“Maura...”
“Yes, Samson?”
“Would you consider marrying me?”
Her silence was exquisite. I was completely serious about the proposal. She could lie and say that she hadn’t stolen the coins. Maybe she had let in a plumber or a window washer and had to run downstairs to clean the sheets that I’d vomited and shat upon.
It didn’t matter that she’d robbed me. She had been there with that gorgeous smile that I could almost remember and with that voice that was first cousin to song. I would have died if she hadn’t been there; that much I was sure of.
“That is a beautiful thing to say, Samson. You are kind and gracious to ask. But I don’t think you know me well enough. If we were to marry you might feel differently than you do right now.”
“I know you, Maura, and more than that, I know myself. If you say yes, I will be your husband through all the years, no matter how lean or how fat. I will be your husband, and you will be the mother of our children. And they will have Irish names, and their second tongue will be Gaelic.”
Again the rapture of silence. I could feel her hopes and regrets over the fiber-optic lines.
After a very long pause she said, “Can I think on it?”
“Do you want me to give you my number?”
“I already have it, silly. I was going to call you after your last visit to the doctor.”
“OK,” I said. “I’ll wait for you to answer, but remember, I’m completely serious and absolutely nothing would change how I feel.”
We said our goodbyes and disconnected.
I didn’t leave my apartment for the next two weeks. I ordered in all my meals (even Cherry Garcia) and sat by the window in the displaced chair, next to the phone.
I was waiting for her answer.
I didn’t give a damn about those coins.
After eighteen days I called Maura’s mother’s phone again. The line had been disconnected. There was no forwarding number. There was no Daimhin O’Reilly listed in all Ireland, Wales, or England.
Maura was gone.
Maybe I should have told her not to worry about the money. Maybe I should have said, “You can consider those coins a wedding gift.”
The days went by, and my health improved. I gained back all the weight that the cancer and its treatments took. I went to work as a data interpreter again. Blythe called with a long explanation about how my cancer had upset her so much that she just had to sue me. I didn’t understand the logic but accepted her apology anyway.
Lana called and asked me why I hadn’t told her that I was dissatisfied with our relationship.
For some reason her question brought Maura to mind, Maura and my stolen fortune. I missed that Irish lass the way parents yearn for the days of their children’s cute mispronunciations: “I wuv you.” The love I felt for the nurse while I was dying meant more to me than anything life had to offer. She was what I was looking for even before I understood why the weight was coming off so fast.
“Well?” Lana asked.
I disconnected the call and went down to the 7-Eleven, hoping that they had the regular Cherry Garcia and still hoping, ever so slightly, that when I got back upstairs, Maura would have left a message and a number, a few rolling r’s, and a question that I could answer.
Pet Fly
Lana Donelli works at the third-floor reception desk of the Landsend mortgaging department of Carter’s Home Insurance Company. Her sister, Mona, is somewhere on five. They’re both quite pretty. I guess if one was pretty the other would have to be, seeing that they’re identical twins. But they’re nothing alike. Mona wears short skirts and giggles a lot. She’s not serious at all. When silly Mona comes in in the morning, she says hello and asks how you are, but before you get a chance to answer she’s busy talking about what she saw on TV last night or something funny that happened on the ferry that morning.
Lana and Mona live together in a two-bedroom apartment on Staten Island.
Lana is quieter and much more serious. The reason I even noticed her was because I thought she was her sister. I had seen Mona around since my first day in the interoffice mail room. Mona laughing, Mona complaining about her stiff new shoes or the air-conditioning or her most recent boyfriend refusing to take her where she wanted to go. I would see her at the coffee-break room on the fifth floor or in the hallway — never at a desk.
So when I made a rare delivery to Landsend and saw her sitting there, wearing a beaded white sweater buttoned all the way up to her throat, I was surprised. She was so subdued — not sad but peaceful, looking at the wall in front of her and holding a yellow pencil with the eraser against her chin.
“Air-conditioning too high again?” I asked her, just so she’d know I was alive and that I paid attention to the nonsense she babbled about.
She looked at me, and I got a chill because it didn’t feel like the same person I saw flitting around the office. She gave me a silent and friendly smile, even though her eyes were wondering what my question meant.
I put down the big brown envelope addressed to Landsend and left without saying anything else.
Down in the basement I asked Ernie what was wrong with Mona today.
“Nothing,” he said. “I think she busted up with some guy or something. No, no, I’m a liar. She went out with her boyfriend’s best friend without telling him. Now she doesn’t get why he’s mad. That’s what she said. Bitch. What she think?”
Ernie didn’t suffer fools, as my mother would say. He was an older black man who had moved to New York from Georgia thirty-three years before and had come to work for Carter’s Home three days after he’d arrived. “I would have been here on day one,” he often said, “but my bus only got in on Friday afternoon.”
I’d been at Carter’s Home for only two months. After graduating from Hunter College I didn’t know what to do. Even though I had a BA in poli-sci, I really didn’t have any skills. Couldn’t type or work a computer. I wrote all my papers in longhand and used a typing service. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I had to pay the rent. When I applied to Carter’s Home for a professional trainee position they’d advertised at Hunter, the personnel officer, Reena Worth, said that there was nothing available, but maybe if I took the mail-room position something might open up.
“They hired two white PTs the day after you came,” Ernie told me at the end of the first week. I decided to ignore that though. Maybe they had applied beforehand, or maybe they had skills with computers or something.
I didn’t mind the job. It was easy and I was always on my feet. Junior Rodriguez, Big Linda Washington, and Little Linda Brown worked with me. The Lindas had earphones and listened to music while they wheeled around their canvas mail carts. Big Linda liked rap and Little Linda liked R & B. Junior was cool. He never talked much, but he’d give me a welcoming nod every morning when he came in. He dressed in gray and brown silk shirts that were unbuttoned to his chest. He had a gold chain around his neck and one gold canine. The Lindas didn’t like me, and Junior was in his own world. Everyone working in the interoffice mailroom was one shade or other of brown.
My only friend at work was Ernie. He and I would sit down in the basement and talk for hours sometimes. He told me all about Georgia, where he went on vacation every summer. “Atlanta’s cool,” he’d say. “But you better watch it in the sticks.”
Ernie was proud of his years at Carter’s Home. He liked the job and the company but had no patience for most of the bosses.
“Workin’ for white people is always the same thing,” Ernie would say.
“But Mr. Drew’s black,” I said the first time I heard his perennial complaint. Drew was the supervisor for all postal and interoffice communication.