How many days in a row make a marriage?

I’m learning to serve a volleyball with my left arm, because my right can’t handle another ten years of impact. I keep having to use my right arm anyway, to remind myself how to serve with my left – to remember the little details. So my right arm coaches my left.

After the gym, I shop so long for a basic black skirt that the salesperson says, “Are you finding your desired silhouette?” What? I buy what’s in my hand so I don’t have to talk to her.

I walk home while Nino walks toward my apartment, so I dawdle a little to catch him in the middle.

I say, “My aunt died. I’m going to the funeral.”

He looks at my leg and says, “I hope the funeral is in a couple of weeks.”

I can go. My leg is improving.

“You saw a physical therapist?”

“No. I’m still using ChatGPT as a PT. But I think it’s working.”

“It’s not. You’re walking like someone just taught you how to walk yesterday. On the phone.”

Three more blocks to my apartment. I am quiet. Working on my walk. But then he says, “Which aunt?” And, “Which cousins are going?”

I’m surprised. He’s the one who wanted a divorce. Now, after 20 years of self-imposed exile, he wants to talk about everyone.

Two days later (because Nino needs his space), we are walking out of the third concert in a row. This one is Chinchester Psalms at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nino remembers singing it when he was in the national boys’ choir. Everyone else is there for Tchaikovsky. We leave at intermission.

“Would your parents have walked out like this?”

“As they got older, they had less patience.”

“Your mom had patience for you when you were little?”

“No. She never had patience for me.”

We’re close to Nino’s apartment, but he always takes me home. I don’t need it, but it’s so nice to feel cared for.

“What about when you took care of your mom at the end? Was she nice to you?”

“In the hospital I asked if I could hug her and she said no. And then I asked if I could hold her hand. And she said no.”

I think about how I asked Nino if we should have sex, and he said no. But I didn’t ask about holding hands. Which is probably what I really want. I think about asking while we walk. But I don’t think I can handle him saying no.

It’s grocery shopping day, so I put a leash on Tali. Nino says, “Do we have to? It’s so much more work with a dog.”

“I take her everywhere. I guess we don’t have to. It’s like kids. Everything is easier doing it yourself. But that doesn’t help the kids.”

I say that so he remembers that he did no hard stuff with the kids. I did it all. Then I think about our couple’s counselor who turned out to be our divorce lawyer who said we need to do things with just the two of us. And we didn’t. And then we got a divorce. So I say, “Let’s leave Tali at home.”

I cook dinner while I call my mom, so if she triggers me I’ll have something to focus on, like burning myself. She tells me that she had cancer on her leg, “but don’t worry, it’s early.” She went to the doctor, who sliced it off a sliver at a time so that only the bare minimum was removed. After the first slice, which “as God is my witness was no bigger than a nickel,” my mom sat in the waiting room for three hours. Then she left.

The doctor’s office called 45 minutes later to say that they were ready for her. My mom “didn’t prevaricate. I just said I’m already home. It can’t be today.”

I said, “Wow, Mom. You sure showed them! No one will ever have to wait for a doctor again.”

“You know what my mom would have said?”

“Wait, you have your mom’s voice in your head? That’s surprising, because I have your voice in my head.”

“Yeah, my mom would’ve said, ‘You cut off your nose to spite your face.’”

“Well, it can’t be that bad; they aren’t covering their tracks for a lawsuit.”

“Oh. Well, they did call me back with four people on the phone.”

The day of the funeral I decide that wearing black is an old rule, so I show up in blue.

I wait to return the skirt I’d bought until Nino goes with me. It might be that the essence of the second stage of our relationship is errands.

We sit next to each other on the train. I used to sit at the seat with a pole in between us. Now I sit away from the pole.

He says, “I saw a film student who reminded me of me: going up and down an escalator with an 8mm wind-up camera.”

In film school, Nino cut up film into smaller and smaller pieces to put them back together. I say, “I love when you talk about process.”

He says, “Seeing the inefficiency killed me.”

“I have this idea that the kids will graduate, and you’ll decide you want to see me so much that you’ll stop skipping days, and then we’ll make films together.”

“That will never happen.”

“Which?”

“Definitely no films. Maybe the first part.”

I procrastinate on cooking dinner while Nino plays nonograms. He plays nonograms incessantly. If he’d been playing nonograms on his phone when I met him, I never would have asked him his name.

But there weren’t phones when I met him. And probably movies with wind-up cameras in film school is the 1990s version of nonograms on the phone. So maybe I’d ask him his name today, too.

He asks me if I need help cooking dinner. This means emotional help. He wouldn’t actually cook. But he would help me pay attention so it gets done. I turn on Bach.

He asks who the pianist is.

I tell him to guess and he guesses right. So we play Name That Pianist with Bach while I cook dinner.

Which I burn. But I am so impressed with his guesses. I think I would have asked him his name no matter what decade it was.