Homesick for Another World(40)
“I wouldn’t say ‘rife,’” John answered, wiping the corners of his mouth with his cloth napkin. “Fragrant, more like.”
The waiter collected the unfinished plates of pasta, then returned and took their orders of cheesecake and pie and decaffeinated coffee. John was quiet. He scrolled through photos on his cell phone, looking for a picture he’d taken of a monkey seated on the head of a Virgin Mary statue. The statue was painted in bright colors, and its nose was chipped, showing the white, chalky plaster under the paint. The monkey was black and skinny, with wide-spaced, neurotic eyes. Its tail curled under Mary’s chin. John turned the screen of his phone toward the table.
“This little guy,” he said.
“Aw!” the friends cried. They wanted to know, “Were the monkeys feral? Were they smelly? Are the people Catholic? Are they all very religious there?”
“Catholic,” Marcia said, nodding. “And the monkeys were everywhere. Cute but very sneaky. One of them stole John’s pen right out of his pocket.” She rattled off whatever facts she could remember from the nature tour they’d taken. “I think there are laws about eating the monkeys. I’m not so sure. They all spoke English,” she repeated, “but sometimes it was hard to understand them. The guides, I mean, not the monkeys.” She chuckled.
“The monkeys spoke Russian, naturally,” John said, and put away his phone. The table talk moved on to plans for renovating kitchens, summer shares, friends’ divorces, new movies, books, politics, sodium, and cholesterol. They drank the coffees, ate the desserts. John peeled the wrapper off a roll of antacids. Marcia showed off her new wristwatch, which she’d purchased duty free at the airport. Then she reapplied her lipstick in the reflection in her water glass. When the check came, they all did the math, divvying up the cost. Finally, they paid and went out onto the street and the women hugged and the men shook hands.
“Welcome home,” Jerry said. “Back to civilization.”
“Ooh-ooh ah-ah!” John cried, imitating a monkey.
“Jesus, John,” Marcia whispered, blushing and batting the air with her hand as if shooing a fly.
Each couple went off in a different direction. John was a bit drunk. He’d finished Marcia’s second glass of wine because she’d said it was giving her a headache. He took her arm as they turned the corner onto East Eighty-second Street toward the park. The streets were nearly empty, late as it was. The whole city felt hushed, focused, like a young dancer counting her steps.
Marcia fussed with her silk scarf, also purchased duty free at the airport. The pattern was a paisley print in red and black and emerald green and had reminded her of the vibrant colors she’d seen the locals wearing on the island. Now she regretted buying the scarf. The tassels were short and fuzzy, and she thought they made the silk look cheap. She could give the scarf away as a gift, she supposed, but to whom? It had been so expensive, and her closest friends—the only people she would ever spend so much money on—had just seen her wearing it. She sighed and looked up at the moon as they entered the park.
“Thank God Jerry and Maureen are getting along again,” Marcia said. “It was exhausting when they weren’t.”
“Marty was funny about the wine, wasn’t he?” John said. “I told him I was fine with Syrah. What does it matter? Que sera, sera.” He unhooked his arm from Marcia’s elbow and put it around her shoulder.
“It gave me such a headache,” Marcia complained. “Should we cut across the field or go around?”
“Let’s be bold.”
They stepped off the gravel onto the grass. It was a dark, clear night in the park, quiet except for the sound of distant car horns and ripping motors echoing faintly through the trees. John tried for a moment to forget that the city was right there, surrounding them. He’d been disappointed by how quickly his life had returned to normal after the vacation. As before, he woke up in the morning, saw patients all day long, returned home to eat dinner with Marcia, watched the evening news, bathed, and went to bed. It was a good life, of course. He wasn’t suffering from a grave illness; he wasn’t starving; he wasn’t being exploited or enslaved. But, gazing out the window of the tour bus on the island, he had felt envious of the locals, of their ability to do whatever was in their nature. His own struggles seemed like petty complications, meaningless snags in the dull itinerary that was his life. Why couldn’t he live by instinct and appetite, be primitive, be free?
At a rest stop, John had watched a dog covered in mange and bleeding pustules rub itself against a worn wooden signpost. He was lucky, he thought, not to be that dog. And then he felt ashamed of his privilege and his discontentedness. “I should be happy,” he told himself. “Marcia is.” Even the beggars tapping on car windows, begging for pennies, were smiling. “Hello, nice people,” the beach boys had said. John had wanted to return their salutations and ask what it was that they had to offer. He’d been curious. But Marcia had shushed him, taken his hand, and plodded down the beach with her eyes fixed on the blank sand.
Crossing the lawn in Central Park, John now tried to recall the precise rhythm of the crashing waves on the beach on the island, the smell of the ocean, the magic and the danger he’d sensed brewing under the surface of things. But it was impossible. This was New York City. When he was in it, it was the only place on Earth. He looked up. The moon was just a sliver, a comma, a single eyelash in the dark, starless sky.