Helen Oyeyemi: Mr. Fox

“Katherine is improving in English literature,” I told her parents, because I felt I should say something. Then I hurried to my room. Katherine joined me when the clock struck seven. And there we stayed, safe from the clinking of glasses and the lilting sound of civilised conversation. Katherine had been teaching herself how to read Tarot, and she told my fortune, laying down card after card, telling me what each one was supposed to predict. They were all bad cards. A heart spiked with sword blades, a lightning-struck tower, a demon holding a man and a woman on the same chain, a hooded figure walking away from cups that lay empty on the ground. She was taken aback; she reshuffled the cards. “Let’s start again,” she said.

“Let’s not,” I said. “That’s cheating.” We put on shoes and coats and slid past the lounge and out the front door. In the garden at the side of the building, we knelt by the pond and fed the koi. There had been more rain earlier in the evening, so we turned up plenty of their favourite food without much effort. The fish surged to the surface of the water and ate the earthworms live from our fingers. Lamps lit the rosebushes as bright as day and sirens sounded and resounded, their screams strangely pure, choral. I had been all over this city on my own, looked down from its heights, looked up from its swarming pavements — I’d spoken to no one; everyone passed me by at a clip. It occurred to me that I was unhappy. And it didn’t feel so very terrible. No urgency, nothing. I could slip out of my life on a slow wave like this — it didn’t matter. I don’t have to be happy. All I have to do is hold on to something and wait.

Once Katherine was asleep I read and marked her illustrated history project on the Church of England. I had to give her a C because she spoilt an otherwise thoughtful piece by suddenly concluding that the Church of England was Anne Boleyn’s “fault.” A Church is not the “fault” of anybody. Next, I set about preparing a lesson on stars, galaxies, and planets, poring over fat books I had withdrawn from the public library on Katherine’s ticket. There was so much information. I had to select things that would interest her, place them strategically alongside the things that were bound to bore her, the figures and units of measurement, in such a way as to disarm her objections to the important facts. I didn’t finish until one a.m., and by then it was too late to reach for my typewriter and add to the other pages I had been accumulating. So I sat beside the typewriter in the dark, and I pretended that I was working at it; then I pretended that all the work was finished, and I touched the keys that would make the page say

THE END THE END THE END

November 9th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Mary,

Many thanks for your letter of November 1st. Here is what I propose: to have my secretary wait for you this Saturday at one p.m., in order to collect the pages you want me to look at, and to buy you a consolatory lunch if you’re hungry. Salmagundi, on Lexington and 61st, is a personal favourite of mine — if you object to the time, place, date, or all three, then please say so by return. Otherwise, save your stationery.

Yours most chastened,

The abominable, contemptible, vile,execrable, etc.,

Mr. Fox

177 West 77th Street,

Apartment 25

New York City

I telephoned Katherine at the Long Island house. Mitzi answered, and I told her that this was an impromptu French oral examination, to keep Katherine’s skills elastic.

“Bonjour,” Katherine said, when she came to the phone. She was slightly out of breath — all that tennis. “Comment ça va?”

“Got a letter from Mr. Fox,” I said.

She laughed, and I heard her clap her hands. “What did he say? Did he sock it to you?”

She stopped laughing as she soaked up the realization that I couldn’t speak. I was in too much of a state.

Once I’d recovered I asked, “Why did you send it, Katherine?”

“I just thought it would be fun.” As she spoke I pictured her standing before me, eyeing me with all the defiance of Lucifer. In a smaller, meeker voice she said, “Stop hating me. . Who is he, anyway?”

“Just a man,” I said. In my mind I was already reorganizing the contents of the black folder. I’d kept working on the stories, and they were stronger now, and better; I was sure of it. It was just as well he hadn’t met me at the Mercier.

On Saturday afternoon I stood paralysed on the pavement outside the restaurant, which had these smart black-andsilver revolving doors; every time someone stepped into them I knew I was meant to take the next empty space and push myself into the lobby. But when I finally did I found that I couldn’t stop pushing at the door until I had spun back out onto the street again. I tried to be firm with myself, but with each glimpse of the restaurant full of marble and women genteelly eating salad, I lost my nerve to join them and ran inside the doors like a rodent in a glass maze. On the corner a man in a suit was standing beside an apple cart. “Apples,” he said. “Getcha apples!” No one was buying, so he began juggling them. “Look what I’ve sunk to,” he sang. “God, I hate these apples. I’d rather starve to death than eat these apples, tra la la.” He was a tenor. Finally he started telling the people passing that he had kids at home. Someone suggested he feed the apples to his kids. He caught my eye. “You’re my witness. When you’re out of work people think they can talk to you anyhow!” I nodded and went back in for another bout with the revolving doors. By now people trying to enter the restaurant from the street were asking me if I was crazy or what; the fifth time I saw the maître d’ frowning menacingly, and the sixth time a woman came to meet me out on the street. She seized my arm as if I was a naughty child about to scamper off somewhere. “That’s enough of that,” she said. “You’ll tire yourself out.”

I coughed out an “Ouch, do you mind?” and hoped the apple seller wasn’t looking. The woman’s grip was surprisingly strong. She wore a brown skirt suit and a tiny brown hat tipped coquettishly over one eye.

“Let go of me,” I said.

When she didn’t, I pleaded, “I’m meeting someone.”

“Who?” she asked.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business—”

She shook me a little. “Mr. Fox’s secretary,” I said. “I’m meeting Mr. Fox’s secretary.”

“Then it’s just as well, isn’t it, that I’m her.”

She released me at last, and we stood nose to nose. I glared, and she just looked back with an air of melancholy.

“You’d better prove it,” I said. For some reason, I’d thought the secretary would be a man.

“You’re. . Mary Foxe?” she said, looking me over.

“I’m Mary Foxe,” I said.

The woman produced an envelope from her handbag, pulled my letter out of it, and showed me.

Abominable Mr. Fox,

I read, then winced, and returned it to her, apologizing. She said: “Don’t apologise; I think it’s funny.” But she didn’t laugh, or even smile.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said.

I handed her the black folder full of stories, and I asked her what Mr. Fox was like.