Rachel Cantor - Good on Paper

He didn’t plan this, I murmured. Tink is here. Her suitcase. Her Nancy Drews.

It’s kidnapping, Shira. If Ahmad is not Andi’s natural or legal father, he has no right to take her out of the house without permission.

He always takes her out without permission.

This is different.

I can’t send the police after Ahmad! I mumbled. That would be crazy!

But you just said …

I can’t. He couldn’t.

Benny mumbled thanks into the phone, then came to sit with me.

I can’t think about this, I said, shaking my head.

You have to.

Andi’s fine, she has to be. Duplicate passport, on a plane to Karachi, my daughter in purdah. Growing up without me, hating me, blaming me .

You have to call him, Benny said.

He won’t answer, I murmured, looking at my hands. I tried.

Then leave him a message. Convince him to come back.

I hate him, I said. I never want to see him again.

He’s your friend, Benny said.

He’s not my friend, he’s never been my friend. He won’t pick up — I’ve tried.

Take my phone. Call him. He won’t recognize the number. And if he doesn’t pick up, leave a message.

I called him a pathetic, horrible man. I hit him, Benny! I said he deserved to lose Roger, he deserved to lose his sons.

No one deserves to lose a child, Benny said.

No, I said.

I sat a while, holding Benny’s hand, squeezing it.

That’s what I have to tell him, isn’t it? I asked.

Benny nodded.

I took his phone.

It went to voicemail.

I took a deep breath. The deepest possible breath.

Ahmad, I said. You need to bring our baby home. You’re scaring her — she can’t understand what’s happening. You can’t separate us, you can’t keep us apart. You can’t keep a child from her mother, no matter what you think of me. If you do this, you’ll be no better than Mirabella. Think about it: Mirabella! Think about what she’s done to you! Are you willing to do that to me, to bring more suffering like that into the world? You can’t do that to me, or Andi. You can’t do that and think you’re better than she is, or better than me. Andi needs her mommy. Oh, please, Ahmad! I feel like I’m bleeding to death. Bring her back to me!

I looked at Benny, my hands holding my mouth, as if to keep the hurt inside. He took the phone from my hand.

You did good, he said. You did real, real good.

I shook my head. I hadn’t. To melt that man’s heart I would have needed words of fire; all I had were words of stone.

I’d like to put my arm around you, Benny said, looking miserable, but I don’t think I should.

I looked up at him. Then I was crying into his chest, his hands stroking my hair, the line of my jaw. I don’t know if he moved to me or I to him, but we were at it again, Benny murmuring my name, I clawing at his buttons. As our clothes came off in a ritual stream to my bedroom, I knew that I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t care: I might disappear, my insides might evaporate if not tamped down by Benny’s loving hands.

I tried to imagine my daughter, safely sleeping; I moved my body as expected, whispered Benny’s name, grateful for his tender mercies, thought of Esther’s madness when she lost her child, thought maybe my madness wasn’t so bad. As Benny rocked into me, I thought of flying, of being lifted despite myself — as in that Celan fragment, through the nothingness we reached each other —of flying across the abyss, as if toward him, naked like a newborn, a flying girl, like Esther’s flying girl.

As Benny moaned, I stared past his shoulder at his skullcap, Mother Mary blue, on my clock radio, the clock blinking twelve noon, twelve noon, though it was well past midnight.

Two flying girls. Two girls in Romei’s mirror, one reflecting the other.

Oh my God, I said, pushing Benny off of me. No! Jesus!

Shira! he half shouted, his coital dream cracked open like a cantaloupe.

You knew! I said, staring at him, horrified. All along, you knew!

One flying girl, there had only ever been one flying girl .

With the precision of film rolling backward, the pieces shot back into place, the shattering of my life became whole.

I tried to get Benny to leave, but he wouldn’t. I accused him of being Romei’s patsy, his puppet, his hired thug. Romei was bankrolling Gilgul , wasn’t he? Benny would do anything for that magazine! He’d fuck me to get information about my fucking so Romei could put it in a scene where he fucks his wife! Romei was a sick bastard, they both were! Benny had to get the hell out of my house, but he wouldn’t.

When I know you’re okay, he said, holding the sheet up to his long, skinny chest, reminding me that I was naked before him, flailing and shouting.

When you’re okay . When Andi was home, is what he meant. Andi!

I sunk back onto the edge of the bed.

Shira, Benny said, putting his hand, always warm, on my shoulder. I shook him off.

Get out of my bed, I said. I don’t care where you go, just get out of my bed.

I love you, he said.

Liar, I said, but he didn’t move, so I grabbed the nearest item of clothing, which was his shirt, and slammed the door behind me, focused my rage on Romei. I wrote him a fax in big black letters: Let me guess! I wrote. The great Romei, the ever glorious, ever victorious Romei, wants to be a superhero and give the daughter back to the mother. Only the mother doesn’t care and the daughter won’t go willingly — he knows this because Benny’s told him so — so he uses story, the daughter’s medium, to capture her attention, to try to steal her empathy. He uses her words, her images to bring the story closer, to convince her she’s “just like” her mother. His calculus is simple: daughter forgives mother, mother forgives Romei, no one has to repent, everyone sleeps cozy at night. Right? Wrong!

I sent the fax and stared at the hateful machine, which had only brought lies into my home when I had dared hope for something more, and realized: it had been Romei’s intention to break me. You think it’s not possible to create intimacy between author and reader? You think translation is shameful and shamful, the traduttore always traditore ? Let’s put my money where your mouth is. I’ll write a great, groundbreaking book, which you’ll want more than anything to share with the world — only you won’t be able to, I’ll make sure you can’t: the book will be untranslatable, every word of it untranslatable! You’ll try, translator SuperTemp, you’ll do everything you can to prove yourself wrong, you’ll sweat and strain. You’ll lose sleep and develop all manner of theory — because you will have decided that you want that intimacy. Author-reader, translator-author, woman-man, mother-daughter — there is no difference, once you accept what they have in common, once you decide they’re possible, desirable, worth the effort and risk.

Horrible man!

But he wouldn’t give up, would he? Men like Romei don’t take no for an answer. He’d keep sending pages! They’d spill out onto the floor, an infinitude of A4, taking over the study, slipping under the curtained door, into the kitchen, out the window, onto the street, through bus doors, onto the laps of dockworkers, au pairs … One reads how Eleanor changed her name to Esther, to celebrate, or at least mark, her new life — or, more likely, took her Hebrew name when she realized that, like it or not, her new life had begun.