There’s No Replacing Anyone

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso
 

Rima, very pregnant, picks me up at Logan Airport, says, “Never liked Sam, cold fish.” I’m too empty to reply. Her husband, Cooper scribbles his lawyer’s number and dashes to a photo shoot.

Before our divorce is final, Sam claims he’s ‘found someone,’ doubtful, sends a set of dishes we bought in Copenhagen that I’m tempted to smash, but mom puts the box in a closet.

I’m au pair for a French professorial couple with two little boys, camping in the attic of their drafty Victorian. I ask Claudine whether my friend Danny, arriving for a Harvard interview, can stay the night and she says, “Bien sûr, Leah.” 

He arrives with red roses. I’m putting them in water when he nibbles the back of my neck, pulls me to the bedroom, fine, until his zipper gets stuck. Maybe things would have worked if he’d laughed, but his gloom cancels moonlight, and he wilts, saying, “Sorry to disappoint,” meaning he’s given up.

“Maybe later?” I say, but there’s no ‘later,’ also no sleep, as he keeps analyzing useless whys and irrelevant wherefores, never shuts up. I want him gone, threads of possible connection shredded beyond repair, glad to see him kicking leaves down the front walk. 

Claudine has an early seminar, so, despite my vile mood, I make the boys toast and “oeuf a la coque” (sounds fancy, but means ‘boiled egg’), then Jean Marc drives them to École Bilingue. Danny sends a letter, so whiny I can’t reply.

November Claudine needs help as she’s accidentally pregnant and nearly went blind from complications giving birth to her youngest son. Abortion’s problematic as it’s illegal, but I search contacts, and she thanks me later saying the doctor was “sympathique.”

I don’t tell Rima, who’s choosing baby names. “Anything but Fred,” Cooper says, the name of an ex-friend. 

January I’m too busy preparing for grad school orals to do childcare. “Quelle dommage,” Claudine says as I pile things into Cooper’s Chevy.

Rima can’t lift anything heavier than a tea bag, but critiques my cheap flat, “Tiny closet, rusty light fixtures?” 

I’m dragging boxes, snow drifting down, when a bearded guy arrives in a Citroen that puffs up and down on air cushions. “I’m Rick, live next door,” and helps carry things upstairs.  I’m lonely, another place that doesn’t feel like home, can’t call mom as the phone’s not hooked up, but hear knocking— Rick, crinkly blue eyes and bushy beard, with petite Emmy. 

“Come have tea?”

He’s a radio engineer who’s into folk songs.  She’s the only female architect in a Cambridge firm.  “Two guys are okay, but the others talk over me in meetings.”

Rick shakes his head, “Typical macho bullshit.”

At the Harvard Square spring fair, I meet Rick’s friend, Miguel, guitar.  Rock musicians down the block are unloading huge speakers, and he says, “once they plug in, no one will hear us.” But we see them packing up, muttering curses. “Maybe bad cables? Fate giving us a break,” almost sorry for them.

After an hour of mellow music, Miguel’s leaving, but invites me to dinner tomorrow. Curious what’s happening by the river, I walk with Rick to Memorial Drive, just stepping off the curb when he grabs my arm, yanks me back.

“Gracie got hit right here, one minute holding my hand, next minute bloody meat on the ground, happened so fast, truck ran a light, but I saved you.”

Mystified, as no truck or car was anywhere near me, I say, “Getting late,” and jog to the corner where Cooper’s picking me up, trying to understand. 

Cooper asks, “Something wrong, sweetie? Big beastie chasing you?”
 
“Maybe,” I say.  He elbows my shoulder and says, “Ma petite cupcake, can’t be that bad?  

“Petite cupcake?” Glad his hands are on the wheel as Rima’s told me stories.

Baby Natasha’s in her high chair, Rima’s draining pasta, asking, “What happened?”

“I’m stepping off the Memorial Drive curb when Rick grabs me, yanks me back onto the sidewalk claiming I almost got hit where a truck killed his friend Gracie, says he ‘saved’ me, but no truck or car was anywhere near me!”

“Sounds like a traumatized goof ball rewriting a tragic scene, rescuing the replacement for his lost love, though there’s no replacing anyone, right?” Cooper’s chuckling, “What a film, ‘Mayhem on Memorial Drive!’”

Compared to the documentary he’s shooting in a prison for the criminally insane, it’s comedy, marshmallow fluff. 

Rima’s scooping pasta. “Gracie’s dead.” 

“Understandable he didn’t want another friend killed, but the rescue notion is fantasy as it just didn’t happen,” annoyed at Cooper’s joking.

I stay with Natasha while they attend a party, sit on the same couch where I slept after leaving Sam, puzzled, as Rick’s never seemed delusional before.

Hunter snoozes by my leg, good dog, but sneaks into Cooper’s office and chews the arm of a certain upholstered chair no matter what they try to stop him. Weeks later Rima offers me the chair, and Cooper hauls it to my apartment. I wrap an old Mexican shawl around the chewed arm hoping to repair it some day. 

“Otherwise Hunter will rip it to bits,” Cooper says, suddenly pulling me close, but I elbow him, push him away. He tilts his handsome head as if to say what’s wrong with a brotherly smooch?

Maybe that’s all it was? But I’m wary as Rima’s told me he screws around, apologizes when found out, insists random sex means nothing, swears he loves only her.

Late June Natasha’s with me for a few weeks while Rima’s in Greece where Cooper’s filming.  She returns, takes the baby home, and I’m pondering what to do until classes start again when Emmy’s knocking, calling me outside.

“Weird sounds, put my ear against the brick wall, noises like sand trickling down, which means the interior is crumbling, might collapse, had to call it in.” Next day yellow danger tape wraps our Hubbard Ave. brick row house, signs posted: “Building Condemned.” 

“Start packing,” Rick says, but never mentions Gracie again.

“I wondered about the rusty light fixtures, the crooked stairs, but can’t they fix things? Had my friend’s baby here for weeks.”           

“No way to patch this kind of structural deterioration,” Emmy says, “and they rarely rescind a condemned order unless it’s historically important, which this isn’t, the owners raise piles of money and have neighborhood support, though sometimes not even then, as it’s a safety issue.”

I call Rima in tears, “My building’s condemned!”

“Thank God it didn’t collapse while you and Natasha were sleeping. We’re in counseling again, Cooper apologizing when I discover he’s screwing someone, insists mere sex means nothing, swears he loves only me.”

Sickening, can’t find comforting words.

Apartment hunting I see an attic on Walden Street, slanted ceilings, grubby walls, but Mr. Massé, the landlord, owns a hardware store and says, “I’ll give you paint, if you do the work.”

I say, “Okay,” and sign.

Since I’m moving again, Mom asks, “How about consignment for those dishes Sam sent, still in my closet?”  Yes, or I’ll bash them.

Rick takes photos of our building wrapped in what he calls ‘the yellow tape of historical destruction,’ and a few weeks later, it’s rubble.

People call the Cambridge dump behind Walden Street an “urban disgrace,” but Rick wants to photograph box-springs, doorless refrigerators, wrecked television sets and whatever else. I’m curious whether anything’s from Hubbard Ave.

 Rick yells, “Don’t touch,” too late as Miguel’s picking up round white stones.

“Artisan marble! Need to sanitize,” he says, “nothing else here but newspaper wings fluttering in the breeze.”

“Valuables get ripped off during demolition,” Emmy says, “and dust’s giving me a headache. What's moving over there, rats? Let’s go.”

Miguel and I have been together for months, things so good I was going to move in with him, but his building went condo, so he moved in with me, and we’re talking about buying a fixer-upper. He works part-time as a waiter, teaches guitar, performs, and I’m doing grad work, teaching freshman English at Brandeis.

A year and a half later we’re hauling boxes from Walden Street to our tiny two-mortgage house on Lake View Ave. and hear bulldozers excavating the dump. The City of Cambridge, after long debate, delegated funds to bury mountains of trash and turn contaminated acreage into soccer fields and baseball diamonds. A high school band trumpets the opening of Danehy Park, and, after political speeches, kids run and toss balls.

Rima and I meet at the park, Natasha toddling. Suddenly Rima says, “This world is full of ruins, city on destroyed city, survivors scavenging. Speaking of wreckage, I’ve filed for divorce.”

“You said Cooper’s on assignment?”

“He is, couldn’t tell you more until I was sure. Haven’t I cried on your shoulder enough? Aren’t you sick of hearing me complain about his lying and fucking around? He’ll never change, that’s who he is, considers monogamy old-fashioned. Counseling’s useless.”

Another structure on its way down.

“Says he loves me, but he’s impulsive, guiltless, can’t be with one woman. Friends report seeing him with someone or tell me their ‘almost’ stories, when he didn’t quite get them into bed. I’ve been the betrayed, stupidly forgiving wife, but no more, my self-respect can’t stand it. We’ll stay with Aunt Diane in Montreal until I decide what’s next.”

Rima’s avoiding my eyes, watching Natasha’s tutu bounce as she toddles in sparkly shoes.  “Cooper thought some of my friends were delicious, including you, but his affair with Yuri’s wife Magda pushed me over the edge, now they’re splitting up, too.” 

“Cooper was flirtatious, but never seriously came on to me, maybe knew I’d kick his ass if he tried. I love Miguel, and we’ve just bought a house,” tears.

Rima’s quiet, but I feel her suspicion, a cellular shift, like the walls of Hubbard Ave. quietly crumbling. She’s cutting ties, doesn’t trust anyone, even me. 

She says, “Time to move on, find a new life.”

Too bruised to reply, I watch her silver earrings swing as she picks up Natasha. Divorcing Sam was hugely depressing, but ending it with Cooper after five years and a child has to be worse. It's like watching a ship push off and sail away— no words feel big enough.


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"There’s No Replacing Anyone" was first published in Wilderness House Review and is part of Nina Rubinstein Alonso's 2023 collection Distractions En Route: A Dancer’s Notebook and other stories (Ibbetson Street Press, 2023).

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work appeared in The New Yorker, U. Mass. Review, Ploughshares, Taj Mahal Review, Ibbetson Street, Broadkill Review, Nixes Mate, Peacock Journal, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, etc. Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press, her chapbook Riot Wake by Cervena Barva Press, and a poetry collection and novel are in the works.