by Delia Ephron
Consider: Being able to close your door and post a threatening KEEP OUT note does not constitute privacy. All kids slap KEEP OUT signs on their doors, and it is my suspicion that parents think it’s cute, even adorable. My definition of adorable: a bunny rabbit. I do not want to be thought of as bunny-rabbit-like. Might as well pin a pom-pom on my butt. As for the K-O sign, who respects it, really? If your door has no lock, you might as well add please, as in KEEP OUT PLEASE, and pray for respect. Furthermore, in a town like this, where the main drag is two miles from the house and the nearest mini mall with a Kinko’s is three, you have to be carted around before you can drive. I am fifteen years old, too young for a driver’s license, too old for a bicycle. I exist at the mercy of others.
Yes. Privacy is an illusion.
“I’m really tired,” I tell Mom and Mel.
It’s true, I’m beat. I hunted for border pieces until four A.M., and fell asleep by accident. When I woke up, a puzzle piece was pressed into my cheek, leaving an indentation. I had to rub my cheek with lotion. All I could find was Neutrogena oil-free sunblock with 30 percent protection. Not to be swallowed, according to the fine print on the bottle. Avoid contact with eyes. I still have a dent in my cheek, but not a crater, and nothing shaped like something that indicated that my cheek should be interlocked with some other cheek.
“Come over, let me kiss your forehead.”
Mom has this unique way of taking temperature with a kiss.
“I’m fine, I’m just tired. I’m going to sleep.”
Mom and Mel exchange a quick look. “You slept until noon.”
“I know, but I didn’t sleep well. There was an opossum outside the window.”
I retreat to my room, close the door, and lie on the floor, flat on my back—I don’t know why I like to do this so much. It’s a little easier to feel that you’re nowhere. After getting bored, I wiggle over to the bed, flip over, and pull out my present. Hard to be separated from it for long. By now I’ve collected a bunch of border pieces and stashed them in a shoe box. I begin the search for more.
“Frannie.”
The door flies open. I shove my present under the bed. “What, Mom?”
“You’re lying on the floor.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“On the floor?”
“You woke me. What is it?” She is so getting on my nerves.
“You need a summer job.”
“What?” I sit up.
“You can’t sleep all day. It’s not healthy.”
“I won’t work.”
“You have to.”
“What, you’re going to make me? Try it. I’m not leaving this room.”
“Frances, you cannot lie on the floor while Mel and I go to work.”
“I like the floor.”
“You were sleeping.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Didn’t you say you were?”
“No.” A lie.
“You said you were going to your room to sleep and now I find you on the floor. What’s that?”
“Why?”
This is a great trick. I highly recommend it. Sidetrack them with something nonresponsive. She says, “What’s that?” I respond, “Why?” This gets the parent very confused. She freezes, trying to remember what she said one second earlier that would make you say what you said, and that little freeze gives you an edge.
“I want to go to Kinko’s.”
“Who’s Kinko?”
See, she’s spinning. “The copy place. I want to copy some photos of Dad.”
Anything to do with Dad she agrees to. “Oh, sure. I guess so. In an hour.”
9
Mom’s delivery van is usually refreshingly cool because it’s refrigerated, but when there are no flowers to keep fresh, she switches off the air-conditioning. As a result, on this muggy June day my thighs stick together and to the seat. Mom named her shop after me, Frannie’s Flowers. I was five at the time (right after the divorce); I suppose I was flattered. Now I find it a tad embarrassing. Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if the lettering on the van (and on the shop window, the stationery, and the website) wasn’t so adorable: swirly turquoise letters frosted with lime curlicues. I remember once telling Dad, “Cover your eyes, Mom’s van is headed this way.”
He laughed, and gave me a squeeze. When Dad squeezed, I lifted off the ground. Or did I? As I remember it, when he swung his arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him, for the tiniest split second, earth seemed unnecessary.
I have begun to worry about how quickly memories evaporate. I don’t mean what Dad looks like, but the sensation of being with him. Whenever I made Dad laugh, I felt proud. These feelings—his laughter and the swelling of my chest in happiness—went together. I know it. I can tell you that. But feeling it is over. My possibilities for experiencing happiness have contracted. Fact, not opinion. Will they shrink more and more?
“You don’t have to come inside with me,” I tell Mom.
“Oh. I’m not allowed?”
Good grief. I didn’t say that, did I? That she’s not allowed? My mom is witchy. She leaps from what you say to what you mean. Another invasion of privacy. “This van smells like the inside of a vase,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
She starts sniffing, and, while she’s trying to detect foul odor, I escape to Kinko’s.
I brought two snapshots of my dad—if Mom asked what I was enlarging, I could show her those—and the photo from the box, the real reason for the Kinko’s trip.
Once Dad and I saw this foreign film Blow-Up, about a photographer who kept enlarging a photo. At first look, in mini size, the image was innocuous, a woodsy park full of bountiful leafy trees. A ton of magnifications later, he saw a gun poking out between some branches, then, in the underbrush, a body.
If I blow this puzzle picture up, will there be a shotgun angled through one of the shuttered windows? Will a lady be crouched behind a boat? Will there be mysterious shadows? The actual puzzle will be much bigger than this small snapshot. I don’t want to be surprised when I put it together. I used to like surprises, but after finding my dad dead, I’m surprised out.
The fellow behind the counter upends the envelope and shakes out three photos. “How large can you make these?” I ask.
He points to the photos of Dad. “These I can do as big as you want. But this”—he indicates the puzzle snapshot—“is dinky.”
“Dinky?”
“Weak resolution.”
“What’s that?”
“The quality is poor. Can’t go much bigger than eight by ten.”
“That’s all? Eight by ten? Okay. Do them all eight by ten. Color Xerox, please.”
He walks over to the machine, flips up the cover, positions one photo on the glass, and lowers the cover back down over it.
Why is that cover made of thick rubber? Do we need protection from Xerox rays? Is it like an X-ray machine?
There’s no air in here. Gigantic panes of glass, but no functioning windows. The rays could collect. Concentrate. My arms feel twitchy. Am I imagining it? My legs feel twitchy too. “I’ll wait outside,” I tell the guy, and using my shirt to grasp the knob, I open the door and step outside.
Should I ask my mom to drive me to the emergency room? I am definitely twitchy. Her van is parked three lanes over and toward the back. She can’t see me loitering about in a twitchy state. My scalp itches.
“Hey there, Frannie.”
A car rolls by. James Albert Fromsky is hanging out the window like a beach towel out to dry. The car makes a right turn out of the parking lot. He’s gone before I have time to insult him. What’s his story? Why is he so fresh that he can fling out a hi-de-ho? He barely knows me. Must be because of Jenna. They probably IM’ed fifty times last night.
“Hey, miss.” The Kinko’s guy beckons me inside.
He lays a photo on the counter: Dad grinning his great wall-to-wall smile as he waves his chopsticks. In this blowup I can see all the frie
ndly crinkles around his eyes. He’s carrying on about something. Probably what a perfect container Chinese food arrives in. He loved those white boxes. He said, “A perfect thing cannot be improved on.” Dad also said that I was a perfect thing.
Forgot that.
I barely register the second eight by ten, of Dad’s face hidden behind the visor and goggles. Larger, yes, but no riveting revelation: the brand name ArtWear on the nose guard, flecks of yellow sawdust in Dad’s black hair. I’m musing on perfect me with my bumpy nose, long face, hedge hair, although excellent legs, and bad mood.
“Weird,” he says, “I tried it three times.”
“What?”
He lays down the third enlargement—no image at all, just blotches of color all run together.
“What’s this?”
“Your snapshot.” His tongue is pierced, and when he speaks a little silver ball bobbles up and down.
“But a Xerox is a photocopy. The color can’t run. It’s not like it’s water or paint or tears.” I touch it. It looks wet but it’s not.
“Maybe it’s got a scrambler?”
“What’s that?”
He chuckles without opening his mouth. Actually it sounds more like his stomach is rumbling. “I made it up. You know, like in sci-fi, something embedded in the photo that makes it impossible to copy. Woo, woo, woo.”
Right. I really have time for this. “Please try it again.”
He fishes two crumpled copies out of the trash and flattens them. “I tried it a bunch of times. Same deal.”
“This is impossible.”
“I said it was weird. I won’t charge you.”
“But I need it bigger. I can barely see what’s there.”
“Sorry.”
“Where’s the original?”
He looks around, pats the counter, checks the floor.
“Are you almost done?” Mom trills over my shoulder just as Kinko’s man from outer space remembers he put all the originals back in my envelope and left it on the machine. “Nice pictures of your dad,” she comments about the enlargements. “What’s this?” She scrutinizes the watery image.
“An abstract painting Dad did. Do you need any paper, Mom, they have a special, five hundred sheets for three dollars, or what about this, they make stamps with inkpads, maybe you could get a stamp for your store?”
With aimless chatter I manage to keep her occupied (and the Kinko’s fellow confined to saying, “Here’s your change”) while I double-check the envelope. The original puzzle snapshot is inside, thank goodness, intact.
As we leave, Mom whispers, “Don’t ever do that.”
“What?”
“Pierce your tongue. I could not survive that, Frannie.”
10
That night, after Mom and Mel fall asleep, I sneak out to the garage.
A dirty old bookcase, an el-cheapo model, has been shoved behind some bicycles. I clear space around it, dust it off, unscrew the back, and lay the board on the floor. On an old desk chair Mom has stacked clay pots. I remove them, flip the chair over, and unscrew the casters. The whole time I’m working, I send thanks to my dad, who was the world’s handiest. He taught me to be fearless around tools. I was like the surgeon’s assistant. “Phillips head,” he would say, and I would hand over the proper screwdriver. “Pliers, balance, epoxy, hammer.” I prided myself on a quick response. Then he would step back, “You can finish up,” and I would take over, smacking the nails flush to the wood, sanding to the smoothest finish, turning the screws a final few times. With all that experience I had no trouble fastening the casters to the board, one in each corner.
I’m guessing about the size of the puzzle once it’s completed, but I’m pretty certain this board is bigger. I can work the puzzle on it. At the same time the board, about my height, is smaller than a twin bed. I can roll it under my bed, out of sight.
The bigger problem is carrying the board into the house without waking Mom or The Mel.
I roll the board out of the garage, down the driveway, and around to the kitchen door. Now the tricky part, lugging it through the house and up to my room. I tilt the board so it stands, grab each side, and lift. To my surprise, it isn’t heavy. The wheels might weigh more than the board. I bet it’s not solid wood but two pieces of laminate with something in between like plastic. Mom probably can’t tell real wood from fake. She doesn’t know anything about wood. She probably doesn’t even know what grain is, and I don’t mean wheat.
The wheels bang into the wall when I carry the board through the doorway from the dining room to the hall. No sound of stirring from above. I whack the board again on the stairs. Not even a hiccup from Mom’s room. I could have robbed the place bare.
In my room I lower the board to the floor and slide it under the bed. It rolls exquisitely and fits perfectly.
I pull it out. I shove it back. Out, back, out, back. Out.
I organize the border pieces on the board by color, paying acute attention to subtle distinctions. These bubblegummy pinks go together, but not these soft baby ones. This piece is too mustardy to lump with sunshine yellow, this green is too olive to bond with sage. I bet Dad knew that putting together a puzzle is the all-time sensitize-yourself-to-color experience—wallow in its variety, train the eyeballs to appreciate shadings and tone. This little knobby bit looks like it fits perfectly into this indentation. It snaps in. My first two border pieces lock together—what a rush. I check the clock. It’s one in the morning. One more match-up and then I’ll go to sleep.
Two hours and twelve matches later, I am still declaring, One more, and then I’ll stop. It’s so utterly absorbing, and you know what else? While I work the puzzle, my mind is peaceful instead of jumpy and full of wretched worries.
Did Dad know this, too? Did he have a premonition that I would need calming down?
11
In the morning I push the eight cardboard storage boxes against the wall. I need space to roll out the puzzle board, plus enough extra area for the wooden box. The box lid, inside up, holds the border pieces that I cull from all the jigsaw pieces in the box bottom. My bureau is partially blocked. I can reach my underwear drawer (the top one) by climbing over the boxes and can get into my closet by edging sideways. This turns out to be fine, not because I decide to spend all day in my bra and undies, but because of this thing I discover: I’m happier in Dad’s clothes. And would I have any idea of this if the route were direct? No.
I was contorting around a box to get to my T-shirts when I noticed, bulging out between the cardboard flaps, a bit of blue fabric: one of his shirts. It was there, accessible, easy, so I put it on. The shirt, limp from many washings, felt especially soft on my skin. Digging farther into the box, I unearthed his old beige sweater and layered it over. They are both so huge that, while I’m wearing them, I can pull right out of the sleeves and wrap my arms around my naked body. The clothes double as a tent. I assume tent pose whenever I take a break from working the puzzle, which is almost never.
When I extracted his shirt, his baseball cap flew out too. Dad was a Yankees fan—the cap is black with NY in white lettering. It fits just fine. I can even pull my hair through the hole in the back.
Dad’s jeans would have fallen off me—too bad. I have to wear my own, which are lying where I always leave them, on the bathroom floor.
When I arrive in the kitchen, around eight thirty, Mel is puttering. I putter past, grab the Cheerios box and a few more supplies to keep me fortified: raisins, orange soda, and a jar of peanut butter that I like to eat off my fingers. I’ve got Mel trained. He’s used to my not talking, but this morning I act tired and make a lot of noise yawning so he doesn’t dare to tell me what serfs ate for breakfast. This summer he’s writing a book about serfs, who were slaves in the Middle Ages. You don’t want to say the word serf around him. Not that it would ever come up, but you don’t even want to say the word Nerf, as in Nerf ball, because he might say, “You know what Nerf rhymes with? Serf.” And he’ll be off and running with
arcane facts about serfs, like how they had no napkins.
Mel won’t bother me because 1) of the aforementioned training, and 2) once he makes a pot of coffee and transfers it to a thermos, he retreats to his office and doesn’t emerge until Mom comes home.
I’m able to work the puzzle all day and the next.
At dinner Mom complains. “I called you, Frannie—why didn’t you answer?”
“I got rid of my cell phone. I don’t want one, and I don’t go anywhere, so don’t tell me you have to be able to find me.”
If you want to freak a parent out, tell them you don’t want your cell phone. If you want them to fall off their chairs in a dead faint, that’s the way to do it. The color drains from Mom’s face. She looks positively wobbly.
“What were you calling about?” I ask as I struggle to cut a lamb chop with a plastic knife.
She doesn’t answer. I glance up again, still busy sawing. She and Mel are transfixed by my struggle. Transfixed (you know what it means, but for emphasis I’ll remind you: to render motionless as with terror). I pretend not to notice. “What did you want?”
“Nothing. Just to see how you were.”
I reach for some ketchup, and Dad’s billowy shirtsleeve lands on the spinach. “Oops.”
Mom and Mel appear gripped by that, too. Here’s what else I notice: As we continue eating, all you can hear are knives and forks scraping plates. Qualification: Since my utensils are plastic, you can’t hear them. You can hear only Mom’s and Mel’s. Still, I guess we’re having a movie moment.
The next day I finish the border, an awesome thing, and measure the puzzle: thirty by twenty-one inches.
After stowing everything under the bed, I attempt to straighten up. My joints pop and creak. It’s necessary to shake out my limbs before descending the stairs.
I poke around in the refrigerator: coleslaw, yogurt, tortillas. Boring. Rummage through the crisper. Would you ever want to snack on celery? Isn’t that the definition of desperation? What’s this? Sliced ham, practically vacuum sealed. That’s another way the frenemies were opposite: food storage. I unpeel the Saran wrap and, before eating, fold a ham slice into quarters. While chewing, I begin to wonder about Saran wrap. I read the writing on the box. The film in Saran Premium Wrap does not contain chlorine. That’s good, I guess, but what film? No indication of what this plastic wrap actually is, just what it isn’t. No warnings like Do not wrap food with this for more than a week. That would be typical. Wrap less than a week, keeps fresh; wrap more than a week, kills you. But apparently not. Safe to swallow, so I do. Peel the fat off another piece, tilt my head back, and drop it in my mouth.
