Enough About Love

STAN

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STAN IS OLD. The thought cuts through him. When he looked at his face in the mirror this morning, he no longer knew himself. Or was it when Anna left, when the door closed behind her. He thought for the first time that she could easily not come back one day. He watched at the window as his wife walked away, then took his coat and went out, he walked all the way to the Jardin des Plantes. He went into the magnificent Grande Serre greenhouse, and here he is now, sitting on a stone bench, not far from the door. He has laid his hand gently against the bark of a large ficus, as if against an old friend’s lined palm, but all the bark does is stay cold, rough, and damp, and reiterate in its treelike way: “You’re old.”

Anna lied to him. She thought she could get away with it, that is all. But there was a gleam in her eye that he did not recognize, like a moment of truancy betraying her, and to think she was someone who never wanted to lie. Something in her eyes had to confess, had to speak for her, and Stan had to spot it so that she could leave without feeling ashamed. As she left, she kissed him that sexless kiss that she so frequently gratifies him with, she turned around and gave him a brief wave. Stan did not hold her back, made no move toward her, he listened to her footsteps dying away in the stairwell. Because of this new shadow, everything was now different and Stan thought that next time he would not bat an eyelid, that Anna could lie and it really would be a lie, because he would not know it.

Stan watches the water drip-dripping along the philodendrons’ large cutout leaves. In the early days, before Karl and Lea were born, Anna used to come and meet him when he got off night duty at the Pitié hospital. On the way, she would buy an apple danish and some croissants, she had a thermos full of coffee, and they had their breakfast on this bench in the Grande Serre. There was a building being renovated outside, the work had gone on for two years, and the sound of drills and saws was forever associated with this bench, with the smell of apple from the pastry and the almond taste of Anna’s kisses.

At the moment, there is a construction site on the rue Buffon, and the wind carries the creak of cranes all the way here. Stan likes these steel stick insects that prove life goes on, that the city is never finished and keeps moving, that the world changes. The outside air comes in through a window, breezing through his hair, chill as the beginning of winter. Anna must be at the hospital already, the gravel must be crunching under her feet, maybe she is walking quickly, Stan so loves the way she runs, like a big waterbird. Stan listens to the waterfall, the cheeping of finches, he watches the Chinese carp in the pond, the motionless turtles. I love you, Anna, Stan thinks, I’m going to tell you today, this evening, you will listen to me and close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes.