Robert Lennon - Familiar

“Are you after a contemporary or more traditional look?”

“Traditional. But not gaudy.”

This makes him glance up. Or maybe he just wanted a second look at her. Another small smile, then he turns around and reaches for one, then another, frame sample. His shoulders are broad, for a small man’s, and his jeans hug his hips. He pushes some papers out of the way, removes the photo from the frame and places it on the countertop, facing Elisa. He selects a sample piece of cream-colored mat board, lays it down over the corner of the photo. Arranges a frame sample at its edge.

“This will give it a warmer look than what you had it in,” he says. “Now this…” He swaps out the mat board for a different piece, this one a pale gray. “This will complement the colors of the stones here, behind the figures.”

“Ah,” she says.

“Your family?”

“Yes.”

He looks up at her. “Handsome boys.”

“Thanks.”

“Do we know each other?”

“I’ve seen you around town.” There is a quaver in her voice. She extends her hand. “I’m Lisa.”

“Larry.”

Their palms touch, his dry, hers clammy. He holds on exactly as long as is appropriate. She says, “I like the cooler one. And the plainer frame.”

“Good choice, I think. We can have that for you in a few days.”

He opens a drawer, pulls out a form, takes pen in hand. She is reminded of the way, after sex, he picks up his glasses and puts them back on. She is trying to remember, with unexpected difficulty, what he is like in bed, what his body feels like close to hers. He writes “Lisa” on the form.

But Elisa has already backed up. She is nearly at the door. She says, “No need for that. I’ll be back.”

Larry looks up, apparently surprised. Doubtless there is a deposit policy. But in the end he says only, “All right then.”

Back on the street, she admits to herself how much of this encounter she planned out ahead of time, how many hours some small ashamed part of her mind spent blocking out the movements, working on the script. Perhaps this is why she expected something more — a feeling of something gathering momentum. Instead it feels like the first steps up a steep hill.

Was it really that different, in the old life? Did she want him right away, or did it take time? Maybe she is misremembering the sudden, inalienable erotic pull, the feeling of inevitability.

Or maybe this is the real life, and that one was fantasy. Erotic fantasy.

No. It is just that lust is physical. Maybe it bypasses the mind, like the impulse that pulls the hand away from a hot stove. Lust is in the body, she thinks, boarding the number 20, shoving her dollar bill into the slot, and this is not my body.

It’s a few nights later. She’s home alone, Derek is out buying a six-pack of beer from the supermarket, and the phone rings. The caller ID tells her it’s Lorraine. She decides to let the machine get it.

But then she picks it up. She can’t stop herself: she’s curious. “Hello, Lorraine.”

“Hello there, dear, how are you?”

“I’m good, I’m good…” Already it’s different: Lorraine never calls her dear, doesn’t ask her how she’s doing.

“I expected to hear from you — how did the conference go?”

“Fine, it was fine.” She is analyzing every word for hidden content: the “I expected” is typical Lorraine, but not in this context. Lorraine expecting to hear from her? The question does not sound sarcastic. The intent does not seem to be to mock and humiliate.

They make small talk. Or Lorraine does, and Elisa tries to. Elisa doesn’t know how to do small talk. This is why they never have anyone over. Or perhaps in this world they do — maybe they have parties, lavish boring parties. Lorraine is telling her about her book group, a novel they read, the comments some of the other women made. She describes a television show she watched the night before, and offers some details about the child of some neighbors who has just graduated from Harvard.

Elisa feels as though she’s supposed to offer something in return. Some little morsel. She mentions getting the photo reframed.

Silence. Then, “Maybe you should just take it down, dear.”

“Maybe,” Elisa says. Another silence follows, so she continues: “Do they… do you ever speak with them?”

“You know that I don’t.” This quietly, uncertainly.

It feels like an opportunity to Elisa, but she isn’t certain what kind. She says, very quietly, “Lorraine. It’s all right if you do.”

She thinks she must have made a mistake — Lorraine says nothing, then draws a deep, ragged breath.

“Thank you,” she says, and nothing more.

A moment later she hears Derek coming through the door. Does Lorraine want to talk with him? No, she doesn’t. “I just wanted to catch up with you, dear,” she says, with audible relief.

“Well, thank you.”

Some pleasantries, which Derek listens to as he arranges beer bottles in the fridge. “My mother?” he says, when Elisa hangs up.

“Yes.”

He shakes his head. “All she ever wanted was a daughter. Sometimes I think she likes you better than me.”

She starts bringing work home. The binder. Budget materials. It’s all begun to make sense, but she wants it to be intuitive. Natural. Out of all the things that are alien to her, she thinks, if I can master this, then I can master it all. Evenings, Derek cooks, she clears the table and puts the dishes in the machine and wipes the table down. Soon she has her glass of wine and is working under the bright kitchen lights. Surely this is not quite right — there are things she’s missing, things Derek expects her to do. But he says nothing. Sometimes he looks at her too long: this is when he’s waiting for her to discharge some obligation. Nights he appears anxious, frightened even. He says good night, then waits. She might get up and go with him, and in bed he will reach out and touch her shoulder, then withdraw. She might remain seated in the kitchen. They haven’t had sex yet.

Friday night, she stays up after he goes to bed. She has been in this world for five days. Laptop open in the kitchen, she searches the internet for references to Silas. Then she composes an e-mail to Sam. It reads, We want to see you. She doesn’t know if this is even possible — if they or he have the money to travel. Surely they do — they did in the real life. The e-mail sits on the desktop, unsent.

She wonders what the other Elisa is doing. If she is adapting, or if she is floundering. The latter, Elisa tells herself — this Lisa, the one she is impersonating, is soft, pliable, defanged. Or perhaps she is merely flattering her real self. In any event, if that Lisa has adopted her old life, Silas is being mourned again.

The memory of Silas’s death — his funeral, his burial, and her subsequent months, years of grief — no longer compels strong emotion in Elisa. The way a factory worker, forced to listen to the same clang of metal against metal for years and years, will lose that frequency for good: that part of her is worn away. But the thought of that woman, her doppelgänger, experiencing this for the first time, stops her breath. A little hiccup of misery convulses her body; the stool barks on the linoleum. The poor thing.

But then again, maybe the Lisa who once inhabited this body, who endured the challenges of a living Silas, has had to evolve a more agile mind. Maybe I’m the weak one, Elisa thinks — the woman who couldn’t hold her marriage together, who cheated and lied, who couldn’t get along with her mother-in-law. And now the smarter Lisa, the stronger Lisa, is making better use of her freedom than the real one ever could. Maybe the fake Lisa mastered Killian Tech even more quickly than the real one mastered the Levinson Center. She has seduced Derek and resisted the advances of the creepy frame shop guy, who keeps calling her, though they’ve never met. She is working harder, thinking more clearly, feeling more deeply. What does Silas’s death mean to her? In this world, the wrong one, he might as well be dead. He isn’t in her life anymore.