She and Harold had seven children! How on earth had this happened? some of her friends, all with fewer or no children, had asked over the years. Then they’d laugh and say of course they knew how it had happened, but why? Why had Ann let Harold impregnate her so many times? What the heck was she thinking? Weren’t two kids, maybe three, four at most, more than enough?
I’m not sure, she’d reply. I guess we were just so optimistic and Harold made a good living and we knew we could care for all our kids properly and so, we thought, why not keep going? She’d wanted to stop at five, to be honest, but then they’d had a whoops and the whoops had been twins, and anyway, that was that. As they said, the rest was history.
A couple of her friends weren’t satisfied with this explanation.
Surely she’d thought about the fact she’d brought seven individual people into the world, each with his or her own conflicting bundle of desires and prejudices and predilections. Parents had an enormous responsibility—to the child and to the rest of the world—when they created another person. Wasn’t this something she reflected on once in a while, or Harold at least reflected on, if for some reason she never did? In reply, Ann would laugh and say, “When do I have time for deep thinking? I have to make sure everyone is clothed and fed and doing their homework, or in Harold’s case, getting to work on time and earning his paycheck.” (Well, he owned his own company, so he was allowed a little leeway, but her friends knew what she meant.)
She had thought about it, though. Her own mother said after the birth of their fourth child that surely she and Harold would be stopping now, wouldn’t they? And for Pete’s sake, contraceptives were available on every street corner these days, unlike when she and Ann’s father were first married and worrying about producing more mouths than they could afford to feed. “We had our own birth control methods, of course,” said her mother. “But they weren’t as reliable.” Ann had two siblings, an older brother and a younger sister, and only her sister had children. Her brother claimed he hadn’t ever wanted them, and her sister was ambivalent up until the day she gave birth to her first, and for a while afterward, too, if truth be told—after the baby was sleeping through the night and her sanity was more or less restored.
She and Harold only had the twins at home now, Jacob and Zach, who were in high school and kept a fuller schedule than Ann herself did with their after-school soccer and baseball practices and debate team meetings, and their friends calling and texting at all hours. The twins could mostly look after themselves, but when Ann told Harold she intended to apply for a part-time job at the new bookstore on Church Street — the store needed a children’s story time reader on Saturday mornings — he wasn’t thrilled with the idea. “Don’t you have enough to keep you busy at home?” he griped. “And what about the garden?” She ignored his objec- tions and was hired on the same day she went in for the interview.
After a few weeks, Lori, her new boss, asked if she’d be interested in working ten hours a week as a bookseller, too, and the week after that, she also asked Ann to help her with her orders for children’s and YA titles because she herself had only a passing knowledge of the best new authors and which older titles to carry, aside from the ones Lori had loved as a girl, some of which Ann’s own children had read repeatedly: the full Dr. Seuss and Encyclopedia Brown catalogs, A Wrinkle in Time, The Chronicles of Narnia, Charlotte’s Web, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Of the newer classics, Lori had almost no knowledge. She told Ann she’d initially considered carrying nothing more than a handful of children’s books, but so many patrons came in asking for them she quickly realized the store would lose out on a significant number of regular customers if she didn’t carry them.
Ann agreed. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of money people spend on their children, sometimes hardly without a thought.”
“What about you and your husband?” asked Lori. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Oh, yes, my husband spoils our kids terribly,” said Ann with a laugh.
“But not you?”
“He’d say I’m the one, but he’s much worse.”
“That sounds like my parents,” said Lori. “My dad did spoil us, though. My mother not so much, probably because she spent more time with us than he did. My brother and I were big brats sometimes. It’s a wonder she didn’t kill us.”
Ann looked at her young boss, whose dark brown hair was loose around her shoulders, but most of the time Lori fastened it into a tight ponytail, many strands always working themselves loose by the end of the day, which she didn’t seem to notice. The only time Ann had seen Lori redo her ponytail was before a publisher’s sales rep appeared to talk about the upcoming season’s new releases. “I’d never peg you for a brat,” she said. “I bet you were a straight A student too.”
Lori snorted. “Not quite, but I think I’ve finally grown out of my bratty stage. My mother probably has a different opinion though.”
After she’d been working at the bookstore for a little over three months, its first-year anniversary passed, and Lori gave her and the other two part-time booksellers, Matthea and Toby, a raise: fifty cents more an hour. She apologized that it couldn’t be more, but if things continued to go well, she’d give them another raise soon.
“Are you kidding?” said Ann. “I shouldn’t say this, but I’d do this job for free I enjoy it so much.”
Lori looked at her for a second, her expression distracted. “That’s why you’re so good at it,” she said. She had a small smear of blue ink on her cheek Ann had pointed out to her an hour earlier. Ann wiped her own cheek, but Lori didn’t take the hint.
“I do have one suggestion for the store,” said Ann. “If you don’t mind me sharing it.”
For a second her boss’s green eyes registered wariness. “No, not at all.” She set down a stack of books, remaindered hardcovers, former bestsellers by James Patterson and Nora Roberts. Lori marked them down to six or seven dollars, and once placed on the bargain table near the entrance, they sold out fast.
“Have you thought about adding a café?” asked Ann.
Lori raised her eyes to the ceiling, a mannerism Ann found unnerving, but Lori said it was how she exercised her eye muscles. “I have thought about it,” she said. “But it’s a big investment.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’ve heard you can earn it back pretty quickly, depending on how much equipment you buy at the outset.” In the evenings while her twins did homework or pretended to and her husband watched news programs on cable after dinner, Ann had been researching bookstores online. Many of the most successful ones, it appeared, had a coffee bar. Some also served alcohol, though most didn’t. You needed a liquor license, but whether or not you served alcohol, if you had a food prep area in the store, you’d have to submit to periodic health department inspections, which Ann knew from a friend who owned an Italian restau- rant up in Highland Park, were both stressful and not too difficult to fail.
“I’ll think about it. We’ll see how things go. To be honest, I’m not sure I’d want patrons sitting in the cafe nursing a cup of coffee all afternoon,” said Lori, lowering her voice. “That probably doesn’t sound very neighborly, but this store is like my home.”
“What does Gavril say?” Gavril was Lori’s boyfriend, a comparative literature professor at the university whose many enormous stone and glass buildings fringed the lake a mile east of Pages.
Lori ran a hand over the Patterson book cover. “About adding a café to the store?”
Ann nodded.
“He’s all for it.”
“I know it’s none of my business. I was just curious.”
“No, it’s fine.” Lori wiped at her cheek, but the smear of ink didn’t come off. “Did he ask you to ask me about it?”
“No, I was only curious if you’d considered it. Finn and Foley probably makes a lot of money through their cafes.”
“They make a lot of money period.”
“But they’re closing some of their stores, I heard.”
“Yes, I think they are,” said Lori. She reached into the cabinet beneath the register for a stack of brilliant red bookmarks, Pages’ address and phone number in black block letters beneath the black outline of a plump apple, and lined them up in a neat pile next to the register before glancing back at Ann. “Big chain stores sometimes close a few of their franchises, even if they’re not losing money. For Finn and Foley, I think the reason is that some of their stores aren’t earning as much as the corporate overlords want them to. The same thing happened with Dominick’s a few years back, but that was the entire chain.”
“I was so mad when they closed those stores. It was the only place I could find the salad dressing I like. I make my own now, but it isn’t as good.”
Lori nodded and Ann reached over with a tissue from her pocket and touched it to the blue ink smear. “I’m probably a little OCD,” said Ann with an embarrassed laugh. “But I didn’t want you to walk around all day with ink on your cheek.”
“It’s okay,” said Lori, her face turning pink.
“Everyone’s a little bit OCD,” said a male voice from behind the Religion-Spirituality bookcase. “Don’t believe anyone who says they aren’t.”
Lori glanced at Ann, her lips twitching with a smile. “Yes, that’s probably true,” she said.
“You should add a coffee bar,” said the man. “Listen to your forward-thinking employee. I’d be willing to drop by and pick up a four-dollar latte every couple of days.”
“Three-dollar,” said Lori. “I can’t in good conscience charge four dollars for a nonalcoholic drink.”
“It sounds to me like you’ve already half made up your mind,” he said. He stepped out and showed himself. It was Mr. Weitz, a retired philosophy professor who had once kept Ann twenty minutes past her shift’s end when he wouldn’t stop talking about how veganism was, in his not-so humble opinion (something she’d heard him say more than once, each time with a chuckle), an indication of weak character. Francie, Ann’s oldest daughter, was a vegan nutritionist, but she didn’t mention this to Mr. Weitz. She’d only seen him in the store a few times, but already knew he liked to fulminate at length about subjects she suspected he had little experience with, though she supposed this described most people, herself included.
“We’ll see,” said Lori. “I really do have to think about it.”
“What are your thoughts on gift theory?” asked Mr. Weitz.
“I don’t know if I have any,” she said. “I don’t know much about it.”
“It’s the concept that no gift is free,” he said. “If you give someone a present, you still expect something in return, whether it’s material or intangible like loyalty or friendship.”
Ann looked at her boss. “That’s a bit depressing. I’d like to believe strings aren’t always attached.”
“Oh, but they are,” said Mr. Weitz, his eyes almost feverish.
“Why do you ask?” said Lori.
“If you do decide to put a café in your store, in the first week, I imagine you’ll give out free coffees to anyone who’d like one.”
“Yes, I guess that’s probable,” said Lori. She touched the stack of bookmarks she’d set out a minute earlier. Ann looked down at her boss’s pale, ringless hands, noticing for the first time the clear polish on Lori’s tapered nails.
“And in return you’ll expect customer loyalty from each person who accepts a free coffee. You’ll want them to come back and buy another one at a later date, if not also a book,” said Mr. Weitz. He hadn’t shaved that morning and was wearing a faded blue Cubs hat over his unruly white hair. He was handsome, Ann supposed. If he weren’t such a blowhard, she would have found him a lot more attractive. He was hugging a copy of Orwell’s A Collection of Essays close to his chest as if afraid it might leap from his arms. She assumed he wouldn’t buy it. He treated Pages as if it were a library, and on some days he’d sit for hours in one of the armchairs in the children’s section and read through an entire novel or work of nonfiction before returning it, slightly less pristine, to its home on the shelf, occasionally misfiling it. How Lori handled patrons like him so gracefully, Ann wasn’t sure.
“I wouldn’t expect anything in return,” said Lori to Mr. Weitz. “No, maybe I would. Oh, I don’t know. I guess I would hope they’d be inclined to come back and buy books, if not a cup of coffee and a scone or whatever it is we’re selling with the coffee.”
“You could start a customer loyalty program,” said Ann. This was another characteristic of profitable bookshops. “For every hundred dollars someone spends, you give them a five-dollar credit toward their next purchase. Or a 20 percent off coupon for a book, with a discount value of up to ten dollars. Something like that.”
“I’m beginning to wonder why you’ve never opened your own bookstore,” said Lori, impressed.
“I was too busy raising seven children.”
“Seven!” said Mr. Weitz. “Goodness.”
“I know,” said Ann. “I hear that a lot.”
He chuckled and raised a hand to the bill of his hat, screwing it on tighter. “Can you blame us? That’s more children than usual in this day and age. I’m guessing you haven’t heard the statistics about Americans’ use of resources.”
“I might have,” she said. “I’m not sure.” She didn’t know what he was referring to but didn’t feel like admitting it. He was beginning to annoy her.
“We’re only 5 percent of the global population but we use 30 percent of the world’s natural resources.”
“I guess I didn’t know that,” she said. She glanced at Lori, whose expression was noncommittal.
“It’s true,” said Mr. Weitz. “I’ve come across those numbers in a few different places in the last couple of years.”
“That’s depressing,” said Lori.
“That’s reality,” he said. “But yes, it’s grim, isn’t it.”
What are you trying to tell me? Ann almost said but suppressed the question. In the last few years whenever someone took a scolding tone with her after they heard about her big family, she would look at them and nod and smile dimly. The litany in her head, however, was less sanguine: “It’s none of your damn business what my legally wed, gainfully employed husband and I have decided to do with our genes.” Inevitably, as her interrogators intended, she’d begun to think about what it meant in a more public sense that she and Harold had a big family.
Her husband, however, refused to worry about their critics. “What’s done is done,” was invariably his response.
Nonetheless, over the holidays the previous year, Ann had eaves- dropped on a conversation between her daughter Francie and Jenni, one of Francie’s oldest friends. Jenni was lecturing her in a high, aggrieved voice about consumption and community. When a couple decided to have children, she said, like it or not, the rest of society bore some of the responsibility for this decision, whether it was how much property tax homeowners paid to keep the schools and libraries in the black, how many police officers and firemen the town employed, how many trash collectors and crossing guards, how often the roads needed to be repaired, how many new subdivisions went up and trees were felled, with birds and other wildlife inevitably being forced from their natural habitats. Ann eventually tried to talk to Harold about Jenni’s tirade, but he wasn’t interested. “What’s done is done,” he said with more force than usual. “What exactly are you worried about? That they’ll arrest us for having seven kids?”
“I wanted to stop at five, but it didn’t quite work out that way,” she said politely to Mr. Weitz now.
He gave her a baffled look. “Goodness,” he repeated. “You certainly—”
“Mr. Weitz, do you have any children?” asked Lori.
“One,” he said. “A son. Haven’t talked to him in—” He tilted his head back, his lips moving. “I guess it’s been over ten years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Lori.
He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. After his mother died, it wasn’t very—” He laughed uncomfortably. “Never mind. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about it.”
He walked the few steps to the register from where he’d been standing under a portrait of C.S. Lewis and set down the book of Orwell essays. “I’d like to buy this. I thought I had a copy at home, but for the life of me I can’t find it. I must have lent it to one of my students.” He waved a hand as if dispersing smoke. “Who knows where it is. When I die, I’d very much like to be reunited with all the precious or otherwise significant objects I’ve lost over the years.” He glanced at Ann. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”
Ann gave him a hesitant smile. Did he think, along with being a conscienceless breeder, she was a religious nutjob? “I suppose anything is possible,” she said. “Who knows? I certainly don’t, not having died yet and experienced any kind of afterlife.”
Mr. Weitz smiled and nodded. “Touché.”
Christine Sneed is the author of the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts, and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry and The Virginity of Famous Men. Her stories have been included in publications such as The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New England Review, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares. She has received the Grace Paley Prize, the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, the Chicago Writers’ Association Book of the Year Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award. She lives in Evanston and teaches for Northwestern University’s and Regis University’s graduate creative writing programs.