Rachel Cantor
Good on Paper
For my parents, who taught me most of what I know about new life
How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from that bird which flies out of its ashes,
that for a man
as he goes up in flames, his one work
is
to open himself, to be
the flames?
PART ONE. THE CALL
1. THE CALL
Twelve thousand envelopes wanted stuffing, there were twelve thousand labels to affix. Mr. Ferguson, Administrative Manager of Legs-R-Us, had particular ideas about proportional folding, and straight affixion.
Affliction? Durlene asked.
Affixion! I said.
Never heard of that, Durlene said.
Exactly! I said.
Why are you whispering? Durlene asked.
I was hiding in the supply closet, but Durlene didn’t need to know that.
You need to airlift me out of here, I said.
You need to stick it out, Shira. I can’t keep placing you if you keep quitting jobs.
I never managed to stick. I couldn’t look at the walls of the schlock gallery, I couldn’t bear the boss who kept telling me to smile or the funny smell in the church-office lunchroom.
I blamed Clyde. We’d gotten together last spring, as Good Scents prepared for Winter Wonderland. As a joke, the flavor techs threw a holiday party, complete with an inflatable Santa, and a menorah for me and the ancient receptionist. Clyde explained over imitation-raspberry-flavored eggnog that a woman’s sense of smell is more acute than that of a man. Allowed to sniff a variety of sweaty T-shirts, a woman will naturally be attracted to the one with the most compatible DNA. It was only when he dabbed soy sauce behind my ears that I realized I was being seduced. We French-kissed under the mistletoe: I guess I liked what I smelled.
But that was spring. By summer, Clyde’s Gal Friday was back, and I was let go: a temp is a temp is a temp, after all; there’d been no talk of us or tomorrow.
Really? I’d asked while buttoning my top.
If the girl needs time off, I’ll ask for you, he said.
I felt shabby, then, and out of sorts.
Since then, there’d been Falafel Dynasty, the Workers’ Museum, the doll importer, and now the proportional-folding system.
I need something different, I told Durlene from the supply closet. Really different. A new start.
That’s what you said before: I got you a charity!
I know, I said. Prosthetic legs, they’re important.
Sticking is important, she said. Sticking means temp to perm. You do want something permanent, right? You’re not one of these folks who thinks the world’s going to end with Y2K, are you?
It was then that I got the call.
It was Ahmad. Friend of my youth, roommate, co-parent.
Gotta go, Durlene! Sorry!
Shira! I need you to stay! Do not quit this job!
Other line! I said. Gotta take it. Could be my kid!
Do not quit this job, Shira!
You shtupping your boss? Ahmad asked when I switched lines. Your voice has that breathless quality.
I’m not breathless, I’m whispering. Is Andi okay?
Of course Andi’s okay, but you won’t believe what I have in my hand.
Don’t play with me, I said. You interrupted an important meeting.
Ahmad laughed. I couldn’t help laughing, too.
You’ve got a telegram.
A what? I asked, even though I’d heard him perfectly well. (A telegram? Was there even such a thing anymore?)
A telegram, he said. Shall I open it for you?
I don’t believe it, I said.
I assure you, Ahmad said. It is here in my hands. The young man who delivered it was quite delectable. We have a date — tonight. We’re going bowling.
You sure it’s not about Andi?
Andi is three blocks away. If something happened, science camp would call.
Wait, I said, and leaned back against a wall of copy paper, and told myself to breathe.
A telegram could mean only one thing. My mother, MIA since I was seven. She’d found me. Or she was dead and someone else had found me.
Don’t open it, I said.
Ahmad didn’t speak.
I mean it, Ahmad! Don’t open it.
I heard a tearing sound.
Don’t open it! I shrieked.
Oh! Ahmad said, and then silence. You won’t believe this.
I hung up, then pleaded Emergency and left for the day, even though, as Mr. Ferguson reminded me, envelopes don’t stuff themselves. I pulled Andi from science camp, whispering to her Enrichment Facilitator that Andi’s aunt Emma had died, wishful thinking on my part.
Just in the nick of time, Andi muttered, dragging her Pretty Princess backpack behind her. We were learning about tectonic shifts. If the crust of the earth is moving, she said, shaking her braids, I don’t want to know about it.
Indeed, I thought, and squeezed her, and suggested she take off her lab coat so we could be off to see the Wizard, which to Andi meant a trip to Kmart. Which earned me a hug.
I love you when you buy me things, she said.
2. NOT WHAT YOU THINK
Our apartment, lent to us by Ahmad’s university, was a stately brick affair at the junction of Broadway and West End. By Manhattan and possibly other standards, it was enormous: come the revolution, it would be divided among three, if not four, proletariat families. We called it the Den of Propinquity — joking, because the place was large, also not joking, because some days it seemed hardly large enough.
The Den was decorated largely to Ahmad’s taste: elegant and minimal. Large earth-toned kilims, comfortable leather couches, Chinese vases on sleek teak tables. My room, next to Andi’s, was rather bare, though I’d lived in Ahmad’s apartment since before Andi was born: a few posters tacked to the wall — Corot’s Isola Tiberina, Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew. A single bed (natch), the obligatory rag rug. I’ve never invested much in things: any day — or so the theory went — we might move on.
Andi wanted to show Ahmad the satin clothes hangers I’d gotten her (her choice), but he wasn’t in his room, and he wasn’t in the kitchen. Which meant he was in his studio, where he painted when he wasn’t teaching undergraduates about Depression Economics and the Economics of Change: fantasies that combined Indian gods, images iconic of the materialist West, and the Italian forms we grew up with — a haloed Ganesh squatting behind bars at the zoo, Ahmad, a donor in robes, kneeling before him. It was the one place neither Andi nor I could ever, ever go. I joked that Ahmad could keep the blue beards of his conquests there, if only his conquests were old enough to have beards, ha ha.
Put the hangers on the dining room table, I told her. He’ll look at them later.
On the table, a note: You won’t be sorry. Under it, a folded telegram.
Again that grinding in my belly. I turned toward Ahmad’s studio.
Mom! Andi called out, horrified, but it couldn’t wait.