Page 62 of The Librarians
“It’s okay, Mom.” Elise presses the cup of chamomile tea into Sophie’s hands. “Grandma and I texted each other a lot after that—she helped me come to grips with everything. And it was good for me to learn the truth—everything you went through—it changed my perspective forever.”
The sincerity in Elise’s eyes, the certainty in her voice—Sophie’s heart expands almost beyond what she can endure.
Elise jumps up and fetches herself a cup of iced tea from the pitcher in the fridge. When she returns to the couch, she grins from ear to ear, again the irreverent young girl Sophie can’t live without.
“Your turn, Mom. Grandma told me I could tell you that I know everything as soon as she went to a better place. But I, well, why rock the boat? I have, though, been all kinds of curious about your version of the events. The way Grandma told it, Jo-Ann was one sandwich short of a picnic.”
“I still can’t believe she told you all that. You were so little!”
Elise touches Sophie on the sleeve. “Don’t worry, Mom. I never doubted that you loved me. Not even for a minute—you loved me too much for that.”
Sophie thought she’d wrung her tear ducts dry, but now her eyes sting again, filling up.
“And now I can at least say thank you, Mom. I mean, that’s what I’ve meant every time I’ve said thank you for the past five years, but now you know, I’m not just thanking you for packing my lunch or folding my laundry but for everything. For my whole life.”
“But that’s just the thing,” Sophie manages thickly, “I don’t know that in the end I have given you a better life.
You’re not queer, as far as I can tell, so you would have had a great life with your real grandmother, with aunts and uncles and a lot of cousins.
You would have grown up surrounded by Black people—in a whole country of Black people. ”
Sophie envied Jo-Ann lots of things—her optimism, her charm, her natural affinity for people—but none more than the fact that Jo-Ann had grown up with her psyche largely unmarred by racism.
Colorism, yes; other ills of colonial vestige, of course; societal problems endemic to Jamaica, absolutely.
But she’d emerged without the same discrimination-bred mistrust and self-doubt that weighed down Sophie.
“I can always go to an HBCU to immerse myself in the Black experience, if I want to,” says Elise. “And Grandma pointed me to one of Jo-Ann’s sisters on Facebook. I’ve checked in on her over the years.”
Would shocks never stop coming? Vaguely, through her stupefaction, Sophie realizes that Elise has called Jo-Ann by name three times. Obviously she’s failed to instill respect for one’s elders in the girl.
“There have been times when we’ve been at loggerheads and I have fantasized about living with her,” continues Elise, “or with Cora Barnes, when she was still alive—”
“What? She’s dead?”
“From the flu, right before the pandemic began.”
“Oh,” says Sophie, a muddle of confused emotions. For so long she was terrified of the specter of Cora Barnes, coming to snatch Elise away. Yet…“I always hoped you’d be able to meet her someday, after you turn eighteen.”
Elise shakes her head. “She suffered from dementia. Jo-Ann’s sister took care of her and wrote that she sometimes asked about Jo-Ann.
She was upset when they told her Jo-Ann passed away, so in the end they took to reminding her that she banished Jo-Ann because Jo-Ann was queer, and Cora would say Good riddance every time.
So maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to meet me. ”
This brings back Sophie’s old sadness for Jo-Ann, Jo-Ann who was so dynamic, so can-do, yet so powerless before her mother’s implacable rejection.
“Poor Jo-Ann,” says Elise.
Decades of Aubrey Claremont’s directives finally kick in. “She’s your mother,” Sophie says, “don’t call her by name.”
“She gave birth to me. You are my mother.” Elise takes Sophie’s arm and places her head on Sophie’s shoulder.
“I don’t regret the path not taken. I only hope—I only hope you also have no regrets.
If you didn’t take me on, maybe today you’d be working at New York Public Library—Grandma said that was your dream when you were a kid. ”
Sophie doesn’t know whether she ought to thank her mother or cuss out the woman who defended and protected Sophie in her own harsh ways. To lay all that guilt on a child—they were lucky that Elise, strong and ebullient, was able to turn that psychological pressure into changes for the better.
“I also wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, until I tried a human gyroscope for the first time and almost passed out.” Sophie pulls back a little, so she can look Elise in the eye. “I don’t need the NYPL to be happy. Everything I need to be happy is already right here, in my life.”
For the first time since Elise was two, mother and daughter cry together. Afterward, to calm themselves down, they bundle up for a walk on the golf course.
The sun, reclined upon the horizon, gilds the expanse of long grass and turns it into a veritable field of gold.
Sophie fluffs the pom-pom atop Elise’s beanie.
“Do you remember all those old, old board games you pored over when you were a kid? They were all Jo-Ann’s. You’ve always been her daughter too.”
Elise is silent for some time. And then she says, “Mom, remember when Game Night just got over and you were mulling over another one in January? Do you think there will ever be another Game Night at the library?”
“In January, probably not. But I think I’d recover enough by March or April. What do you think?”
Elise snuggles more tightly against Sophie. “I think that’d be great.”
And then, like in the old movies, they ride—or walk arm in arm, rather—into the sunset.