The Bookseller (24 page)

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.

I
nside 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.

N
ow, 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.

Frieda nibbles the last of her apple. “Well, I'm off,” she says, standing. “I have shopping to do. Penney's is having a sale. I want a new coat for winter.”

I nod. “I wish I could come. Have fun.”

She hugs me. “You, too, sister.”

After Frieda leaves, I'm frenzied in my work, and by midafternoon the place is spotless. I look around, a satisfied smile on my face. I've done a good job. They
will
be pleased.

I think about that rambling house on Springfield Street. I wonder how my other self keeps it clean, even with the faithful Alma to help out. And then I laugh a little.

It's easy to keep an imaginary house clean, isn't it?

D
espite my intentions not to dwell on the dream life, I am drawn to Southern Hills again.

I tell myself it's just something to do, a way to pass an evening that's chilly but not yet wintry. I bike home from my parents' place and, too weary for much more exercise, take the bus, getting off at Yale and walking south and then east.

Slowly I meander through the neighborhood streets. I imagine the people who live in each of the houses. I think about their lives, their families, their children. That house there, the red-brick one with the juniper bushes by the driveway, they must have teenagers. There's a basketball hoop hung above the garage door and a pile of bicycles, all of them too big for young children, lying on the lawn by the front porch. The family in the
house with the brown shutters—I think their car must be brand-new. It's red with a white top, and it gleams with a just-off-the-showroom-floor sparkle. The man of the house stands next to the car, stroking its side panel affectionately, the way one might the cheek of a newborn.

These people have names, although I don't know what they are. They have histories. They were probably raised in old-time neighborhoods like Myrtle Hill, where I grew up. They went to high school, perhaps to college. They met their husbands and wives; they had children. They decided this neighborhood of newly built houses would be a comfortable, homey, secure place in which to raise their families.

Lars and I, in the imaginary world, must have decided the same thing.

If that imaginary world were real, these would be my friends and neighbors. I walk by the Nelsons' house, irrationally grateful that I know at least one family's name, though in this life they do not know me. George is in the yard, raking leaves. Mrs. Nelson—I still don't know her first name—is just coming out the front door, handbag over her wrist, car keys jangling. Their little spaniel runs up to me and barks.

“Buster,” George calls, and the dog runs back to his master's side. “Sorry about that, ma'am,” George says.

Both George and his wife give me little half waves as I walk by. Their waves are the type you give a stranger. Not the type you give your neighbors.

I shake my head as I approach the bare lot where my own house would be. And then I quicken my pace.

I have
got
to get out of this silliness, I tell myself.

I am so glad my parents are coming home. Clearly I need the distraction.

A
nd then I'm standing on the street, right where I was standing in real life, in the exact same spot. But it's not real life anymore. Now the house is in front of me, and I'm looking at it, and my family is with me. It's a warmish day, but it still must be winter; there is no snow on the road, but it is melting into slushy puddles on the lawn. From the angle of the shadows on the snow, I can tell it's probably midafternoon.

But how did I get into the dream this time? I don't remember taking the bus back to my own neighborhood. I have no memory of making dinner, of reading or watching television or tutoring Greg, the things I usually do in the evening at home. I don't remember turning off the front porch light, feeding Aslan, getting dressed for bed. I don't recall closing my eyes, and I certainly don't remember falling asleep. But I must have done those things.

Or I did something. Something.

Mitch and Missy are wobbling on bicycles—two-wheelers, his green and hers pink. Lars is walking beside the two of them, working with one and then the other to teach them how to ride. I think the training wheels must have recently been taken off the bikes, because both children are falling. A lot.