Good on Paper (21 page)

I finished trotting “Call” and “Screen,” and this is what I found: aside from the echoes in Romei’s first poem, my lexicon of oft-repeated words contained just one entry: Romei’s omnipresent
penna
(his pen, wing, man of letters, writer). Had I missed something? He repeated the usual articles and prepositions (
I
figured rather frequently;
she
almost as often), but nothing substantive—no important nouns or modifiers. As if the New Life involved finding a new word for every situation, as if nothing I’d ever done could help me now.

I was working on the park bench scene, when Ahmad stuck his head in the study.

Our precious needs help with her homework, he said.

Huh? I asked, not looking up. You help her.

I’m due at the Temple of Learning.

After dinner. Tell her I’ll help her then.

Shira, Ahmad said, raising his voice, she needs help now! You need to help her now.

I looked up. Ahmad was holding a wastebasket overflowing with crumpled paper. I pulled out a paper ball. Laboriously perfect block letters,
Once upon a time …
then an error, a “t” that slipped below the line, scratched out furiously with a dull pencil.

They’re all like that, he said. She’s been at it for an hour, apparently.

Andi was seated at her little desk, her face grim with concentration, her Observations Notebook closed under her elbow, her children’s dictionary open to
P
.

You already have homework? I asked. You’ve only been in school three days!

Exactly. It’s all downhill from here.

I leaned over her shoulder to see what she was writing, then pulled up a chair.

How do you spell
precisely
? she said. I can’t find it in this stupid dictionary.

How about you tell me what you want to write, I’ll write it down, then you can copy it.

Mrs. Chao says we can’t copy.

She means you have to make it up.

I
am
making it up.

What’s your story about?

It’s about once upon a time there was a boy named Ovidio …

You’re writing about your friend?

It’s about once upon a time.

Sweetie, I don’t think it’s a good idea to write about your friend. He might not like it.

It’s my story. Ahmad said it was okay.

He did? Well, maybe it depends on what you write. What happens to him?

I don’t know. I’ve only written
Once upon a time
. I keep making mistakes. Look! she said, and swirled around, then swirled around again. Where’s my wastepaper basket? Where is it?

Ahmad took it.

Wow, she said, shaking her braids. He’s always playing tricks on me! I think that’s what he does best.

I laughed.

If Ahmad goes to Connecticut, I think I should go with him.

I stopped laughing.

Why? Why do you say that?

Because he’ll be lonely there without me.

Why do you think that? I asked, and had to keep myself from crying out,
What about me?

Because I’m the only one who likes what he likes.

Conservative economics?
I thought.
Picking up boys at barber shops?

Don’t you think I’d be lonely without you? I asked.

No, Andi said, applying pencil to paper. You’ve got Benny.

Benny’s just a friend. Besides you’re my baby.

I’m
not
a baby, Andi said, putting down her pencil and looking at me, exasperated.

You’ll always be my baby.

She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was pleased.

Did I spell
Ovidio
right? she asked, leaning into me, her braid tickling my thigh.

Yes, sweetie.

She squinted at me.

I’ll ask Ahmad when he finishes his stupid class.

You’re spelling it right, I promise.

You could just be saying that.

Why would I do that?

So you can go back to work.

I’m staying right here while you write your story, I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. That way you can ask me anything you want. Okay?

What do you think happens after
Once upon a time
?

I wish I knew, princess, I wish I knew.

•

Andi read her story out loud at Friday Night Dinner: Ovidio lived in a cave where he hid from his mother and father. Sometimes his mother fought with his father. That’s when he went to the cave. Ovidio had a broken nose but he wasn’t nosy.

I had to bite my tongue while she composed her masterwork, not to influence her. At one point, I took a break in our bathroom, looked at Mr. Bubble, her Winnie the Pooh shampoo, and wondered: Was Andi okay? Was the friction between her
loco parenti
scarring her for
life? Did she need Sigmund? My funny, my beautiful, my startling child! My baby—look at her!

The Polaroid Ahmad had given her was on a shelf. I snapped a shot of her hunched over her desk, the tip of her tongue sticking out as she crossed out yet another word.

Mo-omm! she cried. Look what you made me do!

But there she was now, smiling, triumphant, standing behind her uneaten dinner, peas hidden inexpertly under some mashed potatoes.
The End
. We clapped; Ahmad gave me a look.

Mommy says it’s spelled right, she said to Ahmad, but I think you should look.

He scanned the page.

It’s perfect! he exclaimed. I have never seen such perfect writing!

See, Mambo! I told you.

Know what
Chao
means in Italian? Ahmad asked.

Don’t, I said, hiding my smile behind my hand.

What? Andi asked. It means food, right?

No, it means hello and goodbye both.

Only if you don’t know if you’re coming or going, my baby said.

36

RIGHT! WRITE!

It was Friday evening. Ahmad was telling Andi a bedtime story, and I was in my room, looking out at People of the Book. It seemed ages since Benny and I had talked, though it had been just two days. I shouldn’t, I knew, but I did: I pulled out my cell phone.

Marie answered, wanted to know who was calling.

Tell him it’s Hester Prynne.

Who?

I spelled it for her. She put the phone down, didn’t ask if I could hold.

Shabbat shalom! Gut yontif!
Benny finally answered.

Kasha varnishkes! I said.

Who is this? Benny asked.

Shira! Who else?

Shanah tovah!
Happy new year! Can I call you after the weekend? It’s not a good time.

Locusts? I wanted to ask. Frogs?

I’m getting ready to close, he said. Rosh Hashana.

Rosh Hashana! I said. Too bad! I mean, congratulations!

Benny laughed.

Happy birthday of the world, I blurted.

Thank you, but it starts in an hour and I’ve got a sermon to write.

Right, I said. Write! Ha, ha.

I got off the phone and stared at myself in the mirror.

Watch out, Shira, I said. Watch out.

37

BY A CLEAR STREAM

The next morning I found a fax from Romei, a new section titled “Muse.” And a note:

You say Dante experienced love only in his imagination. You are right, of course
, to an extent.
His dreams and visions, and therefore his poems, are inspired at first by illusions (the figure of Love, his screen ladies). But increasingly he locates his muse outside himself
.

His English was better than he’d let on! If he alienated every translator in town, he could easily translate his
Vita Quasi Nova
himself.

The later poems in
Vita Nuova
are inspired or commissioned
, he continued,
by ladies, the brother, various pilgrims, the mysterious visitors. These are not constructs of Dante’s imagination but “real” people, and the poems he writes for them reflect an increasing engagement with the real. His later poems praising Beatrice also represent an advance on his earlier, more self-centered work. As his love grows, so does he
.

Yes, I thought, burning my mouth on my coffee, after Beatrice is dead and more of an idea than ever!

Your rigid judgments do not allow for the possibility of change. To put it in terms you should understand: what good is a story if nothing happens?

Where is this photo of Andrea?

I laughed and scanned the photo I’d taken of Andi at her desk, then faxed it to Romei, together with a note:

Yeah, whatever. So Dante accepts commissions, so he is inspired by
“real” people, so he has a “muse,” whatever that means. So he stops writing woe-is-me poems. This doesn’t mean he changes—not really. This doesn’t mean he learns how to love
.

Then I said, What the hey, and mailed the photo to Aunt Emma, or Elisheva, as she now called herself, though this would mean receiving a photo of her in return—in the scarf she wore so the West Bank wind wouldn’t wig out her wig.

Which inspired me to find my daughter. She was at the dining room table, coloring in her Insects of the World coloring book.

What kind of bug is that? I asked.

A green bug.

Is that its scientific name? I asked.

Mom!

Up, child! I exclaimed. It’s time to exercise your limbs. Come!

Where’s Ahmad?

In Brooklyn, fixing his car. Come! First-to-get-to-Joe’s-while-also-checking-both-ways-before-she-crosses-the-street gets a happy-face cookie!

Once at Joe’s, I had to grab Andi to keep her from stepping on the twins, who were playing with the Barnard student’s shoelaces. I got a double for me and a coconut dandy for Nate, who, oddly, was nowhere to be found.

Andi ate her cookie while leaning into me on our Riverside Park bench.

It’s pretty great living here, isn’t it? I said, my arm around her. When she didn’t reply, I elaborated: the playground, Joe’s, Cohn’s Cones.

Can I have an ice cream later? she said.

I considered that a victory. Sure, I said. Then she asked for, and I produced, a Handiwipe from my mother’s bag of tricks.

Bye! she shouted, waving furiously, as if she were off on a polar expedition.

Don’t run, I cried pointlessly, thinking of her cast. Then I arranged everything on my bench—Romei’s pages, Andi’s pail and shovel, her Observations Notebook, my iced mocha, Andi’s Wonder Woman Band-Aids, a jumbo pack of goldfish.

The Hudson glimmered. I closed my eyes, heard the trickle of the fountain behind me, imagined myself as Esther on her bench, smiled to think that a singular Romeo might someday watch me from a tree: Benny, for example, his long legs dangling from a branch, playing a flute like an oversize sprite.

Down girl! The only woman Benny wanted anywhere near his flute was narcoleptic Marie.

So what was Romei’s task now? At this point in
Vita Nuova
, Dante addresses poems to his muse. He runs into her at a party—his entire body throbs, he is abandoned by his spirits, he leans against a fresco for relief. The ladies laugh at his distress, not understanding the cause of his transformation. But this sighting occasions more poems—poems about romantic anguish in which the figure of Pity frequently appears.

Then Beatrice injures him by not saying hello. Heartbroken, he tells the ladies who surround him that while his joy once lay in her greeting, now he must locate it in something that cannot be withdrawn. His new path? Words of praise! He resolves to write not of romantic anguish but of the perfections of Beatrice.

Like most of us, Dante finds change easy to talk about, but the prospect overwhelms him. He dithers, he’s beset by fear and trembling. Finally, while traveling by a “clear stream,” he receives a first line … The result: a
canzone
describing Beatrice’s perfections.

So what would Romei do? Esther was his muse, presumably. He’d praise her, right?

Not exactly.

I’d thought that Esther and Romei, once “liberated” from her husband, would be speechless. In fact, their first act is to dine
al fresco
in Trastevere, Esther’s Samsonite propped against a wall covered with obscene chalk drawings. Romei avoids her eye, tosses crumbs to urchin cats, sketches nonsense syllables onto a paper tablecloth. He imagines himself a poet Picasso, whose scrawled words will one day pay for dinner, for he is down to his last lire.