The Japanese Lover(47)

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The following Monday at the end of her Lark House shift, Irina went to find Alma to take her to the movies to see Lincoln a second time. Lenny had gone to spend a few days in Santa Barbara, and so Irina had briefly recovered her position as cultural attaché, as Alma had always called her before Larry arrived and usurped her position. A few days earlier they had seen only half of the film because Alma had felt such a stabbing pain in her chest that she had cried out and they had been forced to leave the theater. She had rejected the manager’s offer of help, as the prospect of an ambulance followed by a hospital seemed worse than dropping dead on the spot. Irina drove her back to Lark House. For some time now, Alma had lent Irina the key to her ridiculous car so that she could drive, since Irina flatly refused to risk her life as a passenger. Alma’s recklessness when driving in heavy traffic had grown in proportion to her failing sight and trembling hands. The chest pains eased along the way, but she arrived back exhausted, gray faced, and with blue-tinged fingernails. Irina helped her lie down and, without asking permission, called Catherine Hope, whom she trusted more than the official Lark House doctor. Cathy rushed to Alma’s apartment in her wheelchair, examined Alma with the care and attention that she bestowed on everything, and declared that she should see a cardiologist as soon as possible. That night Irina stayed in the apartment on a bed she made up on the sofa, which turned out to be more comfortable than the mattress on the floor she had in Berkeley. Alma slept peacefully with Neko stretched out at her feet but woke up listless and, for the first time since Irina had known her, decided to spend the day in bed.

“But tomorrow you’re going to force me to get up, do you hear, Irina? Don’t leave me lying here with a cup of tea and a good book. I don’t want to end up living in pajamas and slippers. Old people who take to their beds never get up again.”

True to her word, the next day she made an effort to start the day as she always did. After that, Alma never referred to her weak state over those twenty-four hours, and soon Irina, who had other things on her mind, forgot about it too. Catherine Hope however was determined not to leave her in peace until she saw a specialist, but Alma somehow managed to keep postponing it.

This time they were able to see the whole film, and left the cinema highly taken with both Lincoln and the actor playing his part. Alma was weary and preferred to return to her apartment rather than go on to a restaurant as planned. When they arrived, Alma said with a sigh that she felt cold and went to bed, while Irina made her oatmeal with milk by way of supper. Leaning back against her pillows, with a granny shawl around her shoulders, Alma looked ten pounds lighter and ten years older than a few hours earlier. Irina had considered her indestructible, which was why it took her until that night to realize how much she had aged in recent months. Alma had lost weight, and the violet-ringed eyes in her haggard face made her look like a raccoon. She no longer walked upright or strode along but hesitated as she got up from her chair; out on the street she clung to Lenny’s arm; and at times she woke up with an irrational fear of feeling lost, as if she were awakening in a strange country. She went to her studio less and less, then decided to lay off her assistants, and bought comics and sweets for Kirsten to comfort her in her absence. Kirsten’s mental stability depended on her routines and affections; as long as nothing changed, she was happy. She lived in a room above her brother and sister-in-law’s garage, fussed over by three nephews and nieces whom she had helped raise. On workdays she always took the same midday bus, which dropped her two blocks from the workshop. She would unlock the door, air out the room, tidy up, sit in the director’s chair that her nephews had given her for her fortieth birthday, and eat the chicken or tuna sandwich she carried in her backpack. After that she prepared the canvases, brushes, and paints; put water on to boil for tea; and waited, her eyes fixed on the studio door. If Alma wasn’t thinking of going, she would call her on her cell phone, they would chat for a while, and she would give her some task or other to keep her busy until five, when Kirsten bravely closed the workshop and walked to the stop to take her bus home.

A year earlier, Alma had calculated she was going to live in much the same way until she was ninety, but now she was no longer so sure: she suspected that death was drawing closer. Previously she could sense it in the neighborhood, then hear it whispering in the dark corners of Lark House, but now it was lurking around her apartment. At sixty she had thought of death in abstract terms as something that did not concern her; at seventy it was a distant relative who was easy to forget because it never arose in conversation, but would inevitably come to visit one day. After she turned eighty, however, she began to become acquainted with it, and to talk about it with Irina. She saw death here and there, in a fallen tree in the park, a person bald from cancer, her mother and father crossing the street: she recognized them because they looked just like they did in the Danzig photograph. Sometimes it was her brother, Samuel, who had died a second time, peacefully in his bed. Her uncle Isaac seemed full of life when he appeared to her, as he had been before his heart failure, but when Aunt Lillian came to greet her occasionally in the dreamy moments of dawn she was as she had been in her last days, an old woman dressed all in lilac, blind and deaf, but happy, because she believed her husband was holding her hand.

One day Alma said, “Look at that shadow on the wall, doesn’t it look like a man’s silhouette? It must be Nathaniel. Don’t worry, Irina, I’m not crazy, I know I’m only imagining it.”