Chapter 24
Perfect Strangers
The shoebox lived on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, and neither of them could have said when it began.
It was an old one. It had held, in some previous life, a pair of brown boots, and it still said SIZE 11 on the end in faded blue ink. It had been put up there in a hurry, in the spring, in the week they moved, among a heap of scarves. It was Daniel who found it. It was the ninth of October, a gray Thursday, and he had gone up on a chair for the winter blankets, and his hand had come down on a lid, and a rustle, and a small sharp corner of paper that stuck out like a tongue.
"What's this?" he called.
"What?"
"There's a, it's a box. It's got stuff in it."
"What sort of stuff?"
"I don't know. It's, there's a napkin."
There was a silence in the next room. Then a clatter, as of a dish going into a sink, and quick feet on the boards, and Sarah appeared in the bedroom door in an apron with her hands wet and her eyes enormous.
"Don't open it," she said.
"Why not?"
"It's, I forgot it was there."
"You put it there."
"I know. I did it in a, there was a day, I was putting things in." She came across the room, drying her hands on the apron, with a look of dawning, helpless, blushing alarm. "I didn't think you'd find it for years."
"I'm a very thorough man."
"You're a nosy one."
"It's the same thing, in a scientist." He climbed down. He had the box under his arm. He sat on the edge of the bed, with the lid on his knee, and looked at her, with his head on one side. "I'd like to open it. If it's all right. If it's not, it's, I'll put it back. I'll never mention it. I'll go and lie in the garage."
She looked at the box.
She looked at it for a long moment. It was plain. It was a battered brown cardboard rectangle with a cracked corner and a ring of dust, and it sat on his lap like a small sleeping animal. She thought of the things inside it. She thought of a month in the spring, when she had walked about this room in her bare feet, putting things away, and every one of them had made her heart go quick.
"Open it," said Sarah.
It was nearly everything.
That was what astonished him. It was so much. He lifted the lid, and there it was, in the dim lamplight, laid out in layers like a small excavation. On the top lay a napkin, a white paper one, from Ruth's, soft with handling, with a pencil drawing of a bicycle gear, and an arrow, and a line of small neat writing. you can't change it while you're pedaling hard. you have to ease off first.
He picked it up.
His hand was not steady. He held it up to the lamp, and the pencil came through the paper, gray and fine, and he saw the loops of his own handwriting. It had been drawn on a cold night in January, in a coffee shop, in a fit of despair. He had left it behind. He had gone home, and sat in his kitchen, and thought, she'll throw it out.
"You kept this?"
"I took it off the table."
"I thought, I thought I'd left it."
"You did." She was sitting beside him, with her knees together and her fingers laced. "I sat there, after you went. I read it fourteen times. I took it home in my glove."
"Why?"
"I don't know." She smiled shakily. "It was the kindest thing anyone had said to me all month. And you hadn't, you hadn't even said it to me. It was a thing about a bicycle."
Under the napkin there was a small brown paper bag, folded flat. He opened it. Inside were six glass straws, empty, with their ends bitten off, rinsed, and dried. They were tied together with a bit of red thread.
"I couldn't throw them away," said Sarah.
"You've kept the straws."
"They were the best honey I ever had."
"They're empty."
"I know." She put her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry. It's very silly."
"It's not."
"I'm a, I think I'm a hoarder of feelings."
"You're a librarian."
"It's the same thing," said Sarah.
He went on. He took out a lily pad, pressed flat between two sheets of waxed paper, dry and brown as a leaf in a book. He took out a card, damp-stained, with a faint blue pencil, and he read it, and went red. One. Ask about the bread. He took out a ticket stub from the county fair, and a goldfish tag, and a corner of a brown paper bag on which she had once written, in a fit of enthusiasm, a four-word list of reasons that he was an idiot. He took out a coffee-shop receipt for two chai lattes, one extra hot, with honey, and a small, folded, neatly cut square of newspaper.
It was a crossword.
It was an old one, soft and gray at the creases. It had a date at the top, in the margin, in her small clear writing. Oct. 10. It was filled in, nearly all of it, in blue ink, in a firm round hand. There were two or three words struck through. And in the top right corner, beside one small, bare, empty row of six white boxes, in the same ink, but smaller, and shakier, as if she had done it lying down, someone had written one word.
oops.
He looked at it.
He did not say anything. He sat with the paper in his hand and the lamp on his face. He thought of a library, and a desk, and a woman with a smudge of blue on her wrist. Seven across. Sound of a small mistake. He had written it on the back of his hand. He had rubbed it off with his thumb.
"I never finished it," said Sarah.
"I know."
"I've tried. I try every, I take it out, once a month. I sit with it. I can't." She was laughing, with her eyes wet. "I've got the wrong word for three down. It's in pen. It crosses the second box of seven across, it's holding up the whole corner, and I can't fix it. I wrote eel where it should be hen. And it's in ink."
"You could start again."
"I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"It's this one. It's the first one. It's, I can't just make a new, it wouldn't be the, it'd be a different puzzle." She wiped her eyes. "I'm stuck. I've been stuck for two years. It's the stupidest thing."
He did not answer.
He put his hand into his shirt pocket. He had, he realized, a pencil. It was a small yellow stub, blunt, with a worn pink eraser and a dent where somebody had bitten it. It was a thing that he carried about without noticing, as one carries a key. He held it out on his palm.
"I could, you could, it's yours," said Daniel.
She stared at it.
"It's not cheating," he said. "It's a, I've thought about this. For two years. I've thought, she's right, I'm a heretic. I've lain awake. I think you're absolutely right that you can't go round, that you shouldn't just erase. That you'd never know what you got wrong." He swallowed. "But I think there's a thing that's, there's a third way."
"What?"
"You write it in pencil, on top. You leave the, you leave the ink. You can see it, under. Everything you got wrong. It's still there, it's all there. But you've written the right one over it." He laughed, unsteadily. "I think that's, you'd know what you did. And you'd also know what it, what it turned into."
She took the pencil.
She held it very lightly, between finger and thumb, as if it were something that might fly. She looked at the crossword. She looked for a long time. Then she bent over the paper, on her knee, in the lamp's yellow circle, and with a small bright intent frown, and a tongue between her teeth, she began, slowly, to write over the word that she had put in ink in October two years before.
H.
E.
N.
It was soft and gray, over the black. It lay on top, in clear round letters, and the ink showed through, small and firm and a little wrong, like a footprint under snow. She looked at it. And then, as if a lock had turned, she made a small soft sound, and moved her pencil to the corner, where a row of six white boxes had been empty for two years.
She wrote it fast.
W. H. O. O. P. S.
She held it up.
"Whoops," said Daniel.
"It fits."
"It's, of course it fits. It was, it's been sitting there."
"It's six letters."
"It was always six letters!"
"It was the crossing," said Sarah. She was laughing so hard that she could hardly get it out. "It was the H. I'd got the wrong one. It's been wrong the whole time, it's been the eel. I couldn't see it, because I wouldn't let myself, I thought if I admitted that three down was wrong." She wiped her eyes. "Oh, Daniel."
"It's a very small mistake."
"It's a tiny one."
"It's the smallest."
"Whoops," said Sarah, and began again, and fell sideways on the bed, with the crossword on her chest, and the box falling over, and a handful of small round years rolling across the quilt.
They went through it all.
They sat on the bed in the lamp's circle, with their legs crossed and the box between them, and went through it, item by item, slowly, as two people who have just found an old photograph album. It took four hours. They did not get up. They ordered a pizza and ate it out of the box, and talked with their mouths full. There was a story for everything. There was a story, it turned out, for things that had not been put in the box at all.
"I looked you up," said Sarah.
"What?"
"In November. The first year. You gave me your name, and I went home, and I looked at the Lincoln Middle School website." She was blushing. "There's a staff page. You were on it. There was a photo. You were wearing a tie. It had planets on it."
"It was a gift."
"You looked like a man being held hostage."
"I was."
"I looked at it for forty minutes."
"You did not."
"I did. And then I shut the laptop. And I thought, what are you doing? I thought, you have a boyfriend. You're a terrible person." She laughed. "And then I looked at it for twenty more."
He put down the slice. He put both hands over his face, and she saw that his ears had gone red.
"I told Theo," he said.
"Who?"
"A boy. One of the club. He was, it was the day we met. At the library. We were walking back. And he said, you smiled the whole time. And I said, I was being polite." He took his hands down. "I went home that night, and I did a, I wrote seven across on the back of my hand. In pencil. And I rubbed it off. I thought, what is wrong with me?"
"You wrote it on your hand?"
"I was thirty seconds from a tattoo."
"That's the nicest thing I've ever heard."
"It's a, it's mostly embarrassing."
"It's the nicest thing," said Sarah.
She leaned over, and kissed him. It was a pizza kiss, with oregano. She sat back, and tucked her hair behind her ear, her left one, and her hand, when it came away, stayed open on her knee.
"What would you have said?" she asked.
"When?"
"If I'd told you. Back then. If I'd said, in the waiting room, in two years, you'll be sitting on a bed with me, with a box of stuff, and we'll be living on Grove Street, and I'll be in love with you." She grinned. "What would you have said?"
"I'd have said you were mad."
"What else?"
"I'd have said, I'm sorry, I don't think we've met."
"We hadn't."
"No," said Daniel. "That's the whole point. We were," and he stopped, and looked at her for a long moment, with his eyes bright. "We were perfect strangers."
She went still.
It was the first time that either of them had said it aloud. It was odd. They had both known it, for a year. It had been sitting between them, small and plain, in a back room, like a coin in a pocket, and neither of them had had cause to take it out. And now it lay in the lamp, between a lily pad and a straw, and she looked at it, and it did not seem to be a joke.
"That's what we were," said Sarah, slowly.
"Perfect."
"It's an odd thing to say."
"It's the best thing I know."
"It's, you know, it means two things. In a, there's a sort of, it means complete. And it means total." She was turning the pencil. "It means that I knew nothing. And that it was, in a way, that it was, there was a perfection in it."
"Which one?"
"Both."
"I think so too."
"I didn't know your middle name."
"It's Francis."
"I didn't know you hated cilantro."
"I don't hate it. It's, I'm wary."
"I didn't know you cry at commercials."
"That's a, that's a lie. That's a, which?"
"The one with the dog, and the soldier."
"That's not a commercial, that's, it's a film."
"It's thirty seconds long. It's for insurance."
"It's a very good thirty seconds," said Daniel, with dignity.
They both laughed.
She leaned her head on his arm. "I know so much about you," she said. "I know, you sleep on your left. You've got a scar on your knee, from a swing. You sing in the shower, the one about the squirrel, and you've never once got the second verse. You hum when you're nervous. You tap two fingers when you think. You say okay before you tell me something bad, and you say it a second time when you're trying not to cry."
"I do?"
"Every time."
"I didn't know."
"I know you didn't." She was smiling at the quilt. "I know you're afraid of being wrong. I know you were afraid of being your sister's husband. I know your mother made a soup you couldn't write down, and that you tried for eleven years, and that on the last try, you cried over the pot." Her voice dropped. "I know that you'd have stood on a landing for three days."
"Probably."
"I know you'd never ask me to."
"No."
"And I know," said Sarah, "that if I said come here, you'd come."
He did not say anything.
He turned his face and pressed it into her hair. He held her, sitting up on the bed, in the lamplight, with a shoebox between their knees, and they stayed like that for a long, warm, silent time. Somewhere in the apartment the old radiator clicked on, and began to knock. A car went by. A dog barked, three blocks off. And on the mantel in the front room, where the crooked green bowls stood in a row, the little lamp on the shelf lit the faded blue-and-brown cover of a record, propped up against the wall, comfortably, with a woman in a sweater, and a window seat, and a cat.
"There's something I haven't told you," said Sarah.
It was after midnight.
They had put the box on the dresser, and turned out the overhead, and lain down, in the dark, with the streetlight through the blinds drawing long gold stripes across the quilt. He was on his back. She was on her side, with her head on his shoulder, and his arm round her, and a hand moving idly in her hair. They had been silent for a good while. She had thought that he was asleep.
"Okay," said Daniel.
She felt it go through her. It was the word. It was not a bad word. It was only the small breath, and the okay, and she realized, with a tiny jolt, that it was her own. She had said it to him. He had said it to her. They had passed it back and forth for two years like a pebble, and it had worn smooth.
"It's not bad," she said.
"Okay."
"It's, I think it's good. I think. I haven't decided." She did not lift her head. "It's Sunday Talk. It's, I know it's Thursday. I'm saying it early."
"I'd like to hear."
"I got a letter."
"A letter?"
"On Monday. I put it in my bag. I haven't opened it, I haven't, I opened it. I read it in the staff room. And then I put it back." She drew a breath. "It's from the Multnomah County Library. In Portland."
He did not move.
"In Oregon," said Sarah. "It's a children's services thing. A coordinator. It's a, it's a real job. It's the one I'd, it's the kind of thing I said I wanted. When I was, when I started the degree. I applied in the spring. I didn't tell you. I thought, I won't get it. I thought, it'll be, it'll go nowhere. And I'd have, I'd have wasted your, I'd have made a fuss."
"You applied in the spring."
"In March."
"Before the apartment."
"A week before."
"And you didn't."
"I didn't tell you," said Sarah. Her voice cracked. "I know. I know. I know what that, I know what it sounds like. I hid it. It's the exact thing. And I sat there, every Sunday, for six months, and said I'm fine, and I didn't, I couldn't say it. Because I thought, if I say it, you'll, I'll have to choose."
"Choose what?"
"Between."
"Between what?"
"The job and you," she said.
It lay there in the dark.
It was a large, still, quiet thing. It sat on the quilt, between their two bodies, and he felt it settle. He lay there, with his eyes open, looking at the ceiling, and the stripes of light, and thought, with great clearness, I'm not going to say anything yet.
I'm going to let this be hers.
He breathed in, and out.
"I don't want you to think it's a decision," said Sarah. She had turned, and was propped on an elbow, looking down at him. Her face was white in the dimness. Her eyes were very wide. "I haven't, I haven't said yes. I haven't said no. I don't know. I'm so happy here. I'm happier than I've ever, I don't want to lose it. I don't want to lose you. I couldn't."
"Okay."
"And I'm also, I think I want it. I think I want it a lot." She was crying, soundlessly. "I've never wanted a thing like that. For me. Not for my mother or my brother or a person who, just for me. And I'm terrified. I'm so afraid that I'm, that it's the old thing. That I'm running. That I'm making a, I don't know how to tell."
"Tell what?"
"Whether it's the thing I want. Or the thing I'm doing because I'm scared."
"Ah," said Daniel.
"That's all. That's all I've got."
"Okay."
"It's not, it's very, it's a lot to put on a Thursday."
"It's not too much."
"I wanted to wait for Sunday."
"It's after midnight," said Daniel. "It's practically Friday."
She laughed. It was a wet, startled, hiccupping laugh. She put her head down on his chest, and he felt her whole body shake, and he put both arms round her, and held on.
"Thank you for telling me," he said.
"I should've told you in March."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"I know." He kissed the top of her head. "And I'm, it's all right. I'd like you to know that it's all right. We're not going to do it again tonight. We'll, I don't want to decide anything in the dark. I think I'd like to sleep. And then I'd like to hear all of it. Every single piece. The job and the city and the salary and what it smells like."
"It smells like rain, I think."
"That's a start."
"I've never been."
"We could go."
"We could?"
"I don't know yet," said Daniel. "I'd like to find out."
She did not answer. She lay on his chest, with her eyes open, listening to a heart. It was slow, and steady. It went on, in its quiet way, under her ear, exactly as it had on a hundred nights, and she thought, very simply, it's not going anywhere.
Whatever I decide.
That's what it's for.
Outside, a very light rain had begun. It tapped on the window. It ran down the glass in a thin silver thread, and the streetlamp made it gold, and on the dresser, in a battered brown box that said SIZE 11, a six-letter word in soft pencil lay over a wrong one in ink, and showed through.
It was not a very large mistake.
It was only that it was theirs.