Shelly Oria - New York 1, Tel Aviv 0

13.

Last week in class we workshopped a poem written by an older woman with thick black hair. The teacher talked about mastering the quiet, 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.

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.