A Boppy is a special baby-holding pillow, Patrick, and I want one in my life. In fact I want it all. Sippy cups and Boppies and the whole messy life! I want the family bed and the way it feels to smell their little sweet baby heads, and the little snow boots lined up next to our big ones, and I want the smooshed-up banana on the couch, and I want the day’s THIRD milk spill, and I want to sing lullabies when I’m too tired to hold my head up, and I want to fill out field trip permission slips and I want soccer games and bath times, and all of us cuddling on the couch watching Disney movies, even the ones that make us cry. OH, and I want dinosaur Band-Aids and Girl Scout cookies and those scooters that terrorize people on the sidewalks. And sleepovers where nobody sleeps, and also those little socks that have lace around the edges. And baby strollers! And car seats! THAT IS WHAT I WANT. And, Patrick, it is possible that there is already a baby coming for us. Don’t forget that. Our lives will be perfect either way . . . but I think even MORE perfect with a baby! So there. Full stop. End of story.
There is no answer he can give to any of this, of course, so he puts his phone away and stares out the window. And when it rings an hour later, he winces. Oh my God, has she thought of ninety more horrible things she wants to endure?
But no. It’s Elizabeth, his older sister. Elizabeth still lives in Wyoming in their hometown, and she’s never married because she’s even more of an introvert than he is.
“Hey,” she says in her midwestern twang. “So how’s it going there, ya big lug?”
He says it’s fine. Is everything all right with her? They make the usual polite small talk: summer’s hot, she’s had to put in air conditioning in the front room after resisting for so long, the apple orchard looks like it’s going to be a good crop this year, she’s playing Scrabble online now, and can he even believe it’s come to that? She’s read over one hundred books since the first of January.
Then the point.
“I wouldn’t call you long distance on a weekday, you know, but something kind of strange happened the other day, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, I should tell Patrick about this.’ Do you remember that acquaintance of mine from years ago? The one that came to town and . . . well, you knew her, too? Tessa?”
“Tessa . . . Tessa . . .”
Then he groans. Of course. That Tessa.
“I’ll refresh your memory,” she says, and now he has no choice but to sit and listen. You can’t ever get Elizabeth out of a paragraph she’s already started. “You were in town for an art show, and she was here hoping I’d help her get a job at the college, so she came to your art opening, and I think you two—well, I kind of know actually, so why am I pretending that I don’t know? It was plain as the nose on your face, it was.”
“Elizabeth, it’s fine. I remember Tessa.” One night—no, two. He’s not proud of this. Never talked to her again. Just one of those things.
“You do. Well, good for you for not trying to deny it. Sexual intercourse is nothing to be ashamed of between consenting adults these days, so we’ll just go on with life, shall we? Although I will say, I was a little surprised. Her being so much older than you and all.”
“Yes,” he says and waits for her to get to the point. He does not want to get into defending an unwise testosterone-fueled decision he made when he was twenty-eight years old and full of the dickens at his first hometown art show. He thought he was a big deal back then. The former cheerleaders were smiling at him, for Christ’s sake. People who didn’t look at him twice back when he was a nerdy kid who didn’t do sports and just wanted to hang out in the art room were now circling around him, smiling and asking him questions. He had reached a level of coolness he could only have dreamed about when he’d been in high school there. And there was sophisticated Tessa, wearing a short black dress and stiletto heels. Looking out of place, and grateful to talk to him about his “process.”
Later, there was a hotel room, kissing in the elevator, and his surprise that a woman his sister’s age, a grown-up, would just invite him up to her room.
“So Tessa called me up out of the blue,” Elizabeth is saying. “Wanted to know if you were still in Brooklyn.” She stops talking.
“Okaaaay, so?” he says. His head may be starting to pound just the slightest bit.
“And I’m sorry, this is out of character for me, don’tcha know, but I got to talking about you, and when she said how she might look you up, I said that, well, you were involved with someone, and she said how of course you would be, you were so handsome and talented, and so before I knew it, I told her about th-the fire, and all the operations you’d had, and I’m afraid I went on some. And she wanted to know—well, she wanted to know how it all ended up. Were you okay? She wanted to know if you were, um, disfigured”—he has to close his eyes for a moment to ward off the way his stomach lurches at that word—“and if that had interfered with your ability to, you know, get along in life—and then I told her the truth, that you’d had a rough time, but you’d met someone anyway, because that’s just the kind of person you are, a survivor, because you are, Patrick. And she said you were a hero. And I said that you weren’t really. I don’t like that kind of talk. The hero talk.”
“You’re right. I’m not a hero,” he says. “I’m just living my life.” And I am currently banging my head against the wall. And my game shows are starting soon, and I need to stop talking about the past. “But why are you telling me all this?”
He can feel her debating how to break the news to him. “Well, I gave her some information. The name of Marnie’s store and your cell number and your address. I hope I didn’t do a bad thing,” she says in her flat, ironic voice. “Like, you know, maybe if Marnie is the jealous type and gets mad about your old . . . whatever showing up. But then I was thinking—and what do I know about love, so don’t pay any attention to anything I say—maybe if Marnie did get jealous, that might actually be a good thing since it could get you to step up and do what needs to be done and marry her.”
She lets out a bona fide cackle at this. He remembers now that his sister is an aficionado of romance novels. And apparently now she’s dreamed up a little romance novel of her own, starring him as a reluctant bridegroom; Marnie, his jealous live-in girlfriend; and Tessa, a siren, “the other woman,” blasting into town to shake up their world.
He rolls his eyes. When exactly did the world lose its collective mind?
“So please tell me I didn’t do something awful,” Elizabeth is saying. “Maybe she won’t even contact you. I couldn’t tell if she was hoping to start something up with you again, but I think I discouraged her from doing something embarrassing like that. Still, it would be amusing at least, wouldn’t it? You, with two women wooing you. Give you some stories to tell yourself in your old age.”
“Elizabeth,” he says, aware that he needs to cut this off before the conversation goes completely off the rails. “I’m sure it’ll be just fine. She probably won’t even call. I’ve got something burning in the oven, so I’ve got to go. Nice to talk to you!”
Bedford is looking at him, wagging his tail, when he hangs up, always up for a good story. Roy sniffs and leaves the room. He’s never cared much for Patrick’s romantic exploits.
CHAPTER SIX
MARNIE
I’m at work, but in between texting with the overly neurotic Patrick and waiting on customers, I have checked myself in the mirror about five times today, because it is possible that four days after the Great Condom Failure, I’m beginning to show some signs of pregnancy. I think my hair is beginning to look shinier and more lustrous, which the internet says happens to pregnant women. I also may have just the slightest glow to my skin. Just saying.
Anyway, I’m happy for the distraction when the Amazings come swanning in.
Usually they talk about their friends and all the problems everybody has: a guy they like named Mookie just lost his dad, and Justin doesn’t have the money to go to college. All of them seem to have something they’re recovering from. Their teenage liv
es are complicated, and hard. But today’s topic seems to be how many people it’s possible to fall in love with at one time. Ariana, their ringleader, who is wearing torn leggings and about four tank tops simultaneously along with multiple necklaces strung around her neck, is arguing that the number is infinite, depending on how big your heart is and how much “soul energy” you have. The one called Dahlia isn’t so sure. She has choppy purple hair and bangs that are only about one-eighth of an inch long, and she thinks you should pick one person and give everything you have to that person.
Kat looks at me over the top of her glasses. I hide a smile. It’s hard to explain how much I adore these conversations.
“No, no, no,” says Ariana. “It’s the opposite. There’s no one person for everyone. That’s a bunch of propaganda to keep women in their place. The truth is that the more love you give out, the more comes back to you, and then it just keeps going and going. So you can have lots of people in your life simultaneously, and people will just gravitate toward you because they feel you loving them.” She’s got huge blue, sea-glass eyes and wild curly yellow hair that I swear she dips in pink ink, which makes her seem even more sincerely wacky. I love hearing her talk. “People can tell, you know, how you really feel about them. I read something about it; it has to do with microscopic eye movements that we feel even if we can’t quite see them. It’s science.”
The quiet one with a shaved head, who is always partial to wearing camouflage and lace—Charmaine—laughs and says, “God, you’re so super ridiculous, Ariana. You get in so much trouble if you don’t just stick to one at a time! People get so mad at you if you do that.”
“Who cares if they’re mad?” says Ariana. “They need to let go of their expectations that everything is all about them. Anyway, that seems crazy getting mad about love. Love is like a physical place, an energy, and like, it’s open to everybody and it’s all unlimited, and you even have to work to push it away, to keep from being hit by love energy. Because it’s the way you’re meant to live. You give it all, and it all comes back.” She waves her hands in the air. Beautiful long, tanned arms with a tiny rose tattoo right near the wrist. How do you already have a tattoo by seventeen? I was barely allowed to get my ears pierced by then.
“Wait, what are we talking about? Like, sex?” Charmaine again.
“Anything. Everything,” says Ariana seriously. “Give it all.” She gets up and goes over to her bag in the corner and takes out her video camera. Lately she’s been taking videos. She likes capturing expressions, she told me once, especially the way people look when they’re talking about love, so she might do a whole documentary on that. She has a theory that people can fall in love with anyone at all, simply by looking into their eyes for fifteen whole minutes without speaking. She’d like to do a documentary about that, too.
As usual when I listen to Ariana, I’m reminded of Blix, who would likely have felt exactly the same way. Blix danced with every single person at my wedding to Noah, her grandnephew—men, women, children, waitstaff, potted plants. I can still see her glowing face as she spun around on the dance floor—dressed, in fact, a lot like Ariana, now that I think of it, all those layers of colors and fabrics. (Maybe not as much bare belly showing.) The day I met Blix she told me quite happily that she had walked away from two husbands on account of them boring her. No other reason. I told her I didn’t know you were allowed to do that, leave somebody simply on the grounds of boredom—and she said that of course you were; why, being bored for your whole life would be the worst thing that could ever happen to a person! You couldn’t live like that! You had a responsibility to at least save your own life, didn’t you? Didn’t it improve the planet if you were happy?
That might have been the moment I fell in love with Blix. The moment that changed the course of my life.
Later, I’m standing at the counter, clipping thorns off a new shipment of roses, when my mom calls. The Frippery is filled today with some of the regulars: Anxious Toby, who is adorable in spite of the fact that his forehead is always lined with worry and also that he wears his hair in a man bun, and Lola, who comes in to pile some of her abundant love on me, and Ernst the Screenplay Guy. The Amazings are now doing some yoga poses while a woman in a turban and a long dress, a newcomer, is playing the flute.
“Hey! How are you?” I say to my mom. “I’m just here at work, trimming some roses. I was going to call you later.”
“Oh, no, I get it that you’re busy. I’ve heard about people who have to work for a living. Not that I have ever had the pleasure—I’ve always been ‘the kept little woman at home!’ As you know. Holly Housewife. Or something. Donna Reed maybe.”
There is something so weird about her voice, all this angry cheer. I keep silent. She liked staying home, didn’t she? She was one of those moms who did everything for my sister and me. Drove us to baton-twirling lessons and cheerleading lessons and band practices. Folded laundry. Knew how to make little packets of the bedsheets before she put them in the linen closet, curling the ends together just so, smoothing them so tightly it was almost like they’d been ironed. She sewed our clothes, whether we wanted her to or not. (We mostly did not.) She made our friends welcome. She always said she felt sorry for the moms who had to work.
“Oh, come on,” she says. “Laugh. I’m telling jokes.”
I fake a laugh. “So. How . . . are you?”
“I’m fine, I guess. So listen, you’re busy, but I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Well, here it is. Hi. My voice. La, la, la, la.”
“I also need to hear about what you do.”
“What I do? The flower shop, you mean?”
“No, not the flower shop! I understand what a flower shop is. I want to know about the magic. The matchmaking.”
She lowers her voice when she says the word magic like it might be overheard by her minister or, worse, some of her neighbors. Millie MacGraw is a decent, law-abiding Florida woman, fifty-nine years young (as she would say), and she’s known for her loads of friends and her meat loaf recipe and the fact that she can swim a mile without even getting winded. She has let me know time and time again that she doesn’t think much of magic—she’s more a believer in hard work and letting time pass because time heals all things—and she certainly doesn’t believe in matchmaking magic. She’s a down-to-earth woman who gives practical advice to strangers in grocery stores and is always the first one to take over casseroles and coffee cakes when any of her many friends is having trouble. Her superpower is that she can talk cops out of parking tickets. Which she is always getting because she parks with impunity wherever she likes.
“Oh,” I say. “Well. The magic. Not sure I can explain the magic, you know.” I peek through the door at the sun beaming into the Frippery, where Lola is rolling oatmeal-colored yarn into a ball, and where Ariana is now doing a handstand.
“Well, then, any of that love stuff you do. You know. I know that that woman, Blix whatever, left you her house because she had the sight or some such thing, and I assume she thought you did, too, and that’s why she just gave it to you out of the blue, really. And Natalie said something the other night about how you’ve really become a sought-after matchmaker now. She said you even introduced her to Brian, way back when you were in college.”
“Oh,” I say lightly. “Really? Natalie said that? Well. Yeah. That happened.”
“So . . . who do you make matches for? Besides Natalie.”
“Oh, various people. People who need to know that somebody’s out there for them, I guess.”
“And . . . so how do you know?”
“Well, I guess I see sparkles.”
“You guess?”
“No, I know. I see sparkles.”
“You see sparkles.”
“Yes.”
“In the air? In your head? Where?”
“In the air, I guess. All around the . . . people.”
“Huh,” she says, and then she falls silent.
“Yeah, so that’
s pretty much it, Mom. So what’s going on?”
“Well,” she says. There’s a pause that is borderline alarming. “I don’t know. I think I might be a little bit in need of something just now. Can you send any sparkles my way, do you think? I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I just—” Her voice breaks off.
“What? Oh my goodness, Mom, what’s wrong?”
“Probably nothing. I’m just a little down, I think. Your father and I—well, you know how he is. Never wants to do anything, never wants to go anywhere. Just wants to sit in his easy chair every night falling asleep to the news. I shouldn’t bother you with this. It’s just that—Marnie, I don’t think I can do this for the rest of my life. I’ll tell you the truth, if I’d known this was what marriage was going to turn out to be about, I never would have signed on for it in the first place.”
“Oh!” I say.
Then she apparently realizes what she’s said, because she backs up a little. “Not that I regret having you kids,” she says. “But now with everybody grown up and gone and even Natalie’s kids not needing me so much since they’re in day care, I tell you, I just want to get the hell out. I’m sick to death of making meat loaf for that man. Forty-something years of meat loaf every Thursday night! What was I thinking, signing up for a lifetime of that?”
“Well.” I pause. I can’t think of anything else to say. Is this where I confide that I think I might be pregnant? And that I would really appreciate it if she would figure things out with my father because he’s my father, and she always acted like she liked taking care of him and making meat loaf? And that, by the way, all I want right now is to get married and have a family, and I’d like it if she would please stop making it sound so terrible.
“Well,” I say again.
She makes a sound that is probably technically a laugh. When she speaks again, her voice sounds defeated. “You’re stunned. Okay, I get it. I’ve vented. Thank you for listening. Go back and do your interesting little magic things, and don’t worry about me. I’m really fine. Just a bored spoiled brat, that’s me.”
A Happy Catastrophe Page 6