He called a week before Christmas break to tell me the name of a cat, a new wife, and to ask whether I remembered him, and I said I did.
“I remember when we flew those paper airplanes at school. Fourth grade, fifth? But I don’t remember anything after that.”
“That’s because I moved away, remember,” he said.
He said he’d thought of me, called my father, got the number, and so the call.
I finished graduate school and went to work for the firm. On the way out of a meeting the VP slapped my shoulder and said, “Good job. Come in early. We’ll talk more.” When we did talk, the VP gave me the narrative of the Ladder, stories of Pitfall and character, and we drank until security poked in and asked if all was well.
He called two years later. He sounded like the underside of a clam, just rough enough to suggest the granularity of salt and water. Something in his voice gave me the impression of drowning, fatigue.
“It’s my second divorce,” he said. “It was odd. The other day, as I really felt the crash, I thought about those planes and you. So I had to call.”
“The planes?” I said. “Right, the planes. We were on summer break.”
Years later I fired Sarah H, who it was always questionable would she persist. I knew she was alone, with two children to raise, and when I told her, I saw nausea and something gray, like a rhinoceros, cloud the back of her eyes.
Her things were gone next morning, the childrens’ smiles, a cheek to a puppy’s nose, the pastiche of Farside, Mary, and Dilbert strips, that odd string of beads she’d hung from a hook on a lamp, the box of tissue.
If he’d have called that night I would have asked him about Sarah H, about me. How does one live with oneself? I would’ve asked. I couldn’t change Sarah H, I would’ve told him. But he didn’t call.
We’d just returned from Harry’s graduation, our last graduation. I put keys and wallet into the basket. She went upstairs to underdress and ready for bed. I poured a glass of wine and watched out the doors to the porch. And he called, called then.
He asked how I was. I told him I was easing out of the day with a glass.
“I don’t drink,” he said, but he said it sounded good.
Then he asked if I remembered those paper planes. “Do you remember the paper planes? We were on the highest landing to the third floor, where the older kids attended class. We tossed those planes over the playground gravel. The beginning of summer. We figured out how to make those things go pretty far.”
I sipped the wine. I thought about it. He and I, we knew only paper planes together, both of us unified at one instance, seemingly for life. But for the life of me I couldn’t recall his face.
“Yes,” I said. “We made them go pretty far.”
