Love, in Theory by E. J. Levy

Author:E. J. Levy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780820344737
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

At breakfast, they split the paper like an old married couple. June takes the science section and her mother the front pages of the Times. Occasionally her Mom looks up to share some bit of news about Sam (who’s spending Christmas at a Buddhist monastery) or the polity.

When June looks up from her scrambled eggs and toast, she sees a man’s photo on the fridge. Where June’s report cards used to hang beside her brother’s drawings is a small black-and-white of a man in a tie. June’s eyesight isn’t great and she doesn’t want to stare. But she can see full well it is a man. And not her brother.

“Want some juice, Mom?” June asks.

“No thanks, bug.”

June rises from the table and goes to the fridge. At the door, she looks at the photo and sees it’s not. It is just a JPEG from the Web: a nineteenth-century etching of a gentleman in coat and tie, beneath which is the caption: “Ask Doctor Kabistan: Advice for the Ruglorn.”

June laughs.

Her mother looks up from the Times.

“What’s funny?”

“Ma,” June says, “you’re obsessed.”

After breakfast, her mother takes her through her latest acquisitions, pointing out familiar details—noting the popular motifs of boteh, herati, Mina Khani, Memling Gul. Her mother speaks not of price but of personalities—which, like price, depend on many factors: material, origin, design, condition, rarity.

Her mother praises each rug’s qualities like she’s praising a child’s. She offers “rug rules,” as another mom might offer beauty tips: Silk—she says—is best, not only for its sheen and fineness, but for its adaptability to dyes, its natural resilience. Avoid antique washes, which like bleached hair, cheapen. (It is desirable to have dyes fade with time and use, but faking it is a fault.) Condition counts: Has it been damaged? Has it been skillfully repaired? Has it aged gracefully? Origins matter: not just the country, but the weaving district and availability of others from that region. (“A rug should not forget where it comes from,” June’s mother says.)

Post-tour, June goes to the bathroom and when she comes back, her mother is staring into space. She has the deflated, slightly disoriented look she developed soon after the divorce. Sometimes June would come on her mom in the laundry downstairs, stopped halfway through folding a sheet or a towel, the cotton bent over her arm as if she were a waiter attending table, stock still and staring. She has that same look now, having come to the end of her rugs. And June knows that her mother needs her. There’s no one else. No man. No drugs. Just them, like always. For always. And she feels flushed with love and a desire to protect her tiny mom—her generous, vulnerable, compulsive-obsessive mom.

“Ma,” June says, setting a hand on her shoulder.

“Oh,” her mother says. “Yes? What?”

“Want a cup of tea? I’ll make us tea.”

“Oh, no,” her mother says, “No, thank you, June Bug.” Her mother looks around the room, filled to overflowing with patterns and books and rugs. “What now?” she asks.

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