The Bookseller(3)

“Take me to your father and Missy,” I say, grabbing the child’s soft, plump hand.


We walk down the hall and go up a half flight of stairs. At the top is a girl’s bedroom, with carnation-pink walls, a little white wooden bed, and a low bookcase filled with picture books and stuffed animals. Sitting upright in the bed is an equally angelic child, a female version of the boy who holds my hand. Her expression is forlorn and her cheeks are flushed. She is about the same size as the boy. I am terrible at deciphering children’s ages, but I’d guess they are around five or six. Twins?

“Mama’s here!” Cherub Boy says, climbing onto the bed. “Missy, Mama’s here and you’re going to be fine.”

Missy whimpers. I sit next to her and touch her forehead, which feels distressingly warm under my hand. “What hurts?” I ask her gently.

She leans toward me. “Everything, Mama,” she says. “My head especially.”

“Did Daddy take your temp?” I can’t believe how easily these words, these motherly actions, are coming to me. I feel like an old pro.

“Yeah, he’s washing the ther-mon-eter.”

“Thermometer,” Cherub Boy corrects her. “It’s a ther-MOM-eter. Not a ther-MON-eter.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Mind your own beeswax, Mitch.”

Lars appears in the doorway. “One hundred one-point-six,” he reports.

I am unsure what that means. Oh, I know it means her temperature is 101.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But I do not know what it means in terms of medication, bed rest, staying home from school.

Because I do not have children. I am not a mother.


I don’t mean to imply that I never wanted children. Quite the contrary. I was one of those little girls who loved baby dolls, who fed them pretend bottles and changed their pretend diapers and pushed them around in a tiny doll-size pram. An only child, I begged my parents for a sibling—not because I wanted to be a big sister, but because I wanted to be a little mother to somebody.

For a long time I thought I’d marry Kevin, my steady during college. He left for the Pacific theater in ’43, along with just about every other young man who hadn’t already gone. I remained faithful to him—girls in those days did that, remained faithful. Kevin and I exchanged letter after letter. I sent him care packages of cookies, socks, shaving soap. In my sorority house, we stuck thumbtacks on a map of the South Pacific, marking our soldier boys’ progress. “It’s hard to wait, but it will be worth it when they’re home,” we girls told each other. We sobbed into our hankies when we got word that someone’s fellow wasn’t coming back. But we also sent a little silent prayer of gratitude to heaven that it wasn’t our fellow, not this time.

Much to my relief, Kevin returned from the war intact and seemingly unchanged, eager to resume his studies as a premed student and attain his goal of becoming a doctor. We continued dating, but he never did pop the question. We were invited to wedding after wedding, where everyone asked when it would be our turn. “Oh, you know, someday!” I’d say, my tone overly gay and nonchalant. Kevin simply changed the subject whenever it came up.

Year after year passed. Kevin finished medical school and began his residency; I worked as a fifth-grade teacher. But as far as our relationship went, one year was as static as the next. Finally I knew I could no longer put off an ultimatum. I told Kevin that unless he wanted to make our relationship permanent, I was through.

He sighed heavily. “That’s probably for the best,” he said. His good-bye kiss was brief, perfunctory. Not a year later, I heard he’d married a nurse from the hospital where he worked.


Well, clearly, in this dream world, none of that—those wasted years, Kevin’s callous rejection—matters at all. In this world, I landed myself a winner somewhere along the line. Good for you, Kitty, I can hear my Delta Zeta sisters congratulating me. Good for you.

The thought strikes me as absurd, and I stifle a laugh. Then I put my hand to my mouth, mortified. This is a dream; nonetheless, there is a sick child here. I ought to behave appropriately. I ought to be suitably, maternally troubled.

I look up from Missy’s bed, and my eyes meet Lars’s. He’s staring at me with admiration and—could I be reading this correctly?—desire in his eyes. Do married people truly look at each other this way? Even in the middle of a kid-has-a-fever crisis?

“What do you say?” Lars asks me. “You always know what to do when these things happen, Katharyn.”

Do I? How interesting this dream is. I glance out the window at what appears to be a winter morning, the windowpane frosty and snow falling lightly.

And then, suddenly, though I cannot explain it, I do know exactly what to do. I rise and walk across the hall to the bathroom. I know precisely where on the medicine cabinet shelf I will find the tiny plastic bottle of St. Joseph’s Aspirin for Children. I pull a paper cup from the dispenser attached to the wall and run a bit of cool water into it. Opening the bathroom’s linen closet, I remove a facecloth, hold it under cold water, and squeeze it out.

Walking purposefully, I carry the medicine bottle, facecloth, and cup to Missy’s room. I apply the cloth to her forehead, gently pressing it against her warm skin. I hand her two aspirin tablets; these she swallows dutifully, using the water to chase them down. She smiles gratefully at me and leans back against her pillow.