Theresa Fenneck

Theresa Fenneck is the children’s librarian at the Three Rivers Public Library and the staff member officially in charge on October 12, 1990, while the head librarian is away at an all-day meeting in Hartford. That afternoon, she tells Thomas Birdsey to lower his voice or leave: his prayer can be heard at the front desk, other patrons are present, and, if he wants to pray, she says, he should go to a church. The encounter comes shortly before Thomas cuts off his right hand in the library. Fenneck’s part in the episode is small in duration but lasting in consequence: afterward, she seeks out Thomas’s twin brother, Dominick Birdsey, because she fears her sharp words may have helped precipitate the act.

Position at the Library

Fenneck’s authority that day is practical and temporary. With the head librarian absent, she is responsible for maintaining the library, and her rebuke reflects its public rules: Thomas is disrupting the quiet, and other patrons have a claim on the shared space. She does not treat the library as a place for his prayer, directing him instead toward a church. The confrontation is not described as a prolonged argument; its importance comes from what follows and from how Fenneck later remembers having spoken to him.

Thomas’s presence in the library is not, however, a sudden interruption in an otherwise unfamiliar setting. Fenneck later tells Dominick that Thomas had come inside and spent afternoons in the periodical section, arguing with newspapers. She had also noticed him around town, muttering about the war with one fist raised. His attention to the Persian Gulf crisis and his recurring public gestures were visible to others, though their meaning was not necessarily understood by them. Fenneck’s account therefore places her reprimand within a pattern she had observed, while also showing the limits of what observation could tell her about Thomas’s intentions.

The Library Crisis and Its Public Setting

Dominick’s account of the library incident is mediated: he says he knows what happened from what Thomas told him and from newspaper stories published alongside coverage of Operation Desert Shield. After Fenneck tells Thomas to be quiet, Thomas resumes praying silently, repeatedly reciting verses from Saint Matthew’s Gospel about removing an offending eye or hand. He takes out a ceremonial Gurkha knife that had belonged to his stepfather, Ray, a souvenir from World War II that had hung sheathed and forgotten in the brothers’ childhood home. With his left hand, Thomas carries out the steps he has rehearsed and amputates his right hand at the wrist. Fenneck is identified afterward as the librarian who called 911.

When she later explains her distress to Dominick, she also describes the pressures surrounding the library. The state hospital van, she says, drops patients downtown and leaves them with nowhere to go; she mentions a dirty syringe found behind the paper-towel dispenser in the men’s restroom. Her description of the country as disorderly reflects alarm and a broad, stigmatizing view of the people she encounters. At the same time, it gives her visit a public dimension: the crisis is not presented only as an isolated act by Thomas but also as an encounter in a town whose services and public spaces are struggling to accommodate people sent out from the hospital.

Visit to Dominick

About a month after the incident, after President Bush has warned that conflict may be inevitable, Fenneck researches Dominick’s address in a city directory and travels to his condominium with her husband waiting in a blue Dodge Shadow at the curb. She identifies herself as the librarian who called 911. Her unannounced visit makes clear that she has carried the incident beyond her official role: she says she has lost her appetite and has not slept decently since Thomas did it.

Fenneck both acknowledges her words and resists the idea that they caused the amputation. She points out that Thomas had planned what he did and would have done it whether or not she had spoken crossly to him. She recalls that people had seen him walking through town with his fist raised, and that she had noticed the gesture herself. Yet her insistence on Thomas’s prior planning does not settle her own concern. She asks Dominick directly whether he or his father holds her responsible, then asks him to put it in writing that the event had nothing to do with her. She explains that the request was her husband’s idea and hopes a written statement might let her sleep, eat, and find a moment of peace.

The visit also reveals the awkwardness of her attempt to make sense of suffering. Fenneck remembers Dominick’s mother as a quiet, pleasant reader, then speaks about cancer in her own family and speculates that computers may explain its prevalence. Dominick is close to tears and imagines that he might instead strike her if she continues. His reaction exposes the gap between Fenneck’s anxious efforts to talk and the grief and fear he is struggling to contain.

Guilt, Reassurance, and Narrative Role

Dominick tells Fenneck she is not responsible, but the reassurance does not come as a generous act of forgiveness. She asks for a written statement, and he writes one on a yellow Post-it pad Joy has brought home from work. He understands that the note will give Fenneck what she wants—food, sleep, and a form of legal absolution—and admits that he writes it to make her stop talking and leave, as well as because he is afraid for Thomas and afraid of being his other half. When he sticks the note to her coat lapel, she flinches; Dominick takes a small, mean satisfaction in that involuntary response.

Fenneck is thus neither established as the cause of Thomas’s act nor freed from the emotional burden of having been the last person to rebuke him before it. The novel leaves that distinction intact. Thomas’s preparations and religious recitation precede the amputation, while Fenneck’s encounter with him remains the moment she fixates on afterward. Her request for a signed assurance cannot explain the act, but it makes visible how a catastrophic event draws other people into the search for a responsible party. Through Dominick’s account, Fenneck’s ordinary duty to enforce quiet becomes entangled with Thomas’s crisis, her own fear, and Dominick’s anger and exhaustion; the note offers reassurance without resolving any of them.