Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

“Worse than I thought,” Randy says to the back of my head, as my forehead is pressed against the glass. I begin to hiccup. “Ten P.M.”

I’m still thinking about the voice, the top of the train car; thinking about where the voice came from and if every car could hear it, what made the voice scratchy. Hiccup. I can’t wonder about too many of these things or I’ll make myself crazy.

Randy says, “I have a trick for the hiccups.”

Cold glass, cold heart.

“What you do,” he says, “is to say the name of someone you love, but really pissy, like they’re in trouble or you’re angry with them.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Why? Just someone. Anyone. It doesn’t have to be, like, a romantic thing.”

“No.”

“Hey. Sarah. I don’t want to be… presumptuous. But if you don’t have a place to stay — you can stay with me, if you want. We have a spare bedroom, and I doubt my parents would mind. I can do that, if you want.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“My mother,” I say, “would hate it.”

He pauses. “We could call your mother. I could explain, or you could explain, and put me on the phone.”

“She barely speaks English.”

“Oh.”

“I told you. It’s complicated.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“I lied. My mother is dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was terrible.”

“I’m sorry.”

Still talking into the window, I say, “Tell me about your brothers and sisters.”

“Sure. I’ve got a brother who’s older, one younger brother, and three younger sisters. The littlest sister is about six or so, though I may have missed a birthday recently. I call them the Ghastly Trio. In good fun, of course.”

“Why ghastly?”

“Oh, because they’re really well behaved. Impossibly so. Do you want to hear a story?”

I move from the window, turning abruptly to face him. “Yes.”

The train car lights up white, and the thunder sounds with frightening enthusiasm. “Um. Okay. Christmas is a big deal in the O’Brien household. My mom goes crazy over decorations. I always complain, because she almost kills herself doing it, but everyone would secretly have a meltdown if she stopped. This is actually the first year I’m not going to be around to see her put it all together, because of school. Anyway, so one year my brother Thomas — Tom, the older one — thought it would be hilarious if he woke up really early one morning and took the good stuff out of the girls’ stockings and put lumps of coal in them. I don’t even know where he got the coal. It’s not like we grill or anything. Are you getting this?”

I nod. I know a little about Christmas.

“I didn’t know about this, by the way. I would have never let him do it. Anyway, so it’s Christmas morning, la-di-da, and we come into the living room and people are going to their stockings. Bridget is the first one to go into hers, which my mother had hand-embroidered with a small Nativity scene when Bridget was in the womb, and Bridget pulls out this coal. She stares at it and then she looks up and says, really bravely, ‘Well, I perhaps put my elbows on the table more than I should have this year.’”

“What did the other girls do?”

“I don’t remember, exactly. I just remember Bridget, who was eight at the time, with a very thoughtful, serious look on her face and saying that she put her elbows on the table too much. Who does that? Even Tom felt bad when she did that. It was worse, he told me later, than if she’d just cried like a normal kid. So I call them the Ghastly Trio. They love each other.”

“I like that story.”

“Yeah. I decided when I started college that the only thing that I’d actually kill anyone over are my siblings. But especially my sisters. I see the way girls get treated at school, with those macho shitheads…” He stops. “Be right back.” He gets up. I notice that he brings his rucksack as he heads out of our car, probably so that I won’t read his notebook.

I look around. Two women, presumably strangers from the looks of their disinterest in each other, walk in and settle themselves. One reads a magazine. We had one magazine in the house: a fashion magazine called Luxe that Ma saved from the pre-Polk Valley days. This one looks to be about the same — a slim woman in a strange arrangement on the cover, wearing a fur coat and heels. My dress is childish in comparison with the clothes worn by the women in long coats on the train — my clothes with the floral print, the silly lace collar. The reader looks up at me and glares.

Randy comes back, violently plunks his rucksack on the floor, and sits down. I know boys and their foul moods, so I keep quiet and look out the window at some men who are standing around in the rain in slickers and gesturing.

Finally Randy says, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Okay.”

“Why do girls act like they care— throw themselves all over you to show that they care — and then! And they say that guys are the assholes. I’m the nicest guy on the West Coast, probably the country.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He evacuates his notebook and a stubby pencil from his rucksack and begins to write, vigorously, before he says, “I called her, is all.”

“On the telephone?”

“Yes. On the telephone. This is a train with a pay phone in it. Fourth car, if you want to call your… whoever you need to call.”

“Okay.”

“Pay phone. You need coins?” He digs into his pocket and hands me a few. His hand is warm and soft like Sarah’s belly. “You use these in the little slot.”

“Okay.”

He goes back to writing.

“Randy?”

“Yeah?”

“What if you don’t know the number of the place you’re trying to call?”

“Um. Dial zero for the operator. Give her the name and city, and she’ll connect you.” He adds, “Godspeed.”

The phone is demarcated in the fourth car with a sign that reads PHONE at the top of a small booth with no door and no privacy. Already someone — a small, compact brown-haired girl with a cap on — is in it, and when I awkwardly stand around waiting she gives me a sharp look and covers the receiver with her hand. A few minutes later she hangs the phone vertically on its hook before adjusting her cap so that the brim is low over her eyes — I don’t think she can even see — and then she scoots out of the booth. The slot is there, just like Randy said it would be. I look at the coins in my hand. I sit in the booth, folding my long legs in, and I pick up the receiver, which is still warm from the other girl’s hand. I put in my coin — do I put the other one in now, or later? The other one I return to my pocket. The number is 0 for Operator.

“Operator.”

“Hi.”

“Yes?”

“I’d like the phone number for the Nowak family. They live in Polk Valley.”

She pauses. I envision an enormous book on her lap, her fingers flipping heavy pages. A book with all the phone numbers in the world must be like an atlas of epic proportions.

Says the woman, “Unlisted.”

“Unlisted?”

“No number. This number can’t be found.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Some people ask to have their numbers unlisted, so they can’t be called by people who don’t know them. Some people don’t have phone numbers.”

“But I know them.”

She sighs. “That doesn’t do anything for you, hon.”

“Oh. What about Mr. Kucharski? In Sacramento?”

Another pause. “Also unlisted.”