Good on Paper

by Rachel Cantor

  It’s your fault! Andi said, as if pleading with me to do something. If it wasn’t for you, he’d be here all the time!

  I can see how you might think that, but it’s not true. Things aren’t that simple. It’s partly my fault, though, you’re right about that. I made a lot of mistakes.

  The table was deeply silent now, as if everyone had fallen away to leave me alone with my girl. How could I say the right thing? Behind her rigid face, behind her anger, I could see my own childish hurt: What consolation had I received? There had been none. What might anyone have said that could have made a difference?

  I love you, Andi. I love you more than anything. We all love you. No matter what happens, that will never change. Do you understand?

  She half nodded. I wasn’t sure she understood, but I’d said everything I could.

  Almost.

  Ahmad loves you, too. As if you were his very own. Even if he doesn’t live here, even if he isn’t your biological father, he will always be your real father.

  Andi’s eyes darted over to Ahmad, for confirmation or relief from her too-intense mother. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. Satisfied, she looked back at me.

  I’ll make you a deal, I said.

  She nodded enthusiastically, her face relaxing: she was a born deal-maker, she knew that.

  You can stay here with us as long as you keep your eyes closed. You can listen to everything we say, you can even talk, but you have to keep your eyes closed. That way, when you’re ready to sleep, you can. Deal?

  Andi put her fingers on her chin and pursed her lips, the very picture of deliberation.

  Maybe the best place for you to sit is on your father’s lap.

  She didn’t bargain. She leapt from her chair and clambered onto Ahmad’s chair. Quickly, his arms surrounded her, her short arms encircled his waist, her face, smiling, pressed against his cashmere sweater. The look he gave me over her shoulder cannot be described: thank you, he seemed to be saying, I’ll care for this precious being, this child we love more than anything.

  He gave me my daughter, allowing me to give her back again.

  •

  Soon, Andi was sleeping, her mouth slack against Ahmad’s sweater. We put her on the couch, covered her with the guilt quilt. Benny took that opportunity to take his leave.

  I saw him to the door, into the hallway.

  I’m proud of you, he whispered. I put my finger to his lips.

  Thank you, I said.

  For what? he asked. I shook my head, stood on my tiptoes to kiss him.

  He’s good for you, Ahmad said, when I sat back down. I smiled. I may have blushed. I’m going to Pakistan, he continued. I thought you should know.

  Wow, I said. May I ask?

  I’m going to see my kids. They’re still minors, I still have rights, even in my benighted land. I’m going to tell them I love them. They’ll decide for themselves if I’m a monster.

  What made you decide, after all these years? I asked, and suddenly his answer seemed the most important thing I could hear.

  I never told Roger how I felt, and I lost him. Jonah, too. We can’t cut off pieces of ourselves hoping to protect ourselves from hurt. My boys may reject me, but I have to know I tried. I leave in December after my last class. I’m terrified!

  I can imagine, I said, and I could.

  57

  LOVE, OUR HARROWING

  It was Sunday, the last day of our Thanksgiving weekend, and Ahmad was alone with Andi—the first time since that night. I was at Joe’s with a novel, halfheartedly drinking a half-caff. Joe was sitting by the jukebox, the twins on his lap pulling his mustache and squealing. In the background, the warm shhh of the cappuccino machine, the lilting sounds of the Old Jewish Couple.

  It seemed like years since those sweaty, heady days when I sat at this very window, pondering Romei’s penna, my place as a footnote at the apex of the postmodern ridge of the Western canon. Years since I’d sat in Slice of Park, surveying my Comfort Zone, elated about New Life. The distance between here and there: I was temping again. Benny wanted to marry. He was traveling next month to see my mother. Ahmad was going to Pakistan to try to reconcile with his sons. He and I had fought—again—and had reconciled—again. Life had changed, again and again, but had I?

  Ahmad called. Andi was locked in her room, talking to an imaginary friend. She wouldn’t come out. He’d told her he was going to Pakistan, he explained when I arrived back at the Den. He hadn’t realized she’d take it so hard.

  I could hear her from the front door, shouting at Ovidio, calling him stupid boy, bad boy! On Pammy’s insistence I’d installed a pretend lock inside Andi’s door—only a piece of string looped around a nail; I’d snip it in an emergency, but I wasn’t convinced this qualified.

  Andi, I called out. It’s Mommy.

  She became utterly still, like a bird startled, hoping to trust its camouflage markings.

  Ahmad says you’re upset. You want to talk?

  No answer.

  She thinks I’m her father, Ahmad whispered.

  Well, you are, I whispered back, wondering if we had to go over that again.

  No, he whispered, she thinks I’m her real father.

  She what? I said, pulling Ahmad away from Andi’s door. What are you talking about?

  She was telling Ovidio, before she got mad at him. She doesn’t believe what you said about the guy in India. Her friend, the one who looks like Pippi Longstocking …

  Martina.

  Martina told her that you sent me away because mothers get rid of real fathers in order to marry new fathers.

  Sheila’s ex is in jail, I murmured. Insider trading. She remarried.

  Might explain why she hates Benny, Ahmad said softly.

  How had this happened? I’d been unequivocal when I’d explained about Andi’s “real” father. The power of hope: it changes how we hear things, it creates possibility out of nothing. It enabled Romei to write pages I would never read, Ahmad to assume we’d move to Connecticut, Benny to propose. Up to me to disappoint them all?

  What do you think I should do? I asked.

  You’re the mother! Ahmad said. Don’t ask me!

  You know Andi. I’m asking your advice.

  Talk to her, he said. Don’t be afraid of her sadness. She’s hurt, not broken. Then make her some Ovaltine. I’ll be in the living room.

  •

  I noticed my daughter with a Scooter Pie. While you’re eating it, I said as she opened the door, we need to talk, and I placed a foot inside her room.

  Andi sighed to show her disappointment. Foiled again, she seemed to say.

  Come on, I said, sitting on the guilt quilt and patting the spot next to me.

  She walked over to me with plodding steps, like a seventy-pound golem, plopped heavily onto the bed: she’d talk, but only under protest.

  Where to start?

  What do you see up there? I asked.

  The ceiling, Andi said, removing the cellophane from her pie. Is this a trick question?

  You know what I mean, I said, already feeling I’d made a mess of it. In the corners.

  Andi looked up at her metamorphosis mural, the portraits in the far corners.

  You and Ahmad, she said reluctantly, and that stupid giraffe. Want a bite? she asked, hoping to distract me with a piece of the pie.

  I shook my head.

  Why do you think we’re up there? I persisted.

  I don’t know, she said, biting a careful circle around the scalloped edges.

  Don’t you? I said, unsure what I was looking for. Look at me, sweetie.

  Andi looked up and shrugged, miserable. I wasn’t making her feel better, this much was clear.

  Andi, sweetheart, we’re up there because we’re your parents and we’ll always be. Like the stars in the sky, we’ll always be there. Do you understand?

  Yes, she said, and turned her attention to the center of her pie, eating the remainder in three precise bites. I wasn’t convinced.

&n
bsp; Ahmad said you told Ovidio that Ahmad was your real father.

  Andi said nothing. Her Scooter Pie gone, she had nothing to set between us. I reached over, wiped crumbs from her mouth.

  You know Ahmad isn’t your biological father, your biological father lives in India, right?

  I know that, Andi said, almost disdainfully. You’ve told me like a hundred thirty times.

  Even if Ahmad isn’t your biological father, he’s your father in all the important ways, all the ways that matter.

  She wouldn’t look at me, just crossed her arms tight.

  He told you he was going to Pakistan?

  No, she said.

  Andi never lied—she was that desperate to change the subject.

  Sweetie, I know he told you.

  She nodded.

  And this made you upset, I said, putting my arm around her. She wriggled under me. I put my hand in her hair.

  Mom! she said, shaking her head to get my hand off her.

  Why did it upset you to hear that Ahmad was going to Pakistan?

  I don’t know. It didn’t.

  Andi?

  Silence.

  Did you think he wasn’t coming back? I asked, because I knew her fear—that she’d be abandoned, replaced by other children in that faraway land which, like India, ate up fathers.

  I didn’t think anything, she said, standing. Can I go now?

  No, sweetie, you can’t. You have to sit with me some more.

  I watched my daughter hesitate: She was me, at the turning. I could see it. She was at the turning away that said, I’m on my own, it’s better for me to be alone, I don’t need anyone, life with others is too painful—it couldn’t be too late to change that. Could it?

  But how? Pretend hurt didn’t happen, pretend abandonment wasn’t possible? She already knew better. What might have made a difference to me at her age? What if my father had said, Come here, Shira. I put my arm around my daughter and said, Lovebug, and kissed the top of her head; this time she didn’t resist. I wanted to hold her so tight her heart’s fire might be ignited by mine. Convince her that the ice floe was always a choice we made, not a place we needed to stay.

  Love is our harrowing, Esther had said, its sparks, sparks of fire. What if my father had sat me on his lap and called me his sweetheart and admitted his loss: Yes, I loved your mother more than anything; she wronged me and I was so hurt, I cut her out of our lives. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I know you miss her, I miss her too. And you know what, she misses you, I know she does. Would that have helped? It might have. It might have saved me years with T., my ex-husband, years protecting my heart from love. It might have helped me to know this.

  But I knew it now, didn’t I? Wasn’t that enough? It would have to be. I took the proverbial deep breath, hardly sure what I was about to say.

  It’s time I told you about your grandmother. I think you’re old enough, don’t you?

  •

  I told Andi what I could, that when I was her age, my mother went away and never came back. I was so sad inside, I thought I might die.

  Andi’s mouth opened and she stared at me.

  Sometimes I got angry, so angry it seemed I hated the people I loved most. Do you know what it feels like, Andi, to be so angry and confused?

  She continued staring.

  Sometimes I thought the only way I could keep living through all the sadness was to pretend it didn’t exist, to keep it inside, to never let anyone know how I felt. I tried to hold it back, but it never went away, because as it turns out, you can’t make sadness go away. You also can’t pretend it’s not there. I tried that and it just got stronger, it became a big hard lump in my throat. Do you know what that feels like, to feel so sad and alone?

  Maybe, she whispered, sometimes.

  I know! I said. It’s hard, isn’t it?

  She nodded, her lower lip trembling. I squeezed her to me and again she didn’t resist.

  I thought it was bad to cry, but I was wrong. You see, it’s alright to cry when you’re sad, and you know what, if you love people, sometimes you’re going to feel sad. Because they go away, or they make mistakes, or they hurt you. Sometimes they don’t mean to—they’re just not thinking or they’re confused because they’re sad themselves—do you understand? But that doesn’t mean we give up on them, right? Not if we love them. Instead, we act extra, extra brave, and you know what that means? It doesn’t mean we do it on our own, it doesn’t mean we keep our sadness inside. It means we say, Yes, I’m sad, but I’m going to give that person I love another chance, a chance to explain themselves, to do better.

  I don’t want Ahmad to go away, my daughter sobbed, suddenly, into my chest. I don’t!

  I know, my love. I know.

  58

  THAT AWESOME FLYER

  I got Andi another Scooter Pie, and whispered to Ahmad that she was okay, and watched, enamored, as she licked crumbs from her fingers. And thought again about my father, how he’d bound the arteries that led from his heart. My mother may have loved him—maybe she loved him still. But Romei proved himself better than all of us: he’d done what none of us was able to do, he’d exposed his heart for her. Would he win her back? I assumed he would, but maybe not. Maybe she’d never been his to have. The answer lay on the floor beneath my fax machine.

  But first I called Benny and offered him the translation for Gilgul.

  I hadn’t been in the study since that night three months before. I’d made Benny remove my computer; it sat awkwardly on a cardboard box on the floor of my room. The air in the study seemed musty—or so I imagined. Pages had indeed accumulated, scattering the floor like leaves. I’d imagined that with time they’d turn black and die, their words effaced, but no, they were bright and clear. And there—shit!—on a page by my foot, my name!

  I’d become a character in Romei’s drama.

  Of course I had, though I hadn’t seen it coming. Did I really want to read what he’d written? Meet a ghost of me, the doppelgänger Romei had created to stand in my stead? See myself portrayed as a freak in his funhouse mirror? He’d make me out to be cold, an unforgiving bitch—that’s how he saw me, right?

  I didn’t want to see, but I had to see. I had to look. I couldn’t not look.

  I could always stop reading if I had to.

  I swept the pages into a folder. On the living room couch, I reminded myself where we stood. Last we knew, Dante was stalled, regressing even. Beatrice’s death had thrown him for a narrative loop. But he couldn’t backtrack forever: he had to move forward, eventually. And he does: he has a vision of Beatrice which gives him a way out of his no-way-out self, the circle line of his self-reflection. Beatrice in glory, again wearing crimson. He repents—performs t’shuvah, if you will—and returns to Beatrice, that goddess of the arrow, the straight-and-narrow narrative. Dante’s guiding image thenceforth is pilgrims, the romei who visit Rome, even his “pilgrim spirit,” which ascends to heaven to look at Beatrice—an event he experiences in words too subtle to grasp.

  After this, he has one final vision, which he declines to describe, saying only that he resolves at that moment to write no more of Beatrice till he can do so more worthily. Arguably, with Vita Nuova he does just that. He ends his journey with exactly what he needed: a pilgrim’s sense of purpose and the promise of a new poetic—the one he will use here, a poetic based on narrative, emphasizing the redemptive power of change.

  So what redemptive journey did Romei hope to make? What elixir would he bring his ailing wife, if he couldn’t bring me? A new poetic? She’d be thrilled with that, I was sure.

  I couldn’t see myself in the story anywhere, unless it was as an absence: the daughter who was not there, who refused to be there.

  When Benny arrived, I was holding Romei’s pages tightly to my chest.

  He pecked my cheek.

  I can fax it here, right? he said of the translation. Do you mind?

  His mind was on Gilgul, of course, the translation, finishing the issue befo
re he left for Rome. He wanted to get the pages to Romei quickly, so he could include the translation, if Romei agreed, in the next issue, maybe scare up funding to expand the print run.

  Of course, I said, clutching my folder. Can you sit for a while?

  I’m so beat, you have no idea.

  I’m tired too, I thought, but I need you.

  And why are you tired? I asked.

  Two weddings, he said, shaking his head, and I noticed he was dressed more formally than usual: black jacket, black tie, tzitzit swinging under a shiny black vest. Interfaith, he said. A beautiful thing, but the prep! First the Sufi girl and Reconstructionist boy in Central Park, then the Humanistic Jew, whatever that means, and the Christian Scientist …

  In the library with Colonel Mustard?

  The Masonic Temple on Amsterdam.

  Poor sweetie! Have you eaten?

  He looked at me as if I were crazy.

  These were Jewish weddings! Look, he said, I brought you a vegan knish! Because I never stop thinking of you.

  He produced a knish from his pocket, put it on the table. It was wrapped in a paper napkin decorated with a rainbow, two chirping birds, the names of the Sufi girl, the Reconstructionist boy. He stifled a yawn.

  Did you ask if I wanted to do something? he asked.

  He’s done it to me too! I said, my voice shaking. I spread the pages fanlike on the table.

  No shit, Benny said, tugging his beard.

  He handed me his hanky, inspecting it first for cleanliness, then held me as I whispered a broken tale of Andi and the fire of love, how it made me think of Romei and had I done the right thing, did he think I’d done the right thing?

  Of course you did, my love. Of course you did.

  I calmed and he faxed the translated scene to Romei, appending a brief herewith, then I fixed us some tea and settled onto the couch to read the next installment of Romei’s tale.

  •

  We don’t know how much time has elapsed. Esther, back in Rome, is no longer in physical crisis, or so we assume. In fact, we don’t know much about her. All we know is that she won’t read the pages Romei wrote for her, the pages imagining her life. Why? We don’t know. Romei doesn’t explain; perhaps he doesn’t know. Her ears are closed.