Possessions
by Judith Norkin

Lina was reading the front page of the Times online when the receptionist from the main entrance desk called to tell her there was a man on the phone for her.  When she lifted the receiver Lina heard static.  
“Hello, this is Lina McLaughlin,” she said. The line sizzled and popped, and finally there was a voice.
“Meezzus Mic-law-fin,” a man said, mangling her name. 
“Can I help you?” She used her big smile-y office voice.
There was a pause, the sound of traffic, and rustling in the background. Then, a string of words gushed through the receiver and into her ear. Lina didn’t understand. The phone line hissed and scratched, like something fighting for its life. She thought of hanging up. Then, through the noise, she made out the words  “taybuul” and “livenstore.” 
 Eventually a picture emerged. A few months earlier, Lina and her husband Jonathan had ordered a new kitchen table at Livingston’s Furniture. This man apparently had something to tell her about it, but it was hard to immediately grasp it through his accent.  Finally, Lina gathered that he had her table and was, in fact, driving to her house at that very instant to deliver it.  
“You are coming today?  Now?”  
“In twenny, twenny-five minewts.” 
Lina was slightly annoyed. She would have liked a little advance notice. On the other hand, nothing important was happening at work. And though Lina did not relish driving home, she did want the table. She was tired of eating in front of the TV with a plate balanced on her lap. So Lina told the man she would meet him at her house. Then she grabbed her sweater and car keys and told the receptionist she was leaving to run an errand.
Lina steered her car out of the parking lot and towards her house—our house—she reminded herself. She and Jonathan had lived there for only six months and the very words—our house—just thrilled her. She still could not believe they owned it. To buy it, they’d pinched pennies so hard that, as Jonathan said, you could hear them scream.  But even if she had to use the hotel soap that Jonathan collected on business trips and eat rice and beans three nights a week, it was worth it. This house, and its contents were theirs.  
Sometimes, when Jonathan was away and she was home alone, Lina walked through the rooms, touching the windows, the walls, the walnut railing that curled like a snail shell. Lina believed this house and the new life she was building with Jonathan was like a moat or tall wall, a barrier that protected her from future catastrophes and buried her unhappy past.
Now, driving home, Lina realized she couldn’t wait, couldn’t wait to see the table. It would be their kitchen’s centerpiece.  She and Jonathan had chosen it carefully, selecting the color from a plastic box filled with dozens of little wood samples. It had been impossible to imagine how samples no bigger than a pack of cigarettes would look, multiplied by a hundred, in the size of a tabletop, and Lina had worried. “Trust your instincts,” the salesman had said, but Lina disregarded his advice. For her, instincts were nothing but trouble. 
When Lina got home she saw the truck idling in the driveway. She parked in the street and walked towards it. Two men got out. One was short and Lina knew she would forget what he looked like the instant he turned away.  In fact, she was forgetting his face even as this thought flitted through her mind. But the other man was entirely different. When he slid out of the passenger seat and onto the driveway, landing softly on the balls of his feet, Lina saw his wavy brown hair, his lean body, his athletic shoulders, and his lightly furred forearms. As he got closer, she felt the center of her chest collapse, caving in like a building being demolished with explosive charges. 
He was a near perfect replica of her ex-husband Mitchell.  
Lina blinked hard, as if this impression was caused by optical error and a blink was a reset button that could erase it.  But even after several blinks the man still looked like Mitchell.  Lina fought the impulse to run and put her arms around him because he couldn’t really be Mitchell. Mitchell was in Africa.
When he reached her, the man who was not, could not be Mitchell, smiled and against all reason, something deep inside Lina stirred.  She felt herself vibrate and heard a deep note, rich as an ancient bronze gong. This was not Mitchell, she reminded herself. Not. Mitchell. She must not gawk.  
“You order a taybuul?” the short, forgettable man said.  
With near heroic effort, Lina tore her attention from the man who was not Mitchell. It was hard to shift her focus from his pale blue eyes with their startling black centers, but it was rude to stare so hungrily at his, or anyone’s, face. 
“I’ll show you inside,” she said. 
The men followed Lina to the door. When she put her key in the lock she was relieved to turn her back to them.  She pushed the door open and led them through a short hall into the kitchen. The man who was not Mitchell appeared completely out of place among the flimsy particleboard and laminate surfaces. He looked like he belonged on the edge of a cliff in a to-the-death swordfight or on the back of a horse galloping across a purple-tinted wilderness, all of which were the sort of things Mitchell—the real one—actually would do, Lina thought irritably. 
She showed them where to put the table.  The small, forgettable man quickly measured the doorway.  When they turned to go back outside, Lina followed them down the hall. The volume and intensity of the ancient brass gong inside her doubled. Tripled even, as she admired the mountain range of muscles beneath the man who was not Mitchell’s white T-shirt. 
“We bring taybuul now,” the little man said.
“Yes. Thank you. I mean, yes please,” she stammered. 
Lina had become a woman made not of flesh, but of fog. She tried, like a flight attendant on a plane with engine trouble or a surgeon whose patient’s vitals were collapsing, to stay calm. But the past and the present were colliding and she was dividing. Melting. 
“Excuse me, I’ve just…I’ve got to do something.” 
She lurched through the hall and flung herself onto the living room sofa. She was married. Married. Her heart and mind should be so fully occupied with love for her husband that no opening existed for memories of him to slip through. And yet, here she was, thinking of Mitchell. She didn’t understand why the deadliest, most dangerous, and also unobtainable thing was what she still desired. Lina pressed her face into the sofa cushions. She knew the texture of the velvet would imprint itself on her cheeks but it would be among the least significant ways that Mitchell had marked her. 
From the kitchen she heard clunk of wood on wood, the grinding whine of power 
tools, and voices.  She wondered why the man who was not Mitchell was silent in her presence. Maybe he was a new immigrant and embarrassed by his English, she decided.  Lina had no idea what language they spoke or where they were from. Mitchell would have known. He had been all over— Europe, South America, Africa, Asia.  The envelopes he sent Lina from time to time were the only clue to his existence, the only sign he was alive.  They came, bent and dirty, holding the oddest things—coins and photos, bits of stone, feathers, pressed leaves. Lina wasn’t sure why he sent them but she kept them anyway, in a locked box on the top shelf of her linen closet.  She used to study them, as if silent flecks of paper or metal could answer her questions. But she stopped when she realized she just bobbed over and over in the same murky waters, and no matter how hard she searched nothing new was ever revealed.  
While Lina lay on the soft sofa, listening vaguely to the sounds in the kitchen, her memories returned to Parma where they’d been when she told Mitchell she was leaving.  She’d turned away when she announced it, avoiding the anguish in his eyes and staring instead at the lush Italian countryside, endless hills and olive trees beautiful as a painting. He’d begged her to stay, prowling the room like a wounded animal, shouting that she had vowed to walk through this life and into the next with him and she couldn’t leave. But Lina had screamed back that she was tired of walking. She was not a nomad. She needed to settle down.
 Lina had no idea why she tortured herself now. She and Mitchell were done.  She jumped from the sofa.  Only action would free her of this sticky web of emotions.  She should see what was happening to her table. En route to the kitchen, she glanced at the front yard where Jonathan wanted to install a stone path. It was a good idea, she thought. The way to get things done was to take one step at a time.  It was true for everything, even broken hearts.
In the kitchen, the men had the table upside down, its legs straight in the air, stiff as the dead animals Lina often passed on the roadside. The man who was not Mitchell crouched beside the table, adjusting latches on its underside.  Lina wished she were the table. She wouldn’t mind if his hands moved over her like that. She immediately censored this terrible thought.  Lina loved Jonathan. She loved how he gathered her to him every night, his reassuring bulk in their bed, like a period at the end of a sentence, a predictable ending to her day. She loved how he let her rest her head into the angle of his chest and chin. How he let her have the front page of the newspaper and, how, when her gas tank was nearly empty, he refilled it without being asked. No one else had ever taken such good care of her.   
 To disguise her turbulence and confusion, Lina began babbling. 
“It’s a big table. I know. But we wanted to seat at least eight, so we needed something big.  We, meaning my husband and I. Jonathan.” She drew out the name. Jon-uh-thon. The sound of it was reassuring. She felt safer, as if each syllable had protective qualities, like a talisman or suit of armor.  
“Verry nice,” the forgettable man said.  
The men put the table in place under the window and began cleaning. They collected their tools and picked up scraps of cardboard and plastic wrap that had fallen to the floor. The forgettable man—Lina willed herself to look at him and tried to memorize his face, but it was useless—held out a clipboard and a pen. He needed her signature to verify that the table was delivered in good condition.  She took the pen and signed Lina McLaughlin.  It still felt odd to write McLaughlin instead of Mitchell’s last name, Reese.  
Once the papers were signed, the only thing left was to show the men out. Lina walked them to the door with her arms crossed.  She did not trust her hands.  She feared they might, like birds, fly off and land on this man who was not Mitchell, as if migrating to a beloved home.  
“Thank you so much,” Lina said. She handed the men a wad of bills, tipping more than she should, wanting them to like her, though she wasn’t sure why. The man who was not Mitchell smiled tenderly and she felt his approval, like a benediction or a blessing. As she watched them cross the lawn and go back to the truck, sadness bloomed inside her. Things broke. Things died. This is what happened. How could anyone live, knowing that everything that began must also end? It was all too impossible to bear. 
After the truck pulled away, Lina returned to the table.  She ran her hand across its surface. The top was smooth without a single knot marring its surface and the wood glowed. But even as Lina admired it she worried.  What if something spilled? What if someone put down a hot mug?  She remembered the white damask tablecloth she received—no, they received—as a wedding gift and ran down the cellar steps, searching frantically in the dim light until she found it, buried in layers of frothy tissue in a pearly white box. 
Back in the kitchen, Lina attempted to unfold the cloth, but the starched damask resisted.  It was so stiff she could not shake it out to float it open over the table like a parachute. She had to unfold the fabric instead, square by square, until the table was covered.  When she stood back to look it over, she was not pleased.  Every fold was a line, and the scrolling tone-on-tone floral pattern woven into the fabric was now overlaid with a sharp grid. She was getting her iron from the laundry room when she heard the squeal and crunch of the mailman’s van.  A minute later, the doorbell rang.  She went to the door and saw the mailman standing outside. 
“Yes?”
“This is for you Ma’am.  It’s too big for the mailbox.”  
Lina took the package.  It had half a dozen foreign stamps applied haphazardly.  The return address was Gabon but the handwriting on the package was not Mitchell’s.  Lina took a sharp knife from a drawer and sliced through several layers of packing tape then removed the wrapping paper.  
The package contained jeans, a sweatshirt, and a photograph of her and Mitchell.  In the photo, she and Mitchell were laughing and their arms were around each other.  Her long braid flipped over one shoulder jauntily and her face was turned towards him like a sunflower seeking light. She smacked the photo on the table. She simply could not bear it.  She would put these things away with the others in the linen closet. 
As she bundled everything into a pile, a white card slid to the floor.  Lina picked it up.  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the unfamiliar writing.  She read:  
“Dear Lina MacLaughlin,
Mr. Mitch was our guest at Ondimba Hotel in Gabon, East Africa.  He was here making photographs of the Lekedi National Park.  When after three days he did not return to the hotel, we informed the police.  They discovered Mr. Mitch’s body in a hiking shelter. Among his things we found your name and address.  Most of his possessions were taken by the police, but they said we could send these to you. 
With condolences, 
Omar Makouku, 
Hotel Manager.”
Lina looked at the date.  The card had been written over two weeks earlier. Her head became heavy and her ears filled with the sound of swarming flies.  She dropped to the floor and felt the tile, a cold slab rising beneath her. It was inconceivable that Mitchell was dead. She curled into a ball, clasping her knees to her chest, and rocked back and forth, back and forth. An ache rose in her so sorrowful and deep that she wanted to die too. If only she were a crack in the earth, she’d cleave through magma and stone, traveling at the speed of sound, ripping a path straight for him. 
Then the tears came, making her soft and pliable.  She cried for what had been and what was lost and what was wasted. When she eventually rose she felt hollow as a casing, thin as shell.  She moved clumsily to the sink and leaned over the basin, splashing her face with water over and over again, trying to restore herself, but she had become an old woman, empty and dry as a cicada’s husk.
In her ragged state, Lina was surprised when she noticed the hammer on the floor. The deliverymen had obviously left it behind. She sighed wearily. Maybe she should let someone know in case it was needed.  The phone number for the delivery office at Livingston’s Furniture was on her receipt. When she called a man with a gruff voice answered. 
“This is Lina McLaughlin.  My kitchen table just came. The delivery men left a hammer.”
“Happens all the time. I’ll call the driver. Who delivered it?”
“I don’t know. Two men.”
“No problem.  I’ll figure it out.”  There was a clunk—the sound of the receiver dropping onto the desk. A few minutes later, the man came back on the line.
“You’re McLaughlin, Mulberry Drive?”
“Yes.”
“My schedule says only one guy brought your table.  Rudy.  Short guy. A little stocky.” 
“Another man came too.” Lina described the man who was not Mitchell.
“No one here like that,” the man on the phone said.   
Lina insisted he was wrong.  The man who was not Mitchell had been standing right here.  He had been close enough to touch.  But the man didn’t know him.  
“Just leave the hammer on the steps. Someone’ll pick it up,” he said.
 Lina hung up and began shaking. What did it mean? Mitchell was dead. Dead.  She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the lines on the tablecloth. They looked suddenly like ladders or scaffolds, objects she could climb to a place where painful and confusing things could not hurt her, because distance and height made everything harmless and small. Then on the countertop where nothing had been before, she saw them. Two tiny blue pebbles. Two tiny blue pebbles the color of Mitchell’s eyes.