The Bookstore

by Deborah Meyler

  “Yes.”

  “It is spotting, or heavy?”

  “Heavier than spotting, but not—not very heavy.” It is difficult to judge, to separate reality from fear.

  “Ah. Hold please.”

  I hold, and look at the bookshelves, and do not think.

  “My secretary is calling the hospital now, and arranges you to have a sonogram. My secretary will call you back when this is arranged. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do not worry too much, Miss Garland. Bleeding is in the first trimester very normal. There are many reasons, and often it means nothing to have bleeding.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “But—when you have had the sonogram, please call me again, Miss Garland, and we will proceed from where we are.”

  I stay in the chair. The Wizard of Oz books are all opposite, in a locked glass case. I wait.

  My phone rings—it is the secretary, I can go immediately to the hospital for the sonogram.

  I call Mitchell. His phone goes to voice mail, so I leave him a message and send a text. And then another so he will see I am in a panic. I get my stuff and come back up to the front of the shop.

  “We’re on Anita Ekberg,” says Luke.

  “We went a bit wild when you left,” says Bruce, grinning as if they’ve all been naughty.

  I turn to George. “I have to go,” I say, “I—I have an appointment at the hospital.”

  George’s frown comes quickly. “Is it anything serious?”

  “No, they just want to check up on me. It’s all right. I’m fine. I am sorry to be just walking out of my shift, though.”

  George waves that aside. “Do you want company? You shouldn’t go on your own—”

  I pretend to be impatient. “No, no, really, it’s just a straightforward thing. I—”

  It occurs to me that I should say that I forgot about the appointment, or they’ve changed the date of it, but I am not up for any of that. I just want to be allowed to go without fuss. Perhaps George can see that, perhaps he can’t, but at any rate, he nods, says, “I’ll get you a cab,” and strides outside.

  I pick up my bag and follow him out. The men are quiet. DeeMo strolls up as I wait on the pavement.

  “What’s happening?” he asks.

  I tell him where I am going, and he asks me if anything is wrong. I say nothing is wrong. George gets me a cab, and as I get in it and tell the driver where I’m going, DeeMo gets in the other side.

  “I’ll come for the ride,” he says. The cab driver looks round at me fast, his eyebrows raised, and I say it is fine.

  “Did I ever tell you what first got me in trouble?” DeeMo says. I shake my head. “I was sixteen and I owed these guys some money. So a brother gave me a gun.”

  “That wasn’t very responsible of your brother.”

  “And I went into the bank, to a teller, and pointed it at her, and I robbed the bank.”

  I look over at him. He’s looking out of the other window. “How could you do that to someone, DeeMo? She must have been scared out of her wits.”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt her.”

  “She didn’t know that.”

  “No, and the judge didn’t know either.”

  “Were you wearing a stocking over your head?” I cannot imagine the terror that woman must have felt.

  “No, a ski mask.” DeeMo starts chuckling. “That’s where I went wrong, man. She gave me this money, but no bag. She said she didn’t have a big bag, just those little bags for nickels and dimes and shit. So I get a shopping bag from this woman in the line, and fill it with the money, and run out, and ten yards outside the bank it fucking breaks, and the money’s all over the sidewalk, so I take off the ski mask and stuff the money in there. And there’s hundreds of dollars falling out of the face part, and I’m trying to run away, and I’m leaving a paper trail of bills . . . you laughing? This ain’t a funny story, no, ma’am.”

  “So how did you get caught?”

  “I stopped to pick up some of the money, and a cop shot me in the leg. Oh, yeah, that’s funny too. A white man shoots a black man and the white girl laughs. You racist?”

  “Yes, that’s why I’m laughing. And so you got put in prison?”

  DeeMo nods. “Yep,” he says. “That was the first time.”

  “What did people do on the street, do you remember? Were they scared, screaming?”

  “This was the South Bronx twenty years ago, girl. Mostly the other folks on the street, they was bank robbers too.”

  The driver pulls over and announces that we are there, and my fear floods back. I pay the cab fare, and DeeMo hops out of his side and opens my door.

  “You’ll be okay,” he says, as I get out. “I say a prayer for you.”

  “Thank you, DeeMo,” I say. I give him five dollars, so he can get a bus back to The Owl. “And thanks for the story.”

  He shrugs. “Don’t matter,” he says, and saunters away downtown.

  IN THE VAST reception hall of the hospital, I can feel more blood leaking out. It might feel like more than it is. I never wanted to read anything about it all going wrong—that’s why I don’t go near any sites or blogs about pregnancy. There’s no news in someone being delivered of a bouncing baby boy, so the stories are the ones that grip your heart, about the seventh miscarriage, the maternal grief, the stillborn.

  The blood might mean nothing, or everything. I can’t think of this, or I will not be able to function. I must keep calm. If there is a chance of that tiny heart still beating, I must keep my own heart stable. I must be the eternal measure, like a grandfather clock in an old house.

  First, they take blood tests. Then they direct me to the sonogram suite, where I am told to sit and wait. The girl at the desk reads my notes and gives me a sweet, sad smile.

  There are about ten couples waiting already. I sit down. I am worried in case I bleed on the chair, because it is upholstered, so I get up again.

  As I stand there, someone shouts out, “Miss! Miss! You’re bleeding! There’s blood on the carpet!”

  I look. There is one red spot.

  The red spot means I get to jump the queue.

  I lie on an examining couch in the darkened room. The sonographer says we are waiting for a doctor and a trainee doctor, and is that all right. Yes, it is. We wait for a few minutes, and I look at the sonographer, who is making adjustments to her screen. I do not believe they are real adjustments. The doctor and trainee arrive in a bustle of white coats and officialdom.

  “Sorry about the slight wait there—you’re Esme Garland? Barratt James, and this is Colene Smith, she’s training. You’re having some first-trimester bleeding?”

  I say that I am.

  “Okay. We’ll have a look at you. Your bloods are in, and they are normal. What would we be looking at in the blood test, Colene?”

  “Progesterone levels?”

  “Exactly, and they’re fine.”

  Then he examines me, and frowns. “It is quite heavy.”

  “I know.”

  “Any pain?”

  “No!” I say, seizing on this with extravagant hope. “No pain at all. Wouldn’t there be pain, if—if . . .”

  “Not necessarily.” He nods at the sonographer, and she gets out a little stethoscope thing attached to her computer, sticks it on my tummy, and turns a switch. The sound of a baby’s heart, fast and insistent, fills the room.

  I dig my nails into my palms as hard as I can.

  I can see shapes flickering on the screen now. It is again that mass of alien tubes and movements. Movements must be good. Movements and heartbeats must be good.

  The sonographer makes her measurements in silence, then leans back and looks straight at me. “It all looks fine to me.”

  “It is looking fairly positive, but I am afraid the bleeding is more than just spotting. Miss Garland, I am sure,” says the doctor mistakenly, “that you want me to tell you what is on my mind. There are times early in a pregnancy where
a kind of genetic mismatch means that a miscarriage may occur. That’s one of the main causes of heavy first-trimester bleeding.”

  “Is there?” I whisper. “Is there a genetic mismatch?”

  “No, I don’t know—I mean that if the bleeding continues, and you experience fetal demise, that will probably be why. If it does happen, there is no reason why you shouldn’t have perfectly normal pregnancies in the future.”

  “That’s true,” chimes in the other one, the trainee. “You should look on the bright side. Many people never get this far.”

  I nod, because I can’t speak. I wish I had someone here, to answer for me when I feel too sad to be polite. I turn my face to the wall.

  Outside the hospital, I raise my hand slowly and carefully, and a cab slides over to me. I ask him if he can drive slowly and carefully back to my apartment. He can, he does.

  At home, I call Dr. Sokolowski. He comes to the phone again immediately.

  “Miss Garland, I have e-mail that the tests were all good. Thank you for calling me. I think that you ought to go to bed.”

  “I am in bed.”

  “Excellent. Is there still bleeding?”

  “Yes.”

  A little silence again. I imagine that he has walked over to his window, to dolefully regard the rooftops once more. “There is a chance that you will miscarry, my dear. You must be ready.”

  He waits. I say nothing. He comes back, brisker.

  “There is also a chance that you will not. My advice, if it is possible to take, is to spend two, three days in bed, monitor the bleeding, and people should be there to look after you. You have people who can be there, someone who can always be there? That is important.”

  I don’t want Dr. Sokolowski to be any sadder than he already is, so I say, “Yes. Yes, I have people. Thank you, doctor.”

  Mitchell calls me back and asks what happened. I tell him about the bleeding and the hospital. He asks what the bleeding means.

  “The doctors say I might—I might—that it might—”

  Why can’t we say what we fear? As if saying the word catches the specter of something and makes it solid. As if we all believe in magic.

  “Where are you?” I say. “I need you.” The words are out before I can think.

  “I’m in a meeting in five minutes, and after that I am teaching again. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  I lie back on the pillows, feeling diminished. That will teach me.

  I should think about organizing people to help me, if I am going to retreat to bed for days, like John and Yoko.

  Almost as soon as I go to bed, I feel a dissociation from New York. Before, I’ve always felt that I fitted in—running to catch the subway train, hurrying to get a coffee that I drink as I walk, striding down Broadway to reach work on the hour, hurtling through Columbia corridors to get to lectures on time, meeting people for breakfast or at two A.M. in a diner because that’s the only time they can see you between classes and waitressing, flinging up a hand to call a cab, praying that it doesn’t get stuck in traffic, promising you will be at this gallery opening at eight, that bar for drinks at nine—needing, like everyone else, to get there now, ten minutes ago, yesterday. And the hurrying isn’t necessary—it’s just that you can hear the soundtrack to the startling new movie of your life, and this is New York, and so you run and run and run.

  But now there is the blood, and so I draw down the blinds and I am still.

  I will try to sleep, that balm of hurt minds.

  I wake up again after two hours—it is three in the afternoon. Even with the blinds down, the room is light—the winter sunlight is shining through the pink petals of the carnations I bought the other day, the very cheapest the Koreans had. I can’t see the flowers, just their pink shadows on the blind.

  I am not in pain. I lie as still as I can. I try to make myself into a cup, a cradle. I try to be gentle and strong and make space inside myself for it to be, to live. I try to hold my baby in life by flooding love at it. A long time passes, and that is all that happens.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The buzzer goes. Mitchell. I get up, still trying to keep this calm fluidity. With the movement, I feel more blood spill. I press the button to let him in, but after a few seconds, it goes again. This time I press the intercom.

  “Mitchell?”

  “Er, no. It’s Luke.”

  “Oh,” I say, brightly. “Well, I’ll buzz you in.”

  I look around the apartment. It is reasonably tidy. There is no underwear, no unwashed teacup. I am not dressed, but there is no way that the sight of a miserable pregnant girl in Marks and Spencer pajamas will inflame the dormant passions of Luke, so I stay as I am. How very odd, that Luke should ever be in my apartment.

  When he gets here, he stops on the threshold. He says, “George sent me. He was worried about you. He thought everything you said back there was ‘British restraint.’ ”

  “Come in,” I say.

  He hangs back. “Yeah—no. I’d better get back to work. You seem fine to me.”

  It is three o’clock in the afternoon, and I am wearing pajamas printed with large cupcakes.

  “I just called in because of George—we—he couldn’t get you on the phone. I don’t want to bother you—”

  “Luke, there was some bleeding.”

  He looks absolutely petrified. If I wasn’t so frightened myself it would make me laugh. He looks very scared indeed that I might mention tampons, or placentas. Thinking so reminds me that I don’t have any sanitary napkins left—I am making my own out of toilet paper. I consider. Asking Luke to get them is clearly a very bad idea. Aside from how embarrassed he would be, it is just too intimate a request. But on the other hand, half the population bleeds; we shouldn’t be so squeamish. And I need them. I ask him.

  His expression is similar to the British at the end of Zulu. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll go now. Any—any particular kind?”

  I shake my head. “No, any will be fine. Except—try not to get scented ones. They make me sneeze.”

  He comes back about ten minutes later, looking, if it is possible, even more deadpan. He hands me a Duane Reade bag.

  “Did it go smoothly?” I ask, politely.

  “No,” he says. “I wanted to be sure not to get the scented kind, so I did what any sensible person would do.”

  “You read the label?”

  “I sniffed the packets.” He holds his nose to do an impression of a loudspeaker: “ ‘Security in aisle three, security in aisle three!’ That is definitely a store I can’t go back to.” The deadpan look cracks into a grin, just for a second. “I’m real glad you think it’s funny.”

  I do.

  “That looks healthy,” I say, nodding at the brown McDonald’s bag in his hand. There is another paper bag too; that’s probably a bottle of beer.

  “Yeah. If some researcher ever finds out that beer and McDonald’s food are bad for a person, I’m screwed.” He is looking at me with a concerned air. “What is going on? What did they tell you at the hospital?”

  I explain that everything might be all right, that I have heard the heartbeat, but also what the doctors say about the chance of miscarriage.

  “It’s good about the heartbeat. So you should be in bed.”

  “Yes—I was, they say that, that I should stay in bed.”

  He is backing away. “Get back in bed. I’ll see myself out. Go.”

  I do get back in bed. I feel self-conscious, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is holding on to the one strand of hope that Dr. Sokolowski gave to me.

  I hear him open the door, and he calls out for me to take care. I call back, “Thank you.” The apartment door does not shut. He says, “Esme?” and then appears at the door of the bedroom. I am lying with the quilt up to my chin. “Have you had anything to eat? Since you noticed the—the problem?”

  “No. I’m not hungry.”

  He spreads his hands. “I’m not a doctor, but I would have said trying to keep everyt
hing normal would be good—eating right’s gotta be important. Can I go get you something?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He sits down on the little chair just inside the door.

  “Honey, you’re not so very fine. I’m gonna go out and buy you some food, so you can either tell me what you would like, or I’ll get you something I’d like.” He waggles his McDonald’s bag at me. It smells wonderful. It is tempting to ask him just to give me that, but it might be true that they are made of cows’ eyelashes.

  “I have some things in the fridge. You don’t have to go out. Could you—if you don’t mind—would you make me a sandwich? I’ve got bagels, and mozzarella, and rocket.”

  “Sure.” He’s getting up to go to the kitchen.

  “And I have some cans of V8, can I have one of those? Would you like one too?”

  “No, I’m okay with Sam Adams.”

  “And will you eat your lunch with me?”

  “I guess—if you want me to . . .”

  I smile at him to show him I do. Perhaps he can see from the smile how scared I am, because he stops looking awkward and embarrassed to be there, and just looks at me from the doorway. I want to say to him that I don’t want to lose my baby. It is obvious, of course, but I want to tell him, I want to say something honest to him. I have not been honest to Luke, hiding things about Mitchell. If I can say this, it will be nakedly honest. But I can’t say it. I can’t say “lose” and “my baby” in the same sentence. The mystic power of words is too strong, I can’t risk it.

  “Oh, Luke,” I say, instead.

  “I know,” he says, softly, like he said to Mrs. Kasperek, grieving for her books. “I know. There’s a good heartbeat. It will be okay.”

  I nod, and smile, because he wants me to.

  He comes back in with the lunch on my floral Laura Ashley tray. He does not look like he belongs in my apartment. I sit up. I am hungry. He has his beer but no burger.

  “Where’s yours?

  “I ate it while I was fixing your bagel. They lose some of their culinary delicacy when they get cold.”

  “You’ve been working with George too long.”

  “I know it.”

  I drink some of the V8. It was nice of Luke, to realize that I needed some food. I had forgotten all the rest, in my fixation on keeping still.