The librarian’s missing page

The van heater clicked three times and gave up. Ruth slapped the dial, which had never helped, while the woman outside waited in the rain with a cookbook held under her coat.

“You can come in,” Ruth called. “The books have already survived worse weather.”

The woman climbed the steps. Water ran from her sleeves onto the rubber floor. She set the book on the counter and opened it where a lime bookmark protruded from the splayed cloth binding. A narrow, pale edge remained between pages forty-six and forty-nine.

“This is the second copy,” she said. “I’d like to see page forty-seven.”

Ruth recognized the navy cover. The Bracken County Table had been out of print longer than she had been driving the library van. The spine had been repaired twice and still leaned sideways when she set it down.

“Somebody tore it out,” Ruth said.

“I can see that.”

The woman had a right to be cross. Ruth was cross herself. “What was on it?”

“Is there another copy?”

“One more on the van. One at the branch, and the village reading room has its own.” Ruth reached beneath the counter for the other van copy. Its gutter showed the same pale strip. “That’s peculiar.”

The woman looked at both damaged books without touching them. “Can you find one with the page?”

“I’ll try. What name should I put on the request?”

“Mara Caldin.”

Ruth knew the name. A Mrs. Caldin had donated one of the cookbooks, the later edition with the square gold lettering. Ruth picked up the book Mara had brought. Its lettering had worn almost flat.

“Your family’s copy?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what’s on the missing page?”

Mara slid the lime bookmark into her pocket. “I need what’s on the back of it.”

“That might help me find it.”

“I know.” Mara pulled her wet sleeves over her hands. “I’d rather you looked first.”

Ruth wrote the request on a slip. Mara watched her write page forty-seven, reverse.

“I won’t have much luck if this becomes a contest,” Ruth said.

“It isn’t one.”

Mara went back into the rain. Ruth kept the damaged book on the counter. She had sounded exactly like the branch manager who used to make her account for every request before he would sign it. June Orme had told her, during her first month on the van, to stop apologizing for borrowers who wanted awkward things.

June had loaded the van in those days. She had retired from that, but Ruth still went upstairs at the mill stop on Thursdays for soup. June put out two plates even if Ruth arrived late. It was the one meal in the week for which Ruth took off her coat and sat at a table with someone.

Ruth added Mara’s telephone number to the slip, then underlined the word reverse. The heater clicked again, and a little warm air came through at last.

At the next stop, Ruth looked for the copy assigned to the village reading room. It was an earlier edition, its cover a darker blue and its recipe numbers printed small in the outer margins. Page forty-six ended with number twenty-one. Page forty-nine began with twenty-four. The missing leaf had carried two numbered recipes.

In Mara’s book, page forty-six ended with number eighteen and page forty-nine began with twenty. One recipe had occupied the missing leaf. Ruth checked the title page: revised edition, 1962. Whatever had been on page forty-seven in the older book, it was not necessarily in this one.

Both stubs had narrow gray fibers stuck to them. Ruth rubbed one gently with the edge of a clean slip. It did not come away. Something adhesive had once covered the torn edge.

She shut the book before the waiting borrowers could see her handling it. Mrs. Yates wanted the newest detective novel. Two boys argued over a field guide to birds. Mr. Vale returned a book smelling strongly of wood smoke and said the print was too small, though he had finished it. Ruth found him another with letters he could read without holding it against the window.

By the time the van reached the depot, her sleeves were damp too. She put the two cookbooks beside the circulation ledger and called the branch.

“Our copy is missing the leaf too,” said Kit, who worked the evening desk. “I’ve checked the shelves and returns. It’s the only one here, and the edge has a neat cut.”

“Look at the edition dates.”

A pause. “1948.”

“Check the recipe numbers on either side.”

“You sound as though you’ve found a body.”

“Four copies, all missing the same numbered page. Mara brought one back this morning.”

“That is worse for our inventory.”

Kit called back ten minutes later. The branch copy’s marginal numbers matched the reading room’s. Its cut was tidier than the tears Ruth had seen, but its stub bore the same gray fibers.

Ruth opened the old accession ledger. Mrs. Evelyn Caldin’s donation was recorded in blue ink in 1987. Beneath it, in a different hand, someone had copied part of her accompanying letter: Please circulate the revised edition. The old directions on page 47 must not be used.

The ledger said the letter was kept with donor correspondence. Ruth found the folder in the cabinet behind the desk. Mrs. Caldin had written firmly, pressing hard enough to mark the sheet below.

My mother kept the first edition through the years when jars and lids cost more than what went into them. The method on page 47 belonged to that time. The revised book omits it. Please give people the revised book instead.

At the bottom she had added, My daughter marked several recipes in this copy. She may ask for it again.

Ruth looked at the date. Mara had been old enough to mark recipes long before her mother donated the book.

There was no record that anyone had withdrawn the old editions. Their cards showed years of travel on the van route after Mrs. Caldin’s letter arrived.

Ruth found a box of retired route binders on the top shelf of the storage room. They held fuel receipts, stop lists, notes about icy roads and a complaint that the van door had shut on a basket of eggs. The binders began before Ruth took the route and continued through her first year. None had a loose page forty-seven.

One binder had been kept by June. Ruth knew her handwriting: a flat-topped seven and a capital R like a boot. She had copied that week’s stops onto it during Ruth’s first month. On a Thursday entry, June had written, Check cookbooks again. Ruth closed the binder and put Mara’s book in her bag.

---

On Thursday the van stopped below June’s apartment. Ruth carried Mara’s book up the outside stairs, keeping it tucked beneath her jacket against the drizzle.

June answered with a dish towel in her hand. She had a slice of apple peel drying in a chipped dish on the windowsill, curled into a tight red spiral.

“You’re early,” June said. “The soup’s still on.”

Ruth showed her the cookbook. “Did you put warnings in these?”

June looked at the navy cover. “The branch should have dealt with them years ago.”

“I found the donor’s letter. She asked for the revised edition to stay on the van.”

“And is it on the van?”

“Without its page forty-seven.”

June stood aside, leaving Ruth to decide whether to come in. Two bowls waited by the stove. Ruth put the cookbook on the table between them and opened it at the stub.

“The old edition’s missing recipe is twenty-two,” she said. “This one’s nineteen. It’s a different recipe. There’s the same tape on all four edges.”

June pulled her own chair out. “You’re doing very well at this.”

Ruth left her bag on her shoulder. “You wrote check cookbooks again in the route binder.”

“I checked them. Nobody else would.”

“Did you take the leaves?”

June looked at the book for a long time. A delivery truck backed into the lane below, making a high, steady noise.

“All four,” she said when it stopped. “I looked at the covers. Same blue, same title. I should have looked inside.”

“My brother took a jar from my pantry,” she said. “I’d followed that old book. He was terribly ill. He came home, but for a while we didn’t know if he would.”

Ruth waited. June watched the strip of torn paper in the gutter.

“I told the branch manager. He said he’d see about the books. They were still in the van the next week, and someone had checked one out. I taped notices across the gutters first, covering that leaf. The tape lifted, and people turned past them. Then I took the leaves.” Her voice sharpened. “You can tell me I was wrong.”

“You were right to raise the danger. I need to know where the pages went.”

“In a folder. I meant to give it to the manager with a note. Then he retired. I was ashamed I’d taken them without permission.” June looked up at Ruth. “After a while, admitting it got harder.”

She fetched a gray cardboard folder from the bedroom. Across the front, in thick pencil, she had written COOKBOOK 47. Four leaves were attached to separate pieces of card by short lengths of old gummed tape. The tape had shed gray fibers, some onto the edges of the paper. June had written the date and the book’s call number beneath each leaf.

The first three pages held the same preserving recipe, numbered twenty-two in the margin. Ruth read only enough to identify it. The paper was browned at the edges, and one leaf bore the faint ring of a cup.

The fourth had number nineteen. It was a supper recipe, with no preserving directions. June had labeled its card E. Caldin donation.

“May I turn this over?” Ruth asked.

June nodded.

Tape held only the top corners. Ruth raised the loose bottom edge of the leaf from its backing card. On the reverse of the leaf, beside the printed continuation of the recipe, Mrs. Caldin had written in slanted blue ink:

Mara comes Thursday. Get the white peaches if they are still cheap. She’ll say she isn’t hungry. Leave them out anyway.

Below that, in smaller writing, was No need to ask about the train.

Ruth lowered the card. She could hear June moving the dish towel back and forth between her hands.

“She asked you for that,” June said.

“She asked for the back of the page.”

“I never looked.”

Ruth checked the number nineteen again, then the donor label. June had removed a harmless supper recipe along with the old preserving directions. The note had spent those years facing its backing card.

“May I take the folder?” Ruth asked.

June put her palm over its open edge. “What will you write down?”

“Which leaves came from which books. Why they were removed.”

“With my name.”

Ruth could have written found loose with the route papers. The same cabinet had swallowed other things without asking who had put them there. She pictured carrying the folder down to the van, calling Mara before the next stop, and coming back to the soup while it was still hot.

“With your name,” she said. “And what you told the manager. That belongs in it too.”

“He’s dead. He won’t have to sit here while you write it.”

“You can give your account.”

“I just did. I thought I was giving it to you.” June pulled the folder to her side of the table. “Take a copy of the woman’s note if that’s what she needs. Leave the rest with me. Nobody will try that recipe again.”

Ruth looked at the two bowls. June had shown her how to take a van around bends too narrow for it, and how to leave a borrower enough time to choose without making them feel slow. She had also taken a page from the very edition its donor had asked her to protect.

“I can’t say I found it loose,” Ruth said.

“Then don’t say anything. Eat your lunch.”

Ruth had never been asked to stay with quite that voice. She picked up the cookbook. June kept her hand on the folder. The leaf with Mara’s note was underneath it.

“I won’t put your name in the public catalog,” Ruth said. “But if the branch asks who removed the pages, I’ll tell them.”

June rose and turned off the stove. “You should go, then.”

Ruth went down to the van without the folder. At the next stop she read Mrs. Yates the back of a novel twice because she had forgotten the first reading. She ate the bread she had brought with the soup in mind. It was dry enough to leave flour on the steering wheel.

At the branch she told Kit where the leaves were. Kit’s pen stopped over the condition record.

“June taught you this route.”

“I know.”

“Did you get the note?”

Ruth shook her head. She entered four missing leaves, seen at June’s apartment, awaiting return. She included June’s explanation and the warning to the earlier manager. Then she called Mara using the number on the request slip.

“I’ve seen your mother’s handwriting,” she said. “It’s there. I haven’t brought it back.”

“Where?”

Ruth told her. Mara listened while she explained June’s refusal and what she had promised to put in the record.

“Can you get me a copy?” Mara asked.

“She offered one if I left the rest alone.”

“You went there for the books.”

“I went because you asked. Then I wanted to finish the whole thing.” Ruth moved the request slip away from the phone. “I should have called you when I found it, before I tried to decide what would satisfy you.”

Mara was silent long enough for Ruth to hear Kit shutting the returns drawer.

“Give me the address,” Mara said. “And ask her whether she’ll open the door to me.”

June answered Ruth’s call on the first ring. She agreed to see Mara. When Ruth said she could come too, June said, “She can find the stairs.”

Ruth gave Mara the address and described the outside stairway above the dry cleaner’s. Mara said she would go after work. Ruth kept the request slip on the desk instead of filing it under completed.

---

Mara reached the branch at five fifty with rain in her hair and the gray folder under her coat. Ruth had cleared a table near the window. The room smelled of wet coats and the floor polish Kit used on Thursdays.

“She wants this back,” Mara said, setting it down. “The cardboard folder. The leaves can stay.”

Ruth did not open it yet. “What did you tell her?”

“I asked whether she remembered my mother. She did. Then I asked to read the note. She held the page for me.” Mara took off her coat. “I told her I wanted to be able to find it again. She said you’d keep it if I brought it here.”

“Did she ask you to leave her name out?”

“Yes. I said that was between you and her. I couldn’t promise it for you.”

Ruth drew the folder toward them. The four cards were still inside. She checked the donor label before raising the revised leaf from its backing. Mara’s finger hovered above the words about the train.

“I thought it said don’t ask,” she said.

“It says no need to ask.”

“Yes.” Mara pulled out a chair. “That sounds more like her.”

Ruth sat opposite while Mara read it again. Outside, the van waited at the curb. Its front window had fogged over.

“I was twenty-three,” Mara said. “I’d taken the train home after I lost a job. I told her I was visiting for supper. She knew.” She traced the air above the line about the peaches, careful not to touch the paper. “I saw her write this. Years later I tried to remember the exact words, and I couldn’t.”

“I shouldn’t have called it a contest,” Ruth said.

Mara kept her eyes on the ink. “I didn’t want another person telling me what a wonderful cook she was. That was what everybody said after she died.”

Ruth stayed in her chair while Mara read. When Mara wanted the page held closer to the light, she asked, and Ruth moved the folder.

Kit brought a copy of the note on fresh paper. Mara held it by two corners and looked between it and the original, checking each line.

“Can I come back to see this one?”

“Yes. Ask for the folder at the desk.”

Mara folded the copy once and put it inside her coat. She stayed another moment, looking at the original ink. Then she thanked Ruth and went out.

Ruth and Kit checked all four leaves against their call numbers and the damaged books. The fourth fitted Mrs. Caldin’s copy; the branch’s neat cut matched another. They retained the cards and leaves in a library folder. Ruth returned June’s empty cardboard folder by hand the next morning. June took it at the doorway. She did not ask Ruth in.

The three 1948 catalog entries carried a visible warning: Page 47 contains historical food preservation directions that should not be used. Removed leaves are retained at the branch for research; ask staff for current food safety sources. The revised edition’s entry said its leaf had been removed in error and was available to view. Ruth kept her account of the removal in the staff record. The separately lost copy stayed marked unknown. She could tell Mara which cabinet held the original now.

The following Thursday, Ruth stopped below the dry cleaner’s. She checked the clock on the van, then the kitchen window. June was there, wiping condensation from the glass with a towel. She looked down. Ruth raised a hand. June stood with the towel in her fist, then stepped away.

At the reading room, Ruth took the repaired cookbook from its crate and set it on the returns shelf. Mara had asked for a different book to be left there, one with pictures of peaches. Ruth put it beside the cookbook, checked the name on the request, and sat on the van step with her bread and cheese. The heater was clicking inside. A car turned into the reading-room yard. Ruth took another bite before putting her sandwich back in its paper.