The Museum of Modern Love(32)
LEVIN HAD BEEN SITTING FOR sixteen minutes at his kitchen table. He was aware of his neck. It felt a little jammed. He’d woken at 4.30 am and by 5.15, having nothing better to do, dug out the black track pants and the white t-shirt he always wore. He arrived for the 6 am Pilates class at the studio on Lafayette by 5.45. His teacher from last year, he learned, had moved to Arizona, but the new teacher, Maddie, had been helpful. His hamstrings were tight, she’d told him, and his buttocks were tight. Most every part of him was tight, and what was tight had got flabbier. After the class he had felt as if the world was clearer, brighter. His proprioception needed improving, but Maddie had appeared to be pleased with him.
On the way home, he’d eaten scrambled eggs and coffee at a cafe he’d never tried before, and found it good. Back at the apartment, he removed all but two chairs from the dining table and set the remaining chairs exactly opposite each other. On one chair he arranged several pillows from the bed. When that didn’t quite work, he used the three red cushions from the couch and a round white pillow from the spare bedroom. Then he got his black cashmere scarf from the cupboard and arranged that too. ‘Hello, Marina,’ he said. It made a basic enough resemblance.
He sat down on the chair opposite and attempted to relax. He felt a little bit silly, but no one could see him. He smiled at the way he’d arranged her hair, and then stopped himself. He breathed and stared at the white pillow face. He noticed almost instantly his desire to scratch his left shoulder blade. He eased his head gently to the left and to the right. He scratched an eyebrow and rolled his shoulders, rubbed one shoulder blade then the other as best he could against the back of the chair, uncrossed his feet and flexed his fingers. Then he attempted again to sit entirely still.
He tried to imagine Marina’s eyes staring back at him from the pillow face. He glanced at the wide rooftop balcony beyond the glass doors. He could be washing the breakfast dishes, getting on with his day in the studio. He could be taking a walk, going uptown. But he had to see about this sitting business.
He began to think about what he’d just read in the Times over his eggs. How 19 April was a day on which all sorts of big events had occurred. The Oklahoma bombing. The Waco, Texas killings. And further back it had been the start of the American Revolution.
There was a lot of store in dates. Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Halloween, Thanksgiving. They’d rented the same house up in Maine after Memorial Day for years when Alice was small. He usually only went the first few days, but Lydia and Alice had stayed for weeks. He liked New York in summer. The hot heavy nights, the sticky evenings with the windows open. The bliss of air-conditioning and cold showers and a breeze coming in off the Hudson. The quiet of the apartment. The welcome relief of solitude day after day. But then he missed Lydia and Alice. When he thought about that time he thought of John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and craft beer. Again he tried to focus on Marina looking back at him from across the table. After a while he realised he was looking at the wall of glass cupboards. It looked as if a whole family lived here. He could have managed quite well now with a cup, a bowl and a plate. Yolanda, their housekeeper, put meals in the fridge each week with little notes attached. Twice a week she cleaned out the fridge and everything was new again. Sometimes she left him chocolate brownies or cookies. And she kept the pantry stocked with all the different cat foods Rigby loved.
Lydia had liked to make Sunday lunches for their friends. New friends, old friends, it was all the same to Lydia. Gatherings restored her as if they were exercise. He didn’t have the need for people that she did. Found it almost unfathomable that she’d fly in from Buenos Aires or Seoul and have eighteen people for lunch the next day. But that was Lydia. Always living as if there wasn’t time to slow down. And perhaps she’d been right.
Pillow-Marina, looking back at him, was entirely still. He squinted at her, and she admonished him for his restlessness. Beneath the table, he unlaced his fingers and put them on his legs. Almost immediately, his hand began to itch. And soon his backside. His lower back was tight, and his hips began to ache. It was the Pilates. He had found all those little muscles that never did any work and everything was going to be sore by tomorrow.
The only movement he had noticed the real Marina make was a little lean forward or back. Or a little roll of the shoulders and head. They were done very slowly. What happened if she got too hot or cold? he wondered. Bad luck, he guessed. She could hardly say, Hey, bring me a blanket. The same with urinating. Or, worse, a bowel movement. Surely there came the mid-morning need to take a crap? He had no idea how she managed any of it. Maybe Serbians were just made tougher than other people. He shrugged and stretched his neck. Another broken rule.
By now his arms were feeling heavy at his sides. He turned and looked back at the clock. Seventeen minutes. He sighed, shifted and straightened. But the pain in his buttocks and hips was becoming excruciating.
It would have been better if Lydia had thrown something, he thought. If she had yelled. He wished she had hurt him physically, scarred him somewhere, so he could look at it and say: That was the day. There it is. The day she told me she couldn’t live with me any more.
After Alice had called him about the stroke, he had carefully unpacked the last of the moving boxes marked Lydia Only. He had placed every precious item carefully, debating with himself the correct arrangement of teapots, sculptures, little bowls and boxes. For weeks he bought fresh flowers for her desk, trying to fool himself that in doing so he was luring her home.