The Giving Quilt (14 page)

“Books being tossed onto bonfires is one,” said Linnea. “Shrill parents demanding the banishment of perfectly wonderful books they've never read but heard dire warnings about on talk radio is another.”

Jocelyn frowned and shook her head. “I feel your pain. In our school district, there's been talk of cutting back library hours to one hour before and one hour after the school day. A school board member actually suggested firing all the librarians and staffing the library with parent volunteers.”

“Oh, I'm sure they'd have a line out the door of qualified parents eager to sign up for that,” said Pauline dryly.

“Naturally. If people know alphabetical order they can shelve books, and anyone can say, ‘Shush,' and there's really not much more to the job than that, is there?” Linnea gripped the back of her chair and forced a smile. “Now I really need that walk. I'll see you all later.”

As she turned to go, Karen called after her, “The Elm Creek Quilters haven't closed their library. They use it as their office, and it's—”

“Don't tell me,” Linnea interrupted, smiling to soften the abruptness of her request. “I'd like to find it on my own.”

She felt their curious gazes upon her as she turned and left the ballroom.

* * *

Michaela could not possibly know how close to the mark her words had struck Linnea, or how painfully deep.

Like so many other librarians she had known throughout her life, Linnea had fallen in love with her neighborhood library as a child, and in all the years since, libraries had not lost their power to enthrall. She still remembered how awestruck she had been on the day she first realized she could wander through the stacks, choose any book that caught her eye, examine it at one of the tables or upon the window seat in the children's section, and, if she liked it well enough, take it home to read and to savor. Her mother had brought her to Saturday Story Time since before she could walk, and as she grew older and learned to read on her own, her mother continued their weekly pilgrimages. Linnea would spend hours browsing the shelves of the children's section, asking the librarian for recommendations, checking to see whether her favorite authors had written anything new, and then, when her patient mother told her it was time to go, she would check out as many books as she could carry. “Are you sure you can read all of those in a week?” the clerk at the circulation desk asked the first few times Linnea proudly presented her library card, signed in ink in her best cursive penmanship. She assured him she could, and would, and eventually all the circ desk staff knew her well enough not to ask. Instead they smiled indulgently and wished her happy reading.

A voracious reader with insatiable curiosity and eclectic interests, Linnea explored not only novels and collections of short stories but also nonfiction books on an endless variety of fascinating subjects, records by musicians she had never before heard of, magazines written especially for children and sometimes by children, and newspapers from far-off cities she longed to visit. Sometimes she liked what she checked out and sometimes she didn't, but she always learned from them, and every so often she would experience the thrill of discovering something new that she really, really liked. The poetry and drawings of Shel Silverstein, for example, and New Orleans jazz, and
Jack and Jill
magazine, and the magical stories of Edward Eager.

Over time, she learned that the only joy greater than having a librarian offer her a book and confide, “I set this book aside for you because I knew you would love it,” was placing one of her own recommended reads in a child's hands and watching a pair of bright, eager eyes light up with happiness and anticipation.

Upon receiving her master of library science degree from the University of Iowa, Linnea had worked for several years as an elementary school librarian. Later, after marriage and children and two cross-country moves as Kevin was transferred up the corporate ladder, she accepted a position as the children's librarian of the Conejo Hills Public Library, in their new hometown about forty-five miles north of Los Angeles.

She loved her work, and she loved her library. On any given day, she could look up from the reference desk in the children's department and see elementary school students browsing through the nonfiction books in search of sources for class projects, new mothers pushing strollers and perusing the bins of board books, and harried parents keeping their active preschoolers in sight as they scoured the shelves for rainy-day activity books. Over the low walls separating her department from the rest of the library, Linnea might observe a book club having an intense, quiet discussion around a table, teenagers studying for exams and silently flirting, a silver-haired woman researching her family tree, a middle-aged man in a suit and tie discreetly nibbling a contraband sandwich while paging through a bestselling thriller fresh from the “New Arrivals” shelf, a young couple nodding with relief as a reference librarian guided them through a bewildering maze of local government services and contacts, a shabbily dressed man leafing through the “Help Wanted” ads in the local newspaper and those from surrounding counties, a new immigrant proceeding haltingly through a lesson with encouragement from her ESL tutor, or an unshaven young fellow frantically studying for the LSATs. Later that evening, the library's meeting rooms could play host to a monthly gathering of the Conejo Hills Chess Club, a lecture by a local historian, a debate on the merits and drawbacks of a hotly contested ballot measure, or a reading by a nationally known author. Ancient Rome had its forum; Conejo Hills—and countless other communities across the nation—had its library.

The Conejo Hills Public Library expanded during the economic boom of the 1990s, investing in new technology, adding a climate-controlled storage area for less frequently circulated materials, and replacing the roof, which had been damaged in the Northridge earthquake. In cooperation with the acquisitions department staff, Linnea nearly doubled the library's young adult collection and successfully persuaded the Friends of the Library to add manga and graphic novels to lure in more reluctant readers. She hired two part-time assistants, coordinated an able staff of retiree volunteers, and initiated an after-school anime club. During the summer she directed the reading incentive program, and throughout the rest of the year, she collaborated with district teachers and school librarians to make sure resources would be available whenever their students had important term projects to complete.

Since all of the elementary schools in the district followed the same curriculum, by keeping in touch with a few teachers, Linnea learned what the upcoming units were and could change her displays in the children's department or schedule programming accordingly. Some themes occurred annually, such as the fourth-grade focus on California history or the sixth-grade concentration on the environment. One of Linnea's favorite units was the first graders' study of great artists that fell between spring break and the end of the school year. She would hang prints of famous, child-friendly works of art throughout the children's department, display picture books and beginning-reader biographies about artists both well-known and obscure, and invite an artist, usually someone local, for a Saturday morning demonstration and discussion of his or her work. Her greatest programming coup was booking Eric Carle. More than three hundred children and parents from throughout Southern California attended to hear him read from his most recent book and demonstrate his unique tissue-paper collage method of creating pictures. Later that day, thirty particularly fortunate students nominated by their teachers for their good grades and good citizenship attended a workshop where the artist and author taught them how to make their own Brown Bears or Hungry Caterpillars. Linnea cherished the rainbow-hued bear he had made for his demonstration and had autographed for her as a token of his thanks for the day. She kept the framed picture on the wall above her desk next to a photograph of herself with former president Bill Clinton, taken when he visited the library to promote his charitable foundation and read from his recently published book
Giving
.

Linnea loved her work, her colleagues, her young patrons, and her library. As she often told Mona, even her worst day at the Conejo Hills Public Library was better than her best day anywhere else. There seemed to be no reason why she shouldn't be able to continue pursuing her passion until sometime in the far distant future, when she and Kevin would decide to retire.

The recession changed everything.

It struck some of her friends like an incoming tide, slowly and inexorably washing away the solid ground beneath their feet and dragging them out to sea. Others it struck with the force of a tsunami, sudden and devastating. Friends and neighbors lost their jobs or saw their paychecks slashed. Families lost their homes to foreclosure. Almost two years to the day before Linnea came to Elm Creek Manor, the biggest employer in Conejo Hills had laid off nearly a third of its workforce. Those who still had jobs and homes feared losing them, and people everywhere turned inward, driven by a primal instinct to conserve what they had for them and theirs before thinking of people they had never met. As the months passed, more and more people sought assistance at the St. Vincent de Paul in the oldest section of town. Visitors to the food pantry sponsored by Linnea's church steadily increased in numbers even as donations dwindled and the shelves became sparsely stocked.

Linnea could see the strain in people's faces as they distractedly browsed the stacks at the library; she read it in alarmist letters to the editor in the
Conejo Hills Call
. Anxiety haunted even those who had thus far escaped the economic downturn relatively unscathed, and as everyone pared back to the essentials, Linnea began to fear that giving would become a luxury limited to more prosperous times. Whenever her family gathered around the supper table, she reminded them anew of her lifelong belief that it was important to remember the less fortunate even when one wasn't feeling particularly fortunate oneself. Perhaps it was even more important at such times.

Her beliefs were soon to be tested.

Rumors of office mergers and closures had hung ominously over Kevin and his coworkers for months before the storm finally broke. Kevin's boss had assured him that he would do everything in his power to retain him even if that meant a transfer, but ultimately even his support wasn't enough. Kevin was offered a modest severance package and career counseling, and after a week of shock and disbelief spent mostly in front of the television watching classic sports channels, he shaved, found a copy of his old résumé in a box of files they hadn't unpacked since their last move, and updated it on the computer. Then came months of sending it to prospective employers, searching the Internet for job postings, networking with friends and former colleagues, and making himself useful at home while Linnea was at work. They had tallied their income and expenses, and they calculated that as long as Linnea kept her job, they would get by. They could pay the mortgage and tuition; they could pay the utility bills and buy food. They would have nothing left over to splurge on luxuries, and Christmas would be a far more frugal affair than they were accustomed to, but they would manage. Their children offered to contribute their part-time after-school wages to the family budget, but Linnea and Kevin could not bear to accept. Their children were saving for college—their eldest was already a sophomore at UCLA—and those plans mustn't change. They had worked too hard to earn good grades to let anything interfere with their educations.

When rumors began to circulate through the library about city budget cuts, Linnea felt the same anxiety seize her as when similar hushed whispers spread dire warnings through Kevin's office. The axe was lowered, not in one swift, merciful blow, but inch by inch, kindling more fear and worry as the days went by. First the library administrators were summoned to a closed-door meeting with the city budget committee. They returned to the library haggard and tense, and at an emergency meeting of the senior staff the following day, they exhorted everyone to cut their department budgets as much as possible. Linnea cut until it hurt, as did her colleagues, but it wasn't enough. First the most recently hired part-timers were let go. Then Sunday hours were cut in half. Then they opened an hour later on weekdays and closed an hour earlier. Then, at last, the whole truth came out on the front page of the
Conejo Hills Call
: Due to the disastrous performance of the stock market and a drastic reduction in assets, the city faced a budget shortfall of nearly four million dollars. For a community of that size, this was a shockingly large amount—enough, in fact, to bankrupt them.

The people of Conejo Hills, already stressed and anxious from job losses, foreclosures, and their uncertain future, reacted with anger and outrage. They demanded that the mayor and every member of the city council resign at once, but cooler, wiser heads prevailed. The city council's predecessors had created the current financial circumstances in a more optimistic era, and banishing the people most familiar with the mess they were mired in would make it even more difficult to pull themselves out. So the city leaders set themselves to the daunting task of slashing the budget without cutting any essential programs, raising taxes, or offending anyone. This quickly proved impossible, so they conferred with legal counsel, met with an advisory committee from the governor's office, and asked the public to submit suggestions for how to balance the budget.

Someone along the way proposed closing down the library.

The mayor promptly dismissed the suggestion, but it was leaked to the press and made its way online. Once bolstered with spurious data gleaned from an organization better known for their efforts to ban books from school libraries than for their accounting prowess, it caught fire. Closing the library would make up more than two-thirds of the budget shortfall, proponents argued. Libraries were not profitable. In the age of the Internet, they were not even necessary.