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Show Motherlunge a novel 21 Fortunate. Fortunate? Walter turned the word over in his mind the way people he observed in the store-housewives-look for soft spots on melons. Fortunate was.. .what? It was Pavia, he decided. His baby girl, her fat hands reaching out for him when he came home. Dorothy had chosen her name; it was the name of a university in Italy where the editor of Dorothy's anthropology textbook had once been a Distinguished Fellow. "The name," Dorothy had said while she was pregnant, happy, "is beautiful, unusual, and not too difficult." Walter thought about this now. Pavia really was all of these things, and in this, at least, he was fortunate. And fortunately and unfortunately, there was Alva. He tried to think of her as a piece of domestic machinery-an appliance, labor-saving, like a vacuum cleaner-that kept his baby fed and clean, and it was their job (his and Dorothy's) to stay out of the way. And unfortunately, he was tired. Then one day, as in every story, something happened. Walter, walking home from work in the early morning, went to put his can of Rainier beer in a trashcan outside the library. He happened to look up at the newly lit windows and the letters above the doorway, Supernal Public Library. He stood there. He became aware that he was part of the public-he could dimly hear his father saying, "you have responsibilities now"-and that he could go in. He could go in and not go home to the apartment. For a while. And it would be all right. You can't fault someone for spending too much time at the library, after all. It's a citizen's duty to be informed. He could check out Popular Science, for example. Time. So he went in that morning, and almost every morning thereafter. Judith Callahan, head librarian with a coal-black wig styled in a crisp, shoulder-length flip, offered him a |
