Still Life at Gym

Sara Martin

1

The Martins are going to Peru! my mother exclaimed on her end of the phone and I didn’t respond right away.

 I was walking on the treadmill, choking back tears while watching a program about a French Bulldog using a rear wheelchair after bone cancer.

This just isn’t a good time for me to go to Peru, I said importantly,
imagining I had a briefcase and regularly used a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer. 

Are you crying? she asked. 

No, I said, I’m exercising. 

Which always makes me cry. 
Especially if Shark Tank is on. 

Well, you should be crying! she said. If this trip doesn’t go well, your father thinks he’d like to be married to someone else. 

Seems like his mind is already made up then, I almost said.
The French Bulldog’s owners circled his capable front half and rubbed his face.  

My eyes filled again. 

I changed the channel. Oh, great. Sex and The City. 
The only thing that ruined me more than handicapped pets 
or budding entrepreneurs on screen: 

Fictional 
Female 
Friendships. 

* 

My poor mother. 
Maybe ultimatums run in our family. 

I made one in high school
when Adam Sussman and I were touching each other in an empty movie theater during Mystic River, I said, you have fifteen minutes to impress me 
or we’re never doing this again. 

I think I got that stupid line from Hot Shots Part Deux starring Charlie Sheen. 

I didn’t call Adam back after that. 

So, he circulated a topless picture of me drinking tequila 
with a girl named Diana who was 15 but looked 25
 and could only be dead or a spy by now. 

Adam still reaches out to me every now and then.  
Usually in the form of a picture of himself wearing a cowboy hat 
or a GIF of Spongebob Square Pants. 

The last message he sent me said, I read some of your brother’s new book. I thought it sucked ass. 

Adam had a really, really mean dad. 

* 

A man stood on the treadmill next to me with his feet on either side of the belt. 
He turned the speed up to 9 mph but didn’t get on. 
The belt just sped beneath him 
like he was contemplating jumping out of a bus. 

I just don’t understand, I said, how a trip to Machu Picchu with your adult children and your unhappy husband is going to repair a marriage that don’t seem all that broke. 

What did you say? 

I just mean, I said, if he has gotten the idea of a new partner into his mind, when nothing in particular has happened, a song and dance in South America is not the answer. 

Don’t. Seem. Broke? she said, slowly, back to me the way she had said, Green. Day? Or Limp. Biz. Kit? when I had asked for their CDs as a teen. 

Don’t seem broke, Mom! I said, you know what I mean. 

The man next to me was leaning over his handrail watching my treadmill TV.
The belt was still speeding beneath him like lava. 
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone was on. 

Might I remind you, she said, that you have a Burberry coat?
People get confused when you talk like that. 
It’s why you make the wrong people too comfortable. Like waiters. Or Peter! 

Peter was her friend Francine’s morally dubious husband.
He was always emailing me sketches of a house he was designing like a beehive 
or trying to meet up at weird hours for a game of ping pong. 

Peter is friends with drug addicts, my mother went on, responding to herself, I don’t know where he finds all of them! In Princeton, New Jersey! 

I’d like to know how to not find a drug addict in Princeton, New Jersey. 
I’d like to trade speaking drug addict for a second language I can put on my resume, please. 

People say you’re fluent in something 
if you speak it in your dreams. 

*

Your father and I did cocaine one time, my mother continued.
I so was worried about doing it that I don’t think I did it right. 
I didn’t feel anything. 

Well, if you want to do it again, I thought, I can introduce you to Always-His-Birthday-Eric or Leo or Avery or Julie Anna or Kendall or Petri or Chess Andy or—

I motioned for the man to switch treadmills with me.
His TV was stuck on Fox News and I felt confident I could continue emoting
even to that, the endorphins were really flowin’.

Do you think Dad has anyone in mind? I asked my mother, returning to the subject of her impending divorce. Do you think Dad is imagining being married to someone else in particular?