Mail

by Mameve Medwed

Louie points to my mail. He has long graceful fingers, the tips slightly spatulate, the skin a golden sheath. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “These envelopes. I mean you get so many. All with the same writing. But from different places …”

  I explain.

  His eyes ooze sympathy. They have black irises wreathed in the softest brown flecked with little yellow suns. Ah, life they say.

  “That’s life,” I say now. “Some I sell, some are sent right back.” What I don’t tell him is that for the two I “sold,” the payment for one was a year’s subscription to the quarterly. The other, three published copies of my own work.

  “Geez,” he says, “and I’m the guy’s got to deliver the bad news.”

  “Next time maybe you can bring me a big fat check.”

  “Right,” he says, “I’m gonna get to work on that.” He pauses. “Mind if I ask you how you pay the rent?”

  “I’ve got money saved. And a small inheritance.”

  “That’s a relief,” he says, “after all those stories about starving artists.”

  I smile. That he’s concerned about the bareness of my cupboard touches me.

  We discuss the weather, the job the city’s doing salting the streets. “Hey,” he says, “about those stories, you know, those Xeroxes …”

  “Hang on a sec.” I run across the hall to my apartment where they are sitting on the table just inside the door. I have kept them there for several weeks hoping he’ll remember them.

  Carefully he folds them into his bag after first asking my permission to crease their smooth surfaces. “Great,” he says. “I can’t wait.” And as he turns to go, he touches one of those golden fingers to my sleeve.

  * * *

  Seamus calls me just as the diaper man is about to ask the UPS woman out. I’m not sure … I start to type when the phone rings. My hello must be grumpier than usual because Seamus says, “You sound so mad, Katinka, as if you knew I was on the other end.”

  “What do you want, Seamus?” I ask.

  “To wish you a happy Christmas, my dear.”

  “Cut the crap, Seamus.”

  “To find out how your writing is progressing. You know I always took, indeed still take, an interest in your literary development.”

  I can’t resist showing off. For some reason that perhaps only a full course of analysis might reveal, I need Seamus to see I’m succeeding without him. Even after all of this time. I clear my throat. “Actually, I’m doing well. Have published quite a few stories.”

  “Where?”

  “You know, the usual. Literary quarterlies. Small but respectable.”

  “Soon The New Yorker, I trust. Have you got Xeroxes?”

  “Actually not. I’m much more interested in what I’m working on now. For me those stories are already in the past.”

  Seamus seems to chew this over with a long intensifying hum which hurts my ear. “Speaking of the past,” he finally says.

  “Why did you call?” I ask.

  “You’ve got my Portrait of the Artist … and I’ve got yours.”

  “What difference could that possibly make?”

  “Mine’s a first edition.”

  “And it’s taken nine years for you to discover that?”

  “Georgette’s talked me into contact lenses. Now I see everything with a new and startling clarity.”

  Seamus says he’ll be over in half an hour. I emphasize that I’m working and can only take a minute to exchange books through my door. “No more time,” I joke, “than it took us to pass divorce papers.” Seamus chuckles. He understands, he says. He, of all people, knows the vagaries of the muse.

  I go to the bookcase and find Portrait. Sure enough it’s his, Seamus O’Toole scrawled possessively on a card tucked next to the frontispiece. I sit in a chair and start to read. Two hours later I am in a slough of despair. I think of my story. It is garbage. More trivial than this fly-speck on the bottom of this page. I should move back to Old Town and become something more suitable to my abilities: a dental hygienist, a grammar school crossing guard. I look at my watch and realize it’s after eleven. As usual Seamus is late. And so sunk have I been in Joyce’s language, I didn’t even hear Louie arrive. I have missed the one bright moment in my day. I get carried away and tell myself I have missed the Joycean revelation in the story of my life. I am just about to squeeze out a perfect tear, when there’s a knock.

  I open the door the width of the book.

  “Wait a minute,” Seamus says. “I’ve got your mail.”

  Seamus pushes through the door. Without his glasses his eyes look funny, like windows missing their shutters. He blinks rapidly. He hands me my book on top of my mail, which contains, I notice, manila envelopes.

  I give him his book. He points at my mail and blinks some more. “Had a little chat with your mailman,” he says. “Quite the sympathetic sort. Feels terrible that your stories keep coming back like this. Maybe he’s afraid you’ll shoot the messenger.”

  “If there’s any messenger I’ll shoot, it will be you.”

  “And a happy Christmas!” Seamus declares after I have shut the door.

  * * *

  My mother has come to spend Christmas with me. Neither of us has the Christmas spirit. “We have seasonal blues,” I explain. “It’s some kind of affective disorder having to do with the lack of sunlight at this time of year.”

  “Nonsense,” my mother says. “It’s all to do with men.”

  She sighs. I sigh. We tack some holly to a shelf and swoon back onto the sofa. We’ve done enough Christmas decorating, we both agree. Things have not worked out well for my mother and the Princeton man. He turned out to have a wife, Smith ’51. “Dowdy,” my mother says, “Lily Pulitzer and one of those lightship basket pocketbooks. But well educated,” she adds.

  I nod. I know exactly how far well educated gets you. These days not even into my front hall. Since my mother’s been here, I’ve missed my talks with Louie. By eleven every morning we’re out the door and stalking markdowns. I’m avoiding Louie, I tell myself, because now that my mother and I are a temporary twosome, he’s not something I want to share. Am I afraid her X-ray eyes will detect the light in mine when I raise mine to his? Or shudder at an insignia embroidered U.S. Postal, not U.S. Naval, Academy?

  After a while my mother and I force ourselves from the sofa and into my kitchen where we are making a batch of gingerbread men. Tonight the art historian and his roommate Gregory the Florist are throwing a Christmas party for the whole building. This isn’t such a crowd as you might imagine since the building is now nearly half empty, so many academics having gone away during the long break. My mother and I ice extra-cheerful smiles onto the faces of our gingerbread men. Under one’s raisin eye I place another raisin vertically. “See,” I say. “He’s smiling through his tears.”

  My mother smiles through her own tears. “How about that Princeton man,” she groans.

  We layer the gingerbread men into a cookie tin and put doilies between the layers. My mother presses the cover shut, and I attach a red satin bow. There’ll be an auction at the party tonight, and we have all been asked to bring a contribution. The proceeds will go to a shelter for the homeless. We have no right to have a seasonal affective disorder, my mother and I tell each other, when there are people with no homes. We decide to wear our discount Diors. We are determined to have a good time.

  The apartment of the art historian, who is named Derek, and Gregory the Florist is furnished in le style Rothschild, which I gather means lots of red brocade, gold tassels, and fringe on everything. My mother is immediately swept off to meet Gregory’s mother, who herself seems to be swathed in le style Rothschild. She is wearing a tent of gold Lurex. At least she is not in Lily Pulitzer. My mother, animated, seems to be enjoying their conversation. Perhaps they are talking about men.

  Young men in black are passing trays of hors d’oeuvres. One stops in front of me and extends his platter. “These ar
e fabulous,” he says.

  I look. The hors d’oeuvres are arranged in concentric circles like the monoliths at Stonehenge. Each round and square mound is topped with a flower. I take one. I touch a petal of a pansy. It is not candied but feels velvety as if just seconds ago it was thrusting up from damp soil.

  I shudder. I turn my head to look at the other people in the room. They are all drinking champagne and eating flowers. All the trays that the young men hold seem to have flowers on them. All the guests are eating flowers. “I don’t eat flowers,” I confess.

  The young man raises an eyebrow.

  “You know that book, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies? I’ve taken it to heart.”

  The young man shakes his head. He is not amused.

  I pick up an hors d’oeuvre. I eat it. Salmon mousse with pansy. I live. I take another. A mushroom with nasturtium. It sticks a little in my throat, but I get it down. I do not require the Heimlich maneuver. When it finally dawns on me that here I am, Katinka O’Toole, eating flowers and still standing, I decide that nothing will surprise me. Thus when I see a familiar face across the crowded room I am not surprised, only puzzled. Who is this person I seem to know?

  He’s a tall man with dark hair, nicely dressed, not in le style Rothschild, but in jacket and tie. Then he sees me and waves. Even from this distance I recognize the spatulate fingertips. Louie, in mufti, and looking fine. My heart turns over.

  He makes his way toward me. “Katinka,” he says. “Isn’t this a great party?”

  “It’s improving.” I point at a passing tray. “Did you eat the flowers?” I ask.

  “No way. I’m a meat-and-potatoes guy. There’s a bowl of peanuts over there on the piano. Shall I get you some?”

  I grab a pansy-topped asparagus tip and tilt it into my mouth. “Actually I’m developing a real taste for plant life,” I say.

  “Right.” He laughs. “Bring on the Pepto. You look real nice,” he adds.

  I don’t tell him how nice he looks. I indicate my dress. “Filene’s Basement,” I say.

  He points to his lapel. “Filene’s Basement, too,” he says. We laugh. It warms me to realize our clothes have been folded into identical cardboard boxes, have been marked down with identical rubber stamps.

  We talk a bit about the apartment’s decor and whether the rumors of the super’s giant binge are true. He is too polite to mention the hordes of my stories that lately seem to be coming home to roost. I’m too polite to ask whether he’s read my Xeroxed offerings yet. I notice my mother standing by a window watching us. Some fringe from the red velvet drapery trails over her shoulder like an epaulet. She telegraphs her delight and is about to make her way toward us when Gregory announces it is time for the auction. Louie and I jam ourselves into a loveseat that already has a person sitting on it. Louie’s hip pushes into mine, our knees bang. My shoulder-duster earring gets caught in the tweed of his jacket. And his arm, as he untangles it, brushes against my breast.

  It’s hard to concentrate on the auction.

  The gingerbread men my mother and I have baked are bought for seven dollars by a professor emeritus of philosophy. The dean of the Business School wins an anniversary flower arrangement. Louie and I are sitting so close together that as we applaud the successful bidders, our shoulders knock intimately. For a moment I allow myself to wonder what it would be like to bump against those shoulders in bed.

  “Now we have something really unusual,” Gregory the Florist, who is acting as auctioneer, announces. He holds up a folder with papers inside. “These are donated by Louie Cappetti. Two stories by our writer in residence, Katinka O’Toole, from the first floor.”

  I, of course, want to disappear, but there is no space in which to disappear. “I hope you don’t mind, Katinka,” Louie whispers. His breath in my ear takes my breath away.

  My mother bids one dollar. Gregory’s mother raises it to two-fifty. A man I don’t know says he thinks he could use the folder and bids two-seventy-five. Somebody asks whether Gregory will throw in his camel hair smoking jacket. Louie jumps to ten dollars and claims the prize to much applause. “Those are the best stories I ever read,” he tells me. “No way would I give them up.”

  After the auction, everybody mills about eating more flowers. I have another pansy and two more nasturtiums and start to feel sick. I head toward the piano and the bowl of peanuts. Louie is already there. The top of the piano is up, and it makes a kind of screen we stand behind. Louie holds the folder with my stories in one hand. With the other hand he points to the ceiling. A spray of mistletoe is tacked to the molding. Louie bends over me. I smell peanuts. Louie’s lips touch mine.

  * * *

  The next morning, it’s after ten when I wake up. I have a headache. My stomach hurts. I spent a restless night twisting on a bed of pansies turned by spatulate fingertips, jabbed against shoulders, and nearly smothered by a blanket of manila envelopes. I put on an old robe and stagger into the kitchen. I have a sense of being off balance, the way I always feel when I have to make a decision and either choice could mean a big mistake. But you don’t have to decide anything, I tell myself, it’s just a hangover, the seasonal affective disorder. My diagnosis is verified when I look out the window to a world of gray clouds and sleet.

  My mother, on the other hand, is bouncing around my kitchen in a red dress. Her Cuban heels dance on the linoleum tiles. The professor emeritus of philosophy has invited her to a concert this afternoon. For her the sun shines at least metaphorically.

  I slump into a chair and fill my coffee mug.

  My mother pulls out the chair across from mine. “About your young man. The one who bought your stories …”

  “What about him?”

  “Where did he go to school?”

  “Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.”

  “All three?”

  “Oxford and Cambridge, Trinity, the Sorbonne …”

  “Now, Katinka,” she begins. Fortunately her cross-examination is interrupted by the thud of the mailbag in our vestibule. We both rise from our chairs at the same time. “I’ll get it,” she says. “You can’t go into the hall like that.” She points at my robe.

  I pull it closer around me. It is missing its tie. I study my bare feet. I have ugly feet, pale and knobby. The toes are crooked and of illogical lengths. The big toe is in fact shorter than the designated little one. Seamus used to tease me about my toes. This little piggy that nobody but me would take to market, he would chant. I wipe a mustache of coffee from my upper lip and trace the shape of my mouth. I can still feel the imprint of Louie’s kiss last night. I can taste its warmth. Louie’s feet, I am sure, are beautiful. His toes are sorted like pearls into a perfectly graduated row. And the thought strikes me that I might never get to see Louie’s beautiful, bare toes.

  This is confirmed by my mother, who skips back into the apartment carrying a pile of bills. She has an expression on her face that Archimedes must have had when he sprang from the tub yelling Eureka! “Katinka,” she yells now, “your young man is the mailman! I never forget a face.”

  I consider putting up a defense, the usual democracy, classless society bit. I consider going out into the hall. Saying to Louie, “About last night …” Saying to him, “Maybe sometime we can have a drink …” But I don’t move. My mother’s astonishment pins me to my place. And I am so heavy with sadness I don’t think I could lift a knee if I tried. Will I ever make it to spring? I wonder. To summer, even. But the very word summer eases my woe. I think of sand, of waves. Of sunburned shoulders. Of letters limp with humidity. Of long tanned fingers. Of sandals wrapped around bare and beautiful toes.

  2

  My mother goes home the day after Christmas. She is ecstatic. She thinks she’s in love. The professor emeritus of philosophy who bought our gingerbread men seems to be courting her. Arthur Haven, Harvard BA, MA, Ph.D., is seventy, wears tweed, and has aristocratic cheekbones. He has a dead wife (Wellesley ’47) and a living live-wire daughter (Wellesley ’85, Harvard Ph.D. �
��90). The daughter’s name is Zenobia. She in turn has a husband, son, cat and dog, and tenure at Simmons College where she teaches art history and has already published a book on the field colorists and has more in the works. My mother adores many things about Arthur, but two things, in addition to his tail of degrees, especially delight her. That he has a daughter my age and that he lives in my building. I’m not sure about the daughter. I reminded my mother how in Old Town all the children of her dearest friends hated each other. “I loathed Shirley Mercer all through school,” I told her.

  “How childish of you, Katinka. Shirley turned out fine. She has three well-behaved daughters and is president of the Old Town/Orono Garden Club.”

  “My very point.”

  My mother ignored this. “You know,” she said, “your father and I always hoped to give you a sister.”

  “I’ve had thirty-one years to adjust.”

  “A little sibling rivalry couldn’t hurt.”

  Which remark hurt me enough to dislike Zenobia Haven (she keeps her maiden name) on principle.

  But what I really dislike is the fact that Arthur Haven lives on the fourth floor.

  Now that he and my mother are dating (is that the appropriate word for sexa- and septuagenarians?), I seem to run into him everywhere. In front of the elevator, around the corridor, at the dry cleaners. “Ah, Katinka,” he’ll wink, as if we have a special bond. Yesterday, there he was again in the express checkout line at the grocery store. He was buying a single carton of yogurt and a Hershey bar. I had a couple items over the allotted eight, that is, if you insist that two apples aren’t one pair. Professor Haven obviously did. I saw him cast a cold eye on my basket. Still, his voice was warm. “Katinka, my dear,” he smiled, “I had the most enchanting chat with your lovely mother last night on the phone.”

  I couldn’t help it. All I could imagine was one of Seamus’ little chats on the English department floor.

  Professor Haven must have read part of my mind because then he went on—“And the most amazing coincidence. I’m teaching one night a week at the Harvard extension, just to keep these old fingers in. And guess who’s running a fiction-writing workshop in the next room?”