The Bookseller (28 page)

Both boys wear forest-green flannel pajamas with contrasting blue piping. But other than their attire and their vaguely similar coloring and features, they could not be more different.

I am seated in a rocking chair between the beds. I have a sudden flashback to this chair in this same room, same position, but between two cribs, when the boys were toddlers. Even then, the contrast was stark. Mitch would stand up in his crib, leaping gleefully about, until I was terrified that he would fling himself out of the crib in his excitement. His crib then, like his bed now, was filled with stuffed animals. Some of the same ones, no doubt.

Michael, on the other hand, would position himself quietly in the middle of his pristine, animal-less crib, not moving a muscle, while I sat in the rocking chair and read a bedtime story. Michael would not look at me, nor demand to see each page as I turned it, the way Mitch did. He'd stare at his feet in their fuzzy footed pajamas, betraying no emotion toward the story, Mitch, or me.

Now I rock slowly, humming Brahms's Lullaby. Mitch lies back under his covers and closes his eyes. In the light from the small, dimly lit lamp on the dresser his mop of blond curls gives off a faint sheen. His hair looks slightly damp, as if he has just been bathed, and I can't resist leaning in to sniff the Johnson's Baby Shampoo smell of his clean head. He smiles and opens his eyes, meeting mine.
I love you
, he mouths.

I love you, too
, I mouth back. Mitch closes his eyes again and snuggles into his blankets.

I turn toward Michael. He is still sitting upright; his eyes remain wide open. I notice, for the first time, that his eyes are as strikingly blue as everyone else's in the family. It must be the glasses, I decide, that make them appear hazy most of the time.

I'm afraid to suggest that he lie down, because I'm quite sure that whatever he is doing is part of his nighttime routine. I don't want to touch him, for fear of setting him off, but I feel like I ought to do something. I settle for pressing my palm against his bedspread, far from his body. “Sleep well, Michael,” I say quietly. “I love you.”

He doesn't move a muscle, or look my way. I turn off the lamp, leaving the room lit only by a nightlight plugged into an outlet near the rocking chair. Going out silently, I shut the door behind me.

I meet Lars in the hallway, coming out of Missy's room. “Sleeping?” he asks me.

“Close.” Even though neither boy is asleep, I have an instinct that where they are right now is where each of them needs to be to get himself to sleep. I nod toward Missy's door. “How about her?”

“Fast asleep.” He smiles. “That bike riding takes it out of her.”

“She's getting good, though. They both are.”

Lars does not respond, and I know what he's thinking, because I'm thinking the same thing. About how I—mindlessly—used the word
both
. Because two of them are “getting good.” And one of them might never “get good.”

“Want a drink?” Lars asks, as we make our way down the stairs.

“Now you're talking.”

He goes to his office to pour, and I wait in the living room, sitting on the sofa. Like so many things in this house, the sofa is sleek and modern, new. Its fabric is a nubby beige tweed with a faint striped pattern. To liven it up, there are throw pillows in solid colors of orange, yellow, and cobalt blue.

Lars returns with two glasses of Scotch on the rocks. Handing
one to me, he sits beside me and drapes his arm over my shoulder, massaging it gently. “You look so tired, love,” he says, and the concern in his voice makes me tremble.

I close my eyes. “I'm exhausted,” I admit. “I'm overwhelmed.” It seems ridiculous to say such a thing in a dream, but since it's true, I may as well say it.

“Well, it's understandable,” he says. “There's not much that's more stressful than this.”

I shake my head. “I guess I don't know . . . quite what you mean.”

He sips his drink. “I felt the same way, you know,” he says. “When it happened to me.” His voice lowers. “Mine weren't together, of course, but . . . you know that mine were only days apart.”

I have absolutely no idea what we're talking about, so I just nod and wait for him to go on.

“He couldn't live without her,” Lars says, his voice breaking. “He couldn't go on without her. So he . . .” His lips tighten. “So he . . . didn't.”

I put my hand on his. “I know.” Of course, I
don't
know, but I want him to keep talking. “Does it help . . .” I hesitate. “To talk about it?”

He looks up. “It helps to talk to you about it,” he says. “It always has.” He swirls the ice in his glass. “You were so understanding and so . . .
not
shocked, when I first told you how . . . how horrendously things had gone for my family.
Horrendously
. There's really no other word for it—and because of that, I didn't share this story with many people in those days. But I knew from the start, when we first met, that I could tell you about it, and it would be okay.” He smiles, but his expression is forlorn. “It made me feel like I could tell you anything.”

“You can,” I say softly.

“She was so sick,” he goes on, entwining his fingers in mine.
“Heart palpitations, coughing, chest pains. You know, she was probably the same as me, probably had an irregular heartbeat like I do, but back then, such things were not diagnosed. Still . . . it exhausted her, sucked the life out of her. Every bit of life she'd ever had. And she
had
had life in her, even though hers wasn't easy. She worked so hard, they both did, and . . .”

I squeeze his hand.

“I was just glad she didn't suffer long,” he says. “You know, in those days and in those times especially, and where we were—rural Iowa, of all places, and we hardly knew a soul and could barely speak English—well, she'd been having chest pains and she should have seen a doctor, but it's not like her treatment options were plentiful.” He finishes his drink and sucks on an ice cube. “At least it was over quickly for her. There was nothing we could do for her.” He shakes his head. “My mother's life was shorter than it should have been,” he says grimly. “Short and not so sweet.” He stands up. “I'm going for another,” he announces, holding up his glass. “You want one?”

I hold out my glass to him, and he takes it and strides down the hall.

When he returns with fresh drinks, I'm worried that he'll let the story go and turn to some other subject. But he continues. “She'd only been buried a few days when he decided he couldn't bear it,” Lars says. “Took a shotgun and went out to the shed. Linnea found him.” He takes a long swallow of Scotch. “Linnea was only sixteen years old, still just a girl. No one, no
child
, should have to face something like that.”

Oh, no. Linnea had hinted at some of this, but she hadn't told me any of these grim details.

“What did you do?” I know I shouldn't ask this question; certainly, I would already know what he did. I am hoping he is so involved in his story that he won't register my asking.

“I did what any big brother would do,” he says. “I took charge. We buried our father next to our mother. We sold everything we had, which wasn't much. We got on a train going west, because neither of us ever wanted to see Iowa again.”

“And ended up here.”

“And ended up here. It was early morning when our train arrived at Union Station. We had only bought tickets as far as Denver. We would have had to buy another ticket and change trains if we wanted to go farther west. We didn't, though. We got off the train and looked around; we saw the mountains in the distance and the sun shining on the buildings of the city just as it was waking up. And we looked at each other and decided that here was as good as anywhere else.”

“You've come a long way since then,” I say. “And so has Linnea.”

Lars nods. “We've been lucky,” he says. “Lucky that, after all the dreary, desperate jobs she and I took just trying to scrape out a living, Linnea found work in a bakery. Lucky that Steven walked into that bakery one day and liked who he saw behind the counter enough to return again and again, just to see her. And lucky that Linnea found Steven as appealing as he found her.”

Oh, now I remember that story. I remember Linnea telling it to me, her eyes shining with a spark she still felt for her husband, even after all those years together. She told me about it the first time she gave me a wash-and-set, back in October 1954. Not in my real life, not when I'm Kitty. No, it was here, when I was Katharyn. It was the first time I went to see her at Beauty on Broadway. Lars was still in the hospital then, recovering from his heart attack.

“And it was Steven who convinced you that you could do better than being a streetcar repairman for the rest of your life,” I
say now to Lars. “Steven helped you apply for college.” I can feel my heart quicken, remembering this.
Knowing
this.

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.”