Misinterpretation, page 27
The sun was illuminating half her desk. I opened one of the drawers. Flawless. A tray with rubber bands, staples, and Post-it notes in designated sections. The second drawer contained two reams of printer paper. The third drawer was empty. The fourth drawer was the exception. She kept a sewing kit in there. It contained needles, spools of thread, safety pins, a box of tampons, a pair of woolen gloves. It reminded me of a drawer from home containing miscellaneous items, scissors, measuring tapes, storage bags. My mother tried to put everything where it belonged, but many things would eventually end up there.
That snippet of conversation from long ago came to mind, but this time my parents weren’t in the garden, as I once remembered, but in the living room. My father’s words still hovered above the kitchen table.
We’re in the same room, but you don’t see or listen to me at all.
I stood by the drawer and looked inside, rummaging through an old deck of cards and a couple of plastic dolls, the kind produced during communism in Albania, which nobody wanted. With their legs and arms stuck to the body, they were as useless as mummies.
“Only a few films are any good,” my mother said suddenly. “But if they are, they end too soon. You’re left bereft, in a dark room. Perhaps the roses aren’t cancerous, who knows. But why take the chance? Better not to touch them at all.”
The drawer creaked. I’d shut it without intending to.
I turned around. They were both looking at me.
My mother’s blonde hair. Her red dress. My father’s white shirt, rolled at the sleeves. His tank top underneath. To soak up the sweat, he’d say.
The images wouldn’t hold. Their silhouettes moved farther away from me; they were steadily shrinking, until they were reduced to specks. The roses in the garden were growing at a rapid speed, their stems thick as trees, their petals vast as sailcloths. There was nothing but a daisy and a cactus in Zinovia’s office, but the smell of the roses was suffocating. I had to remind myself they weren’t cancerous. Then I said that to my mother. They’re lovely, Mother.
The geography of my mother’s face was complicated. Her skin now stretched for miles and miles. Her features were part of a field, a country, a universe, and it dawned on me that although her words to me would resonate forever, she was incapable of hearing mine. For mothers bathed babies in nourishment and all their emotions. For the conditions of the womb persisted and it was a one-way street. That trouble in the mothers’ eyes, passed down and down and down, from their own mothers, and those before them, was there to stay. Daughters could do as little about it as about a choppy ocean, or a river that had run dry. Then Anna came to mind, traveling the world with her Coach duffel bag, only dimly aware of the fact that she was stuck back in time, in the enormous desert of her own mother’s face during those earlier years. For how long had she wandered aimlessly under the open skies, at the mercy of mirages that would always disappear?
Zinovia’s approaching steps brought my daydreams to an end. A wave of panic washed over me. But why? Wasn’t I there to talk to her?
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.
She double-checked that the windows were closed before closing the blinds, which concealed all the people on their purposeful walks, and an electronic billboard, advertising the hourly parking rate of an underground garage.
She turned on a soft light that infused the room in sepia. She lathered her hands in Cetaphil. The smell wasn’t bad this time.
“So,” she said, sitting down and placing one hand on top of the other. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” I said. The idea of getting up and leaving still lurked at the back of my mind. “The sun is finally out.”
“Did you have a nice weekend? Any parties?” she said, her smile bright.
“My friend Anna’s party. Was there with Billy,” I blurted.
UPON LEAVING ZINOVIA’S OFFICE, sunlight flooded my vision. The glare of the street was disorienting. The sounds startling. This was a material world, made of brick, cement, flesh. A Mercedes cut into a lane, nearly causing a crash. A horn, sharp as a scream, blasted the street. A pedestrian launched into expletives toward a bicyclist, who scurried away. The streetlights commanded the flow of the traffic. The phones people’s attention.
I wanted to return to Zinovia’s office, resume my recline on her sofa. I longed to close my eyes and remain in a suspended state, weaving the threads of emotions she had managed to yank from my tangled pile. I wanted to be in a tidy room again, for my body to feel nothing but the sting and comfort of a voice.
What was expected of me that afternoon? One appointment came into focus. I had to meet Alfred in the park in fifteen minutes.
Someone called my name. The doorman of Zinovia’s office building was running toward me.
“I look you,” he said, in his Russian accent. “I look you and don’t find. I feel myself anxious.”
He handed me a red rose. It was bright and plump, accented in leafy ferns, and wrapped in cellophane.
“It’s your husband,” he said. “He drops it off. He is late teaching class.”
A bead of sweat was rolling down the doorman’s neck. His left eye was twitching. He knew me by name but hadn’t seen me come out of the elevator. Having to find me in the crowd had made him nervous. The smallest tasks upended him. He used to be a gym teacher in Russia, he had told me once, but no longer had the strength for exercise.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nice,” he said, before heading back. “The rose. The husband.”
I walked along the sidewalk. Pops of purple and yellow sprinkled the streets. New Yorkers and tourists alike looked content as they sipped on iced drinks, their jackets tied around their waists, their sleeves rolled up. The business of enjoying life was about to be taken seriously. The rose’s petals were smooth. It crossed my mind to surprise Billy, to show up at NYU after his class. He’d shuffle out of the classroom absentmindedly, adjusting the strap of his cross-body satchel. Upon seeing me standing there, in the hallway, a shadow would cross his face. But he would recover. He would manage a smile. Just then my phone beeped. Do you want to come and meet me? Billy wrote, as if he’d been reading my mind. Let me know.
But I couldn’t go to NYU. Alfred was waiting for me in the park. I hurried my step.
By the Thompson Street entrance, the first cherry trees had already flowered. The garden beds were bursting with blossoms. Subway troubles, Alfred wrote in a text. Be there soon. I sat under a cherry tree. The earth was soft and moist from the sprinklers. The white and pink blooms gave off a sweet scent. To my left, a clown was blowing bubbles. Squealing, eager kids were chasing them. One of the children tripped and fell face forward, not far from me. She stayed put on the ground, about to cry. I helped her up.
“Want to pop bubbles with me?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Her father approached us. He thanked me and took her, but he stood nearby, talking on the phone.
“They say it could be a false spring,” he said. “A temperature drop is expected this week. I hope all those flowers and buds make it. It would be a shame if they don’t.”
There was Alfred now, in front of the Garibaldi statue, his head jutting forward and turning side to side. He was overdressed. The black winter coat didn’t seem like something he’d own, but he looked handsome in it. He had parted his hair on the side. His deep-set eyes kept scanning the park. Two skateboarders almost bumped into him. He didn’t even notice. He continued wandering around the sculpture, indifferent to the commotion. Under his arm he held his orange folder.
He took a break from pacing to write me a message. I’m here, he wrote. I’m here. Did you leave already? Where are you? We weren’t far from each other. But he couldn’t see me. The grassy area was packed with children, and I was sitting down.
In the flower beds, daffodils, tulips, and irises were competing over their colors. Alfred resumed his pacing. Then he stopped, opened his folder. He read and read. The blossoming trees did not exist for him. He was oblivious to everything. He was far back, in those distant, shadowy years. He would soon pass his story on to me. The blue sky, the flowers, the children would disappear from me also.
A ray of sunshine fell over his face. He was staring at the flower beds. He then looked at his phone again. A striking expression crept up his face. It threatened to scuttle toward me, his sadness, like one of the more erratic squirrels. I didn’t move. He was leaving the park. I stood up and hurried behind him, but not fast enough to catch up. I followed him, ensuring there was enough distance between us, assuming I’d call his name any second, or maybe just eventually.
He lengthened his stride. He didn’t look back.
By the park’s exit, I stopped. Alfred featured as a blot against the crowd. A street performer, his body and clothes painted gold, was staring at me. Then his posture changed. He leaned forward on a golden cane. He was pointing toward his tip bowl, positioned in front of his feet.
A woman walking by tossed in a few dollars. The golden man bowed his head. The blue velvet of the woman’s jacket and the silver toggle of her shoes shimmered in the sun. She was the same woman from the dentist’s office, I realized, the one who had been staring at the aquarium with the unusual creatures. The timing of her entrances into my life gave me pause. She’d appeared on the first day I met Alfred, then right after Vilma found us together, and now again, when he had just walked off. I ran my finger over the smooth surface of the kambaba jasper inside my pocket. The stone was calming, as Alfred had promised.
“Can you believe it?” the woman said, moving her blue-sleeved arm up, toward the sky. “That it’s finally spring, after all that?”
She skipped along the sidewalk in the same direction as Alfred had. Once she vanished, I was certain I’d never see her or Alfred again. I turned down a tree-lined street and headed toward NYU. Scraggly branches hovered above my head. A clustering of buds, at the end of the twigs, were just about to bloom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CLAIRE ROBERTS AND ALYSSA OGI—YOU ARE MY NORTH Stars in the publishing wilderness. This wouldn’t have happened without you. Meg Storey. Lisa Dusenbery. Beth Steidle. Elizabeth Gaffney. Jennifer Croft and Idra Novey for their generous praise. Everyone attending the Public Space writing workshop. Anna Katsnelson. Coleman Bigelow. For enduring my even earlier drafts—Jeno Pineda, Megan Paonessa, Flavia Zgjani, Kledja Aliskenderaj. My dear Dorothy Mazlum. My mentor and friend Tom Grimes. Every professor and student I encountered at Texas State. Debra Monroe. My friend Richard—your infectious love for books and films kept me afloat. My beta readers: Ken, Barbara, Emily Leish. My warrior writer friends Maisy Card and Meryl Branch-McTiernan. Sage Jacobs. And Matthew, who’s read more drafts than he cared to, without complaints, perspicacious and kind as ever. Thank you!
LEDIA XHOGA is an Albanian American fiction writer and playwright. Before getting an MFA in fiction from Texas State University, she worked in publishing in New York City. She has been published in Intrepid Times, Hobart, and other journals. Originally from Tirana, Albania, she lives with her family in Brooklyn and the Catskills.
“An absolutely gorgeous novel, taut as a thriller, lovely as a watercolor, poetically incisive and wry. I devoured this book and was heartbroken when it was over. Ledia Xhoga is a great and visionary writer whose career I will follow eagerly in decades to come.”
—JENNIFER CROFT,
author of The Extinction of Irena Rey
“Ledia Xhoga is a superb chronicler of post-national existence, of a narrator shifting between disparate views of reality depending on what language she’s speaking and with whom. Deft and insightful, Misinterpretation reveals the disorienting process of making choices in one language and then questioning them in another. This is a moving, exceptional first novel.”
—IDRA NOVEY,
author of Take What You Need
“Ledia Xhoga’s novel about a woman whose life is on the brink of unraveling because of her good intentions explores the complexity of translating our own trauma, even to the people we love. With lyrical prose and a propulsive plot, Xhoga delves deep into the shadows of the human psyche, challenging readers to confront the darker legacies of the past while pondering the delicate balance between empathy and self-preservation. Ledia Xhoga has crafted a literary masterpiece that is as profound as it is unforgettable, solidifying her place as a talent to watch in the world of contemporary fiction.”
—MAISY CARD,
author of These Ghosts Are Family
“Ledia Xhoga casts a riveting spell in this novel of an Albanian interpreter whose own shifting reality is as subject to misinterpretation as the words of her clients. A stunning debut.”
—ELIZABETH GAFFNEY,
author of When the World Was Young
“If in the twenty-first-century Kafka had moved from Prague to Brooklyn, Misinterpretation is the novel I believe he would have written. Instead, Ledia Xhoga wrote it. She captures a corollary world to the one Josef K. inhabits in The Castle, but rather than not being able to reach the castle, Xhoga’s nameless protagonist finds herself living in the castle, a polyglot culture in which everyone misinterprets what everyone else says and does; some residents even misinterpret their own emotions. Xhoga interprets our brave, new multicultural world with a sly, benign wit. Read her novel. You’ll be glad you did.”
—TOM GRIMES,
author of Mentor
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2024 by Ledia Xhoga
First US Edition 2024
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact
Tin House, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
Interior design by Beth Steidle
Cover design by Beth Steidle
Cover art: Hand holding mirror | Shutterstock | Anton Vierietin; Tiger | Elizabeth Pringle | Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Xhoga, Ledia, author.
Title: Misinterpretation : a novel / Ledia Xhoga.
Description: First US edition. | Portland, Oregon : Tin House, 2024.Identifiers: LCCN 2024014812 | ISBN 9781959030805 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781959030881 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Psychological fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3624.H64 M57 2024 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20240402
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024014812
Tin House
2617 NW Thurman Street, Portland, OR 97210
www.tinhouse.com
DISTRIBUTED BY W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
Ledia Xhoga, Misinterpretation
