The Book of Speculation

5 JULY 2ND

Finding information on Verona Bonn has proven something of a snipe hunt. I started in the simple places, ancestry websites, public records, filling the time between book requests and cataloging with casual queries. But beyond a newspaper clipping of a svelte woman balanced on a diving platform, not much turns up. The deeper hunting lies locked beyond paywalls or affiliations with institutions. At the moment I don’t have the cash lying around for a casual foray into genealogy. Like Mom, my grandmother seems to have worked under different names. Verona Bonn must have been her last incarnation, leaving little clue as to why someone would scrawl her name in the back of a very old book, a problematic book.

Save for the book, Peabody’s Portable Magic and Miracles has no record of existing, and I found no evidence of contemporaneous traveling troupes. Hermelius Peabody’s particular breed of entertainment was frowned upon during the Revolution all the way until 1792, when John Bill Ricketts set up an arena in Philadelphia. Yet from what I can tell, Peabody performed, traveled, and profited as early as 1774.

Worse, the names in it are real.

* * *

A printout of a scanned newspaper page, the Catskill Recorder, July 26th, 1816, sits on my desk. It took three days of searching to find it, but now I’ve read it enough times that when I close my eyes the words float in negative.

24 July 1816. Bess Visser, entertainer, found drowned in the Hudson River ferry crossing at Fishkill, presumed to have tragically taken her own life. The lady is reported to have been distraught, suffered from bouts of sleeplessness and mania. She is survived by a daughter, Clara, age four.

July 24th, and not simply a drowning, a suicide, like my mother. The coincidence is too much. When my search for Clara Visser came up empty, I turned back to the book. There, in the back, just before the wash of ink, I found Clara Petrova.

It’s this that has me calling Martin Churchwarry again.

“I thought you’d like to know what I’ve found.”

“Fantastic. Was the book your grandmother’s then?”

“No, nothing so direct. I did find other names in it, though, someone named Bess Visser and her daughter, Clara. My mother knew Bess’s name, so there’s a connection somehow. I can’t imagine it’s a common name.” Something in me holds back about the dates of their suicides. It feels too personal to share. I offer this instead: “In a way I think you did give me a little piece of my family.”

I can almost hear him smiling. “That’s kind of you to say, Simon. Thank you. I’m just glad to know the book has found a good home.”

“It’s fascinating, honestly. I’d like to show it to my sister. The tarot sketches that are in it — my sister reads cards. My mother did as well. I wish I knew something more about them. The sketches are interesting. Different somehow.” I think about Enola, how uncommunicative she can be, and I can’t imagine her telling me anything. “You wouldn’t happen to have any good texts on tarot, would you?”

“Cartomancy?” he says with a light laugh. “I’m sure I must have something around. There’s always at least a little interest in the subject. Hang on a moment.”

I hear him walking around, the subtle thump of slippered feet, followed shortly by the sound of claws scrabbling on hardwood and a muttered, “Down, Sheila.” So, he keeps a dog in the shop. I imagine it’s a beagle. Something about Churchwarry screams beagle. He descends a staircase, a subtle change in creaking boards. “Let’s see. I don’t typically keep a large occult section — my father was more a classics man — but it’s never a bad idea to have a few volumes. Ah. Oh, here you are, you sneaky bastard. The Tenets of the Oracle. That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Lovely edition. 1910.”

I jot the title on an envelope and tuck it into my notebook. “Would you mind seeing if there’s a particular card in it? That is, if you aren’t busy.”

“Oh, not at all. Marie will be delighted that I’m speaking with a customer.” He chuckles and I can’t help but imagine a long-suffering wife, with wispy gray hair and plump cheeks. I describe the card and listen to him flipping softly through pages.

“Yes, that’s it. The sketch you described sounds very much like the Tower. The simple interpretation says that signifies abrupt change, probably violent.” There is quiet muttering. “There’s a much more detailed explanation, though it’s beyond me. I don’t know how helpful it will be as our book predates The Tenets by a century at least. You might look it up for yourself, though. The Tenets is a fairly common book — though my copy is splendid, should you be interested. Gilded edges. Embossed cover.”

“Something tells me I can’t afford your copy.”

“And the longer I hang on to it, the less I can afford to keep it. The two-sided problem,” he sighs.

“Lenders and sellers.”

“Neither with a penny to rub together,” he says, cheerfully. “I do enjoy talking to you, though. I hope you’ll tell me if you find anything else.”

“I will, Martin,” I say, and am startled to realize that I mean it. But there is no more time for reflection. The library beckons.

I shower, shave. The face looking back at me is tired. Messy black hair, a nicked chin, red bumps rising from an old razor and humidity that never lets sweat dry. Alice kisses this face. We’re having drinks at the Oaks tonight. There will be a band, a jazz quartet, I think — maybe funk? Music and drinks might make it a date, or two friends listening to music and having a drink. I press on my bleeding chin. Is this my breakfast face?

I grab the book and envelope. In the car, I stare back at the house. A gutter hangs precariously from the roof. When did that happen? I glance at the clock. I’ll need to get my hands on some braces. Easy-enough fix.

Ruminating over leaks, roof rot, jazz or funk quartets, I arrive at the library. The girls in circulation won’t look me in the eye. Marci turns away when I pass. The only greeting is an atmosphere of shame, which has a broad embrace.

I am losing my job.

A dignified man might go straight to Janice’s office, but I’m not dignified. I need my desk. The last stand I can make is sitting in the chair that has so become a part of me.

Not five minutes pass before the thumping of heels on high-traffic carpet approaches. Janice wears a dark pink suit today, a ragged edge material that’s too warm for July. Today’s earrings are silver periwinkle shells.

“Simon?”

“Can we do this here, Janice?”

She looks uncomfortable, her eyes maybe even a little shiny. Tears?

“It’s easier if we talk in my office.”

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather not walk by everyone again.”

A small parting of the lips, an ah. “I understand. Absolutely.” She begins the speech detailing how hard she fought, how if there was a way to scrape by without letting me go she’d have found it. I can’t listen, not even when she launches into how much she’s enjoyed working with me, seeing me grow. Pretending to listen is a favorite mask that wears comfortably.

“Reference will suffer for it,” she says.

Even if she means it, which she may, it rings of pity. There, by the periodicals, a thick red braid. Oh, hell. Alice gets to hear me get fired.

“I’m terribly sorry about this. There’s just nothing else to do.”

I hear myself agree to two weeks. Janice offers to make phone calls on my behalf. “Okay,” I say. Now I’m thanking her for letting me go, which is its own humiliation.

Fixing a broken gutter is pointless when there’s no money for the rest. With the passage of a few minutes both my homes are gone.

Janice is wrong; I’ve been here twelve years, not ten. Twelve years of solitary work — stacking, sorting, scanning, cataloging, researching, letter and grant writing, fund begging, and book repairing. I’ve become part of the papers. They were mine, twelve years of pages and volumes. Now I have a single book.

Alice walks toward me. We’ve been trying to stay apart at work. Libraries are hotbeds of gossip — everyone knew about Marci’s husband’s drinking almost before Marci did. We’ve been carefully professional, talking to each other only when we need things, when I want the schedule for a room, or when she wants visuals for a speaker, or has to reach something. How will anyone reach things when I’m gone? She rounds the 300s, her sensible brown pants brushing against an oversized volume. I see it: pity. It’s in the tight set of the mouth. It’s in the slightly lowered eyelids, which on Alice makes her eyelashes catch the light. It’s a look that pairs with I’m so, so sorry. The second so is the kicker. The potential for a second so is horrible. She catches my eye. Mouths an Are you okay? I shrug, because what else can I do? She’s by the photocopy machines when an older man taps her on the shoulder. Comfortable shoes, white socks, tissue-thin button-down, shorts, old man knees. Old men love Alice. Thank God for that. I can’t talk to her just now, not until I’ve tried to do something. I pick up the phone and dial Millerston Library.

“Leslie? Hi. It’s Simon Watson at Grainger.”

Forty-five minutes later and I’ve spoken with or left messages for the directors at nearly every library from Babylon to Mattituck. Gina at Comsewogue was kind enough to tell me that Janice had called on my behalf.

“She’s heartbroken. You’d think you were her son. We’d take you on if we could, but we’re in the same crunch. The best I could offer would be volunteering until you could transition into part-time once the summer kids head back to school. It would be an insult.”

Pinching the skin at the top of my nose may not change the situation, but the pain makes the conversation easier. It’s worse with Laura at Outer Harbor.

“Wish I could help, but I’m looking for me. I talked to Janice two weeks ago hoping you guys had wiggle room. Don’t you get funds for the whaling collection?”

“Not enough.”

When I hang up, nothing’s changed but the hour. A book club meets in the armchairs by the front windows and a group of kids climb the stairs. Books need lending, shelving, mending. I still need to finish the grant application for the digital catalog funds. That will continue without me. I start working through the website Liz Reed sent, sifting through links. The New York section is filled with jobs in the city — digital archivists, information system architects, whatever that means. Even if I knew what it meant, there’s no way I could handle the commute. The Long Island jobs are slim, most calling for interns or budget wizards, of which I’m neither. At the bottom of the page is a small green box advertising a manuscript curator position with the Sanders-Beecher Archive, a specialty library in Savannah, Georgia. Clicking around takes me to the archive’s website, which reveals a beautiful old columned building. Photos of the inside show gorgeous dark wood shelves — walnut or cherry? — and rooms filled floor to ceiling with leather-bound books. A brief paragraph describes Sanders-Beecher as an archive with “a personal approach to broader history.” They lay claim to volumes from Georgia’s first printing press, diaries from early settlers, and a museum affiliation. I glance up at the whaling collection — a static snapshot of Philip Grainger’s obsession crammed into two sterile rooms. Something about Sanders-Beecher feels warm and alive. Maybe it’s the romance of distance causing rose-tinted longing. The miles between here and Savannah make the position more wish than reality, particularly when I’ve got the house to think of. And Enola coming home.

“Hey.” Alice drops a stack of broken-backed books on my desk. She leans on them, petting the spines. Her nails are short and carefully filed; mine are chewed to the point of no longer being fingernails. Her pity comes with a sigh, and it’s all right. I want a little pity.

“Hey,” I answer.

“I’m sorry it wasn’t me.”

“Nice of you to say, but you don’t have to lie.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m glad it wasn’t me but I’m sorry it was you. Better?”

“Better.”

“Tonight’s my treat, okay? As much as you want to drink, whatever. You can get sloppy, crash at my place, and I won’t tell anyone.”

I don’t even know what I’d drink. “What do you drink when you’re let go?”

“Rye, I think?”

“That sounds awful.”

She smiles. “Sounds about right.” We stay like this. Printers whir, copiers whine, fingers tap at keyboards. “You bring that book everywhere. Why?”

I don’t exactly know. The notes and the sketches feel vaguely familiar. Then there’s the drowning, and why my mother knew Bess Visser’s name, and the oddness about the twenty-fourth; it’s becoming an itch. “The guy who sent it to me might be right. I’m pretty sure it has to do with my family.”

Alice casts an eye toward the clock above the computer bank. Eleven o’clock. She needs to start setting up for a speaker soon. Don Buchman on salt marsh birds. She stretches. “You can’t find family in a book, Simon.”

I shrug. “You can’t fix me with platitudes, Alice.”

“No, you’re unfixable,” she replies. A soft chuckle — hers, mine. A curve of the lips. She grabs my hand and we both squeeze. “Is there anything I can do?”

Maybe it’s because Alice said it, maybe it’s because Enola hasn’t shown up, but I want to find my family, in this book or elsewhere, and figure out what happened to us. “Would you mind doing a little more digging? I’m looking for anything you can turn up on two women, Verona Bonn and Celine Duvel. I’ve hit a roadblock.”

“I was thinking something more along the lines of leaving early, but okay, sure. I’ll check out your future dates for you.”

“It’s not like that — they’re relatives. There’s just something I’m curious about. I think they might fit into a pattern.”

She arches a brow. “Care to enlighten me?”

“It’s nothing really. I just need a project. You know me, I’m better with a project.”

“I know.”

The morning is lost to taping bindings and polishing grant language. At lunch I email résumés. For the hell of it I send one to Sanders-Beecher, even one to a museum in Texas. The beauty of electronic applications is the fantasy — thousands of miles disappear with a click. Then I’m helping a little girl named Lucinda find a book in the folklore section. It’s a book on selkies, one that’s thick, with a green buckram cover. I remember pulling strings from the binding years ago. Not far from selkies is a smaller book with a melancholy spine. Fairy tales — Russian folk stories, legends and poems from the Baltic. Mom read to me from it. I’ve got no more right to it than anyone else, but I tuck it under my arm and wander back through the stacks. I need one more book.

The library’s copy of The Tenets of the Oracle has a simple red cloth binding, not embossed like Churchwarry’s. It’s a newer edition filled with art nouveau illustrations and seems less an informative text than an homage to mysticism. Churchwarry was right. The drawing of the card in my book seems to be an archetypical rendering of the Tower card, though it’s rougher than the picture in The Tenets, and has a lone man falling instead of two men crashing into waves. The Tenets’ illustrations are beautiful, delicate — but not like those in my book. It’s a signifier of change, and is just as likely to mark a new beginning as it does an end. A fitting card to study for the freshly jobless. I snag an hour or so in storage to page through it. Storage was my realm, a room with musty cabinets of materials not accessed frequently enough to earn a place on the shelves. Colonial printing history, animal husbandry, forgotten biographies. Someone else will have to run back here. By the time I leave storage and return to my desk, Alice has left a small stack of newspaper articles, photocopies, and printouts. On top of the pile is a call slip with her tight, slanted script.

S— Some info on your names. What’s with the paywall on this stuff? Should I be concerned you’re looking into dead women? P.S. My dad called. Gutter’s falling off your place. Let’s get you drunk. Pick me up at 8:00. —A

I sandwich the papers between the books and leave. Walking out the door feels almost like swimming, and I barely recognize the wire lawn sculpture I’ve hated since it appeared five years ago. I toss the stolen books onto the passenger seat along with Peabody’s. I have two weeks to give Janice, but I won’t go back. In my family we don’t prolong goodbyes.

I speed the entire drive home. When the car bottoms out on the dip by the harbor I laugh.

The reality of how close the house is to the cliff sinks in when I pull into the driveway. Instead of sitting down with Alice’s printouts or cleaning up for a night out at the Oaks, I attack the roof.

I hammer and wrestle the twisted metal back into the semblance of a working gutter. The brackets and screws are still attached, as though the roof itself shifted. An hour’s worth of hammering and bending and shredding my hands, and the gutter is ready to be reattached to the eave. The wood splinters under the first screw. I adjust, try again, but it gives way once more, sending a chunk careening to the ground. Third and fourth attempts only loosen shingles and further disintegrate the eave. The gutter falls, beginning an outline around a soon-to-be-dead house. The roof is rotting. This is something I should have known to fix years ago, should have known needed maintaining, but no one told me. I was left a house and a sister, with no instructions on either. And the cliff creeps closer.

We used to run down it, Enola and I, feet sinking deep. Her hand in mine, we pulled each other to the shore, gape-mouthed and howling. Each leap had us falling, counting seconds before we touched ground. Knees bent we’d land, the earth catching us and giving way, sliding down to the sea. Each step chewed at the houses around us, mine.

I would take every one of those steps back.

I let the gutter lie. Hop over it to go up the step, tug the damned door that never opens. Into the living room. Pick up the phone. Call Alice.

“It’s me.”

“You skipped out,” she says. It’s hard to tell how she feels about that.

“I’m sorry,” I say, to be safe. “Do you mind if I come by early? Is that okay? I can’t be here right now.”