Mail

by Mameve Medwed

  “Then she’s semi-gorgeous,” I persist.

  “Semi-semi.”

  “That much?”

  “Actually, not a bit.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  The truth is that I worry about Cheryl. More than I have a right to. It’s not that I have any claim on Louie. I’m not sure that I’d even want one. Sometimes I see Louie through my mother’s eyes. A good-looking mailman whose collar is glaringly blue. What would my friends think? My neighbors back in Old Town? This is no longer the sixties, after all, when Harvard doctoral candidates went to work on assembly lines and shipyards and an invitation to hoist a few in a workingman’s bar was more prized than a tap for Skull and Bones. But the minute I start seeing Louie through my mother’s eyes, shame and fury slam them shut. Then another image of Louie appears, rising like a male version of Botticelli’s Venus, all pink and creamy and lit by an otherworldly light. That’s when I start obsessing about Cheryl.

  Cheryl. Cheryl of the whopper breasts. I remember reading in Vogue that those women who cannot tuck a pencil underneath their breast look best in clothes. That I am a better candidate for the little black dress is small consolation for the thought of Cheryl, legions of Mongol No. 2s nestled under her giant mammaries.

  Louie sees Cheryl once a week, usually on Wednesday nights. She makes him dinner in the Pullman kitchen of her apartment over in Jamaica Plain. Usually Shake ’n Bake, he has volunteered. I asked him once what size bed Cheryl had.

  “Small,” he said. “It’s a small apartment.”

  This doesn’t make me feel much better.

  And why does he keep seeing her, I have to wonder, over a period of time that must add up to at least a decade. There’s no child after all, not even a Daniella to share. Just the memory of one who was never even born. “What do you talk about?” I asked Louie then.

  “Nothing much. The Sox, her work, my work, our kid.”

  “Kid?”

  He coughed, then cleared his throat. “You know, the one we lost. He’d be eleven now, just getting ready for junior high. Maybe heading off to Harvard eventually.” He paused. “When you tell me about Widener Library I can just about picture him there,” and a look of such pride shone on his face I had to turn my head away.

  Although today is Wednesday, I don’t have to worry about Cheryl. Louie’s off in Florida for the week visiting his aunt and uncle. His mother’s brother married his father’s sister. There are seven cousins. “We call them the seven dwarfs,” Louie said, “though the oldest’s only twelve and taller than me.”

  “Are you sure Cheryl isn’t going, too?” I asked. “A close family can always make room for one more.”

  “Come on, Katinka.”

  “She could be the eighth dwarf.”

  “Very funny.”

  “You told me your family likes her.”

  “They’ll like you, too, when they meet you.”

  I changed this subject right away. This family stuff is getting to me. How can I justify meeting Louie’s family when I spend all my time keeping Louie away from my own family and potential family to be. I feel like one of those characters in a Feydeau farce where doors slam shut and characters disappear around corners leaving behind a faint odor of cologne or a dropped handkerchief. This all has to be managed without Louie noticing the extremes to which I’m going to keep them apart. Not that Louie is particularly anxious to get to know my mother and Arthur in any other way but in the mailman sense. He is after all perfectly intelligent and socially aware. “I bet your mother will be really shocked that you’re dating the mailman,” he once said.

  “Of course not!” I had protested a little too much.

  “Sure.”

  “No more than your mother would be, then, at the thought of her precious Louie carrying on with a divorced woman with no bra who isn’t even Italian.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  “You mean she wouldn’t like me?” I’d rushed to ask.

  “How could she help but,” Louie grinned.

  My mother couldn’t help but either, I think now. Once she got beyond the lack of ivy. It’s been hard having her upstairs so much of the last month, but I’m getting pretty good at compartmentalizing my life. “So what’s new?” she asked last week over a lunch of salade Niçoise on Arthur Haven’s wife’s Spode ironstone. “Has that young lawyer Harriman wants to fix you up with called yet?”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Not that I’m meddling. But you’ve got that certain glow.” My mother removed an olive pit from between her teeth and dropped it onto her plate with a ping. “We’ll see,” she said.

  I didn’t ask what she meant by that. No sense in encouraging her.

  I turn the paper to Confidential Chat, but there are no helpful hints on impossible mothers of thirty-one-year-olds. There’s a letter on how to recycle egg cartons, one on toilet-training twins. Another on planning vacations for senior citizens. The senior citizens in my life are already on vacation. My mother and Arthur have rented a condo in Jamaica for two weeks. I took them to the airport on Sunday night and must have been so enthusiastic about hurrying them through the ticket line and the security check that my mother accused me of wanting to get rid of them. “I’m just anxious for you to have the time of your lives,” I’d said.

  “We’ve been having that already, my dear,” Arthur had replied. Arthur looked stately dressed for the Colonies in a straw boater and navy blazer buttoned with brass. I smiled trying to picture him in the bikini bathing suit my mother had bought for him, blue with Greek capitals. If (A) Arthur loves my mother and (B) thus loves anything she gives him, it will follow that (C) he will love the bikini. “Of course he’ll never wear it to the beach,” she’d confided when she sneaked it down to show me.

  “Where will he wear it?” I asked.

  Did she blush? “In the privacy of our boudoir,” she replied, “naturally …”

  Naturally, I tell myself, now picturing dignified Arthur as a centerfold. “Professors Emeriti in Their Teeny Bikinis. Senior Citizens in the Buff” would be the Playgirl headline for the sizzling pictorial. I am still chuckling when the phone rings.

  “What’s so funny?” accuses Seamus, the other senior citizen in and out of my life.

  “You, of course.”

  “Indeed. If you knew from where I am calling and my circumstance you would never make such light of it.”

  “Okay, where are you calling from and what’s wrong?”

  “From where. Remember Winston Churchill’s “up with this I will not put.’ And you a writer …”

  “Seamus!”

  “The hospital. I am at death’s door.”

  For a moment my heart lurches. We do, however incompatibly, share a past. But then I realize that if Seamus were indeed at death’s door he would not be barking so vigorously over the threshold of my phone.

  “What hospital?”

  “Mt. Auburn. I need disk surgery.”

  “How awful for you.”

  “Awful doesn’t begin to describe it. The thing is pressing on a nerve. I am in excruciating pain.”

  “Poor Seamus,” I say.

  But not with enough conviction obviously because Seamus groans theatrically. “The surgeon is amazed I’ve stood it so long.”

  “You’re one tough old goat,” I say.

  This he lets pass with a few more token grunts. “Then after the surgery I’ll be flat on my back for two months.”

  “In the hospital?”

  “At home. Georgette will tend to me.”

  Poor Georgette, I think, for the first time. Somehow a vision of her in miniskirt and dangling fish earrings hovering like an angel of mercy at Seamus’ bed elicits in me a wave of sympathy. “That’s very kind of her,” I say.

  “Some people rise to the occasion,” Seamus sneers.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, my dear, that some people take things in stride. Make allowances for t
he artistic temperament, the bohemian soul.”

  Meaning of course that running off with Melissa and Melinda was the equivalent of sneaking an egg salad sandwich on a diet of low cholesterol. “The only reason that Georgette takes things in stride, Seamus, is that you’re too old to rise to the occasion anymore.”

  “How cruel, Katinka, and quite uncalled for. Not that you’ll ever know.”

  “Thank God for that. And thanks, Seamus, for telling me. I truly wish your surgery goes well. I’ll send you a card. Maybe I’ll even make those brownies you like.”

  “That will be much appreciated. Georgette’s idea of cooking is heating up Chinese food cartons in the microwave.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  “Don’t hang up, Katinka. Forever grateful as I am for your good wishes, that is not the reason I called.”

  Suddenly I am on the alert. I stiffen, all suspicions primed, adrenaline readying its fight-or-flight response. With Seamus there’s always a hitch.

  Which turns out to be a complete surprise. “I want you to take over my course,” Seamus says.

  “Your course?” I ask.

  “My creative writing course. At the Harvard Extension School. It starts second semester. In a couple of weeks.”

  “You want me, Seamus?”

  “I asked you, didn’t I?”

  “But Seamus I don’t know if I’m qualified.”

  “Of course you are. You were my student after all. You’ve had enough publications to impress the great unpublished. They’ll love Playgirl—it’ll give you a certain raffish quality.”

  I am stunned by Seamus’ vote of confidence, what I suddenly decide must be his secret admiration of my writing all along. “Seamus, I am absolutely amazed. Flattered that you’d think of me.”

  “And rightly so, my dear. Still, don’t be that flattered. In all honesty, you weren’t my first choice. Three people already turned me down.”

  This, as Seamus must have known, stops me cold. I don’t say anything.

  “You still there, Katinka?” Seamus finally asks.

  “I’m afraid so,” I say. For a moment I think that I don’t want to be in any club that Seamus would invite me to join either; I want to align myself with the three refuseniks. But common sense takes over. Teaching one course in writing will still keep me in the writing mode, pay for computer paper, get me out of the house, provide me with colleagues, fellow sufferers, and give me something to tell people at cocktail parties when they ask what I do. To be able to answer “teaching at Harvard” is worth sacrificing the privilege of turning Seamus down.

  “I’d love to take over your class, Seamus.”

  “It’s all set, then, I’ll have Georgette Xerox my notes and send over the particulars.”

  “I can’t thank you enough—” I begin.

  “Don’t even try—here’s Nurse Ratchet now about to bring me my pill.”

  As soon as I get off the phone with Seamus, I pull out my mixing bowl from under the sink and rinse away its ring of rust. I sift flour and sugar together, beat in eggs, melt chocolate. I fill two square baking pans and slide them into the oven. Within ten minutes wonderful smells are wafting through my apartment. I sit back, feeling domestic and professional, two sides of the equation perfectly balanced. The woman who has it all. But as soon as I think I’m the woman who has it all, I think of all the things I don’t have, all the things I want—a novel on the “Recommended” shelf at Barnes & Noble, a child like Max, breasts like Cheryl’s, Louie but a Louie with the kind of trimmings even my mother could love, a class of my own, not Seamus’ hand-me-down …

  I make myself stop. I am going to be happy with what I’ve got, not turn it into something inferior. If my mother were here I’d call her. “Guess what, I’m going to be teaching at Harvard,” I’d exclaim, awarding her this jewel in her crown. If Louie were here I’d call him. “I’ll be teaching at Harvard next term. No big deal,” I’d let drop. I could telephone Milly, tell Barney Souza or any number of people I went to school with or passed books to at Widener Library. I could even write this up for the Old Town High School Alumni notes. But I decide to hold off a bit just in case it doesn’t work out. Knowing Seamus, after one of Nurse Ratchet’s ministrations, he could be right now leaping from his bed demanding his job back.

  Which is the correct decision, for immediately the phone rings, and I pick it up waiting for Seamus to say he’s changed his mind.

  “Is this Katinka O’Toole?” a man’s voice asks.

  “Speaking.”

  “I work with Harriman Slade. He suggested I call you. I’m Jake. Jake Barnes.”

  “You’re kidding,”

  “Not at all. Harriman said you—”

  “I mean the name. Jake Barnes.”

  “It’s a perfectly ordinary name. Much more ordinary, dare I point out, than Katinka …”

  “Don’t you know whose it is?”

  “Mine of course. Jake, aka Jacob, Barnes. Yours truly.”

  “In literature, I mean.”

  “I was an economics major myself. Prelaw.”

  I must already be preparing for my Harvard class, for my voice has clicked into a schoolteacher mode. And though I sound pompously pedagogical even to myself, I am bent on enlightenment. “In The Sun Also Rises. Ernest Hemingway. Jake Barnes is the narrator.”

  “How about that,” he says. “Is he the hero, too?”

  “In a way.”

  “Then we probably have a lot in common.” His voice is confident, happy. Even as an economics major, he no doubt knows enough about Hemingway to picture himself battling fascists or shooting elephants.

  I hesitate. Socially speaking I know it’s not in the best of taste to tell a stranger, a potential date, about Jake Barnes’ problem. As a writer and soon-to-be-teacher, however, I have a certain loyalty to the text. Besides, to tell him the truth might save him future embarrassment. “I’m afraid I’d better give you the real scoop right off the bat: he’s impotent.”

  This he greets with silence, and for a moment I regret my rush to educate. When I first read The Sun Also Rises, I explain to him, I had no idea what Jake Barnes’ affliction was. When I asked my mother she replied I was much too young for Hemingway.

  Now the real as opposed to fictional Jake Barnes clears his throat. When he speaks his voice sounds amused. “Let me assure you from the outset that I’m not.”

  I say nothing.

  “Impotent, that is.”

  “I never meant—”

  He cuts me off. Chuckles. “We’re talking rather intimately for two people yet to meet.”

  “I suppose so,” I agree.

  “Shall we rectify that?” Before I can reply he adds, “Harriman has nice things to say about you.”

  I am absurdly pleased. That somebody so polished, sophisticated, so clean, somebody who fathered the world’s most adorable child would have nice things to say about me. It is all I can do to keep from asking him to repeat Harriman’s exact words. I remind myself I am a published author. That I’ll be teaching at Harvard. That I have nice eyes if ugly feet.

  “Harriman says you have nice eyes,” Jake Barnes says. “I’m an eye man myself.”

  He asks me to have dinner tonight at Biba. “That is, if you can on such short notice,” he adds so apologetically that I feel no need to pretend to be busy. I accept. What good timing. For a fleeting moment, I’m relieved that Louie is away. But it’s Wednesday anyway, I realize, Cheryl’s night. I pull my shirt tight against my breasts. I feel defiant. I’ve never been to Biba and hope they won’t have flowered canapés. Jake Barnes says he’ll meet me there at eight. He’ll go straight from his office downtown. “You take a cab,” he says to me.

  When I get off the phone, my brownies are burning. I pull them from the oven in a cloud of smoke. They can be resuscitated, I decide, with a little judicious CPR. I scrape off their blackened bottoms, then plump them up like pillows, which gives them, nevertheless, the lopsided look of children’s Play-Doh cakes.
“Good enough for Seamus,” I say. Immediately I feel guilty. Poor Seamus from his bed of pain making an extreme act of generosity in offering me my job. I fold the brownies carefully into an envelope of tinfoil and add a red satin ribbon from a stash of recycled Christmas wrappings in my bottom kitchen drawer. These I drive to Mt. Auburn Hospital where I leave them with the lady at the reception desk. She gives me a card on which I write get well soon and sign my name beneath three X’s and three O’s. “Is something burning?” a kid standing next to me asks his mother. “These smell good,” the receptionist says diplomatically.

  * * *

  I take the T to Biba. Cabs are for lawyers and investment bankers. Not writers whose discretionary income is earmarked for extra postage stamps. I am dressed in black and have smudged an outline of smoky colored crayon around my nice eyes. I must look good, for a teenager with a giant radio stares at me. “Your sneakers are untied,” I point out to him in a breathing space between raps.

  He turns up the volume, but not loud enough to mask “You ugly bitch.”

  “Kids,” the woman next to me sighs. She carries a large red pocketbook which jabs my ribs. “Honey, there’s lipstick on your teeth.”

  I change at Park Street and ride the T to Arlington Station. I keep my eyes down and my elbows tucked tight against my side. I roll my tongue back and forth across my teeth.

  Jake Barnes is waiting for me right inside the door to Biba’s bar. He doesn’t resemble his namesake, or how I’ve pictured his namesake, one bit. He looks more like Wally Shawn. A little taller perhaps. But not much. He has a skimpy fringe of red hair and chipmunk cheeks nestled into a scarf of ubiquitous Burberry plaid. He’s wearing a thick tweed coat that can’t quite hide his narrow shoulders and the belly of a gnome. His eyes, not the melting limpid dark pools of passion that smolder from Louie, are more like little blue dots, off-center but intelligent. His looks aren’t important, I tell myself. Having the beauty (Louie), I can accommodate the beast. “Katinka?” he asks.

  I nod.

  He puts a hand on my back and steers me to a corner table near the lady checking coats. She is wearing black, and behind her hang a wedge of fur coats. In Cambridge we don’t wear fur coats. Except for the odd battered shearling or recycled muskrat that once kept a flapper warm. I look around. One sweep of the room is enough to make me readjust my long-held view of a Cambridge/Boston fault line of dowdiness: those intellectuals in faded corduroys and defeated misbuttoned cardigans, those preppies safe at home plate in Talbots or J. Crew. These people could be from New York. The women in short black dresses tight as leotards, the men in Italian-looking nubby suits, their shirt collars open and settled softly about their necks like draped silk.