Old Yellow Book

          I still think about Cora Sadosky wanting to borrow "Mornings in Mexico." The musky cloth-covered boards the color of a ripe lemon—the three faded green words centered—seemed, already, to deliver the freshness and Latin sensuality of its title. It was a pretty, old book, lying on its back on a table as she walked through to a dinner of perch and cooked spinach, and it caught her eye. 

          On this morning, the shades are pulled and the fans are going but there is still a bit of fresh air at 7:00, and I don't mind my hot coffee. For a few precious moments I don't feel guilty about my dog, living his life incarcerated under the kitchen table.

          Going outside makes him too nervous. I am apt to agree with his philosophy of the world beyond one's dooryard. Hell is other people, Rob Kleinstuber said once at a book club dinner, high above Dupont Circle in their living room decorated with Oriental reproductions from Sears. Rob and I had almost identical thoughts. He had the same attitude about that canto of "In Memoriam"—Dark house, by which once more I stand—and our scary similarity made us so much more than strangers. We never spoke.

          I wonder if he is dead, too.

          I have found myself around a table with many different people, almost all of them extraordinary, like Cora—the daughter of Argentina's premier female mathematician. I am profusely ordinary, and I could never follow the conversations. I was uncurious about politics and books. Dinner talk always seemed to proceed like a racquetball game; I ducked for safety.

          This will be a hot summer. The Windsor chair kisses my naked back. The cat elongates herself across the doorway like a fox collar.

          At times, life has been like two birches rubbing together in the wind, their speech a cat's cry: high pitched, arbitrary, musical—wholly accidental. There was never a plan, only indulgence. So much to enjoy!

          I have never been to Mexico.

The Sketching Date

Lonely people, in talking to each other, can make each other lonelier.

—Lillian Hellman

          

          I.          

          

          The email arrived in all caps.

          BILL, I HAVE AN IDEA [...] IF YOU BRING YOUR PAINTS, WE CAN HAVE LUNCH AND PAINT. YOU AT ONE END OF THE COUNTER, ME AT THE OTHER.

          I'd been so busy all month that the absurdity of it seemed like a divine relief.

          Aleksandra and her husband John had built the log cabin after camping on the land for years. They raised six kids in one of the mansions of Rye, New York. When they got ready to move to Maine they told each one—now adults—to put their name on whatever piece of furniture or artwork they wanted. The nine bedroom house was emptied, and Aleksandra and John started all over again.

          "This time, honey, can we have some red and blue?" Aleksandra had done the estate in pale coral, sugar snap pea pastel, and seafoam ivory, like mint cream candies.

          "L.L. Bean. I get it!" was her reply. John died in 2011.

          And it is consistent. Everything is scuffed, weathered, and like a theater stage nothing is added to disrupt the vast negative space of the single room with the wall of French doors staring out at Taunton Bay. Yet the eye keeps discovering picture frames and iron soap cradles and objects of delicate comfort arranged with great precision. It is L.L. Bean if it had turned slightly steampunk—then lunched at Bergdorf's.