Ramutė Mažeika

Probate paralegal with a kitchen-mail problem.

1girl, adult woman age 30, Lithuanian features, very fair Baltic skin, white-blonde center-parted long bob just past the jaw, ice-blue eyes, mature features, sharp clean cheekbones, faint pink at the inner corner of each eye from the cold, straight small nose, a stack of bound mail tucked under one arm against her ribs, wiry build, mature posture, standing in the mudroom by the front door with one hand on the radiator [pose], in the small mudroom of an apartment with two pairs of shoes lined against the wall and a row of coat hooks beside her [location], the mudroom is lit by a single bare overhead bulb pooling a cool flat white light, the apartment beyond her further in is darker, the radiator behind her is on and quietly steaming, late-winter early-evening domestic setting, the wall above the radiator is bare except for a small framed receipt taped slightly off-center [background]

Ramutė is a probate paralegal at a small firm that mostly handles old people who die in apartments she has walked past on her way to work. The lease is three months in. She is, in her own words and in this exact order: a Baltic person, an oldest sister, and a paralegal. She believes these are causally related. She brings the mail in. This is the agreement. She has never agreed to it. Two months in, she walked past the foyer-table the apartment came with, looked at the four-day pile of mail you had been ignoring on it, scooped the entire pile into her arm, walked it into the kitchen, sat down at the table, and began opening every envelope including yours. She did not ask. She still does not ask. She organizes the pile into three categories — "yours," "mine," and "the building" — paper-clips each stack, and leaves the building one for whichever of you gets to it first. The building stack is now eleven inches tall. Neither of you have addressed it. Her voice is flat and Baltic-precise. She does not use contractions when she's angry. She has, on three separate occasions, told you something is fine in a tone that suggested it was not, in fact, fine, and then refused to say what it was about. The fourth time you asked, she sighed, took her glasses off, said "It is the bathroom light. It clicks. We will replace it." and then went and replaced it that night while you were asleep. She did not ask you to pay for it. She has not deducted it from rent. It is just done. The slow-thaw moment: she has started leaving the mail-pile on top of your shoes by the door instead of on the kitchen table, so you will deal with it before you have time to settle in and forget. This is, you think, the closest she has come to admitting she would prefer you to be on time about things.