The Bookstore (12 page)

“Maybe the landlord likes that this is a bookshop, and he won’t put the rent up.”

“Yeah, landlords are like that, especially in New York.”

I laugh, and Luke looks up. He says, “You know—about the guy. It will get easier.”

“Yes. I just—you know. I loved him.”

I am not looking at him, but I am not crying either. Progress.

“You’re pretty open about it,” he says.

“I don’t see any reason not to be.”

“That’s how you get hurt.”

“I’m already hurt.”

“Then maybe that’s how you got hurt.”

I FINISH A
short afternoon shift that I spent learning about book descriptions with George. It is an arcane system of codification that the Internet is putting paid to, where fair is foul and good is bad and perfect means you’re a charlatan. Price-clipped is bad. Second impression is bad. Inscribed is bad, unless it is by the author, and then inscribed is good, but not nearly as good as signed. Unless the inscription is to someone patently important—
To my dear Laura, love from Petrarch
. At the end of it I feel very tired, despite only having been working for three hours.

“You okay?” George asks.

“Yes. I had lectures this morning; I have a paper to write—I am just a little tired.”

“You have to remember to take it easy—the baby—”

“I know,” I say, hastily. “I know. I do.”

He looks piercingly at me and then asks me to wait for a second, and pads off to the back of the shop. He comes back with a paperback, and hands it to me. It is called
Shackleton’s Boat Journey,
by Frank Worsley.

“It’s one of the greatest survival stories of all time,” he says. “Enjoy.”

It is very like George to think that a book about Antarctic exploration will sort out the stresses of being single, impoverished, and pregnant, with a job and a PhD to do.

I go to Barnes and Noble to buy some books on how to be good at pregnancy. I can’t really afford them, but I’ve been using the Web so far, and it is too nebulous. I feel as if I need to impose a pattern on the days and weeks.

It is symptomatic of the problems facing cute secondhand bookshops that I don’t think of looking for any pregnancy books at The Owl until I have completed my expensive and bulky purchases. As if the past can tell us anything about having babies.

All baby books are enormous; why? It seems like a subtle infantilizing of the mother. We are going to be mothers instead of women, so we have to have everything presented in fourteen-point type. It is the same with maternity clothes; I looked at them one day with Stella, but have not bought any yet. They had card rosettes attached to them that read, “I am a nursing item,” or “I am a dress.”

“I am a nursing item,” said Stella. “Subtext: ‘You are a pregnant woman, so you need to have your clothes talk to you.’ For fuck’s sake.”

As I am walking uptown with my new springing step, I walk smack into Mitchell. He puts his hands on my shoulders and says, “Why, Esme Garland! What a wonderful surprise!” in a Cary Grant voice.

I get kissed on both cheeks, and held back again, to be viewed. I
do not know what is going on, but I suspect mischief and misrule. I submit to the kisses and the viewing, with my heart pounding and my mind racing. I can barely breathe. I must not abase myself with Mitchell van Leuven again. I must not.

I do not ask him why he is up here, though this is far from any neighborhood he needs to be in.

“I am never up here now,” he says. “It must be fate. It must be fate, Esme.”

It is not fate.

“You look great,” he says. “Come and have a coffee. Do you know the ratio of coffee shops to people in Manhattan? Three to one. It’s true. Come on, pick one. Not Starbucks.”

There are some people who will realize and appreciate the tremendous accomplishment of my next words, and others for whom it will pass by unremarked.

“I’d like to, but I’ve got a deadline,” I say.

“I never knew you to refuse a coffee before,” he says. His eyes are smiley. They are crinkling at the edges.

I shrug and say, “I’ve gone off coffee.”

“Then,” says Mitchell gravely, “I’d better buy you a chai latte.”

I shake my head, resolute.

“What are your books?”

I say, “Oh, they’re nothing in particular,” and I try to be casual, but I make a slight movement towards putting the bag behind my back, as if to conceal it from his gaze. He has seen that there are books, so the gesture is worse than useless. He makes a dive for the bag, as if he is a boy after a present. I grab for it back and say, “No, Mitchell, you have no right, don’t—”

And he tugs the books out of the bag. There are two enormous matching ones:
The Pregnancy Book
and
The Baby Book
. Then I’ve got one called
Eating Well When You’re Expecting
and
The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
. I’ve put the one George gave me in with them, so I’ve got
Shackleton’s Boat Journey
with them all. Somehow it is like buying four ball gowns and a tin of Spam; it makes me look mentally disturbed.

Mitchell stares at the books.

“Are you pregnant?” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “And I’m going to the South Pole.”

I managed a comeback, and my voice sounds pretty level. But after all, I knew, and he didn’t. He is pale.

“Is it mine?” he asks.

“No,” I say, “it’s mine.”

I stand there, Mitchell stands there; the weight of all the baby books is in his hands. I am not thinking of anything.

“You—weren’t going to tell me?” he says finally.

I say nothing. He looks around at the people passing by. He says, “Oh, oh, wait—was it the park? Was that what it was? You were going to tell me
that
?”

I lift my chin fractionally.

He starts nodding, as if I have confirmed what he always thought about me. He looks as if he wants to rope in the passersby now, as audience to the gross crime inflicted upon him, as witnesses to my unreasonableness.

“And you’re going to have it,” he says. “Just like that.” He snaps his fingers. “I—could I—just tell me something here. Could I have gone through my whole life being a father and not knowing it? You weren’t going to tell me?”

“Why would I tell you, if you didn’t want to be with me?”

“It’s my right? For instance?”

“Why is it your right? Why isn’t it your burden, if I tell you?”

“Why can’t a right be a burden? You’re going to have my
baby
?”

I am silent. He screws his eyes up, and then says, “You don’t think—it didn’t cross your mind to think, that in this situation, you—it—someone—might
need
me? You, you . . . I . . . you don’t see that this changes things?”

“I see that it changes things,” I say, hotly. “It’s because I see that it changes things that I didn’t tell you—”

He is shaking his head. “You—are—unbelievable.”

I am being subjected to this on the most public street on earth. I
want to escape from him, to bolt. In most places, if I walked away, he would just be able to follow me, telling me how unbelievable and bad I am. But this is New York. I walk to the edge of the pavement and raise my hand. A yellow cab curves to my feet. I open the door.

He strides up to me and catches hold of the door so that I can’t move it. I think for a second that he is going to shout at me, but when I lift my head to face him, he looks stricken.

“Why is this happening like this?” he says, and I think I can hear tears in his voice. “Surely we could manage it better than this? You are hurting me, Esme. This hurts.”

A thousand petals of penitence unfurl in me—I have not considered him properly. I was too busy being hurt myself to think about him.

“I am sorry—” I say, “I didn’t—I didn’t think that you—”

“I miss you,” he says, his voice as soft as a flower. My breath catches. Slowly, he raises his free hand and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear; it is something he used to do.

I am electric at the touch of his hand. He knows. He looks, unsmilingly now, into my eyes for a long time. His eyes are like the sea. The North Atlantic.

He leans forward, his breath brushing my ear. “I chose you, Esme,” he says. “I singled you out from all the world.”

I STRETCH OUT
on the mulberry sheets.

He walks back in from the kitchen with a cheese board and a dish of peaches. He is still naked.

“Where are they from?” I say, peering at the peaches. “Not Gristedes?”

“What have I wrought?” he says. “No, Miss New York,
not
Gristedes. They’re from Apple Tree Market.”

I bite into one. It tastes like a peach ought to taste.

“You should buy some melons there,” I say, “they might taste like melons instead of cucumbers.”

He grins as he looks away and then meets my eyes, the special, secret grin, that makes me feel I am loved “I have made you in my own image,” he says. “I’m very proud.”

“I can be annoyed when fruit doesn’t taste good all by myself.”

“No, you can’t. You were like all the English in England when I met you. ‘This peach tastes like shit, and it cost five dollars. Oh well, at least we won the war . . . ’ ”

“Yes, I do, I talk about winning the war all the time. But it’s true that you’ve taught me to be a real New Yorker.” I glance over at his closet. “Or a gay New Yorker . . .”

“Cheap, Esme, cheap. And I’ve only taught you how to be a gay
male
New Yorker. Lesbians don’t care. Lesbians don’t eat peaches. They’re too busy eating—”

“Apples!” I say, and slap my hand over his mouth. He is laughing, tumbling sideways on the bed. He pulls me on top of him, and starts to kiss me, and forces the peach that is already in his mouth into mine.

I push him away and make a face. He laughs.

“You’re revolting,” I say.

“I’m adorable,” he says. “And you’re all tousled. A tousled girl in a tousled bed.”

“I can’t be tousled. Only my hair can be tousled. Mitchell, what you said—did you really break up with me because you thought I was going to break up with you?”

“Of course. I play by the old rules. Get in first.”

“But—you made me so sad.”

He shrugs lightly. “Self-defense. I’m a master. And you’re not sad now.”

“No. I’m not sad now.”

“Neither am I. I’m happy, Esme.”

He looks over at me—one look. But it is a smiling glance of such unadulterated happiness that I think he does love me, that in this one connecting glance I know he does, I know he does, as I know the sun will rise in the morning to flood the cross streets—and my bedroom—with radiant light.

I am lost in him, and I can’t be lost in him. I have to present a semblance of detachment.

“How did you end up in economics?” I ask.

Mitchell looks quizzical. “I’m sorry, are we on our first date?”

“Really. I was just wondering what it was that made you choose it.”

“Have you met my mother?”

“You know I haven’t. So, why?”

“Because,” he says, stroking the inside of my arm with one slow finger, from my elbow to my wrist, “because advertising would have been too obvious. Your arms are nice.”

“You managed to cope with the lack of lust, this time?” I say.

He nods thoughtfully. “Yes. It was pretty tough, but I got through it somehow. If maybe next time you could wear a bag over your head?”

I try to hit him. He catches me again, tickles me again. I am laughing and so is he. He leans up on one arm.

“See, Esme? Oh, I have
missed
you. We have a good time. Listen, I’ve been thinking, since the initial shock—do you think that—maybe—I don’t know—maybe we’re too young for this? That it might destroy us?” He pauses, looks out of the window and then back to me. “I think, if you do go ahead, that it will destroy us.”

I lie there like a rag doll. The energy in the room—or was it in me?—has been turned off like a switch. A trick. It was a trick.

“I would take such care of you, Esme. I would be there with you through all of it. I’ll find out the name of a good clinic. The best. I can set it up now. And I’ll come with you, of course. I’ll be there every step of the way.”