with the stacks of paper, the eroded rubber stamps leaning drunkenly against one another on the desktop. The children in the back squabbled for a moment about a book in the centre of the table, and the man in the study carrel lifted his head for a moment, giving Bean a flash of his profile – strong cheekbones fading down into a goatee, his hairline crawling back genteelly from his forehead. Bean thought he could have been handsome. Pity about the goatee.
‘Back for a visit?’ Mrs Landrige asked. She had gone back to her careful work, leaving a date in the future stamped, slightly askew, in a column of its relations. ‘Or to stay?’
‘To stay,’ Bean said, and then stammered it back in. ‘I mean – I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I might go back to the city after . . .’ After what, exactly? After our mother dies? After no one wants to throw you in jail any more? When will it be safe, Bean? ‘After a while,’ she finished weakly.
Mrs Landrige stopped, mid-stamp, and rested her weapon on the desk. She peered up at Bean for a moment, considering, and then gave a little nod, as though she’d decided something for herself. ‘Then you’ll need a library card, won’t you?’ she said finally, as though that solved everything (which, in our family, it nearly did). She opened a drawer with one vein-knotted hand and flicked out a stack of cards. She wrote Bean’s name down on one of them in her precise, schoolroom script and handed it over with a flourish. ‘It’s nice to have you back, dear,’ she said, and smiled, and Bean suddenly felt like crying.
She blinked hard and turned her gaze away from Mrs Landrige, lest the urge to cry, or worse, to hug her, returned. The man in the study carrel gathered his things and strode towards the desk. He wore jeans and a Superman T-shirt, and his boots were battered and faded in spots. No wedding ring, about the right age. Worth a hair flip, at least.
‘All ready, Father?’ Mrs Landrige asked, taking the books from the man.
‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.
‘Have you met Father Aidan?’ the librarian asked Bean, who was busy blushing a little at her idea of flirting with a priest.
‘No,’ Bean said, and thrust out her hand, a little too quickly. ‘I’m Bianca Andreas. My father’s a professor here. At Barnwell,’ she added, as though the town were an academic Gotham, teeming with institutions of higher learning.
He smiled, revealing teeth that were bright white, and slightly crooked, as though his mouth were off-balance in some way. ‘Charmed,’ he said. ‘I’m Aidan.’
‘Father Aidan is the new priest at Saint Mark’s,’ Mrs Landrige advised Bean, neatly closing the last book and pushing the stack across the desk to him.
Well, at least he wasn’t Catholic. St Mark’s was our church – Episcopalian, not so progressive that it would have let our Bean actually bed the man standing in front of her (at least not with any expediency), but she wasn’t going to go to hell just for thinking of it. Episcopalian priests could date, could fall in love, could marry. Maybe they could even engage in some heavy premarital petting. Bean had never really had the opportunity to consider this before.
‘That’s great!’ Bean answered, too cheerfully. She felt stymied by her inability to engage her powers of flirtation, Puck without his love spell flowers. It was great, actually, that the church had a new Father; the last one had passed his sell-by date years ago, but had hung stubbornly on, boring the populace with his creaky Christmas services long after Bean had departed for less green pastures. But she didn’t want to say that. ‘My parents go there. To Saint Mark’s.’
Aidan nodded. ‘You’re Dr Andreas’s daughter, right? Your father read for us a few Sundays ago. He’s an excellent speaker.’
This is true. Years of lecturing has created a monster of a presenter – his voice dips and swoops like a roller coaster, flashing forward at important moments like fireworks, and then retreating back, pulling his audience with him. His overgrown eyebrows wiggle, Marx-like, and he spreads his broad hands across the podium, as if he has to struggle to hold the papers down, lest his high-minded thoughts spirit them away.
‘Thanks,’ Bean said, though none of this is to her, or our, credit.
‘How’s your mother? She’s got chemotherapy in a few days, doesn’t she?’
Bean took a step back, surprised at the question. She’d forgotten how involved our parents were in the church – how they’d raised us to be involved in the church, too, not that it had stuck, particularly. She didn’t think about God a lot. None of us did. He was just there if we needed him. Kind of like an extra tube of toothpaste under the sink.
‘She’s okay. She says she’s tired. But that’s to be expected. And, you know, now I’m here to help.’ Bean was fairly pleased at putting forth this idea of herself as a latter-day (if better-dressed) Florence Nightingale to a clergyman.
‘So, I’ll see you for services, then?’ Aidan asked, bending over to hoist his books under his arm. His hand, broad and dusted with gold hair, spread easily over the span of the covers, and Bean stared at it while she concocted an answer. She hadn’t been to church in years, other than when she came home for Christmas, which hadn’t been often. Our parents had wanted us to believe, but they had also taught us, outside of church, to question nearly everything. It has never made a great deal of sense that our father, a man who spends his days analysing the most finite syllables contained in one book, should so easily accept the even less believable tenets of another. And this is part of the reason why the mystery of faith has escaped all of us, and why Bean – why none of us – had ever bothered to make even a pretence of making church a regular part of our adult lives.
But it’s not like she had any other pressing engagements, right?
‘What the hell,’ she said. ‘I mean, yes.’ Aidan looked at her oddly for a moment while she blushed again – twice in only a few minutes, a record – and then he smiled and said goodbye, heading out the doors into the sunshine.
‘Would you like to check anything out today?’ Mrs Landrige asked, settling back down into the repetitive stamp, stamp, stamp of making due date cards.
‘No thank you,’ Bean said. ‘I have to meet my sister.’
At least we made good excuses for each other.
The next night, Rose was sitting on her bed, watching dust motes dance in the air while she dialled Jonathan’s number. ‘Right on time,’ Jonathan said, picking up the phone an ocean away.
Rose and Jonathan had a scheduled once-a-week phone call. Not very romantic, Cordy might say.
Practical, Rose would reply.
‘I miss you,’ she said, sighing at the sound of his voice. She walked over and closed the door to her room. These conversations always seemed both too much and too little – how could she be sure that he wasn’t doing something else while they talked? How could she be sure that he really was happy to talk to her? The distance was both amplified and removed over the wire.
‘I miss you, too, love. How are you?’
‘Okay. Bean’s home.’
‘The prodigal sister returns? It must be nice to have her around.’
Rose whuffed out a breath of annoyance. Jonathan didn’t understand us. His family was huge and boisterous and loving – six siblings, now multiplied exponentially by marriages and
