Despite my best efforts to carry those babies to term, I made it to only thirty-four weeks—just over seven and a half months. On the evening of November 12, as I lay on the couch watching television with Lars, I felt warm water rushing from my body. And then I felt the first painful contraction.
“Lars, the babies . . . I think they’re coming,” I gasped.
“They can’t come!” he said. I could hear panic in his normally calm voice. “It’s too soon.”
I shrugged. I even laughed. “Tell them that.”
At the hospital, we were told that the babies would need to be born via cesarean section. “They would not survive a natural birth,” Dr. Silver told Lars and me sternly.
I tried to tell myself rationally that the doctor didn’t mean to sound as if he were scolding me—but that is exactly how he sounded.
I remember Lars holding my hand before I went into the operating room, then slowly releasing it as I was wheeled away. I remember the anesthesiologist, a kind-looking older man. “Count backward from ten, my dear,” he told me. I got to six, and that’s the last thing I remember.
When I woke up, I was in a regular hospital room. My abdomen was on fire with pain, and I winced, turning my head and closing my eyes again. I opened them and saw Lars sitting at my bedside. I whispered feebly, “The babies—are they okay?”
He smiled wearily. “They’re fine. They’re in intensive care, because their lungs are small and they need some help breathing. But they’re doing great, and the doctor thinks they’ll be just fine.”
“And I was right, wasn’t I? A boy and a girl?”
He shook his head. “You were almost right.”
“Almost? What does that mean?”
“A girl, my love. And a boy. And . . . a boy.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I wasn’t sure I understood what he meant. Then it started to sink in. “Are you saying it was . . . triplets?”
“Was and is. Yep. Triplets. The doctor thinks one was hiding behind the other two, which is why he only heard two heartbeats.” Lars let out a long breath, then took my hand. “So we have our Mitch and Missy. Now, what will we name that other fellow?”
Lying on the bed in our green bedroom, I remember all of this as if it happened yesterday.
As if it really happened.
I think about Michael, and how he was always “that other fellow.”
The unintended one. Not expected at all, really.
And, once he was here, certainly not expected to be as he turned out.
Chapter 20
When I wake up, I am at home—if indeed you can call this home; this quiet apartment with the hopeful yellow walls and the false sense of serenity.
Is it false? I think about this as I rise from the bed. A small part of me has started to wonder what is true and what is made up. It’s beginning to seem impossible that something as real as the world I share with Lars and the children could actually be imaginary.
I shake off the thought and fix myself some brain-tidying coffee. It’s Monday morning. Yesterday, thank goodness, the Soviets agreed to remove their nuclear weapons from Cuba, and the United States breathed a collective sigh of relief. I joined in the exhalation, of course; I walked over to Frieda’s house, and we watched the rebroadcast of the news on her television set, sitting side by side on her couch and drinking black tea with honey and no cream. Frieda never has cream in the house, much to my aggravation.
“Thank the Lord,” Frieda said, chain-smoking Salems and barely touching her tea. “Thank the Lord.”
Despite the relief I share with the nation, it’s true, what I said to Frieda in the middle of the night last week—I was never truly frightened about the Cuban situation. Perhaps it just seemed too unbearable to fathom, that World War III could actually be about to start, and there wasn’t a thing any of us could do about it. Or perhaps my mind is just too muddied these days by the peculiarity of my dream life, leaving me little room to think on a broader scope. Whatever the reason, I never thought the threat was as vast and imminent as everyone else seemed to believe. Turns out I was right.
As I drink my coffee, I consider this chain of events. I remember calling Frieda in the night; I remember her words of comfort. I remember, yesterday, hearing the news about Cuba and going to Frieda’s house to watch television. But what of the days in between? I shake my head. I can recall nothing of these days. I have no idea what I did or who I spoke to or what I thought about.
Feeling a bit panicky, I gulp the last of my coffee. How can this be? I search my mind for recent memories, but none appear. I look in the dustbin for newspapers from last week, but all I can find is yesterday’s Post, wrinkled and crumpled beneath a layer of bread crumbs and the wrapper from a Hershey’s candy bar. I don’t even remember eating a candy bar. When did this happen? Where was I, what was I doing, where did I buy a candy bar? It seems terribly important that I remember these details, but my mind is blank.
I need to gather my wits, I think as I go outside for my mail. There’s a postcard from Mother—one that was obviously written well before the Cuban situation came to an end yesterday.
Dear Kitty,
I suppose by now you’ve heard the news about the weapons in Cuba. It’s dreadful, isn’t it? I must say we feel very isolated here. And I am terrified for you, darling. I don’t think that madman Castro could fire his missiles all the way to Hawaii. But on the mainland—even though you are, thankfully, thousands of miles from the east coast—even so, your father and I are concerned.
Dad is looking into flights for you to come here to us, instead of us coming home next week. Think about it, darling.
Love,
Mother
I shake my head. I adore my mother, and I love how anxious she is about me. But honestly, does she truly think I could just up and leave? Get on a plane and fly away from Frieda, the shop, Aslan, my entire life? It’s a good thing the whole Cuban incident has blown over, making it a moot point.
Today is, luckily, my day off from work. I have planned to spend it opening my parents’ house and airing it out. I will give it a good dusting, and I hope to have time to rake the leaves in their yard, too. I want everything to be perfect for them when they get home. With the Cuban situation resolved, there will be no change in plans; my parents will leave Honolulu on Wednesday night and arrive here on Thursday.
I put on old pedal pushers and a frayed denim blouse, tie my hair back with a kerchief, and retrieve my bicycle from the shed behind my duplex. It’s a cool, cloudy day, and after crossing the Valley Highway on the Downing Street bridge, I ride up the slight hill, turn right, and pedal on Louisiana Avenue, along the southern edge of Washington Park—the park I went to with Michael in the dream life, a few dreams ago.
I ride past South High School, my alma mater. Its bell tower rises above the houses and trees, the clocks on each side displaying the eight o’clock hour. There is a low buzz of students making their way into the building, starting their school day. They seem unusually subdued for so early an hour—a time, at least in my memory of high school, when everyone and everything was overflowing with noisy anticipation of the day ahead.
Deep in thought, I watch the students as I cycle past. As a student here—with characteristic teenage angst—I thought of the school as something like a torture chamber, designed specifically to heighten my suffering. Nothing ever goes my way, I would say to myself, more morose and downtrodden than any Dickensian character had ever been. Few boys noticed me, and I did not have a gaggle of girlfriends, the way so many of my female classmates seemed to. Even some of my teachers barely knew who I was. I remember one particularly embarrassing incident in which my algebra teacher, Miss Parker, mistakenly called on me in class using the name of the most unpopular girl in our grade, Melvina Jones, who was not even in the room at the time. Melvina was slovenly, overweight, wore glasses; add to those strikes a name like Melvina, and the poor girl was doomed to social failure. Unfortunately for me, Melvina also had c
urly strawberry blond hair, similar to my own. There was no mistaking it when the teacher looked directly at me and called Melvina’s name. “Oh!” Miss Parker said quickly, realizing her error. “You’re not Melvina. I meant Kitty . . . I’m sorry, Kitty. Would you answer question twelve on page ninety-eight? Come up to the board and show your work, please.” When I did so, my face flushed with embarrassment, Miss Parker smiled apologetically; I nodded submissively. But—as my classmates’ mirth made all too clear—the damage had been done.
If not for Frieda, those years would have been unbearable. I think about what Frieda was like back then, how that confidence of hers rubbed off on me, like so much magical dust on the proverbial timid girl in a fairy tale. I was certain that my friendship with Frieda was the only thing that separated me, at least a little, from the Melvina Joneses of the world.
At one point during those years, I remember reading a passage in the psychology section of my health textbook that said as long as a person has just one good friend, he is not abnormal. I finished the passage with a satisfied sigh; I had Frieda, and as long as I held on to her, I was going to be all right.
Thinking about these times makes me wistful. I wish I could go back and tell my fifteen-year-old self that the passage was right. All would be well. I would grow up to be happy. Someday, I would have everything I wanted.
But do I? I am not so sure anymore about this “everything” business. Yes, I am content. I’ve had to face some heartache, some loss, but what I have—the shop, Frieda, my parents, Aslan, my uncomplicated life—it feels like enough.
And in the other life? What of that?
I shake my head and set my right foot firmly down on the bicycle pedal, speeding up my journey. I am eager to get to my parents’ house, eager to get dirty and sweaty. I need to focus on the concrete, real world in front of me. I need to stop all of this idle speculation.
Inside the house, everything feels closed and heavy, casketlike. The gloom disturbs me, and I open all the curtains and window sashes.
The windows look dirty, so I mix warm water, vinegar, and lemon juice in a bucket and start rubbing them with an old cloth. The late-fall weather is cool and dank, so my efforts don’t show much, but I continue working nonetheless. A slight breeze, combined with the lemon scent from the bucket, gives the house a sweet smell, like a baby after a bath. I smile at this random thought. What do I know about how a baby smells after a bath? I have never in my life bathed a baby.
As I’m working, I see Frieda walking up the street toward the house. She’s arriving unannounced, but this doesn’t surprise me. She knew I’d be cleaning over here today, and even on our days off, we are often together for at least part of the day. I lean out the window and call her name when she gets closer; she waves and her gait accelerates as she steps from the sidewalk up the walkway to the house. I leave my post to greet her.
“How are you, sister?” I reach up to give her a tight squeeze around the shoulders.
“Swell,” she says, returning my hug, then releasing me after a moment. “I’m enjoying the clouds, actually. Isn’t it funny how that’s a nice change of pace after so many sunny days?” With nary a pause, she says, “Look, I bought the most perfect apples in the world.” She fishes in her large, gray leather handbag and draws out two red-green apples. “Did you ever see anything so divine?”
I shake my head. “Gorgeous.” She hands one to me, and we sit side by side on the sofa to enjoy them.
“All ready for the big homecoming?” Frieda asks.
I smile. “How pitiful is that?” I ask. “I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’m excited that my parents are finally coming home from vacation.”
She shrugs. “I don’t think it’s pitiful. I think it’s rather nice, actually.”
Frieda is not as close to her parents as I am to mine. It’s not that she’s had any sort of falling-out with Margie and Lou; it’s more that she doesn’t have a good deal in common with them. Margie never understood Frieda’s drive to be a businesswoman. She was disappointed that Frieda never made a “proper marriage” with some eligible, well-heeled young man in Denver society; many have asked Frieda out over the years, and Frieda’s parents would have welcomed any of those fellows into their family. “It’s not right,” Margie has said on more than one occasion. “A pretty girl like you, a girl with everything going for her, wasting away in a little shop like that.” She never says it directly, Margie, but you can tell she thinks it’s all right for me.
As for Lou, he’s much more interested in his sons and their families, especially the grandsons, than in Frieda’s bookish world. Lou played football in college and was even second string for the Bears, Denver’s first professional football team, before quitting professional sports and becoming a businessman. At family gatherings, you’ll most likely find him out in the yard, throwing a ball with the boys. Frieda’s life, which centers mostly on the shop, books, and me, makes little sense to him. Frieda has on more than one occasion attempted to merge these two worlds by bringing him books about sports, fishing, or hunting; these, he politely thanks her for and promptly casts aside. Frieda has told me she later finds them carefully arranged on the bookshelf in her parents’ den, gathering dust.
Despite all that—there is their money. Without her parents’ money, Frieda and I would not be where we are today.
When we first opened Sisters’, my parents put up a small sum for us, more as a gesture than to make much difference financially, since their savings were meager. It was Frieda’s parents’ contribution that truly got us started. I remember the day we signed our loan paperwork, remember sitting in the bank next to Frieda, her father on the other side of her, the loan officer looming large over his desk in front of us. “So, Lou, you’re going to take a chance on these girls,” the bank man said. “You sure that’s a wise idea?” His mouth twitched playfully, but you could tell that he was only half joking; I was pretty sure that he didn’t think it was a wise idea at all.
Lou answered gruffly. “Wife agrees with you,” he told the man. “But let’s do this thing anyway.”
We pay our loan faithfully each month, although sometimes we’re late with the payment because of a simple lack of cash flow. We paid our parents back, Frieda’s and mine, as soon as we possibly could. After that, we never asked anyone for another dime. My parents didn’t have the money to spare, and Frieda’s—well, their money made her uncomfortable. She would have much preferred, if there’d been any way to do it, for us to get started all on our own. “Just this once,” I remember her hissing as we left the bank the day we got the loan, her father and the banker shaking hands behind us. “Just this once, Kitty. Never again.”
There was a time, a few years ago, when we were getting into a bit of hot water with the bookstore’s finances. It was shortly after the bus line left; we saw a sharp decline in business and mounting debt. I remember that I asked Frieda if she’d be willing to ask her parents for another loan, and she shook her head. “We’ll figure out something else,” she’d said firmly. “We’ll have to.”
Take it as coincidence or destiny, I don’t know—but soon after, my maternal grandfather died, leaving a thousand dollars to each of his grandchildren, including me. That money kept Sisters’ afloat, allowing us to catch up on the loan and pay Bradley the two months’ rent we owed him. We reorganized our stock, ran a few advertisements in the local papers, and also had a bit of random luck—a sandwich shop opened a few doors down from us, and a full-service restaurant on the next block. Those establishments brought in new customers, some of whom became regulars. Fortunately, we were able to stay in business.
My small inheritance also kept Frieda from having to ask her parents for money. She was grateful for this, I know. “Anything I can do to keep from being indebted to them,” she told me. “Anything is a help.” Across the countertop at Sisters’, she’d taken my hand and held it tightly, massaging my fingers between her own. “Thank you, Kitty,” she’d said.
Now, at my parents�
�� house, I bite thoughtfully into my apple. Then I ask Frieda, “Do you remember me eating a candy bar yesterday? Or perhaps the day before?”
She shakes her head. “What are you talking about?”
“A Hershey’s bar.” I hear the urgency in my voice—idiotic, illogical. “A Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar. Did I eat one in front of you, sometime in the past day or two?”
Frieda smiles and takes another bite of apple. “I honestly cannot recall such an event.”
“What do you recall, then?” I query her. “What do you remember of the past couple of days?” I look around my mother’s familiar living room—the slumped but comfortable velvet chairs, the scratched but tidy Victorian side tables, the shabby rug. “Because I can hardly remember a thing.”
Frieda shrugs. “You came to my house and watched television with me all day yesterday. You remember that, don’t you?” She grins. “Please tell me you remember that the country is no longer threatened by direct nuclear attack.”
I nod. “I remember that. But nothing else. What did we do on Saturday, or Friday? Or the few days before that? I don’t remember anything since we ran into Kevin the other night.”
Frieda faces me. “You okay, sister?” she asks softly.
Again, I’m overwhelmingly tempted to tell her everything. All about the dreams, all about my mixed-up memories. But I cannot. I shrug. “Sure. I’m fine. Let’s talk about something else.”
Frieda glances around the room. “The place is in good shape.”
I groan. “I have hours of work ahead of me.”
She shakes her head. “No, it looks nice. They’ll be pleased.” She grins again. “You know they wouldn’t care, don’t you?”
I do know that. But there is something about pleasing your parents, even when you’re grown up, even when you’re almost middle-aged yourself. It never goes away, at least not for me.
The Bookseller Page 18