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How to Disappear Completely
The most sinister part of it really, and also the most baffling, is that the making of tiny origami swans from post-it notes was the only thing that got Amelia through the day anymore. She folded one swan every hour on the half hour. That was nine swans a day (she even folded one at lunch, at one-thirty, when she carefully avoided soiling the tiny paper bird with diet coke drips or peanut-butter-sandwich crumbs). Nine swans a day. Forty-five swans a week. It got too depressing to count swans at a timespan greater than that. Amelia had worked at this job for three months, though, and she started with the swans on the fifth day. She had a drawer full of little yellow swans now. She remembered when there were only a few scattered at the bottom. Now the swans had completely taken over the drawer, which was ostensibly meant for Amelia's files of personal notes for her later reference.
Amelia did not take personal notes for her later reference. She took offense at the idea that maybe she was supposed to take such notes. This job was bad enough, what with the constant phone-answering and the way Tal looked at her as though she were another greige office machine that beeped and caused problems once every three weeks or so. Personal notes! Personal! The word made Amelia sneer. It implied that Amelia's personal life began and ended with this job. That anything about this job could be considered personal was just disgusting. What was she supposed to write, anyway? "Tal likes his coffee with sugar, no milk, and very hot, served in the green mug. Tal likes his phone answered on the second ring and without ever using the words "hello," "hi," "um," or "mister." Tal needs to feel utterly adored, revered, and respected, so smile at him a lot and never make faces or try to get away if he smells."
Those were things Amelia could remember.
The swans were kind of a personal note for later reference, anyway. Maybe less a note than an aside. A postscript even.
Every day after work, Amelia trudged mournfully to the subway, too weary and defeated to bother quickly weaving between the slow people the way she did in the morning or on weekends. She still hated the slow people, but it somehow felt better to suffer them at this hour. Especially in the winter. Sometimes, she didn't even button up her coat, and allowed the cold wind to beat against her body. It was usually strong enough to just barely ripple the small rolls of fat beneath her sweater. She noticed when this happened and found a smug satisfaction in how much she loathed it and how it just emphasized what a heinous life she was leading. She closed her eyes and walked in a straight line on the crowded sidewalk, half hoping and half hoping-not that another pedestrian would run into her and cause her to fall flat on her face on the icy concrete.
It would be something, at least.
When Amelia came home from work, she immediately made tea. It was her only vice. She smiled at the idea of tea being a vice. She liked to watch the water boil. She liked to watch the tea steep, making angry, quiet clouds of discordant brown in the clear water. Her own little oil spills, and she could imbibe them. She even liked to burn her tongue.
Amelia's apartment was in East New York, in the basement of a family's house. It wasn't bad--plenty of the men Amelia met at bars and accompanied home had apartments that were far worse. Hers was kind of big, at least, though the ceilings were disconcertingly low. The worst part was that the walls were a garish hot pink, and obviously painted with spray paint. The pink only emphasized the many cracks that climbed the walls like black, leafless ivy. But it wasn't too bad. Being at the apartment wasn't nearly as bad as being at work, Amelia thought; it had the distinct advantage of not requiring her to answer a ringing phone. At home, Amelia let the phone ring and ring. She was fairly sure that it was a wrong number, anyway.
****
It was in late March when she met him.
He sat across the aisle from her. She had stayed late at work--unusual for her--and as sort of a reward, the train was much less crowded than it was at six. She recognized him from the elevator and hoped he wouldn't recognize her. He was part of the pack that got off on 32. She always wondered what company was there, but never cared enough to find out. He always looked to her like the kind of man who always stayed late at work. Apparently, he was. The kind of man whose regular hours were 9 to 8 or even 9 to 9. He wore a grey suit and moved his gaze almost ruefully around the subway car, perusing the ads, the other passengers. Perusing her. Amelia caught his glance twice before she tightened her lips into a half-smile and raised her eyebrows. He started a little, and raised his eyebrows back at her. It was a look of recognition, she guessed. She felt a little awkward. That was all for the first day.
Amelia saw him in a real-life, out-of-work context again, by strange coincidence, in the morning three days later. This time it was on the street. She noticed him as he stood in line to buy coffee from a cart on the street. She looked down and continued walking to the building where they both worked, her heels clicking smartly on the icy pavement, as though she were walking with aplomb and confidence.
Then, three days later, she saw him on the subway again. This time, they were sitting next to each other. It was completely by accident, but Amelia was mortified that he would notice her again and think she had somehow done this on purpose. She stared straight ahead with the purpose of seeing him peripherally. She saw him doing the same thing. She coughed.
He spoke. "Today, my son called me at work and asked "who are God's parents."
She widened her eyes. "Oh," she said, her mouth dry, her tone inviting further conversation.
"And I didn't know what to tell him. Who are God's parents, right?"
"What did you say?"
"I said I didn't know."
"What did he say?"
"He said it was okay." He smiled, paused. "He's a really neat kid. What a question. Got me thinking. I've been thinking about it all day. Who are God's parents."
"I don't think God has parents."
He looked at her ruefully. "Do you believe in God?"
"I don't know. Do you?"
"I'm a lawyer," he replied, as though this answered the question. He attempted a laugh.
"Oh." She hated this attempt at humor. It didn't fit, somehow--it was too self-effacing; it didn't match the confidence in his tense jawline.
Twenty-third street.
"I see you in the elevator, in the mornings."
"Me too." She stared at him, wondering if he just then was finally able to place her. She knew she didn't stand out. She was certainly not the kind of girl people saw and remembered. She was anything but striking.
"Well, now we can say hello. I'm Francis."
"Amelia."
"Where do you work, Amelia?"
"Forty-one." She couldn't bear to name the actual company, her actual position.
Fourteenth Street, Union Square.
"Sorry to bother you."
"Oh, it was no bother." She answered too quickly.
"I'm not one of those crazy guys. The guys who talk on the subway. It's just--"
"Yeah, me too," she said.
He held her gaze. She looked into his eyes dutifully, like a child told to listen carefully.
Astor Place.
"Hey, I know this is really strange and maybe even out of line, but would you like to maybe--?"
"Okay," she replied.
"--get a drink?"
"Okay."
And that was how they began.
***
Amelia folded so many swans in a day that her fingers were cut and swollen with little paper cuts. It stung to wash her hair, and she winced every night as the shampoo seeped into her wounds and inspired little pings of pain as she scrubbed her scalp a little too viciously.
She was up to fifty swans a day.
She was getting very good at them. At the beginning, each swan was slightly different. One would have a longer neck, one would have a longer tail, one would be a little asymmetrical. One would be messy and full of mistakes and wrinkles. But now she had it down to an art beyond an art. She was a swan-making machine. Sometimes, she even folded two or three at a time, as though they were on a reverse assembly line--as though the swans were the workers and she were the car or the television or the computer, and they were making her. They were all completely identical and perfect of late, and Amelia had a subtle pride in it.
She had a more than subtle pride in the sheer number of swans. They had completely filled her bottom drawer and she had had to empty out her middle drawer--it used to have pencils, pens, glue sticks, scissors-- all sorts of cheerful and inviting office supplies that she really never needed since her job only entailed the computer and the telephone- -and use it for swan housing. The middle drawer was almost halfway full, too.
Francis sometimes noticed the little cuts on her fingers, and instead of asking about them, he traced them softly with his lips as though they were beautiful. They were not beautiful. Sometimes they were angry and too pink, threatening to become infected. She very much wanted him to ask about them. How could he not wonder why her hands were filled with tiny, strangely placed cuts? But he merely closed his eyes halfway and kissed them quietly.
On weekends, sometimes they'd spend a full day together, walking around, sitting in a park, making insignificant purchases that they didn't really want but made just to have something to do. Boredom buys. Boredom eats too. These were lazy days. They didn't talk much, and when they did, it was light and subdued. Amelia noted, once, when she was alone, that she and Francis always behaved as though they had just had sex. Their rapport was dewy, hazy: like a morning that's a little too bright, as to obscure the borders of objects.
After three weeks of this, Francis told her that he was married.
She knew. He didn't wear a ring, but it was obvious. Why wouldn't he be married? He had to be in his mid-forties. He was sad-looking and handsome. He never offered to take her home, even though, as he took great pains to emphasize, his wife was usually out of the country on business, and hadn't had sex with him for a year, let alone had a conversation. Amelia reacted to the news the way she'd have reacted to being told a sports team she didn't care about just won a game she didn't know about, the way she'd have reacted to being told a train she never used was out of service for two days. A soft, staccato "oh."
"Oh?" he said, smiling. "All I get is an oh? I was hoping for at least a slap. Maybe even a punch. An oh?"
"I can slap you if you want," she replied.
"Are you angry?"
"Not really."
For a moment he was silent. He ran his hand through her hair, stopping at the nape of her neck and squeezing a little. She turned her head and he peered into her eyes. His eyes were very blue and small. She blinked and looked away, behind him, at a squirrel on their tree.
"Do you still want to see me?" he asked, in a low voice. His hand was still on her neck. His fingers stroked it gently. She had chills.
"Yes."
******
One day, about three months into their relationship, Amelia told him about the swans. They were in a diner, sitting in a teal-colored vinyl booth by the window. She held her hands out to him, but when he moved to hold them, she pulled away.
"Look," she said, turning her hands over and back again.
"What?"
"Don't you ever wonder why I have so many cuts all over my hands?"
"No," he smiled, as though it were a stupid question.
"You don't? Well, do you want me to tell you?"
"Sure."
She told him.
He nodded.
"What do you think about that?"
"I think you should stop making so many swans," he said.
"But I can't."
"I see."
******
It came out once that he had a hobby, too. Amelia caught him in the act. They were on the subway, going downtown to Battery Park to sit and look at the water, languidly, quietly, lazily, like they often did. A homeless man walked into their car and began his speech about how he needed money for food and he didn't do any drugs and he didn't drink, and Amelia noticed Francis reaching into his pocket and fiddling with something. Later she asked, "Did you tape that guy?" and he said yes, he did.
"Why?"
"I have a collection too, you know," he smiled, as though he were talking about his baseball cards to a woman who collected porcelain figurines.
Later she asked if she could hear his tapes, or at least see how many there were, and he just smiled and shook his head no. "It's not the tapes I collect. It's just the voices. I record them onto my computer. I really only use one tape."
"Well, can I hear some?"
"No, I don't think so," he raised his eyebrows. "They're all on my computer at home. At my house."
"Put them on a CD for me," she insisted. "I'll bring you swans. I'll make you one right now."
"That's ok."
She looked at him sadly, in a playful way, and he sighed and ruffled his hand through her hair. "Here," he said, taking the small tape recorder out of his jacket pocket. He removed the tape. "You can have this one. I'll get a new tape."
****
Amelia noticed that she was starting to make swans at home, too. It started out just as a three-dimensional doodling: she'd be watching television, or on the phone, and her hands would find a piece of paper, and then there'd be a swan. But then she felt urges to make them on schedule, like at work. Not every hour on the half hour, but a more organic schedule: a waking-up swan, for instance. A post-shower swan. At home, the swans served as punctuation for small tasks that were completed.
*****
One Monday morning, in October, Amelia just didn't feel able to go to work. It wasn't that she was overtired, or bored of work, or even that she didn't feel up to folding 100 swans. She just couldn't go. She meant to. She lay in bed for awhile, watching her digital clock count very slowly up from 7:30 to 10:17. At 10:17, she realized that she really was not going to work. She tried to stand up and walk over to the phone to call in sick, but that didn't happen either. It wasn't her muscles. She was able to kick her legs just fine. She experimented with that for awhile, pounding her feet on the wall like a toddler having a tantrum.
At 1:43, she mustered up enough strength to leave her bed and call Francis.
"Something's wrong," she said when he answered.
"What is it?" He sounded annoyed, like he was busy with things and people more important than Amelia.
"I can't move."
He was silent.
"I can't." her voice broke a little. She wondered if she was doing it on purpose, and decided that she was not. That was something she'd have done a month or two months ago. Something she was incapable of doing anymore. There was no more guile.
"Listen, I have to go, Amelia," he said. "I'll call you in a few hours. Sit tight."
He hung up.
She used to hate the phrase "sit tight," and she used to hate anyone who'd say it. Now she just nodded and fell asleep, slumping in a wooden chair that she knew would leave pressure marks on her face.
*************
Later that night, he brought over a tub of chicken soup. It was a gesture she found touchingly generic. The soup looked like it came from a restaurant, and she was glad she wasn't going to ask if his wife made it. She was exemplary in that she never asked about his wife. She didn't know one thing about her, even her name. She imagined her to be named something classical and sophisticated. Elizabeth or Anne or Marie or Michelle. Middle-name type names. She imagined her with bobbed dark brown hair and doey brown eyes. Tall. Not-quite-olive skin. Tans easily. Slender, despite having two children with the husband that came before Francis (Amelia knew their ages but not their names: 5 and 2).
"Thanks for the soup," she said.
"It's fine." Francis never said "you're welcome." It was always "it's fine," or "it's okay," as though "thank you" meant "I'm sorry."
"I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Well, what does it feel like?" his tone was not as patronizing as she'd expected.
"It feels like nothing. It feels like there's nothing."
"It feels like there's nothing," he mused. Now he sounded a little more patronizing. "Where's nothing? Where's there nothing?"
"Um," she said. She touched her abdomen. "In here." Her sweater was soft--pale blue cashmere. It was one that he'd bought her, a few months ago, on one of their purchase-happy lazy weekends.
"Please," he said. "Don't give me this." His eyes narrowed a little. She stared at them. They were blue in that cold, mean way. They pointed.
"I'm not giving you anything."
"What do you want from me? I came over. I brought you soup. What do you want?"
"I don't want anything from you."
"Then what's all this about 'it feels like nothing'?"
"You asked and I answered. That's all."
"Well, I can't fix it. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know."
"I'm not asking to be fixed."
"Uh," he said. He pulled out a chair and sat down across from her. They were in her fluorescently-lit kitchen, insultingly and disconcertingly bright. Amelia squinted, miserable.
"Do you still record people?"
"What?"
"Do you still record people."
"I don't see how that really matters right now, Amelia. I--"
"Well, do you?"
"No. No, I don't."
"Why'd you stop?"
"Amelia!" he wore his exasperation in his posture, which was rigid and bent him like a vulture. "It's not relevant. What? What is this?"
"Just please answer."
"I don'tä" he looked around the room, as though the answer might be taped to the fridge or be stacked with the cereal in the pantry. "I don't know. I just don't know. It got to feel wrong."
"Did it make you happy?"
"Amelia, I--"
"I get it." She smiled at him mysteriously, sadly.
"Well, explain it to me then, because I'm sure in the dark." He snorted. "Whatever's going on with you has nothing to do with a stupid hobby I quit, and we both know that. Come on. Be an adult, Amelia, for once. I'm tired of--" he stuttered, searching for the right verb.
"Fucking?"
"--fucking a goddamn child."
"Aha."
They stared at each other dumbly.
"Do you need anything else. Because I should go, if you don't."
"I'm fine," she said in a low voice, barely audible.
She averted her eyes as he left. The door's slam resonated through the apartment. It sounded like a bomb.
***
Amelia couldn't go to work the next day either.
***
She made swans. She began to have a new routine. She woke up at ten. She made six swans. She brewed a pot of black tea, and while it brewed, she made three more swans. She lined up the first nine swans of the day on the kitchen counter, in a row. Each day's row was in front of yesterday's row. It was like a calendar.
Then she made eighteen more swans.
Then she put those swans in the top drawer of her dresser. She'd moved her underwear to a bin in her closet.
There were more swans and more placings throughout the day. She knew she'd become a freak. Sort of an inorganic cat lady. A cat lady without the warm glow of life. Her pets were born dead. They never ate and they never moved. They were beautiful and precise.
Francis called her. After two weeks, he called her. "Amelia," he said, his tone more worried than annoyed, though he definitely sounded irritated. He overpronounced the L in her name. He always had.
"Francis," she replied. It was weird, she realized all of the sudden, that she called someone over fifteen years older than her by his first name. Amelia was never the kind of girl who wanted a sugar daddy, or even the kind of girl who was attracted to men more than a few years away from her own age. In fact, she used to hate the idea. She craved, more than anything, an equal. Francis was never an equal. She knew he considered himself a superior. She wasn't sure if that was actually true--sure, he made more money, was older, was able to live his life without hiding in his house and making hundreds of origami swans all day. But Amelia knew there was something in her that made her superior to Francis and people like him. That was part of the reason she could no longer leave the house.
"How are you?" he asked. He meant it in the way that demands a truthful answer, not in the way that demands a rote "fine."
"I'm not sure," she answered. She was folding a swan as she spoke to him. She held the phone between her face and her shoulder, wincing at the feeling of the cold plastic against her face.
"Not sure, eh?" he asked.
"Not sure."
"Well, what have you been doing?" he tried again. She found it charming how he spoke in the manner in which a stumbling child attempts to climb steep stairs.
"Swans."
"Still the swans?"
"Still the swans."
"Amelia."
"What?"
Silence.
"Amelia, you need to."
"I need to what,"
She could tell he didn't know what to say. But she knew what he meant. She needed to. She needed to something. It was hard needing to. The absence of the verb was disconcerting. But she knew exactly what he meant.
"You--"
"I know. Francis, it's ok."
"Have you called your work at least? Taken a sick leave? Amelia, I'm so worried about you. It's not--"
"Please."
"Amelia." He said her name like it was a plea.
"Why do you even care?"
His lack of speech was audible, it was so wrought with the energy of upset.
"No, really, Francis. Why."
"Because, I--"
She knew he had no answer that would please her. "Do you care enough to come over? Do you want to see me?" What she really wanted to ask was Do you want to eat dinner with me and then fall asleep next to me? Do you want to take a shower with me in the morning and then fuck me senseless, pretending I'm your wife? But she'd never dare. The part of her that could ask such things had died long before she even met Francis.
He didn't answer. She knew what that meant.
"Well, goodbye, then. I thought so." She hung up.
She tidily tucked the swan's head into its neck, completing it.
***
Amelia's replacement---Tal's new assistant--was a fresh-faced, wide-eyed, expensively-shod blonde right out of NYU. She'd majored in communications, and serving as Tal's assistant was as close to her desired career as any other job, she figured. And it sure paid well. She was a lot tidier than Amelia, she kept the coffee brewing and the phones answered, and stayed late regularly.
On her first day, Tal told her: "The girl before you was kind of a nutcase. Never even quit. Just never came back to work, one day. Doesn't answer her phone. Have no idea what happened to her. Anyway, she left all sorts of garbage in the drawers--didn't have time to get it cleaned. You can throw it all out. Get supplies from the utility closet." The replacement, like Amelia, noticed that Tal spoke in the form of an office memo. She opened the middle drawer, and the swans, all yellow and pink and pale blue, formed from post-it notes, spilled out. The drawer had been stuffed. The new girl picked up a yellow one, held it between her thumb and her forefinger, examined it gingerly, and placed it on her desk.
She threw the rest away. She brought a black garbage bag to her desk to do so. There were three drawers filled to the brim with swans. Only the one lucky yellow chosen one got to remain. The replacement named it Henry, after her uncle.
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