I nod. This makes sense to me. I’d have needed every bit of emotional strength I had to get through the children’s birthday and the holidays without my parents. I would have put myself into whatever robotic state it took. Only when those days were over, when I was faced with a brand-new year and nothing on the horizon to look forward to, would I have allowed myself to confront my despair.
It was then, I realized, that my imagination would have taken over.
Next, I ask Lars, “Can you tell when I’m . . . when I have gone into my other world?”
“Usually I can tell,” Lars says. “It often happens just before you drift off to sleep at night, or else early in the morning—I sense that you’re awake, but you’re not really conscious, not really present in the moment. Sometimes it happens during the daytime hours. Your eyes get sort of dreamy and lost . . . usually it’s only for a few moments, and then you pop out of it and return to your normal self.”
I laugh. “Those few moments here can mean days have passed, in my other life.”
Lars doesn’t respond to this. Instead, what he asks takes me completely by surprise. “What’s it like there—in your other life?”
And so I tell him. I tell him about my apartment, my cozy home that I share only with Aslan. I explain about Greg Hansen, how when we started he could barely work out even simple sentences on a page. I speak of the progress Greg has made since then, and how much I enjoy working one-on-one with him. I mention how much fun I have writing books for Greg. Books about baseball, about Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants.
Lars nods. “Well, you are an expert on that topic.”
I give a hoot of laughter. But Lars’s face is serious. “You’re joking, right?” I ask him. “I know nothing about baseball, except what I’ve learned since I began writing for Greg.”
“Katharyn.” Lars is smiling good-naturedly. “You know everything about baseball. You became interested in baseball because I’m interested in it. And so are the children. We all followed the World Series last fall as if our entire future depended on it.” He looks at me in astonishment. “You really don’t remember that?”
I shrug. “I really don’t remember that.”
He shakes his head. “All right,” he says. “Tell me more about your other life.”
I talk about my parents’ joyous homecoming, our long, relaxed dinners together. I smile fondly as I tell him about my conversation with my mother while she knit in the afternoon sunlight at my apartment.
And while I am telling it, I realize that—from the perspective of this world, at any rate—those moments are nothing short of a gift. They are an extraordinary gift that my mind has bequeathed me. With the help of my active imagination, I have been given the opportunity to spend a little time, just a little more time, with my parents, with Frieda—and even with Greg, learning through my experience with him who I want to be, what I want for myself.
I tell Lars about Sisters’, which of course he knew about, but not in the way it is now. I tell him about Frieda’s and my endless pots of coffee at the shop, our lunches at the sandwich place down the street, going out for drinks after we close up—and the conversations we’ve been having. I talk about the opportunity to close up Pearl Street and open in a shopping center—and my reluctance to do so, as well as Frieda’s enthusiasm for the prospect. “Things are changing there, no doubt about it,” I say. “But even so, it’s . . . well, it’s peaceful there.” I shrug. “Yes, Frieda and I are at a crossroads. But it’s an amicable one. I’m going to . . .” I feel foolish telling him this, because it doesn’t fit Katharyn as well as it fits Kitty. “I’m thinking about looking for a job as a tutor or reading specialist,” I say. “I’m finding that I love that kind of one-on-one work. That’s the part I miss about teaching.” I sigh, hearing the lilt of happiness and enthusiasm in my voice. “And I want to write books for children,” I go on. “For children like Greg. And any other child . . .” I am thinking of Michael. “Any other child who struggles to learn.”
“Do you now?” He smiles at this—and not because he’s amused. He actually seems impressed. “Tutoring. And writing. These are things you’d really like to do?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Here, in this world, they don’t seem possible, do they?”
“Why not?” He sits up straighter and takes my hand. “You’re so bright, Katharyn. You handle things with such determination. At least, you did, until . . .” He presses his lips together. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re right.” I think about the sad triumvirate. “In this world, I’ve shut down. Things have worn me down. Michael, Frieda, losing my parents . . .”
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” he says. “You can do anything you want to, love. I don’t ever want you to feel tied down by our life here at home.”
“Well.” I glance at the newspaper again, then back at Lars. “I guess we’ll just see.”
We make love passionately that night. We are slow with each other, taking our time, touching each part, our hands moving as slowly as if we were uniting for the first time. I memorize the shape of his body, the warm feel of his skin next to mine. Laying my head against his chest, I inhale his clean, intoxicating scent. I press my hand against his heart, his beautiful and wonderful heart. I say a silent little prayer that it will keep ticking long enough for us to grow old together.
Afterward I nestle myself against him, pressing the length of my body against his. I don’t ever want to let him go. “I don’t know where I’ll be when I wake up,” I whisper to him. “When I go to sleep here, I feel like I ought to say good-bye to you, because it might be forever.”
The snowy sky outside has made the room brighter than usual, and in the half-light I can see his dazzling blue eyes. “Isn’t that true for everyone?” he asks. “Any one of us can be gone in a second.” He looks up at the ceiling. “Don’t think I don’t consider that . . . all the time,” he says. And then he repeats hoarsely, “All the time.”
We go to sleep with our arms wrapped around each other.
Chapter 30
I’m standing in front of the shop. The morning is misty, almost foggy. I can barely make out the street in front of me, the few cars parked along it. I glance to my left, looking north on Pearl Street. Through the haze I can see the sandwich shop, the Vogue Theater, the drugstore. Everything is where it belongs. I twist my neck and look behind me, through the plate-glass window. I see my meticulously constructed display of fall colors and cozy-up-with-them books. Beyond these, Frieda is sitting at the checkout counter. She glances up, sensing my eyes on her, and gives me a smile and a small wave. I automatically smile back, feeling my heart skip a beat or two.
“I love you,” I whisper, although of course she can’t hear me through the glass. “I love you so much, sister. More than you’ll ever know.”
And then, looking at her, I feel suddenly, irrationally angry. Something she’s done makes me furious. I feel betrayed, like I could never trust her again. Having no idea why I feel that way, I try to shrug the emotions away.
I’m not sure why I’m outside. Was I going somewhere? I don’t think I was. It’s cold out here, and I’m not wearing a coat or hat, nor holding my handbag. I wrap my arms around my ribs, tucking my hands under my sweater sleeves.
No traffic passes. The street is silent and still. Will Pearl Street always be as still as this? It makes me sad, thinking about Frieda and me leaving this place, about things changing. I know it has to happen; I know it’s the right thing to do. The future, at least the near future, is not here. It’s in the vast shopping centers and the sprawling ranch houses and the highways that go on forever.
Is that the future just for a time—or is it for always? Is that Denver’s future; is it America’s? I wish I could look in a crystal ball and see what the world will be like in fifty years. But I am not a fortune-teller.
I think about the world I share with Lars and the children. If I had a crystal ba
ll, what would it tell of that world, in fifty years? What would become of my children? Mitch and Missy would, I am sure, discover their passions in life, whatever those passions may be. They would, I hope, marry and have families. They would live with integrity and commitment and love, the way that Lars and I would teach them to.
And Michael? I hadn’t thought I could get any colder, standing out here, but considering a future for Michael makes me shiver. What would become of him, if that imaginary world were real?
I think about the woman who came into the shop with her autistic daughter. I wish I could talk to that mother again. If I could, I would be more gracious. I would smile kindly and welcome her to my store. I would then go about my business and not stare at her child.
Perhaps I would have been smarter about how I set up that silly, wobbly display of books. But if not, and if the child still knocked it down—well, then, as the mother made her hasty retreat, I would not ask rude questions. Instead, I would hand her a complimentary copy of Ship of Fools. And as I did so, I would look in that mother’s eyes, and without words, I would try to let her know that I understood.
I turn and go inside. The bell over the door jingles as I enter. Frieda looks up at me, a wordless smile twitching around her lips. The phonograph is turning silently, softly, its stack of records completed. Frieda swivels on her stool, selects a new stack, and places the records on the phonograph’s stem. The first disc drops onto the turntable; the needle moves into position. Patsy Cline’s voice fills the bookstore.
If you got leavin’ on your mind . . . Tell me now, get it over . . .
I shake my head. This song doesn’t exist yet. In the other world, in the Italian restaurant we went to with his clients, Lars told me that Patsy Cline had just released it.
And that happened in February. Which is three months from now.
“Patsy Cline is going to die, you know,” I tell Frieda, my voice surprisingly even. I feel like I am listening to myself from a space a few feet away.
“It will happen in just a few months’ time,” I go on. “She’s going to die in a plane crash.”
Frieda nods, as if I’m telling her something she already knows.
“But she’ll release this song as a single first,” I say, crossing the room.
Serenely—how can I be so calm?—I turn toward our stacks of best-seller fiction. My eyes go straight to the new Salinger anthology. Next to it, I see The King’s Persons by Joanne Greenberg, the local author I’d made a mental note to learn more about, the day I browsed Frieda’s big bookstore in the other world.
These books are not yet in print. They cannot be found in any stores. Yet here they are, in our little bookstore.
I run my hand over the Salinger; was this the book that Frieda placed my fingers on, just the other day, when she was trying to assure me that this world is real? I shake my head again, trying to clear my thoughts. Perhaps it was; it seems like it could have been.
I can’t remember.
And then I think about the things that have happened in the last few weeks, things that seemed merely pleasant or convenient at the time. My peaceful, quiet mornings at home and here in the shop. Reading my mother’s lovely, lyrical postcards. Stumbling across Lars’s obituary so randomly, yet so easily. Running into Kevin—his misery proving that I had done the right thing in delivering him an ultimatum all those years ago. The odd, out-of-nowhere free drinks that Frieda and I received at the Stadium Inn the other night.
And finally, my parents—conveniently, pleasantly—getting on the right airplane. One that did not go down in the Pacific during a storm.
Don’t leave me here, in a world . . . Filled with dreams that might have been . . . Hurt me now, get it over . . . I may learn to love again . . .
I look at Frieda. She stares knowingly at me. She seems to be waiting for me to speak.
“Sister,” I say to her, and then I say no more.
Chapter 31
I awake with a gasp. Lars and I are still entwined, exactly as we were when I fell asleep in the green bedroom.
Lars opens his eyes. “Are you all right?”
I am shaking, and I take a deep breath to calm myself. Slowly, I say, “This . . . is . . . it.” Rubbing my eyes, I look around. “This is the real world. Isn’t it, Lars?”
“Katharyn.” He pulls me close and whispers in my ear, “This is the real world.”
I move my head so I can look into his eyes. “How can that be? How could that other world have felt so real, and not be real?”
He pulls back from me and tilts his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know, love.”
I think about all the times in the past few weeks when I went into the world where I’m Kitty. Often I believed I was sleeping in this world. I believed that I had to go to sleep here to get back home, to wake up where I thought I belonged.
But—with the exception of last night’s episode, which felt like a dream and clearly was a dream—all of those other times, I was not sleeping. I know this now. I was right here, making up stories in my head, stories that helped me cope. I was here—and yet, I wasn’t here. I must have been completely absent to those around me.
I swallow hard. “I’m sorry,” I tell Lars. “I am so sorry.”
He wraps his arms around me again. “It’s okay. I understand. It’s okay.”
Tears form at the corners of my eyes. “I don’t know if I can bear it,” I say. “I don’t know if I can be the person you think I am. I don’t know if I can be here—truly be here, the way I ought to be, if this is real.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and in my head I can see myself as Kitty—but she is only a make-believe image, that person.
“You can,” Lars tells me. “You can be here, and you will be here.” He runs a hand through my hair, and I open my eyes to look at him. “I want you here,” he says. “Everyone—we all want you here.” He swallows hard. “We need you, Katharyn.”
I look into his beautiful eyes. They need me, I think. They need me here.
“All right,” I say slowly. “I’ll try.”
He smiles and kisses me deeply.
When we break apart, I turn my head. “Look outside,” I say, pointing through the panes of the sliding glass door. The sky is strikingly blue and cloud-free; the sun is almost blinding in its brightness, reflecting off the snow on the lawn. “Such a fine new layer of snow on everything.”
He stands up and walks to the doorway. “Beautiful,” he agrees. “But Missy and Mitch will be disappointed. There’s not enough snow to cancel school.”
I am actually a bit disappointed myself. A day with all three children at home sounds quite pleasant.
I rise from the bed and swing my feet to the floor. As I do so, I notice a hardback book on my nightstand.
“Lars,” I say, picking up the book and rotating it, so the cover is faceup. “Have I been reading this?”
He turns from the doorway and walks over to me. “You have,” he confirms, leaning over my shoulder to peer at the book. “You said it was haunting your dreams.”
I smile, tracing my fingers over the book’s cover, the shadowed images, the flame-colored, wavy typeface rising in a ghoulish shape to spell out the book’s title: Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury.
“Indeed,” I say to Lars. “It’s haunting indeed.”
There are minor fits from Mitch and Missy before school. Mitch is upset that a snow day wasn’t called; he had planned, he explains, to spend the entire day setting up a toy train layout in the basement. “And now it’s ruined!” he cries, his face flushed, his voice heightened with an uncharacteristically dramatic lilt. “My whole day—it’s ruined!”
To my surprise, it’s Michael who offers words of comfort. “It’s okay, Mitch,” he says gently. “The weekend starts in two days. You can make the layout then.” He doesn’t look at Mitch, but he sidles a bit closer to his brother. He continues speaking, his voice soft. “I’ll help you.”
Missy, for her part, is angry that she
must wear boots to school. “They’re ugly,” she proclaims, her perky nose turned up disdainfully at her cherry-red fur-lined boots. “They’re horrid boots, Mama. I need new ones.”
I shake my head. “We just got these a few months ago,” I say firmly. “They’re perfectly fine. They’re warm, they fit you, they’ll keep your feet dry. Put them on.”
Reluctantly, she pulls on one boot and then the other, glaring at me the entire time. I shrug, not giving in.
Lars, Mitch, and Missy leave the house at eight. Since kindergarten, when Mitch and Missy started attending the elementary school a few blocks away, Michael and I have walked them to school most mornings, and walked back in the afternoon to pick them up. It’s been a few years since Mitch and Missy were in nursery school, when the separation disturbed Michael so much; he has matured enough by now that he expects and can handle these daily transitions. Nonetheless, on snowy days, Lars generally drives Mitch and Missy the few blocks to school. These are more of those household facts that I suddenly know, without any discussion of them.
After they are gone, I stand in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, holding the swinging door open with my shoulder and taking a look around. My eyes find Michael’s slumped form; he is seated wordlessly on the living room couch, staring at the floor.
“Michael.”
He does not look up.
“Michael,” I repeat, crossing the room and standing in front of him. “It’s time for your lessons.”
This gets his attention. He does not make eye contact with me, but he does speak. “We have not done lessons in over three months, Mama.”
The Bookseller Page 27
