The Opposite of Loneliness Essays and Stories(18)

She paused for a moment, studying his half-lidded eyes.

“Future sounds.” She reopened the book. “Future tastes and textures.”

*

Sam wasn’t lonely. Not completely. His mother came up from Jersey every few weeks, and some of his college friends still lived in the city. They’d warned him about enrolling in a “normie” program. His college had been filled with dark classrooms and Braille keyboards, audio books and hallway railings. A college where students left their red-striped canes at the bottom of the staircase, feeling forearms and cupping faces. Pressing together to the vibrations of the speakers, dancing and slipping back to unmade beds based on the smell of someone’s hair or the curve of their wrist or the way their breath tasted. From time to time, Sam would sit awake in his living room, drink a Bordeaux, and blast these half-forgotten rap songs. He couldn’t stand to have a roommate, to subject some Westchester graduate student to the role of perpetual babysitter. After all, he already had nannies. Women who came and read to him like he was some charity case. But Anna was different. She never asked about his classes or his family or what it was like to be blind. It wasn’t about him. She just sat down and read. Read until her voice got dry or her eyes got tired and they would merely sit in silence for a while. She understood silence the way he understood darkness—running from neither as the sun set and the words ran out.

*

Sam stayed on his side of the room. He always did. After three weeks, Anna realized his pattern, and with it how easy it was to take off her scarf without notice. How easy it was to do the same with her sweater. Her blouse. Her beige cotton underwear. Three months later the routine had evolved. At around 6:30 P.M. she’d excuse herself to the bathroom, bunch up her pile, and emerge fully clothed and fully satisfied. Even as she sat in her kitchen, Martin-less. More satisfied that she was Martin-less. Itching as she ate her dinner to ask how his arthritis was, how his hemorrhoids were doing, and how very exciting his day was.

One night, as she waited, Anna fantasized about choking to death. Martin would come home from work and find her dead on the kitchen floor, a giant slab of steak still warm in a puddle of watery blood, a single fatal bite missing from its side. Her funeral would probably have a slide show of pictures back from the opera house; perhaps her nephew would read one of his poems. Beef would be banned from all hors d’oeuvres. Didn’t you hear, people would whisper, that’s how she died. I just can’t imagine, they’d sob, died in her own kitchen. Anna wondered whether an article would run in the Times, or if she’d just get one of those one-liners in the Westchester Daily. Alone, in the evenings, when Martin was at the office and her daughter was living in London and her Portuguese cleaning lady was gone and her Chinese dry cleaner was gone and Sam was somewhere dark, Anna thought about such things. Thought and thought until she felt the satiating company of the guilt she’d inspire and the soothing comfort that surely she’d be missed. But then she’d think more. Think and think until she started cutting her steak into smaller and smaller pieces, overchewing each bite before she tentatively swallowed.

*

Anna read Sam a wedding invitation and peeled off her socks.

Anna read Sam a chapter from The Tao of Pooh and unclasped her bra.

The heating vent chocked.

The tea percolated.

The clock hit 6:30, and Anna went to the bathroom.

*

And so it went. Twice a week, every week, for twelve weeks. Anna bought a book on Malaysian culture and another on Indian cooking and another on the faith of Tao. Martin came home, tired, old, proud. And Anna told him about the dry cleaner and the tuna salad and the similarities between Judeo-Christian monotheism and the singularity of Allah. But Anna was still sick, and she knew it. She told Martin, but he told her she was just bored. That she should just find more things to do with her day. That her knee was fine and the nausea was normal.

That night she went to bed earlier than early and forgot to leave a towel for his bath or water for his pills and lay propped up in bed beside her almanac. She had purposefully climbed in on Martin’s side of the bed, pretending to be asleep for a whole thirty minutes before she heard him sigh, walk around the bed, and lower his weight inside the cold half of the sheets. Anna pressed her face into her pillow and scrunched up her features. But Martin was snoring before he could feel the blankets shaking slightly up and down.

*

On Tuesday at 7:53 P.M., Anna was fantasizing about choking to death when her phone rang. No one called at this hour. Martin wasn’t home yet, so she hoped it wasn’t someone trying to sell her something; somehow she could never figure out how to hang up on those people. She let it ring a few times just in case it was Martin dialing in his delay—she never answered right away, never wanted to seem like she was waiting.

She picked up. It was the annoying woman who sat at the front desk of Martin’s firm. Occasionally she’d call to say he’d be running late—that there was some meeting or that his car wouldn’t start. Anna hated when she called. She had bad taste in Christmas cards and had let herself get fat.

“Anna, hi, is that you?” She paused. Her voice sounded funny.

“Yes it is. Is Martin running late?”

She didn’t answer.

“Hello? Sorry, can you hear me?” Anna hated the new phones Martin had installed last summer—she never knew quite where she should be talking into.