Starting Over

by Dan Wakefield

  But there was also a protocol that dictated that a girl, a woman, had to pretend to be busy by Thursday, or Friday, if she were asked out for Saturday Night, that a boy/man should not ask out a woman for that evening if it were too late, lest he insult her or shame himself. It was altogether tricky, even when one was an alleged Adult.

  When Potter called Renée on Thursday afternoon and asked if she could have dinner with him Saturday, she said, “You mean Saturday night?”

  He inhaled, squinting his eyes as he held the phone, and said, “Yes. Saturday night.”

  There was a pause of age-old legendary painful feigning, as Renée, no doubt caught in her own images of social nicety, said hesitantly that if she could get a Sitter, yes, it would be OK. Which left open the possibility that only the problem of the Sitter was what might hang her up and might have prevented her thus far from accepting sundry other such invitations. Potter understood. He would check back with her to make sure she had got the Sitter, knowing already she would succeed in doing so, knowing with relief that he had filled up the hole of this soonest Saturday, for him and for her, before it swallowed them up, each vulnerable and singular.

  Potter, relieved, whistled a tune.

  The night when my sweetie and I used to dance cheek to cheek.

  Very soon after Potter had made his Saturday Night Date with Renée, the phone rang. It was Marva Bertelsen. She wondered if Potter could come to a small dinner party on Saturday night. He explained he had already made a date. Marva explained that was too bad, because she had just the right girl for Potter.

  “How do you mean,” he asked, “just the right girl?”

  There was a tantalizing pause.

  “I mean, just the right girl for you,” Marva said brightly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Well. She’s very attractive.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “And very intelligent.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Well, I guess you’re not interested.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You just keep saying ‘Mmmm.’”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. She’s in my pottery class. I like her, and I invited her over for Saturday, but you might not like her at all, come to think of it.”

  “Come to think of what?”

  “Ohhhh. I don’t know. When I think of it. She’s really a glorified secretary. Works in personnel for United Insurance.”

  “So?”

  “So, you probably want someone with a much more glamorous job.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I think she’s very glamorous, as a person—herself—but right now she doesn’t have what anyone would consider a glamorous job. Of course, she just got divorced not long ago, and she had to take what she could get. A B.A. in Psychology doesn’t mean anything. Job-wise.”

  “Divorced?” Potter asked.

  “Yes,” Marva said with what sounded like a yawn. “You probably wouldn’t be interested at all.”

  “I bet she has two children,” Potter said.

  “Oh, no. No children. She lives by herself in this really nice apartment on Beacon Hill. Wow. The biggest bed I’ve ever seen. Lots of incense and all. That sort of thing. Probably bore you to death.”

  “Not necessarily,” Potter said.

  “Weeeel. Maybe you could come by for dessert. Just to meet her. You probably won’t see anything in her at all.”

  “Well, you never can tell.”

  Potter took Renée to have dinner Saturday night at a Greek place in Boston that Max Bertelsen had recommended, The Ommonia. It was a little bit overdone, with fake statues and a purple kind of lighting and a Greek combo, but it was rather festive, and Potter was in the mood for it. Renée seemed more relaxed than she had before, and quite animated; her fingers, long and white, made lacy patterns as she talked and laughed. She was wearing a white silk blouse with frilly cuffs, a maroon velvet midi, and black boots. Potter usually loved seeing women in boots, but somehow, Renée’s were a little wrong. Instead of seeming sexy, they looked sort of orthopedic.

  Potter wondered what the girl at the Bertelsens’ would be like, the one who was divorced but had no children.

  Renée finished off the last of her lamb and pilaf, and leaned back, smiling, in her chair. “Mmmm. I feel so indulgent.”

  “Good,” Potter said. “I’m glad.”

  “I even think I might go overboard and have a Baklava.”

  Potter cleared his throat. He hadn’t yet got around to mentioning that they were going to the Bertelsens’ for dessert.

  “Well,” he said, “uh, we sort of were invited to these friends, of mine, after dinner. For dessert and coffee.”

  “Oh?”

  Renée looked at him in a way that was interested, but slightly apprehensive.

  “You’ll like them,” Potter said quickly. “But listen, you can have the Baklava too, if you want.” He smiled. “Be really indulgent.”

  Renée straightened up in her chair and dabbed the napkin at her lips. “Oh, no. I’m actually stuffed, as it is.”

  Potter glanced at his watch. “Well,” he said, “maybe we should go on over there.”

  He divided up the last of the Retsina, gulping his own down thirstily. It tingled pleasantly, like a mouthwash. They had knocked off a full bottle of the stuff.

  The Bertelsens and their guests were still around the dinner table when Potter and Renée arrived, just a few bites into dessert. It was Indian Pudding. Marva was in her New Englandy mood. There was also Paul Tuckerman and his wife, Lynn. Paul was a bright young Urban man at Harvard whom Potter had met briefly at a Bertelsen cocktail party. Tuckerman was said to have done some very important work in Redevelopment, and was often called to Washington. When he referred in conversation to “John,” he meant Mayor Lindsay. His wife Lynn had perfect teeth and displayed them often, in a stern, intimidating look that had the shape but not the spirit of a smile. She was working toward her doctorate in Education, and had a special interest in Criminal Rehabilitation. Potter believed her smile alone could significantly lower the rate of recidivism in any given Correctional Institution.

  As Potter might have guessed, Hartley Stanhope was there. Stanhope, a lean man with distinguished grey hair, was a widower who had been the Bertelsens’ ace Eligible Bachelor, at least until Potter arrived on the scene. Now Potter and Stanhope vied for the top spot, alternating in favor as their stock rose and fell with Marva. Potter wasn’t really sure whether he disliked the man because of this rivalry, or because Stanhope occupied a secretive but influential position as a biological consultant to a government-backed Research Foundation. Potter imagined that Stanhope, the sort of scientific guy who smoked a pipe and sang in a Madrigal Group, probably thought up ways of poisoning the rice of the entire Asian land mass in the cleverest and most convenient manner.

  Tonight, though, was one of the times that Potter felt less hostile toward Stanhope, perhaps because he knew that on this occasion Stanhope had been tapped as the Eligible Bachelor for dinner only after Potter had been unable to accept. Knowing that Stanhope was unaware of this made Potter feel even more benevolent toward him. And yet, there was an edge of jealousy, for Stanhope, even if second choice, had wound up as Dinner Partner for the Bertelsens’ new female discovery, a divorcée without any children.

  Potter took one look at Marilyn Crashaw and quickly looked away, fearing his immediate attraction to her would be embarrassingly obvious. He grasped Renée’s hand under the table, and smiled at her. She looked at him suspiciously. He had never held her hand before.

  After the Indian Pudding and espresso, the party moved to the Library for cognac and conversation. As was customary on these occasions, topics were discussed. Topics of Significance. But Potter was only vaguely aware of them, as they blurred across his mind, chalked words on a classroom blackboard.

  Inflation. Indochina. Administration efforts to muzzle the press. Liz Drew’s insightful piece on �
��The White House Hard Hats” in the October Atlantic. The “no-knock” law and its implications for the future of privacy. An Agnew joke. Speculation on whether Pat Moynihan would last it out serving the Nixon administration, or return to Harvard. Where, it was generally agreed, he belonged.

  Potter tried to keep his eyes off Marilyn Crashaw’s knees.

  Marilyn wasn’t really “pretty”; her nose was too long, and had a slight bump on the bridge. Her teeth protruded just a little, just enough to be noticeable. Her figure was average, not fat or thin, neither voluptuous nor twiggy. Her hair was streaked blonde, and fell to her shoulders. Probably dyed or tinted. Maybe a wig or a fall. You never could tell anymore. So what was so terrific about her? Partly, perhaps, Potter was turned on by the way she dressed. It certainly wasn’t flashy by New York standards, but it was not the conservative attire of the thirty-and-over women in polite Boston-Cambridge society. The more style-conscious of those ladies had gone for the Midi in a big way this season, and the more traditional had stuck to what looked to Potter like the old cocktail dresses of the Fifties, but raised a little above the knee instead of a little above the ankle. And long hair was a no-no, except for their teen-age daughters. Marilyn, who was certainly no teen-ager, but probably around Potter’s own age, wore a plain white blouse with a gold-chain sort of necklace, a miniskirt, and boots. The boots were not extreme or kinky, but neither did they look primarily practical, as if designed for spending a year at Ice Station Zebra. The outfit looked good and Marilyn wore it with confidence, her whole manner seeming assured and at ease, as if to say Here I am, if you don’t like it, too bad. And Potter liked it, the overall impression. And her eyes really topped it off. From the first glance, her eyes seemed not only to look at him but to look into him, saying a secret and intimate hello.

  When enough time and conversation had passed to be able to make a proper exit, Potter took Renée’s hand again, squeezed it, and said to the others they had better be off, said good night to each one in turn, and when he nodded, stiffly, self-consciously, to Marilyn, she smiled, and her eyes said see you later.

  In the car going home Potter talked a lot, faster than usual. He talked of the Bertelsens, of the Boston scene, of the Harvard crowd, of the evening. But he never mentioned Marilyn. When they got to his place he made drinks and put the classical guitar record on. He did not really want to go to bed with Renée, but he knew it would be taken as an insult if he did not, if he did not at least try, and so he got pretty sloshed, and managed to do what he conceived to be his duty. Through it all, he kept seeing Marilyn’s eyes. Afterward he drove Renée home, talking more, concentrating on not mentioning the one thought that really occupied his mind: Marilyn. Renée was especially silent, curled in her seat, huddled deep in her coat. The only thing she said, just before the car pulled up in front of her door, was a question asked in a tone of cool, pretended casualness: “Who was that bitch?”

  3

  It was Sunday, the worst of days, the hardest one to get through alone. It yawned open, a pit of silence. There was little traffic, most of the shops and stores were closed, and the sidewalks were almost deserted. Potter once was able to fill up a large hunk of the day in football season by watching The Pros, but this year, on the second autumn Sunday, watching the Houston Oilers combat the Oakland Raiders, Potter was swept with a wave of depression; as the two teams blammed into one another, as a quarterback was thrown for a loss or sent a long bomb soaring into the waiting grasp of a fleet-footed receiver, as a fullback hurled himself into the enemy Front Four or a kicking specialist connected for a field goal, Potter had a deep and despairing feeling that he was watching the same game he had watched ten years before, that it was all the same, the plays and uniforms and the announcer’s analysis, that nothing was different except Potter, who was ten years older, with little to show for it; that in another ten years he would still be sitting of a Sunday afternoon and watching the same game, just that many more relentless seasons closer to The End. With a feeling almost of revulsion, he violently switched off the set, and had not turned to Football since then. Which opened up a bigger hole in his Sunday—big enough for a monster fullback to plunge through without being touched.

  Potter woke groggily, his mind sodden, trying to assemble the needed information. Cambridge. Sunday. He looked at the clock. Shit. It was only a little after nine. He usually tried to sleep till noon on Sundays; it gave him a running leap forward in making it to the end of the day. He turned over, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to blank out his mind, but then he remembered Marilyn Crashaw.

  He would get her number from Marva and call her today. He wasn’t going to wait and play coy. He wasn’t going to play any games at all with Marilyn. He had this instinctive sense that he didn’t need to, that she was going to understand him, that he would look openly into those large eyes of hers and all sham would fall away, all pretense become unnecessary. He would take it slow, he would get to know her. He didn’t just want to get laid and go on to something else, in the dulling old routine. She was the first woman he had met since getting divorced whom he felt he might want to have a relationship with, whom he felt it might be possible with. All that hope projected out of such slim evidence, and yet that was all he needed; he always knew, in the first hour or so, whether anything really good could happen with a woman, anything beyond a lay. It might not work out that way, but at least he knew if the chance was there, the possibility.

  He rousted himself out of bed and into the shower, soaped himself up a terrific lather, and actually sang, just like men used to do in the movies to show high spirits—bellowing off key, not caring, gurgling, enjoying.

  Pack up all my care and woe,

  Here I go, singing low,

  Byyyyye, Byyyyyye Blackbird …

  Instead of going to one of the cafeterias in Harvard Square that served sorry little eggs and mushily congealed potatoes and soggy toast, Potter decided to treat himself, go into Boston, and have a big hotel breakfast at the Statler. Aferward, he would go to the Commons and relax with the Sunday Globe. He would not be drowned by this Sunday, for he had something to hang on to, something to buoy him up, over the emptiness—a hope, a promise, a possibility of fulfillment.

  He nurtured the anticipation in himself throughout the day, carefully, gently, protectively, and he felt it grow, a warm secret. In the Commons, an unusual number of passers-by seemed to smile at him, and he smiled back. After a cursory glance at the Sports, he even put aside the paper. He didn’t feel the need as he usually did in a kind of panic, like a starving man gorging on stale bread. Today he wasn’t so empty.

  Potter went back home around three, made himself a Scotch and soda, and called Marva Bertelsen.

  “Thanks for last night,” he said.

  “Glad you could make it. And your friend. What’s her name?”

  “Renée.”

  “Renée—Gleason?”

  “Gillespie.”

  “She seemed very sweet.”

  “Yes, she is. She’s a very nice person.”

  Potter could tell that Marva was going to get her money’s worth out of this call; she knew damn well what Potter wanted.

  “Yes, very nice, but frankly—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, she didn’t really seem to be your type.”

  Potter took the phone off the table and lay down on the floor with it. “How so? What’s my type?”

  “Weeeel. A little more—flamboyant.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “Don’t you agree?”

  “Well, maybe so. I never thought about it that way.”

  “Oh, definitely. From what I’ve seen, you like them a lot more flamboyant than—what’s her name?”

  Potter closed his eyes. “Renée Gillespie.”

  “I mean, I liked her, myself. I was just thinking about her in relation to you.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Marva.”

  “Don’t you think Paul Tuckerman’s terrific
? Someday he’s going to be a sort of Kissinger, on the Domestic Scene, I’ll bet anything.”

  Potter took a deep breath. “Goddamn it, Marva, will you tell me her phone number?”

  “What? Who? You want the Tuckermans’ phone number?”

  “No, Love. I want your friend Marilyn’s phone number, as I’m sure you well understand.”

  “Oh, Marilyn! Did you like her?”

  “Yes, Marva. I liked her.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful? So did Hartley. He called up this morning to thank me and—”

  “Marva, I don’t want to know about Hartley. I don’t want to know anything about who he likes, or how much he likes Marilyn, or how much she likes him, or what they did, or what they’re going to do. I just want her telephone number.”

  “I thought you two would hit it off,” Marva said. “Let me see—I’m flipping through my book—I’m sorry you weren’t free to come for dinner, I mean just with Marilyn, as her date, but oh—here it is. No, that’s her office phone. Oh—OK. 266-1590.”

  “Marva, I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

  “Listen, keep me posted, will you? I’m dying to know what—well, I just have this feeling.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Marva. ’Bye now.”

  “’Bye, dear.”

  Potter freshened his drink, put on a Judy Collins, and, with the last warm light of afternoon spilling through the front windows, he called Marilyn.

  Her voice was kind of husky, in the Lauren Bacall style, and Potter was terribly excited by it. Besides the sexy vocal quality, she sounded very warm, and friendly. Just as Potter had anticipated. But when he asked her out for dinner Wednesday night she seemed to get a little rattled. She explained she was taking a night course in Existentialism, and it met on Wednesday from 7:30 to 9 P.M. He asked if Tuesday or Thursday would be better and she sounded even more nervous and slightly confused, then said that actually Wednesday would be best, if he didn’t mind having a late dinner, and if he was able to pick her up after her class. He said that was perfectly fine, he would be there at nine o’clock.