Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

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Ike becomes aware of a presence and looks up startled and there’s Supervisor Barnes, right next to him, smiling at his surprise.

“I’m sorry, Ike,” she says. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that. You’ve got quite the powers of concentration.”

“I enjoy sorting,” Ike says.

Eva shakes her head. “See now, I never liked sorting. Sorting for me was like torture. Loved to be out on the route. Walking the route.”

“I like the route too. I like them both. Sorting and the route.”

“Renaissance man,” Eva says. “I was wondering if you’d like a coffee. It’s break time. I wouldn’t want to be reported to the union for denying you your break time.”

“I’d never do something like that,” Ike says.

“Lighten up, Ike,” Eva says. “I was joking. The float from the main station came in and I’ve got her on the counter. So how ’bout the coffee?”

Ike smiles, slides his behind off the lip of the work stool, and follows Eva to the small room at the back of the station. It’s the regulation break room and it’s filled with three uncomfortable, bright orange, molded-plastic chairs, and a shaky wooden table covered with an ancient coffee machine, two jars of Cremora, a Styrofoam cup filled with Sweet ’N Low packets, and a cardboard box in which everyone stores their own coffee mug. There’s also a poster of the moon landing commemorative tacked to the wall. Ike has always found it an unusually depressing place. And he doesn’t think there’s any need for it to be that way. A little effort could do wonders, a little paint on the walls, some new chairs you could sit in without a backache, replace the moon landing with something a little more recent. But there’s no money in the budget for anything as unnecessary as redoing a branch break room, and when Ike suggested to his co-workers that they take it upon themselves, he didn’t hear the end of it for three weeks.

Eva picks up her mug. It’s basic black, with no pictures or funny slogans or institutional logos. Normally she keeps it in her office and carries it into the break room when she wants some coffee. Ike has always thought this was because she was afraid Rourke or Wilson would put something in it if she left it with the other mugs. Spit in the bottom or something. She must have left the black mug in the room yesterday. Maybe it was an accident. But, more likely to Ike’s mind, she’s just gaining confidence. She knows they know who’s the boss.

Ike’s work mug is identical to the home mug that Lenore gave him, the Neither Wind, Nor Sleet mug. He liked the one from Lenore so much that he searched around until he found the second one at one of those strobe and incense teen boutiques in the mall. Sometimes he wonders if this purchase shows a lack of imagination or independence on his part, but usually he thinks it’s just a tribute to Lenore’s taste and intuitiveness.

Like Lenore, Eva drinks her coffee straight and black. He’s always amazed that people can do this, straight from the pot, without burning their tongue and throat. Ike fills his mug a good forty percent with tap water and Cremora before he adds a drop of coffee. Otherwise his stomach is shot for the rest of the day. He stopped using sugar back in college and thinks it might be wise to cut out coffee altogether. He can imagine the problems caffeine can cause.

“How long have you been with the post office?” Eva asks, settling into a chair, her mug held out oddly in one hand as if it were the control stick of an old airplane.

“Eight years,” Ike says with just a trace of pride sliding out with his words. “And four summers before I started full-time.”

“Oh, you were a sub,” Eva says, sounding genuinely interested.

Ike nods, sips at his mug. “Uh-huh. My father put in forty years. He had my summer job lined up every May. I swear, that guy knew every route in the city.”

“One of those veterans,” Eva says. “Saw all the changes. Was carrying before the first zip codes …”

“Oh, God,” Ike says. “He was out there in those days when people would, you know, write a name on the envelope, and ‘City’ underneath it, and the letter would get delivered, no problem.”

“Lot of ingenuity in the office back in those days,” Eva says.

“Don’t tell me,” Ike says. “Was your dad in the service too?”

Eva shakes her head no and crosses her legs. Ike tries to stay focused on her eyes.

“No, though he did work for the government. And he was a special courier for a time. State Department. We lived all over the place when I was growing up. Spent a lot of time in South America. Brazil and Paraguay. I speak Spanish fluently.”

Ike is impressed. In an instant, he can picture Eva as a young girl, dressed in slightly foreign clothes, rattling off answers, in Spanish, to some old, dark teacher.

“You’re kidding,” he says.

“Not at all,” Eva says matter-of-factly. “We were south of the border from the time I was five until I turned seventeen.”

“Jees,” Ike says, intrigued and excited by the story. “Then what happened? Your father get transferred back or something?”

Eva shakes her head again in that slightly clipped way. “My father died. Massive coronary. Forty-eight years old.”

“Oh, God,” Ike says. “I’m sorry.”

“A long time ago,” Eva says. “I’ve never understood it. The man was the picture of health. Not a pound overweight. Good eating habits. Plenty of exercise. And to the best of my knowledge there was no history of it in his family.”

There’s a pause that they both fill by sipping their coffee.

Ike says, “So how’d you end up in Quinsigamond?”

Eva smiles and Ike looks down to the floor.

“My mother’s family was originally from here. So it was the only place to come, really. We moved in with this bachelor uncle of mine, my mother’s brother Kurt. Now, he was a character. But Mother, she was never the same after Father died. I kept telling myself that she’d come together with each passing year. Isn’t that what you’d think? That the pain and the confusion would sort of ease away slowly, a little bit at a time?”

Eva shakes her head no for a while, staring at Ike until he’s so nervous and uncomfortable he’s ready to run from the room.

Finally, she continues. “Mother drank. She had a problem. Quite a problem. I mean, this was twenty-some-odd years ago and you didn’t confront this type of thing in the way people do today. I’m saying help just wasn’t as available back then. This was something you kept hidden from the rest of the world. It took place inside, deep in your house.”

Ike wishes she’d stop telling him this. He didn’t expect it of her and he doesn’t want to have to change his image of her, the picture he’s imagined of what she would be like if they ever sat down alone somewhere and had a conversation. He wonders how much longer the break can last.

When Eva speaks again, it’s like her voice has come back to earth, regained a lot of strength and composure on reentry.

“It’s funny, Ike,” she says. “I don’t know you well. I mean, I’m not sure if we’ve ever sat and spoken like this. But I’ve noticed you. Your routine, your work habits. I’m a very good supervisor, Ike. I know how all my people operate. You’re on the ball. You’re probably the best in here as far as taking the job seriously goes. You know, supervisor is not a position a lot of people would want. It’ll cost you friends. I don’t care who you are. You take off the uniform and put on the suit, they look at you differently. And that’s fine with me, because first of all, I’ve never been very close to anyone at work, and secondly, the job comes first. The job is number one.”