The Bookstore (18 page)

The baby magazines have advertisements for new ways to separate fools from their money, including a pregnancy belly-cast kit. You get to make a huge plaster mold of your huge giant fleshy belly for twenty dollars, optionally
including your breasts
. It comes with acrylic paints so that you can decorate it. Then what do you do with it? Put it above the fireplace?

You can also “join the momversation at Momversation.com,” and so I do, because my critical faculties are in abeyance. The post that is blazoned across its homepage is “Did you pick the right mate to co-parent your child?” Er, no. I didn’t.

There are lots of pictures of dads in the magazines, strong of jaw and loving in aspect, and even if they are model men posing as model dads, the effect of seeing a minuscule bundle in the arms of one of these guys makes me wistful.

I think I might be lonely. I met Mitchell so soon after I arrived here that I stupidly haven’t forged proper friendships with other people, except for Stella. I always mean to see Beth, my friend from the art gallery, for instance, but Mitchell always seemed to be the next person I ought to see; he was always the person who had just texted me, who had just e-mailed me, who was covering me with attention apparently as light as Irish rain, which actually soaked me to the skin. And now I’m in a dry season. If I try to make friends now, they will assume I see them as second tier, so I can’t do it. I wish that I could tell Mitchell about the funny belly-cast kits, I wish I could ask him to come with me to the scan. I wish
that the phone would ring this minute. It would be Mitchell, and he would say, “Oh, Esme. I love you.”

At first, after he walked out of my apartment, I checked my phone compulsively for messages. None came. I haven’t heard anything from him since. I have been shoving Mitchell out of my head whenever he has come near it. Americans call it denial, but I call it Getting Over Someone. It is a slow process. I still miss him. But not enough to call him.

Before the semester ends, I have two papers due: one on the masculine gaze, and one on Thiebaud, which might stand, if it’s good enough, for one of the chapters of my thesis. Professor Henkel says that I should really present a paper to the department in the spring, and the idea of it makes me go cold with fear. There are now twenty minutes ahead of me in the spring when everyone will find out I am an imposter. I can see it: some curled darling of a PhD student—Bradley Brinkman springs to mind—will stand there in his scruffy clothes that are themselves an implicit declaration of his personal beauty, and he will ask me questions with unseen brackets in the middle of words, with a nod to Derrida and a little side joke about Hegel, and I will stand there for a second, rooted with fear, and then bolt out of the room as my notes float gently to the ground.

Women are more scared of this. Other women seem as scared as I am, while the men seem generally to look forward to it. Why are we scared? Is it because we are
giving
a lecture, giving our thoughts, our words, ourselves, launching ourselves out there as if we were chicks leaving the nest? Is it because our gift might be rejected?

I want to have an impeccable CV—the one accomplishment that the baby magazines touch but lightly—so I will have to do it.

It is easy to write about the male gaze in this city, where Rembrandts and Vermeers and Picassos and Sargents are sprinkled about like sweets.

The other paper is about Thiebaud’s influences, and I have been having some fun with some of that, from the early painters of still lifes with dead geese and beautiful lemons right up to
Thiebaud’s pictures, of cakes with their impasto of icing, of serried soup bowls, of a live white rabbit. Edward Hopper is supposed to be his biggest influence, but Hopper’s people stare out from their own souls, suspended in a kind of ether of misery. In Thiebaud, there is the sort of sadness inherent in nostalgia, but also a joie de vivre, a joie de gateau.

I am trying to sort out my thoughts about this when I get another call from The Owl, and there is a tiny pang of pleasure when I see the number on my phone. I think they are going to ask me to come in.

After expressing hopes that he isn’t disturbing me, George then proceeds to disturb me very much by voicing his concerns about ultrasound scans. The concerns all sound very rational, but this is a man who thinks headache tablets are deadly.

“Wouldn’t more people talk about this if it were such an issue?” I ask. I am looking forward to the scan.

“There are a lot of people invested in not talking about it,” he says. “Just because it is not surgical, do not be misled into thinking it is not intrusive. When I see you, I can give you more information.”

“Okay,” I say, dolefully. “Are you busy there? Do you need any help? It isn’t that long until Christmas—I could come in and tidy up, ready for—”

“We’re fine. It’s just me and Luke but it’s not busy. And we’ve got Thanksgiving on Thursday, so we don’t need to focus on Christmas just yet. Stay home and do some studying. We’ll see you for your shift tomorrow night.”

I had forgotten Thanksgiving. Mitchell described a van Leuven Thanksgiving to me once in meticulous and malicious detail. He said that in rebellion, we would have Thanksgiving alone in his apartment, with a table festooned with orange paper turkeys, and then sex on the sofa. And then we would feel very thankful.

The phone rings again. It is George again.

“We were assuming you had Thanksgiving plans, Esme, but Luke says that I should ask you. We always have a small Thanksgiving
celebration at my apartment, up in Washington Heights. Everyone from the bookshop is always invited. David can’t come—I think he’s going home for Thanksgiving—but Bruce comes, and Luke is coming this year. And so is Barney, and so is Mary, with or without the dog. You would be welcome.”

That tumbling mixture of gratitude and misery; I want to be with Mitchell and his silly paper turkeys. The disappointment is so tangible I could chew it, the kindness with its casual delivery so like George I feel hot tears rise up.

“Luke says to tell you it’s going to be vegan.”

“No turkey?”

“I’m afraid not. Nor even the vegetarian approximations of it; no Tofurkey, no igturkey. And although personally, I have some grave suspicions about the ontology of mushrooms, we will be having organic mushroom roast.”

“Norman Rockwell wouldn’t like it.”

“The turkeys, by contrast, are overjoyed.”

“Thank you, George. I would love to come.”

“We’ll see you Thursday.”

I TAKE CRANBERRY
sauce and applesauce to the Thanksgiving, as instructed by George, to go with the turkey that won’t be there.

George’s apartment looks like a storehouse for Bergdorf Goodman windows that a giant has stirred with a spoon. There are books everywhere, of course, on shelves, in piles—that was pretty much in the cards. But there are also the most peculiar and off-the-wall things propped everywhere: In a small patch of wall between two shelves, the pottery face of a Green Man looks wickedly down. Against a bookshelf that contains about a dozen volumes of the letters of Erasmus, a huge pale blue cardboard compass with golden lines on it is propped, and in front of me, two welded metal turkey cocks whose tails are dozens of rolled-up pieces of tin stand next
to a little naked manikin made of newspaper—I think he is made from the
New York Times,
as he has an upside-down picture of Paul Krugman on his tummy. There are evident pathways through all this to a small clearing in the middle of the sitting room. Luke and Mary are already holding glasses. I produce my two Ziplocs full of sauce.

“Plastic!” says George, in tones of horror.

“Food-safe! For thirty minutes!” I say.

He takes them gingerly, then buzzes Barney in. Barney is walking into the center of the room when his attention is caught by a lamp on the top of a bookshelf—it is an ordinary turned wooden lamp base, with a parchment shade.

He pauses midgreeting to say, “Oh my, George, is that shade made out of plainchant? On vellum? Is it real? I don’t care, I love it, I love the whole ensemble. How much do you want for it?”

George passes a glass of fizzy elderflower to me. “Barney. This is my home. The things in it are not for sale. Would you like a glass of
prosecco
?”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Barney says, completely unfazed. “I brought a pumpkin pie. It’s from Dean and DeLuca. I needed a bank loan to buy it, seriously. Oh, and I brought champagne. Hi, honey. How’s the baby coming along?” He sits down next to me and beams. “I totally fucked up on that lamp thing, didn’t I? I’m usually a lot classier than that, believe me. Still no sign of the father? What’s so funny?”

By the time we have finished the pumpkin pie and the peach cobbler that Mary brought, I am the only completely sober one, and I don’t feel sober; the company and sugar combined are making me feel giddy. Mary has just had one glass. The others, though, are all well beyond counting.

Barney is eating slice after slice of vegan cheese, remarking on how revolting it is after each mouthful. He is saying, “Seriously, how does anyone get pregnant by accident in this day and age? Or no—more interesting question—why anyone gets pregnant on purpose in this day and age?”

“You think I got pregnant on purpose?”

“Is the pope gay?” replies Barney.

“I think ‘Catholic’ is the adjective you’re looking for there, Barney,” says George.

“I got pregnant by
accident,
” I say.

Luke says, “They say there is no such thing as an accident.”

“There is such a thing as an accident.”

“Not according to Freud,” says George.

“I’m serious,” says Barney. “I’m really serious. Esme, look at you, you’re a smart girl, with everything ahead of you—what would induce you to take the risk unless you wanted it to happen?”

“I didn’t want it to happen.”

“Not consciously, maybe . . .”

I sigh. There is no argument against “not consciously, maybe.”

“Is he rich? The guy?”

“That isn’t important. That wasn’t what it was about.”

They all, except Mary, look as if enlightenment has dawned, even George.

“How rich?” says Barney. “What does he do?”

“He teaches economics at the New School,” I say.

“Oh. Then he’s from money already,” says Barney. “What’s his name? Esme? What’s his
name
?”

“Mitchell van Leuven,” I say. “No, Barney, do
not
google him, we’re in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner . . .”

He takes no notice. “How are you spelling it?”

I say, “I don’t suppose anyone will believe me, but it wasn’t ever about his being rich.”

Mary says, “I believe you.”

Luke says, “What was it about?”

I say, “It was about love. I fell in love with him.”

“Yeah, we get that part. But why?”

I hesitate. “His iconoclasm, I think.”

Barney rolls his eyes. “Ask a graduate student a simple question . . .”

“He’s teaching economics at the New School?” says George. “He doesn’t sound like much of an iconoclast to me.”

“Would everyone mind,” says Barney, “if we get back to the whole ‘how rich is he’ thing? This is going down a track I won’t be able to follow for long.”

ON THE MONDAY
after Thanksgiving, there are so many good back-to-back lectures that I skip lunch. This is the error of an idiot, and as I am pregnant, I feel guilty as well as hungry. I think I will get something between the end of the last lecture and the beginning of my shift, but Professor Vincenzo Caspari, as august a figure as it is possible to be without being dead, is delivering it, and it even has a name—“The Fermor Lecture”—so he can take just as long as he likes. Professor Caspari has an intellect as fine as his suit, and he is lecturing on the multiple lives of paintings. It is fantastic, but it overruns by twenty-five minutes. I will be late for work.

I fly out onto the street to find it pouring with rain, and all the cabs speeding by. People are standing with newspapers over their heads, vainly trying to flag one. They try to upstage one another by walking a few yards north, in order to bag the first cab. I can’t compete in this environment—I’ll end up walking to the Bronx. It would be quicker taking the local.