The Library

She’s frequented the same cafe for over a decade, and still, the smell hits her every time: cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and over-roasted coffee beans. With a deep breath to fill her old lungs, she steps in and smiles at the familiar barista.

“How are you, Mrs. Washington?”

“Good, Evelyn,” Mrs. Washington says, approaching the counter slowly, as her knee is already giving her grief after the walk from her car to the café. “How are your classes going?”

“Good! I’m glad I stayed at the community college,” Evelyn says. She doesn’t take Mrs. Washington’s order and instead starts pouring iced tea into a tall glass with a chip on the rim. The familiarity makes her smile, and Mrs. Washington muses that this must be what having a family feels like — being known.

Just as she takes a breath to ask what courses she’s taking, Evelyn, who has always been a chatterbox, continues. “Your English class really saved my skin. I think the rest of my composition class is struggling, but I’m great. I just write my essays like you taught me.”

“I had you for tenth grade?”

“Eleventh.”

Evelyn hands Mrs. Washington her iced tea, and the already-forming condensation on the glass cools her warm hands. The coming summer heat is oppressive in Florida, and here, inland, there are no sea breezes to cool the days — only iced tea.

Mrs. Washington reaches for her pocket, but Evelyn shakes her head and waves her away as always.

“Boss told you before. Your money’s no good here.”

While she would have been happy to pay, Mrs. Washington is grateful to keep a couple extra dollars in her pocket. After retiring last year, she’s found that money is harder to hold onto.

“Thanks, Evie.”

Evelyn rolls her eyes at the childhood nickname but smiles despite herself as she greets the next customer, Mrs. Washington turns away to find a seat, lest she recognize anyone else in the café and get pulled into a conversation. After all, she is here to meet someone.

She finds a seat in a quiet corner. It’s the table where she used to grade essays and meet struggling students for after-hours tutoring. The chair is familiar and she sinks into it gratefully, stretching out and rubbing her sore knee as she quietly wishes her visit had no agenda. What she wouldn’t give to just sip her tea and read her book — that’s what retirement is supposed to be, after all, though many days it feels like she’s just waiting patiently to meet her end.

Mrs. Washington doesn’t have time to dwell on her hopes of being stood up. The door opens swiftly, and a tall, thin man enters, bringing in the late-spring heat with him. He scans the room with dark eyes until they settle on Mrs. Washington’s corner and he smiles, all crooked teeth and dimples.

“Mrs. Washington.”

“Eric.”

Eric approaches, and Mrs. Washington, who had struggled to remember his face upon receiving his cryptic email asking to meet, suddenly recalls everything: a quiet boy hunched over in class, struggling to make friends, having difficulty understanding the themes and symbolism in the literature she taught. She remembers the afternoons spent tutoring him in her otherwise empty classroom until essay writing finally clicked enough for him to not fail his classes.

This Eric was a far cry from the boy she remembered.

“It’s so good to see you,” he says, approaching. Mrs. Washington reaches out for a hug and he obliges quickly, crouching to embrace her.

“And you,” she says as he slides into the seat across from her. She immediately notices his carefully manicured appearance, which is opposite the scrappy, messy teenager she remembers with shabby sneakers and torn-up school supplies. His shirt is pressed and neatly tucked into a pair of jeans she’s certain cost at least half her rent. He crosses his legs and she checks the new leather shoes on his feet, the soles barely worn.

So it’s disorienting when he lays a small, battered black notebook on the table with frayed edges, a splitting elastic band, and a spine that seems to be one good breeze away from falling apart. In all her years of teaching public high school, she’s never seen a notebook so worn, but still held together. If it were a person, she imagines, it would be begging for death.

“How have you been?” Eric asks.

Mrs. Washington takes a sip of her tea — mediocre at best — and gives the canned answer she always gives former students.

“Fine. I retired last year.”

“I heard,” Eric says. “Congratulations! Have you been enjoying it?”

“I miss my students.” Mrs. Washington shrugs and smiles. “Tell me how you’ve been. I heard through the grapevine that you moved to Chicago.”

“I did,” Eric says, grinning. “I went into real estate after high school.”

“You said college wasn’t for you, if I remember correctly.”

“You do,” Eric says, idly running his thumb over the corner of the black book. “And it wasn’t, and definitely not at 18. Though I am considering getting a business degree next year.”

“From what I hear, you don’t need a degree. You’ve been doing well.”

“I have. I was fortunate to have good mentors in the field. But I also had good teachers before that,” Eric says. “I want you to know I still read. Maybe not the classics you teach, but you really taught me to like it.”

“That’s so good to hear,” Mrs. Washington says, though she often wonders how much is true when former students say such things. Looking at Eric now, she imagines a jet-setting young man driving an expensive car around Chicago, meeting clients and working from an iPad instead of an office. She nods at the black book on the table. “Looks like you might be writing a book as well.”

“This?” Eric picks up the book, turning it in the light. “God, no. Despite your best efforts, I’m no writer. I’m amazed this thing has survived. I’ve had it since middle school. It was the only nice notebook I had.”

“It’s seen better days.”

“It has,” Eric agrees, sliding back the elastic. By virtue of its damaged spine, the book opens itself to reveal the messy scrawl of a teenager. Eric turns it around to show her and Mrs. Washington deciphers a few words.

“Mom: New handbag

Besty: The Barbie with the purple dress”

“I have a terrible memory. That’s part of why I struggled so much in school. I had one notebook for keeping lists and notes for school, and this one for personal things to remember — mostly ideas for Christmas presents and reminders of birthdays.”

“It’s a good way to manage it,” Mrs. Washington agrees. “Though I’m sure it’s mostly digital now.”

“I’ve still found use for this one,” Eric says. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I was wondering why you wanted to meet,” Mrs. Washington confesses. “I’m sure your time at home is limited.”

Eric smiles at her and closes the notebook.

“I’m only here for a few days, but I had important business. See, I wrote down things people told me — things they wanted. I figured out that it was a good way to make my family happy. It helped me be the attentive son and brother I wanted to be. But I also wrote down the big things about people I cared about. When I was a kid, I didn’t think I’d be able to do most of it, like take my mom to Austria to see where they filmed The Sound of Music, or take my dad to Alaska to go ice fishing.”

“Did you get to do those?”

“Fortunately, yes, I did.” Eric grins, and Mrs. Washington can’t help but find his happiness infectious. He’d turned his personal success into joy for others, and it warmed her in a way she hadn’t felt since before she retired.

“But recently I’ve… well, I’ve come into some money. Not a fortune, but some.”

“It sounds like you’ve worked hard for it.”

“I don’t mean from work,” Eric says. “In my spare time, I’ve been playing with investing. Nothing major, but I made… well, I made a risky bet on a few stocks and it paid off. It paid off bigtime.”

Mrs. Washington checks her instinct to ask how big while also reigning in her mild jealousy at those who experience windfalls when her own never came.

Eric takes a breath and continues. “I’ve crossed off a lot of things on this list. I’ve done things for my family and friends, but most of them were trips or things they needed. But I always wanted to cross off a big one.”

He opens the notebook to a dog-eared page — one that’s clearly been visited many times. Mrs. Washington leans closer to read it.

“March 2004.

Tutoring with Mrs. Washington. Can’t afford a copy of Gatsby and library is out, so she gave me one to make notes in. Said she wishes the school had a better library for the students.”

“You took notes on your teachers?”

“A few,” Eric confesses. “But you helped me so much. I probably would have failed all my English classes and not graduated if it weren’t for you.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” she admits. “I still don’t understand.”

“You went out of your way for me,” Eric says. “You didn’t have to spend so much time working with me, but you did, and I survived high school because of it. You don’t know how hard it was or how depressed I was, but you cared.”

Mrs. Washington hesitates. She doesn’t remember doing anything special — she’s tutored many students over the years and helped them. By helping the sons and daughters of others, she quieted her own grief at never having her own children.

“Well, I’m glad I could help,” is all she can say.

“You said you wanted a better library for your students,” Eric says, earnest. “I know you’re retired now, but I’m donating the funds for an overhaul of the school library’s collection.”

Mrs. Washington stares at him, faces of all the students she worked with flashing through her mind. She thinks of how they could have benefitted from better resources and how their lives may have been changed, or at least enriched, by having more books for classes and more stories to distract them from high school difficulties.

“You’re what?”

“It’s only $20,000, but they’ll be able to update the old, damaged books with new ones, and add to the collection. And since the condition of the donation is that the library will be re-named after you, I thought you’d want some say in what books they choose.”

“It’ll… what?”

Eric smiles and falls silent, letting his words sink in. A new library. A legacy library named after her, a washed-up English teacher whose only extraordinary gift to her students was time.

“Eric… are you sure?”

“It’s already done,” he says. Mrs. Washington can’t help but reach across the table and pat his hand and is surprised when he takes it in his own, squeezing it. “I spoke with the principal and a district representative this morning. My only stipulation was that I wanted to tell you myself. I didn’t think you’d want a ton of fanfare.”

“You’d be right,” Mrs. Washington says, chuckling. Her eyes water as she stares at Eric. Perhaps, she thinks, she’s made more of a difference than she gave herself credit for. Maybe she’ll live on in ways she didn’t expect.