Mrs. Poumier, Retired Editor

What I really like about the United States of America is the breaks one has to go to school and learn many useful things. Where I come from — a country in Central America that I won’t name, but you can guess — most people are illiterate, but I went all the way through the third grade, and I know how to read and add and subtract in both Spanish and English.

But this story is about Mrs. Poumier — not me — and I want to put it on paper right quick while I still have this sadness that is gnawing at my guts and heart. If I write it out, I feel I will get it out of my guts, heart, and mind. And get some peace. Not that I want to cure myself from this sorrow, nor that I want to lessen my guilt, or much less lay blame on someone—no sir or madam.

Not at all.

It is that I want to pay my respects to Mrs. Poumier, the only Anglo friend I had in this great country that I love as much as I love my own.

In a bit you’ll see why I am so sad: Mrs. Poumier — my sweet dear friend — died a day after Thanksgiving.

For those who are curious how a person like me — with 3rd grade education and low wits — would dare try to write a story, I will say that I read a lot. I’ve read that Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote — the novel I would rescue from a burning building — also went only to the third grade; but he read every piece of paper that came into his hands.

Also, Charles Dickens didn’t even finish the third grade, and yet he wrote great novels.

So, that is what I do: read everything!

Some people say, “We are what we eat,” others “We are the choices we make,” or “We take what’s in our star.” I beg to differ. I say we are what we make of ourselves.”

How?

By being daring.

By setting goals.

Not only I read at Barnes and Noble, Borders, and local bookstores, but I am familiar with every public library in Manhattan.

Reading is my passion.

And so was Mrs. Poumier’s. In fact, that is how we met. In the summer, during my lunch break, as I sat on the stoop of the building where she lived and read one of the Harry Potter books, she floored me when she looked at the title, exclaiming with great relish: “J. K. Rowling is a heck of a writer!”

And that’s how we started our friendship.

Later, as we became friends, Mrs. Poumier revised my stories, edited them, and gave me advice: “Watch how you begin your sentences. Sentence openers will clue the reader what comes next. Too many words ending in ‘ly,’ too many adjectives, and go on a ‘that’ and ‘which’ hunt.”

Being an orphan, my grandmother raised me. Even though several years have gone by since my grandmother — ‘abuelita’ Guadalupe — died, her image is so fixed in my brain that I can say she is very much alive in my mind and heart. When my gramma died, she left me a medal with the image of the ‘Virgencita de Guadalupe.’ I feel that as long as I have this sacred token, nothing bad could happen to me.

Because Mrs. Poumier looked like — in looks and spirit — my grandmother, I made it a point of befriending her.

For almost two years, I’ve worked in this catering service on 1st Avenue, near Sutton Place. But just because one mentions Sutton Place doesn’t mean that everyone around here is wealthy. No Sir. In fact, Mrs. Poumier, who lived half a block away from One Sutton Place, was poor—poorer than me! To be blunt, her social security check and a small annuity from Vintage a publishing house is all she had left, after her son — a big shot stockbroker — lost her portfolio, which he had loaded with Internet stocks. As we well know, the Dot.Com crisis lost many a fortune.

That is what she tells me, but I suspect a more sinister sin: a lying and wicked son.

Yet despite being poor, she said nothing bad about her children. When Merrill Lynch handled her portfolio of stocks, bonds, and other securities, she did well and could send her son to Harvard Business School, and her daughter to Columbia Law School. Joy and pride would spark in her eyes when she spoke of her two children.

One day, she told me that most of her income went to pay for her rent and that she had very little left for other things, including food. “Not that I am a miser,” she said to me. “It is just that I have to watch every penny.” Yet, she would go meal-less for a day or two so that she could buy the NY Sunday Times. “That’s something I cannot do without—even though it wrecks my budget!”

I loved to listen to her. I loved the cadence in her voice; in her voice I found a refined diction; in the diction elegance, an elegance that revealed nobility, and in that nobility the milk of human kindness that more than kindness was love for neighbor.

“We girls had to practice good diction and write well,” she told me once. “I went to Mount Holyoke College, you know,” she said it as if I would know what she was talking about. And I could see in her bright eyes that those might have been the best years of her life. Of course, I did a little research on the internet and found out that Mount Holyoke College is an all-women college with a vast campus and famed for their first-rate scientists and writers and scientists.

In Mrs. Poumier’s case, more than a writer, she had been an editor with Vintage, a huge publishing empire. But like many fine women a few years ago, she had left her career to care for her two children. Later, she returned and retired from the publishing business. To show her my thanks for her goodwill, I gave her my ‘Virgencita de Guadalupe’ medallion. “Nothing bad will happen to you as long as you keep this,” I said to her.

Knowing about Mrs. Poumier’s thin budget, I spoke to Sadeek, the owner of the candy store two doors down from where I work, and he agreed to sell me the blessed newspaper at half-price. When I told him it was for Mrs. Poumier, he reduced the price even more. And we cooked up a plausible story to tell her. That Sunday, when she came to buy the paper, Sadeek told her that if she came back at 12 noon, she could buy the paper at half price, since by then all the customers had picked up their copies. He had to return the leftovers. Of course, Sadeek asked her to keep mum about that or he would be in trouble with other customers.

Where I work, we sell gourmet food, which we sell for the most shocking prices. Emiliano, the first cook, fixes this ‘arroz con pollo’ — listed in the fancy menu as ‘poulet de la maison du roi’ — which we sell for $29 a meal. Go figure. And people from Park Avenue to Sutton place call us for the delicacy, which, to tell the truth, costs less than two dollars to prepare. And if you throw in the labor (minimum wage, no benefits), rent, and overhead, you can add another dollar to the cost.

Nice business.

Nifty profits.

Antoine, the owner of Le Bistroquet, du Marie Antoinette, an immigrant from Romania, is a good man; very strict, dull, but kind-hearted.

Because I speak English better than he does, he lets me handle the the fax, e-mail, and telephone orders. And in the afternoon and evenings, I deliver the orders of Emiliano’s exquisite dishes. I don’t want to digress but let me say Emiliano was born to cook and to be quiet; among friends we call him “El mudo.”

Our wealthy customers — many of them celebrities I recognize — can’t get enough of Emiliano’s creations. Yet, the man can barely read and write and never uses written recipes, nor scales, or measuring cups!

When any of the machines — ovens, freezers, refrigerators, cash register, coffee and espresso machines, and other objects — breaks down, I fix it. I can fix every machine ever invented. So, the owner is happy with me. As a result, he only comes a few hours a day, but mainly to balance the receipts for the day and to do some ordering and bookkeeping.

During my lunch hour, I would bring Mrs. Poumier a full meal of the special of the day, for free. Nothing in my life gave me more pleasure than to see Mrs. Poumier enjoy her meals. For her birthday (late August) I swiped a bottle from the cellar of a $40 white wine, and we — I brought Emiliano and Sadeek with me — had a few glasses.

How glorious she looked that day: her delicate features glowed with happiness when we sang the ‘happy birthday’ song.

Nervous like a bird, Mrs. Poumier would glance in the telephone’s direction, as if a call from her children was imminent. Yet no call came while we were there. When the doorbell rang, she dashed to the front door, only to see Plutarco — the doorman — whom I had invited to join our little party.

When I thought of the expensive bottle of wine I had brought, a pang of morals jolted me, alerting me I was stealing from my employer; but I would quickly counter the pang with the thought that just fixing one freezer I save his business two or three hundred dollars, and if you multiply this for six to eight times a month, you can well see that $2, the cost of the meal, and $5 for the wine will not set my patron back that much.

Ah, humanity and inhumanity!

One sad day, Mrs. Poumier told me I should not bring her any more meals because her daughter — a partner in a premier law firm — visited her and told her to stop spending her money in expensive meals. “I know the prices these people charge,” she had yelled at her. Not only had she yelled at her, but she had threatened to sue us — my catering place — for exploiting a poor, senile, frail old woman. The nerve of those people! Mrs. Poumier confided she had been afraid that her daughter would box her ears. She had threatened to put her in a home.

Fearful that I might lose my job, I told Emiliano not to fix the meals for Mrs. Poumier anymore. For many days, I felt sad and hard as I tried to see where I had gone wrong—I could not.

During the month of October and November, I saw Mrs. Poumier around the vicinity a few times; she looked unkempt, the spark of vivacity in her eyes gone; gone also was the lilt and sweetness of her voice.

Knowing how much I cared for the sweet lady that Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, my friend Plutarco — the doorman — came running to tell me that my good friend had collapsed in the lobby; the paramedics had declared her dead.

“This lady is way underfed—nothing but skin and bones!” the paramedic had exclaimed.

As Plutarco gave me the sad news, he also gave me my “Virgencita de Guadalupe’ medallion, which Mrs. Poumier had dropped when she collapsed. Plutarco knows I am a man not given to tears, but that day he saw me cry my eyes out; even Sadeek came out of the store and sat next to me and tried to console me. Through a veil of tears, I saw Emiliano, the chef, remove his 10-gallon white hat and fall on his knees and start mumbling what I took to be a prayer. That action made me bawl and wail even louder, for Emiliano hardly ever says a word; mostly he just looks at you as if he were a mute inscrutable Aztec god.

More than tears for losing my good friend, I felt Mrs. Poumier had not wished to die the previous day and spoil Thanksgiving Day for her son and daughter and grandchildren; the two families own houses in Long Island and live in luxury there.

Unloved and reviled by both son and daughter, she’s now with my Virgencita de Guadalupe who will give her all the love that she didn’t get here on this harsh concrete and asphalt jungle that is Manhattan.

I believe much cruelty, fear, and anger wash over this shore. On the other shore, she’ll find goodness, peace, and love—Nothing bad will happen to her there.

The following month, I received a letter from Mr. Jason Stamas, the chief editor at Vintage, telling me they had accepted my manuscript of short stories for publication.

The news was beyond my grasp.

How is this possible?

So, I gathered enough courage and called Mr. Stamas. He explained to me quickly that a retired editor named Lucy Poumier had sent the manuscript to him, which she had praised as an arresting piece of writing, with characters depicting a range of emotions seldom found in current fiction.

In closing, he invited me to have lunch—the following week — with him and the team that will guide and nurture the publication of the book.

Mr. Stamas was shocked to learn that I am an immigrant and that I write in English, which is my second language. I said that Joeph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, And Jack Kerouac wrote in their second language: English. And I felt that if they could do it—why not me?

“Right,” he said. “They had fine editors, and you had the best in Mrs. Poumier. I will send you three books that you should read and reread daily: Mary Duffy’s Toolbox for Writing, and East of Tiffany’s Daring Dudes. And of course, Stephen King’s On Writing.”

“Thank you, but I already own them.”

But as I said above, this story is about Mrs. Poumier, not me. But I can’t help sharing with readers the most valuable advice Mrs. Poumier gave me.

“To write fiction,” she said, “you must learn where emotions spring from. Print the emotion wheel by Robert Plutchik. You must know by heart what is a sentence, a phrase, a clause, and a segment. You already know that. You must learn when to use a phrase or clause or a segment rather than a sentence.”

“I am using your lessons in my writing, now.”

“But the secret that all fine writers keep to themselves —well, except Stephen King— is …”

Eager to hear the secret, I interrupted her.

“Please tell me right away.”

“When you become famous. Make sure that like Sphen King, you will divulge the secret to other writers who may be struggling.”

“I promise.”

“Ninety percent of the words you write should be monosyllabic words. Ernest Hemingway and Tolstoy came close to that, but they still used too many big words. Big words belong in essays—not fiction.”

The end.