The Paper Wasp

by Lauren Acampora

  Whenever I looked at the author’s photograph on the back of the book, a bolt would shoot through me, just as it did when I saw a photograph of you. It was a formal portrait, lit in a dramatic way that highlighted the curtains of Perren’s blue-white hair, shadowed the hollows of the cheeks, and turned the light eyes spectral. Those eyes seemed to stare straight into me. Although remote, I was Perren’s best student. I’d all but memorized the chapter on active imagination; it was a playbook written especially for me. Now, I not only could project my nighttime dreams onto paper, but could do the same with my waking visions, dark or light. Thanks to Perren, I was no longer at the mercy of my mood swings, but could channel them productively. There were twenty-three poster tubes in my closet already, each containing at least a dozen rolled-up drawings—the makings of a hundred films. All I needed was someone to help transmogrify them, translate them to celluloid, aerate and distribute them. And Perren, I felt, was the only one who could do this. He would understand at once, if I ever met him. The minute he saw the pictures, he’d recognize our partnership.

  In the meantime, it was difficult to wait. Dreams saturated my days. The waking world seemed thin and false in comparison, in danger of crumbling away. I drove over the ashen tundra to Meijer. I endured the assault of fluorescence, metallic music, plastic packaging shells. I stood blinking at the register in my navy polo shirt, sliding products over the scanner: marshmallows, condoms, Frisbees. The customers manifested one by one and disappeared as quickly as they came. There was always some face in front of me, blinking or glaring or gabbing. There was always the strident squeak of shopping cart wheels and the odor of the grocery section. The rest of the store swirled to infinity, a Charybdis of pillows and patio sets.

  In the news: a massacre at a school in Pakistan. An airliner, vanished into the sea. I often practiced my Perrenian techniques at the register, but sometimes I wasn’t able to hold off the tide of terror, and it broke over me. A crash of toppling cans in the grocery section might became the automatic fire of a weapon, smashed fruit and spilled milk mingling with blood on the floor. My heart would race and my ears would thunder. I’d have to stop what I was doing and grip the register shelf, to keep from running out the door. But after the reunion I stood at my register and simply replayed our communion on the loveseat. I closed my eyes from time to time and remembered the scent of your hair at my cheek, the benediction of your smile. Again, I heard your invitation to visit, clear as a church bell. It had happened. You had been here. You remembered.

  When my shift ended, I bought all the magazines, in hope of finding you. Sitting in the little armchair in my bedroom, I opened Vanity Fair and hunted through the pages. I didn’t really expect to see you—you’d never been in Vanity Fair—but all at once I felt the sharp report in my chest followed by the wave of warm bathwater. You were there: your viridian blouse iridescent as a leaf beetle, your hair like a sweeping foxtail. It took effort to look away from the twin crescents of light in your irises and read the article:

  She eats her quinoa salad in small, deliberate forkfuls and brushes a lock of bright auburn hair—she’s a natural redhead—away from her face as she speaks. At the mention of her upcoming film, Vespers, in which she plays opposite costar Rafael Solar, she puts down her fork and comes alive. “I play a satyr-type creature,” she says with clear delight, “with, like, cloven hooves and little horn bulbs on my head.” She wiggles a finger at each temple. “Beautiful and deformed.”

  I put down the magazine and closed my eyes for a moment. I sat, watching the flittering spores behind my eyelids. The dancing satyrs. They all settled into place like pieces in a kaleidoscope: preordained. I took my pair of heavy sewing scissors that cut the finest line. The sound of paper separating from magazine was a whistle through a grass blade. I dropped to the floor like an animal, pulled the old pink box out from under the bed—the box where I’d once laid my dolls down to sleep—and set the new magazine pages atop the others. I took a last look at you. Your eyes stared up at me, my old friend, and I saw something pleading in them, imploring me. My dreams hadn’t been wrong. They were never wrong; they were truer than life. As I held your gaze, I understood that our bond had never truly been broken. You needed me as much as ever.

  On the last day of the year, the dream of the house on the hill came back to me. It was the rarest of my recurring dreams, and the one I’d been waiting for, the one that would spring open the gates. In the dream, I found myself in an alpine landscape near a lake so pristine it made me cry. This, I thought in the dream, is the place I’ve been looking for, and I’ll never leave. As the dream unfurled, I recognized the place. I knew what would happen next. The appearance of the white house on the hill, a glimpse of the mad genius inside.

  I awoke in a surge of euphoria. I shoved my blankets off and sprang from bed to my vanity table. I drew without pause, dismissed my mother when she came to check on me, and worked through the afternoon. I had no appetite or need beyond capturing this dreamscape—the details of the house, its baroque furniture, its icing-sugar trim. The tall windows overlooking the lake, the coruscating chandelier over my head. This is the place.

  Outside my window, fresh snow blew from the ground in sparkling sheets. The light was nearly painful, the crackle of subzero temperatures. It was a new year, I remembered. 2015. The number seemed false, futuristic. Dazzlingly blank. I sat all day and drew. In front of me stretched a fully detailed panorama of the white house on the hill and its furnished interior, each of the rooms, and all the children contained in them. Every chair and sofa, every crystal in the chandelier. Outside my window, twilight painted the sky a blue so deep it edged beyond human perception. I was charged with energy and exaltation, as if I might meld with God, as if my body were a machine for divine creation. This was the feeling I’d been waiting for. Now, I could go to you. I could do and be everything I wanted. I could create masterpieces at will. I laughed to myself as I finished inking the front hall, the staircase and its banister, each of the delicately carved spindles, the volute like a nautilus shell.

  I walked a circle around the room. Here was the rabbit wallpaper I’d chosen as a child. Here were the ruffled dolls from my dead grandmother, the ceramic animals from tea boxes, the snow globes with dolphins and dancers. Everything carefully positioned on little shelves, powdered with dust and dead skin. I circled the room, and it shrank with every rotation until I felt dizzy. Then I stopped and stood, listing sideways, the walls still turning around me, and I felt myself grow. I grew, with my feet planted on the mottled old carpet, until I could reach out and touch each wall with my fingers, sweep the shelves bare with one stroke, topple the dresser and cabinet and spill their contents to the floor. I could punch through the ceiling and through the roof. I could elbow out through the drywall and step into the yard and keep growing and growing.

  I stood tottering on the carpet, and laughed at my room.

  II.

  THE LOS Angeles airport was bright and open, with feather-light people coasting over a pastel carpet. I became one of them, floating beneath the signs for ground transportation, trailing my little suitcase behind me. I had to use the restroom but didn’t dare stop. Finally, near a clot of reuniting lovers and returning soldiers, among cabbies and chauffeurs, I pulled out my phone and found your number, where you’d typed it for me. As in a dream, I pressed the Call button and held the phone against my ear.

  There was a click, and a recording told me to leave a message. I watched a little girl in a yellow dress run to her grandparents, and felt my heart skip. “Hi, Elise,” I squeaked, still watching the girl. “It’s Abby Graven. Guess what: I’m in L.A.! I can’t wait to see you. I’m at the airport. Call me back.”

  I hung up and gripped the phone at my side, breathing rapidly. The little girl’s family trundled toward the sliding doors and disappeared. I became aware of the taxi drivers surrounding me, the commingled smell of cologne and body odor. I fastened my gaze to the sign over the baggage carousel and waited. At last the
phone vibrated in my hand, and your voice was in my ear, that long-lost music. I smiled out into the terminal, meeting the eyes of strangers who quickly looked away.

  “Abby?” you said. “Uh, wow. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Surprise,” I breathed.

  “It is a surprise,” you said, and I heard other voices in the background. “How long are you here?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  You were quiet for a minute. “Where are you staying?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m at the airport now.”

  “You’re at the airport,” you repeated.

  “Yes. I’m standing in the baggage area.”

  “You don’t have a hotel?”

  I laughed lightly. “No, no hotel yet. Just me and my bag. What should I do?”

  There was a long, muffled pause. Maybe you’d put your hand over the phone. Maybe you were with someone and needed to excuse yourself. The pause was excruciating. I wanted your voice back.

  Finally, I spoke into the void. “It’s okay that I came, isn’t it?”

  Your voice returned then, with a thin metallic note. “Yeah, yeah, of course it’s okay. Why don’t you find a taxi and come here. Do you have a pen? Write down the address.”

  The taxi gave off the nauseating smell of hot leather and microfiber. There was no music on the radio, no news commentary. It drove in silence along avenues and wide freeways until at last it turned onto a narrow, winding road through scrubby hills. All evidence of urbanity had, at some undefined point, been rubbed away. This was a Los Angeles I hadn’t expected: a barren, undulating terrain that appeared more suited to wildcats than movie stars. I had no precise notion of where you lived, but I’d assumed it would be near the water.

  I cleared my throat and asked the driver, “What’s this area called?”

  “Malibu,” he said with a musical lilt.

  Perhaps he had an odd sense of humor. I didn’t know much, but I knew this was not Malibu. Just then, the car began to slow, stopping in front of a wrought-iron gate.

  “Here, okay? One hundred dollars.”

  I blinked at the driver, handed him my mother’s credit card.

  A moment later, the cab was gone and I was alone outside the gate, shielding my eyes in the white light. Through the glare I saw there was a call box, a button I needed to push. I looked at it for a long moment and felt myself come slowly awake. My frenzy had been so absorbing, it was almost as if my body had been hijacked. I distantly remembered scrawling the note to my parents at dawn that morning—Going to see Elise in California, will be in touch—and pulling the Impala out of the driveway, its engine sputtering in the cold. I remembered parking in the long-term airport garage, as if it had happened to someone else, and shivering in my red capris at the airline desk as I put the one-way flight on my mother’s Mastercard. What had I done, coming here? Belatedly, I heard the perturbation in your voice on the phone. Was it possible you didn’t want me? I stood trembling outside your gate. You were so close now. Tears gathered behind my eyelids, and I tried not to think as I pressed the button. I might have made an epic mistake, but you’d appear in front of me soon, and that was all that mattered.

  I peered through the gate, waiting. Your house was surprisingly modest, snug to the ground. I’d pictured something grander. It was warm stucco, with a red-tiled roof, verdigris shutters, a rustic wooden door. The ground sank beneath my feet as I watched the door open inward. You appeared, moving through the sunlight in a loose dress and sandals, not smiling as widely as I would have liked.

  “This really is a surprise,” you said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t give more notice.”

  You leveled a look at me, and my body buzzed with pleasure despite itself. Your face was so familiar, so much sweeter than in the magazines. I smiled, and your lips curled up. It was still a reflex for you to smile back at me.

  “It’s fine,” you said. “Come in, I’ll show you around.”

  I followed you over the cobblestone driveway edged with violet flowers. You were somehow smaller than I remembered, compact like a cat. And yet I could take in only one part at a time: your hair falling in its natural waves, a few strands tucked behind an ear; the exposed pink backs of your heels; the long ikat-patterned dress made of some rough cotton or hemp, clinging as you walked. This was a style I’d never anticipated, this California earth girl.

  “I bought the house a few months ago,” you said, shielding your eyes from the sun. “I really love it. It’s not huge, but it has tons of character. I just had these cobblestones put in.”

  I left my suitcase and backpack on the front step, and we circled around the house to the pool and bluestone patio. It was straight out of Dwell. Beneath a pergola was an arrangement of upholstered furniture with throw pillows, as if an entire living room had moved outdoors. The back of the house was a wall of glass that looked over the canyon. In the distance, a dark strip of ocean. I’d never seen anything so magnificent. This was the sweeping scenery you saw each day. This was where you slept, and where you woke. Of course it was. The vista might have been a mural painted for you: nature in its ease and ravishment, equal to your own splendor.

  I was hungry and still had to use the bathroom but couldn’t bring myself to interrupt you. You’d become more animated, caught up in your tour like a child displaying her toys. I followed along a path that wound through a grove of gnarled lemon and orange trees until nothing else was visible. It was a shaded bower of our own. You took a ripe lemon from the ground and offered it to me. I put my nose to its waxy skin and, catching its covert scent, felt a swell of joy.

  “I love the ocean,” you were saying, “but I don’t like so many people around. Everyone jockeys for their own little cove on the beach, but the houses are so packed together down there. I like it better up here. It’s so secluded I can forget I’m even in L.A.”

  It occurred to me that this was how you’d speak to a journalist. The intimacy of our reunion on the loveseat was absent. But it would return, I knew. You just needed time to adjust to me. I clutched the lemon in my hand like a blood-pressure pump as I followed you into the house. In the foyer, my own ghostly face looked back at me from a pressed-tin Mexican mirror, and for a moment my black-ringed eyes were the eyes of a stranger. You ushered me around the rooms, which were sunny and cluttered. The floors were layered with faded Turkish rugs, upon which sat pieces of fashionably weathered furniture. There was a deconstructed divan and a hanging wicker pod chair. From the ceiling hung a light fixture of elk antlers. Art covered the walls, salon style, in mismatched frames. I couldn’t take it all in at once.

  “Where’s your bathroom, if you don’t mind?”

  I closed myself into the downstairs powder room lined with wallpaper, a repeating motif of pagodas on a black background. It was the most dramatic bathroom I’d ever seen, and I tallied every painstaking choice: the porcelain faucet handles, the smoky mirror with chipped gold paint, the green-glass soap dish shaped like a sleeping cat. My face was mercifully fogged in the mirror, and I had a flashback to the ladies’ room at the reunion, my drunken swirl and plunge, just before you rescued me.

  When I emerged, you were waiting in the hallway. You smiled spontaneously, and I smiled in return. We looked at each other. This was the beginning. Right here. I knew it, and I felt that you did, too. It was the beginning of our new story together.

  You led me up a staircase with painted Talavera tiles on each riser, the walls hung with photographs, drawings, paintings.

  “I love how you decorated,” I said to your back. “It must have taken a lot of work.”

  “Not really. I hired a designer. I chose most of the art myself, though.”

  We reached the top of the stairs and went into a room lined with books.

  “Obviously I haven’t read them all. In fact I haven’t really read any of them. I chose them mostly for how the spines looked.” You stood in the middle of the room and looked at me, your arms at your sides
in the slack sundress, suddenly vulnerable. “You know I’ve never been a reader.”

  I looked back at you and smiled. “I know.”

  Above your head was a pink pendant lamp in the shape of an octopus, and as you saw my eyes go to it, you said, “It’s from Anthropologie, but it’s designed by a real artist in Philadelphia. And, here, look at this.” You gestured toward a pedestal in the corner of the room, with a glass dome upon it. Inside the dome was a diorama: a miniature house overhanging a sinkhole. One of the house’s exterior walls was blasted away, exposing the furnished rooms inside and the miniature people going about their business. There was a woman running a tiny vacuum cleaner, a man watching television—either unaware of the disaster, or indifferent. The house was a generic ranch style, with shutters and drainpipes, a small sedan in the driveway, a metal swing set. The property was brown, and the trees were bare.

  “It’s by an artist in New York,” you told me in a quiet voice, as if the little people might hear. “It kind of reminds me of home.”

  “I didn’t know you were into art,” I ventured.

  “I like to go to the galleries out here. They show artists from all over the world. I’ve kind of gotten addicted to collecting.”

  I stood for another moment, looking at the diorama. Ringing the bleak backyard was a wall, and I saw a child crouching at its base, looking out through a hole where a stone had fallen away. Beyond the wall and around the perimeter of the piece was a verdant grove, golden orbs clustered in the foliage as in a mythical garden.