Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

“My art is beyond my control,” I said. There was a pause. “Well, I would like it,” my sister said, her voice smaller than usual, lower, “if it’s not too much to ask — I mean I know you can’t control inspiration — if just once, at some point, you could write a story in which an older sister is a good person.”

I shifted my galley.

I added a line. “ ‘You are incredibly beautiful,’ the law student said, shifting the knife in his pocket. ‘Falling asleep next to you would be a big big privilege.’ ”

I shrugged. “I’ll try,” I said.

“It’s okay if it’s dark,” my sister said. “But not depressing, okay? I’m interested in female protagonists who overcome adversity, like in a fantasy novel, and maybe feel a little, you know, joy.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

That week, my sister put an ad in the Denver paper (titled LYME PATIENTS!) that offered, for a one-dollar postage cost, copies of her template legal letter to anyone with Lyme disease, so that they could use the documents to get insurance coverage for IV antibiotics.

No one responded.

—

So this is the dark but joyful part of the story. The time changes, and the characters do, too — that is, I’m still around, but I’ve disguised myself so cunningly that not even the cleverest reader will recognize me.

It was six in the evening in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a month after the stock-market crash of 2008. Creative Writing Professor X, lecturer status on the faculty of an Ivy League university, was in her room on the fourth floor of the brownstone in which she and some journalists in their twenties rented space. Professor X was seated at a messy writing table, rereading the fifth paragraph of a manuscript titled “Jenn’s Day at the Mall,” which she had already read three times. Professor X had Lyme disease, and although she had done two years of daily intravenous antibiotics, she was not getting better. She was wearing leggings, two pairs of sweatpants, two thermal shirts, a sweater, a sweatshirt, a wool hat, and three pairs of socks. All her clothes were dirty. The left sleeves of the sweater, thermal shirt, and sweatshirt were pulled up to her elbow so that she could reach the lock mechanism on the plastic tube attached to her PICC line, which was hooked up to an IV bag. She adjusted the lock mechanism every few minutes and the liquid in the bag hanging from the IV pole dripped faster or slower, and every time Professor X adjusted the tightness of the lock, she stared at the clock in front of her, wrote down the position of the second hand, counted the drops that fell from the IV-pole bag in one minute, wrote down the number of drops, and then wrote the time again. On the desk in front of her were several dusty, unopened parcels, two empty coffee cups, a stack of bills, a landline phone, and dozens of empty packets of nicotine gum.

Professor X reread the fifth paragraph a fourth time: “ ‘Jenny, what a great sample sale,’ Miranda said. ‘All the samples are my size! I’m a two! I hope I’m not fat!’ ”

“Lively language here…” Professor X wrote in the margin. She paused, fighting back nausea. She took a sip of water, opened a bottle of prescription antifungals, and put five in her mouth.

X’s cell phone rang. X looked at the phone and, feeling sly, saw that it was the man assigned to her by the collection company, and did not answer.

She peered out the window. In the yard below she could see her landlord, a short, heavyset Haitian woman pruning flowers in her garden. Above the treetops, at eye level, a flock of crows sailed into blue sky through white clouds and telephone lines.

Professor X read the manuscript for some time.

Eventually, Professor X wrote on the manuscript in front of her, “I wonder what the dresses at the sample sale look like? I wish I could see them. Except I am not a size 2, ha ha! Maybe we could see a physical description?” She made a smiley face on the manuscript. Then she realized that the smiley face was a frown face. Then she realized, with fright, that what she’d written was illegible. The liquid dripping into her PICC line had increased speed. Feeling nauseated, Professor X leaned forward and vomited. The vomit was the color of the green cucumber drink she had drunk that afternoon, according to her doctor’s orders. Some vomit dripped down the desk’s front onto the floor.

A knock came at the door. Professor X glanced at the tube in her left arm. “Wait,” she said, but the door pushed open.

The landlord walked in.

The landlord was sixty-five years old, a single woman with two grown sons. She’d never married, worked for forty years in a factory, and saved enough money to buy a brownstone. The landlord was bipolar, sometimes bringing X fried plantains and chicken and sometimes entering her room without warning to yell at her. She reminded X of her mother.

The landlord held up a yogurt container. “I found this. Look!” She stepped into the room and shook the container.

X recognized the brand of yogurt that her roommate Y, a culture journalist for the Wall Street Journal, ate at night while watching Gossip Girl.

“I happened to be looking over the trash, to make sure it was ready for the garbagemen, and sitting right on top of your trash I found a recycle, again, I told you, if they find recycles they’ll fine!” She was yelling. “I don’t want them finding recycles in the trash in front of my house once they find it in the trash in front of your house, once they mark you, I want my privacy, when your skin is like mine they already watch you, I don’t want them in my—”

She looked at the girl, X. “Oh, you have your thing in.” She stared at the IV bag. “How long are you doing that for? You’ve had it in a long time now, haven’t you? When are you getting it out?”

“I don’t know,” Professor X said.

“Well, I hope you get it out soon, you—” The landlord stepped into X’s room. She looked at X’s unmade bed and messy desk. She saw the vomit. “What’s that ? Oh, you threw up. Are you sick? Why don’t you clean it up? You need to clean it, you can’t just leave it there. I just put on a new layer of varnish on those floors, just before you moved in—”

“I’m sorry,” Professor X said. “Look, it just happened, I’ll clean it, but look, I want to talk to you—”

“About what ? Don’t you get ornery with me. Are you going to be rude again?” The landlord stepped into the middle of X’s room.

“I thought,” Professor X said, looking at her PICC line and then the door, “I mean, we talked…This part of the house is my private space…”

“I knocked,” the landlord said, taking five steps forward, until she was two feet from X. “Don’t you try that with me. This is my house, and I just happened to be going upstairs to the roof to investigate some noises I heard up there, and I knocked and you said, ‘Come in.’ ”

X replied, as calmly as possible, that she had not said, “Come in.”

The landlord lifted the yogurt container. “Don’t tell me what I heard,” the landlord yelled. “Are you calling me a liar? I heard you say—

“Oh my God.” Her eyes shifted to the space heater on the floor. “Is that one of those things ? You know better, it’s in the lease, no space heaters! That will start a fire in my house! I know a woman who owned a house, one of her tenants used a space heater, her whole house burned down. That is what happens, I give you privacy and never go in your room and look what you do, I can’t trust you!”

Professor X unplugged the space heater.

“I’m sorry,” she said.