Good on Paper

by Rachel Cantor

  Romei becomes a crazed writer-animal, desperate for his wife’s attention: he leaves pages on her desk, under her dinner plate, amid her socks, inside the books she reads. He sends them special delivery, in burlap-wrapped packages sealed with wax, covered with the stamps and certifications, the bolli so loved by Italian officialdom. Fellini extras declaim scenes while Esther, indifferent, waits for her tram, waiters offer her menus with Romei’s pages attached. He returns to her desk, her books, finds his pages used for shopping lists, for doodles, the contours of which he searches for clues.

  Esther is opaque, a thing-in-herself. We don’t know what she says, what she looks like, what she does. She is nistar, Romei writes, reduced to her Esther essence.

  Nistar?

  Hebrew, Benny said, noshing absently on his knish. Esther, the word, is related to nistar. It means hidden or concealed.

  Like celan in Dante’s Italian, I said, scooching closer.

  No kidding!

  Yeah. Does she really call herself Esther, or is that fiction as well?

  She really is Esther, Benny said, laughing.

  Esther becomes invisible; we infer her existence from Romei’s actions. Again, the story is all about Romei, crazed, lonely Romei, maybe it always had been.

  Strange device, I thought. In that last section Romei “imagined” Esther, and now he’s returned to the “real” Esther. As if there were such a thing. Through all of Romei’s mirror tricks, all his inversions and fictionalizing, I realized I knew as little about my mother as I had when she first appeared on that park bench. She was still the mystery she had always been.

  Shit.

  I understand, I said, taking Benny’s hand and bringing it to my cheek. Silent Esther, hidden Esther, that’s my Esther, the Esther I know. The unfathomable Esther who never sought me out, who didn’t contact me, who won’t ask for me even now.

  Shira, Benny said, putting his long arm around my shoulder.

  I’m okay, I said, and realized I was. As readers, we wait for Esther to respond, to do something, just as I waited my whole life for word from her, but she won’t speak, not in Romei’s text, not to me, not ever. That’s my answer, isn’t it?

  I don’t know, he said.

  If I’m right, what does he want from me? To forgive someone who won’t ask for forgiveness? How does a person do that?

  I took a moment to sink into Benny’s chest, to smell the good knish smell of him.

  Is that knish all gone? I asked, looking up.

  Knish? Benny asked, then looked around as if it still might be there. I squeezed him, kissed his chest, his nose, his sleepy face. He laughed and squeezed me back.

  Eventually, Romei gives up. He puts his pages away and sits in Piazza Santa Maria, which to him is as large and empty as a soccer field; the entire city is vacant to him. Her refusal to see him makes him impotent: his penis shrivels, wilts, melts, dissolves—he uses ten too many images to make his point (as if we might not believe him otherwise): his rod is a tent without support, a seagull dead upon the shore, a too-heavy flower doubled over on its stem. Esther no longer fills his penna: he cannot write.

  Are you sure you make an appearance? Benny asked, yawning.

  Very sure, I said, and continued.

  Romei goes to New York to promote the English translation of Baby Talk. It’s 1990.

  Ah, says Benny, shifting on the couch, stretching out his long legs, pushing off his Birkenstocks with his toes.

  You remember something, I said.

  Maybe. Keep going.

  Romei stalks me. He becomes a bloodhound for my secrets. He locates my former professors, poses as an Italian poet looking for a translator. Professor Fabrini finds Romei’s Romanian accent unlikely, and his professed name—Italo Roma—suspect, and reports him to security, but not before Romei befriends a departmental secretary, who tells him everything he needs to know: my address, publication history (such as it was), his personal opinion that I was none too stable but if Mr. Roma was looking for a translator, he need look no further than Dennis himself, graduate of an advanced course in Italian conversation, author of an unpublished monograph on Carlo Goldoni.

  Romei follows me—to work, on a date with a semiotician who whinnies on about signifiers. He claims to have observed me weeping on a park bench. He talks to a neighbor, who, worried for me, says I’m married to a mafia don who’d cut the nuts off a man as soon as look at him. Romei, taking notes but not understanding, asks, Cashews or peanuts?

  Good comedy, but I couldn’t say I got the point.

  All this “information” he presents in the form of a detective report, Esther’s version sent over the great sea complete (he says) with eight-by-ten glossies: Shira struggling with groceries, Shira staring at the Hudson. A detective report like the one Janey gets in my story “I Know Who You Are” when she’s looking for Elena, the estranged child of her dead husband. If his wife couldn’t have her child, she’d have a facsimile. This was the elixir he’d offer her: Shira in a bottle.

  He used every form he could think of to catch Esther’s attention: a résumé in which I apologize to prospective employers for wasting my life (I work, apparently, in Mobile—i.e., door-to-door—Vacuum Sales, having been fired from a job in Dairy Promotion—i.e., flogging cheese at Zabar’s). I was looking for a job dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s.

  A To-Do list (call my mother, finish my translation). Alternative endings to my stories scribbled onto a placemat (Elena forgives father, introduces daughter to daughter’s grandmother).

  A crossword puzzle, hand-drawn, the clues also referring to my stories. Elena’s comfort: Charly the doll, Mabel’s craving: Devil Dogs. A badly drawn cartoon: Shira using a ruler to rap the knuckles of hapless suitors—a clown, a homeless guy, an old man. The caption: Love hurts.

  A whole postmodernist riff, Benny said.

  Maybe, I said, but Romei-the-writer seems at loose ends no less than Romei-the-character; his narrative’s reached its edge, his story has broken down.

  Romei’s been called the first postmodernist, Benny said, yawning. He’s showing us what he thinks of that.

  Maybe, I replied, but I didn’t think so: Romei-the-master was showing me Romei-the-character at the end of his rope.

  Esther still does not acknowledge him.

  Finally, he sits by a clear stream, which is to say, the East River, hoping for inspiration; it arrives in the form of an ad in the Village Voice: a reading in Alphabet City, the Purple People Eaters’ Writers’ Group. Shira, the daughter, will read.

  Oh, I said. The reading that made me a star. From nistar to star!

  Romei told me to go, Benny said.

  Because he knew I’d be there.

  Apparently. I thought he just wanted to meet me there. But after, he raved about your story. I began to think I’d be a fool if I didn’t publish it.

  “Confessions”: Young Shira in love with the adulterous T. You didn’t like it?

  It was a hard story to hear out loud. Better on paper.

  Good recovery, I said, smiling.

  Later, when he told me who you were, he made me promise not to say anything.

  So Romei is responsible for our having met. Shit.

  And your first publication.

  Double shit.

  You don’t owe him. He had his own agenda.

  We wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for Romei, I said.

  We’ll invite him to the wedding.

  Funny, I said.

  You still haven’t given me an answer.

  I need time.

  Right, Benny said.

  Don’t push me.

  You thinking about it? Tell me at least you’re weighing the pros and cons.

  I am, I said. If he knew my name, that means my mother must have mentioned me, right?

  I don’t know, Benny said, and if I did …

  I know: you couldn’t say.

  He put his arm around me again. I continued.

  Romei describes the café
where the reading takes place in comical, rhymed verse—English verse, no less. His description made me laugh: he included details about the macrobiotic café I’d forgotten: the morose “maitre d’,” a six-foot Cambodian who liked to ask diners their astrological sign. The larger-than-life posters of Michio Kushi. The organic beer brewed flat by Trixie’s cousin. Described in accurate detail to give authority, I supposed, to what followed. The rest might be fiction, but this scene, we understood, was “real.”

  First up on the vegetable crate Trixie called her Soap Box: Franky the funky fabulist. He told pointless tales about street people, paralegals, Israeli electronics salesmen, the moral of which always was that only pre-postmodernist hacks looked for morals in lit-er-a-toor. Romei has fun rhyming Soap with trope, fable with execrable, Franky with spanky (as in, deserves one).

  When Shira climbs onto the Box, with small, hesitant steps, Romei dispenses with doggerel, describes instead a vulnerability that finds expression in tentative gestures, unfinished sentences, a tendency to put hands to face, brown eyes from which gold shines, red dress like a nightgown.

  I didn’t tell Benny that to describe me, Romei had recycled language he’d used earlier to describe my mother. As if we were one person. Except for the red dress: Esther had worn a sweater set.

  Did I wear a dress like a nightgown? I asked.

  Shira, it was a decade ago—how could I remember?

  Shira, Romei observes, is shorter than her mother but has her mother’s eyebrows, perpetually arched, her cheekbones, her knees, her hips, her reticent smile. A catalogue of similarities, also of differences: nose, ankles, breasts—apparently, my mother’s were “full,” while mine, in Romei’s expert opinion, were champagne-glass-size. Our characteristics, like building specs, presented in a column.

  What is this? I asked.

  A Homeric list, Benny said.

  He’s pulling out all the stops, isn’t he?

  He’s running through all available forms, from light verse to epic, said Benny lazily. I bet you’ve found others.

  At least two kinds of sonnets. An aubade, of sorts.

  All twisting the form?

  Yes!

  There’s that Ukrainian villanelle, Benny said. Probably a pastoral, too.

  Esther in the park, I said.

  Panegyric? he asked, yawning again.

  Poems of praise? You could say so! Also twisted.

  Actually, Benny said, the whole restaurant scene could be understood as a palinode. A recantation in poetic form of an earlier poem or set of poems.

  If he’s recanting his earlier work, what’s he replacing it with?

  Hard to say, Benny said, since he’s rejecting all the traditional forms he never used.

  Why bother, if only I am to read this?

  Maybe he’s making a point. About the need to reject assumptions. I’d have to see the whole thing. You’ll let me read the earlier sections, won’t you?

  I nodded and continued. A first-person poem, unrhymed, unmetered, describes Shira on her Soap Box, as she loses her fear, steps closer to the audience. A bright red sloop in the harbor, he writes (again in English), I supposed because Shira’s red dress stood out in that sea of Indian print. I was quite sure I’d never owned a red dress.

  Anne Sexton, Benny said. “For My Lover Returning to His Wife.”

  I’m reading a story with “confessions” in the title and that makes me a confessional poet? I am not confessional!

  Benny raised an eyebrow.

  A poem about adultery, I suppose?

  The end of it. The end of adultery, I mean.

  Ah, I said. Romei was telling me he understood “Confessions” to be a literal account of my life. Strange, since I knew I could no longer read his story that way.

  “Song for a Red Nightgown,” Benny said. I remember now. It’s from the same volume as “For My Lover.” Love Poems. I’ll bring it tomorrow.

  Terrific, I mumbled. Can’t wait. Shit, I said. We have a copy. Ahmad gave it to Roger, hoping it would prove “an accessible introduction to poetry.” Roger smiled and filed it among Ahmad’s books. Look over there, under S.

  Do I have to? Benny asked, wrapping both arms around me now, as if settling in for the night.

  I can’t reach.

  You owe me, he said, and ambled to the far bookcase. He didn’t need to stand on a sleek Italian chair to reach the top shelf.

  You’re not going to believe this, he said, after searching the pages.

  I’m sure I won’t.

  Benny was right: Romei knew exactly how to freak me out, he’d put his hands on just the poem to do the job: a nightgown girl, an awesome flyer, unafraid of begonias and telegrams.

  Another flying girl. Unafraid of urgent messages from afar, of truth delivered by extraordinary means. The awesome flying girl, in her nightgown/red dress.

  I went to the kitchen to fix us more tea. My hands shook as I picked up my teacup.

  We can take a break, Benny said. Continue another day. I could fall asleep any minute.

  I need to know. Please don’t go.

  I might be afraid of the telegram, I thought, but I would read it. I hadn’t known this about myself, or maybe I’d changed. I would hear what Romei had to say—all of it.

  I picked up where I left off. In the audience, Romei listens to his stepdaughter as she reads about a woman’s attempt to seek forgiveness through writing: she’ll explain through her story how things were so the person she wronged will understand.

  Rather a self-serving reduction of “Confessions,” don’t you think? I asked softly, though he was right: I’d written it for Ahmad, so he could understand about T., and, understanding, forgive the way I’d treated him then. And he had.

  Benny didn’t open his eyes, just raised that eyebrow again.

  The story gives Romei an idea. He will also seek forgiveness through writing: he will explain how things were, so Shira can understand. Illumination comes in the form of a haiku, something to the effect of, The poem’s the thing wherein he’ll catch the conscience of the queen. Except that poetry alone won’t do the job: it’s too static—he needs the dynamism of narrative, which alone promises new life, or so he’s been told.

  That’s not haiku, Benny murmured, opening his eyes, looking over my shoulder. Too many syllables. Five-seven-five, it should be.

  The vowels elide in Italian, I said, glad to return to something I knew. You count syllables in Italian by counting the consonant clusters.

  You’re so smart, Benny said.

  No biggie, I said, proud of myself. Oops! Though actually, he’s reversed the order: seven-five-seven. Hourglass shape.

  Time’s wingéd chariot, Benny said, sitting straight again. Time ticking by.

  Jesus, I said. Do you think so?

  Benny shrugged and smiled.

  Are we supposed to believe he came up with this idea almost ten years ago, to get me to translate a piece about Esther? To use his writing to awaken my conscience? That it was my work that gave him this idea?

  He didn’t know you were a translator yet. I don’t know.

  He called me queen. That’s weird.

  Maybe he was talking about Esther, Benny said. She’s the queen who charms the king to save her people. A benign Salomé. You know, the Book of Esther and the Song of Songs are the only books of the Bible in which the figure of God doesn’t appear.

  So Shira and Esther have something else in common, I said, trying to be sardonic.

  The Book of Esther is like a fairy tale, Benny said. You’d like it.

  I continued translating. At the end of the reading, Shira stands to the side, scanning the crowd. Romei suspects she does this to mask awkwardness.

  He approaches her. (He didn’t, you know. I’m sure he didn’t, I said. Wouldn’t I have remembered? Benny shrugged. He wasn’t famous then, he said, no photos on book jackets, no appearances on Letterman. You remember something, I said. He did talk to me, didn’t he? I recollect, yes, that he did.)

&n
bsp; You are knowing Rome very well, Romei says in English.

  She looks at him, with only half her attention.

  You are tourist there? he says, knowing this will make her talk.

  As a matter of fact, I used to live there, she says. I don’t think you could call me a tourist.

  You will visit again soon, I think.

  I doubt it. Rome belongs to my past, I may never return.

  But is the land of Botticelli, Michelangelo … In your story …

  My story is just a story. If you’ll excuse me …, I say, and turn away.

  You mention Dante, perhaps you are scholar of Dante?

  He hoped flattery would keep my attention. It did.

  At one point. I was a graduate student in Italian Studies. I translated Vita Nuova, maybe you’ve heard of it?

  Here in the city?

  Yes, I say, and excuse myself, to congratulate Paula the tired language poet.

  Was I this much of a jerk? I asked.

  I wasn’t listening.

  You were probably hitting on dainty Barbara Baskin!

  Barb had composed poems for the audience on the café’s drinks refrigerator, using plastic magnetic letters. It was a performance piece, an improvisation where the words’ color and arrangement were as important as their sense. Most were about patriarchy. Patriarchy and menstruation. The longer poems depleted her letter collection, which gave her performances a certain frisson: how would she end with so few letters, what would she write! Most ended, perforce, with the unvoweled howl of the oppressed: rzf glflnx!

  I don’t remember Miss Baskin, Benny said.

  Redhead. She looked like a bird, all torso, no legs.

  Maybe I remember her.

  You wanted to photograph her improvised refrigerator poems for Gilgul. She accused you of trying to petrify her with your objectifying gaze, she called you Medusa.

  Maybe I remember her.

  Benny was embarrassed, no longer half asleep.

  I’ve changed, you know.

  I know.

  You believe this, right?

  Sure, I said.

  I don’t believe you believe.