Mail

by Mameve Medwed

“I’m so sorry, Katinka, I’ve screwed up royally. Is there any chance we could just keep things as they are? As they were?”

  I shake my head.

  We fight over the bill. Louie insists on paying. It’s my treat, I demand, since I set the meeting up. Louie argues chivalry. I champion independence. We finally split it down to the last nickel of the tip. The coins, slightly tarnished, make a sad pile, a reminder of Seamus, of how dissolutions bring out pettiness.

  The waiter sweeps our money up with the check just as tears start to spill from Louie’s eyes. He smears them away with the flat of his hand. The waiter averts his head. It’s unseemly for a man to cry in a coffeehouse while sharing cappuccino with a woman, his posture seems to say. But of course the waiter’s Spanish, the land of macho men, and Louie’s Italian—or Italian-American—a heredity from which feeling soars as flagrantly as Pavarotti’s handkerchief. “So it’s over?” he asks with the wrenching cadences you might hear in a rendition of “’O Sole Mio.”

  “Probably,” I say.

  “I’m not ready to give up yet.”

  “Dragging things out is no solution.”

  “It’s all my fault. Please let me make it up to you.”

  “Perhaps we need some time,” I stall, though I suspect that Louie and I as an item is getting as stale as day-old bread. But he looks so crushed. And I feel so before-the-fact bereft. “Let’s have a moratorium for now.” I open my hand on the roll of Love stamps. I flick them over to the side of Louie’s table. “Good-bye, Louie,” I say.

  “Keep them,” Louie says. “You can always use the stamps.”

  * * *

  On the way home I shed a few tears. Once inside my front hall they really gush. It wasn’t all sex and lies and, well, letters instead of videotape. There was sweetness. We shared a bond. Poor Louie, I think, who at least has, if not a consolation prize, the consolation of a son. Perhaps if I’m out of the picture, he’ll start to view Tony not as a punishment but as a gift. My mother might say things happen for a reason. That the reason Louie was given such beautiful hands was for talking with his son. I pick up Daniella. I cry into her lumps, which my tears will soon dilute into paste. How the mighty have fallen. Once Daniella dined at Arthur T. Haven’s table. Now she’ll be good for smearing onto construction paper. In my childhood books, bad guys were always turning horses into glue. In grown-up real life princes turn out to have secret children and insufficient consciences.

  The phone rings. “Katinka,” my mother says, “you sound terrible.”

  “I may have broken up with Louie.”

  “The mailman?”

  “What other Louie is there?” I sob. “I’ll be right down.”

  “I prefer to be alone.”

  “Nonsense. For a broken heart only a mother’s love will suffice.”

  When I let her in she’s doing a good job keeping the glee from her face even if the corners of her lips are pulled down somewhat theatrically.

  “I said good-bye,” I explain.

  She puts her arms around me. “You did the right thing.”

  I snuffle. “You only say that because he’s the mailman.”

  “Not so.”

  “Is so. I know you disapproved because of his job. Because he didn’t have a suitable degree.”

  “How can you accuse me of such a thing. After what I told you of my Sears man.”

  “Whom you gave the old heave-ho.”

  My mother releases me. Looks me in the eye. One brow slightly raised. Her chin determined, teeth clenched. It’s her I’ve-got-something-to-tell-you look.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” she says now. “I didn’t dump him. I was too embarrassed to admit this, but the fact is …” Her voice rises to a pitch of incredulity. “He dumped me!”

  “No!”

  She nods. She sighs. Her eyes are sad. She shakes her head. “Among other things, he called me a snob. Can you believe it?”

  I can believe it. But this is not the time to say so. I need her motherly bosom too much, her motherly sympathy. “Oh, Mom,” I say.

  She puts her arms around me. “So now you’ve got nothing to rebel against.”

  We have gin and tonics. Summer drinks in February. My mother after all has just come back from Jamaica, and I have a seasonal affective disorder that only the symbols of summer will cure even without the promise of white sand sliding between Louie’s tanned toes.

  My mother leaves. I assure her that I feel better. “Gin helps,” she says. “So will Jake.”

  Now that I know she was dumped by somebody with no degrees, a man who snubbed her for being a snob, who wore a uniform with his name embroidered on the pocket flap, a Sears man she would— might—have taken if he had wanted her, I don’t feel so bad that she’s cheering for Jake.

  Whom I call as soon as she is out the door.

  “What’s the matter, Katinka? You sound terrible.”

  “You know that other relationship I told you about? The other so-called contender in the great battle for my affections?”

  “I’m on my way,” says Jake. “Put the wine on ice.”

  15

  The weather suits my mood. Outside my window the sky weeps. I weep. I’m three weeks into my moratorium with Louie. Three weeks into my exclusive relationship with Jake. Jake’s happy. My mother’s happy. Louie’s miserable. He leaves plaintive messages of love and longing on my machine. I’ve taken to monitoring my calls. “Are you there, Katinka?” he’ll plead. “Just let me hear the sound of your voice.” I don’t trust the sound of my voice in response to the sound of his. Sometimes, when I am feeling especially melancholy, I’ll fill a glass with brandy, rewind the tape, and play “Katinka, are you there?” over and over as if it’s my favorite concerto.

  Still, for the most part I am doing better than I would have thought. Most evenings my dance card’s penciled in with Jake. Some nights I sleep over at his house in Lexington. The sex is better if not yet stars. Though Jake’s not a natural like Louie, he’s a good student and a hard worker. Right now we’re more like proto-stars—those masses of gas heading toward fusion and, then, ultimate stardom.

  What’s really nice about Jake is he’s not a tit-for-tat kind of guy. He understands that I’ve declared my own apartment a sex-free zone. Not just for you, I explain, but all members of the male persuasion with the exception of Max. Why does my one bedroom with great location and wood-burning fireplace feel less like home and more like an encampment surrounded by enemy territory? I ask him. He surveys his own center entrance colonial, its plundered remains of matrimonial battles. Funny, he agrees, how fast a castle can become a dungeon. With my mother upstairs, Jake can appreciate the stress-relieving properties of geographical celibacy.

  When everything gets to me, I throw myself into my work. Mornings, I slave over my prose. Afternoons, I study my students’ manuscripts and devise writing exercises to shake them up. “Two pages of a doomed romance,” I assigned last week. India Germaine wrote a piece about a tubercular violinist and the man who launders her bloodstained handkerchiefs that had Eddie, the cab driver, shedding tears on his tattoos.

  The truth is I’ve become a good teacher. After a rocky start— due to standing in for Seamus and my new-at-the-job nervousness—it’s been smooth sailing, to use one of Muriel Kingsworthy’s navigational metaphors. But what’s really amazing is that I’ve developed a spine.

  Maybe the suffering over Louie acts as a kind of calcium for assertiveness.

  It was last week when I put my new resolve to the test. I was in the middle of critiquing one of Muriel Kingsworthy’s novel sections. The phone rang at eleven at night, not Louie’s time to call. I still considered letting the machine pick up. I was afraid of losing the thread. But the problem was there was no thread, I realized, and lifted the receiver. A mistake. “Katinka,” Seamus bellowed, “I want my class back.”

  I had a sudden picture of a cartoon child banging a spoon and demanding his strained applesauce. Boy, was Seamus, gray-bearded a
nd professorial-browed, an illustration of how looks deceive. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Exactly what I said. I’m a new man and raring to go. I’m off my bed. Fit and ready for work. I’ve neglected my students long enough.”

  “Too bad,” I snapped. “No! No! No!” I shouted. And surprised myself.

  And Seamus, too. “Am I hearing you right?” he asked.

  “You gave the class to me.”

  “And you had the privilege and fun of teaching it, not to mention the enhancement to your résumé. I didn’t realize my rallying powers. Georgette’s introduced me to Chinese herbs and acupuncture. And over in Watertown, there’s this extraordinary Swedish masseuse …”

  Watch out, Georgette, I wanted to warn. But if Seamus is a good rallyer, so am I. “No Way, José,” I emphasized.

  “Be reasonable, Katinka.”

  “I am.”

  “Then you are seriously misguided.” He paused, and I could practically hear him put on his thinking cap. “Well, perhaps at your next meeting you might summon a vote.”

  “I just might. And I wouldn’t be so sure of the outcome if I were you. Indian giver!” I yelled and hung up the phone.

  I passed a few hours in misery. But if Seamus wanted a popularity contest, I was ready to fight. I considered my troops. Who I’d need to marshal for my support. My ranks have already been decimated by the desertion of Cindi and Louie. Rebecca Luscombe’s dropped out, too, for reasons other than my inadequate attitude toward sisterhood. She’s been appointed the editor of a new feminist magazine and has switched to premed. My other students are making good progress. Except for Muriel Kingsworthy, who writes the most high-blown prose larded with a thesaurus’ worth of adjectives though I keep admonishing her to simplify. And Russell MacQuillen, whose capacity for being boring deserves the Guinness record book. Since I wasn’t pasting silver stars onto their manuscripts, these two were the obvious Benedict Arnold candidates.

  When I presented the problem to the class, about Seamus’ desire to come back, Muriel Kingsworthy was the first to jump to my defense. “But you’re a great teacher,” she exclaimed, “the best.” (Which resulted, I must admit, in my unusually warm praise over her latest offering.) “Certainly more pleasing to the eye,” Eddie Horgan added. “I’ve learned a lot,” Jonathan Marshall said. The vote was almost unanimous, the lone dissenter being Russell MacQuillen, who felt he’d be better understood by Professor Seamus O’Toole.

  I savored my victory for a long time. You’re a great teacher, I told myself, even “the best.” But despite my class-confirmed abilities, lately I’ve come to realize I prefer to write rather than to teach writing. The truth is I’ve started a novel. It takes place in Cambridge. It’s about a romance between an artist and a policeman. The artist’s father, who lives around the corner from her studio, is having an affair with the widow of a Harvard archaeologist. And there’s a child confined to a wheelchair whom I might change to being visually impaired. I’ve checked out three library books on Braille. Central to my novel is a CPA with a big heart and red socks. If you’re supposed to write what you know then I certainly know what I’m writing about. And I’d rather be writing my own pages than writing criticism on somebody else’s. I wake up in the morning panting to get to my desk.

  Which, in addition to providing a surface to write on, is taking the place of the analyst’s couch. Writing about what’s happened between me and Louie has given me distance. Transforming Louie from real life to fiction is a form of therapy. The faster I write the faster I am recovering. Still, I must admit that when I hear the clatter of mailboxes I have a little pang.

  Even though I know it’s not Louie. He’s graduated to a walking cast and has been given a temporary desk job at the Central Square post office. This suits me just fine since I buy my stamps and send my packages at the Harvard Square branch. I figure that between writing about Louie and putting actual space between Louie and me, I’m making real progress in getting over the relationship. Not to mention the fact that because of my suffering, I may end up with a book. Still, it’s amazing how the symptoms linger after the disease is gone. Jogging by the library yesterday, I spotted a mailman who was short and balding and still nearly tripped off the curb.

  We’ve got a substitute mailman in the building who is a mail-woman. She wears her hat at a rakish angle and her standard-issue blue hems folded under to the length of a miniskirt. Her skills aren’t Louie’s either since she keeps mixing up my mail with Mr. O’Riley’s on the third floor, as if O’Riley and O’Toole were interchangeable. Some nights I can keep myself awake worrying that a New Yorker acceptance might turn up lost in the pages of one of Mr. O’Riley’s History Today’s. Unlike Louie, she doesn’t seem to value her work.

  The young men in my building, however, seem to value both her work and her miniskirt. Two of them, grad students with odd hours, do a lot of hanging around the vestibule from noon to one. I must say it doesn’t add to the tone of the building to see people leering in the lobby in the middle of the day.

  Nevertheless, despite my problems dealing with various aspects of the mail, I had no problems dealing with Seamus. After my vote of confidence, I called Seamus to tell him the results of the ballot. He wasn’t home. I didn’t announce my victory on the machine. I needed to crow in front of a live audience.

  The next morning, Seamus called me back. He apologized for not being reachable. He’s been spending a lot of time on the table of the Swedish masseuse.

  “The table?”

  He let that pass. “And in the library whipping my lesson plan into shape.”

  “Which you don’t need,” I explained. “They took a vote.”

  “And?”

  “And elected to stay with Katinka O’Toole.”

  There was a long, sputtering pause. “They say a good deed never goes unpunished. Lord knows what wiles you’ve used.”

  “You’re a poor loser, Seamus. You don’t play fair.”

  “And you do? You’ve certainly made the most of my name!”

  He hung up the phone in a fury a second before I could hang up the phone in a fury. His name! Katinka O’Toole, Katinka O’Toole, I said, and it tasted like food gone rancid.

  Katinka O’Toole, I say to myself this morning. It’s a cracked record that for the last few nights has been playing on repeat. My next step is becoming clearer. Still, Katinka O’Toole is the name on my stories—my professional name. Katinka O’Toole is the name on my mailbox—my domestic name. I picture Seamus’ syllabus with Georgette’s notes scrawled over it. On the back of the last page she had written Georgette Elizabeth O’Toole, Georgette Elizabeth Edmunds O’Toole, Georgette E.E. O’Toole, G.E. O’Toole until the ballpoint pen ran out of ink. We women can be so pitiful. I think of my own scribblings in the margins of elementary school books, attaching my name to the sixth-grade flavor of the week: Katinka DuBois, Katinka Goldberg, K.G. MacFadden, Katinka G. Quince. Even if as a writer I am known as Katinka O’Toole, I can’t exactly say I’ve made my reputation with that name. My public can adapt. Look at the rock star Prince whom all the newspapers now refer to as “the rock star formerly known as Prince.”

  I call Jake at the office.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” he says.

  “I need to find out about legally changing my name.”

  “By marriage?” he asks.

  “From marriage,” I exclaim.

  “That was an unenlightened question,” he retreats. “I do apologize.”

  “Accepted. I want to take back my maiden name.”

  “I see. I’ll connect you to our family law department,” he says. “Just hold.”

  I hold for less than a second when a voice announces “Evelyn Atamian” into my ear.

  I explain what I want.

  Couldn’t be simpler, says Evelyn Atamian as if mine is the easiest problem she’s ever had to deal with in a month of overlong and overscheduled days. I can file a petition for a change of name in the Middlesex County Proba
te Court. And I need to publish a legal notice of the citation at least seven days before the return date in The Cambridge Chronicle.

  “Publish a legal notice?” I ask.

  “A technicality,” she says. “Ostensibly to give anybody who wants to a chance to object.”

  “Like in a wedding, like in “if any person present can find just cause why these people should not be joined in holy matrimony …’?”

  I must sound a little hysterical because her voice slips into professional tones of reassurance. “Objections rarely occur. Besides the print is so fine in those legal notices hardly anyone looks at them.”

  “That’s a relief,” I say.

  I am about to hang up when she adds, “Of course you’ll need your birth certificate. A certified copy with a raised seal. You can try to get it through the mail, but I always advise clients, if they don’t come from too far, to get it in person. That way you can make sure it’s exactly what you need.”

  I know exactly what I need. I call Milly and arrange to borrow the Dumpmobile for the weekend. I explain why. “Go, Katinka, Go,” she cheers. “Finally you are taking control of your life.”

  I take control of my laundry. Between declaring my apartment sex free and declaring my life Louie free and thus freeing myself up for work and misery and taking control of my life, I have let my housework slide. My sheets haven’t been changed for weeks. When I toss my jeans onto the floor they practically stand upright.

  I grab a basket of laundry. Next to it is another basket equally stuffed to the brim. In addition, there’s a tangle of kneesocks and tights I have raked into a neat pile behind the bedroom door. But you have to start somewhere. I wedge the basket against my hip and chug down to the basement laundry room where—guess who?—is folding undershorts on top of a sawhorse-propped plank.

  “Katinka!” my mother exclaims. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Is this a standard greeting or a comment on my personal hygiene? I decide not to follow this train of thought since my mother is managing to look both delighted to see me and concerned about the degree of brokenness of my heart. I study Arthur’s undershorts, which are stacked across the table like the higher-end magazines in upmarket bookstores. They’re a colorful bunch: stripes, polka dots, rows of sitting ducks. I notice one with a border of hearts, another an overall pattern of miniature veritases on their crimson shields. Gifts, no doubt, from my mother. I’d know her mark anywhere.