And everyone we know

Thick and thin walls

“THE SUMMER IS ENDED AND WE ARE NOT YET SAVED” — Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Scenes from the eleventh new moon of the year. My heart is in my ears.

I wake up early, rush to put a story online, it’s an article I like about an artist I love, and then bike to a doctor’s appointment, I’m finalizing the piece in the waiting room, and after the blood test is done, I call my mother from the parking lot.

She was recently diagnosed with a heart condition that’s usually genetic. In light of this new information, my sister says her son’s skating coach is asking for clearance from his doctor before the season starts. Mamo tells me that undiagnosed, this condition is associated with sudden death in young adults. The internet tells me to get tested for the gene. My siblings speculate about whether to get screened. I don’t want to. My heart is what it is, I don’t need to see it on an echocardiogram. On the phone this morning, my mother tells me her own genetic test results have come back. She’s negative.

My heart relaxes, so I spend the rest of the day putting it in overdrive.

I try to call you but you’re angry with me for being mean and having poor control over my emotions. You’re rarely mean with your words, but you can be in action, and in inaction. I’m 36 and I behave like I’m 16. I bike home, try you again, we talk, I apologize for the timing but not the content, compounding the meanness. You say you’re not angry but I know you. You are. I know you won’t read this because you’re angry.

My heart actually hurts from all this thinking.

I forget to eat lunch, I’m thinking about going to the hospital to see you but I need to get to the press preview for the artist I’ve just profiled. I know you won’t read this because you’re heavily sedated in the ICU. Earlier in the week we had been texting a lot and I only realized something was wrong when you went radio silent on an important deadline for me. This makes me feel guilty. Your heart failed you five years ago in Okinawa, and last week your lungs stopped working properly, they’re keeping you on a breathing machine, I want to see you, though somehow I think you wouldn’t like it, we run all around town looking for the files we need for the story, I feel guilty rifling through your files while you lie somewhere struggling to breathe, but I’m also angry with you. And I’m scared.

I think about all the ways I failed to take care of N. Whether I’d fail again given the chance.

I go to the museum, the exhibit is very nice, everyone thanks me for my article, though I can tell no one has read it. I run into you, you always notice me but wait for me to say hi first, I guess you’re much more important than me. I know you won’t read this, because why would you. I get to feel important for once because I can introduce you to the artist, and then we spend the rest of the afternoon alternating buildings and galleries and acquaintances. It’s fun to crash parties with you because you know everyone and can’t possibly be made to feel like you don’t belong. You turn to me and say how many business cards do you have because I’m going to introduce you to a lot of people. I’m really hungry. We see a very famous artist and I can’t stop staring at his eyelashes. They’re long and light and sparse. As I look at his eyes from the side, something about his work clicks into place. Everyone is intimidating. You like to tell people I went to Princeton and have written a book. Those both happened so long ago. An attractive older man asks if it’s a love story.

I leave and take the train to find another gallery, and my phone dies. I’m in a mall and I can’t find any art.

Thank goodness, there you are. The rain is pelting us as we leave and try to find a friend’s gallery that’s moved to the top floor of a building which we all agree is bad for business. We play critic games, hug people we don’t know that well, talk about the art market and having kids. We sneak away to dinner. You tell me that you don’t cry. Can’t, maybe. Melancholy is an intimate friend, I say. I know you won’t read this, because you’re happy and it’s sad. The way you eat and pick things up is so delicate, if I didn’t know you so well I’d think it was an act, I crash and bang my utensils and cups up and down, side to side, drop aji fry tendrils everywhere. You are so good at holding things. Except grief, it seems.

The rain is cold and my jacket is thin and the walk to and from the train station is long. I have to use the machine to calculate the fare and get a paper ticket.

I arrive home and there’s a letter from you. It’s inside a flattened yellow rice pilaf box that you’ve taped shut. I didn’t know you eat yellow rice pilaf. I do know you’ll be among the first to read this. The letter is about our parents and what they taught us and didn’t teach us. I was given a moral, occasionally spiritual, upbringing; I learned how to travel and spend money and think about the span of a life. But I wasn’t taught how to fix anything, plant anything, pitch anything, climb anything. Things were different for you, you can fix anything. Except your dryer, apparently.

I sleep, wishing I hadn’t had any champagne and that I was someone else, someone who’s calm and happy with a heart that can withstand cruelty. Instead I fall asleep me, and wake up again a day older.

Really excited I got to profile Yuko Mohri, a rising art star who repped the Japan pavilion in Venice this year. Her kinetic sculptures are about fruit, weather, sound textures. How could I resist?