Free Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel by Donald Antrim Page B

a library book. Riding mower. High gear. Couldn’t stop. Sticks and rocks flying.” Rita’s apparent acceptance of my “lawn mower” con offered me comfort and strength; it served to integrate me with the larger community represented by these family groups. I milked the role of benign neighborhood duffer by boasting to the gathered throng, “I guess I’m not much good with lawn tools. Say, Rita, you wouldn’t happen to have some hot coffee, would you?”
    “We’ve got coffee and doughnuts in back. I’ll bring some out. Don’t you worry about this book. Accidents do happen. You’re lucky you didn’t lose a hand or a foot. Why don’t you sit down and unwind a bit.”
    “Thanks, I’d like that.” I watched moms and kids file into the Juvenile section. Juvenile is my favorite of all the special collections in the library. Along with, maybe, History. The Juvenile section is decorated with colorful, messy finger paintings and a collection of kids’ Play-Doh statues of anthropomorphic beings, marbles stuck as eyes in their heads. Juvenile has its very own card catalogue and semicircular seating unit, one of those comfortable wraparound sofa environments, scaled down to youngster size and richly pillowed in stuffed animals: polar bears, kittens, multicolored birds, lions and tigers, an elephant, a bison. Beholding those kids hopping, now, into that playtime bestiary—it filled me with joy. I headed right on over and reclined among them, little Susy on my right, Steven and Brad to my left. Susy grabbed a python. Steven cuddled a bear. I got the bison. Other kids completed the circle, a boy named David and his redheaded infant brother, Tim; a puffy girl named Jane who looked like she’d been crying recently. Most were preschoolers. They all clutched animals and stared my way with wide gazes. One, an auburn-haired girl of, I guess, five or six, dressed in a floral-print jumper and saddle oxfords that wore friendly smiling schnauzers’ faces sewn onto their uppers, said, “Hi, mister.”
    “Hi.”
    “Are you a monster?”
    “Sarah!” her mother scolded from a folding chair beside the World Books. I said to the mother, “It’s okay,” and I asked Sarah, “Do I look like a monster?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry,” Sarah’s mother said to me. To her daughter, in treacly, charm school cadences, she said, “Do not be a rude child.”
    I noticed Jenny Jordan blanching at the sound of this fierce other mom. I winked at Jenny (it was good to have an ally), then explained, patiently, “Sarah, there are two kinds of monsters. The real kind are scary and evil, and you always want to watch out for that kind of monster. Then there’s another kind that’s not a monster at all, just a person having a rough day.”
    “Like my dad?” Sarah asked. All I could do was chuckle, “Heh heh. Kids.”
    Luckily Rita arrived with refreshments. “How do you take your coffee, Mr. Robinson?”
    “Black.” I flipped the bison on its back and balanced my Styrofoam cup on its synthetic-hair tummy. Rita addressed the gathering, “Mr. Robinson is married to a mermaid, isn’t that nice?”
    “Oh,” cried mothers.
    “Well,” I said.
    “Now don’t you be modest, Mr. Robinson. Meredith is a special person, and we’re fortunate to have her in our town.” Rita took up an oversized volume emblazoned with four-color images of Native Americans enacting ceremonial violence. She held the book up to show a black-haired female helplessly watching a bare-chested chieftain sporting a feathered headband and hoisting a rock poised to descend onto the head of a trussed and bound white man. Rita pointed out, “This is Pocahontas, the beautiful Indian maiden, and this man with the rock is her father, Powhatan, and this man here is Captain Smith, the man Pocahontas secretly loves, and here is their story. Everybody ready?”
    “Ready!” chorused the kids. What a sound. I only wished Meredith could’ve been present to hear that happy