and there in conversation to flaunt her origins. Aside from the brief lunch encounters, and times when one or the other needed a bit of extra help with a patient, they barely spoke at all.
“I am going now,” Nadine said, rising from her seat. “My throne is yours.”
When she returned to her one-bedroom condo in Canarsie that evening, Nadine was greeted by voices from the large television set that she kept on twenty-four hours a day. Along with the uneven piles of newspapers and magazines scattered between the fold-out couch and the floorto-ceiling bookshelves in her living room, the television was her way of bringing voices into her life that required neither reaction nor response. At thirty, she’d tried other hobbies— African dance and drawing classes, Internet surfing—but these tasks had demanded either too much effort or too much superficial interaction with other people.
She took off the white sneakers that she wore at work and remained standing to watch the last ten minutes of a news broadcast. It wasn’t until a game show began that she pressed the playback button on her blinking answering machine.
Her one message was from Eric, her former beau, suitor, lover, the near father of her nearly born child.
“
Alo, allo, hello
,” he stammered, creating his own odd pauses between Creole, French, and English, like the electively mute, newly arrived immigrant children whose worried parents brought them to the ward for consultations, even though there was nothing wrong with their vocal cords.
“Just saying hello to you.” He chose heavily accented English. Long pause. “Okay. Bye.”
Whenever he called her now, which was about once a month since their breakup, she removed the microcassette from the answering machine and placed it on the altar she had erected on top of the dresser in her bedroom. It wasn’t anything too elaborate. There was a framed drawing that she had made of a cocoa-brown, dewy-eyed baby that could as easily have been a boy as a girl, the plump, fleshy cheeks resembling hers and the high forehead resembling his. Next to the plain wooden frame were a dozen now dried red roses that Eric had bought her as they’d left the clinic after the procedure. She had once read about a shrine to unborn children in Japan, where water was poured over altars of stone to honor them, so she had filled her favorite drinking glass with water and a pebble and had added that to her own shrine, along with a total of now seven microcassettes with messages from Eric, messages she had never returned.
That night, as the apartment seemed oddly quiet in spite of the TV voices, she took out her mother’s letter for its second reading of the day, ran her fingers down the delicate page, and reached for the phone to dial her parents’ number. She’d almost called many times in the last three months, but had lost her nerve, thinking her voice might betray all that she could not say. She nearly dialed the whole thing this time. There were only a few numbers left when she put the phone down, tore the letter into two, then four, then eight, then countless pieces, collapsed among her old magazines and newspapers, and wept.
Another letter arrived at Nadine’s house a week later. It was on the same kind of airmail paper, but this time the words were meticulously typed. The
a
s and
o
s, which had been struck over many times, created underlayers, shadows, and small holes within the vowels’ perimeters.
Ma chère Nadine,
Your father and I thank you very much for the extra money. Your father used it to see a doctor, not about his knees, but his prostate that the doctor says is inflamed. Not to worry, he was given some medications and it seems as if he will be fine for a while. All the tests brought us short for the monthly expenses, but we will manage. We would like so much to talk to you. We wait every Sunday afternoon, hoping you will return to our beautiful routine. We pray that we have not abused your generosity, but
“I am going now,” Nadine said, rising from her seat. “My throne is yours.”
When she returned to her one-bedroom condo in Canarsie that evening, Nadine was greeted by voices from the large television set that she kept on twenty-four hours a day. Along with the uneven piles of newspapers and magazines scattered between the fold-out couch and the floorto-ceiling bookshelves in her living room, the television was her way of bringing voices into her life that required neither reaction nor response. At thirty, she’d tried other hobbies— African dance and drawing classes, Internet surfing—but these tasks had demanded either too much effort or too much superficial interaction with other people.
She took off the white sneakers that she wore at work and remained standing to watch the last ten minutes of a news broadcast. It wasn’t until a game show began that she pressed the playback button on her blinking answering machine.
Her one message was from Eric, her former beau, suitor, lover, the near father of her nearly born child.
“
Alo, allo, hello
,” he stammered, creating his own odd pauses between Creole, French, and English, like the electively mute, newly arrived immigrant children whose worried parents brought them to the ward for consultations, even though there was nothing wrong with their vocal cords.
“Just saying hello to you.” He chose heavily accented English. Long pause. “Okay. Bye.”
Whenever he called her now, which was about once a month since their breakup, she removed the microcassette from the answering machine and placed it on the altar she had erected on top of the dresser in her bedroom. It wasn’t anything too elaborate. There was a framed drawing that she had made of a cocoa-brown, dewy-eyed baby that could as easily have been a boy as a girl, the plump, fleshy cheeks resembling hers and the high forehead resembling his. Next to the plain wooden frame were a dozen now dried red roses that Eric had bought her as they’d left the clinic after the procedure. She had once read about a shrine to unborn children in Japan, where water was poured over altars of stone to honor them, so she had filled her favorite drinking glass with water and a pebble and had added that to her own shrine, along with a total of now seven microcassettes with messages from Eric, messages she had never returned.
That night, as the apartment seemed oddly quiet in spite of the TV voices, she took out her mother’s letter for its second reading of the day, ran her fingers down the delicate page, and reached for the phone to dial her parents’ number. She’d almost called many times in the last three months, but had lost her nerve, thinking her voice might betray all that she could not say. She nearly dialed the whole thing this time. There were only a few numbers left when she put the phone down, tore the letter into two, then four, then eight, then countless pieces, collapsed among her old magazines and newspapers, and wept.
Another letter arrived at Nadine’s house a week later. It was on the same kind of airmail paper, but this time the words were meticulously typed. The
a
s and
o
s, which had been struck over many times, created underlayers, shadows, and small holes within the vowels’ perimeters.
Ma chère Nadine,
Your father and I thank you very much for the extra money. Your father used it to see a doctor, not about his knees, but his prostate that the doctor says is inflamed. Not to worry, he was given some medications and it seems as if he will be fine for a while. All the tests brought us short for the monthly expenses, but we will manage. We would like so much to talk to you. We wait every Sunday afternoon, hoping you will return to our beautiful routine. We pray that we have not abused your generosity, but
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