New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

by Shelly Oria

  Dora said nothing.

  Then I said: If that’s really how you feel, I don’t see this relationship going anywhere.

  Dora said nothing once again.

  We both said nothing for a very long time. Then the beep started beeping, Victorian chariots were flying in the air, and the ceiling was going up and down.

  I forgot to say that sometimes the ceiling would go up and down.

  Maybe you can try to see it, Dor, I said. My voice was very sweet. Loving.

  Dora smiled.

  I can try, she said, but I can’t make promises.

  That’s fine, I said. That’s all anyone ever does anyway. Try.

  * * *

  The first thing Dora saw was a dreidel. She said it was tiny, and purple. I couldn’t see it. Then she said there were plenty of them, in all colors of the rainbow. It sounded beautiful. They were flying in all possible directions, she said, and they were too small to hurt anyone. Dora didn’t have to dodge.

  * * *

  My mother was coming to visit. Dora and I were baking a cake. Dora said, Remember, babe, not a word. I used too much baking soda. I committed to memory: not a word, not a word. I knew I might still forget.

  My mother’s visit was the oddest thing. She kept calling Dora Jojo. Dora didn’t seem to mind. That’s fucked up, Dor, I said when we were in the kitchen and I thought my mother couldn’t hear. I was wrong. What’s fucked up, dear, my mother asked: standing in the doorway. I spilled the beans. All of it.

  My mother said, Sweetheart, you are imagining these things, yes?

  I said, No, Mom, you are imagining that you can’t see them.

  She said, Surely, sweetheart, you realize that you’re bored. When you were young you used to try to fly. That was out of boredom too.

  I don’t remember that, I said; that’s pretty stupid.

  Actually, you pulled it off once, she said, but that’s hardly the point.

  My mother made hot chocolate, cut the cake. Then, on the sofa, she was stroking my hair: her attempt at making me hopeful. That’s rather annoying, she said all of a sudden. What is, I said. Something is beeping, sweetheart, she said. Can’t you hear it?

  MY WIFE IN CONVERSE

  1.

  My wife and I took a cooking class recently. My wife and I take classes. It is a passion of my wife’s, taking classes. My wife is good at most things one could take classes in, which, when you think about it—and I’ve thought about it—means my wife excels in all things. And I believe that is in fact true. I believe my wife excels in all things. I am not blinded by love when I say this—we have been together eight years. They say after seven, whatever blindness you had is gone.

  * * *

  While my wife was chopping things or perhaps sautéing them, the instructor came over. I stopped what I was doing, which wasn’t much. He was a man in his sixties trying hard to look French. He smelled like years of garlic. We looked at each other until some time passed. You might want to take up poetry, he said finally.

  2.

  The poetry class conflicted with the cooking class—the one my wife was excited about, the one from which I was now banned. I make curtains for a living, and most of the work is done from a tiny shop I set up in the back of our house. In other words, my schedule is flexible; this sort of problem never happened before. What do you want to do? I asked my wife. In my chest I was hoping she’d say we both quit. I was imagining her saying, Intro to Tarot Card Reading. Or: I heard of a place, just a short drive north, where you can take horseback-riding classes. My wife loves intro classes, and loves anything that’s a short drive north. But instead she said, We are not one person, you know. My wife had never pointed that out before.

  3.

  The poetry class was led by a young man with too much gel in his hair. His bio listed literary journals with exotic animals in their names, and words in Latin. I’m a poet before I’m a teacher, he told us the first day, a poet before anything. Everyone nodded.

  4.

  How was the cooking class? I asked my wife when we both got home. Dominique thinks I should open my own place, my wife said. After three classes? I asked. Eventually, she said, emphasizing each syllable. She looked at me like I had something on my face, but I knew that I didn’t.

  5.

  Later that night, I went to my shop and cleared a small corner of my sewing table. In this corner, I thought, I can be a poet before I’m a curtain maker.

  6.

  Since then, every night I sit myself down, because that’s the first step to anything worthwhile. I bark at myself from a dog place in my brain, a place only I can hear: Write! Then I get up and go to the kitchen to get some olives.

  7.

  The poem is about my wife, I think. The poem is about Sunday mornings, when the sun is too early. The poem is about being the last human being on earth, but responsible for someone else.

  8.

  Of course we still have sex, my wife says.

  9.

  The last time we had sex, it was cold out and they said a storm was coming. My wife was shivering in fear, making lists to steady herself. For a while I was trying to cross things off her list—candles, eight gallons of water, move things away from windows. Check, I would say cheerfully at her, check check check. But the more I crossed off, the longer the lists got, and the more anxious my wife seemed. She was sitting on our bed, her upper body low like it was trying to reach her knees. I stood close behind her, put my hands on her shoulders. Honey, I said, and she tilted her head back and looked up to meet my eyes. There was such fear in her face, and I hadn’t thought this through; Honey was all I had. I said Honey again, to buy a few seconds, and then I just saw it, saw in her eyes the thing she needed to hear, saw it the way you see anything—a car in the driveway, a coat in your closet. I promise you it’s going to be okay, I said; can you trust me? She let her head lean farther back until it touched my stomach, and I held her like that for a bit, then turned her around to face me, kissed her eyes. Her body softened, opened.

  * * *

  When the winds came later that night, they were far weaker than expected, and we were still inside each other. It had been a while since we made love like that—hearing our rhythms without effort, reaching toward each other without haste, again and again.

  * * *

  When we woke up the next day, the outside was yellow and brown, a strange mix of relief and disappointment. I tucked a curl behind my wife’s ear. We didn’t die, I said, and smiled. Don’t be dramatic, she said, and got out of bed. God, I need to brush my teeth, she murmured with her back to me, heading to the bathroom; I woke up with an awful taste in my mouth.

  10.

  I like saying my wife to strangers, seeing their eyebrows twitch. The eyebrows always twitch. The only difference is whether they let them twitch or try to keep them from twitching because they’re liberals. When they ask—smiling, to show they never twitched at all, why would they?—How long have you been married? I say, We were in the first weddings, Massachusetts. I nod a couple times and look away. If I let myself see their eyes, I will see the next question. And I admit: I want to leave them to their twitching.

  11.

  Someone, perhaps my wife, used the expression in conversation. The street was being loud right as these words left her lips—loud on the end, loud on the ation. In converse was what I heard. I can use this for my poem, I thought. That is how I operate these days, like a thief.

  12.

  Whenever my wife wanted to read the poem, I’d say It’s not ready it’s not ready. Sometimes she’d say Read it anyway, read to me while I cook. Then I’d say I prefer to finish it first, and my wife would make a face. I didn’t know why she felt this urgency with the poem. What I did know was: when it’s ready, I want her to listen without cooking. I’d say nothing though, because what’s the point?

  13.

  Last week in class we workshopped a poem written by an older woman with thick black hair. The teacher talked about mastering the qui
et, which has something to do with space breaks. This woman is very good at space breaks, if I understand it correctly, and is quite close to mastering the quiet altogether.

  * * *

  After class, I collected my things slowly, waited for people to leave. The teacher was texting or perhaps checking his e-mail. I waited for him to make eye contact, and when he did, I asked How do I know when a poem is ready. The teacher sighed. A poem is ready when the poet stops writing it, he said. So I should just stop writing it? I asked, confused. The teacher put the phone in his back pocket. I said the poet, he said. He looked at me for a few seconds, then started moving toward the door. With his back half to me he said, Look, it’s not personal, I just don’t like it when students get ahead of themselves. Whatever poem you’re talking about—let’s workshop it first and take it from there.

  * * *

  I stood in the empty classroom for a long moment after he was gone.

  14.

  When I got home that night, I could hear laughter. I stood outside our door and listened. Why would Dominique be in our living room? But I was wrong—the laughter was coming from the kitchen. They were giggling at the salmon. My better half is home, my wife said when I opened the door, glancing in my direction. How am I better, I wanted to ask, in what way? I have an order to finish, I said and walked toward my shop. I’m sorry about the smell, my wife called after me; let me know if you need your pills. I’m allergic to fish, and sometimes the smell alone burns my lungs. It’s a big order, I shouted back, I just have to finish it. I sat myself down and tried to find the quiet in my poem, but everything was loud. I tried to find the quiet in my poem until through the loudness I heard Dominique leave.

  * * *

  In bed, my wife mentioned a cooking seminar in the south of France. I can learn so much over there that I can’t learn here, she said. I nodded in the dark. But there’s more to learn here too though, I said. There was nothing before my wife said, Sure. When I heard my wife sleeping, I said, I’m quitting the poetry class. That’s too bad, my wife said, already in a dream. It’ll get too soggy if you soak it overnight.

  15.

  I didn’t know the seminar was only a few days away, didn’t know my wife and I had agreed she should go. I only understood the next day, when she brought the big suitcase up from the basement. She looked at my face and said, You didn’t think I would take the small one, did you? It’s a long time! I said No, of course, of course. I wanted to ask how long exactly, but got the feeling I was supposed to know. I didn’t want to say anything that would make her think once again I wasn’t listening. It was true—I was lately finding it hard to listen.

  * * *

  My wife cooked for me that night. Do you like it, she kept asking, even though I said a few times that I did. She was saying things about the texture of the food, and I nodded. I wanted to ask if she would still have vacation days when she returned. I’d been wanting us to go somewhere, but she could never take time off. Now, from what I understood, she was using those accumulated days for the seminar. But perhaps not all of them, I thought. Perhaps she would still have a few left? If she’d resist, I would say something like If you can take time off for cooking, why not take time off for us? I was thinking it through while chewing. I had good ideas, but the words stayed in my mouth.

  * * *

  Before my wife married me, she was married to a man. He liked his shirts ironed and his blankets tucked, which were two of the things they didn’t see eye to eye on. On our first date, I took my wife on a boat—one of the ones that go around the city making everything look pretty. Even though she was still married, I already knew she would one day be my wife, so I planned well.

  * * *

  They say the past is the best predictor of the future, and what I say back is that it’s actually the other way around: the future, if you work hard enough at it, slowly changes your past. But there are times, and that night on the boat was the first, when I look at my wife and for a fast moment see that she belongs to no one, not even herself. She is always leaving someone.

  16.

  I’m sorry this is happening so fast, my wife said. She was all packed, and Dominique was picking her up in an hour. I wasn’t sure what she meant; it didn’t seem she was talking about the seminar. Well, you don’t control the schedule, I said and tried to smile, and her chest dropped. I took a deep breath. Is he picking everyone up, I asked. No, my wife said. She was looking straight at me; that was the question she wanted. Are you meeting the others at the airport, I asked. No, my wife said. Everything was quiet then, very quiet and still, and it seemed the world would be that way for a while. We’re hooking up with them at the resort, my wife said finally.

  * * *

  Even Dominique’s car horn was quiet, a small bee in the distance. I do love you, my wife said with one hand on her suitcase. She kept her lips on my cheek for a bit.

  17.

  After my wife left, I slept for two days. My dreams were mostly about money: I was making a lot of it now. The curtain business took off, or I joined a start-up at just the right moment and made CEO, or, in one dream, I became a successful lawyer. And in all the dreams I was either showing off my new money to my wife, who was no longer my wife, or trying to win her back with it. In some dreams we were still together, and I was buying her diamonds and making her quit her job. I would wake up between dreams, sweaty and puzzled. My wife never complained that the curtain business wasn’t making enough. My wife loved her job. My wife hated diamonds.

  18.

  When I got out of bed, I walked straight to my shop without brushing my teeth. I erased my poem, except the line I stole: my wife in converse. Then I took the pile of papers and marched over to the dining area by our kitchen. I stood there for a moment, holding my papers, and looked at the large mahogany table no one would be dining on for some time. The shop is for curtains, I thought, not for poems. Maybe that was the problem all along. Now, in this new space, I would start all over again. And this time I would get it right.

  PHONETIC MASTERPIECES OF ABSURDITY

  Sometimes after the men leave, Nadine’s body tells her to wait awhile for the water. Make that bath count more. She lies still, and her skin feels too tight on her bones, like someone gave her the wrong size. With a finger that smells of them, she looks for sharpness where she knows she will find it: elbows, knees, shoulder blades.

  The edges of her bones comfort her, but it’s a feeling that passes quickly, and soon there is need for more, for proof. So Nadine gently touches her cheek with her knuckles; her knuckles are her secret weapon. She thinks: These knuckles could make a peach bleed.

  * * *

  She should probably charge more by now, but she can never figure out what to say, or how to say it.

  * * *

  The men smell of baby carrots, because their five-year-old son mistakes baby carrots for candy, and of sweat, because they are always nervous when they see her, even if they’ve been coming for years. Or they smell of ice cream, because last night their wife tried to revive the marriage with some innovative foreplay, and have Viagra breath, because they stopped trusting their body long before it failed them. It doesn’t matter.

  * * *

  Thursdays are the busiest. She never understood why. On Wednesdays, her BlackBerry keeps buzzing with men’s anticipation until she feels like there are bees inside her ears. So on Wednesdays, saying no is important. I miss you, too, Baby; really wish I could. Every man is Baby, no exception; that she learned early on. Even the sophisticated ones appreciate the gesture: the implicit warmth, the promise of anonymity. But she does know their names, of course, sometimes even their last name, and on a few occasions the name of a wife, a mother, a sister they haven’t spoken to in six years. It pains them, that the sister won’t return their calls. They ask, Why won’t she fucking let it go already? Nadine doesn’t want to look for answers. If they insist on talking, she touches their hair, lets her eyes scroll up and down their torso; she waits for their body to rem
ember what it wants. Really, she waits for the chatter to stop, but the trick is still giving it the space it needs. Once, when it was absolutely necessary, she made tea.

  * * *

  Generally speaking, she remembers more than she should: the bump on the back of their neck, the sweat behind their ear right before they come, the scar on the toe of their left foot and the story behind it. There is always a story behind it. They tell the stories and then retell them. Because, well: if she doesn’t truly exist, surely she doesn’t remember; they desperately need to believe that she isn’t real. But then there are times when she can see sadness in their eyebrows, in their lower back, and suddenly they want her to remember. Temporarily, they acknowledge her presence in the world. It’s funny, but you are the most stable thing in my life, you know? In these moments, she has learned, a nod goes a long way.

  * * *

  The woman, the photographer, Mia, has been dominating her thoughts. Now Nadine even dreams of her. Last night, Mia was elected World President.

  Nadine wants to know things like what’s Mia’s favorite fruit, what she looks like when she cries. Mia. She rolls Mia’s name on her tongue until she sounds like a cat. Mia wants to know her, too: the first thing she said was I’d like to get to know you, if you’d let me. But Mia wants to know her the way a painter wants to know her canvas. Besides, there is always a lens between them.

  * * *

  Mia reached her through a friend of a friend of a friend, someone Nadine hadn’t talked to in years. On the phone, Mia sounded aggressive, and Nadine wanted to say, Sorry, I don’t think I’m interested. But for a few minutes she chewed the words like she chews her gum before falling asleep, unable to spit. Finally she said, Okay. She said it softly, and Mia didn’t hear her, so she had to repeat. Okay. Nadine assumed they would meet at some bar or café. I work on the Lower East Side, she told Mia, plenty of places to choose from. But Mia said it would be helpful, for the project, if she could see Nadine’s apartment. She may have used the words natural environment. As in: seeing you in your natural environment.