Sublime

Libraries had always made her feel like a kid, in a good way: secret and safe and taken care of, rocked to sleep in a cocoon of books.

Here was a shelf of nothing but Harry Potter, here, my worn copies of the Narnia books, there, my beloved Little House books (Santa Claus brought me one volume each Christmas for nine years). The Elizabeth Enright and Edward Eager books I’d read so many times. Mary Stoltz, who didn’t get the attention she deserved. Streatfield, Barrie, Canfield, Co

Even now, at seventeen—high school graduate, mistress of her fate, and a ten-dollar-a-week file clerk in the very Forty-seventh Street lawyer’s office where Helen was a fifteen-dollar-a-week typist—as she sat on Helen’s bed and watched Helen primp for a party, the memory hurt. There was no consolation in the thought that not now and not then would