The Bookseller(59)
As I’m working, I see Frieda walking up the street toward the house. She’s arriving unannounced, but this doesn’t surprise me. She knew I’d be cleaning over here today, and even on our days off, we are often together for at least part of the day. I lean out the window and call her name when she gets closer; she waves and her gait accelerates as she steps from the sidewalk up the walkway to the house. I leave my post to greet her.
“How are you, sister?” I reach up to give her a tight squeeze around the shoulders.
“Swell,” she says, returning my hug, then releasing me after a moment. “I’m enjoying the clouds, actually. Isn’t it funny how that’s a nice change of pace after so many sunny days?” With nary a pause, she says, “Look, I bought the most perfect apples in the world.” She fishes in her large, gray leather handbag and draws out two red-green apples. “Did you ever see anything so divine?”
I shake my head. “Gorgeous.” She hands one to me, and we sit side by side on the sofa to enjoy them.
“All ready for the big homecoming?” Frieda asks.
I smile. “How pitiful is that?” I ask. “I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’m excited that my parents are finally coming home from vacation.”
She shrugs. “I don’t think it’s pitiful. I think it’s rather nice, actually.”
Frieda is not as close to her parents as I am to mine. It’s not that she’s had any sort of falling-out with Margie and Lou; it’s more that she doesn’t have a good deal in common with them. Margie never understood Frieda’s drive to be a businesswoman. She was disappointed that Frieda never made a “proper marriage” with some eligible, well-heeled young man in Denver society; many have asked Frieda out over the years, and Frieda’s parents would have welcomed any of those fellows into their family. “It’s not right,” Margie has said on more than one occasion. “A pretty girl like you, a girl with everything going for her, wasting away in a little shop like that.” She never says it directly, Margie, but you can tell she thinks it’s all right for me.
As for Lou, he’s much more interested in his sons and their families, especially the grandsons, than in Frieda’s bookish world. Lou played football in college and was even second string for the Bears, Denver’s first professional football team, before quitting professional sports and becoming a businessman. At family gatherings, you’ll most likely find him out in the yard, throwing a ball with the boys. Frieda’s life, which centers mostly on the shop, books, and me, makes little sense to him. Frieda has on more than one occasion attempted to merge these two worlds by bringing him books about sports, fishing, or hunting; these, he politely thanks her for and promptly casts aside. Frieda has told me she later finds them carefully arranged on the bookshelf in her parents’ den, gathering dust.
Despite all that—there is their money. Without her parents’ money, Frieda and I would not be where we are today.
When we first opened Sisters’, my parents put up a small sum for us, more as a gesture than to make much difference financially, since their savings were meager. It was Frieda’s parents’ contribution that truly got us started. I remember the day we signed our loan paperwork, remember sitting in the bank next to Frieda, her father on the other side of her, the loan officer looming large over his desk in front of us. “So, Lou, you’re going to take a chance on these girls,” the bank man said. “You sure that’s a wise idea?” His mouth twitched playfully, but you could tell that he was only half joking; I was pretty sure that he didn’t think it was a wise idea at all.
Lou answered gruffly. “Wife agrees with you,” he told the man. “But let’s do this thing anyway.”
We pay our loan faithfully each month, although sometimes we’re late with the payment because of a simple lack of cash flow. We paid our parents back, Frieda’s and mine, as soon as we possibly could. After that, we never asked anyone for another dime. My parents didn’t have the money to spare, and Frieda’s—well, their money made her uncomfortable. She would have much preferred, if there’d been any way to do it, for us to get started all on our own. “Just this once,” I remember her hissing as we left the bank the day we got the loan, her father and the banker shaking hands behind us. “Just this once, Kitty. Never again.”
There was a time, a few years ago, when we were getting into a bit of hot water with the bookstore’s finances. It was shortly after the bus line left; we saw a sharp decline in business and mounting debt. I remember that I asked Frieda if she’d be willing to ask her parents for another loan, and she shook her head. “We’ll figure out something else,” she’d said firmly. “We’ll have to.”
Take it as coincidence or destiny, I don’t know—but soon after, my maternal grandfather died, leaving a thousand dollars to each of his grandchildren, including me. That money kept Sisters’ afloat, allowing us to catch up on the loan and pay Bradley the two months’ rent we owed him. We reorganized our stock, ran a few advertisements in the local papers, and also had a bit of random luck—a sandwich shop opened a few doors down from us, and a full-service restaurant on the next block. Those establishments brought in new customers, some of whom became regulars. Fortunately, we were able to stay in business.
My small inheritance also kept Frieda from having to ask her parents for money. She was grateful for this, I know. “Anything I can do to keep from being indebted to them,” she told me. “Anything is a help.” Across the countertop at Sisters’, she’d taken my hand and held it tightly, massaging my fingers between her own. “Thank you, Kitty,” she’d said.