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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