Chapter One #2
But…here’s the thing about having memorized the address of the apartment that your husband is moving into on August fifteenth…here’s the thing about having put it into Google Maps…and having pinned it on the map…it beats like a blinking cursor on the map in your head.
Which is what is happening to me. Right this very second.
The rain is increasing from a drizzle to a more insistent pitter-patter, enough that I see a drip form at the end of my bangs. This package is not going to survive if I keep standing on the curb in front of St. Michel’s shop.
I can’t keep standing still. I have to move.
So I shove the package under my sweatshirt as best I can and start to run.
In the direction of the bus stop, and home.
Within moments my socks and shoes are soaked.
It’s dumping rain now, and a buffet of wind tosses a sheet of water onto me from the side.
There’s the bus stop at the end of the block!
Here it is!
There it goes!
I keep running right on past.
In front of me, cars slice a gigantic puddle in half. The light changes, I jump the puddle, scamper across the street, there’s rain down my back. This is such a bad idea that the universe is attempting to stop me in my tracks with bodily discomfort. But I’ve chosen belligerence. I press on.
There’s a yellow awning up ahead and I sprint.
I make it there and huddle up onto the single stair, out of the worst of the downpour.
Nine Five Four. The enormous metal numbers leer down at me.
It’s a brick building, this new address of Vin’s.
I can’t see, because the rain has turned the world gray and opaque, but I bet there are flowers on the windowsills.
Probably someone upstairs plays grand piano with their window open on the sunny days.
There is probably a band of plucky and precocious children who knock on the doors of their neighbors to deliver the kugel their mothers have just made too much of.
This is clearly the most charming apartment building in all five boroughs and I hate it.
I’m just about finished cursing it, about to drag my soggy ass back into the pouring rain, when the foggy glass door behind me comes open an inch and shunts me back onto the street, out of the cover of the awning.
“Honey, come in! Come in!” a voice says behind me.
There’s rain sliding down the back of my neck, wetting my eyelashes, dripping off my ears.
Come in? As in enter the premises? Of Nine Five Four?
Unthinkable.
“Come in!” she says again, and this time she grips my wrist and tugs.
All my aforementioned belligerence washes away into meek obedience.
Maybe I’m too soaked? Maybe she’s just the right amount of bossy?
I stumble through the door and gasp with relief when I step into a warm, dry hallway. The door slams shut behind me.
“Are you Miri?” she asks.
I wipe at my glasses and turn to see my savior. She’s got big brown eyes and a long gray braid spiraled into a crown on her head. She’s wearing a cashmere sweater set and New Balance sneakers.
“Oh. No, I’m Roz.”
“Ah. Well. We’re waiting on Miri.” She cracks the door and sticks her head out, peering through the torrential rain.
She ducks back in and shrugs. “They sent me to wait here for participants but with this rain…We always lose a few on the first day anyhow. People sign up but don’t end up showing. Come on, then.”
Her voice is so full of authority that I almost take a step after her. “Sorry, I…I’m not signed up.” I actually don’t know what this is. Isn’t this an apartment building?
She stops and beckons me. “It’s raining. At least come sit. I think there are towels in the classroom.”
As I follow her down the hallway (hardwood floors and a mop bucket off to one side, a cheerily flickering line of lights along the wall, rows of doors with nameplates instead of numbers), I see that this is a mixed-use building.
We pass a dermatologist’s office, a therapist, a door that just says MR. GREG in all caps, and then, finally, on to the only open doorway in the hallway.
She disappears through and I peek in after her.
It’s bright and merry in there. Ten or so people chatting and milling.
Ah. I see. It’s a figure drawing class. They’re setting up their easels in a circle, sharpening pencils, flipping gigantic sheets of paper to the clean side.
In the middle of the circle is a midtwenties man with spiky black hair and a terry-cloth robe to his knees.
He’s sitting on a wooden platform, leaning on his palms and yawning hugely.
“Miri? Hi, I’m Daniel. The instructor,” a man says from next to me in the doorway. He’s middle-aged, trim brown beard and friendly eyes, just an inch or two taller than I am.
“No. This is Roz,” calls the older woman as she digs through a big set of drawers in the corner. “I’m calling Miri as a no-show.”
The man smiles fondly at her. “Esther is our registrar.”
“Ah.”
Esther pads back to me, hand towel in tow. “Here you go, love.”
After a moment’s consideration, I pull the packaged frame out from under my sweatshirt, which makes both Esther and the man laugh in surprise. Then I gratefully take the towel and scrunch at my hair, wipe off my soaking wet legs.
“If you wanted to stay and warm up,” Daniel the instructor says, “you could take the class. We’re not at capacity, you know.”
“Oh.” I’m completely befuddled by this suggestion.
Doesn’t he know that I haven’t picked up a pencil to draw since middle school?
Doesn’t he see that I’m soaking wet and need to go home and change into my fuzzy slippers?
And most importantly, that I’m only here because I’m creeping on my husband’s new address and under no circumstances was I actually supposed to enter this building?
He’s looking at me expectantly and all I’ve said is “Oh.”
I try again. “Um…”
I attempt to summon all that sauce-making ferocity from earlier this evening. Unfortunately, I’m only coming up with the sort of exhaustion you get when you realize you might be about to start your entire life from scratch.
His eyebrows rise in a friendly way. “Lots of beginners in the class.”
“Right.”
“ ’Scuse me,” says a deep voice at my back.
I jump to the side and a man who, I shit you not, looks exactly like Aladdin, is grinning, dripping wet, peering down at me from under a raincoat.
“Sorry!”
“No worries.” He gives me a lingering, seashell-white smile; he has friendly eyes and floppy black hair. As he walks past me, he pulls his hood down and I get a whiff of his scent. He smells like Louis Vuitton’s rich Gen Z grandson.
“Lauro!”
“Laur-oh!”
“It’s my man.”
The class has perked up immensely at this man’s presence and he makes his rounds, bussing cheeks, giving daps, and finally, one enormous hug to the model, who doesn’t seem to mind embracing a sopping wet raincoat.
“So, Roz.” Daniel checks his watch and then looks down at my feet, neatly lined up in the hallway, while my head peeks around the doorway. “In or out. Class is about to start and we keep the door closed during session out of respect for our model.”
“I’m not signed up…” I say again, uselessly, as if it will stop time and prevent any sort of decision from needing to be made. I could just drip on this doorstep into infinity, enjoying the vibes and risking nothing.
“First one’s free.” He winks but then jolts as Esther pops up from nowhere.
“No, it’s not,” she says. “But if you decide to sign up you can pay later.”
“I don’t have any supplies…”
“We have plenty extra lying around,” Daniel insists.
“I’m soaking wet…”
“Live with it?” he suggests, and I laugh.
It looks so warm and bright in there. The people, each very different from the next, seem to know one another well. The air is rich with charcoal and wax and paper. This is how some people spend an early Friday evening in June.
Esther fans every imaginable shade of colored pencils in front of me. “Pick a color,” she says sternly.
Sometimes, someone tells you to do something and you just do it.
Which is how I find myself with a forest-green colored pencil in my hand and a pad of paper on my lap.
Daniel’s gone to find an easel for me, so I’m sitting on a free stool and trying not to draw attention to myself.
Even though I’m soaking wet and wearing knee socks and the only person not chatting freely with someone else.
Glancing up at the model in the robe (peeling a banana and still doing some pre-class chitchat), I figure I better quickly check and see if there is some sort of prodigious hidden talent I’m about to unearth. Perhaps the universe has plunked me on this wobbly stool for a reason.
But, yeah, just as I thought. No. No, I’m not secretly amazing at drawing. The model, wiry and vivacious in real life, is reduced to a lumpy, squat little alienoid on my paper.
What am I even doing here?
“Oh. That’s wonderful.” I startle and turn to see Daniel, easel in hand, peering at my paper. “So, I see you already have an established drawing practice!” he says.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
He laughs and then studies my drawing again. “Well, then you’re just naturally talented.”
Either he’s seeing something I’m not or he’s a hell of a salesman. I narrow my eyes. “Are we looking at the same blob?”
He laughs. “No, seriously. Most newbies drawing the figure…they just try to copy exactly what they’re seeing and put it down on the page.
But look, what you’re doing with Alan…you’re building him part by part.
Constructing him. As an idea, not a likeness.
Not easy to do with a stubby colored pencil.
Very cool.” He gives me a double thumbs-up.
Someone calls his name and he leaves me there with the empty easel and a possibly terrible drawing on my lap.
My toe hits one wet corner of the packaged frame resting on the floor and the paper wrinkles accusingly. I wince and gather it up, clutching it against my chest.
What would it be like to have the chutzpah to just start a new life? To be someone who goes to drawing class on Friday nights with a roomful of strangers? What would it be like to be brave enough to even wonder about life without Vin?
I don’t find the answer.
Because I want my old life back, not a new hobby. Because I’ve failed at marriage and I don’t know if I can handle being bad at one more thing.
I’m on my feet and meeting Daniel at the door to the classroom, where he’s about to close it up and start class.
“I really have to go,” I whisper.
“Sure,” Daniel says easily. “In that case…” He gestures for me to step out into the hallway.
At the last second, he pokes his head back out into the hall and catches my eye.
“I’m closing this, but door’s always open.
I mean, again, not literally, because like I said we keep it closed during class.
But if you want to come back. Come back. Okay. Get home safe.”
And then the door is closed in my face and the light dims accordingly.
I walk back down the hallway toward the rain. Because the framed photo is beating like a heart on its last few pumps. Because I really don’t think I can try something new when everything old in my life is dying.
I waited a week before I asked Raff about her. No, wait, I should tell about the night I first saw her. But we weren’t together yet. So maybe that part doesn’t matter. Whatever. I waited a week. That’s probably what she would say was the important part.
(What do you think is the most important part?)
I really, honestly, don’t know how to tell this story. It’s supposed to be the story of how we met, right? That’s the assignment.
(Start at the beginning.)
Which beginning? She’s my wife. The story of who I am to her, the story of what kind of husband I am, all that starts decades before I even met her.
(Start anywhere!)
(Just start!)
(There’s no wrong answer!)
Okay. Anywhere. Okay. Well. Have you ever met someone for the first time and it seems like you’ve already known them for a really long time?
I spent a week trying to figure out where I knew her from.
And then I figured it out.
(Where?)
(Where was it?)
Nowhere. I didn’t know her from anywhere. I just…I just recognized her. Remember that sweater I talked about before? The one I couldn’t describe? Flower or whatever? Well, she walked in, wearing that sweater, and her hair and that smile and I just…recognized her. That’s the best I can describe it.
I saw her and thought, Here comes my wife.