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  I open the door. Nobody looks up except Louie. Only two other tables are occupied. A woman along the side under the window is stirring espresso and writing in a notebook. A large black-bearded man is slurping gazpacho and reading a newspaper propped up against the sugar shaker. The newspaper is printed in Arabic. Next to the gleaming coffee machines a handful of waiters are murmuring in Spanish or maybe Catalan. They’re an interchangeable group, dark-haired, slim-hipped, in black trousers and white shirts. They’re too young to be the same waiters who served me iced tea and ginger parfaits back when I was an undergrad. Yet they look exactly the same.

  As, dammit, does Louie. Handsome and adorable with his wide-eyed startled innocence. This is not the face of a liar and a cheat you wouldn’t buy a used car from. His appeal isn’t even watered down by the fact of Jake. Leg trouble and parent trouble, Cheryl trouble, and impending trouble with me have left no lines on his velvet brow. He’s not grown fat being waited upon by his mother, missing the exercise he gets along his route, missing the calisthenics in my bed. Why am I recording this lack of change now, I wonder, since I saw him only two days ago. But then it was the child who grabbed my attention, and the movement of Louie’s hands graceful as Javanese shadow puppets as they signed to this child became the hypnotist’s ball I needed to focus on.

  “Katinka,” Louie says, and the delight on his face is something Laurence Olivier might have found hard to approximate. He starts to get up.

  “Don’t get up,” I say. I pull out the chair opposite him. I plunk myself down.

  He leans forward, his lips beginning to form one of his earthmoving kisses.

  I avert my face.

  “Uh oh,” Louie says.

  One of the slim-hipped waiters glides over to take our order. Up close I notice that he is not that young. Though who is anymore, except for Louie’s knee-weakening boyishness. I harden my heart.

  While we wait for our coffee, I think how to proceed. How do I lead up to this? Now Louie is studying the menu with the kind of intensity I’ve only seen on Jake. But it’s pretty clear Louie’s is a delaying tactic since we’ve already put our orders in. It’s pretty clear Louie needs something to hide behind.

  He pokes out from behind his menu, which nevertheless is still covering his mouth. “Remember Chris Smith?” he asks. “The guy who shared my hospital room?”

  I nod.

  “The one who was circumcised?”

  “Of course I remember,” I say. “It was only a couple of weeks ago. Besides,” I add pointedly, “I never forget a name or a face.” Does his own face which I have committed to my fabulous memory (along with selected body parts) look a little stunned? Or am I imagining this?

  “At any rate,” he goes on, “he’s getting married in a month. He sent an invitation, addressed to me and guest. How about it Katinka?”

  “You’re inviting me as the guest?”

  He nods.

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “As your date?”

  “Of course, as my date.” He’s getting exasperated, explaining to someone with a learning disability what is obvious. “You’re my girl, you know.”

  This touches me more than I care to admit, so much in fact that I don’t even bother to amend “girl” to woman. I feel my resolve starting to melt. Am I your girl? I want to ask. And if so, what are the components of that possessive pronoun? The standard-issue forsaking all others, the mutual revelations of past and (in comparison to the present) failed loves, the vows of monogamy, the pledges of honesty? I’m afraid of what I might say, so I don’t say anything. The silence stretches to such a level of discomfort that Louie adds, “Who else would I take?”

  A tactical error. Who else, indeed. With that question I am set back on course.

  “Please go with me,” he implores.

  “It depends.”

  Before he can ask on what, our cappuccinos arrive. I lick off a clot of steamed milk. I spoon up the rest until all that is left is a surface of black coffee dotted with a few drifts of foam like floating islands. Louie, on the other hand, seems to be saving his froth for last. In Maine we used to have philosophical arguments over whether to crack open the lobster tail first or hold off till the end. You can tell a lot about a person by the order in which he eats. For instance, do you start at the widest arc of a pie or its narrowest point? Studies have probably been made of this.

  Now Louie seems to be making a study of me. Never mind the mechanics of coffee and my own reluctance to get to the point, Louie can hold on to a thread. “Depends on what?” he asks.

  It depends on the right answer, I want to coach, though given the facts—the minivan, the kid—the odds aren’t good. Less good even than for the lottery and its windfall of megabucks. Still, hit the jackpot and you win the refrigerator, the trip to Hawaii, and the grand prize of Katinka O’Toole. Answer wrong … I plunge right in. “I saw you Saturday, at the International House of Pancakes.”

  “You did?” he asks. He picks up the menu again and keeps staring at the list of coffees as if they’re troops he can summon to surround the enemy.

  “You were with a little boy.”

  “I was?” he says.

  “I think he was deaf. Or at least,” I search my internal dictionary of politically correct terminology and come up with: “hearing impaired.”

  “He was deaf. He is deaf.” His voice is flat. The voice of someone surrendering to defeat. His body crumples in on itself like buildings that have been wired to implode.

  “Who is he?” I persist.

  “Tony …”

  “Tony who?” I ask. I feel as if I’ve been stranded in the middle of one of Max’s knock-knock jokes.

  “Tony …” Louie’s voice trails off. He spins his fingers in the air. Is he signing a name?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I point to his hands. “A bird, a plane. It’s superman?”

  “Not funny, Katinka.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Oh, brother …”

  He sits up, although his eyes are now riveted on a little basket of Sweet ’n Low. “Actually, he’s my brother …”

  Sure, as in “He ain’t heavy, Father.” I may come from Maine, not exactly the show-me state, but I’m no bumpkin. “Don’t insult my intelligence. Rosalie’s well beyond the age for a ten-year-old. You don’t have a little brother, Louie.” Did Louie hit his head when he fell on the ice and broke his leg in three places? Did some part of his brain disconnect and float away?

  “Not that, Katinka. The Big Brother program. You know the one they’re always promoting on TV.”

  I am incredulous. Many’s the time we’ve watched those public service announcements tangled postcoitally in one or another set of my carefully selected sheets. It’s a pretty easy transition from TV to speaking of big brothers … “You mean this is something you’ve never bothered to tell me. That you’re a big brother to a little brother who’s deaf ? Who you learned sign language for? Who you spend a lot of time with?”

  Louie is now looking as if he’s just confessed to a crime rather than a generous act of public service. He straightens all the packets of Sweet ’n Low so their corners line up. He shifts the salt and pepper shakers and the little bottle of Tabasco so they form a triangle. He folds his napkin into a precise square and wedges it under the wobbly table leg. Order in the face of chaos.

  Which is something I understand though a compulsion for geometry does little to neaten your basic messy world, a world now spiraling out of control. “Louie,” I say, and my voice, surprising me, is not unkind.

  “So much is at stake,” he says.

  “I agree,” I say.

  “I feel like such a jerk,” he says.

  “I won’t disagree, Louie. Just tell me,” I urge.

  “To think,” he goes on, “I made up such a stupid story for someone who’s so smart. For someone I care so much about. For you who …”

  “Who what?”

 
He shrugs. His shoulders go limp. He’s collapsed so far down in his seat he could be Daniella or, more appropriate, a half-empty sack of mail.

  “Go on,” I say.

  The words come out in a rush: “I didn’t tell you because I was so ashamed. Because once we started, from that first kiss, I felt like there was no stopping us as long as I didn’t rock the boat. With you everything was so exciting, so much fun. I felt interesting, free, not just a mailman with a lot of—well—responsibilities. Not just someone whose life was set, whose future was predictable. Remember those flowers that were served at Gregory’s party? I never knew such things existed. You ate one. I didn’t, but then I thought that next time I would. That I could. That eating a flower would be something I could do. That with you I could have adventures.” He pauses. Takes a ragged breath. “I was afraid to tell you in the beginning because I figured you wouldn’t even consider seeing me. And then later—I wanted to. I knew I had to. But I was afraid of losing you …”

  “Louie,” I say. “Tell me what?” I must be nearly yelling because the man looks up from his Arabic newspaper and the woman freezes her coffee cup in midair. Who is this crazy woman making a scene in such a sanctuary? they seem to say. I lower my voice. “Please, Louie.”

  “Okay, okay. Tony … he’s my son.”

  “Your son?” I gasp. The appropriately hammy response to a soap opera or some romance novel I’m in the middle of. I picture the photograph in Louie’s hospital room, the child on the other side of the restaurant. This is something that underneath the layers of denial, the fairy tales of my own making, I have perhaps always suspected. You jerk, I think. You jerk, I want to say. And yet my development is arrested somewhere along the path from girlfriend to antagonist because what comes out is, “He’s beautiful.”

  “Which doesn’t make it easier.”

  “It?”

  “Everything. Having Tony. The guilt. His handicap. Every time I look at him—it’s so painful.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Not telling me spoils everything between us.”

  “No need to rub it in. The story of my life.” Louis groans. “I just wanted to keep things the way they were. I was ashamed. Afraid you’d change your mind about me.”

  “Because of your lie or because of your son?”

  “Both.” He nods. “I was—I am—afraid that you’d look down at me. That I wouldn’t have a chance.”

  “A chance at what?”

  “At you. A classy college girl like you.”

  “Class!” I spit out the word. “Oh, Louie, I hate when you do that,” I say. “It’s not class. It’s the lies. The lack of trust.” I go on. “But you must realize that it’s the secret about your son that hurts the most. The simple fact of having a son is not necessarily the end of a relationship. You know how I feel about Max.”

  “But Max is different. He’s perfect.”

  Max is perfect, I think. “No one is perfect,” I say.

  “Tony is deaf.”

  “That’s not the issue. It’s not telling the truth.”

  “I know that, Katinka. I went to a parochial school. I was taught lying is a sin. Believe me, I don’t make a habit of it. When I wrote that story for you in class? Well, I guess I kind of tricked myself into thinking the story was really my life. Was not a lie, but—well— fiction. For a while, I even started to believe it. In class. With you. I guess that’s why I liked writing so much. You can mess with the facts, put yourself in a better light. The real story, Tony’s deafness, is so bad I wanted to change it. It’s changed my whole life.” He pauses. “My mother says it’s a sign. A punishment.”

  “A punishment for what?”

  “For being young and stupid. For not being a good Catholic. For wanting an abortion. For not doing the right thing by Cheryl. For not being ready to settle down. For thinking that, for imagining that you …” He hits his fist against the table. “My mother says I’ve got just what I deserve.”

  “And what do you think?” I ask, recoiling from a vocabulary belonging less to a writer, more to a therapist.

  “That she’s right. That I’m being punished. Still am being punished. Look at you and me. It was silly to hope. I should have figured it wouldn’t work out. The differences between us. Plus the way I lied. About the abortion. About everything. We did intend to have the abortion. We were in the doctor’s waiting room when Cheryl changed her mind. I tried to convince her to go through with it. She wouldn’t listen …”

  I stare at Louie. He is a study in misery. His hands grasp his cup so tightly, it looks like it might break.

  “I baby-sit Tony every Wednesday. Cheryl’s taking classes at night to get her RN. We both went to school to learn sign language. You wouldn’t believe the expenses for Tony, special classes, tutors. One of the reasons why I am still living at home.”

  “In addition to your mother’s manicotti.” It’s a pathetic stab at levity.

  Which he ignores. “At first Cheryl wanted us to get married— before we knew about Tony’s deafness. Our parents agreed. But there was so much I wanted to do. I even thought maybe I could go to college. Meet a different sort of girl. After Tony was diagnosed, I ended up having to quit school anyway. To go to work. After a while I figured maybe Cheryl and I might as well marry. Then it was she who didn’t want to. Don’t do me any favors, she said. Don’t feel you have to do your duty by me. I was like a robot going through my life. Until I met you, Katinka.”

  The waiter brings the check. He tucks it under the salt shaker, ruining Louie’s triangle. Louie doesn’t notice. Straightening bottles of condiments will not straighten Louie’s tangled web. “Now I’ve lost you, Katinka.”

  About that, I’m not yet sure. We’ve probably lost each other, though I’m not ready to take any bets. But if he’s lost me, maybe Cheryl will be the consolation prize. Sometimes you can’t use the refrigerator. Or the trip to Hawaii is scheduled wrong. Sometimes you’re happier with the toaster oven or the microwave.

  Louie reaches over and touches my hand. He gives a little squeeze. “You know Katinka, I really like your stories. If I was a college kid, I would have loved to be in your class.”

  I pull my hand out from under his and give his a quick pat, a motherly pat, a teacherly pat, devoid, I hope, of sexual content. I busy myself blotting puddles of coffee on the black marble tabletop. Louie’s hand lies pale and forlorn like the cheese that stood alone. Is it my imagination or are his fingers trembling slightly?

  Louie takes his hand from the table and reaches inside his pocket. He brings out his wallet and a roll of stamps.

  “Hey, I’ve got a present for you,” he says.

  “I can’t be bought.”

  “That’s pretty clear,” he says. “But from the tone of your voice on the phone when you set up this meeting … I guess I was desperate.” He opens his fist and holds out the roll which, when I take them, I realize are Love stamps.

  “I gather these didn’t just happen to be at the top of the box?”

  “You gather right. I nixed the Stars and Stripes, the sheets of Marilyn Monroe, tons of Nixon stamps that nobody in Cambridge would touch with a ten-foot pole.”

  “Under the circumstances, I better give these back.”

  “Oh, don’t Katinka,” Louie implores, and his voice cracks.

  My fingers fold over the stamps. An involuntary motion since I know they’re a hot potato I need to unload.

  “What about Chris Smith’s invitation?” Louie asks, pressing his luck.

  I shake my head. “Are you sleeping with Cheryl?” I ask.

  “No,” he says.

  “Really?”

  “I did,” he admits. “We’d be feeling kind of lonely, sad. Worried about our kid. It wasn’t like with you. No stars or anything. And since I’ve been with you, I’ve been—what’s the word?—monogamous.”

  Which is more than I’ve been since I’ve been with you, I think. I feel a
twinge of guilt. I do have my secrets, I remind myself, though secrets are not lies. Not until Louie asks me who I’m sleeping with. Why doesn’t he ask me? I wonder. Is he too egotistical to entertain the possibility of someone else. Or too modest to presume? I am so confused. Can I even believe Louie when he tells me he’s not sleeping with Cheryl?

  “What about us?” he asks now.

  “I don’t know. I am so confused.”

  “I don’t blame you, Katinka, if you never wanted to see me again. If you went so far as to move away to avoid me even bringing you your mail. You don’t need to tell me I’m in the market for a heavy dose of reality. Why, I’m so crazy that Chris Smith’s invitation got me to thinking …”

  This is a sentence Louie has the sense not to finish. “You couldn’t possibly imagine,” I begin, then stop. But of course this, along with the Nobel in literature and Teacher of the Year, is something I have been imagining. I’ve made a logical leap from two bodies naked in bed to a bride and groom on top of a wedding cake. Ignoring the fact that the groom is wearing a mailman’s uniform and is lying through his pearly teeth. Ignoring the fact that the groom prizes the bride for her differences from him—not a foundation to build a marriage on. Ignoring the fact that the bride prizes the groom for the fleshly incarnation of something you can see in certain magazines. Ignoring the fact that all these unsuitable alliances can end in tragedy, An American Tragedy. Or if not tragedy mere unhappiness, which is bad enough. I shudder. I look at Louie. What to do? For a writer who is supposed to be a keen observer of human nature, I’m pretty much at a loss. All I know is—as one of Max’s classmates will soon say—there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark. “I’m not sure what to do or what I believe,” I admit, “only that there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know that’s from Hamlet, Katinka.”

  “I wouldn’t have had a doubt,” I say though I am not exactly telling the truth. I am glad he knows Hamlet. It lifts my heart the way finding out he was a library user once did. I signal the waiter, who starts to detach himself from his cluster of clones.