“Do you?” I smile. “Who is your favorite author?”
“Oh.” Linnea waves her hand, the one that is not holding my card. “It’s difficult to pick one favorite. Shakespeare, perhaps. I love reading Shakespearean sonnets, and some of the plays, though others are quite so sad. I’m a great admirer of Henry James; I loved The Portrait of a Lady. Of more recent authors, I suppose John Steinbeck is my favorite. I just now finished reading The Winter of Our Discontent. This is a book that I know a lot of readers did not care for, and I understand; it’s not a happy story. But I think it shows the disappointing side of American life.” She furrows her brow. “Maybe Americans do not want to read about that,” she says thoughtfully.
I nod. I had the same impression of The Winter of Our Discontent, which I read last year when it came out. After reading several reviews that proclaimed that Steinbeck’s barefaced morality was putting him on the downward slope of his career, I wondered the same thing as Linnea: is it the author’s moral high ground that we find disagreeable—or is it that he is spot-on, but the theme of his new novel makes us uncomfortable?
“I learned English by reading,” Linnea tells me. “It’s the best way, really.”
“Well, we have plenty of Shakespeare, plenty of James, and plenty of Steinbeck,” I say. “Anything else you want, too. And anything we don’t carry in the store, we can order for you. You ought to come by sometime.” I hear the pleading in my voice, and I pray that Linnea is too engrossed in her work to notice it herself. “It would be my pleasure to show you around.”
She places the Sisters’ business card carefully on her side table. “I’ll do that,” she promises. “I’ll bring Gloria. She, too, loves to read.” Linnea steps back, eyeing my curler-covered head, nodding her approval. “All right, then, Kitty, I think you’re ready for a dryer.”
Back at Sisters’, Frieda exclaims over my new look. “It’s stunning,” she says, staring at me. “Honestly, Kitty, I have never seen you look so good.” She fishes under the counter for her purse and pulls out a compact, dusting her nose. “You make me want to freshen up,” she explains, grinning apologetically. Closing the compact with a firm click, she says, “Haven’t I told you for years to get rid of that Veronica and go see someone new for your hair?”
“You have.” I am looking at my reflection in the mirror over the counter. I cannot stop staring at myself. I look exactly like I did in the dream. Except a lot more sober, and with much less ritzy clothes on.
“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you.” Frieda comes from behind the counter and bends down to retrieve a book that has fallen over on the Classics shelf—The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, a substantial volume if there ever was one. The Tales should, by all means, be expected to hold themselves up. That cheeky old Wife of Bath is probably to blame.
Frieda uses both hands to adjust the book. I think about Linnea and wonder, since she likes Shakespeare, if she has read Chaucer. I make a mental note to go through the stacks and put aside a selection of books for her—Chaucer and maybe Edmund Spenser if she likes classics, Joseph Conrad, perhaps George Bernard Shaw, if she enjoys turn-of-the-century writing, and possibly some contemporary female authors like Katherine Anne Porter and Flannery O’Connor, since it appears Linnea has primarily read works by men.
“That Hansen kid came by,” Frieda says. “The one that lives next door to you. Said to tell you thanks again, said he ‘just keeps reading it over and over.’ Said he can’t wait to read more.” She stands back, waiting to see if the Chaucer will fall again, but it appears to be grounded now. Frieda turns to me. “What’s that all about?”
Chapter 11
Mama.”
I open my eyes and look around. Everything is so blurry.
“Mama, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
There is a small pat on my right sleeve. I concentrate, and Missy’s face comes into focus. She is looking at me with trepidation. Her look reminds me of an actor I once saw playing a psychiatrist on television. In that story, the patient was a woman who had stumbled on the sidewalk and hit her head on a stone wall; she lost her memory entirely and could not even recall her own name. In the scene I am now thinking about, the doctor was looking at the patient as if he felt not only concerned about her situation, but also overwhelmingly sorry for her.
Missy is giving me the exact same look. Her strawberry blond curls are in pigtails on either side of her head, tied with red bows that match her plaid dress. Her little brow is furrowed, making her appear much older than the age she is—which, I realize with alarm, I still don’t actually know. I have assumed the children to be about five or six, but I have no idea of their exact age, or when their birthday is. Moreover, I still assume that they are twins—nothing so far has led me to believe otherwise—but I don’t know that with any certainty. What a preposterous imagination I have. To keep dreaming about an entire made-up family, one’s own entirely made-up family, and not even know the children’s ages, birth dates, or birth order.
“I’m . . . I’m fine, sweetie.” I look around. My vision has cleared up, and I can now see that we are in the shoe department of a large store. It is not a store with which I am familiar. I do most of my shopping at Monkey Wards on Broadway or May-D&F downtown, the store where I went in real life to seek out the coral-hued dress. This store looks a bit like May-D&F, but not like any part of May-D&F that I’ve ever been in. I can tell by the vivid yellow, red, and blue display racks, the carefully arranged patent leathers, tennis shoes, and rubber boots, that we are in a department that carries only children’s shoes. In all my years of shopping at May-D&F, I don’t think I have once set foot in the children’s shoe department—but I do know where it is, on the second floor, near the better dresses and coats. I see neither of those departments anywhere nearby, which leads me to believe we are in a different store entirely.
A salesman briskly approaches us, his arms loaded with brightly colored cardboard boxes. RICHARD, his nametag reads, and above that I see the familiar blue May-D&F logo, with its tiny sketch of the downtown store’s iconic triangular roof standing in for the hyphen. So this is a May-D&F store—but unless they’ve rearranged recently, I don’t believe we’re downtown. I wonder exactly where we are, but of course there’s no way to ask without sounding absurd.