The Bookseller

by Cynthia Swanson

  After dinner, I spend an hour stripping the masking tape from my bedroom’s windows and baseboards. I pull up the newspapers from the floor, rehang the curtains and shades, and consider moving the furniture by myself, ultimately deciding that it’s not worth the effort. Instead, I climb into bed and fall instantly into a dark, initially dreamless sleep.

  And then I am there. In the green-wallpapered bedroom. Grayish morning light filters in, and through the patio doors I can see that again small flakes of snow are falling. Does it always snow in this place?

  Lars and I are spooning, his right arm around me. I can feel the solid weight of his forearm on my waist, his warm breath on my neck.

  I turn slightly to look at him. Who are you? I ask him in my head, afraid to speak aloud and wake him. What am I doing here with you?

  As if I have spoken, he opens his dazzling blue eyes. “Good morning, love,” he says, turning my face toward him so we can kiss. His kiss is warm and instantly familiar. I feel as if I have been kissing him daily for years.

  “Good morning,” I murmur. It feels so good; I want to enjoy this for as long as I can.

  I turn and press against him, feel his hardness against my thigh. I hesitate. And then, remembering that I’m only dreaming, and therefore nothing I say or do actually matters, I ask him, “What time is it? Do we . . . can we . . .” I stammer, not sure exactly how to find the words, even in this not-at-all-real world.

  “If we’re quick.” He smiles. “I love Saturdays.”

  And so we begin to make love fiercely, furtively, the way I imagine married couples do when they find themselves with a few moments to spare in the early morning. They must do it quickly, before the children awake.

  He caresses the length of me, tenderly, with experienced, gifted hands. Unbuttoning the top two buttons of my nightgown, he presses his lips to my nipples. I arch my back to meet him, moaning softly. I had forgotten how miraculous this feels.

  He places himself fully inside me, and I move my hips—slowly at first, and then gaining momentum as I become at ease with the feeling of his length inside me. My climax comes hard and fast, more powerful than any other sexual moment in my memory. I am astounded at how strongly I feel the sensations of it, all the way through my body. I cry out, and then I bite my lip, afraid I might be making too much noise.

  He goes on, his breath quickening, and I can feel his heart pounding against my chest. And then, abruptly, he slows his pace until he is almost, but not quite, still.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, alarmed. “Are you all right?”

  He speeds up slightly, his strokes quicker but not nearly as rapid as before my climax. “I’m okay,” he says. “I just needed to . . . slow down . . .”

  I am silent, moving with him, altering my rhythm to the change in his.

  After he comes, he slides off me, adjusts the fabric tie of his pajama trousers around his waist, and lies quietly by my side. I pull my nightgown down over my legs, curl up next to him, and put my hand on his chest.

  His heart is pounding. “Are you all right?” I ask him again.

  “I’m fine.” He smiles, turning to face me. “You know how I have to slow down sometimes . . . it’s easier if I do . . .”

  “Easier . . . how?” I ask carefully.

  He taps his chest, his fingers warm against mine. “Easier here,” he says. “It’s easier on my heart.” He draws me close and whispers, “You know this, love.”

  Neither of us says anything for a moment. I watch him carefully as his breath slows to a regular pace.

  “It was wonderful.” I tell him. “It felt so . . . satisfying.” I grimace. He must think I’m nuts.

  “You were intense,” he said. “As if it had been a while. But it hasn’t been.” He looks thoughtful. “Only a few days, right?”

  If only he knew. “Well, I suppose it just feels that way for me sometimes.”

  There is a hesitant tap on the door, which is ajar. A small voice says, “I knocked. Just like you want me to. I remembered, and I knocked.”

  Lars smiles. “Come on in, buddy,” he calls.

  The door opens fully, and towheaded Mitch sidles in, coming directly to my side of the bed and standing next to it. “It’s after seven,” he reports.

  “So it is.” Lars glances at the alarm clock on his nightstand.

  “I waited, just like you asked me to.”

  “Good job,” I say.

  I am not sure if this is allowed—who am I to know the rules of this house?—but nonetheless I am overtaken by the urge to snuggle with this child. I throw back the covers and invite Mitch in. He eagerly climbs onto the bed, wraps the coverlet around his legs, and puts his arms around my neck.

  “Did you go potty?” I ask him, at the same time wondering what gave me the presence of mind to even think of something like that. Mitch nods.

  “You’re the only one up?” Lars asks, and the boy nods again. Lars rises from the bed. “Go get a book, buddy,” he says. “Mama will read to you in bed. Won’t you, love?”

  “Of course I will.” I lift myself up and get comfy against the pillows.

  Lars leans over to kiss me. “I’ll get breakfast started.”

  And so it is that I find myself in a charming, stylish bedroom, with a soft snowfall outside, snuggled with what has to be the most delightful little boy on the planet, reading a book about transportation.

  Vehicles, it seems, are Mitch’s thing. All kinds of them. Airplanes. Trains. Antique autos. Ocean liners. “I’m going to be an ocean liner captain someday,” he tells me proudly. “I’ll sail around the world, and my family will come along and you’ll have first-class cabins.” I smile and hug him a bit tighter.

  We are deep in the evolution of train travel—did you know that the first steam engine was built in 1804 by Englishman Richard Trevithick? I didn’t, before today—when the door opens again and Missy enters the room. “Daddy says it’s almost time for breakfast,” she tells us. She twirls for me in a pink nightgown with a princess in a yellow dress appliquéd on the front.

  She leans over for a kiss. After obliging, I ask her, “How was your first night in your new princess gown?” How did I know that?

  Her grin is enormous. “It was swell. It’s so comfy, and when I woke up in the middle of the night and the princess was right there on my tummy, it made it so easy to go right back to sleep.” Missy gives me a quick squeeze. “Thanks again, Mama,” she says. “You’re the best sew-er-er!”

  “Seamstress,” I correct her.

  Except that I am not. Not since the days of Home Ec class, more than twenty years ago, have I sewn anything more complicated than a loose button on a blouse. Yet in this life, I have made (or at the very least attached an appliquéd princess to) a child’s nightgown. Where did I acquire such a skill?

  “You two skedaddle,” I say to them both. “Tell Daddy I’ll be out shortly.”

  Before leaving the bedroom, I take a good look around.

  The first thing to catch my eye is the large wedding portrait on the west wall. In the unlit room, made even dimmer by the snowy day outside, the photograph is in shadow. The picture is black-and-white—not hand-colorized as older photographs sometimes are, and not filmed with the color film that you see so much nowadays. Just a simple black-and-white photograph that looks as if it were intentionally taken a bit out of focus, as if to soften the image. Yet I can definitely make out my thirtyish self, along with a younger-than-now Lars—a little more hair on top, a little less girth around the middle. My white dress is simple, with capped lace sleeves, a fitted waist, and a full, tea-length skirt. Lars is standing slightly behind me, his arm around me, his hand placed lightly on my hip. I hold a bouquet of light-colored roses, perhaps pink or yellow, with sprays of baby’s breath among the blooms. I cannot make anything of our whereabouts. Apparently we were posed for this portrait with a plain background, one that highlights the bride and groom but gives no clues about where the picture was taken.

  Next to the weddin
g portrait is another black-and-white photograph, this one a street scene in what can only be Paris. I’ve never been to Paris; I’ve always wanted to go, but as of yet, my travels have not taken me that far from home. Unless you’ve spent your life in Siberia, however, Paris in a photograph is instantly identifiable. As in so many photographs of that city, there is a café in the background, a Metro stop, narrow streets. A bicycle with a large, flower-filled wicker basket attached to its handlebars leans against a wrought-iron fence. Stylishly dressed men and women cross the street, looking as if they are in a hurry to get somewhere both amusing and exotic.

  Did we honeymoon there? I wonder.

  I turn to the long, lean dresser. Stealthily, I open one drawer after another. They are filled with women’s clothes, but they are not my clothes. As I’ve gotten older, my taste in clothing has gotten quite a bit more eclectic and—how shall I put this? Haphazard, I can hear Frieda filling in for me, oh-so-helpfully. My blouses are colorful, my scarves and jewelry plentiful. I wear slacks as often as skirts, though sometimes my customers—not to mention my parents—frown at this. “It’s nineteen sixty-two,” I tell my folks. (Of course, I would never say such a thing to a customer.) “Women are changing. Everything is changing.”

  However, in this 1962—if indeed it is 1962 here—my tastes are decidedly conventional. I run my fingers over delicate cashmere sweaters in shades of taupe and burgundy. Gingerly, I lift the neatly stacked rows of stockings to see if anything more interesting is buried underneath the nude and tan hose. Nothing is particularly jazzy or creative, but it looks as though I spend a good bit of time, not to mention money, on my wardrobe. Everything is well made; everything is neatly arranged in the drawers. When I open the closet’s double doors, I find the same sense of organization on the racks. Rows of dresses, blouses, and skirts greet me, in order by color and degree of formality.

  I envision the tiny bedroom closet in my duplex on Washington Street, the explosion of dresses and skirts and slacks hung any which way I can get them to fit in the too-small space. Every morning I go through the same ritual of digging through the closet to find a desired item, tossing aside everything else, and leaving a jumble of garments on the bed. I often come home from work to find Aslan curled in a cozy, purring ball amid my rumpled clothing.

  This wardrobe, in comparison, looks as though nothing is ever out of place. With a closet as large and thoughtfully arranged as this, certainly one could find items to match any article of clothing, perfectly and appropriately, for any given occasion.

  I slip on the blue bathrobe, which is comfy, as I noted last time I was here, but a bit subdued for my tastes. Belting it about my waist, I quietly open the bedroom door.

  The house, as far as I can surmise, is a split-level. It’s modern, definitely built after the war, probably within the past decade. Our bedroom, Lars’s and mine (how odd that sounds!), is on the first floor, with our bathroom accessible only through the bedroom. You see that in these contemporary houses, a bathroom via the master bedroom. En suite, they call it. The sliding glass doors beside the bed presumably lead to a patio and the backyard. Peering out the bedroom doorway, I find a hallway to my left, with a door at the end that is ajar and looks as if it might lead to an office. To my right, I see the living room and the front door of the house. The walls are a pale gold and the door is aqua blue. Now, that’s more like it, I think; at least I appear to have some color sense in my interior decorating.

  Somewhere in front of me, blocked from my line of vision by the hallway, I can hear Lars and the children in what must be the kitchen. I know from my previous experience that the children’s bedrooms are up the half flight of stairs just off the entryway. The stairs also go down a half flight, likely to a laundry or rumpus room, or possibly both.

  Instead of heading toward the family and its noises, I slip down the hall to my left. The walls are decorated with photographs. All except the first one, the one that can be seen from the bedroom doorway, are pictures of people. That photograph—the mountain scene—still mystifies me. I step back to stare at it for a few seconds. But again, I cannot determine where it might be.

  It’s then, however, that I realize the placement of this photograph is no accident. While the other frames hold pictures of children, ancestors, family gatherings, this photograph has intentionally been positioned exactly where it is. From the bedroom—no, not just from the bedroom, but from the bed—one would be viewing this scene. Not looking at photographs of children or grandparents.

  Pretty clever, I congratulate myself—if indeed this arrangement was my idea.

  I study the other photographs. Surprisingly, I do not see Mitch and Missy. Instead, these are all black-and-white, and look as if they were taken a long time ago. Perhaps Lars’s ancestors?

  And then I stop and draw in my breath.

  Midway down the hallway is a photograph that I know well. I cannot remember the actual event, though I am featured front and center. My blond hair falls in waves around my chubby face; my mother always said that I had the most beautiful curls as a small child. They only evolved into my maddening cowlicks when I entered my school years.

  I am sitting on a picnic blanket, my parents on either side of me. My mother props me up—I couldn’t have been more than six months old—and smiles her beguiling smile. My father is seated next to her on the blanket, his long legs stretched in front of him. We are picnicking in Washington Park, not far from my childhood home on York Street in the Myrtle Hill neighborhood of Denver. These days, people call Myrtle Hill “East Washington Park”—but back then the neighborhood had its own name, distinct from the park itself.

  I know—because she told me some years ago—that at the time this photograph was taken, my mother was pregnant. She was expecting the first of three babies that came after me. All of them were boys, and all were stillborn. “The doctors never could figure it out,” my mother said quietly, the day she told me this sad tale. “After it happened that many times . . . well, the doctors told your father and me that we ought to take steps to make sure we did not . . . that there was never another child.” She shrugged, her eyes downcast, and said no more.

  I don’t remember her expecting the first two babies, but I remember the last one. I must have been about six or seven years of age. I remember my mother’s protruding belly, how it got in my way when I wanted to climb on her lap and practice reading from my primer, the way my teacher expected us to do in the evenings. I remember my father taking Mother to the hospital, and my aunt May—who was young and unattached then, not yet Uncle Stan’s navy bride—coming to stay with me. I recall that when my father came home, many hours later, his step was heavy. He sat on the sofa, wrapped his arms around me, and put his unshaven cheek against my smooth one. He told me in a very low voice that my baby brother had gone to heaven. “You mean the baby isn’t going to come live here and grow up with me? He’s gone forever?” I’d asked, keeping my cheek pressed to his scratchy face.

  “Yes,” he’d answered hoarsely, and I felt the wetness of his warm tears on my skin. “He’s gone forever, honey.”

  I remember feeling angry with my mother’s physician. He should have been able to save my baby brother, I thought. Weren’t doctors supposed to save everybody?

  Now, looking at the photograph of my young parents and my infant self, I feel as if something or someone is striking my heart. A small sob escapes my throat. I am, suddenly, awash in sadness.

  “Mother, Daddy,” I say softly. “Why is your photo in this house?” I look around. “Why am I in this house?”

  I step quickly to look at the rest of the pictures. Yes, there are strangers here, old and young, children and grandparents, who knows who. But not all of the faces are unfamiliar. Some of these photographs are of my relatives. I see my aunt Beatrice, arm around my mother, in their teen years. There is a photograph of my cousins Grace and Carol Louise, with me sandwiched between them—me chubby, my swimsuit banding across my developing chest, and the two of them gangly
in loose-fitting suits, all of us in rubber swim caps, squinting into the sun. There is a lake and a sandy beach behind us. I remember that time, remember the vacation our two families took that summer to Lake McConaughy in Nebraska.

  There are my grandparents, stiff and formal in their wedding photograph, my grandmother looking more mature than the nineteen years she was at the time—and more grown-up by far than any nineteen-year-old you see these days. This picture, too, I remember. My mother showed it to me frequently, told me the story of their wedding day, how they almost didn’t get married because the preacher was coming from Kansas City and a snowstorm delayed his train. “During the wait, Grandpa started to get cold feet—probably literally as well as figuratively,” my mother would tell me, running her fingers over the photograph in its leather case. “But his brother—you remember Uncle Artie; he died when you were ten—gave Grandpa a firm talking-to. Told him good women did not come along every day, especially in eastern Colorado ranching country in 1899. Told Grandpa that if he didn’t marry Grandma, then he—Uncle Artie—would do it instead.” My mother smiled. “Well, that was all the convincing it took. Grandpa knew that Uncle Artie meant every word. The preacher arrived, and the deed was done.” She smiled fondly at her mother’s young face. “And the photograph taken.”

  Tears well in my eyes as I study the photographs. So many of these faces, like my cousins’, are those I do not see often enough. Some, like Aunt Beatrice and my grandparents, are people who have passed out of my life already. I think suddenly about what it means to grow old. It means that all those that you loved as a youth become nothing but photographs on a wall, words in a story, memories in a heart.

  “Thank heavens for you,” I whisper to the picture of my parents with my baby self. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”