Here's a short fictional story I wrote in the summer of 2010. I remember I was crossing a street in Manhattan when I was struck with the idea to write this piece. Enjoy.
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“The Envelope”
The envelope, brown and oversized, was lying on
the lobby floor underneath the row of mail slots along the lobby wall. Mara,
who had been out buying rolls, had just walked through the archway and up the
step when she saw it, the brown envelope propped against the wall. No need to
switch on the hallway light for this one. She could read the label fine: Mara
Strum, Grossbrunnen Strasse 34. She knew what this was. This was not a good way
to start the day.
First off, there was the
mailman. He couldn’t just knock on the door? Okay, she hadn’t even been home
when he made the delivery, and this was how some post arrived—especially the post too big for the cubbies —but he couldn’t even leave a note or something?
Then there was the issue of the envelope itself. The same goddamn envelope that
had been sent to her for the last three years, for as long as she’d been in
university, with the same damn questions. As if anything had changed.
At the foot of the
staircase Mara reached into her pocket for her keys and then started up the
stairs to her apartment. The stairs at Grossbrunnen Strasse weren’t as steep as
the ones at her last place. Plus, they were wider. The plant was the best
thing, though. Because each floor looked nearly identical, it was easy to lose
track of which floor was which on the way up. But she always knew she was about
to reach her floor, the fifth, because a neighbor had placed a plant on the
landing between four and five. You know Germans—they love their sunlight and their plants.
The apartment was dark
and quiet. By the door, she hung her coat on the coat rack and shouted “Hello.”
No answer. Good, he was out. Sharing an apartment, especially with a man,
wasn’t exactly an ideal situation, but there was no choice. It had to do with
money. When you don’t have that much money, you don’t have the luxury of not
having a roommate. Dirk slept in a small bedroom across the hall but he
dominated the living room and the other rooms in the apartment, which was old
but nice because of the high ceilings. He was probably out giving music lessons
that morning. Mara looked around her bedroom and then down at the brown
envelope in her hand. As if anything hand
changed. She threw it across the room and it landed at the foot of the
hamper.
The red light on her
answering machine was blinking.
“Mara—I’m going to be in
your neighborhood later. Should I come over? We can have tea or something. I
have to go to a store first but I can come over after. Call me.”
It was Romy, Mara’s best
friend. Well, Mara’s decent friend. All right, Romy was her best friend, but to
be honest Romy annoyed Mara. Mara didn’t even know why sometimes. Maybe it was
the way Romy never put her own
dishes in the sink after she ate. Or how she still didn’t know her way around
Hamburg—even after living in Hamburg her whole life. Even after 24 years, Romy still couldn’t tell you what streets to
take to get to Sternschanze from Landungsbrücken, by the port, where she lived.
She knew which subway to take, sure. But if you asked her if she knew the same
route on foot, she’d tell you she didn’t.
Mara’s mom was next on
the machine.
“Hello little one. How
goes it? I’m going to be making dinner tonight—Spanish, paella. Do you
want to stop by? Oh, if you need to use the printer at my job tomorrow, you
have to come very early. I won’t be around if you come later. I just wanted to
let you know. Okay, that’s it. Stop by for some yummy food if you want. Ciao.”
That one annoyed Mara
even more. Her mom knew that she had been really tired because she had been
opening at the ice cream store all week. Why the hell, then, would she tell her
to get up even earlier to use the stupid printer? Things weren’t terrible
enough already. No, of course they weren’t. Maybe Mara should call her mom
back. “Yeah,” she’d tell her, “You know what, Mom? The goddamn envelope from
the offices came today. Do you want to open it? No, go on, I think it would be
a really good idea if you opened it, Mom.
The envelope was still
by the hamper. Maybe she’d just call Romy back. At least, after all this bullshit today, the idea of
drinking some tea still sounded nice.
Mara stood at the
railing outside her door and looked all the way down five flights to the square
of lobby floor. She wanted to see what kind of hand would grab the staircase
banister. When she saw that it was a female’s, and then saw the edge of the
coat, she knew it was Romy who was
climbing the stairs. Still, Mara always liked to make sure that whomever she’d
just buzzed into the lobby was the person she thought, at least while she still
had the high ground.
“Well, you. How are
you?” Mara said. Romy wiped her
feet on the mat.
“Good, good.”
“What were you doing
around here anyway?”
“Returning a shirt for my mom...” Romy took off her shoes and they both walked
down the hall to the kitchen.
“At H+M?”
“No, my mom bought this shirt, which wound up
being too small, at this really pretty boutique—”
“By the Schäferkamps Allee?”
“No, but have you seen how many new boutiques
they’ve opened there lately?”
“Yeah, I love that.”
“Me, too. No, it was actually by this cute place
near Schulterblatt. I figured I’d just go return it for her, and maybe look
around a little.”
“That’s nice. You are always so sweet with your mamacita,
Romy-litta.” Romy giggled. Mara
noticed that Romy had lost some
weight. She hadn’t seen it by the door, but Romy definitely had lost a kilo or so, which probably had to do
with her not drinking Guinness every day like she had been when she was abroad
in Ireland. Or was it because her hair was down?
“So what did you want to tell me?” Romy said.
Mara got up and took the teapot off the burner
even though it wasn’t exactly whistling yet. She poured the hot water into the
two cups on the table.
“I don’t know. I just feel like shit.”
“And
why?”
“I don’t know. You know how I told you my new
semester starts in October? I’ve
got to take care of all this shit with the offices. The German offices. They
want all this information from me.”
“Yeah, but that’s normal. Right?” Romy said. “They are going to give you money,
though, right? I mean, they had before so…”
“Yeah, I know. But it just makes me feel like
shit having to go through them. I fucking can’t stand my mom for...ugh! I don’t
know. Dumb cow.
“Mara. Don’t be so mean. You shouldn’t say that
about your mom.”
“Yeah, it’s easy for you to say. Your mom pays
for your school, right? Right, because you have the money, which is fine. I’d
be happy if I had the money, too. I know I’d probably never be having
conversations like these, but—”
“No, I understand.”
“Anyway, I just can’t stand it, you know? It’s
just like saying, ‘Strip yourself naked and show us what you got.’ It’s like
the offices put me down so bad when they do this shit. They did it to my mom,
too, you know. I told you. When she was really having a hard time, when things
were really bad. I told you about that one-euro-a-day job she had, cleaning.
That was crazy. One goddamn euro.”
“But the state supplemented her, right?”
“Still! You’re earning one fucking euro a day. Do
you know how much that bothers you? And then they check up on your every move.
They want you to submit all your paperwork, all your receipts, all your bills.”
“I know.” Romy put her teacup down.
“But just get it over with.”
“Yeah, well, what else am I supposed to do, you
know?”
“And that’s the only way that you can get money?
Like, I mean, if you don’t…then you don’t…”
“Right, if I don’t prove it, then I don’t get
shit.”
“So when do you have to have it in by?”
“Next week.”
“Did you get it yet?”
“Yes, of course I did. It’s in my bedroom. I just
threw it on the ground.”
“Well, you should do it, so...”
“Yeah...let’s just talk about something else. I
don’t feel like talking about this anymore...”
The sunlight was pouring in through the window by
the bed. For some reason, Mara sat there and watched the whole time. She
watched Romy slowly cross the
street, walk up the block and then disappear around the corner at the
intersection. Romy said that she
wanted to go meet up with her boyfriend, Dennis, which was fine, but now Mara
didn’t know what to do exactly.
She lied down on the bed and looked up at the
poster on the wall. “The Kiss” by Robert Doisneau, 1950. Such a
great picture. So simple. Just a guy kissing a girl on a busy street in
Paris...but really kissing her.
Exactly: If you really love someone, you show it—no matter what. Mara looked around her room. The walls looked incredibly white
because of the strong sun but the laundry on the line was drying well. The
passing cars outside rumbled over the cobblestones. She was bored.
She read the movie titles on the spines of the
DVDs, which were on the rack near the dresser: “Paris, Je’taime”—no; “Love Me if You Dare”—no;
“What a Girl Wants”—no; “Together we Are Less Alone”—hmm...no. Yeah, she was definitely bored.
The envelope was still lying there by the hamper.
Mara rolled her eyes and then got out of bed to go pick it up. For a second she
pretended that a friend had sent this envelope and it contained a long letter
on thick paper from some faraway place, perhaps the Near East. The handwriting
would be curly and the message would be concerning the difficulties of finding
the exotic brass trinket that Mara had requested as a souvenir. But no. This
letter in the brown envelope was concerning something else:
Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz. Federal aid
for students.
She opened
it. There were the papers—really, just
a small packet—that she needed to fill out if she
wanted to get money from the state that semester. And she needed the money—she needed that aid. She hated to
say it, but she did. She needed it to pay tuition, to pay rent, to eat, to do
everything that a living, breathing university student in Germany does. Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz. The
word was long by even German standards. No wonder almost everyone abbreviated
it. They called it Bafög. But even that sounded ugly, “bah fuhg.”
Mara sat at her desk and took out a pen. The
first few pages were easy. Address, employment history, current boss’ name if
applicable, phone numbers, university details. The first few pages were always
easy. The form at the end less so. And she knew it’d be there. It was there
every other year, and Germans don’t like variation.
There it was.
She printed her name on the very first line at
the top of the page, Mara Hellblau Strum. Right next to that, they wanted her
reference number, 700103.
The title was in bold and was underlined:
“Statement regarding a parent’s failure to fill
out Form 3 due to ignorance of that parent’s whereabouts”
She read on, to the beginning of the sworn
text:
“I know that I am first and foremost required
under the law to furnish a Form 3
detailing both my parents’
personal data and financial affairs in order to be granted federal aid to
study."
“However, I am not able to provide a complete
form because I’m ignorant of the whereabouts of my...”
Mara checked the first box. “Father.”
“I haven’t been able to locate my parent
since...”
Yeah, Mara knew. She was supposed to write some
sort of year here. But her circumstances were a little different.
“My whole life.”
“My parents were 1) never married or 2) married
to each other until...”
That space after 2 was reserved for yet another
year, the one your parents broke up if they’d been married. Mara chose 1.
She put her pen down for a second. She wanted to
call up her mom right at that exact moment, call her up and yell at her, just
scream at her: “You fill this crap out.” And if it all wasn’t bad enough
already, the offices were asking for more information this year.
“I
undertook the following unsuccessful efforts to try and determine the current
address of my missing parent:”
There were only two lines to answer this one, so Mara
wrote really, really, really damn small.
“Well, since my father’s name is Gustave and
there are about 20,000 Gustaves in France—I know, I’ve looked at phone books—and since I don’t know his last name, and since I don’t even know what city in
France he lives in or came from—or if he even still lives in France—and since my mother never wrote down his last name, and since he stopped
writing me letters when I was 2, and since we have no idea what shipping
company he worked for when he met my mom at the port in 1986, I would have to
say it’s a little difficult for me to determine his address or even try to.”
Then Mara wrote something she knew the German
offices wouldn’t be happy about:
“You try and find one kernel of corn in a
cornfield.”
What else did they want?
“My
relatives and any other personal contacts believe that this is the last known
address of my mother/father...”
Mara
just wrote “France.” She then checked another box:
“I
have never received financial support from the parent in question.”
And
finally:
“I
assure that everything written on this form is true and complete and I will
immediately report any new developments if the situation changes.”
Mara
signed her name and filled in the date and place of her signing.
Mara
Hellblau Strum, 14 September, 2010; Hamburg, Germany.
She took out her own envelope, licked the sweet
flap and sealed it. She was going to put it in the bin downstairs for outgoing
mail. But that would be too long. She went to the post office to mail it. She
did it that very same day.