Broome County Public Library, 01/28/06

Gladys sat at the edge of the coffee table and leaned over Estelle.

"I was making six or seven a day," Estelle whispered, "knitting scarves and caps for different stores around town. But my arthritis has become so bad I had to stop."

"I know so many people with arthritis." The women were dressed in the old style, wearing dark sweaters over drab dresses, their hair pinned back tightly. Estelle wore a wool overcoat and a red scarf with a subdued pattern. Everything about them suggested that they had never owned pants, and driving cars was a remarkable deal.

They spoke in hushed tones because we, all three of us, were in a library. I was seated close by them, and I eavesdropped as their conversation turned from knitting to arthritis to craft shops in town (the lady in Johnson City is nicer) to Estelle’s divorce. She stayed in Colorado for a while after she and her husband broke things off.

“I’m so unhappy with the religious right right now, I’ve pretty much turned away from the Church,” Estelle said.

“Oh, that’s sad.”

“I still believe in God.”

“Oh, of course.”

“It’s just that there are so many of them. There’s one God who wants war, one God who wants peace, one God who says the poor have to take care of themselves, one God who—”

“You’re going on and on.”

“Oh yes,” Estelle said. A girl rapped on the window behind us and ran away giggling. “What happened? I guess someone knocked on the window.”

“I was so mad at God when my son died,” Gladys intoned, hunching even further over Estelle.

“When your son died.”

“I was so, so angry at God. I can’t tell you.”

“Oh.”

“But the Bible says if you believe and are saved. . . . You just get so disillusioned.” Their conversation continued at a sincere and meaningful level for several more minutes until Gladys, who had run out of things to say about the choir, reverted to a platitude about still having a mission, which was why she was still here. And, somehow, the conversation returned to knitting.

“Knitting is a marvelous form of psychotherapy.”

The library was unusually active. A man with downs syndrome stood at a table several feet away, staring at a stack of books as if he’d forgotten what they were meant to do. He seemed really magnificent, almost cherubic, in his white sweatpants and tank top. Finally, he picked up the books and hugged them to his belly. He ambled away like that.

Next to me a young woman wearing a Riverdance tee shirt sat down to scan through some books about horses. She had just finished a book about training dogs. After a while she stepped away, then returned smiling broadly. She had another horse book.

And a sharp-looking man dressed like a hip-hop kingpin took a seat and read Newsweek. Estelle and Gladys continued talking.

“What have you got?” Estelle asked. Gladys showed her the videotapes she was borrowing from the library.

“I see, funny stuff. That Milton Berle. You know, I always tell a joke I think I got from Milton Berle. It’s pretty short. I always tell jokes quickly. This man has a job delivering a penguin to the zoo, but on the way his truck breaks down. ‘Oh no’, he thinks, but then he sees his friend coming and his friend drives a truck, too. So he waves him down and his friend says no problem, he’ll take the penguin. The man is very grateful and says, ‘Just remember, the zoo closes at 5’. Well, later on the man is driving home happily when he sees his friend walking down the street with the penguin following just a few feet behind him. The man quickly pulls over. He’s very excited. ‘What happened’, the guy says, ‘I told you he had to get to the zoo by 5’! ‘Don’t worry about it, the friend says. We went, he had a great time, and now we’re going to the movies’! Ha, ha,” Estelle laughed, “I just think that’s cute.”

A young boy wanted to look at Wired but his mother told him that it was a grown-up magazine. “Who cares,” he said. “I care,” she responded. “This is going to take forever,” the boy said. There was an article in Wired that featured Burning Man Festival, and a photo spread showed a fulsome girl with her breasts painted blue.

Behind where Gladys perched a heavy-set, poor-looking man sat down with a paperback novel written by Anne Rice. The women kept up their chat, despite his proximity. Estelle’s brother was a musician with the local symphony and the Cooperstown opera, and that meant she had to spend a lot of time taking care of her mother, but her own health wasn’t great, and her mother clearly favored her brother, who was also divorced (from a violinist who’s mother was a psychiatrist which made Estelle think they were a neat family) and, even though her brother really is busy, with the garden too, she was not excited about having to look after her mother.

The chairs at the library can rightly be considered an event. The chairs make sense of things, become a fulcrum of the community. After a while, Estelle excused herself and Gladys returned to her seat. The boy whined, “Mom, can we go home? I’m tired.” A woman across from where Estelle had been sitting screwed up her lips as she read a harlequin romance. Urban fashion suddenly made sense; bright yellow fabric with camouflage patterns render a person see-through in such a colorful society.

Gladys was sitting alone and had fallen asleep. There were plenty of people browsing the library’s video collection, but I was the only person in the chairs when her son came to pick her up.

“Hey, Sweetie,” he said, touching her arm lightly. Gladys awoke.

“I met the most lovely lady,” she told the man. “We talked for quite a little while. She’s having a bit of a row with her mother, who isn’t treating her well.”

“Really?” said the man. “That’s too bad.”

Gladys looked over to where Estelle had been. “She isn’t here now.”

“Have you seen Becky? I dropped her off at the Salvation Army. She was going to walk here and meet us.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“I’ll see if I can find her, and then we’ll come to pick you up.” He walked away, stopped between a rack of books and adjusted his shoe, went on. Two girls were playing hide-and-seek. A woman moved her lips as she read.