“We’re okay,” I say.
“But,” she says, blocking our way with a ferocious smile, “it has six unique preset programs, five levels of speed and intensity, and two-stage zero-gravity positions inspired by NASA.”
“We really don’t—,” I say, but she is already ushering my mother backward into one of the plush armchairs. My mother sinks down, stunned, her legs and arms encased in leather padding.
“Isn’t that amazing?” beams the woman. “Here.”
She takes the towel rack from me and guides me into the chair opposite my mother. There is no point in fighting. It feels like I am being eaten by the chair, rolled around on its leather tongue. It is not, I must admit, entirely unpleasant. The woman presses a remote, and pulsing waves of pressure flow up and down my back, arms, and legs. This, I imagine, is what it feels like to be digested.
“Relaxing, huh?” says the woman. “Now let’s try the zero-gravity setting.”
She presses the remote again, and our chairs lift from the floor with a crank, then begin gyrating back and forth on their stands. I am being pulsed, rocked, kneaded, and rolled. I have no idea where my body ends and the chair begins. I look at my mother. She is tiny, devoured by all that leather. She is looking at me. We rock toward and away from each other.
“Eleanor!” she calls over the vibrations of the chair.
“Ma!”
“I never wanted you to have less!” she says.
*
We put up the towel rack when we get home. Two mugs filled with tea balance on the edge of the tub. Goldfinch and kestrel.
“If you could have bought anything in that whole mall, what would you get?” I ask.
She closes her eyes and thinks. I watch a smile spread across her face.
“An electric can opener,” she says.
Sometimes I worry my mother is shrinking in every way.
*
Since I am dateless and childless, it should be easy for me to spend my evenings writing my kids’ comedy, Human Garbage, but it’s not.
I open my browser and type “seeing dead animals” again. It does not appear to be an ailment others suffer from. I thought it was impossible in the internet age to find anything that made you truly unique, yet here I am. I go back to staring blankly at the screen. Somehow, I am still developing carpal tunnel.
*
Eventually I give in and search her name. It is a combination of letters so perfect it makes my teeth ache. I find a picture of her from an art show. She’s standing in front of a splashy nude, looking seriously at the camera. Her hair is in a long fishtail braid. Her skin is the creamy color of whole milk. She’s wearing cream too, a silk blouse tucked into a long, rippled skirt. Tiny gold rings in her ears. She is a pearl. A perfect pearl of a girl.
*
Okay, so I am not beautiful or blond or British. But I can make jokes, be nice to your mother, and give a decent blow job. That’s what I got.
*
Jacky has invited me to lunch. When I swing by her desk, I notice a picture of her in the ocean with a dolphin either side of her, kissing her cheek. On her computer is a sticker that reads “Dolphins are a girl’s best friend!”
“Are you married, Jacky?” I ask over lunch.
“No, hon,” she says. “Running this place? When would I have had the time?”
“But.” I look down. “Would you like to be?”
“Not my style.” She smiles. “Move to Florida, that’s the plan. Swim every day. Most of my people are down there now anyway.” She leans toward me. “Why? Do you want to get married?”
“No.” I shake my head. I am trying to find the words. Eventually I say, “You’re so lucky you found dolphins, Jacky.”
Jacky gives me a funny look. “You’re lucky too,” she says. “Frank tells me you’re a great writer. You found the thing you love to do.”
I think about the writer’s room in LA. The jokes, the men, the sandwiches for every meal. I think about my evenings alone at my mother’s house working on Human Garbage.
“Sometimes I hate the thing I love to do,” I say.
*
“What we’re looking for,” says the real estate client, “is writing that makes you smile with your mind.”
*
Frank tells me that in Poland they translated The Flintstones into rhyme, so it sounds like poetry.
*
Frank tells me there’s nothing shameful about being creative for money. He tells me that John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to sit down together and say, “Let’s write ourselves a new swimming pool.”
*
Frank tells me the Nike slogan was inspired by the last words of a murderer in Utah. Moments before he was executed in 1977 by firing squad, he apparently turned to them and said, “Let’s do it.” I tell him, that sounds about right.
*
I tell Frank that in my experience, the better the headshot, the crazier the actor.
*
I tell Frank my favorite painting is Hans Holbein’s portrait of Thomas Cromwell in the Frick. There’s a patch of carpet in front of it that’s grown bald from the thousands of feet that have stood before it. I tell him I think that’s a good thing to hope for in life, for the carpet to grow thin before you.
*
Levi’s girlfriend has up and gone. She met a Canadian Hell’s Angel at a dive bar and took off, which is the kind of thing that happens in Levi’s world.
“I should have known she wasn’t right for me,” Levi says. “When she designed our band flyer using Comic Sans.”
*
My mother finds a dead hummingbird in the garden. This seems ominous. She carries it into the kitchen and lays it on the tea towel I gave her. Up close, it is remarkable. A feathered jewel. Its beak is the size of a needle. Its tiny black eyes are open and shine like onyx.
“Maybe I can stuff it and wear it as a pin?” she says brightly.
*
That old guy I dated in high school is dead now. I know this because I run into my former classmate, Candi Deschanel, outside Home Depot and she tells me, “That old guy you dated in high school is dead now.”
Candi has a baby on her hip and two more children wrapped around her legs. I am carrying an extra-large bag of birdseed for my mother.
*
Later, I look up his name. There’s a short obituary online written by his family. It was a lawn mower accident. They are not as uncommon as you’d think, the obituary takes care to point out.
*
A race car driver killed by his lawn mower. There must be a joke in there somewhere.
*
The pair of high school students next to me on this PATH train know so much more about life than I do.
“I was trying to be, like, hyper-rational,” says the first girl. “And explain to him that he can’t treat me this way.”
“That’s smart,” says her friend.
“But all my human feelings got in the way,” says the first girl.
“That happens,” says her friend.