The Letter Opener by Kyo Maclear Read Free Book Online

on, the electric Singer) so that they could assist her when she was especially busy. The women of the town came to the shop for their dressmaking needs, and Sarah gained a reputation for her ability to make new outfits from old garments. She could cut down a sack and turn it into something stylish.
    A few months after she started work, the co-operative ordered a second-hand mannequin from Bucharest. Delivered to much acclaim on the back of a truck that also carried blackboards for the local school, it had red hair, a large upturned nose, eyebrows arched like arrows and wide red lips. The bust was large and placed very low; the hips were marked by jutting pelvic bones. Wearing a fitted wool suit, demurely arranged in the store window, “Shirley,” named after Shirley MacLaine, one of several American actors who had visited Romaniaduring Andrei’s childhood, became a symbol of Western glamour and sophistication.
    On the day Andrei turned thirteen, his mother presented him with his father’s old belt. The buckle was a hand-hammered brass square. The strap was enormous on Andrei’s small frame, so she used an awl to punch extra holes in the brown leather, spacing the holes evenly until, on the eighth hole, it no longer slipped off his waist. The newly tailored belt became Andrei’s pride and joy. He wore it everywhere, fitting it through his belt loops, tucking and winding the extra foot of leather so that it was artfully distributed around his middle. Even with the extra holes, it looked ungainly, a belt designed for another body, but Andrei refused his mother’s offer to trim its length. And she never insisted, perhaps because secretly it gave her pleasure to see it left intact, a kind of continuance. The final, awkward embrace of the father.

Five
    D oes the sender have any obligation to the receiver? Andrei was not always reliable when it came to recounting the events of his departure from Romania. He had a tendency to bounce around in time, so that I was often left to piece his story together morsel by morsel. This was especially true in the early months, when our encounters were confined to breaks during the workday.
    On one such occasion, Andrei was reminiscing about wading in the Tisza River as a child. It was a humid summer morning, and we had been sitting outside on a concrete planter having a coffee. A group of pigeons was waddling around us, pecking at bread crumbs Andrei had tossed a few seconds earlier. A car approached and the flock took flight in a sudden updraft of wings. I turned toward Andrei, saw the way the sunlight passed through his fair hair. As he spoke, the sweat gathered on his upper lip. I blushed and turned away when he noticedme staring at him. Passersby would have seen us as a somewhat odd couple: a slender, boyish man leaning toward a full-bodied woman. I often felt that no matter what adjective I applied to Andrei, the opposite could be said of me. Thin/Wide. Bony/Voluptuous (if I flattered myself). Light/Dark. Male/Female. Gay/Straight. Our differences piled up. His proletarian provincial childhood. My two-car suburban upbringing…
    “You know,” Andrei said, gently knocking my shoulder, “I think we make a wonderful pair.”
    “Do you?” I said, with feigned casualness.
    “Yes. Like—” He paused. “Like Ginger and Fred…Like igloo and polar bear…Like peanuts and chocolate.”
    A smile glowed in his eyes.
    I laughed. “You’re crazy.”
    I could feel a hum of activity between the two poles, an electric exercise of imagination, an unwritten correspondence.
    This platonic attraction of ours grew into a need, an urgency I had never before experienced. It was not a matter of Andrei being more attractive than Paolo. Paolo was handsome in exactly the brooding, tossed-together way I liked. Dressed in jeans, a plaid flannel shirt, work boots and glasses, he looked like a skinny, intellectual lumber-jack. We had our rough patches, but no more than any other couple. In essence, we