Read The Weight of Water for Free Online Page B

the drips.
    Thomas said, “I’ll go find Adaline.” He did not say, “I’ll go find Adaline and Billie,” or “Adaline and Rich.”
    The librarian returns with several books and folders of papers. I thank him and pick up one of the books. It is an old and
     worn volume, the brown silk binding of which has cracked. The pages are yellowed at the edges, and a few are loose. Images
     swim in front of me, making an array of new covers on the book. I shut my eyes and put the book to my forehead.
    I look at an old geography of the Isles of Shoals. I read two guidebooks printed in the early half of the century. I take
     notes. I open another book and begin to riffle the pages. It is a book of recipes,
The Appledore Cookbook,
published in 1873. The recipes intrigue me: Quaking Pudding, Hash Made from Calf’s Head and Pluck, Whitpot Pudding, Hop Yeast.
     What is pluck? I wonder.
    From the folders the library has given me, papers slide out onto the table, and I can see there is no order to them. Some
     papers are official documents from the town, licenses and such, while others are clearly bills of sale. Still other papers
     seem to be letters written on a stationery so fragile I am almost afraid to touch them. I look at the letters to decipher
     the old-fashioned penmanship, and with dismay I realize that the words are foreign. I see the dates: April 17, 1873; November
     4, 1868; December 24, 1856; January 5, 1867.
    There are a few photographs in the folders. One is a portrait of a family of seven. In the photograph, the father, who has
     a beard and a full head of hair, is wearing a waistcoat and a thick suit, like a captain of a ship might have. His wife, who
     has on a black dress with a white lace collar and lots of tiny white buttons, is quite plump and has her hair pulled severely
     back off her head. Everyone in the photograph, including the five children, appears grim and bug-eyed. This is because the
     photographer has had to keep the shutter open for at least a minute, during which time no one is allowed to blink. It is easier
     to maintain a serious expression for sixty seconds than it is a smile.
    In one of the folders, various documents seem interspersed with students’ papers and what look to be, to judge from the titles,
     sermons. There is also a faded, flesh-colored box, a box expensive writing paper might once have come in. Inside the box are
     pages of writing — spidery writing in brown ink. The penmanship is ornate, almost impossible to make out, even if the words
     were in English, which they are not. The paper is pink at the edges, slightly stained in one corner. A water stain, I think.
     Or perhaps even a burn. It smells of mildew. I stare at the flowery writing, which when looked at as a whole makes a lovely,
     calligraphic design, and as I lift the pages out of the box, I discover that a second set of papers, paper-clipped together,
     is at the bottom of the box. These pages are written in pencil, on white-lined paper, and bear many erasure marks, which have
     been written over. They also bear one purple date stamp and several notations:
Rec’d September 4, 1939, St. Olafs College library. Reed 14.2.40, Oslo, forwarded Marit GuUestad. Reed April J, 1942, Portsmouth
     Library, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
    I look at the first set of papers and the second. I note the date at the beginning of each document. I study the signature
     at the end of the foreign papers and compare it to the printed name at the end of those written in English.
    Maren Christensen Hontvedt.
    I read two pages of the penciled translation and set it on my lap. I look at the date stamp and the notations, which seem
     to tell a story of their own: the discovery of a document written in Norwegian; an attempt to have a translation made by someone
     at St. Olafs College; the forwarding of that document to a translator in Oslo; the war intervening; the document and its translation
     belatedly sent to America and then relegated to a