Mail

by Mameve Medwed

  “Like cod liver oil,” I whine, slipping from old age back to infancy.

  “Nonsense.” Milly is dismissive. But she really must be worried since she’s buying popcorn and Raisinettes, large Cokes, and—oh dear!—two Milky Ways—and all before lunch.

  We see the French movie: a love triangle with English subtitles and tragic overtones. Needless to say I identify. I overidentify. I weep from the first frame to the last. Milly pats my hand obsessively. “There, there,” she whispers.

  I leave Milly with hugs and protestations of gratitude. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Just live in the moment, Katinka,” Milly says.

  “As if we ever could.”

  The theater is halfway between my apartment and Mt. Auburn. I should go home. One quarter of a new story awaits in my hard disk, students’ stories are piled on my desk. Upstairs in Arthur’s apartment freshly ground French roast is probably just being spooned into the top of the Melior. “Come up for coffee,” my mother had said, “and we’ll make wedding plans.” That they’re her plans and not mine doesn’t seem to her the least bit out of the natural order of things. But I guess I’m in a morbid frame of mind. I choose the lame, the halt, the sick over the robust bride and head toward the hospital.

  * * *

  At the nurses’ station there’s the usual shelf of African violets in little terra-cotta pots. These look healthy, healthier than many of the patients on the floor. Either they’ve replaced the old plants or taken on staff with greener thumbs.

  “I think he’s stepped out,” says the nurse, pointing to Louie’s room.

  “Stepped?” I ask.

  She giggles. Her hat, a little white sail secured with one hair clip, billows. “On crutches. The PT’s been with him since breakfast. He’s about ready for the marathon.”

  “I’ll wait in his room,” I say, “if that’s all right.”

  “No problem. Chris Smith was discharged last week. Maybe you already know that. The bed’s not been filled yet.” She giggles again. “You should have seen him walk out of here. What some people will do for love.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” I say, though I have no idea what the truth is or what I have done for love or what I will do. I do know what I’ve done for lust, however, and what I am doing right now to avoid other people’s love. I go into Louie’s room. Chris Smith’s side has been stripped of all signs of him. The bed is freshly made, the night table Lysoled. A carafe and cup wear their sanitized paper shields. On the bulletin board opposite his bed, though, a photograph of his fiancée, Judy, is still tacked up. She’s smiling through a mouthful of rickrack teeth. So this is the face that launched the circumcision. Why did Chris forget her picture? Perhaps he has so many photographs of Judy there’s one to spare, and he’s left it to the hospital the way other philanthropists endow a wing.

  Puzzling about this, I turn to Louie’s bulletin board, which is bannered with get-well cards—my own included—and photographs all overlapping like the squares in a crazy quilt. Except for checking that my own offering was given pride of place, I haven’t paid much attention to any of these. Now I study them. There’s a huge card, a five dollar one, from the post office, with about twenty signatures inside. A flowered one—for those who care to send the very best—from whom I assume is Cheryl signed love—love!—C. Children’s drawings both primitively Crayolaed and computer-generated. There are photographs of Sal and Rosalie. Of Diane. Of lots of kids. The seven dwarfs I suppose in all sorts of combinations. Kids on slides, around birthday cakes, at soccer practice, at barbecues, at a battered-looking swing set. Bunches of kids who pretty much look like they’re on the track to growing into a Louie or a Louise.

  I go out in the hall where the nurse with the bobbing cap is waltzing an IV along the corridor. “I’ve just spotted Mr. Cappetti,” she says to me. “He’s having one of his nice little visits with Professor O’Toole.”

  “Professor O’Toole?”

  “They’ve become the best of friends.”

  “I see.” I really do see. Not that “friends” is quite the word, implying equals, involving give and take. Seamus likes disciples, acolytes, people sitting at his sandaled feet. Look at me, look at Georgette, look at the M&M’s. These acolytes tend to be of the female persuasion, but hell, we’re all getting older and have to take idolatry from any quarter we can. I think of the front row of rapt undergraduates in Seamus’ lectures, I think of my own students not exactly rapt although one or two are coming round, of Louie startled and stunned at our one and only class. I think of Jake Barnes across the table from me, his chipmunk cheeks, his apologetic smile. It’s only my mother and Arthur whose admiration society is mutual. Except for well-established couples, everybody else is pretty much mentor and mentee.

  A notion I’m not disabused of when I walk clear across the corridor to the other side of the hospital and peek into Seamus’ room. Seamus is lying on a bed which has been raised so high that he looks levitated. Louie is sitting literally at his feet, on a small bench at the end of Seamus’ bed even though there is a more comfortable empty chair drawn closer to the head. But I decide not to take this as some kind of proof since Louie is resting his cast on one of the bars of the footboard. Maybe this position of nonpower is better for a broken leg. The corner-office top-floor view isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you’ve got a handicap.

  Seamus is gesturing in his most professorial manner and Louie is nodding his head like the biggest brownnose in a lecture hall. I tiptoe away and go home.

  11

  I’ve been discharged,”Seamus telephones me, jubilant. “Though it will be a couple of weeks before I can put on my dancing shoes. I’m in my own bed even as we speak. You should see the little love nest Georgette has made for me,” he crows, “a mountain of pillows for my back, a bed tray of delectables, a carafe for potables, a stack of books to feed the mind, flowers everywhere for the eye, and, of course, Georgette.”

  Whose job I do not envy. I know what Seamus is like when he’s sick—the operatic moaning and groaning, the obsessive taking of his temperature, the demands for plumped pillows and smoothed sheets. Even a Stately Home’s worth of servants wouldn’t be enough to supply the chicken soup and Kleenex boxes and TLC in dosages adequate for Seamus’ needs.

  “I’m glad you’re home, Seamus,” I say. I can afford to be generous. I don’t have to nurse him. And I can now visit Louie without fear that Louie is down the hall visiting him.

  “I knew you’d be glad for me. The brownies and your note were thoughtful, Katinka, a nice touch. I expected a visit though. Louie told me you’d been to see him. I must say I find it rather odd you’d visit your mailman and not drop in on your ex.”

  “He’s not just my mailman.”

  “Well! Aren’t you full of surprises!”

  “Not that, Seamus. You always had a dirty mind. My student. At least he was until he broke his leg and had to drop out.”

  “Let me remind you he was my student until I hurt my back. It was my class after all in which he’d enrolled.” He pauses to let that remark sink in. “Well, I’m sure there’s a lot you can teach him, my dear. Too bad you won’t get the chance.”

  I am about to say you only wish but hold my tongue. I am above competing with Seamus for students. The ones who expected Seamus and flaunted their disappointment at me I dismiss as sexist and ignorant. I do realize, though, I am not above competing with Seamus for Louie. For his mind. His body is my undisputed property, his broken bones only temporarily being attended to by Mt. Auburn Hospital. “So why did you call?” I ask.

  “Other than to announce the good news of my homecoming? To find out about your class, my class. Am I sorely missed?”

  “Sorely. Though I am developing my own following.”

  “Nature does abhor a vacuum.” Seamus coughs. “No other students breaking their bones to get out of class?”

  “Seamus!”

  “Just kidding. Still, they s
ay there is no such thing as an accident. Nobody else trying to get their money back?”

  “No,” I lie, “even though you are irreplaceable.”

  “No one’s irreplaceable. Not even me. That’s what I told Louie as we were being discharged. He’s so worried about his route.”

  “Louie’s been discharged?” Though shock clutches my throat I manage to ask this with the same casualness I’d employ seeking out the price of a can of tunafish.

  “We were rolled out in wheelchairs side by side. Two cute little nurse’s aides in candy stripes.”

  “How did he get home?”

  “A blond with an enormous chest whom he introduced as an old friend. Not bad at all. With a little more attention she could be quite the stunner. Youngish. About the age of Georgette. She was there with a rather depressing-looking minivan. They very kindly offered me a ride but Georgette with her usual foresight had arranged a cab with a Charles Atlas driver to help me in and out. And here she is now, little Florence Nightingale, with the most delicious-looking bowl of chicken soup … and, aha, a bottle of my favorite single malt …”

  “I’ll say good-bye, Seamus.”

  “For now, Katinka, but keep in touch.”

  I hang up the phone, furious. The way I often am after one of these exchanges with Seamus. But it’s not Seamus I’m furious at. How come Louie hasn’t let me know he’s been discharged? I saw him yesterday. A quick grope before his sister arrived. Enough time between “Oh Katinkas” for important information to be relayed. And there’s always the telephone. Lately I seem to be talking more with Seamus on the telephone than we ever did in person when we shared a bed. Why didn’t Louie call? I could have arranged a taxi and a Charles Atlas driver just as well as Georgette. I picture Georgette and me both standing next to yellow cabs. I picture two candy stripers—as cute as Seamus’ M&M’s—slide the hospital’s double doors open on a pair of wheelchairs that straddle the sidewalk like those strollers you see for twins. It’s a classic tableau, two devoted women waiting devotedly for their two wounded men. But of course something is wrong with this picture: Cheryl, the potential stunner, and her minivan.

  I am, I must admit, not totally an innocent party. If Louie’s off with Cheryl in her minivan, I’ll be off with Jake Barnes in his center entrance colonial. He’s cooking me dinner tonight. When he called, I didn’t hesitate to accept, surprising myself. My instincts must be right because the timing has turned out to be perfect. Two minutes after Jake’s invitation my mother dropped down to ask me to dinner. It was a relief not only to say that I was otherwise engaged but also to tell with whom. “That nice man we met at the airport, the one who went to Penn?” said she, zeroing in with sharpshooter accuracy, “and then to The Law School with Harriman?” Typically she was happier that I was eating out with Jake than eating in with her and Arthur. The pleasure of my company was expendable for her pleasure in my social life. Would I rather be spending the evening with Louie? Probably. But it wasn’t an option when he was in the hospital. I’m not sure it’s an option now that he’s out. Given all the churnings and odd pairings of the people in my life, I’m rather looking forward to driving out to Lexington.

  Or am I? Do I have the energy? All at once I’m so tired I wish I could climb into bed. I wish I had someone to plump the pillows and bring me chicken soup. A bottle of Laphroaig on a silver tray. Who? Not Georgette, though Louie and Jake Barnes come to mind. I consider them both, their levels of devotion, their latent nursing skills. Jake would be earnest and a little bumbling, might spill the soup or drop the spoon. Louie would carry it just fine—he’s good at carrying—but then he’d get into bed and the soup would get cold. Sex but no sustenance. Still I must admit that for some people, sex can be sustenance. But right now Louie’s not available for sex or heavy lifting or the light lifting of a bowl of soup. And at this moment it’s not sex that I long for or even men. It’s my mother. A primitive need that surprises me since I have just been congratulating myself for avoiding breaking bread with her. I want my mother.

  The minute I think this I realize I have totally regressed. It’s my old mother I want back. My mother as mother. Not my mother reincarnated as sexpot, my mother as Ivy League coed or co-dependent, my mother as fiancée of Arthur T. Haven. I want my mother in the apron she never wore in the house that’s about to be sold out from under me. I think back to my childhood. The time I had chicken pox. The time I had my tonsils out. The TV was moved into my room. And the radio. I had a new deluxe box of crayons and coloring books. Things to read, delicious foods to eat. My mother made me eggnogs and ginger ale floats. Dinner came on a wicker breakfast tray with a place for real flowers in a little vase and a side pocket which would have rolled up in it a usually forbidden comic book.

  I remember the sense of having my mother all to myself. Such domestic bliss. The kitchen sounds. The telephone. The vacuum. The cooking smells. The old brass school bell on the night table next to me and the instant gratification of my mother’s footsteps on the stairs the moment I picked it up. I want my mother encased for eternity in Old Town like a bug in an amber bead. Not my mother in a love nest three floors above me on Prescott Street. I sigh. It is all I can do not to suck my thumb. Does the threat to sell your childhood home make you a child?

  I want a mother. I want to be a mother. I think of Max. Of how well he takes care of Daniella. In three days he’s coming to stay with me for the four days his parents are in Amsterdam. I can try out my parenting skills.

  But right now I need to try out my editorial skills. I go to the pile of manuscripts on my desk. Russell MacQuillen, Junior’s, is on the top. It’s a story about a hacker who intends to sabotage the computer system of the CIA. I hack through it with my red pencil slashing at the dense language, planting the margins with my own thicket of red-scrawled criticisms. It’s almost lunchtime when I have reached the end if not the point. I’m too dispirited to tackle Rebecca Luscombe’s story entitled “She’s in Her Heaven” and illuminated with far too many exclamation marks.

  I am taking inventory of the disappointing contents of my refrigerator when the telephone rings. “Not Seamus,” I say.

  “It’s Louie,” he says when I pick up the phone.

  “I understand you’ve been discharged,” I announce in a noncommittal nonjudgmental voice.

  “How did you find out?”

  “Seamus.”

  “I meant to tell you myself. But then everybody was here. There wasn’t a chance. I miss you, Katinka. How soon can I see you?”

  There’s an urgency in his voice that melts my semihardened heart. When Louie whispers “Tonight?” I whisper “Yes!” completely forgetting that I cannot.

  Which turns out not to be a problem because the minute Louie dangles the carrot, he snatches it away. “Gosh, I don’t know what came over me—I do know what came over me—but I can’t, Katinka, not tonight.”

  I’m about to ask why not but catch myself. I’ve got my suspicions having to do with a minivan probably right now parked outside his house in Somerville.

  I let it drop. “No matter,” I say to Louie. “I’ve got my own plans.”

  Which he is diplomatic enough—or uninterested enough—not to ask about.

  We discuss how to get our plans to coincide. Louie is after all on crutches and in a cast. Pretty much smuggleproof. What’s more, he’s off his route. He’s out of class. His accident has made it impossible for us to meet by accident. Louie’s got two flights of stairs and a smothering family. I’ve got no stairs but family problems of my own. Also there’s Jake tonight, tomorrow school; on Friday Max will come. “We’ll work something out,” Louie says.

  I make a sandwich of wilted lettuce and Feta cheese stuffed into pita bread. I take it to my desk. When I push Rebecca Luscombe’s manuscript to the side there is Jake Barnes’ Tenancy by the Entirety staring me in the face. I pick it up. I always do my homework for any class. I always do the groundwork for any date.

  By the end of the first page, however, I d
ecide there are exceptions to any rule. It starts out promising: A tenancy by the entirety requires five unities, he writes, of time, possession, title, interest, coverture. Except for coverture, which I will look up later, this sentence is intelligible, almost comforting, full even, with its talk of unities, of Aristotelian possibility. In the event of divorce a tenancy by the entirety becomes a tenancy in common. A few more sentences and I have no idea what Jake is talking about. It reminds me of those tests we used to have in Latin Three. Mr. Kellogg would write a paragraph on the blackboard with all the words mixed up, and we would have to unscramble them, finding the subject, the predicate, the modifying clause according to their endings. I was a whiz at them.

  I am not a whiz at this. Halfway down page two I get stuck on the word moiety, which makes me think of sperm, which in turn takes me entirely away from tenancy by the entirety. I look again at moiety and realize I am seeing motility. I put Jake aside and pick up “She’s in Her Heaven,” which I read in penance straight through to its exclamation-pointed end.

  * * *

  My own car having been diagnosed as terminal, I borrow Milly’s extra car, the Dumpmobile, which is made available to close friends and visiting relatives. At six-thirty I set out for Lexington. Take Route 2 and at Lexington Center turn right at the post office are Jake’s instructions. You can’t miss the post office, he added pointedly. Winding through the back streets of north Cambridge, I see blue boxes set against the curbs and paired in places with the army brown containers where the mail is stored. It is snowing lightly.

  At the rotary, traffic looks like a game of bumper cars. A UPS truck blocks the outside lane and lets me through. There’s another jam at the entrance to the Fresh Pond shopping mall. Traffic thins and I barrel along Route 2 doing the maximum, all the while feeling I am just spinning my wheels. Those in the helping professions would tell me I need to work on my self-esteem. I will try to be my own cheering section, a support group of one. I think of Sheila Graham educated by F. Scott Fitzgerald in what the two of them called a college of one. She became a writer. So am I, I remind myself. And when I turn right at the post office, I’m in writers’ territory—Hawthorne Street, Emerson Avenue, Alcott Road. It makes sense, the post office at the hub of its greatest appreciators—these writers probably more mail-obsessed than I given the nineteenth century’s lack of faxes, FedEx, and a worldwide web.