The Bookseller

by Cynthia Swanson

  I remember how he smiled appreciatively, clearly enjoying this new version of his wife. “Farmer Katharyn,” he called me. “And her farmhands.”

  The triplets and I put flowerbeds in the front yard. I let the children pick out the seed packets, and we waited with anticipation for the flowers to pop through the ground and bring patches of brightness to our yard. Mitch and Missy loved the muddy, colorful messes, the warm earth filtering through their fingers. Michael abhorred it; he would shriek when dirt got under his fingernails.

  When the fall came, and we had to spend more time inside, I figured that imaginative play would help Michael find a way outside his own head—and besides, Missy wanted to grow up to be a princess. So we played dress-up. On Saturdays, when Lars relieved me of child-care duties for a few hours, I’d rummage through the Salvation Army store, bringing home treasures in satin and lace. These I’d transform into costume after costume, with a little magic on my sewing machine—another new acquisition, and one that was further converting me, I hoped, into the domestic whiz I was sure I could be.

  Missy loved the costumes; she changed outfits twenty times a day, becoming Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and a princess she made up herself, a princess named Claire after my mother and Missy’s own middle name. Princess Claire wanted to marry Prince Jon—her name for Mitch—and she would force him, both of them giggling, into a tinfoil crown and a little velvet jacket. She tried the same with Michael. “A princess can marry as many princes as she wants,” Missy told us with authority. But Michael brutally ripped off his royal trappings and ran from the room, cowering in the corner of his bedroom, behind his bed.

  I thought that being out in public might give Michael the opportunity to learn to interact with different types of people. So we went on outings: the zoo, the park, the library. Even though I had my station wagon, we sometimes rode the bus, because Mitch, as young as three, had already begun his love affair with transportation. But they were exhausting, those trips, because I never knew how Michael would behave, never knew what, if anything, would set him off. It was like the woman in Sisters’, the one who had come in with the autistic daughter. I know now how that woman must have felt, because my feelings when I took my child out of the house were the same. We’d be having a good day, and then suddenly, with no warning, something would happen—Michael would be hungry and I’d have packed a different snack than the one I’d promised him, or another child at the park would climb onto the swing that Michael had been heading toward, or the weather, which had promised to be sunny according to the television forecasters, would unexpectedly turn cold and cloudy. And then it would start. The screaming, the howling. The other two children would be in tears, and so would I. It was all I could do to get everyone back to Springfield Street in one piece.

  By the time Lars came home in the evening, I was spent. The best I could manage by then would be to sit quietly on the couch and read stories to Mitch and Missy, who snuggled next to me.

  Michael, as I recall, I was all too happy to hand off to Lars each night. I made it clear to Lars that the moment he walked in the door, Michael was his responsibility.

  Despite my desire to make it up to Michael—to change him, to cure him—by the end of the day, I couldn’t stand to spend another second with him.

  The September before they turned four, Mitch and Missy began attending nursery school three mornings a week. Logically, that ought to have made things better. Caring for one child, albeit one child like Michael, ought to have been much easier than caring for three, right? To my surprise, I found that things were more difficult on the days that Mitch and Missy were in school. Michael and I both missed them, and the time that we spent one-on-one did not satisfy either of us. Although he did not have the words to say so—he spoke very little, and what he did say, we usually had to work to decipher—Michael did not understand why he could not join his brother and sister at school. Barring that, he could not understand why Mitch and Missy ought not to be prevented from going. “Michael go,” he’d insist when I dropped them off each morning. He shook his head violently, clawing at my arm as I held him at the doorway, as I tried to steal a moment to kiss my other two children good-bye, rarely getting the opportunity to do so. “Michael go, too! Or no go. No, no, no go!” He’d break into a fit and pummel me with his little fists as I dragged him to the car, the other mothers staring and whispering as I made my hasty retreat.

  On the short drive home, I would be silent as he whimpered and fussed beside me. I knew it was my job to help him, to comfort him. But nothing I said or did—no touch, no word, no gesture of any sort—seemed to matter to him. So I learned to keep my eyes on the road, choking back the guilty tears. There was nothing, I told myself, that I could do for my child. The damage had been done; it was too late. And it was my fault.

  Eventually I started having Lars drop the other two off at the nursery school. That helped, but I still dreaded pickup time; I was never sure how Michael would act in that gathering of children and mothers and end-of-schoolday confusion. But there was no way to avoid it; Lars was at his office at that hour.

  The hours between Lars leaving to take the other two to nursery school and my driving to the school for pickup felt like an eternity. I did my best to entertain Michael, trying to engage his interest as I read him stories on the couch, walking around the block at his slow, methodical pace, and taking him to the playground on nice days, where I’d swing him for hours—something he loved, and that gave me respite in a way, a chance to clear my head, the orderly, reliable pace of the swing on its chains a small comfort to both Michael and me.

  Mitch and Missy were aglow with all they learned at nursery school. They adored music hour, and they would insist I turn on the car’s radio on the way home, so they could sing along with the catchy tunes. They learned in full detail the name and sound of each letter in the alphabet, and they quickly became skilled at counting to twenty. These accomplishments made me smile, thinking that even at their tender age, they already displayed an extraordinary ease with and love of learning, much like my own.

  Still, my joy was bittersweet. While they flourished in this introduction to school life, Michael and I both withered.

  Kindergarten the next year only made things worse. I was thankful Mitch and Missy had had the nursery-school experience; they were a few months shy of age five when they started kindergarten, and thus younger than many of their peers. But having each other, and having a little bit of schooling under their belts, they did splendidly. They learned to write their own names, and they could recognize a number of words in their picture books. Their drawings transformed from scribbles to stick figures and recognizable houses and suns and stars. They remembered to hang up their jackets and carefully line up their boots in the coat closet when they got home, as they did at school. Lars and I marveled at these wonders, at how smart and accomplished Mitch and Missy were.

  And then we would both be silent, thinking about Michael.

  There was never a question of sending him to school. Not regular public school, at any rate. The public school was not required by law to educate him, and we did not feel it would be fair to anyone—the teacher, the other children in the class, or Michael himself—to force him into a typical classroom situation. He would be disruptive, we knew, and he would learn little; a teacher with a room full of other young children to manage would not be able to give Michael the type of one-on-one attention he so clearly would require.

  Of course we researched other options. We looked at a few special schools, private schools designed for children who could not function in a regular school. But the children at those schools were either high achievers who were completely out of Michael’s league, or else children with much more severe disabilities, for whom the schools seemed little more than babysitting services, somewhere such children could be during the day, giving their mothers a break.

  “I can teach him at home,” I told Lars. “I have the credentials; I have the experience.”

&nb
sp; He gave me a skeptical look.

  “I can do it,” I insisted. “I had the occasional difficult child in my classes, you know.”

  “But none like Michael, right? And none that were your own.”

  “True,” I conceded. “But really, Lars, what other choice do we have?”

  I didn’t bother giving Michael formal lessons during the kindergarten year, but we began working on some basic skills. Knowing that forming accurate circles, squares, and triangles is the foundation for writing letters, I encouraged him to draw. This he appeared to enjoy on occasion, although his drawings were generally indecipherable as any particular objects. Quite often I read to him, hoping that he would eventually fall in love with stories, as most children do when frequently read to. Michael did not relish these sessions, the way most children would, but he tolerated them for short periods.

  Not until Mitch and Missy started first grade did I decide it was time for Michael’s lessons to start in earnest. His learning might be delayed, but, I reasoned, I had as long as it would take to teach him.

  Whatever it took.

  I set up a little desk for him in the dining room. I would sit him there, put paper in front of him, and work with him on writing his letters. We started with A. I didn’t ask anything else of him—just to write A’s and to look for A’s when we read books. At first he was willing, but as time went on, he became less and less interested.

  I was in despair. I thought he’d never learn a thing. He could recite the alphabet, but it had no meaning for him. Words on a page meant nothing. He’d shake his head if I asked if he recognized an A, or any other letter. He was a compliant student, if not an eager one; he did not protest when I said it was time for lessons. Instead, he would sit at the little desk and write his A’s, staring at the blank wall, waiting wordlessly for me to say it was all right for him to rise from his seat, that lessons were over for the day. Which I would do, eventually—sometimes two or three exhausting hours later, when I was ready to give up.

  I couldn’t understand it. “He knows how to do it,” I told Lars. “He just doesn’t want to.”

  “He’ll get it, in time.”

  That was mid-October of last year. Right before Halloween. Right before . . . that week.

  Now, standing at the closet door, I select a pair of dark slacks and a gray sweater. They match my mood. I slip them on, find knee-highs and a pair of black leather flats, brush my hair and pull it back with a headband.

  I return to the living room. Alma has vacuumed here, making neat lines in the carpet from the picture window to the dining room table. As I cross it, my feet leave prints in the pile. I stand by the window and watch for Lars’s car.

  When Lars pulls up and opens the car door for Michael, I see my son emerge sullenly, sniffling. This surprises me; he always seems more cheerful around Lars than he is around me. I go to the door to greet them.

  Lars helps Michael off with his coat. “Go on upstairs,” he tells our child, and Michael complies, wordlessly.

  Lars shakes his head. “I don’t know how you do this all day, every day.”

  I shrug. “Me, neither.”

  He goes to the kitchen and pours coffee from the still-warm pot. “Want some?”

  “No, thanks.” While I get myself a glass of water, Lars heads to his office. I drink my water, then go to the bottom of the stairs and listen. It’s silent up there; perhaps, I think, Michael is resting on his bed. I follow Lars to his office.

  Standing in the doorway, I watch him speak into the telephone. “Right, but I can’t make it in today,” he says. “Okay . . . no, I understand.” He glances at me. “Hold the line a moment, Gladys.” He covers the receiver and turns to me. “They really need me this afternoon,” he pleads. “Will you be all right if I go in?”

  I shrug again. “It’s fine by me. I just need to . . . I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes first.”

  He puts the receiver back to his mouth. “Gladys, tell them I’ll be there by one thirty.” He hangs up and brushes past me. “I’ve got to change,” he says. “Can we talk while I do that?”

  I nod and follow him to our bedroom.

  We have a club chair in the bedroom, tweed, dark green, a nice contrast to the sage-colored walls. I sit in it, watching Lars while he finds trousers, a crisp white shirt and tie. Even from across the room, I can smell the clean-laundry smell of his fresh clothes as he dresses. I watch him button the shirt over his broad shoulders, his solid chest. He is such an attractive man. So lovely, so perfect, and I know I should feel nothing but gratitude to be here with him.

  Whether it be real or not, I should be happy for what I have.

  He looks at me in the mirror. “You feeling any better?”

  “I’m hanging in there.”

  “You were pretty upset last night.”

  “Lars.” I stand and cross the room, joining him by the mirror as he puts his tie around his neck. “I need you to do something for me. It might be hard.”

  He turns and puts his arms around me. “Anything you need.”

  I close my eyes for a moment, relishing the feel and smell of him so close to me. Wishing I could just take pleasure in that and forget everything else. But I can’t. I open my eyes.

  “Just . . .” I sigh. “Just tell me what happened,” I whisper. “To them. To my parents.”

  He tilts his head. “Honey, you know this.”

  I shake my head. “No, I mean afterward.” I break away from him and step back. “How did we find out? What did we do? How did we tell the children? How . . .” I bite my lip. “What was the funeral like?”

  He looks at me for a long moment. Then he ties his tie—slowly, cautiously, taking his time.

  When he is satisfied with his appearance, he leads me back to the club chair, gently pushing me down into it. He sits on the bed opposite me. “It was rough,” he says, shaking his head.

  I nod. Of course it was rough.

  “I took the morning off from work, and we’d kept Mitch and Missy out of school for the occasion. We went out to the airport in your car,” he went on. “Piled in and ready to pick up Grandma and Grandpa from their flight. The kids had on their Halloween costumes; they were delirious with excitement.” He looks at me sadly. “You, too, honey.” He puts his hand on my knee. “Katharyn, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but that morning in the car . . . I think that’s the last time I saw you truly happy.”

  I look out through the patio doors to the snowy backyard. I don’t remember that, but I can picture it in my mind. I know how the children would be dressed. Missy would be a princess, because Missy is always a princess. Mitch would be a hobo or a magician or a train engineer or perhaps a cowboy—Mitch’s imagination could take him anywhere in the world, so the possibilities were endless. Even Michael would have gotten into the spirit of it; perhaps I would have convinced him to dress up, just a little. I would have outfitted him in something comfortable and not too confining—yes, I know what it would be, a puppy-dog costume, with floppy ears that I made out of felt and attached to a soft, loose hood, worn with a regular pair of brown pants and a brown sweatshirt, the spotted tail I’d fashioned from more felt pinned to the seat of his trousers.

  I can see myself, too. My face would be flushed with anticipation. I would lean over to check my reflection in the rearview mirror as we drove to Stapleton. I would be fussing over my hair, although it would no doubt be picture-perfect from Linnea’s skilled hand.

  Lars would be at the wheel, whistling and cracking jokes with the kids. The weather would be overcast, the same as it was in the real world on that day, but that would not destroy our jovial moods.

  I can imagine us reaching the airport, parking, going inside. Passersby would smile and nudge each other, gazing at our delightful children in their costumes. I can see us finding our way to Gate 18.

  The same gate from which I picked up my parents in the real world, just a few days ago.

  “They were to make a connection in Los Angeles,” Lars co
ntinues. ‘The connection came in on time. We waited, watching at the window, waving to everyone who got off the airplane and stepped onto the tarmac. We waited while they all came through the gate. And then we waited until the gate area was empty.

  “‘They must have missed their connection,’ you said. ‘I’m surprised they didn’t telephone.’”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “They would have telephoned.”

  Lars nods. “There was a stewardess at the gate, so we asked her. She directed us to a service desk. They . . . they seemed to be waiting for us there. Several people, a man and two women. ‘The Anderssons?’” one of the women said as we approached. ‘We tried to telephone you at home, but you must have already left for the airport. We’re sorry to inform you that Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s airplane from Honolulu . . .’”

  And here Lars stops. “Well,” he says after a moment. “You know what they told us.”

  “Oh,” I breathe. “Oh, not in front of the children?”

  He nods. “I was angry about that. I thought . . . they ought to have pulled us aside or something . . .” He shakes his head.

  “What did . . . what then?”

  “Well, it was bad,” he says. “Everyone was crying. You, the children, even me. I . . .” He holds up his hands. “They were fine people, Katharyn. I loved them, you know, as a son loves his parents.”

  He pauses, and I remember our first telephone conversation, when Lars told me he was 4-F and didn’t serve in the war, and I wondered what my father would think about that. And then I know—I realize I have always known, of course—that my father would not have cared at all. I understand that my father, that both my parents, would have adored Lars. That they would have seen how much he loved me, how devoted he was to our family, and that would be all that mattered. And Lars would have felt exactly the same way about them.