Rigid

The first symptoms appeared after I started volunteering at the Madson Public Library, but I didn’t immediately make the connection. And by the time I did…well, now I’m getting ahead of myself, and I have a strict policy against spoilers, both giving and receiving. They’re untidy, rude, and indicate a lack of discipline. It’s better if you earn it.

The library is on Main Street, right in the beating heart of town, in a one-story red brick building with a three-bar bike rack and a black, powder-coated steel and cedar bench erected in loving memory of longtime mayor Marshall Buxton. It’s co-located with the community center and city hall, which the locals still call the “new” city hall to distinguish it from the creepy Old City Hall building a few blocks west, even though it was built decades ago. I guess things don’t change too quickly in small towns. I’m okay with that.

I rode my bike that first day, just like I did back in the city, even though there was a rare early summer rain. It was only a mile or so, and I wasn’t going to change the plan, even if it meant spending a few hours in wet shoes. The streets were the same that I had terrorized as a kid, only now I had a carbon fiber road bike instead of a rusty bmx. Also, now I swerved around the puddles instead of targeting them.

After locking up my bike and clipping the helmet to my backpack, I entered the building through the heavy, carved wooden doors. Other than a few chairs and a sepia-toned, framed map of Madson from the early twentieth century, the lobby presented me with three options: go right to city hall, straight down a short hallway with bathrooms to the community center, or left to the library.

I opened the library door, the door that led to everything that came next, starting with Head Librarian Dorothy Framel, who was quite possibly the most annoying person I’ve ever worked with.

“Martin!” she yelled, breaking the first and most famous rule of libraries in the first moment of our acquaintance. “Hillary said you’d be coming in today. Righteous.” She leaned over the counter and extended a fist, displaying knuckles and a forearm embellished with faded tattoos that I recognized in the moment but just as quickly slipped from my mind. “Pound it.”

I pounded it.

“Wet!” She wiped her hand on her lime overalls.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “Didn’t expect the rain today.”

“You’re good!” She scanned me as I stripped off my clinging jacket. “Did I get that right? Righteous?”

“Huh?”

“That’s from your time, right? The 1980’s?”

“Oh.”

“Twentieth century!”

I nodded. “Yeah, I guess we said that back then. Hard to remember.” I hung my jacket on the coat tree and smoothed it. Hung my backpack next to it, straightened the zippers.

“No doubt,” she said, earnest eyes widening. ‘Well, I’m glad you remembered to come in today!”

I tilted my head. Did she just–

“Joke! Cause you’re old and forget things? Sorry. My mom says I have ‘social serenity’. Like the opposite of social anxiety? I just say what I think.” Then, in a cartoony cowboy voice, she said, “You’ll either git used to it, or you’ll just git.” Quick transition to serious face. “Like my dad.” Huge smile. “Kidding, my dad didn’t leave us!” Brimming eyes, pouty lip. “He died in a freak grain elevator accident.”

Oh, no.

“Shirt got caught in the auger.”

At that point, with horror, I realized.

“Auger? I hardly know ‘er!”

I was working with a Gen Z theater kid.

“No, but seriously it was pretty grim.”

One who was presently caught in a feedback loop, trapped in a riff-off with herself. How long would it go on?

“How’s your dad?” she said, and in the sudden silence I heard the ticking of the giant analog clock on the wall over her head.

“Oh, he’s good. Getting settled in at Pine Village.”

“Excellent. My great grandma lives there. Good food.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath to recover from the gut punch of her great grandma being in the same assisted living facility with my dad. Just how old was I?

“She says it’s like being back in college, everyone’s a teacher or a nurse or has an MRS degree, and the men get all the attention.”

“Ha!”

“Things have changed a lot since then, but not enough!”

“Bet,” I said, daring to attempt a Gen Z term I’d heard on social media. I felt exposed, like an escaping prisoner, cringing in the mud, caught in the guard tower floodlights.

It stopped her in her tracks. She crinkled her eyes and crossed her arms like she was snuggling into a cozy sweater. “Oh. I like you.”

“Uh, thanks, I like–”

“Come on!” Whereupon she flung herself onto the counter, wiggled for a comically long time until her legs had done a one-eighty, and hopped down in front of me. “Let me show you around!”

~~~

She spent the next hour walking me through the 1250 square-foot, one room library. Kids section with its low shelves, low tables, low chairs, colorful rug, and a bulletin board filled with cartoon character cutouts. Fiction section with subsections for scifi/fantasy, mystery/thriller, and romance. Nonfiction section with subsections for biographies, true crime, and cooking. A shelf for graphic novels, and another for books on tape. A spinner dedicated to Agatha Christie.

“One of our projects this summer will be to break out YA and give it its own section. Us ‘youts’ are people, too!”

She told me how she’d recently been recruited to move from Chicago to Madson to run the library after the longtime librarian passed away. I told her how I’d moved home temporarily to help my dad transition to Pine Village, and clean up and sell the house. The former being no small task after living there for more than half a century, and the latter perhaps even harder in a small town getting smaller. I was fortunate to have a job I could do entirely online on my own hours, and between that and organizing the house I had no shortage of work, but something was missing. Someone at Pine Village, a lovely white-haired woman named Grace, mentioned that the library was looking for volunteers. It sparked something in me. A delicious ache, like my belly was cramping but I knew a sumptuous holiday meal was waiting on the table in the dining room.

I’d spent many hours in this library as a kid, perusing the shelves, spinning the spinner, laying on the rug on my back, balancing a book in the air above my face. Back before the bike rack, when I’d just leave my bike around the corner on a strip of grass. I remember the librarian back then would sometimes let me stamp the due date on the slip in the book myself; on one very special day she looked over both shoulders before offering me the choice between black, green, red, or blue ink. Being back in the library felt like the home my condo in the city didn’t.

Dorothy was walking me through the more modern barcode system used today when the door opened, seemingly to nobody. Then, a woman backed in, bumping the self-closing door with her powder blue pant-suited rear end.

“Oh, dear!” she said, bopping the door with her not insubstantial derriere. She made a quick move to escape the door and rotate into the room, then straightened her back and locked her knees. I had a flash of a nineteen-fifties stewardess; I almost expected to see one of those funny round hats on her bouncy red hair. She held out a brown pastry box.

“Good morning, y’all!” she gushed, and the sun shone brighter through the windows behind her. “We had some leftover doughnuts and whatnot after the council meeting last night so I said to myself: ‘Margaret L. Fall, you should take those over to the fine folks across the lobby’, and anyway I wanted to sneak a peek at our newest librarian.” She winked. “A little birdy whispered in my ear that you were starting today!” She set the pastry box on the counter separating us and slid it forward with two dainty pokes of her index fingers.

“Thank you, Margaret,” Dorothy said. I’d never claim to be the best reader of people, but I noticed that Dorothy, in a breach of theater kid standard protocol, was not matching Margaret’s energy.

“Indeedy-do!”

“I’m Martin Serenby, it’s nice to meet you,” I said, reaching my hand across the counter.

“Margaret L. Fall!” she said, squeezing my hand. “Executive Assistant to the mayor.” The scent of baby powder suffused the room.

“Not a librarian, just a volunteer.”

She gave me a smile reminiscent of those normally reserved for drawings worthy of posting on the fridge. “Just a volunteer! Not only a fellow servant of the deserving people of the great town of Madson, but for no pay! Certainly not holding us over a barrel for Chicago-level pay!”

I flicked my eyes to check in on Dorothy, who’d turned back to the computer.

“Well, I’ll let you all get back to your busy day!” Her eyes traversed the empty library, then settled on mine. Another wink. “It was fantastic to meet you, and do say hello to your father for me, he’s a peach! Toodle-oo!” She tapped the top of the pastry box with one gleaming pink nail, winked, and clucked her tongue. And in a swirl of powdery freshness, she was gone.

In the vacuum that was left, I blinked. Blinked again.

“Wow,” I said. “She’s a dick.”

Dorothy jumped in the air, landed with both fists clenched, skier-style, then spun in a circle and started wiggling like her skin was full of cats. Then, stilled, she looked at me and said, earnestly, “It is my considered meDICKal opinion that she is adDICKted to being a dick.”

“That’s certainly my verDICKt.”

“I preDICKt that she’ll always be a dick.”

“Hold on now, that’s a reDICKulously raDICKal conclusion…”

“Well I’m stDICKing to it!”

At that, we both burst out laughing.

We spent the next couple of hours getting to know each other while she trained me on the systems. I asked her what instrument she had played in high school band; flabbergasted, she said, “What makes you think I was in band?” and, also, theatrically: “Clarinet!” She asked me what I majored in in college, and why was it accounting? Laughing, emboldened, I asked about her tattoos. The change in her physicality was abrupt. Sedately, but with a warm smile that was somehow also wise, she said, “Thank you for asking. Ask me again sometime.” And that was that.

I ended up eating one of Margaret’s day-old pastries—there was one gluten-free apple fritter I couldn’t pass up because how often would I find gluten-free pastries in Madson!—but Dorothy just made a cross with her index fingers and refused.

~~~

That night my allergies decided to make a visit. At the time I blamed the years of accumulated dust in Dad’s attic, which I dedicated a couple of hours a day to breathing and bathing in while I sorted objects into “keep”, “donate”, “trash”, and, the bane of future-me, “maybe”. It started with prickly eyes and itchy, irritated patches on the tender skin on the inside of my wrists and elbow pits. I figured saline drops and over the counter 1% hydrocortisone cream could handle it. I’d preserve the big guns, if necessary, for later.

Later arrived the next morning. I woke to discover that the itchy pain had spread to the skin on the sides of my torso, the back of my knees, and, most annoyingly and hardest to reach, under my shoulder blades. I broke out the tub of betamethasone valerate 0.1% gel, a more potent, prescription-only topical corticosteroid. I preferred the gel for larger areas. It was easier to spread and quicker to absorb, and felt for just a moment like a soothing dip in a cool lake, escaping a blazing sun. Maybe if I nipped it in the bud I could prevent a long, uncomfortable flare-up.

That day the combined first grade classes from Madson Elementary, for a special treat during the last week of school, visited the library. I shelved books while Dorothy read “Where the Wild Things Are” and tramped around growling “I’ll eat you up!”. I wish you could have seen the wild rumpus of three dozen seven-year-olds stomping and spinning. Dorothy waved me over. I wiggled my head no. Then she started chanting, “Mar-Tin! Rum-Pus! Mar-Tin! Rum-Pus!” and soon the kids and both teachers joined in. The mob formed into a Dorothy-led conga line, which wended its way around the kids area and then toward the counter.

“Mar-Tin! Rum-Pus! Mar-Tin! Rum-Pus!”

“Martin!” Dorothy growled, “Lead us, or we’ll EAT YOU UP!”

I was trapped.

Delightfully, frustratingly, joyfully, embarrassingly trapped.

So I joined the wild rumpus. I led the wild rumpus. And, for a moment, the ache of my sores fell away.

Dorothy and I are nothing alike. She’s a boisterous, tattooed, late-twenties, close-talker from the Midwest that drops crumbs everywhere, somehow even when she’s not eating. I’m a tidy, quiet, middle-aged, list-making allergy sufferer who keeps his opinions to himself and would rather not eat than try something new. I mentioned earlier that Dorothy was the most annoying person I’ve ever worked with. That’s true. She’s also, somehow, one of my favorites. Two things can be true at the same time, right?

~~~

By the time I got home my skin was screaming for more gel. I stripped down to assess the situation, and found it was worse, and spreading rapidly. The itchy pinkness had spread in every direction, across my belly, up my neck, and across my inner thighs and buttocks. The places where it had been merely irritated before were now rough, brown, and scaly, and when I bent my elbows below ninety degrees, hot electricity zapped up and down my arms. Had it ever been this bad?

I pulled out my phone to post a message in my allergist’s patient portal and realized my itchy, swelling eyes weren’t focusing on the screen. Blink. Blink again. A few drops of saline. Nothing helped. Meanwhile, closing my eyelids felt like a stone door scraping shut in a medieval dungeon.

Was something in there?

I leaned over the vanity in my childhood bathroom, my face inches from the mirror. It was blurry, but I could see…what was that? The whites of my eyes were no longer white; instead, they were the dirty yellow-brown of topaz.

I gasped. What was happening to me?

Ignoring the tearing pain in my elbow, overriding everything in me telling me to stop, I extended an index finger and gingerly touched my right eye. It was warm but unnaturally rough, like a callus.

Something chitinous coating my eye.

I had to get it out. I scraped an experimental fingernail across it. It felt repulsive but didn’t hurt. I could do this. It had texture. I thought I could get a grip on it. My thumb joined my index finger and I pinched, gently, then more insistently. Something resisted under my eyelids, tugged at the hidden tissues inside my eye socket.

My breath came in puffs.

I was in it now, I had to stay strong, see it though.

I pinched harder, and found purchase.

Ignore the pain.

Ignore the suctiony sensation.

The translucent coating peeled off in a rigid chunk, like half an eggshell. I flicked it away, blinked, and stared into my stinging, watering eye. Other than being bloodshot and sensitive to light, it appeared normal.

I knew I had to free the other eye, too, before I lost my nerve. But I was so tired. Every movement now felt like I was trying to sprint in a swimming pool. Maybe I should lay down, rest for a few minutes. I could set an alarm. When I held my phone up I saw that the scaly husk was spreading from my wrist, up over the heel of my hand and across my palm.

I set the alarm for fifteen minutes and shuffled to my bed. I collapsed on my back, letting my arms and legs go straight, and immediately felt relief. This is what my body wanted: to be long and rigid and still. I dragged my tongue over the thickening, gelatinous surface between my cheeks and gums and wondered, randomly, if they still sold Big League Chew.

Fifteen minutes later, the phone alarm started chiming.

Fifteen minutes after that, it stopped.

~~~

“–is my fault.” A woman. She sounded like she was on the other side of the wall, but I could see, as if through thick, melted glass, her distorted shadow leaning over me.

“How is it your fault?” A man.

“This was meant for me.” The woman again. Dorothy.

“Maybe…”

“They know. You know they know.”

I was exhausted, hazy, but I tried to move, and failed.

The man sighed. “They’re getting bolder. They think we won’t see it.”

“They don’t care if we see it!” Then, up close, in my ear, as if through a window. “Martin, can you hear me? I hope you can. It’s Dorothy. I’m so sorry! We’re gonna make you better. I swear we will. We just have to…figure it out. Things are different in Madson from when you grew up. People are taking sides, and you got caught in the crossfire.”

“We need to move him,” the man said. “They’ll be watching.”

So they moved me. I don’t know where, but it’s dark, and getting darker. Dorothy visits, and others too. I hear them arguing.

I hope they figure out how to help me before it’s too late.

Because something feels funny.

I think I’m changing.