Cleopatra and Frankenstein(46)

The creative director comes by to introduce himself. His name’s Frank. I once heard a man described as having so much sexual gravity, he could be his own planet. This is not exactly how I would describe Frank, but he does have a sort of electrical energy—jolty movements, a static shock of hair, and weird flashing eyes—that sends a current through his hand to mine.

“My mom’s name is Eleanor too,” he says and smiles. “But I’ll try not to hold it against you.”

*

Before she retired, my mother taught English at a high school for gifted children. Now she plays bridge with other women from her synagogue three nights a week and takes courses at the School of Professional Horticulture to improve her gardening. My mother is like a hummingbird in that if she stops moving, even for a moment, she will surely die.

*

My father lives in an assisted living facility for people with Alzheimer’s not far from my mother’s house. He was, up until a few years ago, a celebrated OB-GYN. My parents divorced when I was ten, and then my father moved in with a Brazilian dermatologist, who in turn left him for another woman. Despite all that, my mother still visits him once a week. We only ever refer to the place he lives in as That Home. Not to be mistaken with a home, which it isn’t much of.

*

A Jewish gynecologist and a Brazilian dermatologist. There must be a joke in there somewhere, my mother likes to say.

*

“I heard something wonderful on the television today!”

My mother is calling to me from the kitchen table, where she is reading about different varieties of hydrangea. I come in and take soy milk from the fridge.

“Don’t you want to know what it was?” she says.

“You can just tell me, Ma,” I say. “You don’t need an invitation.”

“Bite my head off, why don’t you,” she says, passing me a mug. Sparrow. “Well, it’s because of you I remembered it. It was on one of those daytime talk shows I never watch. A matchmaker came on to talk about dating in the digital age. And do you know what she tells her clients to say to themselves first thing every morning? ‘Remember, you could fall in love today.’ And I thought, I bet Eleanor would like that. I’m sure Eleanor would think that was just great.” She beat the words out with her pencil. “You. Could. Fall. In. Love. Today.”

“Why don’t you fall in love today, Ma?” I say and accidentally slam the carton so hard it splats milk across the counter.

“Rag under the sink,” she says and turns back to her book.

*

I must not forget to fill my mother’s hummingbird feeder with nectar. Nectar, it turns out, is just boiled sugar and water.

*

I am lonely, of course. I’m so lonely I could make a map of my loneliness. In my mind it looks like South America, colossal, then petering out to a jagged little tip. Sometimes I’m so lonely I’m not even on that map. Sometimes I’m so lonely I’m the fucking Falklands.

*

“I’d throw myself off a bridge but I’m afraid of heights!” says one old woman to another as they carry their shopping bags home ahead of me.

*

I spend the morning working on subway ad taglines for a Swedish yogurt company.

I’m a dairy good idea.

I have culture!

Spoon me …

Then kill me.

*

Levi calls to tell me he’s taken up whittling after reading an article declaring it the perfect antidote to the stresses and strains of modern life. I tell him I could use some whittling too.

“Hmm, how’s work?” he asks, crunching on something loud down the phone.

“I’m a human pun machine,” I say.

“Oxymoronic,” he says, chomping away. “You can’t be both human and a machine.”

“I hope you’re putting this streak of pedantry to use at the hot food counter,” I say.

“You know what the best antidote for existential ennui is?” he asks.

“Tell me,” I say.

“Physical pain.”

*

Levi was born with the IQ of a genius, but I worry he’s smoked so much weed he might be down to smart lab rat by now.

*

Myke insists on talking to me, despite having no verifiable interest in me as a person at all. I am playing a game with myself where I see how many questions I can ask him until he asks me one in return. So far, I’m at nine. It is like putting coins in a slot machine with no hope of ever getting a prize.

*

I’m in the office late when Frank walks by my desk.

“Still here?”

I tell him I’m waiting for my mother to finish her class at the Botanical Gardens so I can drive her back to Jersey.

“Ah, so you’re a suburb kid,” says Frank. “When I was in high school, they were always the craziest. Did you used to sneak into the city on the weekends too?”

Somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate to tell him I spent my weekends with my forty-year-old boyfriend doing things like his laundry and helping edit his “memoir” about his nascent career as a race car driver. In fact, there’s nothing about that situation that feels appropriate to tell anyone.

“Not really,” I say.

“Ah, so you were a good egg,” says Frank.

“More like a soft-boiled egg,” I say.