Redemption

My librarian called. She sounded worried, and a little angry. The book I had just returned had water damage, she announced, and because I had borrowed it through interlibrary loan from another library, she was embarrassed to send it on in this condition. I would have to retrieve the book and return it personally to the lending institution, a few miles away. She would keep it in the office behind the main desk for me to pick up. 

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll come and get it this afternoon.” 

She was right about the water damage. I had read the book in a bathtub full of bubbles, turning pages carefully with soapy fingers. Maybe a dozen pages had been dappled with a few drops, enough to puff them up a bit, but not much, not enough to imperil the next reader’s comprehension and enjoyment of the book’s content, I didn’t think, and I had slipped the book into the library’s return bin without another thought.

I had always been hard on my own books, but there was a time when I was careful with library books, when I did not dog-ear the pages, or crack the spine to make them lie flat. Now they slept on the library’s shelves for long periods of time without being read, with cryptic pencil code inside the back covers of some of them to record how rarely they were being checked out. I hoped a future librarian might understand that my dog-eared page means that someone somewhere had loved a real book enough to mark her place. If I had to reimburse the library for causing damage to this particular book, I would not mind. 

The main desk was right next to my home library’s front door. In the sedateness surrounding the desk, a few patrons read newspapers in comfortable chairs near the sunny windows, while others hunched over their computers, and high-pitched voices lightly floated up the open staircase from the children’s department. I told the library assistant at the main desk that I needed to pick up a book that was being held for me, and she immediately directed me to the nearby hold shelves where dozens of books awaited the readers who had requested them. I tried to tell her that no, my book would be behind the desk. Cutting me off before I could give her more information, she again insisted it would be on the hold shelves. “I’ll look, but it won’t be there,” I told her, and she said yes, it would be, and returned to whatever she had been doing before I interrupted her.

I spent a minute or two looking for my damaged book even though I knew it would not be there. I returned to the main desk. 

“It’s really not over there. You’re holding it back here,” I said, gesturing toward the office. She sighed and said, no, it has to be over there, we don’t keep them back here. I told her I had just gotten a call that it would be held behind the desk. Ignoring that, she asked, did you check in the audio-visual section? I just looked at her. She came out from behind the desk and had me follow her back to the hold shelves. I stood back and watched her scour the shelves, one by one. Finally she asked my name and the author of the book, and flounced back behind the desk and into the small office behind it. Almost immediately I heard the voice of the librarian who had called me as she stepped out, waving the book at me, ready to scold me anew. I held out my hand for the book. 

“Say no more,” I said before she could start spewing any more harsh words she had saved for me, and took the book. “I’ll take care of it.”

As I drove to the lending institution, a bigger library serving a larger population, I thought about all the books I had read in the bath during my life. From children’s mysteries to high school English textbooks to trashy novels that I was ashamed to have read to literary fiction that I wanted to like more than I actually had—they had all taught me that reading in the bath wasn’t really about the books. The cups of tea, the occasional tears, the steaming bathwater, the familiar design of typeset pages, the locked door between the world and me were my ritual, and I had never worried before about the collateral damage of a few drops of water on a book’s pages. 

“I’m sorry,” I said to the book on the passenger seat next to me, as if it represented all the books I had ever read in the bath. I imagined it could hear me and I hoped it might answer, “It’s all right.”

The lending institution’s parking lot was crowded, unlike my home library, where one of the twenty or so parking spaces was always available. Children with faces painted as tigers and butterflies chased each other around the first floor. I waited in a short line to return the book and pay for the damages. When it was my turn, I handed the librarian the book and said, “It has water damage.” 

Misunderstanding me, she answered, “I’m sorry. Can I find a better copy for you?” 

I shook my head. “No, I caused the damage. Can I pay for it?”

She opened the book and lightly smoothed a few pages. 

“It’s worse back here,” I said, and showed her the handful of pages that kept the book from closing completely as it had when it was new. She smoothed those pages too, as if to remove the watermarks.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for it,” I offered again.

“Oh, no, really, it’s fine,” she said. “This won’t bother anyone. We don’t worry about this.”

She swiped the book under a code reader and checked it in, and smiled at me. 

“Was it good?” she asked.

“I loved it,” I said, and smiled back.

“Have a nice day,” she said. 

“I will,” I answered. “You too.”