My neighbor’s dog barks when left alone, and it is always alone. She’s a nurse or something, my neighbor. The bundle of blankets on the couch that is my brother Jack bangs on the wall with his palm. The banging has left an off-off-white mark on the wall. The mark frames his hand, fingers stretching out toward less discolored places. It does not quiet the dog.
Jess, he tells me. It’s every fucking day.
For about a month now. My brother only stops banging to save his arm from the cold. He pulls but cannot make the blankets any tighter over himself. He cannot burrow any farther into the couch. We wear jackets at all times, even under blankets, it is that cold. The heat is that broken. My maintenance requests that ignored.
I ask my brother if he wants to come to the libraries with me. I work six days a week as a part-time librarian at three different libraries. I earned this after a graduate degree and a decade of experience. I have so much experience, I am overqualified even for marriage. My ex-husband thought so. But I worked hard for today’s four-hour opening shift at Sachem, for the half-hour drive to the six-hour closing shift at Huntington, for Fairfield Apartments to take half my income on a monthly basis, after another half-hour drive home. Our mother once told me this story about someone pulled over on the LIE. The cop was concerned (which already makes this a fairytale, just not one that helps me sleep)—concerned for the passenger, who looked sick. This is because the passenger was a life-sized dummy with its papier-mâché face melting off. The driver, face falling too, was ticketed for improper use of the HOV lane.
In this story, I am the life-sized dummy, and I am the one paying the ticket.
But I shouldn’t complain. Not in front of my brother. I should be grateful to have a job, let alone three. Six or eight months ago, Jack was fired from his job at a shipping fulfillment center for an online shopping conglomerate, for signing a card. He slept in his car for a few weeks before I found out and could play the concerned older sister to get him on my couch. This is something we do: comfort by omission. We learned it from our mother. But at least the heat in his car worked.
The libraries are warm, I say over the dog barking. And quiet.
But what would I do there? he asks.
What would you be doing here?
A hand comes from the blanket to gesture at the Nintendo on the table, laid like treasure fought over by the empty beer bottles surrounding it:
Saving princesses.
◆
Our mother texts to wish Jack and me a good morning, and to ask how he is doing. Some days I don’t think he moves at all, except to shiver and bang on this wall. But every night the ashtray is more full. He is suffering, he jokes, for his idealism: There is a specter haunting this bar!
Officially, he was fired for Negligence. Though the company pointed out that any explanation was legally unnecessary. In New York, all employment is at-will, and it is the impulse of children, after misfortune, to ask why.
Workers of the world, my brother says: Unite! You have nothing to lose but your jobs.
◆
Jack is fine, is what I write to my mother. This too is care by omission. There is only so much worry to go around, and I take so much of it.
◆
The three libraries, despite how far they are from one another, are stocked by women with same names—Marie, Rose, and Rosemarie—and all of them hate me. But without this ungrateful girl, who would cover their lunchbreaks? They would have to (shudder) hire someone. In a way this is job security, because these are jobs no one else wants.
When I get to Sachem, there is a George waiting at the door. The policies state that the opening librarian should not go in by the front door if a patron is waiting there. It’s for a good reason, and now all librarians carry pepper spray. But the employee door is on the other side of the building, down iced-over stairs, and I’ve determined this George is harmless. (Not all Georges are, but this one is. As an amateur taxonomist, I might argue that Georges capable of harm belong to another classification altogether. Hermans, perhaps.) I helped this George get in touch with a shelter. He comes here during the day looking for warmth. (Aren’t we all?) Even after all this time, he calls me Miss Jess, because he met me while I covered Children. When he says it though, it sounds more like,
Hi Mess Jess.
Hi Mr. Fredericks, I say. Hold these for me?
I hand him a bag of stolen gardening books. I stole them. I thought gardening could be an outlet for my creativity and passion. When you care for flowers, they bloom. Good in theory, but I have no land to cultivate a garden. I do not even have a permanent department at these libraries.
I let George inside for the half hour before open. Explicitly against the rules, but all he will do for that half hour is what he will do until close: sit quietly at a table, looking at his hands. Sometimes there will be a book. He likes books small enough to finish in one sitting, because without a residential address he cannot get a library card to check anything out. But he can sit, and he does, moving his lips silently to Sonnets from the Portuguese.
This shift I’m in Teen. It’s less like being a librarian than a security guard, because we have no security guards. They were cut in the last budget reassessment along with any hope I had of being promoted to fulltime. I am told my primary concern is theft, especially of the video games. (In a library!) If there is actually a teen present in Teen, that teen is under suspicion. The teens do not belong in Teen. If something is stolen, I am scolded, and also if nothing is checked out on my shift. Whether I let the teens in or keep the teens out, I am scolded. I read a book like this once. If only a librarian could help me remember what it’s called, or what its ESRB rating is.
◆
Our mother is sorry to ask again, but between Sachem and Huntington I wire what I can.
◆
It’s past ten when I get back to Fairfield. I turn off with the car. The heat in my car smells like burning hair, and I sit in the parking spot until the sweet smell of winter smothers the fire. Sound travels sharper in the cold and the dog stabs me from here.
My brother is doing exactly what he said he would be doing. The wide handheld screen is just barely out of the blankets and the princess is always in another castle. He says nothing when I ask if he wants dinner, so I have cereal at the table with a beer. I used to read when I got home, but I hate books now. Librarians learn this hatred. Books save no one and we incinerate them when they get too old. This, at least, might keep someone warm.
I tap them and Jack gallantly moves his legs so I can sit with him. The reward for this is a beer. If I invested in koozies it might solve the problem of our hands shaking with the cold bottles, but it shouldn’t be my problem to solve, so I don’t solve it. The TV is the only light we keep on. The light shows us the police battering in a door that looks like my door.
Who watches the news anymore? I ask.
You have to watch the news, Jack says. How else would you know this is your complex?
My brother tells me an old man across the street lured a seven-year-old into his apartment this morning. A neighbor saw the child banging on the window in the afternoon, and in the evening there was a standoff. News12 caught the end of it: the old man pushing the girl out of his apartment without any clothes. That was shown when the news was live. On replays the story skips to the battering ram. Over an hour we watch the door get battered in four or five times. The lower third reads do you know your neighbors?
I guess I don’t. Our mother writes, this is your complex?? The buildings are the same color jaundice, but I don’t recognize the old man when he is taken away, the first or fourth time. I don’t recognize any of the people in the crowd watching, except my neighbor with her dog. It isn’t barking on camera, like it is now, but it is making itself as small as possible between my neighbor’s legs. This is the only part of the image I am able to understand. I say,
I can’t believe this is the kind of place this happens.
Jess, my brother says. Every place is the kind of place this happens.
And the police are still outside. Jack tells me they’re sticking around so people—air quotes—Feel Safe. They’ve given a ticket to every expired regi in the complex.
◆
Not the barking but the banging wakes me up later, still on the couch, still in my jacket, still cold. News still battering in the door. It’s three in the morning and Jack is punctuating what he yells with his hand against the wall: Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
We listen to it cry until the dark fades into the dull morning light that can’t come in through the wrong-facing windows. (All the windows are wrong-facing.) It must have separation anxiety. Could you die from that? I imagine screaming like this dog does and it makes my throat hurt. I imagine calling out: Please! Please! Please! for nine straight hours, and the tubes of my neck push up to my tongue and out through my teeth. I can’t help feel the fear, how scared this dog must be to scream, for hours, into the dark. To stop screaming only because you have to get ready for work.
◆
Our mother wishes me and Jack a good morning, and sends a joblisting for part-time work at a sewage treatment center.
(Jack has no experience in this.)
It’s just receiving packages! she writes. Instead of sending them!
◆
Rose finds me in Reference coated in the same thick layer of dust over everything. The day is muted colors but her sharp red lips tell me I’ve been written up. (For?) Mr. Fredericks slept in the library’s bathroom last night. Now he is outside, pumping his knees against the cold.
We have you on tape letting him in before open, Rose says. (This sounds like the closer’s problem.)
I closed, she says. (And you didn’t check the bathrooms?)
It was the men’s room. (And?)
And you’ve been written up. (Sounds like you should be written up.)
Only the director can write me up, she says. And my own sister would not do that, Jessica.
◆
The director, Rosemarie, calls me into her office later. It is spacious. Bigger, actually, than my apartment. Her chair looks more comfortable than my bed, and the walls are a soothing autumnal color. There is a salt lamp on her mahogany desk. Rosemarie is a burgundy suit with a gold-plated brooch. The chairs in front of her are low to the ground, but she doesn’t even bother looking down to explain that I offered Mr. Fredericks the impression that the library was his refuge. (Is it not?)
No, she says. It is not. A note will go in your file. (I didn’t know I had a file.)
Employee files are referred to when considering promotions or raises. (At this I have to laugh. I’ve worked here for three years without either a promotion or a raise.)
Rosemary looks down at me as though for the first time. She squints to ask,
You’ve worked here for three years?
◆
At the end of the day I have nothing in me able to get groceries. I left myself hours ago. There is enough, maybe, for a bowl of cereal. But between me and my cereal is my neighbor, standing in the cold. Her shadow stretches into the dark from the harsh white light on the wall between our doors. She tells me she is trying her hardest.
It is hard here, she says.
She waits for my response as though I have one. I’ve decided she is a kind of Sarah. She doesn’t even have a jacket on. I want to ask whether her heat is working but it doesn’t feel like the right time.
I know that it was you, Sarah says waving a piece of paper at me. Will you pay this? Will you take care of this?
These questions continue even when I close the door. Then she resorts to yelling names, some not in English, none that are mine. She does not know my name, I reason (being very reasonable). She uses what’s available.
My brother explains that the cops are battering-ram happy. It’s like a new toy. They smashed into Sarah’s apartment today because of the dog. It barked all morning. The cops assumed there was a body inside. Instead, they only found a scared dog, and didn’t even know what to do with it. They just left it, the dead body must be in another castle. The leasing office came by later to leave a letter on the bashed-in door about a rent increase. Our leases stipulate a pet fee. An extra two hundred a month.
I bet they make her pay for the door too, he says.
He saw the dog when he went outside for a cigarette. It sat on the threshold of the broken door. Once he got out there, it stopped barking. There weren’t any treats in our apartment, obviously, or even any meat in the fridge. (Meat is expensive.) But there were some freezer-burned chicken nuggets that he didn’t think I would miss. (That I didn’t even know I had.) He sat out there with the dog until Sarah came back and started yelling at him. Running the back of his hand over the off-off-white, he says,
The dog is actually pretty cool.
At the end of this story, I say I need a drink. It makes my brother grimace. The word is Grimace. You could find it in the cracked Reference dictionary we keep on a chain: To distort one’s face in an expression usually of pain, disgust, or disapproval. To point at the empties on the table, with bad news for me.
◆
By the time we pull up to the bar it is hours past the happy one, but Jack gets us happy-hour prices for a wink. We order stouts because they are like meals themselves, and I didn’t actually have enough milk for cereal. The foamy heads are like pillows. The bar is warm, and the stools more comfortable than their wooden backs look. The tea candle in front of us twirls in the center of a pool of its own red light shining on the wood.
Work, I say. Was bullshit.
My brother agrees. He says,
There is no such thing as a good job,
and we cheers. Both of us, as we have always done, suck down the first drink. He gets us shots for a smile and two more stouts at happy prices. If he shaved, I tell him, I bet we wouldn’t have to pay for anything. It makes him rub his unemployed beard. He does not take care of it, but the lumberjack thing is hot right now. I’m probably right, he thinks. Because he is really pretty.
I got written up today, I say. For letting a homeless man into the library.
My brother distorts his face in an expression usually of pain, disgust, or disapproval. I had to make my face hard today and now it will not yield.
And, I say, they banned the George. Mr. Fredericks. He stood outside all day, in this cold. They put me on the circ desk so that, whenever he tried to come in, they made me tell him he couldn’t. I had to keep out the person I think the library is for. And it is so fucking cold outside—where is he going to go?
My brother doesn’t know. His price-dropping smile has disappeared. We could be angry. It would be a familiar anger. We have used it as a fire to keep up going, but we are the wood that feeds it. Charred wood breaks easily.
Jack, I say. If I’m not helping anyone, I don’t know what I’m doing.
This he knows. And I know he knows. Down the bar, my brother sees some work buddies with an organizer. He goes over. They’re happy to see him but not happy. Their hands linger on each other’s shoulders. My brother used to be at the center of these clandestine meetings. They’ve thinned out. More have been fired, and all he can do is commiserate. He sits with them while I order another beer at an unhappy price. A server is going around blowing out the candles. I keep mine in my hand, but a draft from the door blows it out anyway.
◆
My mother writes, simply,
Love you,
with a heart swirling around another heart. Jack and I are watching a different door get battered in now, for meth, in another apartment complex that looks like this one. I walked by the old man’s apartment when we got back from the bar. It’s the same layout as mine. They all are.
I show Jack the text. It pools blue on his face. He loves her too, but he gets even more of these notes than I do. He files them away. When he told her about the union, she asked why he would get mixed up in Something Like That. She said he would lose his job, And for what?
He had an answer, then. Not so much, now.
Everyone has been here, I tell him.
Not everyone, Jess. If everyone had been here, I’d still have a job.
◆
At seven in the morning the doorbell drives nails into my hungover skull. It’s the leasing office, coming finally to check the heart. They agree, helpfully, that it is cold in the apartment. Colder, even, than outside! And it’s a shame the sun doesn’t come through these windows—it’s out for the first time in days.
(It is. A shame.)
But when they see my brother pretending to sleep, they point. A guest! Boyfriend banished to the couch?
(Brother.)
They look between our faces, at him then me then back again. They say we don’t look related.
(But what is wrong with my heat?)
They spend a second looking at the thermostat before admitting they don’t know. They’ll need to bring in someone who knows about these things.
(When will that someone arrive?)
I’ll hear from them in a week. Maybe longer.
◆
Maybe shorter. Within an hour, an email. It informs me that my lease states single occupancy. If a significant other has moved onto the premises, the leasing office would need to reassess the terms of their agreement. A representative will be by, Sometime This Week, to check the occupancy of the unit.
(There is no mention in this email of my broken heat.)
◆
Then more knocking. Sarah is sorry but she knows it was me. Me who made the noise complaints, me who called the leasing office. She has heard the banging on her wall because it is not just when she is not home that the dog barks. Somedays the dog will not recognize her. She has held it close at night to stop its barking, but even then it will not stop shaking. It was abused. Do I understand? It does not know when it is safe.
I do understand, hugging myself against the bright new chill on the wind. Sarah says she does not understand, but it is in her nature to help people. She knows she has failed this dog. Completely, she says. But what now is there to do? She cannot afford to keep the dog, and who would take it?
I consider, a moment, showing my neighbor the text my mother sent this morning. Good morning to me and Jack, and a listing for a basement apartment. It specifies:
No smoking (allergic).
No cats (allergic).
No Wi-Fi (allergic).
First, last, security upfront.
Dogs okay.
◆
Before I leave for work I tell my brother not to answer the door. Pretend he isn’t here. It would only be the leasing office or the neighbor.
What’s the leasing office want? he asks.
Omission is a way to care for yourself, too, so: Nothing. The leasing office wants nothing. They are worse than useless and cannot fix the heat.
◆
Marie puts me at circ and tells me not to let in any vagabonds. There’s a stark white glare coming in from the doors I have to look though to make sure I’m at the right library. They all look the same, all governmentally brutal concrete and thin gray carpet. But Marie (or whoever) heard about the incident at the other location.
We share files, she tells me. (What else is in this file?)
Let’s just say you’ll never be promoted.
(Should I not focus on checking books in and our for our patrons? Is that not what the circ desk does?)
Marie, though, is confused. Have I not noticed the self-checkouts?
◆
I forget the beer on my way home. It’s only at the apartment door that I remember. I turn back toward my car. Then I turn back toward the door. I turn, and turn. The stools at this bar swivel round and round while I turn the pages of my newly stolen copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese in the candlelight. My phone buzzes but I cannot fucking read these notes anymore—the file is full—so I call my mother with an expression wheatpasted onto my voice that she could really love.
Honey, my mother says, sounding confused. Is everything okay?
I got a raise today, I say. They looked through my file. I have a great file. Every page told them to give me a raise.
I’m so happy to hear that, baby. You’re out celebrating? Getting out of that cold apartment? Those maintenance people are always so useless.
How did you know my heat was broken?
And do you think you’ll make fulltime soon?
It’s a matter of time, I say. (Full, part, no time at all.) I can help you more now.
Thank you, honey. But I’m good. Don’t worry about me.
I’m not worried, I say scratching through the varnish on the bar with my nail. I care about you.
I’m sorry your mother is such a burden.
I love you too, mom.
But the text was Jack, telling me he would be next door if I was looking for him.
◆
I love that dog, he tells me in the morning. She is such a good dog. We’ve got to figure out what to do for her.
We? I ask. (But I am not really part of this conversation.)
It’s fucked up. There shouldn’t be pet fees. Like, we’re already alienated from our labor, do we have to be alienated from our homes, too?
He is drumming his fingers on his knees, and cannot sit still.
She cheers in Russian, he says. Za zdarovye! And—he winks—no boyfriend.
(He could just stay there then.)
Too soon, Jess. But I’m gonna take the dog.
(Take it where?)
If she’s out by next week, no rent increase.
(Take it where, Jack?) But he won’t look at me. The news is on—it’s always fucking on, always battering in someone’s door—and I have to turn it off to make him look at me.
It can’t come here, I say. I can’t afford it.
They’ll never know.
You’re not even supposed to be here, Jack! (Am I yelling?) I’m already going to get a pet fee because you’re here (I am yelling), let alone an actual fucking dog. And a dog, at least, wouldn’t drink all my beer and sit around feeling sorry for itself all day.
When I am done yelling there is only quiet. Neither of us look at the other. The morning light can barely show me that my brother is keeping his face very still, carving nothing out of wood, but there is a varnish on his eyes. I wish the dog were barking. I wish Jack would bang on the wall, on the off-off-white spot hanging above his head like a small cloud. But we sit in this quiet until I have to leave for work. For a while I hold my hand to my face to make sure it is still there. The chill felt sharp against it before but I can’t feel it now, like it is made of plaster.
◆
George is under the awning when I arrive. Snow is starting to fall half an hour before the library opens, and I realize I have forgotten his book.
Hi Mr. Fredericks.
Hi Mess Jess. Am I allowed inside today?
No, Mr. Fredericks. I’m sorry.
It’s cold out here, Mess Jess.
I know, Mr. Fredericks. I’m sorry.
And I miss the poetry, Mess Jess.
◆
Truant teens sit around the section reading books (of all things). I have peeled through the library’s manuals and policies, but the legalese is thick. The opacity is the point: a boilerplate stamping on a human face forever. Rosemarie is no help when I point out there is no appeals process for bans, and asks only if I have an appointment.
Mr. Fredericks is still outside, I say.
Who?
The homeless man Rose banned because she couldn’t do her job correctly.
Careful, Jessica.
It’s true.
It’s also beside the point.
Rosemarie sighs, but says that I am right. There is no appeals process for bans. If Mr. Fredericks were a patron, there may be more to be said. Considering he does not have a library card, it was a kindness that we ever allowed him inside in the first place.
He’s a member of the community, I say.
Whose community? she asks.
◆
I leave through the employee door to avoid George. If I had his book, maybe, but then it is there on the driver’s seat: Sonnets from the Portuguese. My brother must have brought it. He left no note, nothing for his file, but I can add the mental image of George’s smile, missing a tooth, but large nonetheless. I try to be sorry I cannot let him inside, but he raises his hand.
I know it’s not up to you, Mess Jess. I also know not to stay where you’re not wanted. That’s worse than the cold.
◆
Jack’s car is when I get back to the apartment. I find the blankets he had been using folded at the end of the couch. All night, the dog does not bark and my phone does not buzz with answers to my texts: Please tell me where you are. Please tell me you’re okay. Please answer me. Instead, it buzzes with a text from my mother to wish me a good morning. Just me this time.
Sarah is coming back from work as I am leaving for it. She asks me to thank Jack again for her next time I see him.
He is so good with Anastasia, she says.
She tells me that Jack explained the situation to her. She wants to apologize for how she acted. She wants to make me coffee. Please, she says. Come inside.
Her apartment is the same layout as mine (of course) but a cozy pink. I like it, and they charged her for it. But the gray walls that were here when she moved in? Pfeh, she says. Bad enough, this cold. And do I know her heat has been broken three weeks? Her coffee is strong, but she asks if I might join her for a drink. After a night shift, she needs one. We could make the coffees Irish, and we do. Our mugs cheer za zdarovye.
I like your brother, she says smiling into her table. He is a good one. Sweet. A little idealist, but it is good sometimes. I wish him the best luck with his interviews.
I want him to text me. I want to wish him luck on these interviews. But my phone only buzzes to tell me I am late for work. My brother, who knows where, has omitted himself from my life entirely. Sarah tells me over the buzzing that it was hard to give up Anastasia. You had the feeling, when she looked at you, that it was really you she was seeing. And now she is gone, and who will look at her like that again?
To pour another and takes out shot glasses. My phone is telling me that my file is getting larger. Or maybe it is telling me that the leasing office will be bringing a battering ram to my door any minute. I don’t know. I’m not looking at it. I am looking at my neighbor, and she is looking at me. I am holding out my glass. We are both here, life-sized, the plaster melting off omitting nothing. I do not know her name.