The Museum of Modern Love(12)

Major Danica Rosic Abramovi?. One-time director of the Museum of the Revolution, Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia.





LEVIN STARTED IN SURPRISE AT seeing the next woman walk across the square and take the empty seat. She was over six feet tall with polished ebony skin and long black tightly curled hair. She wore black jeans over impossibly long, slender legs, a red jacket, red nails, bare feet.

‘Oh my goodness—she’s incredible,’ Jane said.

‘She is.’ Levin smiled.

‘You know her?’ Jane asked.

‘That is Healayas Breen,’ he said. ‘She does Art Review from New York on NPR.’

He did not add that, until recently, Healayas had been one of his closest friends. Or that he’d played piano in Healayas’s band at the Lime Club for the last ten years. Healayas had been Tom’s girlfriend. Tom Washington had given Levin his first film score, the one that had started his career as a composer. Eight films over twenty-five years, theirs had been one of the enduring partnerships. And then Tom had found a younger composer.

‘I just want to try this guy out,’ Tom had said. ‘I think he has something really unique he can bring to this project.’

‘We’ll do another film next year,’ Tom had said at the last party he and Healayas gave together.

Shortly after that, Healayas moved from Los Angeles back to New York.

‘He was a hard dog to keep on the porch—that’s how you say it?’ Healayas had asked Levin and Lydia in her accented English. How a man could ever cheat on Healayas Breen, how he wouldn’t run after her to the ends of the earth, Levin didn’t know.

And then Tom died in an avalanche coming home late one day on Ruthie’s Run. ‘Familiarity is dangerous,’ the coroner said in the Aspen paper. ‘People think they can beat the conditions.’

Levin hadn’t quite forgiven Tom for the hole he’d left. Nor for dying in a stupid accident. He didn’t know why he had to lose people that way. A falling tree for his mother, an avalanche for Tom. Since New Year, Levin had avoided Healayas as he’d avoided everyone else who would have an opinion on Lydia’s situation. Her situation. It was inadequate but that’s what it was. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t remotely normal. But it was their situation and everyone had an opinion about it. No one yet had decided that it was okay for him to do what Lydia had instructed. Get on with his life, his music, and forget all about Lydia’s situation. He was pretty sure where Healayas would stand, but he didn’t want it confirmed. He knew she’d left messages. Sent texts. So had other people. At some point early on, he had turned off the message bank on his mobile. When emails came in, he deleted them unread.

When Marina Abramovi? raised her head and opened her eyes, he saw Healayas smile at her. Abramovi?’s face did not change. But after a few minutes she leaned forward in her chair. Healayas, in mirror image, did the same. This was more than regard. Now it was a conversation that was happening entirely in the eyes.

‘How wonderful for an art critic to feel this from the inside,’ Jane murmured. ‘It’s got the art world jumping, this show. Chrissie Iles from the Whitney has come.’

Healayas appeared quite at ease. Her height, the way she moved, you could have imagined her invulnerable. But you would be wrong. On regular occasions it had been Lydia who put her back together again. Lydia who fed her, talked with her—those long, serious, funny conversations women seemed to have together. It was Lydia who had made sure Healayas was invited for dinner, for Thanksgiving, for birthdays.

He wondered if Healayas had seen Lydia. Yes, he felt sure she had. Perhaps only yesterday. Last week. He did not want to think about how Lydia might look. He would not think about that. He got up and stretched his legs.

‘I’ll be back in a while,’ he said to Jane, as if she was his companion, not a stranger. He did not want to sit where Healayas could simply turn her head and see him. He moved back through the crowd to the wall, then stood and observed as people milled and dispersed about him. After a while it appeared Healayas would be there for some time, and his legs ached, so he returned to the space beside Jane. She gave him a brief smile of welcome then continued to watch the two women.

Love accounted for so many things. A series of biological and chemical interactions. A bout of responsibility. An invisible wave of normality that had been romanticised and externalised. A form of required connection to ensure procreation. A strategic response to prevent loneliness and maintain social structures.

He had exhibited all the signs of love. He had felt himself love Lydia over and over again. And there had been the bad patches. When she was sick. Unrecognisable. Not the Lydia he knew. The coroner had been right. Familiarity was dangerous.

He had spent most of Christmas Day, after he’d left the hospital, walking. He had walked to Brooklyn and on, and it was only when he realised that he couldn’t feel his fingers and toes that he’d finally hailed a cab. He’d slept for almost a day. He didn’t know where that fatigue had come from. But he knew that when she got sick, he got very tired. He remembered how the shampoo had run out. The cat was hungry. The milk had been past its use-by date but he’d used it anyway. He’d ignored the flashing messages on the phone. Lydia’s friends and colleagues stretched far and wide, people who were useful any time of the day and night. But not to him.