Page 65 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Chloe
All of Chloe’s extended family within a three-hour driving radius convened at her grandma’s white farm-style house the next day to celebrate Nana’s birthday.
She was turning eighty-seven, but she was livelier than most women who were a quarter of a century younger.
Nana credited it to a vigorous walk every morning followed by a bowl of miso soup; she didn’t believe in any of that sugary cereal nonsense.
(Chloe kept mum about the sugar buffet that constituted her own breakfasts.)
However, the no-sweets rule did not apply to birthdays or holidays, and per tradition, the family had gathered to decorate “Nana Cookies.” It was an idea Nana had devised many, many years ago, when it became clear that the “grandkid” generation would be quite substantial.
She loved having a big family and wanted everyone to remain close, and to do so, she needed to create the scaffolding for that to happen.
Hence Nana’s Summer Cookie Extravaganza was born.
As well as Kansas Gingerbread Christmas and New Year’s Day mochi and ozoni soup for good luck, always using her large home as an anchor for the family.
Now, with the beginnings of a great-grandchild generation, it was more important than ever to gather the chickens of her brood together when she could.
Chloe and her mom had spent the whole morning baking close to two hundred sugar cookies, which was precisely the balm Chloe had needed after spending last night thinking about the CLOVER memory box and, after that, fretting about the deep hole of debt she was in.
Could she press charges for what Jennifer had done?
But even if it were possible, would Chloe do it?
It would take months—maybe years—for the police and then the courts to sort it out, and meanwhile, Chloe would remain mentally tied to the Jones family, when what was best for her was probably a clean break.
That didn’t solve her immediate money problems, either.
She needed more time to think about what to do next. Hence, the relief at getting to bake this morning. Sugar was only a temporary reprieve, but still, it was a reliable comfort.
Nana, as usual, had chosen a party theme, and this year’s was a botanical garden, so there had been cookie cutters shaped like irises, daffodils, bumblebees, and roses.
“The theme was going to be wild animals,” Nana told Chloe now, as they set out the cookies on the long counter in the kitchen, which still boasted its original orange tiles from the seventies when the house had been remodeled.
“But when I read your interview in the New York Times , I knew the cookies had to be flowers this year. I’m so proud of you, Lo-Lo.
And you gave me a great thing to brag about to the ladies in my bridge club—none of their grandkids are famous! ”
Laughing, Chloe hugged her, holding on to her Nana’s tiny, birdlike body for a good, long minute.
“I am not afraid of storms,” Nana said, “for I am learning how to sail my ship.” She patted Chloe’s arm after they’d separated from their hug.
Chloe’s mouth hung open. “What did you say?”
“It’s from Little Women ,” Nana said. “It means you’re going to be okay.”
Tears swelled in Chloe’s eyes. But she put on a brave smile and nodded.
Soon, though, Nana’s home was no longer a quiet place for small wisdoms. It quickly became a madhouse as minivans and SUVs arrived, spilling out more and more family.
Chloe found herself enveloped over and over in the arms of cousins, uncles, and aunts she hadn’t seen in a long time.
Even her very pregnant cousin Ashlee came.
“Okay, my dear little hellions!” Nana clapped her hands while beaming at the crowd packed into her kitchen. There were children on the dining chairs, on the barstools, and hanging off the edge of the counter. “It’s cookie decorating time!”
A collective squeal went up, and the kids scrambled for seats at the various folding tables, while their parents brought them blank cookies.
Meanwhile, Chloe and some of her childless cousins set up stations with different-colored piping bags and all sorts of decorations—sparkly sugar, pearl-like candy beads, gold and silver dusts, and a rainbow assortment of jimmies.
When every child had what they needed, Chloe stepped to the side of the kitchen to observe, but from outside the fray.
If anyone thought the noise right now was too much, just wait until the kids had begun eating the decorations.
In about fifteen minutes, the decibel level would border on dangerous.
Chloe shook her head and smiled, remembering when she had been one of the children in this kitchen, jockeying for the icing and decorations.
When Oliver had been right there beside her, using his longer arms to make sure she got the colors and sprinkles she wanted. A tinny pang echoed in her chest, reminding her that the hole he’d left there had never quite healed.
On the other side of the kitchen, her mom’s older brother, Uncle Mitch, let out a roaring guffaw. “Hey, which of you kids did this?” he said, still laughing. “Are you all trying to be like Chloe?”
He scooped something up in his large hands and held them aloft. Then he opened his palms and let a dozen yellow paper roses cascade through the air, back down onto the orange-tiled counter.
None of the kids responded to Uncle Mitch. They stopped their cookie decorating for about two seconds before they decided the grown-up’s question was boring and irrelevant, and they went right back to chattering and shoving icing and sprinkles straight into their mouths.
But Chloe gasped. One of them was the gold-foil-striped paper rose from her pen pal. Were the rest of them from him, too?
She rushed through the crowd of family, weaving around moms and dads and grandparents helping their kids, and through cousins sharing bad dating stories over beers.
She arrived on the other side of the kitchen right as Uncle Mitch said, “Well, let’s open up these flowers and see what messages are inside. ”
“Stop!” Chloe shouted.
Every single person in the kitchen froze.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that… those are mine.”
Uncle Mitch grinned and made a casual swatting motion with his hand, dismissive not in a rude way, but like a member of the older generation who was used to hearing youthful silliness. “There’s so many here. We can share.”
“No!” Chloe said, which earned her some stern looks. She softened her tone, simultaneously trying to think of an explanation for her outburst that wouldn’t sound absolutely bananas. Telling everyone that she’d been having an ongoing conversation with traveling paper roses wasn’t going to cut it.
“Um, I made those,” she lied. “But I’m not done yet. I wanted to put some finishing touches on them first.”
Uncle Mitch laughed and swatted his hand again. “Well, why didn’t you just say so. Here, take them. We can be patient.”
Grateful that suspicion did not run in her family, Chloe swept the paper roses into a kitchen towel, then hurried—as nonchalantly as possible—down the hall with them, to the farthest side of the house.
The sunroom was a side porch that Chloe’s grandpa had enclosed during the same 1970s remodel, because Nana had wanted a quiet place to read and enjoy the sun without being harassed by mosquitos.
There were wicker armchairs with floral cushions, a bench swing (also with floral cushions), and a fat, overstuffed sofa incongruously upholstered in a repeating pattern of “KU” in interlocking block letters and the university’s red-and-blue Jayhawk mascot.
Chloe spilled the armful of origami flowers onto the sofa. They tumbled out of the kitchen towel onto the couch cushions in an artful pile, like a bouquet of paper roses.
The first rose was the most recent one they’d been passing back and forth. She knew the gold pattern of the paper so well now, the edges a little worn.
But as she picked it up, it felt different. Heavier, like there was something inside. And the touch of the paper itself made her palm tingle, like someone was whispering across her skin. Her pulse thrummed loudly in her ears.
She unfurled the paper flower and hardly skimmed her own note, which had ended with:
On the other side of risk is the very real possibility of happiness.
He’d responded:
Then here is my heart.
It’s yours, Chloe… It has always been yours.
∞
Two bracelet charms tumbled out into her hand—a clover and an infinity symbol made of looping hearts. They would have matched the charm bracelet she used to wear in high school.
From the tarnish on them, it looked like they had been bought when she was in high school.
“Oh my god. Oliver.”
A happy sob escaped from her lungs, and Chloe felt electrified, as if a time machine had whisked her back and she and Oliver were on the porch roof outside her bedroom window, their bodies nearly touching, watching the lightning cut the sky through the rain.
These paper roses changed everything. Running into him on the streets of New York had seemed like a coincidence, but now—knowing he was the one she’d been writing to all along—it felt like there was no other way it could have been.
She could feel the vibration of the delicate, spiderweb-like thread of silk that tugged between them.
Maybe she didn’t know the Oliver of the present as well as the Oliver of the past—his handwriting was certainly different—but Chloe couldn’t look at this paper rose and believe that it meant nothing.
It had traveled back and forth between them for a reason.
No other origami flowers had done this. Every day, her little volunteer crew in Central Park physically handed roses to passersby, or she left them places to be picked up, and that was that.
And if there were something more to it elsewhere—in San Francisco, in Atlanta, or overseas in Asia and South America and Europe—Wanda would have mentioned it during the New York Times interview.