entered, standing just inside thedoor. She turned on the overhead fluorescents. “It’s just a regulation,” she said. “Nobody checks.”
I told her I wasn’t hungry but she said she was. I gave her my bag of groceries and waited alone, not moving a muscle, awkward and inexplicably ashamed, almost tearful with a sense of unbelonging, while she went to the janitor’s closet down the hall to fill a saucepan with water. On a hotplate stashed randomly among a lot of junk on the wall-length counter she started things cooking. She handed me a knife and I stood up to help. I tried to wipe the paint from the blade but it was dry. I diced a carrot. The vertigo, the plunging shyness, passed. I cut up a cucumber. I asked what we were making and she said it was miso soup. I sliced an onion. “I’m crying,” I said. “I’m crying, too,” she said. “It’s a good one.”
Apparently Flower knew a bit of my history, the lousy part. “Do you cry a lot? Your family was wiped out, weren’t they? So do you cry?”
“I used to but I stopped.” We leaned against the counter as against a bar in a tavern, facing one another. “I think you remind me of my wife,” I told her. “And I think you remind me of my daughter.” As long as we were being blunt. “She was only twenty-three when we went to Washington.”
“Not your daughter.”
“My wife. Anne.”
“Was she a whole lot younger than you?”
“About fourteen years. I was forty-four when she had our daughter, and I turned forty-nine three weeks after I lost them, the two of them. After they died.”
“How old when they died?”
“Huntley was almost five. Anne was thirty-four.”
“And now you are—”
“I’m fifty-three.”
“And I’m twenty-six.”
“You’re young enough,” I admitted, “that it’s sort of the main thing about you.”
“I’m less than half your age.”
“Yeah. Finally. And next year you’ll be more than half.”
“You’re getting younger and younger.”
“When I’m two hundred? You’ll be seven-eighths of the way there.”
This silliness was all about nothing. I was enchanted with how easily it came.
She said, “It’s funny the way mathematics works, Michael Reed.”
She still had a strange ending to every statement. On my name her voice went over into the depths, and I went right along with it. Now she said, and I was sure she meant to flirt with me, “Let’s just let that simmer right there.”
She picked up a lab coat bunched on the counter, stepped behind a large blank canvas on an easel, and dropped her pants around her small black boots.
I sat on my chair again and watched. She stood backed by a white wall. The white canvas blocked all of her between her shoulders and knees. She managed to get out of her slacks without taking off her boots. She removed her blouse and hung it on the easel. Then she put on her gray smock.
We sat down at a collapsible table and moved aside her cluttered paints and pencils and ate our soup. Afterward I walked around. Against one wall I found her bed, just a pallet on the floor with a square pillow of dark silk, shot silk, I think it’s called. All of her paintings faced the wall.
“Can I see what you’re working on?”
“I don’t think so. No. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“I lack talent.”
I wanted to lie with her on that pallet. To be very tired and sleep beside her all night.
Gradually the things she surrounded herself with, the materials she collected, were separating themselves from one another. I would live here among her bits of glass and shards of mirrors, strips and patches of astronomical and topographical maps, nautical charts; I’d live here in sunken Atlantis. It got bad light for a studio, all from the North and West, with the windows, though high in the room, set low to the ground outside. Or I would put her in the finest studio on earth.
She kept glass jars of buttons and boxes of marbles. Here was the lid of a large box
I told her I wasn’t hungry but she said she was. I gave her my bag of groceries and waited alone, not moving a muscle, awkward and inexplicably ashamed, almost tearful with a sense of unbelonging, while she went to the janitor’s closet down the hall to fill a saucepan with water. On a hotplate stashed randomly among a lot of junk on the wall-length counter she started things cooking. She handed me a knife and I stood up to help. I tried to wipe the paint from the blade but it was dry. I diced a carrot. The vertigo, the plunging shyness, passed. I cut up a cucumber. I asked what we were making and she said it was miso soup. I sliced an onion. “I’m crying,” I said. “I’m crying, too,” she said. “It’s a good one.”
Apparently Flower knew a bit of my history, the lousy part. “Do you cry a lot? Your family was wiped out, weren’t they? So do you cry?”
“I used to but I stopped.” We leaned against the counter as against a bar in a tavern, facing one another. “I think you remind me of my wife,” I told her. “And I think you remind me of my daughter.” As long as we were being blunt. “She was only twenty-three when we went to Washington.”
“Not your daughter.”
“My wife. Anne.”
“Was she a whole lot younger than you?”
“About fourteen years. I was forty-four when she had our daughter, and I turned forty-nine three weeks after I lost them, the two of them. After they died.”
“How old when they died?”
“Huntley was almost five. Anne was thirty-four.”
“And now you are—”
“I’m fifty-three.”
“And I’m twenty-six.”
“You’re young enough,” I admitted, “that it’s sort of the main thing about you.”
“I’m less than half your age.”
“Yeah. Finally. And next year you’ll be more than half.”
“You’re getting younger and younger.”
“When I’m two hundred? You’ll be seven-eighths of the way there.”
This silliness was all about nothing. I was enchanted with how easily it came.
She said, “It’s funny the way mathematics works, Michael Reed.”
She still had a strange ending to every statement. On my name her voice went over into the depths, and I went right along with it. Now she said, and I was sure she meant to flirt with me, “Let’s just let that simmer right there.”
She picked up a lab coat bunched on the counter, stepped behind a large blank canvas on an easel, and dropped her pants around her small black boots.
I sat on my chair again and watched. She stood backed by a white wall. The white canvas blocked all of her between her shoulders and knees. She managed to get out of her slacks without taking off her boots. She removed her blouse and hung it on the easel. Then she put on her gray smock.
We sat down at a collapsible table and moved aside her cluttered paints and pencils and ate our soup. Afterward I walked around. Against one wall I found her bed, just a pallet on the floor with a square pillow of dark silk, shot silk, I think it’s called. All of her paintings faced the wall.
“Can I see what you’re working on?”
“I don’t think so. No. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Why not?”
“I lack talent.”
I wanted to lie with her on that pallet. To be very tired and sleep beside her all night.
Gradually the things she surrounded herself with, the materials she collected, were separating themselves from one another. I would live here among her bits of glass and shards of mirrors, strips and patches of astronomical and topographical maps, nautical charts; I’d live here in sunken Atlantis. It got bad light for a studio, all from the North and West, with the windows, though high in the room, set low to the ground outside. Or I would put her in the finest studio on earth.
She kept glass jars of buttons and boxes of marbles. Here was the lid of a large box
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