Mail

by Mameve Medwed

  My key sticks a little in the front door but opens it. In the kitchen three chairs are arranged around the maple table in their usual place. It’s the house that time forgot, that I never have. Automatically I pull out my own chair from the side between the head and the foot. I change my mind. I feel strange, like a character in a feminist retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but, still, I take my mother’s seat. I eat my lobster. I drink my beer. I wander the rooms figuring out which will be my study, where I’ll put a guest. By nine o’clock, I’m in my own room fast asleep in my own bed.

  16

  There’s a Post-it stuck to my apartment door when I return to Cambridge. “Truce,” my mother has written beside the outline of a dove.

  What can I say? Only that she is my mother. That she has her good points, too, though none at the moment spring immediately to mind. I dig for compliments on her behalf. She’s funny, generous, a Democrat (in party if not philosophy). She’s a good cook. She loves me. And come Memorial Day when my absence from Cambridge will make the heart grow fonder, I’ll be able to love her back.

  But before I accept her olive branch there’s something I need to do. I take pencil, pen, scissors and go out into the vestibule. I measure. I cut. I write Katinka Graham on the piece of paper and slip it into the slot on my mailbox eclipsing the Katinka O’Toole. I admire the new me even though it’s not a legal new me yet. Just as I start to turn back I begin to worry: can I count on the substitute mail deliverer to recognize my substitution and thus parcel out the mail accordingly? Under the Katinka Graham there’s just room for me to write in parentheses: formerly O’Toole.

  I am proud of myself. I feel strong. Once inside my apartment, I tap Max’s peace pipe for good luck. Then I phone my mother.

  “Thank God,” she says.

  “I left a note.”

  “For which I’m grateful. Though part of me was afraid you’d gone to Maine for good.”

  I bite the bullet and tell her. That I’m buying my old house and moving home.

  This is greeted by an astonished silence followed by a series of gasps.

  “I’m filling out the papers now. I’m about to notify the landlord not to renew my lease.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. Goody-Goody Goodreau is drawing up the Purchase and Sale even as we speak.”

  My mother groans. “How can I sell my own child her childhood home? Let me call the bank and see what can be arranged.”

  “And deny me my rediscovered Maine-born gene for self-sufficiency? I insist on buying it. Besides, it’s a bargain.”

  “That’s true,” my mother agrees, “but only because it’s in Old Town. Only a fool would actually choose—”

  “Mother …” I warn.

  “It’s my fault,” my mother says, her voice contrite, “because of what happened in the laundry room.”

  “You were impossible,” I admit. No absolution. Not so soon. “It’s something I’ve wanted for a while, just hadn’t realized yet.”

  “Do you know that I was so upset I forgot all about Arthur’s shorts and a repairman left a dirty wrench on them.”

  “Try a little bleach …”

  “Oh, Katinka! You’re moving back and all my life I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”

  “The ironic twist in our mutual biography.”

  “I feel as if I’m leading the life I wanted for you.”

  “You can’t want a life for somebody else.”

  “Then we’ve switched places. I’m taking Arthur’s name and moving to Cambridge. You’re taking mine …”

  “And my father’s.”

  “And your father’s and moving back to Old Town.” My mother sighs. Her voice is sad, segueing into hopeful. “They say you can’t go home again.”

  “That’s fiction. The name of a novel a novelist wrote.”

  “I guess you’d know,” my mother concedes. “What about Jake?”

  “Jake’s not relevant.”

  “Then, the mailman. He’s—”

  “Mother!” I yell.

  She pauses. Harrumps. “Don’t think I haven’t learned my lesson, Katinka. His name will never pass my lips.”

  I am about to ask, Promise? Cross your heart? “I’m glad you’ve learned your lesson,” I tell her instead. “I’ll talk to you later. Give Arthur a kiss.” It’s amazing, now that I’m on my way out of here, how easy it is to forgive.

  And because to forgive is not only easy but also divine, I call Louie while the receiver is still warm with the milk of my human kindness. “I forgive you,” I announce.

  “This is my lucky day. This makes me so happy.” He proceeds to list his varying states of joy until he runs out of superlatives. “Do you mean now we can go back to the way things used to be?” he asks.

  “Not exactly. But I’ve got a plan.”

  “Change the sheets,” says Louie. “I’ll be there faster than superman.”

  I don’t change the sheets. After all, I washed them the day before I left for Maine. Besides it’s not sex I have in mind. Sex is only a minor element of the master plot. I set the scene. I take out a map of Old Town, the brochures on public schools and children with disabilities. I bring out a copy of the change-of-name petition I will file in Middlesex Probate Court and the form for the legal notice which I will take tomorrow to The Cambridge Chronicle. I add the mortgage application, and three photographs of the Old Town house, an exterior shot, and two inside. I pile on a catalogue from the University of Maine and a leaflet listing their extension services. I prop up a postcard of downtown which shows the post office figured prominently. There’s also a pamphlet on taking courses toward your high school equivalency degree. All these I arrange on the coffee table of my living room.

  Louie arrives by taxi. This I know since I am sitting at the window peering down the street. A walking cast thickens one leg of his pants. He carries a cane. He hobbles adorably. I refrain from running to the front door. Minutes pass before he rings. What’s he doing? I wonder. Maybe touching base with the rows of mailboxes he’s been homesick for.

  I know what that feels like, being homesick. I’m homesick for home, homesick for him. I buzz him in.

  When he limps across my front hall, his face is lit up like a kid’s. He opens his arms.

  “First things first,” I say.

  He tilts his head in the direction of the bedroom.

  “Not that,” I say. I take his elbow and lead him into the living room. His cast makes loud thumps. I am relieved I live on the first floor. Soon enough I won’t have to worry about disturbing the neighbors, I remind myself.

  He sits down on the sofa. “What’s this?” he asks pointing to my arrangement of literature spread out on the coffee table like a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

  I feed him brochures. He looks at each in turn and puts it down like the last person in a chain of lumberjacks passing logs.

  “Frankly I’d rather spend my vacations in Florida.”

  “Florida’s a silly state,” I say, echoing Frenchy Levesque.

  “But it’s got sun and Disney World. Space Mountain is an incredible roller-coaster ride.”

  My life is an incredible roller-coaster ride, I think. “I prefer Mount Katahdin, its authenticity,” say I who have never climbed any mountain, real or fake.

  He lets that pass. “Why are you showing me this?” he asks. “I know it’s where you’re from and all …”

  I hand him back the leaflet on students with disabilities. “Look. Look at the programs they have for the deaf.”

  He gives it a cursory glance. “That’s nice,” he says, “but not much to do with Tony and me.”

  “It could,” I say.

  “What do you mean?” He puts his arm around my shoulder and I feel swaddled in the warmth of fur or at least multiply cashmere. I nestle against him. He squeezes, “What say we do this chamber of commerce stuff later,” he whispers.

  I shake my head. “I’m moving home,” I say. “I’ve
bought back my childhood house.”

  “No kidding.” He studies me. “You are kidding, right?”

  “I’m completely serious.”

  He sits up. “You mean you’re moving away, voluntarily, from the 02138 zip code?”

  I nod. “And not soon enough,” I emphasize.

  “Moving from the city of Harvard? The city of Seamus?”

  “My very point. The city of Seamus. The city of shame.”

  “I’m shocked, Katinka. You fit in here. How can you turn your back on Cambridge?”

  “Easy.”

  “Easy for you. Me, I’ve always been so proud to be delivering mail to 02138. To Nobel Prize winners. And college types. Proud to be living only one zip code away in Somerville.”

  “That’s pathetic, Louie,” I say. Shades of my mother. I wince. Maybe the wounds from my encounter with my mother are so fresh they’re bleeding all over everything and thus distorting what I hear.

  Though there’s no distorting what Louis says next. “But you’re an O’Toole,” he pleads.

  “A Graham. I’ve taken back my name.”

  “So that explains the mailbox. I kept staring and staring at it.”

  “Oh, Louie,” I sigh, “it’s time to get you out of here.”

  I explain about my trip to Maine, the house, the procedure for changing my name. I describe Old Town, its salt-of-the-earth people, its down-to-earth life. How everybody pretty much wears the same clothes, how people who attended Harvard repair roofs and people who used to be nuns serve submarine sandwiches. How where you went to school is less important than where you’re going to go on Saturday night. “And so,” I finish up, “I want you and Tony to come and live in my house with me.”

  Louie must have perfected his staring while eyeballing my mailbox because he stares at me with pupils wider than I would have thought was humanly possible. Even in the insect species such eyes would have been an anomaly. He takes my hand in his. “Is this a proposal?” he asks.

  “Sort of. Do you want me to get down on my knees?”

  His human slash insect eyes fill with tears. “Katinka, this is the most amazing compliment I have ever received.”

  “I should have brought a ring.”

  “Now you’re teasing me.”

  “Come to think of it I’ve got a roll of Love stamps somewhere. We could put them around your finger and pretend …”

  “I don’t need any stamps to remind me I love you,” Louie says.

  He loves me! My heart soars.

  “But can’t we keep things just the way they are?” he asks.

  The catch. I shake my head.

  “Even for me? Why can’t it be Louie Cappetti and Katinka O’Toole right here like it always was?”

  My heart sinks. “Katinka Graham.” I shake my head again.

  “They say if it’s not broken don’t fix it,” he pleads.

  I knock my knuckles against the cast on his leg.

  “I wouldn’t want to go someplace I didn’t know,” he adds.

  “Even for me?” I use his own words.

  He doesn’t exactly say no but he hangs his head. “I’m not big for change. I mean, I’ve got my routine. By the end of May I’ll be back on my route. Then there’s my parents and my sister. All in the same house … I know I complain, but I’ve gotten kind of used to it. And there’s Tony. How can I take him from Cheryl. How can I take care of him by myself.”

  “You won’t be by yourself.”

  “But Tony’s not yours,” he exclaims. I must look as hurt as I feel because he hurries to add, “I don’t mean it how it sounds.” He rushes on. “Why would you want to live in Maine by yourself anyway?” he asks.

  “By myself wasn’t my plan,” I say.

  “It doesn’t make sense that you’re leaving just when your mother’s moving here, when you’re going to have Arthur’s family, all those people right next to you …”

  “One of the reasons that I’m getting out.”

  “My parents said when I got married they’d move downstairs and let me have the top floor.”

  “I could never move into your parents’ house with you, Louie.” I pause. “Not that you’re asking.”

  “I would ask if I thought there was any chance you would.”

  “Then you know me better than you think you do.”

  And maybe that’s how he likes me, safe outside his own safety zone.

  All at once, it comes to me in the pure and startling light that sad truths force on you: Louis won’t leave home. Won’t change his route or his routine. He’s his parents’ little boy. He’s a Hamlet who can’t commit. A mailman stuck between deliveries. He might prefer Cappetti-O’Toole (the Dublin O’Tooles) to Cappetti-Corelli. But not on a permanent basis; he only wants visiting rights. For him it’s the best of both worlds: guest privileges in the 02138 zip code and his meals at his mother’s table in Somerville. Why blend into the citizenry of Old Town when you can stand out in Cambridge as the mailman who delivers more than the mail to the ex-wife of Professor O’Toole? “I guess I don’t know you as well as I thought I did,” I say. “I gather your answer is no?” I ask.

  He wipes his eyes. “I’m sure I’ll live to regret it.”

  We kiss good-bye. His body—a body I have loved and lost, or rather, pushed away—folds around me, then steps aside. “Well, no regrets,” he says.

  “No regrets,” I echo. I attempt a brave smile.

  His smile is wistful. “By the time I’m back on the route, you’ll probably be all moved out. Gee, I can’t imagine the mailbox without your name.”

  The instant he leaves, I cry. Maybe tears are simply the Pavlovian response to saying good-bye. But it’s not the great weeping which followed the Pamplona debacle. This is our second parting and I’m more used to it. I’ve seen Louie’s clay feet. I think of his broken leg. It’s a metaphor for how he can’t stand on his own two feet. But if Louie’s lame, I’ve been blind. So blinded by Louie I’ve overlooked the Jakes of this world. Like my mother, I’ve been dazzled by surfaces. Unlike my mother, I can dig deeper. Louis and I are not compatible. Not for reasons of class, my mother’s reasons, but because he’s as bad a snob as my mother, is as resistant to change as Seamus, and unlike me, hasn’t grown up.

  These multiple epiphanies do little to vanquish my misery. For several minutes, I sag in my hallway wrenched and tragic. I hear a door slam. Somewhere outside on the street, a car pulls up. Then, a burden lifts and I feel a lightening.

  17

  Spring comes late to Cambridge. By mid-April, the igloos of snow which border the streets like an abandoned Eskimo encampment have thawed to puddles. When I walk home from Sever Hall these days, it’s nearly light even though some of the trees are still bare. Now I look out my window and see a few early crocuses shooting up. I have passed through the most amazing winter of my life. I feel caught between seasons, caught between chapters in a book.

  Though one chapter is about to close. I’m in the process of packing for the move. I fill milk crates with novels and biographies. I make three piles of clothes, one for summer, one for winter, one for Goodwill. I place my stack of Playgirls into a metal file box that has a lock. In the apartment upstairs somebody is dragging furniture across the floor. I look around my own soon-to-be-vacated apartment. The packing is leaving these rooms as decimated as Jake’s.

  Jake’s been especially attentive lately. I haven’t told him any of the Louie story, but some of it he may have guessed. He’s asked a lot about the house in Old Town, about the Indian reservation, the library. When I describe the people, Tubby Burnside and Goody-Goody Goodreau, Frenchy Levesque, Pollyanne Mulligan, he sighs with envy of their Down East qualities. “Sure beats the meat-packers,” he says. “And Laura’s crowd.”

  I tell him he can visit often, that there’s a guest room.

  “Not as a guest,” he objects.

  The room’s for Max, I explain. Zenobia and Harriman will drive him up for a week in August. I’ve promised to take him
to Indian Island, to the Old Town Canoe Factory, to the drugstore for cherry Cokes. “Or we can just hang out,” I said to Max.

  “Awesome.” He’d waved his peace pipe, which seems to be filling the vacuum Daniella left; he takes it everywhere.

  For Jake and me, there’s a double-canopied bed. He is relieved. He was afraid, he jokes, that Old Town still had bundling boards.

  You’ll see for yourself, I say, how great it is.

  I take down some posters and study the white spaces in their wake. Funny, but I’m not feeling at all nostalgic about this apartment, about these walls, and stove, and mantel, and door. Even about the bedroom, the site of so much ecstasy. The apartment’s already been rented, to a retired Harvard couple. My mother’s sent them a note to come up for drinks the day they move in. The wife, Mrs. Lowell, has shown up twice to measure for curtains. Around her neck she wears a discreet Phi Beta Kappa key. I am delighted. They will be fine companions for the Havens and no enticement for Louie. Frankly, I’m not ready to turn my mailbox over to some young, available female without the buffer of an elderly couple’s one-year lease.

  I go to my study. There’s no sense clearing my desk until my class ends. I sit down and pick up India Germaine’s manuscript. Her story is called “Leaving Home.” I put it down and look at Russell MacQuillen, Junior’s, which is titled “Software: A Computer Story in Three Parts.” I open to Part One. I brace myself.

  I am saved by the phone. It’s Seamus and he’s mad as hell.

  He gets right to the point. “Katinka,” he shouts, “I’ve just seen your legal notice in The Cambridge Chronicle.”

  “You read legal notices?” I ask.

  “I read everything, as you should recall. I was in the bathroom. I finished with the news articles. I went on to the toothpaste bottle and the box the soap comes in. Then I started with the legal notices. The print’s so small, I was lucky I had my spectacles. To my horror, I saw that you’d petitioned for a change of name.”