On Turpentine Lane(6)

Joel emitted something like a hmmmff.

“Is this public knowledge?” I asked. “That he paints? Can I tell him we saw these?”

Our mother asked, “How about this: I’ll tell Norman Rockwell that I showed you two pictures from his Orange Suite, and you really liked them. Is that an accurate statement—that you like them?”

I said yes. Joel took another look, and said, “Okay, me, too.”

I asked her when the artist was next coming to dinner.

She squinted in the direction of the wall calendar, each month showcasing another dairy product from the local creamery. “I invited him for Friday, for beef Stroganoff, but he hasn’t confirmed.”

“If it’s on, could we come, too?”

“I can’t on Friday. I have a date,” said Joel.

Of course, that triggered the instant engagement of my mother’s and, to an only slighter degree, mine.

“Is it someone new?” she asked.

“It’s always someone new,” I said.



I texted Stuart about the discovery: Mystery solved. Dad left bec he wants 2 paint. oil on canvas, abstract, mom OK w it so way better than I thought. Miss u.

I didn’t like using the abbreviations of a twelve-year-old, but Stuart believed it was stuffy to spell things out if you could get by with less, just like in life. He texted back the next morning, Was this 4 me?





6





Pointers


WHEN IT CAME TO Joel’s social life, sometimes my mother and I could hover. Especially me, since I was subletting a one-bedroom apartment two floors above his until I took possession of my bungalow. He’d been married at thirty and divorced a year later, the innocent party, which I say not out of blind loyalty but as fact. He had the bad luck to fall for an adultery-prone woman named Brenda, whom the rest of the family considered unworthy.

I’d love him to meet someone deserving of his big unlucky heart. He isn’t the most conventionally attractive or fittest guy in the world, but for those who notice, his face wears his goodness quite handsomely.

Growing up only eighteen months apart, our solicitousness is a two-way street. The same night I told him about what I called our engagement and what Stuart characterized as “our promise,” Joel asked for the play-by-play. “Set the stage for me,” he said, taking a first sip from his dessert, a chocolate martini. “It’s research, in case I meet someone. All pointers welcome.”

I tasted his drink then ordered one of my own. “It happened the night before he left on his quest. We were having takeout from Peaceable Nation at my place, and we’d had a bottle of wine. And he quite literally asked for my hand. ‘Right? Left?’ I asked. First he snapped off a piece of the fringe from the scarf he was wearing—red cotton, made in India—then took my left hand and tied the thread around the fourth finger.

“I said, ‘Is this what I think it is?’

“?‘It’s a placeholder.’

“?‘For . . .’

“?‘For when I’m back.’

“?‘And then . . .’

“?‘We’ll be together, under one roof.’ He patted my hand. ‘Good fit? Not too tight?’

“I said, ‘It’s perfect. A metaphor.’ I wanted to ask whether the ‘under one roof’ meant as husband and wife, or just roommates. But I didn’t want to spoil the moment. Instead, I asked, ‘Would it be okay if I replaced it with something a little sturdier?’

“He told me that was his intention, of course; that’s what he meant by ‘placeholder.’ He said the red was no accident, that it had major symbolic heft in many religions and cultures.

“I asked, ‘And when you’re back, were you thinking we’d live here or at your place?’ He said he was subletting his apartment during his hegira, and the lessee had signed on for six months, renewable verbally or by text in six-month intervals up to eighteen months.”

I didn’t tell Joel the rest, that we’d made farewell love in a new position that Stuart said he’d learned from kabbalah teachings, and in the morning, his departure documented with photos destined for Facebook and Instagram, he set out more or less west. I’d made him three cheese sandwiches and three peanut butter and honey ones on pita bread. He said he’d eat dropped fruit that he’d source from orchards along the way, so just an apple and a banana to start with.

After he left, I looked up hegira. I don’t think he knew that its dictionary definition was “a journey, especially when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation.” Over the next few weeks, I switched from red thread to string to yarn and back to string when the wool made my finger itch. The infirmary’s nurse questioned my needing hydrocortisone cream when I could simply remove the irritant. I called Stuart and told him of my dilemma.

I must have woken him. “Red thread?” he repeated, his voice a little thick. “Remind me.”





7





Halloween


I’D STAYED HOME, GIVING out generous amounts of candy to the mere half-dozen trick-or-treaters in the apartment complex. Between visitors, I was reading Stuart’s Facebook posts, noticing he was looking thinner, which didn’t worry me since he was walking the equivalent of a half marathon every day. His tan was deepening despite his safari hat, his SPF precautions, and the fact that it was late October. Though I made a point of “liking” all of his Facebook pictures, many I actually hated. He seemed to be running into old girlfriends and every female classmate from social work school; one might even have deduced that his route was not a spontaneous meander but a romantic scavenger hunt. I didn’t want to make an issue of his socializing with women he once dated, but each post unsettled me. I reminded myself that he chose me, committed himself to me; that I was the one with the red string around my finger. And only those closest to him—his parents and I—had our credit cards in his wallet.