Opinion: Ghosted by society, it’s my turn to haunt the Rinconada Library

When I casually mentioned that I might apply for a job at the Rinconada Library, my wife told me not to. She said it would keep me from doing other more important things. She said that I was overqualified. She said that I would be bored. 

Perversely, my wife telling me not to apply made me want to do it even more. 

I thought a job at the Rinconada Library would provide meaningful work. I’ve loved the library since we moved to Palo Alto in 1990. I have spent many happy hours there. I would love to work in a place surrounded by books and people who love them. Twelve hours a week seemed like the right amount of work.

I haven’t had a job since before the pandemic. When I resigned from Adobe in March of 2020, I had worked in software for 37 years. A week after I quit, the Bay Area shut down. There was no celebratory party, no goodbye lunch, no exit interview, no fanfare, no swan song, no eloquent soliloquies, no drunken songs with workmates — nothing to mark the passing of my career.

I learned about the library page position in an uplifting newsletter from the City of Palo Alto. I would be happy to call myself a library page. It’s a noble job title. The word “page” evokes the most important part of a book. Who wouldn’t want to be a page in a library book, especially if you could choose the book? I would choose the first page of Moby Dick. Call me Ishmael. When I read that book, I was young. Anything seemed possible, even sailing the ocean in search of the white whale!

Or I would choose the first page of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, with its dark and mellifluous opening paragraph. As I recall, that paragraph ends, “…silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Rinconada Library, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Shirley Jackson ended The Haunting of Hill House with the same paragraph she used to start it. Her opening paragraph serves as a warning: “Read this book at your own peril.” 

Maybe I have the wrong meaning for the word “page.” Maybe a library page is not printed and bound into a book, but is instead a servant, like a page who serves a knight errant. And weren’t knights sworn to honor and protect? Like Don Quixote in the book by Cervantes, with his loyal and loving squire, Sancho Panza. 

I could be that kind of page and serve the Rinconada Library. I would keep the shelves of the library full of properly ordered books. I would straighten chairs under desks when they were left askew. I would answer questions graciously and assist anyone searching for a book, magazine, or restroom. As a library page, I would be sworn to serve and honor the library. 

As a first step in my quest, I polished my resume and uploaded it to governmentjobs.com.

I got an interview — my first one in many decades — and my first one via Zoom. Two serious librarians spent 30 minutes with me. They asked me six prepared questions, such as how I had handled a difficult situation at work, and what I would do if a patron asked for help while I was reshelving books. They thanked me and told me I would receive a response in a few weeks.

I wondered about my interview performance. Did I answer the questions well? Did I sound like I was a know-it-all? Or was I too insecure? How did I look?

As the days progressed without a response, I sensed that I had failed. As much as I wanted to work in my favorite place in Palo Alto, it was a desire I would never fulfill. At age 66, I have many goals that I will never achieve; viewed from one perspective, life is a series of abandoned dreams. I can add library page to that list. 

I was surprised by the emptiness I felt when I got the email. A friendly HR representative thanked me for my interest and kindly rejected me. She didn’t say why I wasn’t selected, but my own reflection offers a possible reason. My appearance as an aging man is not to my liking, and since I applied for the job, I’ve become less substantial, less corporeal, more ghostly. 

After receiving the bad news email, I took a good look at myself, and my image has degraded substantially. My outline is blurred, like a photograph out of focus. I was once described as zany and happy-go-lucky. Now, my body is disappearing. I am fading into nothing, vanishing.

In the Portrait of Dorian Grey, the protagonist stays forever young while his face in the portrait becomes twisted and ugly, reflecting the ugliness of his soul and depravity of his life. I don’t want to be a page from that book. It’s too grim, too unsettling. I am no longer young, and my vanity has made me avoid my reflection for years. But I didn’t expect to disappear, to be ghosted by society, to vanish from the hearts and minds of the people around me.

As I fade away, I realize I have one more chance to serve the Rinconada Library. I might never be a library page, but I can take up residence as the library ghost. I can haunt the place and the patrons. I can inhabit the silence that lays steadily against the wood and stone of Rinconada Library. I can become the “whatever” in the phrase, “whatever walked there walked alone.”

Kevin Susco is a retired software engineer and writer who loves to read books and can be emailed at ksusco@gmail.com.