Lars nods. “He encouraged me to stick it out when I wondered whether it was worth all the hassle and expense. Yep, without him, I’m not sure my career would have happened. I might still be fixing streetcars on the Colfax line.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I say a bit ruefully, thinking about Sisters’ and deserted Pearl Street. “There are no more streetcar lines. You’d be repairing buses now.”
Lars chuckles. “Well, that’s probably true. So you see how lucky I was that Steven and Linnea met.” He takes my hand. “And of course, I was very, very lucky that you came along when you did, Katharyn.”
“Lucky,” I parrot softly. “I guess in many ways we have been very lucky.”
His eyes are pained. “I know it doesn’t seem like that right now,” he says. “I know it’s hard to imagine that there could be any good outcome after what happened last fall.”
What happened last fall? I remain silent, waiting.
“You know I’ll always be here for you,” Lars says, squeezing my hand. “You know that I know how hard it is to lose your parents.”
To . . . what?
Now I shake my head in a frenzy, trying desperately to wake up.
I’m sitting on the sofa, rocking back and forth and crying. Lars holds me by the shoulders, hands me his handkerchief, presses his cheek against mine.
“I need to get away from here,” I tell him, squeezing my eyes shut. “I want to go home.”
“Katharyn, you are home. This is your home.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, you don’t understand. This isn’t where I belong. This is all made up, and I need to go back where I belong.” I stand and start pacing the living room floor. My left heel gets caught in the aqua carpet. Perhaps, I think, pulling it loose, the heel has a torn edge and needs repair. If I’m not careful, it will become hooked in the carpeting and I’ll fall. What an absurd thought to have right now.
Lars stands and tries to put his hand on my waist, but I push him away. “You’ve been kind,” I tell him. “More than kind. You’ve been the man I always dreamed would come along someday.” I laugh, and I can feel the bitterness in my throat. “The man of my dreams, right? But this is not real. This is all just a dream. And in the real world, my parents are not dead. Do you understand me? They are not dead there, and I need to go back to where my parents are alive!”
“Mama?” a small voice calls from the landing upstairs. “Mama, is everything all right?”
Lars hurries to the bottom of the staircase. “It’s fine, buddy,” he says. “Go back to bed.”
“Mama sounds upset,” Mitch says, and despite myself, my heart fills with love for him, this delightful, imaginary child of mine. “Mama, are you all right?”
I wobble toward the staircase, wiping my eyes. Standing at the bottom of it, I look up at him, his mop of clean hair, his cozy green pajamas. “Mama’s fine, sweetheart,” I manage. “Just feeling a little sad tonight.”
“Because of Grandma and Grandpa?”
I can’t help it; an enormous sob escapes my throat. Mitch rushes down the stairs and puts his arms around my waist. I bend down to his level and squeeze him tight. Lars stands next to us, silent.
“I just . . . I didn’t think I’d lose them . . . this soon,” I whisper to my son.
He holds me tighter. “I know, Mama. I’m sorry. I know it must be really hard for you.” He sniffles. “Even if you are all grown up.”
I nod into his hair. “Yes,” I say. “Even if I am all grown up.”
I close my eyes and wait. Surely this is the moment when I ought to be going home. I’ve accepted it, haven’t I? I’ve accepted this crazy news the dream has thrown at me, and I’m being the adult here and doing the right thing. Surely that ought to earn me a trip back to my own bed in my own apartment—oughtn’t it?
But I remain where I am, holding my son against me. After a moment, I let him go.
Lars steps forward. “Let me tuck you back in, buddy,” he says, taking Mitch’s hand. To me, he says, “Go back and sit on the sofa, Katharyn. Just relax and I’ll be back soon.”
But I don’t go to the sofa. Instead I walk to the hallway and stand in front of the photograph of myself with my parents when I was a baby. I am still staring at it when Lars returns.
“She was twenty then,” I say hoarsely. “She had me at twenty. He was twenty-two.” I do not turn to face Lars. “She is only fifty-eight; he just turned sixty. I know they’ll die someday. I know that. Everyone loses their parents someday. But not yet. Not this soon.”
“Katharyn . . .”
“Don’t call me that!” I whirl on him. “My name is not Katharyn. It’s Kitty. My name is Kitty Miller, and I am an old maid who owns a bookstore with her best friend. My life is very simple. There are few surprises. It does not resemble this life whatsoever.”
“Okay.” Tentatively he places a hand on my shoulder and steers me toward the living room. “Let’s sit down again.”
We go back to the sofa, and he gently presses my shoulder until I am sitting. After he has seated himself beside me, I say, “Tell me exactly what happened to them.”
“Katharyn.” His eyes are sorrowful.
“No.” I sit up straighter, resolved to hear this out. “Tell me. I don’t care if you think I already know. I don’t know. You have to tell me.”
He sighs and sips his Scotch. “They were flying here,” he says. “They were coming home from a big fortieth-wedding anniversary trip they took to Hawaii. There was weather, a storm, and . . .” He sighs again. “Their airplane went down, Katharyn, in the Pacific. Everyone onboard was killed.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true,” I say. “They did go to Hawaii, but they arrived home just fine, safe and sound. Their airplane did not go down. Nothing of the sort happened.”
He doesn’t answer. He is waiting.
“When was it?” I ask. “Tell me the date.”
He frowns, considering. “It was a Wednesday,” he says. “It was Halloween. They’d flown over Tuesday night; that must have been the night of the thirtieth. Their Honolulu flight was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning, and then they were to take a connecting flight back to Denver. It would have been the morning of Halloween.”
“Well, there you go.” I stand up. “They did not come home on Halloween. They came home the day after Halloween. I remember it distinctly.”
“No.” Firmly, he shakes his head. “No, it would have had to be Halloween day, because they wanted to be here for Halloween. To see the children in costume.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. I shake my head, and I laugh and laugh. It’s almost too hysterical for words.
“Are you all right?” Lars asks.
“Of course,” I say, practically gasping for breath. “Of course, but you see how absurd that is. My parents would not come on Halloween to see the children in costume. Because in the real world, Lars, there are no children! Don’t you understand?” I sweep my hand around the room. “None of this is here, Lars. None of it. No house, no Mitch and Missy, no Michael. No you.”
And then my face falls, as I think about what that means for him. He is so lovely and so beautiful and so perfect, and the last thing I would ever want is for such a divine man to have died as young as he was on that October evening in 1954, when we talked on the telephone.
I turn to face him. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want it to be this way for you.” I laugh again, a bit cynically this time. “I would rather you’d turned out to be who I always thought you were—the rat who stood me up. Not someone who died alone in his apartment.”
His brow furrows. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“You died,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, truly I am, but in the real world, Lars, we didn’t continue talking on the telephone. We made plans to meet each other, said good-bye, and hung up. I went to meet you for coffee two days later, and you never showed up. You had a heart attack and died that night. Right
after we got off the telephone.”
He swallows the last of his drink. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“But it’s not!” I put my hand on his knee, pressing into the flesh through his trousers. “This is what’s crazy, Lars. All of this. You are a figment of my imagination. This house and this family and Alma and the neighbors and not speaking to Frieda anymore and my parents dead—all of that is crazy, Lars. Not the real world. Not the world I live in, where everything perhaps is not perfect, but at least it makes sense.”
I lean forward, wrap my arms around his neck, and kiss him deeply. I want to burn the memory of his lips, his touch, into my mind and heart. I never want to forget—but I never want to be back here again, either.
Finally, we break apart. I give him one last sorrowful look. “I’m going to bed now,” I say, standing up. “I’m going to go lie down in that imaginary bed in this imaginary house, and I am going to go to imaginary sleep, and when I wake up, I will be back in the real world.” I touch a curl of hair behind his ear—tenderly, as if he were one of the children. “Good-bye, my darling,” I whisper.
Chapter 26
When I wake up, I’m not sure where I am. The room is dark, and the bed is narrow and high. Curtains close off two side-by-side windows. The coverlet that envelops me is chenille, soft and cozy.
And then the smell hits me, that roasted-squash-and-lavender smell that I would recognize anywhere, and I realize that I’m at home. Not my home, not my duplex, but my parents’ home. I am in my own childhood bedroom in the house on York Street.
Throwing off the covers, I pad to one of the windows and open the drapes. It is still dark out, and misty. I can’t tell if the sun has not yet risen or if we have a cloudy day in store. I have no idea what time it is; there is no clock in this room. I make a mental note to remind my mother that she needs to add one.
Some years ago, after I moved out, my mother depersonalized this room. She pulled down my South High School banners and my movie posters—Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind; Deanna Durbin in It Started with Eve; William Holden and Martha Scott in Our Town. My mother painted the walls, which had been sea green, a more impartial beige. She replaced my old pink-and-yellow patchwork quilt and matching curtains with this austere colonial-blue chenille spread and coordinating drapes. On the walls, she hung several small reproductions of French Impressionist paintings: Degas ballerinas, Renoir café scenes. “It’s perfect for a houseguest,” my mother proclaimed when it was finished. I honestly can’t remember my parents ever having a houseguest here, though my mother is right; the room would be lovely and ideal if a guest were to arrive.
I glance down at my body, which is covered in a too-large white nightgown, high-necked with a lace collar. Doubtless it belongs to my mother. What happened? Was I so drunk they couldn’t even get me home to my own place? Good heavens, how humiliating.
My mother has thoughtfully placed a glass of water on the bedside table, and I gulp it in its entirety. My head is pounding softly. I open the bedroom door and creep into the hall.
I glance at my parents’ bedroom door, which is closed. It’s all I can do to stop myself from flinging it open and hurling myself into bed with them, as a six-year-old might. As a six-year-old has, I remind myself wryly, in that imaginary world.
And then the horror of what Lars told me in the dream comes back to me. A small, barely audible cry escapes my throat. I stop walking and stand motionless in the dim hallway, my arms wrapped around my body for warmth.
My mother had mentioned something about the Honolulu flight on Tuesday being “dreadful,” so it seems likely that Lars’s information was correct. An airplane coming from Hawaii must have gone down in a storm, though I hadn’t heard about it here in the real world. I feel an overwhelming sadness for those who lost their lives and those who lost loved ones. And then I feel a vast sense of relief that my parents were not on that plane.
I try to imagine this life, my real life, without my parents. I know it happens—airplanes crash, people die. And I know that unforeseen death, whether via illness or accident, could happen—to my parents, to Frieda, to anyone I love. But the point is, it did not happen. Not to my mother and father. Not in my life.
I make my way down the hall in the darkness, heading for the kitchen and the coffee percolator. It’s no matter. I am not going back to that imaginary world. I am not sure exactly how I am going to keep it from happening, but one thing is certain: I’m not going back there again. I simply can’t let my mind go there again, I tell myself as I fill the percolator with water.
The truth is this: I am terrified that if I end up there again, I may never be able to get back home.
I can’t tell my parents, of course. Who would want to hear such a thing about themselves? I fix breakfast and wait for them to wake up. The day before yesterday, I went to the market and stocked their refrigerator with a few staples so they would have what they needed on their first morning at home: orange juice, a loaf of bread, cream, eggs. The smell of coffee wakes them and they both emerge from their bedroom, robes belted around their waists, noses in the air.
“Kitty.” My mother takes a long look at me. “Did you sleep at all, darling? Look at those sandbags under your eyes.” She reaches for a coffee cup and pours from the percolator. “I’m sorry we didn’t take you back to your apartment,” she goes on, her voice even. “We just felt that you—”
“It’s all right,” I interrupt, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry.” My father sits at the table as my mother fills the familiar rose-patterned china creamer—a staple in this house for as long as I can remember—and sets it, along with a cup of coffee, in front of him. “We’ve all been there, honey.” He pours cream into his coffee, adds a lump of sugar, and stirs. Then he sneezes the way he always does—loudly, sounding less like a person sneezing than like some large dog, a Labrador or a Great Dane, saying woof. The sound, though familiar, catches me off guard. I realize that the self in my other life—were I to go back there, something I fully intend not to do—would never again hear what for me is a very normal, everyday noise.
My father pulls a handkerchief from his robe pocket and blows his nose. “We just wanted to make sure you were okay, so we thought you’d be better off here,” he says, tucking the handkerchief back in his pocket.
I sit next to him and run my fingers through my hair. “Well, I’m mortified, all the same.”
“Honey.” My father places his hand gently on my shoulder. “This is us,” he says. “You don’t ever need to feel that way around your mother and me.” He takes a sip of coffee. “You know that, Kitty.”
After breakfast, my parents drive me back to my duplex. The day is still cloudy, but warm for early November, and they wait on the porch while I go inside to freshen up. I look like death warmed over, so there’s not much I can do, no matter how much makeup I use.
After I’ve changed clothes and done what I can with my haggard face, my parents walk with me to the shop, so they can say hello to Frieda. It’s still cloudy, and rain falls intermittently on our heads as we walk. Nonetheless, the door to the shop is open, letting in the warmish breezes. “Probably getting toward the end of the season when we can leave the door open,” Frieda says as we enter. She and I exchange glances, and I know we’re thinking the same thing: it may be the last time forever in this little space. When and if we move our bookstore to a shopping center, there will still be a door to open, but it will be a big sliding glass door leading to a pristine concrete walkway, not a crumbling city sidewalk.
Frieda stands up from behind the counter and comes around to kiss both my parents. “You look wonderful, darling,” my mother tells her, holding her at arm’s length. I grimace, knowing that I look about the opposite of wonderful right now.
“You and Tom do, too.” Frieda tucks a stray hair behind her ear and turns to my father. “Tom, you must tell me: Is Hawaii the fountain of youth?”
And two, because in that other world, all of it—Hawaii, their wonderful memories of this trip of a lifetime, not to mention everything they have back here at home—gets ripped away from them.
And from me.
After a brief visit with Frieda, my parents leave. The sky is still threatening a full-blown storm, and they don’t want to get caught in it. Besides, my mother tells us, they have unpacking to do, and there will be mountains of clothes to launder.
When they’re gone, I turn to Frieda. “I have to tell you something,” I say to her. “It’s going to sound crazy.”
She grins. “Then let’s put on a pot of coffee first.”
When we’re settled behind the counter with our cups, I face her. Frieda lights up a Salem and inhales deeply. She turns away to exhale, then looks toward me again. Her eyes are dancing; she’s in a good mood. I realize how often my moods follow hers. If she’s feeling dark, then I am, too. When her spirits are up, then mine are, too. But while I’m glad she’s so cheerful today, I can’t follow suit.
“Something strange has been happening to me for the past few weeks,” I begin. “When I go to sleep, sometimes I dream I’m in another life.” I take a breath. “A totally different life, but I’m still me and it’s still now . . . actually, it’s a few months hence, the beginning of March, I think, and . . .” I trail off. I cannot think of any sensible way of explaining this to her.
Frieda sips her coffee and taps her cigarette into the ashtray on the counter. “Everyone has dreams like that sometimes,” she says. “Last night I dreamed I was an actress singing on Broadway. You should have heard me . . . I did a tear-jerking rendition of ‘Soon It’s Gonna Rain’ from The Fantasticks.”
The Bookseller Page 22