The Bookseller(91)

“Yes!” I cry. “Yes, it does, Michael. You’ve got it!” I can’t help myself; I pull him—notebook, dictionary, and all—onto my lap and squeeze him with all my might.

He screams and pulls away from my grasp. “Too tight! Too much!” he yells, and runs up to his room.

Yikes—I ruined it, I think. Nice going, Katharyn.

And then I smile. I don’t care. He has learned. He has learned something, and I am the one who taught him. I sigh and lean against the back of the sofa, hugging the dictionary to my chest, bathed in happiness.


After a while, I go up to the boys’ room and coax Michael back downstairs. “I don’t want to read anymore, Mama,” he says, as I lead him gently to the desk in the dining room. “Reading tires me out.”

“Okay.” I can see there’s no point in pushing it. I need to take this slowly. If I want it to happen at all, if I want Michael to learn to read, then I need to take it in baby steps.

“Let’s do some math instead,” I suggest. “Can you count?”

“What a funny question, Mama.” He sits at the desk and begins to count aloud. He makes it to one hundred in less than three minutes. I interrupt to tell him he can stop.

“What about adding?” I ask. “Do you know two plus two?”

“Mama.” He rolls his eyes. “I know two hundred and two times two!”

“Really?” I smile. “And what is that?”

He sighs, bored. “Four hundred and four.”

“Okay,” I say, turning away from his desk. “Let’s work on money instead.”

“Real money?” he asks eagerly.

The excitement in his tone makes me smile once more; he is so rarely enthusiastic about anything. “Sure,” I reply. “Real money. Come with me.”

We raid the coin jar in the kitchen, the one perched on the windowsill. Sitting at the kitchen table, we count every coin. I am astounded by his concentration, and how easily he grasps the denominations, adding the amounts in his head. “Thirty-three dollars and sixteen cents!” he says triumphantly when we’re done.

“That’s a lot of moolah.”

“What’s moolah, Mama?”

“Money.”

He laughs, that wonderful laughter that reminds me of my mother’s. What a gift, hearing that sound. “Moolah is a really funny word.”

“You’re right. It is.” I stand up. “I’ll go see if Alma is ready to make your lunch.”

On the way down the hallway in search of Alma, I pass the photograph of the mountain scene, of Rabbit Ears Pass. And suddenly, finally, I understand its significance: Lars proposed to me at that exact spot.

We’d been dating steadily for about six months. Our courtship was like nothing I’d ever experienced; it was as if we couldn’t get enough of each other, as if we had to make up for all the time we’d lost in trying to find each other. He’d call me several times a day at the shop; I’d take the calls in a breathless voice, like a schoolgirl. Frieda would roll her eyes at me, but she did turn away to give me privacy.

Lars and I spent nearly every evening together—dinner at his place or mine, movies, sometimes going out dancing.

“I never see you anymore, outside of work,” Frieda complained—a bit peevishly, I remember thinking, as if Lars and I had planned our blossoming romance for no better reason than to upset Frieda. “I miss you, sister,” she’d beseech me. “Make some time for me, would you?” I’d nod and tell her I was sorry; perhaps she and I could do something that week, some night after we closed. But then Lars would telephone or show up at Sisters’, and I’d forget my promise to Frieda.

The day Lars proposed was a beautiful late-spring Sunday. We’d gone for a drive with no particular destination in mind. We drove into the mountains on Highway 40, meandering through Winter Park, Grandby, Kremmling, gazing out the window at the vast mountain ranges and the tiny towns and the melting snow. At one point, after we’d been driving for several hours, I suggested that we ought to turn back. Lars simply shrugged. “What for?” he asked, and since I could give him no answer, we continued on.

At the summit of Rabbit Ears Pass he parked the car, and we walked to the top of a rise to admire the view. The late-afternoon sun was warm on my bare shoulders, but the breeze was cool. Lars took off his sweater and draped it around me. “Wait,” he said, reaching around me into his pocket. “Can’t hand over the sweater without handing over this first.” He’d bent onto one knee and opened a small jewelry box, holding it in front of me. “Will you marry me, Katharyn?” he’d asked. “Please say yes.”

I looked at the ring, and then into his blue, blue eyes. “How could I say no?” I replied. “Of course I’ll marry you.” I wrapped my arms around him. “Yes,” I’d whispered. “Forever—yes.”

Now, turning away from the photograph, I shake my head, smiling, and veer into our bedroom.

I find Alma in our bathroom, cleaning. I am suddenly guilt-ridden. I don’t mind watching Alma iron or wash the dishes—I did such things willingly in my other life, my made-up life, and I didn’t consider them taxing chores. But cleaning a bathroom? I can’t recall anyone, except for my mother when I was a child, ever cleaning a bathroom for me. But Alma doesn’t seem fazed; she is smiling and humming as she works. I am surprised that I recognize the tune: “De Colores.” It is a song that I don’t recall ever hearing in my other life, but one that I know for sure Alma has taught my children. It’s all about colors, about everything colorful in the world.