Luke glances around. “It’s fine, George. I can handle it when it’s like this. You go on the call.”
“No, I would feel happier staying here at the moment.” He makes big eyes at us to indicate that the customer upstairs might be a serious one.
“But—can Luke do this? Does he know anything about it?” I ask.
“Thank you,” says Luke.
“Luke is great at it,” says David. “You don’t know anything about him.”
George fishes in his pocket for the name and address, and goes back up the stairs. Luke and I go outside together. We wait at Broadway for the light, without speaking, and then, when we get to the other side, I say, “So—that was Mitchell. The other day.”
“Yeah,” says Luke. “That was Mitchell.”
We walk down 81st Street and turn the corner without speaking.
We get to the apartment building. The lobby is black and white tiles; the rows of mailboxes are pale gold. In the time we stand there waiting for the lift, three elderly people converge at the boxes to check their post. They greet each absently and yet formally, the one because they have obviously done this every day for years, and the other because the acquaintances began in a different age and have never developed. Mrs. Eliot, Mr. Bedel, Mrs. Begoni.
“I hope this doesn’t take long,” says Luke, when we’re in the lift.
“Didn’t you like him?” I ask.
“Who? Mitchell? I saw him for two seconds. I don’t have an opinion.”
“Right. He was upset because I wasn’t wearing my engagement ring. We’ve just got engaged. But I didn’t think I ought to flash a diamond around at the homeless people. I thought it would be insensitive.”
“That was very sensitive of you,” Luke says.
“I didn’t tell anyone at The Owl because I wasn’t sure how—”
Luke holds up his hands. “Esme, your private life is your business.”
“I should have told you. When we went to look at the Sargent. I didn’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Because I thought it would change things.”
Luke almost smiles. He says, slowly, “Are you sure? You’re what, like, twenty-three years old? And you’re marrying this guy? This one? Where everything is about status, and class, and . . .” He stops.
“Mitchell doesn’t care about things like that,” I say, as Luke raises his eyes to the heavens. “And I love him.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, but you love chocolate, you love . . . poached salmon—those things—they’re gratifying, but they’re not necessarily good for you. How do you know it’s not just infatuation?”
“I think there is no difference between love and infatuation. If it works out, we call it love; if it doesn’t, we shrug our shoulders and say it was infatuation. It’s a hindsight word.”
He gives me a brief, sad smile. “Maybe. Like I said, not my business.”
In the corridor on the sixteenth floor, the walls are papered, and thick with many layers of coffee-colored paint. All the doors are dark brown. A dead Christmas garland hangs forlornly upon one. We get to a door, and Luke consults a scrap of paper.
“Sixteen B. Mrs. Kasperek. This is it. You’re not at work this weekend, is that right? George says you’re off to the Hamptons.”
“Yes . . .” I look at him. He is looking straight ahead, waiting for the door to open. We hear the bolts being drawn.
“Be nice,” he says, still without looking. “Be English.”
A slight and energetic old lady opens the door. She looks to me to be pretty old, around eighty. Wisps of white hair wreathe her head like clouds.
“Mr. Goodman?” she asks.
“No, ma’am. Mr. Goodman couldn’t come at the last minute—didn’t he let you know? He sent us—”
“Oh, that’s right, that’s right. He did just call. Come on in.”
Luke strides forwards and shakes her hand. “I’m Luke, and this is Esme Garland.”
“You’re dead on time,” says Mrs. Kasperek, and then she turns to me. Luke explains that I am learning the trade, on my first ever book call.
“I’m Esme,” I say. She shakes my hand, and then holds it still for a second.
“And expecting a child,” she says. Her blue eyes gaze into mine; they are alight with pleasure for me. “Congratulations, my dear.”
“You can already tell?” I ask. I don’t think you can, yet. I am just a little rounder. And she hasn’t even looked.
“Why yes, when I shook your hand,” she says, and does not explain further. She turns to lead the way to the books. Luke and I follow.
The apartment is a spacious one-bedroom, with high windows looking out over West End. On both sides of the sitting room, the bookshelves reach the ceiling. From a quick look, I can see we’re going to be taking a lot. There are lots of hardcovers from Routledge, a couple of shelves of Faber poetry; the bottom shelves look full of artists’ monographs. There are also higgledy-piggledy piles of paperbacks everywhere. On the seat of a worn and disreputable armchair is a little orange soft-cover called Bell-Ringing: The English Art of Change-Ringing. Next to the chair is a table with a reading lamp and a pair of glasses. Luke regards it all.
“You are a reader, ma’am,” he says.
“Yes I am. Always have been.”
Luke moves forward to get a better look. Mrs. Kasperek says, “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“No,” says Luke. It bothers me that he doesn’t add a “thank you.”
“But for you—Esme, is it? You would like some tea. Wouldn’t you?”
I am particular about tea, and I have apprehensions that she is going to ferret out some Lipton’s tea dust that is past its sell-by date, but I say yes because Luke said no.
Mrs. Kasperek hurries past me to her kitchen.
“Come and talk to me. I like to meet new people. Unless you have to help your friend?”
I look back at Luke. He is reaching high up for a slim volume and says, “Her boss, as a matter of fact. No, no, she can take it easy. We don’t like to overwork the pregnant staff.”
“My boss?” I say.
“Sure,” he says. He nods towards the kitchen and says, in a quieter tone, “Go keep her company.”
Mrs. K is opening a cupboard. There is an array of glass jars with handwritten labels.
“They’re all small, I don’t buy big,” she says. “I don’t want them to get stale.”
“Where do you get them all from?” I say. “I thought you would give me Lipton’s.”
She pulls a face that would not make the Lipton’s people happy.
“From McNulty’s. I take the local to Christopher Street. I like those guys. You know McNulty’s? They’ve got time. A lot of places don’t have time anymore. I like their Russian blend. We could have that. And I like the Nilgiri one, too. From the Nilgiri hills, in South India. It’s not so expensive, but it’s a nice tea. Do you want to try that?”
I say yes, and I watch as she goes about the painstaking business of good tea, fresh water drawn to start with. All the blue veins are visible beneath the taut skin on her hand as she fills the kettle.
I like the fact that Americans all have kettles on the hobs of their ovens; nobody has an electric kettle. It seems connected to the frontier way of life; whether you’re in a New York apartment building or you’re keeping the coyotes away on the prairie—you need boiling water? Then you need a flame.
She warms the teapot and measures out some teaspoons of tea. When it is brewing, she turns her attention from the pot to me, and says, “It’s hard for me, this day. Selling my books.”
“Why are you?” I ask.
“I’m selling up. My son fixed me up in assisted living. It’s a pretty nice place. I will be better off there. But there’s no room for my books.”
“You do have a lot,” I say.
“I know. But I never really got into the library thing. I always liked that I could put my hand on a book when I wanted it. And to kno
w I owned them; that was important too. It’s important to have a copy of Shakespeare, it’s important to . . . to have Churchill, on the war.” She considers me. “Both Englishmen. You’ve got a pretty good country there.”
I don’t think I can quite take credit for Shakespeare and Churchill, but say, inanely, that I like England. We taste the tea. It’s great.
“I’m definitely going to pay a visit to McNulty’s,” I say. “Mrs. Kasperek—how did you know I was pregnant? Did George—Mr. Goodman tell you over the phone?”
“No, no. I always have been able to tell. Sometimes I can sense the sex too, but I never tell. I think a baby should get to surprise you when it arrives.”
“Could you sense the sex with me, with mine?”
She nods, her lips firmly closed.
I put my hand on my belly. I was looking forward to finding out the sex, at the five-month scan, but the idea that I am spoiling the surprise is a powerful one. I might let my baby surprise me.
We take our tea back into the sitting room and watch Luke, who is deforesting the shelves steadily.
Mrs. Kasperek stands in the middle of the room and watches in silence. Luke is not leaving many, just a few old travel guides, battered cookbooks, and some hardcover fiction that nobody reads now. The old lady’s arms are by her sides. Sometimes she reads the title of the topmost book of a pile Luke is holding, before it is slipped into a bag.
“The Walter Cronkite is signed,” Mrs. Kasperek says, as it joins the rest.
“Dedicated,” says Luke. “To Winifred K from Walter C. Is that to you, Mrs. Kasperek?”
“Yes. ‘Walter C.’ I thought a lot of Cronkite.” She stands pensively for a few seconds, and then walks off towards her bedroom.
Luke calls out to her; “Do you want to keep it—his book?”
There is no answer. Luke jerks his head at me to indicate I should go in the bedroom. I go towards it cautiously and peep through the doorway. Mrs. Kasperek is sitting on her bed, staring straight at the wall, and evidently not seeing it. Her blue eyes are focused on the past, on the book signing decades ago, maybe. It is a high old bed, the kind that you can keep things under, and she is small enough that her feet, sticking out on thin ankles from her trousers, do not touch the ground.
“Luke wants to know if you would like to keep the Cronkite,” I say, trying to be gentle. “Since it is signed for you?”
“Do you know who he was?”
I do not really know. “Was he a historian?” I say.
She shakes her head. “He was a newsman. He was the man who told everyone that Kennedy had been shot. On CBS. He was upset.”
Luke is in the doorway. “I’ve seen the footage,” he says. “He took off his glasses when he had to say that Kennedy was dead.”
Mrs. K nods, and looks long at Luke.
“These books . . . ,” she begins, and stops. I am frightened; for her, for myself decades from now, struggling to retain dignity with two strangers as they take away my books. I can see the straight line to her grave, to mine.
“I know, ma’am,” Luke is saying.
“They are all my life. These books are all my life.”
She looks out of the window. I can see the muscles of her face that are clamping her jaw. I know the action so well that it makes tears well in me too. She doesn’t speak. Luke stands still in the doorway; he doesn’t speak either. The silence goes on, and it is unendurable. It is the silence of the empty shelves, of the shutting down of a mind’s exploring.
“Don’t get rid of them all!” I say. “Keep your favorites. Keep the Walter Cronkite and the Churchill set. And the poetry and the Shakespeare. And the one you were reading.”
“You’re a good girl. A good girl. No, I don’t want to keep any. Let them all go.”
I don’t see why she has to let them all go.
Luke then offers her what seems to me a lot of money—hundreds of dollars. Mrs. K nods listlessly, and Luke pulls a great roll of dollars out of his pocket, counts them out, and gives them to the old lady.
We have dozens of bags of books to move out. We stack them all in the corridor to begin with. When we’ve finished we go back in. Mrs. Kasperek is still on the bed.
“The assisted-living place is still in New York?” I ask.
She focuses on me with a little difficulty. “Yes, it’s right here on Tenth. He might be able to make me give away my books, but nobody can make me leave New York City.”
“Then—buy some more. Buy new books. Buy better books. You’d be hard-pushed to buy better ones than these, I suppose, but you could try. You could enjoy yourself trying. And Barnes and Noble still isn’t far away.”
Mrs. Kasperek breaks into a chuckle. I look behind me. Luke is standing with his eyebrows up to his hairline.
“Barnes and Noble?” he says. “You don’t think maybe The Owl?”
“Oh, I forgot about The Owl. But at The Owl, Luke, she would see the outrageous markup George will put on all the books you’re buying from her.”
“That’s true,” says Luke, reflectively. “Maybe you should stick with Barnes and Noble, Mrs. Kasperek . . .”
Mrs. K spreads her hands. “Business is business,” she says. “I don’t blame a man for that.”
Luke shakes her hand again. “Good-bye, ma’am. It’s been a pleasure. I hope we will see you at The Owl, as Esme says.”
I turn to Mrs. Kasperek; this feels urgent to me. “Do you know what Caliban says when he wants to take away Prospero’s magic? ‘Remember, first to possess his books; for without them he’s but a sot.’ ”
Luke shakes his head at me, wanting me to leave it. Mrs. Kasperek says, “There comes a point when you don’t need the books, because they’re up here.” She taps her head. “Same with you. You don’t need a copy of The Tempest. Prospero’s in your head. Lucky girl.”
“All right,” I say. “Okay, I’ll stop.”
“You love the father?” Mrs. Kasperek says.
I stare.
“The baby’s father?” she repeats. “You love him? Because that’s all that matters in this world. At my age, I know some things, and I know that. So make sure you love him. Because nothing else is worth a red cent.”
I glance at Luke. He is already looking at me.
“Yes,” I say, “I do.”
She is looking from me to Luke. A false light dawns:
“Oh! You are the father!” she says to Luke. She strikes her knee with her palm, in exasperation that she didn’t see this before.
“No, ma’am, I am not,” answers Luke. He injects profound thankfulness into his voice. The old lady shakes her head.
“I thought you two were kind of a good fit.”
“But thank you, Luke,” I say. “That was very courteous of you.”
I hold my hand out to Mrs. Kasperek. “Good-bye,” I say. “We’ll see ourselves out.”
I glance back as I am pulling the door shut. I can see Mrs. Kasperek on her bed, in the apartment denuded of the books that were all her life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We are in a restaurant on Columbus Circle for lunch, exquisite in every particular, high above the city. It is so exquisite that I am subject to the now-usual sense that I do not match up—that this is the kind of New York that demands finish, and I am not finished. Their menu says that they don’t want to impress me (oh, come now) but they do want to cook for me and make me happy. I am about to say something about this, when Mitchell says, “We’re here to celebrate. I’ve just been offered a job.”
“A job? What do you mean? What’s wrong with the one you’ve got?”
“Nothing. But this one is at Berkeley. How does that sound?”
As I look at him, it is borne in on me that I am now joined to another person’s will and desire. That in loving him, and meaning it, I might have to forswear so much I also love.
I spread upon my lap the heavy linen napkin that was probably embroidered by Andalusian Carmelites, smoothing out its ironed lines. I am much sadder at the
sudden possibility of giving up the bookshop than I am about Columbia.
“It sounds amazing,” I say. “Honestly—that’s impressive.”
“Thanks. Don’t look so stunned. These things happen when you’re an up-and-coming young professor . . . I told my mother about it today. They’re just back from Paris. She said that if I was pleased, then she was pleased for me, but perhaps I should find out if there were any positions at Oxford or Harvard that I could think about. Isn’t she a peach?”
“Berkeley doesn’t cut the mustard for her?” I ask.
“Oh, it’s not that. If I’d been offered Oxford, she would have wondered why I couldn’t manage to get a job at Cambridge.”
“But what does it mean, to be offered this?”
He beams at me. “Shall we order a single glass of champagne? Not a bottle, this time.”
I nod. Oh, I will get another mouthful.
He calls the waiter over and orders it.
“It’s a great department,” he says.
I am a person. I am not an adjunct. “Mitchell, I—”
“We could live in Marin County. I love Marin.”
“But, Mitchell—”
“Wherever we live, though, Esme, you will be able to concentrate a lot more on fitness and diet than you do at present. Running each morning, of course, but I think beach volleyball would also be a good choice. I bet you can find a group of other pregnant women who play it too.”
“Beach volleyball?” I don’t so much say this as echo it faintly. “You know, it might be rats for Winston Smith, but I think that for me it would be beach volleyball.”
“Esme. I am turning it down. I am just teasing you. I mean, yes, it is pretty fine to be offered this, but it isn’t what I want. It’s very much a sideways move, so it wouldn’t look like I was such a smart player. I am playing the long game.”
“But then, why did you apply?”
“I didn’t. I was asked.” He smiles. “And then, you’re at Columbia. If you wouldn’t come with me, that’s a heck of a commute. You need to trust me more, Esme. You are not a trusting person. Now, you won’t mind meeting all my people at this party? My family and everyone? Uncle Beeky will be there, so that’s good.”
The Bookstore Page 18
