Love in the Time of Covid

Victorian mourning brooch by Marta Tycinska, Flickr

Ms. Myska had chanced upon a new way to find connection and fellow feeling during the worldwide pandemic. She discovered this by means of an ad in Clock World.

She had inherited an old grandmother clock which was a comfort to her during the partial lockdown, the kindly and gentle chimes reminding her of the quarter hour. It was a grandmother clock which meant its stature was more diminutive than a grandfather and therefore less intrusive in her garden apartment. It merely watched her from beside its place near the fireplace. It did not tower, it did not dominate.

She liked reading about caring for clocks in Clock World. She liked reading about the art and history of clockmaking.

The ad read:

Stay in touch with a set of hands. Do not go it alone. We are all humans here trying to survive this. But sometimes we need help with tools that act as extensions of ourselves. You will feel newly connected without exposing yourself to danger.

In the ad, there were pictures of sets of long skinny artificial arms as well as a long bag for toting the arms on one’s back like a quiver of arrows. Some arms stretched longer than an average human arm would go. They were articulated and seemed to function with mechanical levers. Some were shorter – an average full-length arm, a half an arm from the elbow down, and simply a hand from the wrist down.

If you were an expressive person and liked to show your style you could have yours especially painted or tattooed. Or you could have it monogrammed. Or you could purchase a set of temporary tattoos or henna designs.

Apparently, the novelty clockmaker who had placed the ad had run on hard times with the lack of demand for his special and heretofore expensive creations. There was a picture of him in his workshop at his bench, his workshop teaming with clock faces empty wheels of various sizes like spokes on a wagon, and tools of all descriptions. He seemed kind and was smiling through a beard and mustache, a pair of tiny glasses perched on his nose.

“How charming,” said Ms. Myska out loud to the grandmother clock. At that moment, both the grandmother and cuckoo sounded the quarter hour. The cuckoo had been a fairly recent acquisition from a man who had proposed marriage yet to no avail. The presence of the cuckoo reminded her of a silly child. The grandmother minded the cuckoo all day and this made her feel less alone.

“I will try this,” said Ms. Myska and counted out just enough money to place in an envelope. She ordered an entire set though she eschewed the personalization option. Her dog woke from her sleep on the couch and stared as Ms. Myska was talking. “I may try the temporary decoration later,” she said, jauntily, as if she were naturally a person who would wear tattoos or henna in her pre-pandemic life. The animal put her head back on the couch, comforted in sensing her owner’s outer range of change and disruption. Also, it wasn’t time yet for her food.

When the arms arrived only days later, she unwrapped them with care. They were wooden and carved whimsically like arms ending in Victorian hands.

“This is amazing,” laughed Ms. Myska, patting her dog with the wooden hand. The dog gazed at her, holding her station on the couch, abstaining from the temptation to jump down and find a spot where she could continue napping unbothered. Yet she emitted little miffed snorts as she often did when indulging her owner.

Ms. Myska placed the hand back in the quiver. In the outside pocket of the quiver was a small satchel to help the owner convey and receive objects. One loaded the satchel and cinched the drawstring around the wrist, thus securing it in place.

She then heard the ice cream truck. The tinkling melody of “It’s a Small World” drifted through the apartment complex as children yelled and scrambled onto sidewalks.

Buoyed, she pulled on her walking shoes and face mask, pocketed her money, and leashed her dog who was all too happy for a change of scenery.

She had never bought from the ice cream truck and especially not now when she would not allow herself to come close to others or risk touching another hand in the exchange of money for a cold confection. She would use her longest arm. She would test it out. Normally, she would have been too self-conscious, but somehow the need for being in public overrode her fear of social risk.

At the truck, she retrieved her longest arm from the quiver, placed her money inside the satchel, and attached the satchel to the dainty wooden risk. She extended the wooden arm out over the heads of the children. On a note inside she had written “Orange Creamsicle please” (her favorite). The unmasked children began laughing at this production of a wooden arm hovering over them but somehow she didn’t care. It would be nice to sit at the picnic table with her new quiver and dog and pre-empt the daily summer showers with a frozen treat. From the picnic table you could see the pond and the fountain and beyond that, the pool, also full of unmasked children and their parents.

When the ice cream man saw the hand, he took the satchel, as if the situation explained itself. Once he took the money and filled the satchel with the ice cream treat, he shook the hand. Once more the children burst out with glee.

When she was sitting on the bench, she noticed he had included a small note to her: “If you would like to speak from a distance tomorrow, meet me here at the same time.”

The next day, Ms. Myska felt brave enough to include her own note: “My name is Katarina Myska.”

Their note exchange continued all summer and into the fall. Once cooler weather set in and the world was coming closer to a vaccine, Ms. Myska retired her arm set. The desire to shorten the distance to ice cream man Tony Lasko overtook her natural reticence and fear of life-threatening illness.

He was sweet, and quiet, like Ms. Myska. And he seemed not to mind her.