The Bookseller (23 page)

I
floated home from the doctor's office. My mind was reeling with excitement. Twins! How lucky could we be? To have met each other so late in life—when both of us had, for all intents and purposes, given up on ever finding a mate. To almost
not
have met, had we not stayed on the telephone long enough for me to hear his emergency and rescue him. To find ourselves so compatible, to fall in love so rapidly. To marry so quickly, to start a family so soon. And now this! It could not be more perfect.

I was convinced it was a boy and a girl.

I was still working at Sisters' in those days, of course, but I telephoned Frieda and told her the appointment had worn me out and I had gone home to rest. Of course, I did not tell her the news that there were two babies. I was dying to, but that was Lars's to hear first, not Frieda's.

Back home, in the kitchen of our small apartment, I made a batch of white cake batter, which I separated into two bowls. I dyed one with a few drops of red food coloring, turning it pink; the other, I dyed baby blue. I poured them into two pans. When the cake layers had cooled, I stacked them and frosted the entire thing generously with white icing.

I prepared dinner: salad with garden-fresh vegetables, pork chops stuffed with bread crumbs and spinach, and mashed potatoes. After dinner, I brought out the cake. “Slice into it,” I said to Lars. “It will tell you if we're having a boy or a girl.”

Lars gave me a quizzical look. “I thought you went to the doctor today, not a fortune-teller.” Nonetheless, he smiled and took up the knife. I watched his face carefully as he pulled a slice from the cake, then looked at me in confusion.

“Congratulations, Papa,” I said. “We're having twins!”

He laughed and shook his head. “Amazing.” He pulled me onto his lap, my big belly protruding between us. “And how, my beautiful wife, do you know for sure that it's not two boys? Or two girls?”

I smiled. “I just know. It's here.” I tapped my heart. And then I put my hand on his chest and whispered, “Here, too.”

I
wish I could remember Frieda's reaction to the news that I was having twins. I am sure that would speak volumes about where we are now. But I cannot remember what she said. I do remember that before the big news, back when we thought it was only one baby, I had planned to bring my infant to Sisters' with me while it was small. Frieda, as I recall, thought that would be fine. I had it all pictured in my mind: a cradle in the corner, where the baby would sleep peacefully while Frieda and I tended our shop. “Once he or she is more active, I'll hire a babysitter,” I'd assured
Frieda. “It will be fine. Everything here will stay the same as always.”

She'd nodded. “I'm glad.” She squeezed my hand. “Don't leave me, sister. Don't abandon me.”

“Never,” I told her firmly. “We'll work it out.”

“I'll help you find someone, when the time comes,” she offered. “With all my parents' connections . . . You want someone really qualified, Kitty. Someone competent, someone you can trust. I'll help. I want you to be sure of what you're doing.”

I'd nodded gratefully. “That would be wonderful, Frieda. Thank you.”

Yes. That conversation, I remember well.

After pronouncing me expectant with twins, Dr. Silver warned me against working too hard. He convinced me to cut back my hours at the shop to mornings only. I promised Frieda that I would be back full-time as soon as possible. With two babies, it seemed impractical to bring them to the shop, but we would simply accelerate the hiring of a babysitter.

Because of this promise, Frieda was not overly upset when the doctor put me on bed rest at twenty-eight weeks' gestation. It was not a strict bed rest; although I could not leave our apartment, I was permitted to get up from the bed in the morning and go to the couch. I could take occasional small walks from room to room, just to stretch my legs, and I was allowed to fix myself lunch, if I were alone.

But I was rarely alone. My mother was there almost every day. Taking care of me, preparing my meals, keeping me company. I remember thanking her almost daily for this, and I specifically remember her reaction: “No thanks are needed, sweetheart. What mother wouldn't do this? What do you think I've been waiting for all these years? At last I'm going to be a grandmother!”

Lars's return from work every evening brought kisses, smiles, and often flowers. He frequently brought me novels or paperback books of crossword puzzles, something to keep me occupied. He called a dozen times a day, just to check up on me. “Just to hear your voice,” he'd tell me over the line.

Aslan, dear Aslan, was my companion at all times, purring contently beside me. “If Aslan had his way,” I'd joked to Lars and my mother. “I'd stay on this couch gestating babies forever.”

Did Frieda visit my couch-prison? I cannot recall ever seeing her there—although of course she must have made an appearance every now and then. How often? I have no idea.

I
pored over baby-name books, and every night Lars and I would consult on the subject. I refused to select more than one girl name and one boy name, so sure was I that the babies would be what I thought they were. After much discussion, we agreed on Mitchell Jon and Melissa Claire. Mitchell's middle name was after Lars's father, and Melissa's middle name was after my mother. We'd call them Mitch and Missy.

Despite my best efforts to carry those babies to term, I made it to only thirty-four weeks—just over seven and a half months. On the evening of November 12, as I lay on the couch watching television with Lars, I felt warm water rushing from my body. And then I felt the first painful contraction.

“Lars, the babies . . . I think they're coming,” I gasped.

“They can't come!” he said. I could hear panic in his normally calm voice. “It's too soon.”

I shrugged. I even laughed. “Tell
them
that.”

At the hospital, we were told that the babies would need to be born via cesarean section. “They would not survive a natural birth,” Dr. Silver told Lars and me sternly.

I tried to tell myself rationally that the doctor didn't mean to sound as if he were scolding me—but that is exactly how he sounded.

I
remember Lars holding my hand before I went into the operating room, then slowly releasing it as I was wheeled away. I remember the anesthesiologist, a kind-looking older man. “Count backward from ten, my dear,” he told me. I got to six, and that's the last thing I remember.

When I woke up, I was in a regular hospital room. My abdomen was on fire with pain, and I winced, turning my head and closing my eyes again. I opened them and saw Lars sitting at my bedside. I whispered feebly, “The babies—are they okay?”

He smiled wearily. “They're fine. They're in intensive care, because their lungs are small and they need some help breathing. But they're doing great, and the doctor thinks they'll be just fine.”

“And I was right, wasn't I? A boy and a girl?”

He shook his head. “You were
almost
right.”

“Almost? What does that mean?”

“A girl, my love. And a boy. And . . . a boy.”

I didn't say anything for a moment. I wasn't sure I understood what he meant. Then it started to sink in. “Are you saying it was . . .
triplets
?”

“Was and is. Yep. Triplets. The doctor thinks one was hiding behind the other two, which is why he only heard two heartbeats.” Lars let out a long breath, then took my hand. “So we have our Mitch and Missy. Now, what will we name that other fellow?”

L
ying on the bed in our green bedroom, I remember all of this as if it happened yesterday.

As if it
really
happened.

I think about Michael, and how he was always “that other fellow.”

The unintended one. Not expected at all, really.

And, once he was here, certainly not expected to be as he turned out.

W
hen I wake up, I am at home—if indeed you can call this home; this quiet apartment with the hopeful yellow walls and the false sense of serenity.

Is
it false? I think about this as I rise from the bed. A small part of me has started to wonder what is true and what is made up. It's beginning to seem impossible that something as real as the world I share with Lars and the children could actually be imaginary.

I shake off the thought and fix myself some brain-tidying coffee. It's Monday morning. Yesterday, thank goodness, the Soviets agreed to remove their nuclear weapons from Cuba, and the United States breathed a collective sigh of relief. I joined in the exhalation, of course; I walked over to Frieda's house, and we watched the rebroadcast of the news on her television set, sitting side by side on her couch and drinking black tea with honey and no cream. Frieda never has cream in the house, much to my aggravation.

“Thank the Lord,” Frieda said, chain-smoking Salems and barely touching her tea. “Thank the Lord.”

Despite the relief I share with the nation, it's true, what I said to Frieda in the middle of the night last week—I was never truly frightened about the Cuban situation. Perhaps it just seemed
too unbearable to fathom, that World War III could actually be about to start, and there wasn't a thing any of us could do about it. Or perhaps my mind is just too muddied these days by the peculiarity of my dream life, leaving me little room to think on a broader scope. Whatever the reason, I never thought the threat was as vast and imminent as everyone else seemed to believe. Turns out I was right.

As I drink my coffee, I consider this chain of events. I remember calling Frieda in the night; I remember her words of comfort. I remember, yesterday, hearing the news about Cuba and going to Frieda's house to watch television. But what of the days in between? I shake my head. I can recall nothing of these days. I have no idea what I did or who I spoke to or what I thought about.

Feeling a bit panicky, I gulp the last of my coffee. How can this be? I search my mind for recent memories, but none appear. I look in the dustbin for newspapers from last week, but all I can find is yesterday's
Post
, wrinkled and crumpled beneath a layer of bread crumbs and the wrapper from a Hershey's candy bar. I don't even remember eating a candy bar. When did this happen? Where was I, what was I doing, where did I buy a candy bar? It seems terribly important that I remember these details, but my mind is blank.

I need to gather my wits, I think as I go outside for my mail. There's a postcard from Mother—one that was obviously written well before the Cuban situation came to an end yesterday.

I shake my head. I adore my mother, and I love how anxious she is about me. But honestly, does she truly think I could just up and leave? Get on a plane and fly away from Frieda, the shop, Aslan, my entire life? It's a good thing the whole Cuban incident has blown over, making it a moot point.

Today is, luckily, my day off from work. I have planned to spend it opening my parents' house and airing it out. I will give it a good dusting, and I hope to have time to rake the leaves in their yard, too. I want everything to be perfect for them when they get home. With the Cuban situation resolved, there will be no change in plans; my parents will leave Honolulu on Wednesday night and arrive here on Thursday.

I put on old pedal pushers and a frayed denim blouse, tie my hair back with a kerchief, and retrieve my bicycle from the shed behind my duplex. It's a cool, cloudy day, and after crossing the Valley Highway on the Downing Street bridge, I ride up the slight hill, turn right, and pedal on Louisiana Avenue, along the southern edge of Washington Park—the park I went to with Michael in the dream life, a few dreams ago.

I ride past South High School, my alma mater. Its bell tower rises above the houses and trees, the clocks on each side displaying the eight o'clock hour. There is a low buzz of students making their
way into the building, starting their school day. They seem unusually subdued for so early an hour—a time, at least in my memory of high school, when everyone and everything was overflowing with noisy anticipation of the day ahead.

Deep in thought, I watch the students as I cycle past. As a student here—with characteristic teenage angst—I thought of the school as something like a torture chamber, designed specifically to heighten my suffering.
Nothing
ever goes my way, I would say to myself, more morose and downtrodden than any Dickensian character had ever been. Few boys noticed me, and I did not have a gaggle of girlfriends, the way so many of my female classmates seemed to. Even some of my teachers barely knew who I was. I remember one particularly embarrassing incident in which my algebra teacher, Miss Parker, mistakenly called on me in class using the name of the most unpopular girl in our grade, Melvina Jones, who was not even in the room at the time. Melvina was slovenly, overweight, wore glasses; add to those strikes a name like Melvina, and the poor girl was doomed to social failure. Unfortunately for me, Melvina also had curly strawberry blond hair, similar to my own. There was no mistaking it when the teacher looked directly at me and called Melvina's name. “Oh!” Miss Parker said quickly, realizing her error. “You're not Melvina. I meant Kitty . . . I'm sorry, Kitty. Would you answer question twelve on page ninety-eight? Come up to the board and show your work, please.” When I did so, my face flushed with embarrassment, Miss Parker smiled apologetically; I nodded submissively. But—as my classmates' mirth made all too clear—the damage had been done.