The Lions of Fifth Avenue: A Novel

CHAPTER TWO

New York City, 1993

Sadie Donovan leaned against the stone lion named Patience and waited for the line of tourists entering the library to subside. The March sun was bright, offering a tease of warmth, but the intermittent gusts of wind made it clear that a temperamental spring was still firmly in charge. The chilly air irritated her, as did the crowds storming the building. They came in wave after wave, first taking photos of the two marble lions that flanked the steps—the one across the way was called Fortitude, the names conferred in the 1930s by Mayor LaGuardia as a reflection on Depression-era virtues—then around the revolving door that deposited them into the foyer like widgets in an assembly line. From there, they’d wander aimlessly, running their greasy hands over the polished walls and jamming up in the entrance to the Reading Room on the top floor as they stared up at the painted ceiling, fish mouths agape.

She almost wished the architects hadn’t put so much fuss behind their design for the building. This ought to be a place for scholars, where the maps and books and artifacts took precedence, not the scrollwork or chandeliers. If it were up to her, she’d allow the gawkers limited access, say seven A.M. to nine A.M. every other Wednesday. If the tourists wanted a museum, they could go to the Met uptown and be pests there. Not on her turf.

Finally, the crowd eased and she headed inside, maneuvering up the stairs to the northeast corner of the library’s top floor, through the heavy wooden door marked BERG COLLECTION. While the Reading Room down the hall offered a vast expanse of desks and chairs under rows of massive windows, the Berg had no windows and only a couple of large tables. Yet it offered its own quiet sense of majesty, with fluted Corinthian columns flanking Austrian oak panels. Glass cabinets showed off valuable editions and manuscripts by Thackeray, Dickens, and Whitman, generously donated by the brothers Henry and Albert Berg back in the forties. The room felt intimate, safe.

As she walked into the back-office space, her colleague Claude looked up from his desk.

“Any sign?” she asked.

“No.” His phone rang and he turned away. Sadie settled in, placing her purse in the drawer of her desk. On the other side of the room, a dozen interoffice envelopes sat piled up on their boss’s desk. Sadie supposed she might as well start her day going through them so the administration of running the Berg Collection wouldn’t fall behind.

Yesterday, Marlene Jenkinson, the Berg’s curator and Sadie’s mentor, hadn’t shown up for work as expected from the weeklong trip to New England she’d taken with her husband. When there was no sign of her early that afternoon, Sadie and Claude had approached the director of the library, Dr. Hooper, and been told to carry on with their work—he’d fill them in soon. Sadie had continued working on the master sheet of the Berg Collection’s highlights for an upcoming exhibit, entitled Evergreen, while Claude had been one room over, in the exhibit hall, going over the floor plan with the carpenters.

It wasn’t like Marlene to extend her trip and not tell them, to leave them in the lurch like this. The exhibit was an opportunity for the Berg to shine. It would attract international attention, and they’d all been working doggedly ever since it was announced, spending weekends down in the stacks, going through the rare books and taking inventory.

Over the past four years, Marlene had proved a kind and generous advisor and friend to Sadie. Surely, if something were wrong, Marlene would have reached out and let her know. The mystery around her absence, followed by Dr. Hooper’s curt dismissal, worried Sadie. She considered airing her concerns out loud to Claude after he hung up the phone, but thought better of it. They’d been circling each other with caution the past couple of months, now that their “relationship” or whatever it was called was over, and she didn’t want to show any vulnerability in front of him.

Sadie had always preferred books to people. In high school, she’d eaten her lunch in the library to avoid the confusing maze of social rules in the cafeteria. She’d befriended one of the librarians, who, Sadie’s senior year, urged her to get a degree in library sciences at Rutgers, where Sadie aced every class. After eight years working at the university’s library, she landed a job at the New York Public Library and moved into an apartment in New York’s Murray Hill neighborhood, not far from the town house where she’d been raised. It was perfect, with soaring ceilings, a fireplace, and a narrow stairway that led to a generous sleeping loft. The first night, she hugged herself with happiness, hardly believing that this was her life.

It was at the New York Public Library that she truly began to shine, manning her station at the reference desk in the Catalog Room next to the old pneumatic tubes that still carried the book requests down to the stacks far below. The questions came fast and furious, and she loved the more difficult ones.

How much horse manure was dumped on the streets in 1880? Sadie scoured the Department of Sanitation’s books from that year and found the answer: approximately one hundred thousand tons.

When did the Statue of Liberty turn green? Digging through the library’s archives, she came upon letters that described the landmark, looked up artists’ renderings, and compared postcards of the statue over the decades, before pinpointing 1920 as the year it had weathered enough to turn completely green.

The crazier the request, the more fun. Here at the library, she was the queen of the inquiry, and her colleagues envied her talents. Sadie’s skittishness around strangers, her worry that she was somehow lacking, disappeared at work. Because books didn’t play games. Facts didn’t play games.

Then she was promoted to the Berg Collection. While the library’s vast holdings included several rare book and map collections, the Berg was Sadie’s favorite. It wasn’t like the Reading Room, where anyone with a library card could request a book. At the Berg, scholars and researchers were closely vetted. To gain access, they had to describe their research topic, summarize their research to date, and submit a reason for requesting whatever item it was they wanted to see. Which meant the inquiries were more challenging than the general ones down the hall, and also more satisfying. Even if she had to put up with a preening Claude repeatedly tossing his hair out of his eyes like a horse in the dressage ring, it was the perfect job.

None of the envelopes on Marlene’s desk were time sensitive, so Sadie closed them back up and placed them in the in-box. Where could she be?

The phone at her desk rang, and she rushed to pick it up.

“Sadie, I need you to do me a favor.” She recognized the voice as Dr. Hooper’s. “Marlene was supposed to give a tour for our new board members today. Can you take over? I’d completely forgotten and they’re already here. Then I’ll need to see you and Claude in my office at two thirty.”

“Of course. Where shall I meet the board members?”

“The Trustees Room. They’re waiting.”

The tour group consisted of a tall man with a neatly trimmed beard named Mr. Jones-Ebbing, and a married couple called the Smiths.

Sadie led the trio through the halls, pointing out all her favorite spots: the painted ceiling of a cloudy sky above the back stairwell, the Edward Laning murals depicting the history of the written word in the rotunda, and the view of the foyer from the second-floor balcony. Then down to the stacks, where the library’s millions of volumes were housed. “If the shelves were laid end to end, they would measure over eighty miles,” she said.

Mrs. Smith let out a small “Oh, my.”

“This particular branch of the New York Public Library is a research library, not a circulating one,” said Sadie. “That means we don’t lend the books out, they must be consulted on-site. Furthermore, the stacks are not for browsing, they are closed off to the general public. Instead, a patron consults the card catalog and puts in a request, and then the book or books are sent to the Reading Room. The retrieval process hasn’t changed much in all the time the library has been open to the public, since 1911.”

The stacks consisted of seven tiers that rose from the basement level to just below the Reading Room. They reminded Sadie of an ant colony, with library pages dashing up stairs and down the narrow aisles, locating one book among millions within minutes along the steel shelves. She pointed out the conveyer system that carried books up to the patrons waiting in the Reading Room, as well as the dumbwaiter used for oversized works.

Mr. Jones-Ebbing ran his fingers along the spines of the books beside him.

“Don’t touch.” She smiled in an attempt to soften the command. These were the people who supported the library with their large donations. Marlene was quite good at coddling the VIPs. Sadie really needed to work on that.

Mr. Jones-Ebbing withdrew his hand and grinned, thankfully not in the least offended. “I just love the feel, and smell, of old books. Can’t help myself.”

“I’m the same way.”

The group emerged into the newly constructed storage area that extended deep under Bryant Park. Sadie proudly reeled off the statistics. “The temperature is kept to sixty-five degrees with forty percent humidity, in order to best preserve the books. There’s even another level below this one.”

She showed how the bookshelves could be moved back and forth with a large wheel, so there was no wasted space. “Near the very back are a couple of small escape hatches—in case of fire—that exit onto the west side of Bryant Park.” She was surprised to catch Mrs. Smith raise her eyebrows at her husband, unimpressed, as if they were touring a seedy warehouse.

“I prefer the old part of the library better,” said Mrs. Smith.

“We had to expand to accommodate all the books. Although we currently use only one story of the two that were excavated, together they’ll accommodate up to 3.2 million books and half a million reels of microfilm, effectively doubling our storage capacity.”

Polite nodding. They were bored. She was boring them. Sadie racked her brain for something interesting to show them, something unexpected.

“We’ll cut this short and go upstairs. Follow me.”

They took the elevator back up to the third floor, to the Berg Collection, where Sadie led them over to one of the enclosed bookcases. She pointed through the glass door at the bottom shelf.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith leaned down to stare. “Is that a cat’s paw stuck on the end of a knife?” asked the wife.

Sadie removed a white glove from her pocket and fitted it onto her left hand. She fiddled with the lock on the case and, once it was opened, slipped her gloved fingers carefully beneath the cat-paw letter opener and lifted it out, placing it on one of the tables reserved for researchers. The paw was about four inches long, easily recognizable as that of a gray-and-black tabby. The inscription read, C.D. In memory of Bob 1882.

“This is what Charles Dickens used to open letters,” explained Sadie.

“Is it real?” asked Mrs. Smith, scrunching her turned-up nose. Maybe this had been a mistake.

“Yes,” said Sadie. “The cat, called Bob, was so beloved by Charles Dickens that he had his paw put on a letter opener after he died.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Sadie stumbled through the explanation as Mr. Jones-Ebbing slid his finger lightly along the sharp end of the blade; she barely stopped herself from giving his knuckles a good rap. “It’s an important artifact, one that tells us a lot about Charles Dickens and the time period he lived in. Back then, taxidermy was all the rage. People made hats out of birds, inkwells out of horses’ hoofs. By doing this, Dickens could still touch the fur of his beloved pet every day.”

What else to show them? Sadie replaced the letter opener and looked around. “Over here is a walking stick that belonged to the essayist and writer Laura Lyons.”

“Oh, gosh, I read all about her in some magazine not long ago,” said Mrs. Smith, her stridency melting. “It’s really hers?”

Finally, a hit. “Yes. She had it with her when she died, in 1941.”

Sadie stared down at the stick, as she had many times since she’d begun working there. Sometimes, after hours, when she was alone, she’d take it out and place her bare palm where Laura Lyons’s had once been.

“Simply fantastic,” said Mrs. Smith.

Mr. Jones-Ebbing broke into her thoughts as they retreated into the hallway. “We were told you’re working on the Berg Collection exhibit. Can you give us any hints of what you’ll be showing?”

“I won’t spoil the surprises, but I can tell you it will be the best that the collection has to offer.”

“Cagey, I see,” he said, eyes twinkling. “Can you at least share how you and your colleagues go about curating a big exhibit like this one?”

“We sift through the collection and allow the objects that capture our attention and imagination to illuminate the theme. In this case, the exhibit will be called Evergreen.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” asked Mrs. Smith.

“The focus is on pieces that have retained their value to scholars and historians over time. While the Berg has some fantastic manuscripts and first editions and diaries and such, we would also like to showcase the quirkier pieces—the ones that have a different kind of story to tell.”

Mr. Jones-Ebbing leaned in with a mock whisper. “I hope the letter opener makes the cut.”

“I’ll let you in on a secret: it does. But you can’t tell a soul.”

He put his fingers to his lips, and they all laughed.

Maybe this wasn’t going so badly after all.

“Once we know the objects we want,” Sadie said, feeling more at ease now, “we go through them and make sure they’re in good shape, figure out how best to highlight them: what page a book should be opened to, what historical context needs to be explained.” They’d reached the door to the Trustees Room. By now, all three board members were gathered around her, listening. “We’ll consult with top scholars to determine what’s the most important thing to mention, what should be revealed. Then there’s all the work with the designers on the exhibit room itself, regarding the exhibit cases, the general aesthetic. What color paint on the walls? What typeface for the labels? How will we control the climate inside the cases? We’ll also put together the catalog, which needs to be in language that’s both suitable for the average reader and accurate.”

“Quite a job. I look forward to the opening,” said Mr. Jones-Ebbing. “Seems like it’s in very capable hands.” He smiled down at her. “I’ll be sure to tell Dr. Hooper that you impressed us all.”

“Lovely to see you, Claude and Sadie. Please, do take a seat.”

The director of the library, Humphrey Hooper, MLS, PhD, spoke with a quick, flat cadence, something Sadie had noted when she first met him a decade ago. Originally from Alabama, he’d somehow mastered a vocal inflection that couldn’t be pinned to a particular place yet clearly signaled an upper-class upbringing, like Cary Grant in the old movies.

Since that first meeting, Sadie had risen from assistant librarian to librarian to assistant curator of the Berg Collection by learning everything she could about the library, from the genealogy department to the map room to the prints and photograph department, by coming in early and staying late.

Claude, sitting in the chair next to her, had taken a different approach, taking his superiors out to lunch and wooing them with his charm and wit. He wasn’t handsome—his eyes bulged out slightly, and his upper lip tended to sweat when he got excited—but he had broad shoulders and a thick head of hair, and most of the female librarians swooned when he paid them the slightest bit of attention. He’d shone his light on Sadie during the library’s last Christmas party, kissing her in the back-office area and making her feel breathless and beautiful.

That time of year had always been a dismal one for Sadie. Christmas Eve was when her father had passed away, so even decades later the sight of a pine tree aglow with a riot of primary colors induced in her an anxious melancholy. It also happened to be Christmas Eve when, sick with dread, she’d rifled through her now ex-husband’s briefcase and found a bill for a credit card she’d never known about, filled with charges to the Washington Square Hotel and several Greenwich Village restaurants. All conveniently located near NYU, where Phillip was a tenured math professor. Even though that was six years ago, the holidays still filled her with an ominous apprehension that the world might fall apart at any minute.

So it really was no surprise that with Claude’s unexpected kiss, even though his breath smelled like Scotch, Sadie’s yuletide clouds of misery had gently evaporated.

He’d been away for a week after that, during which time she’d let her imagination run wild, thinking of them together, wandering around the city, roaming from bookstore to bookstore. After he’d returned, they’d gone out to lunch together and sometimes dinner, where he held her a little too long when they said goodbye out on the street. At work, he’d made sweet overtures, like sharing a magazine article on the new Tennyson biography, or passing along the Times crossword once he had finished the paper.

But then, one morning, she’d turned the corner near the administrative offices and spotted him deep in conversation with one of the young pages who worked in the stacks. The girl had thrown back her head and laughed—a high-pitched, ludicrous sound like she was being strangled with sleigh bells—and something in Sadie had shut down, hard. The ups and downs of heartbreak were not for her, no way, not after what she’d already been through with Phillip.

That same day, deep in the stacks of the Berg Collection, Sadie had come across an intriguing title she didn’t remember seeing before: a first edition of Surviving Spinsterhood: The Joys of Living Alone, published in 1896, by Abigail Duckworth. She plucked the thin volume from the Berg’s caged shelves and began reading, turning her back so any passing pages couldn’t see what was in her hand. She’d flown through it, delighted at the timeless advice for successfully maintaining independence as a woman, chock-full of pithy chapter headings like “Solitary Refinement” and “Pleasures of a Single Bed.” For decades, women had lived happily, easily, without a man. That was good enough for her.

Claude had made overtures after that and been rebuffed at every turn. If he brought her the crossword, she’d say she’d already finished it. Articles? Read them. These days, she and Claude had maintained a respectful, if chilly, distance, and whenever loneliness threatened, she’d pluck the book off the shelf and turn to a random page for a quick dose of witty inspiration.

In Dr. Hooper’s office, she smoothed down the voluminous skirt of her dress, hoping Dr. Hooper didn’t find her outfit too frivolous for someone who’d just given a tour to trustees. That morning, she’d chosen a marigold-colored fifties shirtdress with thin orange stripes, admiring the way the full skirt fell away from her hips. It had been one of her most recent finds at the Antique Boutique thrift store, downtown on Broadway. But today, under the harsh lights of the director’s office, the yellow zinged brightly. Perhaps too brightly.

She’d gotten used to the various reactions to her daily ensembles, ranging from a surprised “How lovely” to “Well, that’s an interesting outfit.” Sure, her tastes were a far cry from the current craze for Doc Martens and oversized suits, but eventually they’d come back into style and she’d have the last laugh. In the meantime, she liked the idea of wearing a piece of history, whether it was a tailored 1930s suit, only slightly faded, or the fifties frock she wore today.

Dr. Hooper consulted his notes. “We’ve had to do some reshuffling. Marlene, as you know, unexpectedly extended her vacation. Permanently, it turns out.”

“What?” Sadie and Claude spoke at the same time.

“She reached out to me yesterday to let me know that she’s taken the job of chief of collections at the Boston Library.”

Sadie sat back, stunned. That explained the unexpected goodbye hug that Marlene gave her the Friday before she left for vacation. As well as her extra-detailed instructions for while she was gone. The decision to take the job, in charge of all the collections at the third-largest library in the country, must have been very difficult. Yet it was a big step up, and Sadie just wished Marlene could have felt comfortable confiding in her. But that wouldn’t have been professional, and Marlene was nothing but professional.

“She was poached?” asked Claude.

Dr. Hooper harrumphed. “Yes. She gave her resignation yesterday and apologized for the short notice but said that it couldn’t be helped. She added that she was certain the two of you could take on the mantle. I hope she’s right. This is terrible timing, with the Berg Collection exhibit to open in May. We’re in a bind.”

If Marlene was no longer in charge, the logical next choice would be either Claude or Sadie. Sadie had been at the library longer, but Claude had more years in the Berg Collection. It was a toss-up.

“What can we do to help, Dr. Hooper?” asked Claude.

“There’s no time to look for an outside hire, so I’ve talked with the board of directors and we’ve decided that we’d like Sadie to take the helm. For now.”

The director wanted Sadie to become curator of the Berg Collection, one of the most esteemed literary collections in America. Right when they’d be mounting a major exhibition that would be written about in all the newspapers.

“I’m sorry, but why Sadie?” Claude was not amused. “I’ve been working closely with Marlene this past year, day after day. I know what she wants to include.”

“Right,” said Dr. Hooper. “Luckily, we have the final list, so there are no decisions to be made there, as much as we appreciate all your hard work, of course. Sadie’s been at the library longer and, we hope, will bring her comprehensive knowledge to bear as we get the exhibit up and running. That means long hours, lots of research and writing, but we believe you both will rise to the occasion.”

“Of course.” Sadie tried to contain her joy. What she really wanted to do was leap to her feet and jump up and down, the way her six-year-old niece, Valentina, did when she won at Connect Four. But that wouldn’t do at all. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Thank you. I want to be clear, this is on a trial basis. I’ll make another, more permanent decision after the exhibit is up and running.” He shifted to address Claude. “Claude, I can’t tell you how much we appreciate all of the hard work you’ve done. And will continue to do.”

What an opportunity. The job went way beyond her current role as a chronicler of old books and literary paraphernalia. As the face of the exhibit, she’d be able to share with the world her love of these historical objects and the emotions they represented to her. She might even get offered the job for good, as the permanent curator of the Berg.

For the next twenty minutes, Dr. Hooper went through the list of exhibit items one by one, in alphabetical order, asking for a progress report. All went smoothly, until he reached the L’s. “I noticed that the Laura Lyons walking stick is on the list of exhibit items,” he said.

In the past five years, there had been a reawakening in interest around Laura Lyons, as her essays were reexamined by feminist scholars and cited for their forward thinking. The few details of the writer’s reclusive life were being mined for clues, which made the walking stick a perfect choice.

But Sadie stiffened as Dr. Hooper continued. “Since she lived here at one point in her life, I want one of you to go through the library’s archives, see if you can find anything about her that we’ve missed. I’d like to include more than the walking stick. An essay, some original piece of her work, a letter, something that would attract a lot of attention.”

“I’ll do that,” offered Claude.

“No. I’ll do it.” Sadie didn’t care that she was being rude. “I studied her work in college and so have a background that will be useful. Of course, all her private letters and manuscripts were destroyed right after her death. So I’d be surprised if we found anything of interest.”

“In any event, let me know what you discover.”

She avoided meeting Dr. Hooper’s eyes as she assured him she would.