Mail

by Mameve Medwed

  “Isn’t it great,” I say, “when something billed as wonderful turns out to be just that?”

  “Hear hear,” says Jake. Under the table he touches my ankle with the tip of his shoe. This makes me nervous given my intimate congress with Louie’s toes.

  Jake and I manage to come up with three more quarters. Max runs off to play more video games. We order coffee which Mitzi pours from what she calls “the never empty coffee pot.” She nods in the direction of Max. “Your kid’s adorable,” she says. “He’s got a little bit of both of you.”

  “You think so?” Jake says. “I hope he’s got more of his mother and less of me.”

  “You men,” Mitzi says.

  “You men,” I say after she goes to refill her empty “never empty coffee pot.”

  I sip my coffee. I look around the dining room, which is beginning to thin out. My eye stops at a table at the opposite corner of the room. A man and boy sit there. Their hands are swooping up and down like gulls. A pair of crutches leans against an empty chair. Even from this distance I can see that the child has light hair and a tilted nose. Even from this distance I could identify this back anywhere. My heart stops.

  “Katinka!” Jake asks. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  Banquo’s ghost, Hamlet’s ghost, the ghost of Christmas past, the ghost of Christmas parties past. “One pancake too many,” I explain. I look back at the table where a very unghostly Louie sits with a very real child. Their hands are spinning and weaving over the tabletop. They are talking sign language, I realize all at once. Their hands stop. Louie reaches for his crutches and gets out of his seat. I grab a menu from the table next to us and start studying it.

  “You want something else?” Jake asks, incredulous.

  “Just looking,” I say, looking at Louie, watching him and this child make their way through the dining room—a real obstacle course for someone on crutches though of course Louie does it gracefully. I don’t have to worry, however, that he’s about to spot me and go for the world’s record in awkward moments; his eyes are fixed on the child’s flying fingers and he keeps nodding while negotiating a path to the exit.

  And when I turn my head to the window which overlooks the parking lot, the first thing I see is a dilapidated minivan pulling up to the door.

  14

  The next morning I call Louie. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “Shoot,” Louie says.

  “Not here. Not on the phone.”

  “Hey, Katinka. I thought you were baby-sitting for Max and didn’t want any boyfriends around.” This he says with a skim of false cheer over an undercoat of worry.

  “Max’s parents are coming to get him in a couple of hours.”

  “Well, then what about tonight? I could probably sneak away. It’s been so long …”

  For a minute I’m tempted. I picture Louie’s body, imagine the touch of his fingers. Playgirl overload has tipped the balance in favor of the pleasures of the flesh when it’s the problems of the relationship that need dealing with. I steel myself. “Tonight’s no good. Later this afternoon.”

  “I’ll take a cab over.”

  “Not my apartment,” I say. “Someplace neutral.”

  “That bad?” he asks.

  “That bad.”

  We arrange to meet at the Pamplona at four. It’s a coffeehouse between Bow and Arrow streets I tell him. It’s dark and quiet. Though it’s in the basement, there aren’t too many stairs.

  “No problem,” Louie says. “You should see me on these crutches, I can really get around.”

  “So I’ve noticed.” I hang up fast.

  I force myself not to think about the scene at IHOP. I’m going to put all my questions on hold until the hour of four. Meanwhile I plan to cherish my few remaining hours with Max. I’m already starting to miss him even though he’s sitting right next to me drawing in the sketchbook with the crayons that, in addition to the Power Rangers and cowboys and Indians, I was astute enough to provide. Over the last few days I have honed my maternal instincts to a diamond clarity. This despite the fact that no sooner have I become the good mother than I have to relinquish a motherly claim. Now I am trying to work on my separation anxiety. Max is going home and I’m already feeling homesick for him, hoping, selfishly, he’ll feel homesick for me. When I was in summer camp, I hurled myself into the middle of every Sunday night lineup of sobbing girls who were allowed to call home, they missed their mothers so much. Did my mother yearn for the sound of my voice the way I yearned for the sound of hers? Unlike Milly and Charlie, though, my parents didn’t grab their coats and drive two towns over to rescue me.

  Milly thinks she’s such an expert on homesickness but she doesn’t know the half of it. I know she doesn’t miss her kids when they’re off on their overnights. I know the best summers she’s had are when the kids are away at summer camp. Maybe that they’re your kids is enough for you to let them go. Unlike mere parental affection, my passion for Max has the intensity of first love. “What are you drawing?” I ask Max.

  He pulls up the flap of the sketchbook to make a shield. “It’s a surprise,” he says.

  It’s no surprise that I’ll miss Max. I’m an expert misser, practice having perfected the art. I miss Louie, the pre-IHOP Louie. I miss my father; some days I even miss Seamus’ familiar arrogance. I miss my own home which, my mother told me yesterday, may be sold to yet another Frenchy. This one hopes to raise the roof, add a heated swimming pool and state-of-the-art gym, and turn it around for double the price. My mother thinks it’s doomed to failure, that Mainers prefer local watering holes and to get their exercise lobstering and splitting wood.

  I’ve probably lived in Cambridge too long to claim a Maine soul. I never split a log or trapped a lobster. I’ve eaten plenty of lobsters, though, and clams, and bushels of wild blueberries. And no doubt an equal number of Harvard Square’s Bartley’s burgers and Elsie’s roast beef specials before Elsie’s closed. When I was a kid I’d pose for photographs at the boot of Paul Bunyan, the gigantic statue dwarfing Bangor’s civic auditorium. At Radcliffe I’d perch on John Harvard’s lap in front of University Hall. I’m someone whose allegiances are easily switched. As demonstrated by the example of Louie and Jake. I need to let go of the Old Town house. I need to let go of Max.

  And because I need to let him go, I pull Max close. Carefully he puts his drawing to one side. Graciously he doesn’t protest. How time passes when you’re having fun, I think. How time passes when you don’t want it to.

  And no time at all seems to have passed before Zenobia is ringing my bell.

  “Max!” Zenobia cries.

  “Mummy!” Max flings himself at her. I have to look away. I have to go away. I go into the kitchen. I put the kettle on. The mother-child reunion does not need a mother wannabe watching jealously. When the kettle whistles I figure time’s up. I put two mugs of tea on a tray and a glass of milk for Max (the empty Coke cans are safely stashed in the basement recycling bin) and repossess my living room.

  “Tea! How lovely,” Zenobia exclaims. She is sitting on my sofa looking immaculate as always, not like someone who has just spent eight hours on a plane and for whom it is already after eight. Max is on the floor, his feet stretched under the coffee table playing with a toy windmill and some wooden figures of children on silver skates. “I’m so sorry about the delay.”

  If only there were a delay. “What delay?” I ask.

  “Well, Harriman absolutely had to go to the office and check his mail. I finally left him there. The whole trip back was a nightmare. We almost didn’t make the plane.”

  If only you didn’t, I think. “What happened?” I ask.

  “My medal set off the security alarms.”

  “It was that big?”

  “Presumably. Harriman and I were taken to a side room and practically strip-searched. It was inconvenient and unpleasant. But Harriman was incensed. He’s probably researching right this minute the ch
annels whereby an American citizen can sue the Dutch.”

  “Holland must have been nice.”

  “Cold and gray.”

  “What about the ceremony? The award dinner. The honor? It must have been wonderful.”

  Zenobia gives a dismissive wave. She balloons her cheeks, “Pffft” escapes from between her lips. It’s a gesture I’ve seen French actresses make in black and white films shown in art theaters with espresso makers instead of popcorn machines. “Boring. After a while they’re all the same.”

  I nod but feel no sympathy. Zenobia reminds me of successful writers who complain about book parties and editors, talk shows and cross-country reading tours. We on the outside looking in would kill to have such things to complain about.

  “And I missed my little guy,” she adds now.

  “I’m not surprised,” I say. Here’s something I can identify with.

  Zenobia sends Max into my study to gather all his stuff. I hear the TV go on, the raced-up music of kids’ cartoons. I hope Zenobia is ignorant enough to think it’s some background music to a Nova special on endangered species. Maybe she is, because she doesn’t rush over to investigate. Instead, she leans closer to me. She lowers her voice. “So how did it really go?” she asks.

  “Great,” I say. “I’ve fallen totally in love with your son.”

  She smiles. “I’m not surprised.”

  “We’ve had a marvelous time.” I pause. “Though there are a couple of things I need to tell you.”

  “Max misbehaved?” “I misbehaved.

  We had pizza, Big Macs, pancakes. From soup to nuts the whole way paved by fast food.”

  “Is that all?” Zenobia sighs with what sounds like relief. “I left a note to you that I wasn’t expecting you to follow my nutrition plan. It’s probably good for Max to be introduced to mass culture. In small and limited amounts.”

  How small? How limited? I wonder. The size of a deck of cards? The size of a RootyTooty Fresh n’ Fruity IHOP special? Maybe the cure for mass culture is the homeopathic introduction of bad foods to build up immunities. “That’s not all,” I continue. I hope that once you begin to confess it gets easier. Velocity propelling what starts out in spurts to end in a flood. But confessing to Zenobia isn’t exactly like telling a priest behind a curtained grille you stole your little brother’s candy bar. “Wait.” A picture is worth a thousand words I tell myself, choking on the words I can’t quite form. I go to the kitchen and fish the suitcase key from the sugar canister. Zenobia watches the moving picture I make with a puzzled look on her face. I move to the hall closet, take down my suitcase, which I bring to the coffee table and place in front of her. I twist the key in the lock, pop up the top. Inside are dry cleaner’s bags, the cardboard from two packages of pantyhose, and five copies of Playgirl magazine.

  “What have we here?” Zenobia picks up a magazine. “Katinka! Your story’s been published.”

  Not just my story is the problem. “I feel so terrible …” I start.

  “Did they mess up the proofs? I certainly understand. The fights I’ve had with editors. Why, I—”

  “Not that. But I stupidly left the magazine in my study—Max’s room. And he—quite naturally—started reading it.”

  Zenobia doesn’t say anything. I don’t know what’s on her face since I refuse to look at it. Her silence stretches.

  Stretching my own fear along with it.

  Finally she responds. “It’s your study, Katinka. And Max—well, you can’t protect a child from everything.”

  With this I dare to move my eyes to her face. Her brows are knit. Her hand cups her chin. Her face isn’t mad, just concerned. She looks like she’s mulling something over. She leans forward like The Thinker of Rodin. “This may in fact be a good thing. For the same reason that Max’s school assigned Daniella—to show the underside of life, to give these overprivileged kids a reality check. Naked bodies, pornography—they’re all a part of our society. Besides,” she takes away her hand and thrusts her chin, “I don’t believe in censorship.”

  “Me neither,” I state emphatically. After all, in our good old American society Ulysses was banned. Bibliophiles bought copies from Sylvia Beach under the shadow of Notre Dame and smuggled them through customs. But there’s no disputing Ulysses is great literature. I gulp. So my story’s in a magazine devoted to the under-side of life, in the Daniella floursack equivalent of the literary marketplace.

  “So,” Zenobia rubs her hands together, “let’s take a look.”

  Side by side on the sofa we each hold a side of the magazine. First we move to my story. Zenobia admires the illustration, the typeface, the size of my name. She can’t wait to read my work, she exclaims. I take another magazine from the suitcase and hand it to her. She slips it into her Hermés pocketbook where it fits with the precision of Cinderella’s shoe. I show her the ad for the penis-enhancing elixir. She starts to hoot, then covers her mouth. I show her the naked lawyers. Tears stream down her cheeks; she is shaking with the laughter we are both trying to muzzle for the sake of Max. “Look at that! Look at that!” she whispers.

  I remember many years ago going with Milly and her two boys to one of the bookstores in Harvard Square. There was a window seat for children then with a stuffed Curious George and a bookshelf of Tintins and Babars and a rack of magazines. We settled them in. Five minutes later giggles sailed out across the aisles of customers followed by a stentorian “Look at them boobs.”When Milly reached them they were convulsed with laughter, two blond brotherly heads bent over National Lampoon.

  Now as Zenobia and I bend our heads over naked lawyers, I feel we have formed a bond. We could be friends, roommates, sisters. Our shoulders touch companionably. We are two sisters under the skin. Two sisters staring at skin.

  Two sisters who stop staring at the sound of Max coming down the hall. We put the magazines back, zip and lock the suitcase. “Are you going on a trip, Katinka?” Max asks.

  “You never know. I like to be prepared,” I reply.

  Our good-byes are rushed in a flurry of overcoats and mittens and suitcases. I hug Max. I hug Zenobia, this natural extension of Max. “I left you a present on your desk,” Max says. In a flash, they are gone.

  I hang my head. Out of the corner of my eye I notice Daniella slung into a corner of the hall. I run into the vestibule where I catch them just in front of—oh misery! oh symbolism!—the glittering row of polished mailboxes. “You’ve forgotten Daniella,” I pant, out of breath.

  “Oh, darling,” Zenobia says to Max.

  “Keep her, Katinka,” Max says to me. “You can throw her away. Or maybe make pancakes out of her. You know she was never really a person,” he instructs, “just a bag of flour.”

  With a heavy heart, I drag myself back to my apartment, the rejected Daniella propped on my hip. I feel so sorry for her, this prince turned back into a frog, this adored child abandoned to a bag of flour. I feel abandoned myself. By my borrowed child, my borrowed sister. And I feel something else—the stirrings of pride. I have weaned Max from Daniella, a feat Zenobia and Harriman couldn’t accomplish with all their enlightenment. Still, I can’t bear to dump Daniella or sift her into batter. After mothering Max, I’m not too excited about mothering her. I settle her back into her corner in the hall. I go into my study where on my desk is the drawing Max has made for me.

  I pick it up. “To Katinka With Love From Max” is printed across the top. I think of the Salinger story, “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor”—another precocious enchanting child. I’ve always loved Salinger the way some people adore Elvis—with a mixture of identification and hero worship. I had a friend whose daughter attended the same prep school as Salinger’s son. Once when this daughter was registering parents for parents’ weekend, she watched a slight nondescript man write J.D. Salinger across a stick-on name tag and fainted dead away. That J.D. Salinger broke his seclusion for the sake of his son still touches my heart.

  I study the drawing of my own son-for-four-days. It�
��s a group portrait: a little boy with sticking-up hair standing between what I assume are his parents. The mother with a briefcase and a bun. The father with a briefcase and a tie. Over to the side, smaller, more indistinct is another figure, a woman, holding something in her arms. The woman is wearing a red plaid shirt like the one I am right now wearing over my jeans. The blob in her arms could be a baby, Daniella, a magazine, or, even, a pizza-sized bribe. There are trees all around, and flower-strewn paths. In the distance towers the spire of Memorial Church. In the foreground tiny cowboys and Indians are half hidden by the grass.

  What can I say? Only that Max is a genius and in a few more years will be hanging in the Fogg. I’m going to have it matted on archival acid-free paper and put into a gold leaf frame. I’m going to center it on the wall across from my bed where I can see it when I first awake and just before I go to sleep. That Max has chosen to include me in a family portrait however remote I am from its nuclear core moves me profoundly and shores up my confidence.

  Confidence I’ll need to confront Louie. Family pictures slide across my eyeballs. My parents. Arthur and my mother. Zenobia and me. Max and me. The drawing Max made of me. These make way for a picture I have so far held in reserve. It’s the kind of picture set up in a small room off the main gallery. On view by invitation only for privileged clientele. Out of view unless you stumble across it on your way to the ladies’ room. It’s Louie and a child at a table in a restaurant. In the space between their heads two pairs of hands fly up.

  * * *

  I arrive at the Pamplona on the dot of four. I’ve changed my red plaid shirt and jeans for a neutral gray sweater and skirt. I’m not dressed to kill or dressed for success but cloaked like a nun. This implies serious conversation with no sexual overtones. Louie’s already there. I can see his crutches through the basement window as I go down the stairs. My tone must have been enough for him to know to choose a table near the back.