The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(17)

But that was before Martin retired. Before he left work to stay home and question the amount of mayonnaise in the tuna salad and why she let that damn Chinese family overcharge her for the dry cleaning. Before he reconsidered and, at seventy-one, went back to the firm. Before she realized that she’d liked when he complained about the mayonnaise and didn’t really mind that he was home for lunch.

One morning, Martin made Anna scrambled eggs before she woke up. She didn’t say anything when they tasted oddly sweet, but once she found the empty cream carton in the trash, they nearly cramped up laughing. The next weekend, Martin took her golfing for the first time. And later that summer to the city for a show. But he must have missed his keyboard and his meetings and his legal briefings because the following fall he went back to his office, his job, his early mornings and late dinners. Anna’s career had peaked in her twenties, deteriorating with her body, not expanding with her mind. She retired at twenty-eight and worked in a dance studio for a while, but she eventually settled into her house and her hobbies. His decision puzzled her. And sooner or later her knee started hurting and her nausea began and she got The Diagnostic Almanac and Dr. Limestone prescribed her “purpose and routine.”

Sometimes, in the shower, or in the car, or loading the dishwasher, Anna would wonder what would have happened if she had offered to read to Martin. Offered her eyes to cable-box directions and instant-soup instructions, unpaid bills and pages from his law books. I’ll be your glasses, she would have said. That doesn’t say milk, it says cream.

*

On Wednesday at 4:22 P.M., Anna knocked on Sam’s apartment door.

“Hi Anna,” said Sam.

“Hi Sam,” said Anna. He placed his hand on her elbow.

“Your knee doing okay?”

“Not really, Sam. They think it might be a sign of hemolytic anemia.”

“That’s terrible, Anna. Come on, sit down, sit down.”

She sat.

“I’m just tired. I’m tired all the time. I wake up and I’m tired, I go to sleep and I’m tired.” She looked at him; he looked slightly to the left of her.

“You know I love having you here, but there are other volunteers in the program and if you’re too—”

“No, please,” she interrupted. “Really, I’m fine.” Anna brushed past Sam and settled on the sofa. “Did I ever tell you I could do Black Swan’s thirty-two fouettés en tournant without breaking a sweat?”

Sam smiled.

“I’ll put on some tea.” The kettle needed washing and Anna was wearing a dress, so by the time he sat down at his desk, her clothes were already piled neatly beneath the armchair.

He looked at her. She loved when he looked at her. Loved imagining Martin imagining him looking at her. As he sat at his firm’s desk, too good to retire, staring at a case as his wife parted her bare legs in the apartment of a younger man.

Anna hadn’t made love since Martin un-retired. Or for that matter since her knee started hurting and the nausea began. But her pulse would quicken like it did in her twenties. Sometimes, when she’d finished a sentence, or a letter, she’d pause for a minute, letting Sam’s clicking fingers catch up, and close her eyes. Sam couldn’t see the way her breasts hung down in pockets of thinning skin. Or the way her pubic hairs had begun to thin near the bottom. So she imagined that they didn’t and they hadn’t. Anna just sipped her tea and let the years fall off her with her clothes. She was twenty-five. Her skin was taut and her hair strawberry yellow. Her joints were smooth and her voice was crisp.

That morning in her closet Anna sorted through options. Straps were preferable. Cottons and silks were quieter, skirts and dresses easier to remove. Buttons were practically essential. Her knuckles struggled with detail, mandating a patient delicacy in sliding the tiny polished plastic through their knitted holders. She started with a hand on her neck, lingering on the divot above her collarbone before sliding her fingertips under the strap and letting it fall off her shoulder like a leotard. Sentence by sentence, she fingered the circles, tossing them aside with the periods, semicolons, and dots from the i’s. Sometimes, though, the anticipation was too much. Sometimes Sam would turn toward her at the right moment and her lips would part, and her back would hurt, and she’d lose her place on the page—looking back at Sam like she’d looked at Brian from Conservatory or Lev from her summer in Moscow or Martin before he’d taken the bar. It was these times that she ached to rip off her straps and to let her buttons crack off like tiny moons.

*

“I miss dreaming forwards,” Anna said.

“What?”

“I dream backwards now. You won’t believe how backwards you’ll dream someday.” She cupped one of her breasts in her hand, sliding it up her body and closer to her neck.

“I didn’t think dreams had directions.” His broken eyes managed a smile.

“You’re teasing me.”

“Anna, I would never tease you,” he teased. She liked the way he said her name. It rolled off his tongue to say I’m talking to you, to say I’m listening to you.

“I dream of the past, of things that could have happened, or should have happened or never happened. You dream of the future. You’re so young, Sam. You don’t realize it now, but you’re so young.”

“I dream in sounds and tastes and textures,” he said.