Rumi and the Red Handbag

by Shawna Lemay

  The same day she asked, though her question was more of a soft accusation, —you must have a secret? Playful, she was never impolite and would never directly ask a question so personal. In that second, I understood that if she had asked me point blank, —What secret do you keep? I, like any good secret keeper, would lie.

  Secrets, anyway, are usually incidental. How you keep one is important, how you choose to live with it, let it alter you, matters. Perhaps it makes you a kinder person, someone more willing to forgive and understand. Secrets have that potential.

  ***

  Neither of us had been working at the store all that long the morning we came in, both of us walking up the street from opposite directions at exactly the same time, to find Florine wasn’t there. I vividly recall Ingrid-Simone jiggling her key in the front door lock. We were cold and the door had a layer of frost on it, as did the round metal lock. Ingrid-Simone took the key out and breathed on it, huffing, trying to warm it. There was an ice fog in the air, an unusual dampness.

  —Maybe we should go round the back and ask Florine to let us in, I said. But Ingrid-Simone gave me a look that said, patience my love, and repeated the procedure a few more times. I humoured her, remaining silent, not believing this could work.

  But it did work and we were in, suddenly warm and not a bit giddy, me congratulating her on the use of her superpower, the ability to thaw ancient lock mechanisms with her warm breath, and she laughed, sparkling, and said how full of hot air she was, proven once and for all. And we both admired the frost that had attached itself to the hair around our faces once we took our woolly hats off.

  —We’re angels, she said, —beautiful snow fairies, look at us! And we flipped our tresses about while the frost disappeared, and our hair was damp and rather limp.

  —Let’s hope we don’t have any exboyfriends come into the store today, I said, and she looked at me, actually shocked, and walked away. I meant to tease her about boyfriends later to see what her reaction meant but had no chance and the thought slipped away.

  The closet in the back room where we hung our things was dark. Usually Florine turned the lights on for us when she arrived. No Florine? We looked at each other. First thing in the morning, she was always there, in silence, sorting clothes or sometimes doing paperwork, organizing the consignment invoices, paying bills, writing numbers down in a ledger since she refused to use the computer. More often, she was hanging out the back door at the bottom of the narrow stairwell, one foot in, having a cigarette. When she saw we had arrived, she would bend down and put the cigarette out in an old black saucer of an ashtray, usually quite full, that she left sitting outside the back door.

  Later in the day she would often disappear, quite randomly. Maybe she went for long walks, or long lunches with unknown ladies, we never knew and she certainly never said. Sometimes she came back looking as though she had engaged in strenuous exercise, all flushed and mussed and damp. Exhausted looking. At other times she would have leaves in her hair, snow clinging to her boots and the back of her down coat, and we surmised quietly that she had walked into the ravine, laid down, and made snow angels. Or was having a clandestine affair. We would ask her, —did you have a nice lunch out? And she would sputter —oh, lunch, nononono. I brought a sandwich. Going to eat it now. The sun is bright today. Then she would walk away from us, go to the back room and hang out the cold back door with her cigarettes.

  But that morning, she wasn’t there, and we thought maybe her key hadn’t worked very well either. So we swung open the back door and Ingrid-Simone got her key out to see if it would work and it did. There was a skiff of snow and no footprints. We closed the door.

  —She’s probably just late. I hope nothing happened. One of us said these things and then we shrugged and went on with the opening duties of vacuuming the rug, setting up the cash register, unlocking the front door, and turning the open sign over. We expected a slow day thanks to the weather. Ingrid-Simone sat on the front counter, as no one was in the store, and took out her miniature notebook filled with her miniature writing. She flipped a few pages until she found what she wanted.

  She read, —“Run your fingers through my soul. For once, just once, feel exactly what I feel, believe what I believe, perceive as I perceive, look, experience, examine, and for once, just once, understand.” This is by Anonymous. How lovely, lovely! Don’t you think? Run your fingers through my soul! Okay, it’s a bit corny too, I admit. Do you believe in the soul? Last night I Googled the word, ‘soul,’ and I suppose it’s no surprise but there are millions of results, utterly millions!

  There was a rack of clothes needing to be put away from the day before. I took one or two pieces off the rack and held them up to me and danced around while Ingrid-Simone chattered away from her perch, scrunching her face or laughing occasionally at my clumsy, fauxelegant dance. Once in a while she stopped and said, —oh, yes, now that one, that’s really you, darling. Usually these were the supremely ridiculous dresses, worth a fortune but gaudy as hell. We talked about pitying the person who bought a particular garment, and took to saying, —O, I pity that one, which was later just shortened to, —Pity!

  —Pity! She called out, as I twirled around the store, and then she asked, —do you believe the soul is composed of parts? How many do you reckon? I replied, quite cavalierly, —run your fingers through my soul and find out…

  —No, no, I mean, look, look. The Stoics, whoever they were, thought the soul had eight distinct parts. Eight! They thought the soul was like a breath, too. Others describe it as a flame. Heraclitus. Heraclitus. He thought it was a flame. A nourishing flame. I’ve written this down, nourishing flame, breath. The soul moves with an exquisite fluency, I’ve copied that as well. I don’t know what any of it means, I realize that. But do you believe there is life after death? Do you believe a soul could follow another soul, haunt one? Or accompany one? With an exquisite fluency?

  I realized she was serious, her voice becoming suddenly sombre, downcast and low.

  The telephone rang, disturbing the moment. Funny, I suppose, how things unfold. But that day, at least, unwound around the moment of the phone, the ringing, its sharp interruption and the news it brought. Even if that is true, the importance of such ringings, I worry that I have not yet explained fully enough the strangeness and naivety of Ingrid-Simone, her freshness. She was like someone from a Woody Allen movie but that does not do her justice, for she was real, utterly and poignantly and delightfully real. I want to compare her to wildflowers but that’s too easy.

  What shaped a person like Ingrid-Simone? Though maybe what I mean to ask is, what shaped a poem like Ingrid-Simone? Until the day of the ringing, I didn’t ask myself this question. I only wanted to watch, as one might watch a movie, to see what would happen next, to understand what each of her gestures meant as an insight into her largely unknowable character.

  I can still conjure that particular ring in my head, I swear. Ingrid-Simone picked up the receiver and held it at an angle from her ear so I could also hear. The voice from the dead, saying, —I will not be there. I will not…be… there. And the sound of the hanging up, the loud tone on the line gone dead.

  We had suspected as much. Florine would not come into the store that day. But we were also reminded that there were many things we didn’t know about Florine. Did we know anything? We pooled our scant knowledge of her. We started by wondering if she were ill. Or if she was hungover. This seemed too scandalous; we laughed and put our hands over our open mouths. It seemed impossible. Then Ingrid-Simone suggested in a more subdued tone that Florine sounded as though she were drugged. Sleeping pills, we speculated. Or too much Nyquil. Yes, that was it, she had a cold and took Nyquil and felt groggy, like death warmed over. That sounded right.

  Should we take her anything? Was there anyone to look after her? We didn’t know her phone number, let alone where she lived. She never spoke of a partner, or husband, or even of a very good frien
d. We were awful! Instantly filled with guilt. Embarrassed. We rummaged in the front desk for something that might have her telephone number on it, a contact list. Her last name, what was her last name? Surely we knew that.

  I told Ingrid-Simone the story of how I was sure I had seen Florine in the field at the edge of the city riding a bike, an antique Schwinn. How I imagined stories about her. How neither of us mentioned having met before when I came to the store for the interview. How I might have even come up with strange theories about twins or doppelgangers, except that once I heard her talking in a low tone to a woman who came in holding a bicycle helmet under her arm. I heard the odd phrase, a few words here and there. Florine had said, —my Schwinn, more than once.

  We became quite serious for the rest of the day, quiet. We dropped all of the “run your fingers through my soul” business. There were very few customers so we had long expanses of silence, which was unusual for us. Florine didn’t come in the next day either or the following one.

  Late in the afternoon on the third day of Florine’s absence, Ingrid-Simone was tidying the handbags when she heard a rattle. She opened a worn and black handbag, very much like a doctor’s bag, and retrieved a smooth stone, shaped like a heart.

  —So odd! How could I have missed this? I couldn’t have missed it, I’m very thorough, I know I am. Someone must have come into the store and placed it inside. But that’s absurd. What sort of person would do such a weird thing? I mean, it seems like something I might do, but who else would? It seems like a message.

  When Ingrid-Simone said the word ‘weird’, it was as though she were handing out the highest of compliments, she said it with such awe, with so much air before the w. I had never heard anyone say the word the way she said it. It didn’t sound the way people said it in the 1970s —she said it in an utterly modern way. Full of her breath, beginning with a whoosh, full of wonder and encompassing the esteem that she felt for anyone who was weird.

  As we locked up that night, we decided to call the police the next day if Florine didn’t call or appear. Though what we would tell them, we were unsure. We didn’t know her last name or anything really. We would look ridiculous, daft.

  But she did come in. The light was on in the dim back room when we arrived. The faint smell of cigarette smoke drifted to the front of the store, and there was Florine, hovering by the back door attempting to blow her smoke outside into the frigid air and watching it be repelled by the wall of cold, easing itself back inside. The first thing she did was wave us away. We left her. Went on with our opening duties. Opened the door. There was no one waiting to get in, as there were so many days. I volunteered to go to the back and talk to Florine. All I could get out of her that day was that she had not been ill. —No, nothing terminal, she joked. How exhausted she looked and her skin seemed grey. I thought she moved like a skeleton, as if she were part bird. I noticed that her hair was becoming increasingly grey. Had it been that streaked through before?

  The rest of the winter, we attempted to learn more about her but after this day, she became more elusive. She would often be late. She disappeared during the day for long periods without telling us that she was leaving or when she arrived back. When Ingrid-Simone once boldly asked her to let us know when she was coming or going, so that if someone phoned for her we could tell them the appropriate thing, she just said, —message, take a message. And kept muttering, —yes, take a message. If someone calls asking, oh never mind, a message.

  I returned to Ingrid-Simone, then, content that Florine was not in any immediate harm. And we hid between racks of clothes and talked and wondered. And made it a goal to find out as soon as we could, at least, what her name was, where she lived, and what her telephone number might be.

  —I feel like a private investigator, or a snoop, or a peeping Tom. Maybe we’ll have to follow her home. Have a stakeout! It would be for her own good, of course.

  We planned a surveillance of Florine, which we never imagined enacting.

  The day that Florine returned, I remember she rolled out a rack of freshly steamed clothes with a rather pointed look at the two of us that said: what am I paying you for, to hang out whispering amid the cocktail dresses? With her arms like skeleton wings unfurling rather magnificently, sublimely decrepit, she heaved a huge box of purses and shoes onto the counter behind the front desk for Ingrid-Simone and headed for the back room, arms flapping, stretching out I suppose, limbering up. We buried our heads immediately, exchanging a couple of looks, raised eyebrows and the like, for the next while. But eventually we ended up distracted, looking after one customer then another until we wound up whispering amid the lime green shawls and orange tshirt dresses. We started talking again about finding out her name, her full name. Florine was not a popular name of late, maybe there was a way to search first names in a particular city, I wondered aloud. And then I said, —the only other person I’ve heard of with that name was a New York artist named Florine Stettheimer who painted interiors of parties and people and flowers all in an eccentric, modern, fantastic mode. Her palette was somewhat pastel and stomach churning, yet beautifully artificial, eclectic, and full of the drollness of a secluded socialite life. Her sister Carrie made a dollhouse that’s in the New York City Museum. I saw it once, behind Plexiglas. Strange.

  Ingrid-Simone wanted to know more about the dollhouse. The miniature paintings in it, originals done by artists like Marcel Duchamp. A miniature Nude Descending a Staircase. All the tiny period furniture. Sculptures even.

  —Fascinating! I’m going to go to the library tonight and look up pictures.

  A week after we talked about miniatures I received the first purse. I was wearing an orange dress.

  ***

  I, who in my whole life had never even dreamed of wearing an orange dress, wore the dream of an orange dress to work. An orange, beautifully cut, wraparound dress swinging just below my knees. As an academic, even the pretend one I was, I could never have worn such a garment to the university. Not that anyone would have blinked. What you wore was not a factor, and so usually, students and professors on campus usually dressed in an understated mode. Not that there wasn’t a certain amount of stylishness but it was a stylishness of a different sort altogether. You simply didn’t wear attentiongrabbing orange dresses when you wished to be unobserved. And all I had wanted to do was blend in and listen. I had wanted to listen. That calling, amid the others.

  Maybe the combination of finding the heartshaped stone in the handbag and the discussion of miniatures, or maybe Ingrid-Simone thinking in a way that was miniature, like her writing, led her to create the first tiny purse. Which is not to say that she thought small but that her thoughts were condensed, they required a certain amount of squinting, they brought attention to things that could just barely be seen. They examined what others might pass by or dismiss as inconsequential, a smudge, a blur, a randomness. Once she told me she was interested in graffiti, miniature graffiti. She found surfaces on which she could write quotations with her superfine markers. And she signed her graffiti—I.s.

  —There’s something I want to give you. Hmm. I want you to have it because of everything you give me, everything you teach me. Just being with you I feel like I’m growing, you know? I want you to have it. What it is, is, well, it’s a purse sculpture I guess you could call it.

  She held a small box on the palm of her hand, outstretched. I protested. —Honestly, honestly, what ever do I give you? Oh you’re lovely, but no, I’m nothing.

  —No, no, Shaya, I want you to have it, I made it for you.

  And she smiled her really beautiful, soft, bemused smile that transformed her face into music; it was as though you could hear the string section come in. An opening up. A smile you could walk into as you would into a clearing in the forest. The light coming into the mossy space through the green leaves, golden and twinkling and pretty dappled.

  She slid the box from the palm of her hand into the palm
of mine, as though we were transferring a handful of pearls or a kitten. Yes, more like a kitten, calico because I like the sound of that word. The box was purring. I thought it must contain a breathing, purring, content life.

  It was difficult to open. I was swallowed perfectly by that moment. Hypnotized by every particle of the purring gift. By the transfer, by her slightly chipped candyapple red nail polish, the smudged and faded ink remnants of a reminder to herself on her wrist, by the shape of her hand as it was cupped, by the giving, by the shyness and boldness and girlish procedure. It seemed a magic trick—voila! presto! Suddenly the box lay in my hands, also cupped. So few are the times in my life when I can say I was thrilled by such an inner shiver of delight, I mean truly thrilled. How often we just throw such words about to cover up disappointments, things not coming up to expectations, but here I was intently and thoroughly thrilled. This was an unnatural state for me, so often inhibited and silent.

  The lid removed, I couldn’t see what was inside. I had a moment of blindness. So emotional and with no idea what I’d see, I briefly, for an instant, saw nothing. A darkness, which was just a film of water covering my eyes. I had to blink and blink and squint to behold.

  I beheld. A miniature buttery leather messengerlike bag, bordering on a satchel, a miniature leather holdall. How small the stitches were! Minute! Embroidered in crimson on the front, the word:

  C A P A C I O U S.

  I turned it over and found the words—‘any thing, solemn, slight or beautiful.’

  I knew immediately this was a purse dedicated to Virginia Woolf. When I had first learned of Ingrid-Simone’s penchant for purses, I had brought in Woolf’s diary and read out loud in my best fake British accent for her the famous line, “What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious holdall, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through.”