Page 3 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Chloe: Never mind. I’ll be fine. Talk tomorrow?
Zac: OK but call sooner if you need me.
It was sweet of him to offer, but she wouldn’t take him up on it.
He’d been talking for weeks about that client dinner with one of the richest families in New York; they owned the Yankees and several soccer teams in the US and Europe.
Zac was gunning hard for a major promotion at the investment bank he worked at, and tonight would be an important event for him.
Chloe wouldn’t interrupt him just because she was sad.
By the time Chloe stumbled into the big brick apartment building where she lived in Astoria, Queens, she was starving for human connection.
Both luckily and unluckily, she had a roommate (because in a city this expensive, it was perfectly normal to be thirty-two years old and still have to share an apartment).
Chloe braced herself as she walked in the door.
“Wow, you look like shit,” her roommate said, as she ate her precisely portioned snack of almonds (ten of them) and kale chips (one cup, not overflowing).
Becca Huntington was a manager at a health food store and looked like what would happen if you mixed a yoga teacher and a bookkeeper together in an organic cocktail shaker—toned body powered by green juice, topped with a supertight no-nonsense bun and tiny rectangular glasses.
It’s not that Chloe disliked her roommate.
But Becca was brassy in a native New Yorker kind of way that Chloe’s tender Kansas heart wasn’t always prepared for, especially in moments like these.
Becca, on the other hand, had made it her personal mission to toughen Chloe up while also protecting her.
She’d basically adopted Chloe as a little sister, which came with all the fixings of sibling relationships—hugs but also harsh truths when you didn’t want to hear them, a person to unwind with at the end of the day, who also judged you for everything you ate and wore.
Plus, as the “big sister,” Becca had plenty of rules about how they ought to live in their shared apartment.
“So why do you look like an eighteen-wheeler just ran over your teddy bear?” Becca asked.
“I lost my job.”
“Ouch. That sucks.”
Chloe set her bag down heavily on the kitchen counter. Becca immediately waved it away. “Gross, Chloe! We eat there. And that bag’s been all over the fucking subway.”
“That’s really not the most important thing right now.” Nevertheless, Chloe sighed, threw her bag over her shoulder again, and trudged to her room. She was a grown woman, but all she wanted right now was to call her parents.
I got laid off today. I’m allowed to be a little pathetic.
Chloe gave in to the impulse, flopped on her bed, and wrapped herself in the bright patchwork quilt she and her mom had made together, years ago. Then she dialed.
After just one ring, her mom picked up. “Hi, Lo-Lo!” Next to her, Dad chimed in, “Hey, sweet pea! To what do we owe the honor?”
“I wanted to hear your voices,” Chloe said.
“Everything okay?”
Chloe hesitated. But they sounded so chipper, she didn’t want to drag them down with her. “Everything’s fine, just missed you. What’re you up to?”
“Oh, we’re about to pull into Clay and Mel’s driveway for your cousin Ashlee’s baby shower.
Everyone’s going to be here tonight. I see Brandy and Darin’s car over there on the curb, they must’ve come over early to help set up like we did.
Your aunt Emily and uncle Joseph’s truck is behind them, and that might be the Millers’ minivan, and… ”
Chloe bit her lip as her mom kept listing names of their family and friends in Kansas who’d all be celebrating together.
Chloe had been invited, of course, but she couldn’t afford to fly back home more than once a year at Christmas, so she’d sent a cute set of swaddling blankets to Ashlee off her registry.
“Sounds like it’s going to be fun,” Chloe said. “I’ll let you go. I don’t want to keep you sitting in the driveway.”
“We don’t mind,” Mom said. And the thing was, Chloe knew it was true. They’d sit in their car and talk to her all evening if she wanted them to.
“Yeah, but if I had to guess,” Chloe said, “you’ve got several three-gallon tubs of ice cream in the trunk.” Her parents’ quirky ice cream shop was a favorite with the University of Kansas students.
Dad chuckled. “More than usual. Ashlee requested an entire tub of our sweet corn n’ bacon flavor, just for herself.”
Chloe screwed up her face. “Well, I don’t want to be the reason that treasure melts. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Sounds good, Lo-Lo. Love you bunches!”
After they hung up, the absence of their voices filled the room. Chloe stared at the ceiling and watched the lopsided fan whir round and round.
For two hours.
Thwip
Thwip
Thwip
Thwip
Thwip
Thwip
Eventually, Chloe started to go a little cross-eyed. And she had to admit her method of wallowing in self-pity was kind of boring. Also, she started to notice that the fan squeaked like a drunk chipmunk every 360 degrees, when the lopsided part made the motor work harder.
It was less
Thwip
Thwip
Thwip
and more
Thwip
Thwip
Ee-eep
And once she thought of it, she couldn’t un- hear the drunken chipmunk. By the tenth rotation, she was cracking up—slightly hysterical—in bed.
Several minutes later, she slapped herself lightly on the cheek. “All right, Chloe, that’s enough.”
She sat up, still snickering. But she needed to get herself together. Maybe it was time to apply the methods she used at school with her students on herself.
Chloe reached into her backpack and pulled out the square Japanese box that held all her yellow origami paper. She chose one covered in smiley faces, then paused for a moment, thinking what encouragement she needed to hear, playing with the folds of her buttercup-yellow skirt all the while.
Maybe the answer to my problems will surprise me when I least expect it, she thought.
So she wrote Chin up, buttercup , and for good measure, she added her signature doodle of a rosebud shaped like a heart.
Then she started folding it into a rose.
She could have made it into an animal, a boat, even a different flower, but Chloe chose a yellow rose because what she needed at the moment was a small gesture of friendship—of affectionate kindness—with herself.
Becca barged in without knocking. “Hey, you know what might be good for you? Distraction. Can you go downstairs to the Hell Room and get the mail? I’m waiting on some screen protectors for my phone.”
“I don’t really want—”
“It’s good for you, Chloe. Being in package purgatory will take your mind off the job shit.”
Chloe sighed. The residents here called the mail room the Hell Room because it was, without fail, a mess.
The building had been constructed long before the revolution of online shopping, so there wasn’t enough space.
There were always boxes everywhere, stacked precariously five- or six-high on the floor, along an entire wall.
Trying to find a package you were expecting was like playing a game of giant Jenga with cardboard boxes.
One false move and the whole thing would collapse on you.
“Um, yeah, I guess I can do that,” Chloe said, pressing the crease she was making on the origami paper. Besides, it was technically her responsibility to get the mail; Becca’s chore chart on the refrigerator laid out the division of labor, and “Hell Room” was in the Chloe column this week.
Becca started to leave the room, but then she popped her head back in. “Hey, even though you got canned, you’ll still be able to pay the rent, right?”
This was one of those moments when Chloe did not like having a blunt “big sister” as a roommate.
But Chloe wasn’t capable of glaring at Becca, because that was one thing Rob had gotten right when he let her go—Chloe was soft.
Not in a bad way, she thought. Just that she had more in common with sunrise-tinted clouds and spring blossoms than hard-edged steel and concrete. And she liked that about herself.
Did she even belong in a place like New York?
Instead of answering Becca, Chloe simply rolled off her bed and took her origami rose with her, finishing it as she went out into the hall, down the gray cement stairs, and to the Hell Room.
It was even more of a disaster than usual, like a UPS truck had vomited everything in its belly into this single room.
Chloe let out a long exhale.
“Well, the only thing to do is start digging,” she said to herself as she crouched and began sorting boxes and plastic mailers.
Behind her, Thelma—the grouchy elderly woman in unit 1A—opened her door to take her terrier out for its early evening walk.
As usual, her hair was impeccably blown out in a style worthy of Meryl Streep on the red carpet, but her silk blouse and slacks—though once elegant—were now a bit tatty.
The other residents had nicknamed her the Threadbare Countess.
“You young people need to stop buying so much crap!” Thelma said, eyeing the mail room as if Chloe had personally brought the scourge of every single one of those boxes into their lives.
“And I see that yellow paper flower thing sticking halfway out of your back pocket! Don’t you dare let it fall out and then leave your litter!
” The Threadbare Countess scowled one more time before she turned on her heel and led her dog away.
Chloe frowned, but she pulled the yellow paper rose out of her pocket and temporarily set it on the small table to her left, where residents sorted their mail and recycled what they didn’t need.
Except, by the time she found her roommate’s package, Chloe had forgotten about the origami.
And the next person who came in accidentally knocked the paper rose off the table, to be buried under piles and piles of boxes on the Hell Room floor.