The Secret Lives of People in Love (10 page)

He dressed meticulously and combed his white hair in the yellowing toilet mirror. After polishing his own shoes on the machine in his socks, he washed his hands.

Under the sink was a long silver cake knife wrapped closely in white muslin cloth. It was a family heirloom and once guided the weight of two hands across a wedding cake.

Serge slipped the wedding knife into his pocket and flicked off all the lights inside. The outside sign burned all night in dazzling red neon read. It read: all soles fixed here.

He locked up and stepped onto the street.

Serge hoped he might see Peter the blind tobacconist or Omar—someone to keep him from the company of ghosts. Children rushed past with buckets tied to their backs with rope. Others kept pace with their parents, their faces sour with the embarrassment of a public scolding.

Like a gust of wind, another group of children swept past Serge, gently brushing the edges of his clothing.

The evening was comfortably warm, and for miles around, the piercing freshness of ripe apples poured into people’s homes like sunlight.

Serge lived humbly in a basement apartment in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. His landlord, who lived upstairs, was a retired university professor who thumped on the floor with a broom when he listened to Beethoven. He was also a widower and the only member of
his family to escape the Nazi gas chambers. The weight of their sadness combined would have been too much for either to bear, and so their relationship consisted of a mutual nod whenever they came face-to-face.

On a table next to Serge’s bed was a small apple tree, which he tended to every day as responsively as if it had been a dying companion. He purchased the most expensive plant foods to ensure its prosperity. It was almost a foot tall and, with a growing confidence in the world around it, had begun to widen at its base.

In three months, depending on the weather, Serge would have to sneak down to a once-abandoned lot, rip up some cracked tarmac with a crowbar, and plant the tree next to all the others he had planted since arriving in Brooklyn in 1974. After thirty years the wasteland lot had become an orchard and the site of New York City’s only apple festival.

Nearing the orchard, Serge could hear the crowd and wondered if there would be anywhere to set up his folding chair.

As he turned the final corner, his perpetually dry eyes were suddenly moist and he felt himself crying. Instead of stopping to forage for a handkerchief, Serge continued his slow rocking walk, for he was sure that no one would look at him long enough to know.

On the eve of his departure from the small Russian village of his birth, Serge had smoked in the family orchard watching workmen board up the windows of his family home with thick planks. The men’s wives toiled inside, covering furniture with thick white sheets as though blindfolding them.

Before the men nailed shut the front door, Serge carried his suit
case outside and set it on the grass. It was dusk. The river that flowed across the property was high and thick with the soft black bones of trees.

Like people, all rivers are falling.

With several blankets borrowed from his mother-in-law, Serge made a bed for himself on the grass, six feet above his child.

At dawn, with a film of dew upon his skin and clothes, Serge rose to his knees in order to kiss the gravestone one final time. However, at some moment during the night, an apple had swollen just enough to sit perfectly on the head of the stone. Serge was breathless and picked the apple so the branch—madly and gratefully—could return to the tangle of branches above. He buried the apple deep in his suitcase. On the journey west, six days of hunger and thirst were not enough to tempt him to eat it.

As Serge came within sight of the lot, he was confronted once again with his daughter’s legacy and more than a hundred Russian apple trees nodded in recognition.

The curling limbs of the trees were studded with apples, and children grew within the branches, laughing and hanging upside down.

Serge unfolded his chair at the edge of the orchard and listened to the sound of apples punching buckets. Some people had brought barbeques and were baking apples wrapped in aluminium foil.

After several hours, Serge cut his last slice of apple with the silver wedding knife and then wrapped the knife back in muslin cloth. People were beginning to go home. Children dispersed in small groups, their tiny backs bent over with cargoes of fruit. An apple is the size
and weight of a human heart; they were carrying the hearts of those not yet born and those lost forever.

It was getting chilly and Serge didn’t want to risk his arthritic hands. By morning, his nightly drop box was sure to be full of broken soles and heels worn into smiles.

As he started to rise, Omar pushed through the crowd, his pockets so stuffed with apples that he could only run with his legs straight.

“Shoe-man!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been looking for you all night.”

At the end of the block a firecracker exploded, and Omar grinned.

“Up to your old mischief, uh?” Serge said.

“I bought you a baked apple, but I dropped it and a dog ate it.” Omar arranged the apples stuffed into his pants.

“The mayor of New York was here, did you see him?” Omar asked.

Serge said no.

“Someone threw an apple at him,” Omar said, laughing.

“Not you, I hope,” Serge muttered.

“No, not me—but he said that the city has bought the lot and is giving the orchard to the children of New York.” Omar lunged for an apple as it popped free from his pocket and rolled under Serge’s chair.

“Who do you think planted these trees, Omar?” Serge asked. “Haven’t you ever wondered who started this?”

Omar was on the ground fishing for the lost apple but managed to say, “Nobody knows who did it. The mayor said it’s one of the city’s great mysteries.”

“But have you ever wondered why anyone would do such a thing?” Serge asked.

“Because they love apples,” Omar said.

Serge noticed the moon and felt the deep pull of home.

When Omar finally found the apple under the chair, he removed one of his little socks and ripped it in half.

“What are you doing down there?” Serge snapped.

A pair of small hands suddenly began to skate over Serge’s shoes. The hands moved vigorously but with controlled strength. Omar spat on the sock and rubbed the heel. Serge tried to get up and shake off the scoundrel, but he had already started the other shoe. Serge sat back and closed his eyes.

For a moment after waking up, Thomas was only vaguely aware that he was alive. Then, like the shock of cold water hitting his body, Thomas remembered that his wife’s sister had telephoned during the night, that they had spoken briefly and nothing had been resolved.

He lifted the blanket off his body and waded through a gray light that had seeped through the curtains and into the room. He looked at the telephone with disbelief and then made a pot of tea. While it was brewing, he sat on his bed and fought to remember a dream. He tried piecing it together, but it was as though a feast had taken place during the night in his honor and he had awoken with only a few crumbs. He looked at the telephone again.

He could hear rain spraying the window and decided to write his letter of resignation. He sat at his desk. He swept aside bills and the report he would never finish, then pulled a crisp sheet of paper from the bed of the printer. After finishing a cup of tea, he began to write. He could feel a skin of sugar upon his teeth and after writing his own
address, realized he could not steady his hand. It shook like a small, dying animal.

He turned his head toward the telephone but did not look.

Outside, he could hear the increasing traffic. People were going to work, radios were clicking to life in bedrooms, coffee was dripping into glass jugs, bathtubs were filling up. He gripped the handle of the teapot awkwardly and poured himself another cup.

He could imagine his wife in the hospital, her limp body beneath the white sheet like a spread of mountains. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the nurse’s white shoes and his wife’s bare feet parted beneath the hospital sheets.

Her sister had called in the early hours, but he had spoken very little because each time he thought of a word, it had popped like a bubble before he could nudge it past his teeth and into the telephone. Nothing had been resolved, and he thought of the hospital corridor, a long river of plastic with brightly colored lines upon the floor. He could sense the tension in her sister’s voice as she imparted everything the doctors had told her. All he could think was how beautiful the word
triage
was.

He dressed. The house was cold and quiet. He poured himself more tea and drank it cold. As he poked his arms through the sleeves of his jacket, his eye caught a pair of her boots. He wanted to slip his hands inside, through the dark leather mouths and into the stomachs that cradled her feet.

He tried calling her sister. Her telephone rang for a long time. He replaced the receiver, feeling that life was disordered in a way he had never imagined.

He looked at his watch and thought of his old self driving to work, listening to the news, sipping coffee. He felt a strange sense of shame and naivety and knew that if he let his mind regress, it would pass a countless number of occasions in which he could have been a stronger and brighter version of himself.

After tying his shoes, he reached into the closet for his raincoat. Instead of yanking it from the hanger, he tugged slightly at the arm and felt his hand begin to wander. It brushed against different fabrics and then stopped at her favorite coat, a long camel-hair one with a thick belt. His fingers crawled into the pocket and swam around between coins, slips of paper, and mints. The secrets of a hand.

He drove to the hospital. The hand that had been in her coat pocket exuded a light aroma of perfume. He thought of her spa and pictured the shelf of tiny bottles above her desk, each one containing a distilled floral essence, each bottle an olfactory fingerprint.

He remembered the faces of her clients as they hung their coats and then peeled a magazine from the stack on the table. He remembered watching their eyes sail slowly through the pages as they anticipated the warm, scented oil upon their faces and the soothing calligraphy of his wife’s hands.

The road to the hospital became narrow and straight. It stretched through a forest like a gray bookmark, and dead leaves—like brittle letters—bounced across the highway on their brittle ends.

He tried to hold a portrait of her face in his mind but could not weave each detail simultaneously. He thought again of the small bottles above her desk.

At the hospital he stood above her and listened. Birds muttered on
the window ledge, a machine clicked. He sat in a chair and studied her fingers. They were long and evenly spaced. On her wrist was a clear plastic band with her name written by a computer. This made him angry. He leaned in and breathed upon her hand. It was warm, and he shuddered as his breath pushed against her skin.

He felt numb, as though during the night his body had been filled with plaster. He wondered what was happening inside her head. He imagined a garden with the noisy dots of birds.

The day of the operation had been the worst day. Now it was a waiting game, said her sister.

After napping, he awoke to a shadow cast over his wife’s body.

“Good morning, Thomas,” the nurse said.

He nodded and asked if there was any change in her condition. The nurse consulted her charts and replied that there was no change.

“Would you like to wash her face?” the nurse asked. He turned to his sleeping wife and imagined swishing a wet cloth through the tiny canyons and then across the plains of her cheeks. He felt awkward and his hands turned to wood.

“I’ll get you some warm water,” the nurse said.

She returned a moment later and placed a bowl and some cotton balls beside his wife’s bed. Thomas dipped a ball of cotton into the warm water and then squeezed it. He swished it along her forehead. She did not move. When he had finished, he patted her face with a soft towel, being careful not to cover her mouth or nose.

The operation had lasted six hours and twelve minutes. During this time, Thomas left the hospital and walked to a park where he sat on a bench and wept violently for several minutes. He then smoked a cig
arette and watched two boys throw a football to one another. In the December twilight, a dog barked. Then the park was swallowed by darkness. As he had walked back to the hospital, he felt ashamed that he had left even for a moment and wondered if her sister would be angry with him.

He stood before the automatic doors at the hospital for a moment before continuing.

As he had made his way back to her room, he remembered the boys playing football in the park. He thought to himself that one year from this moment, everything would be different—for better or worse.

The nurse returned and took away the bowl and cotton balls. Thomas remembered his wife’s voice from years ago, expressing a wish to see the lavender fields of France.

Next year for definite, he thought, when all this is behind us, we’ll do something like that.

Four days since the operation, and everyone who visited commented on how she had lost weight, as though it were somehow complimentary. It was an uncommonly warm afternoon, and Thomas decided to walk to the park again. It felt good to walk, and he tried to imagine the splintering glass, the spontaneous explosion of the air bag—her face and crumpling body.

He saw the park up ahead and slackened his pace. He tried to see the faces of people driving past him. They eyed him for a split second and were gone.

A sudden loathing filled him.

As he sat down on an empty bench he resisted an urge to sprint
back to the hospital and carry her from the bed to their house and then lock all the doors.

At that moment, Thomas realized he had changed, that he was not the same man, but like everyone else, he was the result of an accident that had once taken place between nature and chance.

An old woman with hanging cheeks sat down beside him and sighed.

“The evenings have become so cold,” she said. She offered him a stick of violet gum. He slipped it into his mouth and chewed. They sat mostly in silence.

“This time next year,” Thomas suddenly remarked to the woman, “my wife and I will be in France.”

“Oh, that’s nice, dear.” The old lady seemed delighted but then looked away. “My husband and I always talked about going to Europe.”

“They grow lavender and you can smell it in the air as you amble through the villages,” Thomas said.

“Wished we’d gone when we had the chance,” she said, “but life just swallows you up, doesn’t it? Just swallows you up with its everyday things.”

That evening at the hospital, Thomas insisted that he stay with his wife—that he hold her hand and burn some of her favorite distilled essences.

“Most people go home, get a good night’s sleep, and come back first thing,” the nurse said as she folded a towel.

“I’m not most people,” Thomas said and truly meant it. The nurse left the room without a word.