by Paloma Meir
“Are you okay?” She patted my back, making the noodles feel like they were coming out of my nose. “I don’t know the Heimlich.”
“I’m fine.” I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Good, okay, shower time as Danny always calls it. Come on.” She took my hand and led me through her very large bedroom to her very large bathroom. “Here are some of Danny’s pajamas.” She took a pair from his drawer. “You can use all of my scrubs and face washes.” She shut the door before I could protest.
I turned the water on to discover that Zelda had not one, but three showerheads all with premium water pressure. I hadn’t realized until the water hit me that I was chilled to the bone. I turned the handle to maximum heat and stood, letting the water run over me. I shampooed and soaped using a washcloth instead of Zelda's many scrubs. Warm and feeling surprisingly relaxed, I dried off and put on Danny’s pajamas. I opened the door and found Zelda sitting on her bed waiting for me.
“Have you been sitting here the whole time?” Was it possible for her to be cuter?
“No silly,” She smiled and held her hand out to me. “I cleaned up the kitchen and made your bed on the sofa, “Hand me your clothes. I’ll have them sent out and delivered back to your dorm room. I have a surprise for you. It was going to be your Christmas present. Come with me to my studio.”
“That’s not necessary. I’ll wash them when I go back in the morning. Don’t worry, Zelda. I’m a very clean person.” I picked up my pile of clothes, but she took them out of my hands.
“No, we’re going to do it my way. I’m very worried about you, Serge. You push yourself too hard. I’m the only one here to take care of you.” She ran her fingers through my wet hair, clearly not happy I hadn’t combed out all the tangles.
“Studying isn’t harmful.” I gave into her intrinsic sweetness. “That would be nice. Thank you.”
“Come on.” She put my clothes on the chest of drawers and dragged me into the spare bedroom she had converted into a very well organized “studio”. Sewing machines, bolts of fabrics, countless knitting supplies, everything she needed for whatever she was trying to accomplish. I glanced around for her drawing materials but didn’t see anything other than one of the Demon Books her and Carolina drew in when they were kids.
It must have been one of the later ones based on the complexity of the demons shapes. I flipped the pages as Zelda picked through a basket of knitting, still talking in her new hyper way, but now punctuated by yawns from the warm milk.
“Here, Serge.” She turned to me and held out a large cream-colored cable knit sweater exactly like my black one that was now in her laundry pile. “I made you a new one. I’m worried about the light color now that you’ve become someone who never changes clothes. I should have made one in navy or gray.”
“Thank you.” My eyes felt heavy as I looked at the smiling Zelda holding up the sweater that must have taken her many hours to knit with all of her other responsibilities. We hadn’t grown apart. She had always been right there. It was me who had drifted away from her. “I don’t want you to worry so much. I don’t always wear the same clothes. I bought a half dozen of those khakis when they were on sale.” I wondered if I was going to have to explain the concept of a sale to her. “They’re flannel lined, and I wear thermals under your sweater. I’m clean and tidy.”
“You’ve turned into a mad scientist. Which one was it that always wore the same clothes every day? Einstein? You’re just like him, Serge. I’m glad you like it. Okay, now I’ll show you the bodysuits.” I smiled at having been compared to Albert Einstein in any way at all.
She turned back to her knitting basket and dug through it in search of the elusive bodysuit. I heard the door open as she continued her stream of caffeinated words. “Baby, I’m home. I missed you solid. You’ve got to see this. Where are you?”
I opened my mouth to let him know we were in the studio. Zelda hadn’t heard him over her chattering, only to have him walk by the door fully nude.
“Hey Serge.” He said casually with a glance into the studio, not slowing or speeding up his pace, calm and collected. “I’m going to bed Zelda.” I heard him say as their bedroom door closed.
“My darling, I’ll be there soon. Just showing Serge ... Here it is.” She popped up, bodysuit in hand as I stood stunned before her. “Do you like it?”
“What?” I needed to go to sleep. “The bodysuit? Yes” I took it from her and examined it as if I could offer valuable input. The workmanship was perfection. The pattern looked like swarms of galaxies colliding. The cashmere thread, thick in a rich flat black. Artful but from what I could see served no practical purpose. The very nature of the pattern prevented it from providing warmth or from being something that could be worn in public. I wanted to ask her the purpose.
“You can wear it under your clothes or to sleep in.” She said as if she could read my mind, “Look Serge, I made an opening to make it easy to use the bathroom.” She took the suit from my hand and showed me the crotch. Zelda had made a cashmere sex suit. I looked into her eyes to see if she actually believed women would buy it to sleep in. The soft wide eyes said yes. She thought she had made a utilitarian garment.
“It’s beautiful Zelda, intricate work. I’m sleepy. Let’s talk more about it in the morning.” I stumbled into the living room and saw Danny’s pile of clothes by the front door. I needed my dream-like evening to be over. I climbed into the elaborate nest-like bed she built for me eager for sleep.
“Why is everyone so tired? It’s only 11:00.” She knelt down beside me and held the “bodysuit” in her hands. “Do you really like it? I sent ones to Carolina, Veronica and Theodora. They said they loved them. Do you really think they do?” I closed my eyes at the mention of Veronica’s name. “I did that before the Barneys’ order. I made a few to send to our mothers, but now I have the order for eighty so I didn’t send them out. I only have ten. How am I going to make the other seventy by January 1st?”
I laughed imagining my mother and Danny’s opening a package from Zelda containing a very slinky feather light open-crotched article of clothing. I was sure Zelda’s mother would love it and wear it while lounging around her home in her cat-like way.
“They’re buying them for 150.00 each. I’ll make 12,000.00 dollars. Me, all on my own.” She clapped her hands, proud of herself as if she needed the money in a desperate way. “You’re so sleepy. I’ll leave you alone now.” She gave me a light kiss on the forehead and ran her fingers through my hair as she had been doing all night. “It’s so silky just like mine.”
“Good job, Zelda.” I skipped the opportunity to make a joke about her narcissistic pursuit of touching my hair because it was that kind of night. “Good night,” I opened my eyes, wanting her face to be the last thing I saw before going to sleep. She hovered above me, and I gently flicked her nose and rolled on my side.
I heard her tiptoe back to her room, the door opening and shutting, followed by Danny’s muffled voice, her laughter and him shushing her. I took one of the many pillows and put it over my head so as not to hear what was sure to come next and fell into a deep sleep.
…
I woke to the smell of bacon and cookies. I kept my eyes closed and listened to the calming sounds of their foot patter and the murmur of their low voices. I pulled the duvet over my head. The position reminded me of the expression on Veronica’s face when I left her room. I sat up suddenly, wanting to shake thoughts of her away.
“He’s up,” Danny said, “Hey Serge, Zelda thinks you’re going to eat cookies for breakfast.” He laughed and pulled the white bathrobe wearing Zelda close to him.
“He loves them. He always eats them. Tell him, Serge.” She stood up on her tippy toes because she was adorable.
“You were right about him sleeping in. It’s like he’s two different people. The Serge I know lives on tofu and broccoli and wakes up at 5:00 for a run.” He ran his fingers through her hair because that’s what you get to do when you live with her.
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br /> “I love you.” She wrapped her arms around his matching white bathrobe wearing body. Those two may have loved robes more than each other. At least half the time I went to their apartment they were wearing them. “Let’s let Serge decide.” She let go of him and picked up her plate of cookies and sat down beside me.
“We’ve been arguing all morning. So we’ll leave it to you.” She put the platter on my lap and expected me to eat and digest a chocolate chip cookie before even a word had left my mouth.
“Baby, he’s always going to be on your side. He’s not our tie breaker.” Danny laughed as he placed the best smelling breakfast I had been served in weeks, perhaps since I had been home over the summer, on my lap.
It may have been late, but Zelda looked as if she had just woken up. Her pale porcelain skin was make-up free, and her long white hair had a little sleep lump on the back. It was as if an angel had sat beside me.
“Has anyone ever told you that the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to you?” I bit into the cookie that assaulted my tongue with sugary sweetness.
“What?” She laughed as she wiped the crumbs off my face.
“He said you’re beautiful in the morning. Entropy baby, you lack it.” Danny answered for me, surprising me. I sometimes forgot how sharp he was because of his constant “bro speak”.
“He only thinks I’m pretty.” She took the cookies off my lap. “Breakfast time, Serge. Get up. I’m leaving it up to you. You can be fair.” She tilted her head and opened her eyes in a clownish way, encouraging me to take her side.
“Look at these,” she instructed me and pushed a pile of brochures my way as I sat down at the dining table. “I want him to take a gap year with me instead of having him go straight into medical school.” She turned her head towards him but continued addressing me. “It doesn’t even have to be a gap year. We could go to England, and he could do medical school there. Paris is my first choice... but medical school wouldn’t work in that scenario.”
“Good idea. Pack your bags, Danny.” Zelda smiled brightly at me as Danny shook his head and practically rolled his eyes back into his skull.
“Thanks Serge, I knew I could count on you. No, Zelda. We’re going back home. We can travel in the summers like we do every year.”
“I don’t want to be a tourist. Two weeks in the summer is never enough. I want to feel like it's home. I’ve always said that.”
“It’s true. Paris... it might have been the first thing she ever said to me.”
“No, baby. It was never just two weeks. I did three years in a row of a month at a time in Nice with your family and Anthony following us around every minute of the day. Your parents...”
“That was with my family. This would be just the two of us. Waking up, having coffee.” She took a sip from her large mug. “Spending all of our days at Versailles.”
I watched them go back and forth while eating my roasted tomato and goat cheese omelet that was unlike any other egg dish I had ever had before. Zelda was wrong. The best part of living with Danny would be the food. I thought of telling her to send Mrs. Goldberg a letter of thanks.
They didn’t argue like other couples or anyone else. The two of them sat close together and spoke in soft voices, touching each other’s faces, Zelda nuzzling her head on his chest every so often. I wasn’t big on arguing either, but in my life even with the always eager to please Marianne, there had been disagreements. Although with her, I always had a sense of pride when her opinion differed from mine. With Marianne, even when I lost, I won. Celena had been a nightmare of angry discourse, but I never fed it. She did that on her own.
“You go,” Danny said and woke me from my thoughts that were straying to Veronica, “Do the semester in Madrid, the textile program Laurel was talking about last night. This is good... I can go live in the dorm and finish out my senior year. Get the real college experience. I have all those interviews coming up… finish up in the research lab.”
“What?” Her head snapped back as if he had slapped her. “I’ve prevented you from having the real college experience? You want me to go away for a semester?”
“No, baby. I don’t want you to go anywhere. I want you with me, but you want to do this. I’m never going to want to live over there, Zelda. Last summer in Rome? I was sick the whole time.” He held her stiff body against him. “Maybe when I’m done with my residency.”
“That won’t be for ten years. I’ll be thirty. You’ll want to go right to work. This is the only time we could do it.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m not even going to want to go then.”
“Serge tell him...”
I stayed silent.
“Zelda, baby. I want you to go for you, and get it out of your system. Go play with your fabrics. You’ll come back in May, and we’ll set up our home in Malibu. Our plan beauty.”
“I don’t want to live in Malibu. I don’t like the beach. What if you don’t get into UCLA? Why can’t we stay here? You could go to Harvard or Tufts.” She lifted her head off his chest and looked almost angry “I don’t play with fabrics. I’m interested in textiles, their construction... designs.” She put her hands on her head. “I don’t understand any of this. I’ve ruined college for you. You’ve lost respect for what I work with... How would I even finish my bodysuits?” She got up out of the chair and paced back and forth, her hand patting her heart as if she were trying to control the beats.
Danny and I stood up at the same time. I repressed my urge to tear him apart and sat back down.
“We won’t live on the beach. I told you this before. We’ll live up in the hills.” He lifted her face up to his. “Remember you wanted us to go to school in New York, and I told you how much better it was here? You love it there. It’ll be just like that.”
My urge to punch him came back.
“I’m getting into UCLA. The other interviews? Because I have to do it. You’re going to go to Madrid. You’re going to come back, and everything will be the same, even better. We’ll be back home.”
“We have the perfect life here.” Tears streamed down her face though her voice remained clear.
“Anywhere with you is perfect.”
“Apparently not,” I said without thinking.
He glanced over at me, opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it and turned back to Zelda. She shook him free and picked up her coffee cup.
“You’re going to send your bodysuits off to your dad’s factory, and he can make them. I love what you do with your yarns and fabrics. You’re so happy when you work with them. It’s like you’re playing.”
“They’re handmade. It’s the workmanship.” She sat back down at the table and opened her laptop and began typing. “The quality can’t be reproduced in a factory. There isn’t even a machine that can make crochet.”
“Get Laurel to help you or your knitting club. They’re your friends. Or hire someone.” He stood behind her and stared out the window onto the park below.
“You know they’re not my friends.” Her voice took on a distracted tone. “I don’t even think they like me. I asked her last night to help me. I told her I would make her a partner. All she cares about is those penguins.”
“What penguins?” I asked to distract her from whatever she was going through.
“The penguins in Patagonia." She looked up from her computer with a small smile. “There’s something wrong with them, something to do with oil.” She went back to her typing. “They wanted to rent a bus and sleep in front of the Argentinean Consulate. I gave their leader a check to cover their costs. I don’t know... It wasn’t good. He started yelling I was part of the problem because I wouldn’t go on their camping trip with them.”
“He yelled at you?” I said a little louder than intended. I picked up the dishes and took them to the sink angry with the ”penguin” leader." and angry that Danny let people yell at her.
“Danny wanted to go beat him up,” she laughed. “Maybe he had a point. I don’t really care
about the penguins. I worry more about the people that sleep in the park, and I don’t do much for them either.” She reached for her purse that was on the floor and took out her wallet. “The penguins eat the squid... When does it ever stop?”
“When does it ever stop?” I sat down in the chair beside her and said in a very serious tone of voice.
“You’re so funny, Serge.” She laughed as she refilled her coffee cup.
“That’s enough coffee.” I took the pot away from her.
“He’s right,” Danny came back to life and said, “It’s too much for you.”
“I’m not a baby.” She shooed my hand away and turned to Danny, “I signed up for the program and requested Laurel and Fawn as my roommates. I gave notice that we’ll be ending our lease. I also put an ad on all the local sites looking for an assistant knitter.”