Chapter 5: The Labors
Lucy awoke to her husband rubbing her shoulders. “Honey, come on. It’s late. Time to get up.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s six. I’m on my way out the door.”
Lucy bolted onto her elbows. “Six? Jerry you know I have to be there by eight!”
“I’m sorry, I forgot to reset the alarm.”
“Now I’m going to be late. And I have a meeting this morning.”
Jerry leaned over and kissed her on top of the head. “I have to run. You can yell at me more tonight over dinner. I’ll pick something up for us.”
“What about lunch? You want me to make you a sandwich?”
“It’s catered today,” he called from the living room. “Lovin’s.”
Lucy reached past the nightstand and dragged her chair over to the bed. She locked the brakes and hefted herself onto it, instinctually smoothing the nightshirt down over her thighs. In the bathroom Jerry’s rumpled T-shirt and boxers lay on the floor blocking her path. Normally he was good about this sort of thing, he was in a hurry. Lucy rolled right over them. She undressed, hefted herself onto the toilet and then into the tub. The cold sides were always a shock on her back. Her legs felt nothing.
She turned on the hand-held shower sprayer and groaned at the mirror eye-level to the edge of the tub. “Looks like I wore a motorcycle helmet to bed last night. Now I have to do my hair too.”
Cleaned and dried off she got back in her chair and with some difficulty in the tight corner got herself situated facing the sink where she could get to her makeup and whatnot in the cabinet below. The mirror above the sink was too high so she used a couple of makeup mirrors, round ones that flip over with a 3x magnification on one side. She noticed her roots coming in. Like many professionals she dyed her hair regularly.
As the steam in the bathroom evaporated she felt more and more chilled. It was another half hour of determined discomfort sitting there with only a towel draped over her chest and lap, digging for an eyebrow pencil, stretching to plug in the hairdryer, spitting the mouthwash all over the rim of the sink instead of into it, wheeling to the hall closet and back, to the shower caddy and back, efficient and full of stress.
Back in the bedroom she saw the clock and groaned: it was nearing 7:30. She picked out a blouse from the short chest of drawers, something that wouldn’t need ironing, and a pair of slacks from the closet. She wore long pants almost exclusively. Skirts tended to bunch up and were awkward to manage.
“At least I don’t have to shave all the time,” she chuckled. “And Jerry doesn’t mind.”
Lucy spread her underwear and her outfit out on the bed and then flopped onto it herself. She sat upright to pull her panties on, bending forward to direct her feet through and then laying on her back to pull them up. She thought that a mirror on the ceiling would be something convenient. “Oh my god,” she laughed getting a picture of Jerry’s reaction. “He’d blush. He’s such a little kid about some things.” But he never asked how much something would cost, not if he thought it would help her.
There was no time for breakfast, she was out the door.
“Good morning!” a voice called.
Lucy poked herself around the back of her station wagon. “Oh, morning Marcus. You’re up early.”
Marcus was in his 50s, portly and bald. He’d been retired some years now, since he and his partners sold their company to Dow Corning. He was rich, Lucy didn’t know how rich but it was enough to be considered filthy. He and his wife preferred to live in the suburbs like normal people. Marcus was the inventor of styrofoam.
“I was out here checking the day lilies,” he said pulling off his padded gloves, “and I heard Jerry leave. Here, let me give you a hand.”
Lucy opened the car door all the way, pushed the chair into the joint, and locked it into place. She swung her butt onto the driver’s seat and grabbed the pant legs over her thighs to drag her legs in behind her. Her grip slipped and she hurried to reach under her knees to complete the task. “Sorry. Thank you. Sorry.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
Lucy stopped. “Marcus, have you had any strange dreams lately?”
“Strange dreams.”
“Something out of the ordinary. Like a fairy tale?”
“A fairy tale.”
“Oh, I’m just reading something on interpreting your dreams,” Lucy said becoming embarrassed.
“Dreams. The usual I guess, about the kids and what was on the tube last night. I’ll just pop this in the back.” He flipped the latches that collapsed the chair into itself like an accordion.
“Oh no, I’ll never get it out back there,” Lucy said. “The passenger side, please. Sorry. Thank you.”
“What am I thinking? I haven’t woke up yet. Dot was just saying the other day, she said, ‘Sometimes it’s like you got a head fulla concrete and ears fulla caulk.’ That’s what she said.”
“She’s so funny. We’ll have to have you two over for dinner. Not tonight, Jerry wants take out. But I’ll cook this weekend. Sorry. I have a meeting in, like, now. Thank you! Bye!”
The station wagon was modified so that the gas and brake were controlled by turn-signal-type levers off the steering wheel. Lucy backed down the driveway and waved to Marcus.
“I hope I wasn’t rude. But I am running late.”
On the way out of her neighborhood she passed the elementary school. She was held up at the crosswalk by a woman holding a stop sign on a little wooden handle. Two children ran across, a boy and a girl. The girl wore a shiny plastic backpack with cartoon characters on it, and the boy jumped up and pumped his fist when he reached the sidewalk ahead of her. Lucy’s heart went out to them, and she held up traffic long after they were safely across.
Chapter 6: Phantom Limbs
Snoz over the course of the past few weeks had become nimble with chopsticks. With little flair he dipped the last unagi roll into the lite (green bottle) soy sauce, touched it to the empty ceramic dish leaving a puddle, and guided the roll into his mouth. He sat alone at the end of the sushi bar. An overweight businessman in from New Hampshire attempted conversation with the two chefs behind the counter, expressing surprise at the freshness of the fish so far inland from the coast. One nodded a thank you while the other hardly paused the tale he told in Japanese. The kabuki prints on the walls only held his attention so long, and with no rumpled newspaper in sight Snoz got his cellphone out and sent a familiar number.
There was a connection and then a pause before a deadpan greeting. Snoz knew she’d recognized his number and he overcompensated. “Emily! Hello!”
“Hello,” Emily said.
Snoz gave her a moment to continue and then launched into his spiel. “Guess what I’m doing. Guess? I’m sitting here in The Stalk.” He said the name of the restaurant, The Bamboo Stalk, with drama hoping for a laughing reaction as it used to be their place. There was only silence. Snoz plowed ahead. “It’s great. I’ve got the whole place nearly all to myself. You know how it gets when it’s full of tourists.” He said the next part in a chuckling husky whisper. “Plus we’ve got the good sushi chef today. Yamamoto. Yamamoto-san. Remember? The one who made you those different rolls that time and kept telling you ‘Try this, try this,’ you know?”
“Yes, I remember.”
His heart leapt. “I was thinking if you’re hungry you could come down and meet me. Seriously, you’ve never seen the place so quiet. They must’ve got a bad health inspection for cooking the tuna.”
The joke fell flat. “It’s 2:30,” Emily said. “I won’t be hungry for hours. You’re the only one who eats dinner in the middle of the day. And besides.”
“I know, I know,” Snoz said turning away toward the wall at the end of the bar. Unfortunately the wall was covered by a giant paneled mirror, and he was the biggest thing in it. “But there’s this guy sitting here too at the other end and he was talking to the good chef saying he’s from the coast and he’s used to having this super fresh fish and it reminded me of when we spent that week on the beach in South Carolina. I know what you said but it’s like the universe was telling me to call so I just did.”
“Snoz,” she said, and at the mention of his name he’d have wagged his tail. “You never even asked ‘Are you busy? Are you in the middle of something right now?’ I just get this call I’m not supposed to be getting. You bring up the past and then you ask me out. And you don’t even see what you’re doing.”
Snoz said nothing and took to chop-picking single grains of rice out of the dish of soy sauce.
“Do you?” she asked kindly. Then, “I’m waiting for my machine to get free so I only have a minute. I’m at the gym.”
“At the gym?”
“I started going. Jess got me on at hers. She’s going to New York next month. Some big audition. I’m going with her. Go to SoHo, make the scene, press the flesh. Network. See what’s hot.”
“Sounds like a good trip,” Snoz said. “I’ve never been.”
“The galleries are the best. That’s where it all started, the Guggenheims, non-representational art, the whole scene. It influenced absolutely everything that came after it. Even portrait painters. Wyeth, Wyeth is an incredibly skilled painter. A huge talent. And he’s not respected there. The Manhattan artists changed everything. He’s a dinosaur, Rothko made him obsolete before he even got going.”
“You had posters of that one guy, the pastels, Maxfield Parrish.”
“Oh, absolutely everyone goes through a Parrish phase. Someone like Eakins was a sincere talent. His figures had an austere finality about them. Which is all well and good, but we’re not supposed to be speaking to each other right now.”
“There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
“That’s preposterous,” said Emily.
“I deserve honesty.”
“You already know this. No, I’m not seeing anyone, and no, I don’t want to see anyone. That’s why I’m not seeing you.”
“You changed you mind, just like that? When? Did I do something?”
“We’ve been through this. No, you didn’t do anything. It’s been two and a half years and I had this feeling, and I knew I had to get out.”
It hurt every time she said it. “How long were you feeling like that before you said something?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I wish we wouldn’t have moved to the Quarter. If you’d known how much you’d hate it.”
“I did hate living down there. But that wasn’t it. My job with the gallery, trying to put together my own show. Things are different. I don’t know why.”
“We should be able to get through something like this,” he said. “We ought to at least try. There wasn’t a big, you know, neither one of us did anything shitty.”
“Somehow things are still different.”
“But,” he said haltingly, “we love each other.”
“Of course.”
The angels sang and the trumpets blew on high. Snoz’s throat stopped constricting. He felt such joy that he was unable to speak. In the meantime there was silence.
“Hey,” Emily said.
“Yeah?”
“I might as well tell you. It’s not just a trip, I’m going to move. Back to Kentucky, first, and then maybe New York.”
“What? I don’t understand. You’ll never afford it. What about Nance?”
“The gallery isn’t busy right now. It’s summer.”
“No, but, you just moved in with her.”
“I know, but ugh. Otis is always over there. When I went to bed last night he was on the couch, and I can hear the TV in my room. And when I got up to go to work he was still sitting right there. It’s like he never sleeps. Plus he walks around in his underwear and Nance never says anything. It’s gross.”
“Well, but I mean, Kentucky? You couldn’t wait to get out of there. Are you serious?”
“Yes-I’m-serious,” Emily sighed. “I already talked to Mom and she said it’s okay with her, just until I can save up a little and get things going.”
“She’s probably getting tired of this. How long can you keep moving back home once you’re out? She’d never say it, but I bet they’d rather keep having the place to themselves. It’s their place.”
Emily deflected him by agreeing. “I know, but they’d never say no to me, and I can’t stay here much longer.”
“Why not?”
“We just talked about it.”
“Just tell me why. There has to be a reason. Just tell me one reason so I can understand.”
“Snoz you’ve got me on the phone talking to you in some restaurant.”
“It’s not some restaurant.”
“Snoz.”
“There has to be a reason.”
“I have to go.”
“Elio’s not doing well.”
“Oh my god,” she said. “What happened.”
“Nothing, well no, nothing major. But he stopped getting his prescriptions.”
“Idiot. That’s awful.”
“I know, I told him. But he wouldn’t listen. Maybe if you talked to him. Maybe we could go over there at the same time.”
There was no response for a time. “Snoz are you using what’s happened to Elio to try to see me?”
“No!”
“I hope not, because that’s sick. Okay, I will think about it. I have to go now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll, I’ll call you, at least before the move, okay? Okay?”
“Okay.”
Snoz sat there a while longer, hunched in the same position, rescuing grains from their inky soy grave. The waitress came and asked if he needed a box and he ignored her, and then immediately felt bad since he was a regular. Emily was moving back to Kentucky, and in the restaurant they were riding bikes on the sand.
He left some money on the counter and rose with a nod.
“Everything all right?” Yamamoto-san asked with care.
“Yes. It was great. Like always.”
“Everything all right, everything else?”
“Yeah, just. Bad phone call.” Snoz started to walk away and then turned back to drop a couple bucks in the tip jar. “How, I’m sorry. But tell me. How do you fix something when you don’t know how or where to start because it’s… That type. You know?”
“Make it into small problems. Then you fix one at a time,” said Yamamoto-san pointing 1, 2, 3.
Snoz smiled. “Small problems. Start basic. Right. All I have to do is get her not to move. Get her to stay, and then work on getting back together. That’s, yes. Thanks! Thank you!”
Yamamoto-san laughed, and nodded, and went back to his work.