The Bookseller(60)

Now, at my parents’ house, I bite thoughtfully into my apple. Then I ask Frieda, “Do you remember me eating a candy bar yesterday? Or perhaps the day before?”

She shakes her head. “What are you talking about?”

“A Hershey’s bar.” I hear the urgency in my voice—idiotic, illogical. “A Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar. Did I eat one in front of you, sometime in the past day or two?”

Frieda smiles and takes another bite of apple. “I honestly cannot recall such an event.”

“What do you recall, then?” I query her. “What do you remember of the past couple of days?” I look around my mother’s familiar living room—the slumped but comfortable velvet chairs, the scratched but tidy Victorian side tables, the shabby rug. “Because I can hardly remember a thing.”

Frieda shrugs. “You came to my house and watched television with me all day yesterday. You remember that, don’t you?” She grins. “Please tell me you remember that the country is no longer threatened by direct nuclear attack.”

I nod. “I remember that. But nothing else. What did we do on Saturday, or Friday? Or the few days before that? I don’t remember anything since we ran into Kevin the other night.”

Frieda faces me. “You okay, sister?” she asks softly.

Again, I’m overwhelmingly tempted to tell her everything. All about the dreams, all about my mixed-up memories. But I cannot. I shrug. “Sure. I’m fine. Let’s talk about something else.”

Frieda glances around the room. “The place is in good shape.”

I groan. “I have hours of work ahead of me.”

She shakes her head. “No, it looks nice. They’ll be pleased.” She grins again. “You know they wouldn’t care, don’t you?”

I do know that. But there is something about pleasing your parents, even when you’re grown up, even when you’re almost middle-aged yourself. It never goes away, at least not for me.

Frieda nibbles the last of her apple. “Well, I’m off,” she says, standing. “I have shopping to do. Penney’s is having a sale. I want a new coat for winter.”

I nod. “I wish I could come. Have fun.”

She hugs me. “You, too, sister.”

After Frieda leaves, I’m frenzied in my work, and by midafternoon the place is spotless. I look around, a satisfied smile on my face. I’ve done a good job. They will be pleased.

I think about that rambling house on Springfield Street. I wonder how my other self keeps it clean, even with the faithful Alma to help out. And then I laugh a little.

It’s easy to keep an imaginary house clean, isn’t it?


Despite my intentions not to dwell on the dream life, I am drawn to Southern Hills again.

I tell myself it’s just something to do, a way to pass an evening that’s chilly but not yet wintry. I bike home from my parents’ place and, too weary for much more exercise, take the bus, getting off at Yale and walking south and then east.

Slowly I meander through the neighborhood streets. I imagine the people who live in each of the houses. I think about their lives, their families, their children. That house there, the red-brick one with the juniper bushes by the driveway, they must have teenagers. There’s a basketball hoop hung above the garage door and a pile of bicycles, all of them too big for young children, lying on the lawn by the front porch. The family in the house with the brown shutters—I think their car must be brand-new. It’s red with a white top, and it gleams with a just-off-the-showroom-floor sparkle. The man of the house stands next to the car, stroking its side panel affectionately, the way one might the cheek of a newborn.

These people have names, although I don’t know what they are. They have histories. They were probably raised in old-time neighborhoods like Myrtle Hill, where I grew up. They went to high school, perhaps to college. They met their husbands and wives; they had children. They decided this neighborhood of newly built houses would be a comfortable, homey, secure place in which to raise their families.

Lars and I, in the imaginary world, must have decided the same thing.

If that imaginary world were real, these would be my friends and neighbors. I walk by the Nelsons’ house, irrationally grateful that I know at least one family’s name, though in this life they do not know me. George is in the yard, raking leaves. Mrs. Nelson—I still don’t know her first name—is just coming out the front door, handbag over her wrist, car keys jangling. Their little spaniel runs up to me and barks.

“Buster,” George calls, and the dog runs back to his master’s side. “Sorry about that, ma’am,” George says.

Both George and his wife give me little half waves as I walk by. Their waves are the type you give a stranger. Not the type you give your neighbors.

I shake my head as I approach the bare lot where my own house would be. And then I quicken my pace.

I have got to get out of this silliness, I tell myself.

I am so glad my parents are coming home. Clearly I need the distraction.





Chapter 21


And then I’m standing on the street, right where I was standing in real life, in the exact same spot. But it’s not real life anymore. Now the house is in front of me, and I’m looking at it, and my family is with me. It’s a warmish day, but it still must be winter; there is no snow on the road, but it is melting into slushy puddles on the lawn. From the angle of the shadows on the snow, I can tell it’s probably midafternoon.