Esmé Wang - The Border of Paradise

“K-U-C-H-A-R-S-K-I.”

“No. There is no such name here.”

William. Poor, poor unlisted William. Poor, poor unlisted Nowaks. Gone and unlisted Mr. Kucharski.

Back at my seat, Randy looks up at me with his pencil still in his hand and the notebook still in his lap. I take great care not to look at the notebook directly. He has a lovely face. A beautiful face like a robin’s, black-eyed and bright.

“Good call?” he asks. He lifts his legs to let me slip by, and the backs of my knees rub against his stocking feet.

“No.”

“Me either. Cassie said that she’s not going to see me. First time we’re home since school starts and she’s not going to see me.” Randy closes his notebook. “Have you ever loved someone so much that you thought it would just kill you? That’s how I feel about Cassie.”

“What does that mean?”

“That it would kill me? I feel like my insides are being torn up. It’s like I’m having a heart attack. I don’t know. I feel like an abortion.” He opens his notebook again. “You should hear some of the things she said to me. I’m recording them for posterity.”

I wait for him to read them to me, but he doesn’t. Instead he reads to himself, silently, growing increasingly agitated.

“Maybe you should stop that,” I say. “It’s making you upset.”

“Ugh. I know. I can’t seem to stop.”

“Here. Give me your notebook. I won’t look at it; I’ll just keep it from you until we get to Sacramento.”

He looks at his notebook, which has a crisscrossing of pale lines across its front from creases, and a maladjusted spine of wire spirals. Quickly he hands it to me. I put it in my tote.

“Thanks,” he says.

“It’s no good to look at things that will just make you upset,” I say.

“I know, I know. I shouldn’t have called her. I knew that it wouldn’t go well. I’m a real idiot sometimes. Another problem with never seeing Tom anymore is that he’s never around to tell me that I’m being stupid. Hey,” he says, “don’t let me call her again, okay? I sort of feel like calling her again.”

“Why? What would you say?”

“I don’t know. Something to make her change her mind. I haven’t thought it through. I guess I just want to hear her voice.”

“Don’t call her again,” I say — and here is that hook of feeling again in me toward him, a complicated sharpness and softness at once — or maybe he just reminds me of a sillier, less highbrow version of William. At least they have the same passionate sense about them, and I can protect Randy; I can keep his notebook, I can keep him from calling his Cassie. What is it about these boys and their girls?

“It’s from being in the theater, I think,” he says. “Her voice, I mean. She knows how to use it. She wields it. She has a very vibrant voice, even on the telephone, even when she’s not talking loudly.”

“Don’t call her,” I say, “and don’t talk about her. You’re making yourself sick.”

He stares at the seat in front of him. He puts his thumb and forefinger together, forming a loop, and moves the tip from the right side of his closed mouth to the left side of his closed mouth. Then he gives me a fresh look.

“Let’s go back to the dining car,” he says. “I’m allergic to crying babies.”

As we walk back to the dining car I’m reminded of my father. “The left hind foot,” he says, “is the lucky one.” He’s separating the foot from the dead gray rabbit with a small knife at the wrist. He holds the foot in his naked hand and inserts the tip at the top, pulling it down to the dark pad. I am suddenly dizzy.

We’re in the middle of an empty dining car when Randy turns abruptly, stretching his arms overhead with a small grunting sound. The bottom of his T-shirt comes up, exposing an inch of white, with a path of thick hairs extending to the waist of his trousers. I don’t know how to feel about this, or how to feel when he reaches his hand out for me, walking me to the far end of the car beneath a swinging light. He says, his voice throatier now, “Sarah, I know this is weird, but… d’ya think you could see yourself loving me, if you were Cassie? I know you don’t really know me. If you did know me, would you love me? Because I don’t know if I can go on when I get back to Vacaville, and she won’t say boo to me, you know? It’ll just — it’s just going to kill me.” He reaches over and drags the backs of his fingers against the upper part of my arm. I can feel every finger on my skin. So it is impossible, and yet it is inevitable, that my hand goes to my tote bag and pulls out the bowie knife. I press the tip of it into his sternum.

He startles. We stand, a tableau, with the knife between us, large and with only one intent, until he finally says, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to put that away.”

But I keep my hand where it is. I think of pushing it through the layers of skin. What am I supposed to do? How do I keep myself safe? What will the consequences be if I take this knife and slide it down his chest with a terribly exact amount of pressure? After all, I have nowhere to go. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I would run. He is saying words, but I don’t know whether to believe him. I don’t know if anything he’s told me is true.

One time, I told myself as he left the convent. It will have to be only this one time. He’s married, and he has a child. Beg for forgiveness from Our Lord and Savior; pray that your stupidity doesn’t ruin you.

When I failed to bleed the next month, and then the next, I knew. I packed my things and told Sister Angeline that I would leave in the morning. I’d not yet begun to show, but my body had softened as my heart was hardening. I said nothing about the reasons for my departure. Sister Angeline said that she would pray for me, but as I left her small and austere room I could feel all prayers fading for me forever.

And when I later saw David, and when he gave me his largesse, I was making a deal with the devil; I was conscious of the bargain as I made it. I could never ask him to leave his wife and boy for me, because my only claim to him was our history and a few afternoons and now this child inside of me, and I asked, and still ask, myself why. What kind of insanity infected the life of the church I’d tilled for myself. Was it his familiarity? Was it the fact that I’d loved him once and could love him again, or that I actually did love him again, had never stopped loving him? Was it the wine that parted my legs? I don’t know. I hated him for it, but I hated myself more. He was only doing what he wanted, and who could blame a man for pursuing his desires? I should have, as the expression goes, known better.

My child was so well behaved even then, allowing me no morning sickness and barely any discomfort. The discomfort I did endure, such as back pain, I accepted and even welcomed as punishment. With every month I grew larger, the stretch marks on my soft belly snaking toward my sides. I was not one of those fallen women who could pretend that she was not pregnant — it was as evident to me as it was to everyone I encountered when I left the house to buy groceries or simply exercise my sore legs. Women stopped me in the street and gazed at my pregnant body, saying things like “I carried high like that” or “How far along are you?” No one asked, “Is this a bastard child?” I suppose because I seemed reputable enough, although this may not be a question that people ask if they are polite. I was completely aware of the baby every second of every day.