Joe strolls past, wearing a short-sleeved permanent-press shirt that matches his blue pants. How is it that every man looks good in a uniform unless it's postal? When she met Christopher, he was wearing his Swiss minimalist lifeguard togs: red Speedos, a white whistle on a red cord, a red foam rescue tube with RESCUE printed in large white letters. She'd fallen hard after that first taste of CPR. He'd saved her life, only to ruin it later.
Anonymity is difficult in a small town, impossible on a postal route. Since Christopher lives close, along with all they've shared, they share the same carrier.
"How you doing?” Joe asks. He's a poet, but he never says anything worth remembering.
Her boobs feel lumpy and heavy, like someone filled them with buckshot during the twenty-five minutes she managed to sleep. “Not so great,” she says.
"Sorry to hear it.” Joe transfers the white tubs to his van, leaving hers for last. “You okay with this?” he says, with a nod to the skunk.
She shrugs. “It doesn't smell,” she says. “But thanks."
Her boyfriend's house is near the end of the route. Stella, in her present state especially, won't fit inside the mailbox, so Joe carries her to the door and rings the bell. He gives it a few tries before setting her on the concrete slab porch. “What are we gonna do now?” he asks, but she knows a rhetorical question when she hears it, and sure enough, he takes out form PS 3605-R from his pocket and starts filling out the blanks. The paper is yellow. He copies the zip code and checks a box informing the occupant a parcel awaits pickup.
"Can't you just leave me?"
"Sorry. Someone has to sign to show they've accepted you."
She doesn't protest. She knows about rules, about rigidity. Her mother was a civil servant. Her father, a career soldier. “There's no democracy in bureaucracy,” he told her. When you work for the government, there's nothing to do but bide your time until retirement. So back she goes, back to her padded crate and night workers who couldn't be kinder. They feed her Vanilla Wafers and saltines and let her use the employee bathroom. She feels special, like the post office cat. She waits to be claimed. And waits. Joe brings her a science fiction book called The Postman by David Brin, but she's not much of a reader, and sets the book on the counter while she uses the bathroom. By the time she remembers, it's disappeared. She becomes friendly with a sorter named Michelle, whose asthma is exacerbated by the glues used to seal envelopes. Twice, she's sent Stella to the lockers for her inhaler, and Stella has stood by, doting, until the rasp of Michelle's wheezing fades and her breathing comes easier. Stella learns the wisdom of having a friend who is in worse shape than she is.
Michelle has two kids and works night shift while her husband sleeps. She goes home in time to get the children ready for school. Four hours of sleep and then there's after-school activities and cooking. “Not much of a life,” she says. “But it takes two incomes."
After a week, Joe brings disturbing news. “You can't stay,” he says. “You need to go home."
"He's coming,” Stella says. “Just another few days.” She looks at her watch, which makes no sense, not that anything about her life makes sense. She just expects it to.
"Sorry,” Joe says. “Regulations.” He flips through a manual and points to a page, but when she sees the heading Mail Recovery, formerly called the Dead Letter Office, Joe says, it makes her sad, and she only pretends to read the words in question, and nod her head. In the morning, he transfers her to his van and when he gets to that place on the route, delivers her to her house, where she's supposed to sign for herself so he can leave her on the porch.
Only she won't do it.
Joe fills out another form, this one chartreuse and marked PS 941-X. “We just had in-service on this,” Joe says. “New form.” They return to the post office to file a report about unaccepted mail. Joe boils water and makes her instant soup. His voice is gentle. “Stay as long as you need,” he says. “You're on my route. Around here, that means something."
"Thank you,” answers Stella. When her calf seizes up and she has to stretch, she's allowed to walk around unsupervised in the storage room, a space that, like the center of the earth, has seen neither fresh air, nor natural light.
"Look where you step,” says an old man sitting next to a shopping cart on a green canvas cot. The shopping cart is filled with lumpy black plastic bags and crushed soda cans. Oil-stained buckets from Kentucky Fried Chicken form a makeshift parapet around his encampment. He smells like sour milk and stale tobacco. A dried maple leaf curls through his hair.
"Do you live here?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Yeah. It's not so bad. I worked here forty years,” he says in a gentle Southern accent. “Service before that."
She does the math and it adds up to Vietnam. Sure enough, he's wearing a black tee shirt under his flak jacket with an evil-eyed golden eagle and gold letters that proclaim, “Remember the POWs."
"What's your name?” she asks.
"Bartleby,” he says. “Like Melville's scrivener. But you can call me Bart."
"Like the Simpsons,” she says, being unfamiliar with either Melville or scrivening. She introduces herself.
"Like Stella Kowalski,” he says. “I once lived on Desire."
"No,” she says. “Not like anyone.” This isn't true. She just doesn't know who she was named for. Maybe if she did, she'd understand better how she'd ended up living in a post office. She sees misshapen figures like shadow puppets fluttering across the back wall. “Do they live here, too?” she asks.
The old man shushes her. “It's best not to mention it. Don't ask, don't tell,” he says, “or they'll make you fill out a squatter's form.” He chuckles at his joke and lies back down, leaving up one hand to guard his cart. “First thing you do,” he says, “you get yourself a cart. Unless you can convince one of the blue shirts to give you a locker."
"I'd prefer a locker,” Stella says.
"I'm kidding. Sorry, little post office humor. I'll ask one of the boys to bring back a cart next time he makes groceries."
Stella wanders out, finds the break room. She'd like a cigarette, but the machine is out of everything except Snickers and Wintermint gum. Her stomach roils. She sits with her head between her legs for fifteen minutes until she's able to stand, then go out and find somebody to talk to. She sees why Bart might like it here.
"Would you like to help sort the outgoing mail?” asks the night supervisor. “Makes the time go faster when you've got something to do.” He finds her a blue uniform she can grow into.
She works an hour or so before seeing her boyfriend's name whisk by, and she pockets that envelope, and though shamed by her felonious act, her shame is not so strong it prevents her from doing this again. And again. In less than a week, she's a serious serial mail thief who lines her tub with Christopher's correspondence. She steals utility payments, his Texaco charge, and his entry to Publisher's Clearinghouse. She lets him pay his telephone bill.
She sleeps from four in the morning until noon, and sometimes manages to sneak in a short afternoon nap, but her slumber is frequently interrupted by vivid dreams that leave her exhausted. Today, for instance, she's dreamt she was a sand crab coming up for air just as an animated Swiss Army Knife—with blades for limbs—dashed away. She's dreamt Bart asked Joe to deliver a postal money order, but Joe said it was against regulations to reveal her zip code. She's dreamt she was about to add her name to Christopher's mailbox, but couldn't find a Sharpie. This last was a waking dream, and her eyelids flutter into consciousness just as Bart asks her something she doesn't quite get. “Could you repeat that?” she must say, and he shuffles away, muttering, “Sorry to interrupt."
She feels bad for him, but also wary. Two days ago, Bart got mad and kicked a man hard enough the man flew out of his shoes. The man was one of the shadow people she's been warned to stay away from. These are very bad people, people who've been caught opening Christmas cards to steal money meant for children. As punishment, they must walk the floors in
darkness, pulling heavy bags filled with mail. The bags are locked with heavy metal locks that clank against the chains. The shadow people moan and groan from the weight. It's very creepy. On the night Bart kicked the man hard enough for him to fly out of his shoes, Michelle, Stella's friend in mail sorting, broke up the fight with a cardboard mailing tube, reinforced with quarters from the stamp machine, and told Bart he'd be asked to leave if it happened again.
"It's the veterans who go postal,” Michelle had said. “This one's got a temper you need to watch out for."
So Stella lets him go, feeling bad to have hurt his feelings by being half-asleep. He was married once, but his wife took the children and left him. She knows Bart's had a hard life, and knowing this helps her keep things in perspective, because as bad as things are, they could always be worse. At the back of her mind she holds the hope she'll suffer a miscarriage, fit back in her own clothes, but that seems more and more unlikely once she graduates from the first trimester. She's made a decision by making no decision, not for the first time. Maybe it's her training in a military family, where people tell you what to do.
The night supervisor organizes a pool and swiftly collects over a thousand dollars, half of which goes to her. “I'm betting on February 31,” he says with a wink.
Joe saves out some crafts magazines that can't be forwarded because the subscribers have moved.
Stella learns to knit a scarf with postal twine she finds in the storage room. They don't use it anymore—the fibers get snared in the machines. She knits potholders and a bath mat. Linda, on the cleaning crew, brings her a few skeins of yarn and Stella starts on a yellow and white striped baby blanket. Soon, everyone's bringing in their leftover yarn. She knits compulsively. Wrap. Cast. Purl. She appreciates the smooth touch of the needles, how they clack and tap, the soft bump of the knots beneath her fingers. Knitting produces a tactile bliss that's almost as satisfying as smoking.
The night shift supervisor shows her how to develop a business plan for a mail order business. She figures out the sales points for personalized lap warmers. Postage is a break point, but fortunately, the lap warmers can go First Class in a Tyvek envelope. A casual observer might believe things are looking up for her. It's Bart who discovers Stella one night, sitting in the center of a maze of sorting boxes. She's writing postcards to Christopher and has accumulated a hefty stack. “Having a wonderful time,” she's printed on the reverse of a Disneyworld train station. “Wish you were here."
"For when the baby comes,” she explains. “So he knows I'm still thinking about him. In case I don't have time to write him then."
Bart nods. “You can't forget a person just because they forget you,” he says, and shows her to a box of letters written to his son in Seattle. “There might come a point,” he says, “where you stop writing them and stop mailing them. It happened to me."
She doesn't want to argue. Just because their paths have intersected in the mailroom doesn't mean she must abandon hers and follow his.
Bart pulls out a rolled up book from his jeans. It's The Postman. “I hope you don't mind me borrowing this,” he says. His fingers curl around the spine. He isn't so much returning it as coveting it.
"Was it any good?” she asked.
His expression is animated. “Great,” he says. “Maybe sometime I can read it again."
"Why don't you keep it?” she says. The hand clutching the book is already halfway to his pocket.
"Thanks,” he says. “Much appreciated."
The old man was a medic. “You need vitamins,” he says, and the next day, Joe brings forth a discount vitamin catalog in the bulk mail pile.
One of the women on the day shift brings in old maternity clothes, and the night shift supervisor finds a mattress that fits a clean white tub and is a perfect crib.
One night, when Stella is sorting mail, the machine mangles an envelope, creasing it into an origami heart with hard corners. It's addressed by hand, from a Kara G. on Portland Street to a Danny L. on Emerald Ave. Whatever message was inside is absent now. This happens sometimes, when people don't seal the flaps. She's supposed to go to the night supervisor, who will stamp it with the auxiliary marking that says, “We're sorry that your article was damaged during processing,” but the futility of this correspondence intrigues her, and she keeps the envelope to add to her collection of Christopher memorabilia. She thinks about what might have been in the letter. A copy of expenses from an automobile accident? A complaint about services rendered; maybe Danny was the overzealous gardener who butchered the azaleas. Maybe it was love. Would Kara try again, or give up when there was no answer?
The missing letter haunts her. The next night, curious, she cautiously opens a few promising letters and reads. A child has written a note, thanking his grandmother for a bicycle. Marie is sending a picture of her dream family room to a contractor before getting a bid. James is writing Martha to ask for a recommendation to grad school. At first, she's careful when replacing the contents, and gluing the envelopes shut. By the end of the week she no longer cares. When there's something she wants to keep, she either pulls out the letter and sends the envelope on to the supervisor, or hides the entire thing. This kind of thing is difficult to trace.
Bart catches her, and though she worries that he'll turn her in, instead, he volunteers himself as the baby's godfather. “That would be great,” Stella says. “Really, great.” She's no longer afraid of him.
The old man gives her a hug. His clothes are dirtier and more beat up than when she first met him, but the odor doesn't bother her nearly so much. She decides to knit him some hand warmers.
She likes the name Christopher for a boy and Christine for a girl. She reads about correspondence schools and mail order degrees. She's comfortable living here; this will be a good place for a child to grow up. Her last trimester, her ankles swell and she's tired all the time. “Why don't you cut back,” says the night shift supervisor. “Get a little more rest."
Being pregnant is practically a full-time job, utterly exhausting. She reduces her shift to two hours a night and is in bed in time to catch the last few jokes on Letterman. One night Michelle bakes her a tray of homemade cinnamon rolls that Bart promises to guard, to prevent sneaky nighttime raids upon her buns. Michelle's asthma has improved since Stella ordered a bottle of essential oils made from Thyme, Eucalyptus, Sage, and Lemon. Stella also ordered Lavender oil for Bart, though she hasn't had the nerve to suggest he use it sparingly to mask the other smells.
Bart tucks her in and pats down her hair with a fatherly hand. “Sweet dreams,” he says. She falls asleep. They say you don't pick your family and sometimes that's true. But sometimes, you get lucky and your family picks you.
* * * *
I became interstitial when my sister was born three years after my birth, transforming me from little sister to middle. In case you didn't know, middle children wrote the book on interstitial relationships, a tragicomic memoir. On one page, there you are, siding with big sister to form an unbeatable pair, relentless in tormenting your younger sibling. Turn the page, and big sister sides with little, forming an equally daunting pair who torment you. You're the in-between girl. One foot crosses into future mysteries and big sister's new high heels; the other foot plays dress-up with the baby, whose idea of grown-up is to imitate your mother. The lines have been drawn, and they are blurred. Did I mention I also have astigmatism?
Like many readers, I learned of the interstitiality of the Post Office from Eudora Welty. Like many writers, the PO is my conduit between artistic endeavors and audience. It's a surreal place, where intimate conversations stack atop bulk mailings, and where civil servants work beyond what can reasonably be asked, all in service of keeping the world interconnected. Thanks to my mailman, Joe.
Leslie What
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The Shoe in SHOES’ Window
Anna Tambour
The shop says SHOES because that is what it sells, just as the bakery next door says BRE
AD. When milk jumps out of a cow's eyes, it would make sense to call a shoes-shop ‘Liliana's’ or ‘Mode', but that, incredibly, is what is done in those places where chaos reigns.
Truly, where chaos reigns, even at night, nonsense and evasion shine where people look for straightforwardness, but where they look for inspiration, something beyond the realm of daily existence, they are then shown only things, and who can feed his soul with that? For a tired man or mother, a few moments of my treatment is like taking off socks and shoes and dipping your feet into a cool stream on a hot and stinking day. I restore the mind and nourish the soul—myself and my colleagues, I should say: window dressers to the People.
I dress the windows of SHOES, as well as the shops FOOD, STATIONERY, CLOTHING, and TOYS. This year I won the Hero of Culture Award for SHOES, but my most consistent triumphs, I think, have been in TOYS.
For years my days have been filled with the dual necessaries of life: creativity and undisturbed peace. That is a state unachievable to the workers in the shops, disturbed as they are from shop opening to shop closing, by constant interruption. It is impossible to do a proper inventory! But I am glad to say: that is not my problem.
I have cordial relations with them all—or had.
Today SHOES was in an uproar, and I was dragged into the middle of this unpleasantness.
Interfictions Page 5