by Julie Metz
“Well, if I meet anyone I like enough, I’ll bring him home and you can decide if you like him. I’ll be going out a bit more than I used to, but I’ll make sure you get to go someplace fun. Also, I’ve found you a nice babysitter. I think you’ll like her. She goes to college. She says she likes to play games.”
“Will she play Attack? How come Tomas doesn’t come here anymore? He’s good at that.”
“I don’t know if this babysitter will play Attack, sweetie, but maybe I’ll meet someone who likes that game.”
Rich lived in a town south of mine. When he contacted me from my online profile, the convenience was undeniably appealing, as child care was always my predicament, even with the new babysitter. Rich and I went for a walk one evening after our initial meeting at a local bar. He drove to and parked his car at a town park area I’d never seen before, and knew I’d never in a million years find again. He took my hand as we walked up a hillside path. I wasn’t ready to be holding his hand, and as we approached a steep area, I withdrew my hand to leverage the incline. He remarked that his birthday was coming soon. I took his hand. It is not so great to be anticipating spending your birthday alone.
“What are your plans, then?” I asked pleasantly.
“I never plan anything, because terrible things always happen on my birthday.” Oh, for chrissake. Now we’ll have a sob story. I had, actually, tried to minimize my own sob story at dinner.
“Such as?” I continued, trying for an upbeat tone, now feeling very wretched about having to hold his hand, some creeping anxiety growing about being alone in this nighttime park with a man who was potentially troubled about the upcoming birthday.
Women always chose this day to leave him, he said.
Shit. This was some big, bad baggage—almost as heavy as my baggage. Naïvely, I had hoped to meet someone with much less baggage than I had. I was pretty sure that whatever happened between us wasn’t going to work out the way he hoped and that in fact it might all go down quickly, ending before dawn on the dreaded birthday.
There wasn’t a long courtship. While I would have liked to have had more time to consider what I wanted from him, we reached a “Ma’am, this ain’t a library, are you gonna buy that magazine?” situation within a week’s time. I felt nothing much for him physically apart from a kind of curiosity. But I let him stay one night, after feeding him a good roast chicken dinner.
And now I was trapped in bed with a yeller. I’d heard about these types, though I had never met one till now. I might as well have stepped out of my body and gone to the kitchen for a drink of water, as my actual presence did not seem to be required at all. It had devolved into a theatrical performance, one that had stupefied me into embarrassed silence.
I believe he very much hoped to please me. I muffled a snigger, thinking how I would describe this night for Anna—offering her a good girlie guffaw being perhaps the only way to salvage anything positive from this evening. Anticipating her explosive laughter brought me back to a self that could endure the mess I’d made. He had five orgasms without ever going soft, which was certainly impressive, but numbing.
I had to gratify him, if only to make him stop by faking it, a depressing but effective skulduggery. But at last he moaned, “I have to sleep now…,” and snapped off, unconscious in an instant. I watched him as he slept for a few minutes, then tiptoed out of bed to the bathroom, where I sat quietly on the toilet. I was going to dump him—soon—on or just before his birthday. Which was too bad, really, because he was a nice guy, and if I hadn’t been idiotic enough to have sex with him, he might have become a friend. I could have used a friend who was a guy, in addition to an actual boyfriend. Now he’d just have more baggage. And I would feel like shit, being too much of a coward to tell him just why I was dumping him. I hoped he’d find a woman who, unlike me, would be happy to be with a guy who could come five times in a row.
He said he was leaving for a business trip to Los Angeles the next day and promised he’d call me. He did call me, and I chatted friendly-like. And then I did the slimy deed via e-mail.
I promised myself that the next time I would offer myself more time to make a decision I would not regret in the morning.
Who can resist the promise of that English accent? Eliot was Oxford educated, with a stylish scruffy Vandyke. His Match.com profile said he was six foot three, too tall for me. Five foot one and a half, the measurement on my driver’s license, was possibly overstating the case. I had never liked feeling so dwarfed by a man. And he lived in Connecticut, about two hours away.
When we talked on the phone, Eliot had a self-deprecating, saucy, and irreverent sense of humor. Lying on my red velvet couch, cordless phone cradled on a cushion against my ear, I laughed and laughed. He was a big, naughty flirt, and that was a tonic. While it was hard for me to speak about Henry’s betrayal to a man who was still a stranger, when I did tell him the condensed version of what had happened, he was comforting and kind. Another tonic.
We made a plan for dinner in a week’s time, having chosen a spot in the middle—Danbury, Connecticut, a small city I knew only as a string of highway exits featuring malls and gas stations on I-84, the route I took to visit my parents at their weekend house in Litchfield County.
I liked Eliot. Right away he seemed like a truly okay guy. I enjoyed his raunchy humor, which might have offended me in an earlier time but now was a relief. So this is what men really think about. I could tell he knew all about dating. Maybe he would teach me.
I couldn’t see myself dating or living in Connecticut—suburban New York State was already such a definitive personal disaster. Driving to Connecticut for dinner dates was not going to work in the universe where I lived. If things proceeded further, I might find myself waking up startled in a bedroom two hours away from my child. I wasn’t ready for that kind of separation at all. I knew this as I hung up the phone and climbed the stairs to get ready for bed.
Liza was already asleep in what we now referred to as “our” bed, clutching a ragged stuffed lion, one that had belonged to my brother and had somehow been entrusted to me. Eliot might be horrified to discover these not very grown-up facts of my domestic life—that I cherished the stuffed lion, and that my daughter still spent most nights in my bed, because she and I, ignoring my therapist’s well-intentioned advice, both wanted it that way.
Eliot called me the next day. Not to give me driving directions but to cancel dinner.
“I’m pretty sure you aren’t ready for anything serious yet,” he said sincerely. “I am ready. I don’t want to be your, you know, ‘transitional man.’” Eliot had it so right. A smart fellow he was. Relief flooded my chest. I liked him even more.
Could we still be friends? I wrote back the next day. Why yes, he would like that. We agreed to stay in touch. And I thought that would be the end of that.
Several weeks later, missing his lighthearted humor, I sent him an e-mail. By then I’d met another man—Daniel—and Eliot had met another woman.
Daniel was smart and funny, in a quiet, mordant sort of way—a quiet way I hoped would not become boring. His profile indicated that he was divorced with a son. I thought that he’d understand the parenting issues in my life.
In any event, I was dating. Dating meant going out with someone, getting to know him, eating some meals together, yak-king, not having sex right away. I’d settled on that much. No commitment, nothing I couldn’t walk away from in a hurry.
On my third date with Daniel—an autumn hike up a nearby mountain trail—he told me that he thought he was falling in love with me. I cast an eye over his long, placid face, dad-looking red plaid shirt and jeans, sensible and sturdy brown leather walking shoes—garb Tomas never wore, of course, or Henry. I hadn’t expected such impulsive behavior from this man. I was completely bewildered, once again feeling blank and nonpresent, an observer watching myself act in a film. I was sitting in his lap when he told me this (and was regretting the kissing that had been good fun a moment earlier), and now I wanted to charge down t
he trail for home immediately. I had absolutely no idea what I thought about this man. I didn’t love him. I was still working on just liking him.
And there was also Tim, another man with whom I’d corresponded online, who was divorced with no children. We’d talked, but I’d thought maybe it was best to try out men one at a time. Plus, my amateur theorizing held that it would be better to date a man who had kids. But fuck if I knew anything about men.
And there was still Eliot, who was turning out to be a great pal. I called him on the phone to tell him that Daniel had confessed love on the third date. Did this mean I couldn’t wait for a few weeks before having sex?
“Are you joking, Jools?” Eliot snorted. “No real man will put up with that kind of nonsense, waiting a month to have sex.”
“Really, you’re sure about that? You’d never wait if a woman you really liked wanted you to?”
“Nope,” Eliot replied. “I’d figure she just had some weird sex hang-ups or wasn’t that into me. Doesn’t sound like you’re really that into this guy.”
And of course I didn’t know either.
“But, Jools, apart from the sex, the really important thing to remember is the three-month rule,” Eliot reminded me gently. His repeated advice did have the ring of truth and common sense about it. The idea was to wait three months before bringing someone home to meet your kid. The reasoning was that it was difficult to mask the darker aspects of one’s real personality (ax murderer, run-of-the-mill cad, or control freak) for longer than three months. “Once you bring this guy home, your daughter will either get attached or maybe hate the guy. Then it’s going to be harder the next time to introduce a new person into her life.”
“Okay, yeah.”
“You didn’t listen to me, did you?”
“So don’t be mad at me, Eliot. I already let Daniel meet Liza last weekend. He doesn’t seem like a nut job, he seems nice enough. He might be a bit too old for me. Not his actual age. I think he’s just four years older than me.” Than I am, I remembered too late for Mr. Oxford-educated (who I hoped was used to American bastardized English). “But he seems older, maybe kind of quiet, but very kind. He brought his dog. Lizzie loved his dog—it’s a big friendly black Lab.”
I paused, waiting for Eliot to say something nice. “Eliot, you’re going to tell me that I screwed up. Did I screw up?”
“Yeah, Jools, I do think this is a mistake, it’s too soon. Do you care about this man?”
“I don’t know.” I laughed nervously. “I thought I’d let my kid decide.”
“I’m serious, Jools. You have to feel something. That’s not going to work.”
“Okay, okay. Shit. You’re right. I fucked it up.”
I did fuck it up, quite royally in fact.
Daniel was quiet and steady, a man of habits. He seemed to live nearly a hermit’s life, which saddened me—I’d hoped to have a bit of silly fun during this time of my life. Daniel had a proper office job, just what I’d thought I wanted in a man. He owned the sensible-dad red plaid shirt, and a few more like that one. Sometimes khakis. No ragged T-shirts of any sort. Running shoes, and the sturdy leather walking shoes. I began to suspect that his politics might be more conservative than mine. As time passed, I worried that he might be an actual Republican but was too afraid to ask, as this would be an instant deal-killer.
But this man had told me he loved me with a quiet intensity that I believed and was curious to understand. What could he love about me, since he couldn’t know me yet, since I didn’t even know me? I wanted to know what was lovable about me. I wanted to feel loved.
We made plans to see each other on Saturdays, and I quickly felt trapped, unable to see other friends. Of course, it wasn’t like I’d been whooping it up on Saturday nights before meeting him. Plenty of weekend nights had been spent at home with Liza watching TV or a movie we’d both seen twenty times. It was the routine of it that speedily wore on me. Routine was already too much a part of my life. He was forty-eight and I was forty-four, but I felt and began to behave like a twenty-year-old having an affair with her English professor, who always remembered the correct use of the object pronoun in his letters.
It was Daniel’s daily e-mail letters that initially won me over and revealed a great and dark wit. I read them and laughed out loud—there was humor and the heady delight of being wooed by such a fearless and natural writer.
I wanted to be with someone younger at heart, more spontaneous, though not as spontaneous as Tomas or Henry. The Daniel who wrote me letters was someone I liked a lot, even if the actual physical man wasn’t “my type.” But “my type” had gotten me into a marriage of big trouble. “My type” was The Crush, and I sensed nothing but big trouble there. I thought I might do well to avoid “my type.”
One night Daniel brought over photos. I took out my albums, and we looked through our lives together. He showed me his life as a young father, embracing his then wife and young child, bundled against the cold on a skiing trip. I cried. His losses saddened me.
I decided—it felt like a good and rational decision—to be with him.
Daniel took a personal day one Friday. I followed his directions to his house: “Driveway on right, house with weeds,” he’d e-mailed. I smiled as I pulled into the driveway. He had not exaggerated. Presented with a bland split-level house fronted by a mangy lawn, I walked up the cracked concrete stairs and opened the screen door. I called to him, but he did not answer. In the hall was an old upright piano, clearly unused, since the seat was covered with boxes of sporting equipment and dirty clothes that might belong to a boy his son’s age. More sports shoes littered the hallway floor. I might have yelled at my own child for leaving such a mess, but in this case I welcomed the familiar signs of life lived with untidy children. Through a doorway I could see a living room with the underfurnished look of a just-moved-in space. There were no photographs hanging on the walls and no other sort of artwork, just two quite hideous tan couches, and a large TV placed in front of the fireplace. Farther on, a simply laid out dining room, the table strewn with a few magazines and yesterday’s paper. From the hallway I was able to peer beyond into the kitchen. There, it seemed, a renovation had been considered, but the project appeared to have been abandoned, given the evidence of everyday life’s debris. The light wood cabinets were from some decades earlier. I imagined for a moment the time when they were new and this house set the standard for convenient modern family living. Now the plywood was peeling apart.
I understood that Daniel saw this as a temporary place, for which he had little love. Not like the wonderful Vermont house he often spoke about wistfully, the family home of many summers. This house I stood in now was more like a storage place for his life, postdivorce, until he decided what to do next. In profound ways I admired his lack of attachment. I felt overattached to my house and my stuff in a way that plagued me, especially when I allowed myself to think about leaving it behind. When he came to my house for the first time, Daniel remarked that I should charge admission, because it was like a museum of curiosities.
I called out again, and this time he answered. He was downstairs. I walked carefully down the narrow, carpeted stairs.
There, splendidly, was the oasis of his bedroom, the one room that had been decorated to his taste. It was a wonder of peacefulness, in muted natural colors of earth and sand, with the hushed feeling of an elegant retreat. Perhaps a retreat in Japan, I thought, noting the row of Asian ceramic pots arranged elegantly across a low wooden dresser. A painted screen of swooping calligraphy hung on one wall. He had told me that his parents had spent some years overseas.
Across the room was a low bed, where Daniel lay watching me, with the covers pulled up, looking boyishly expectant. I sat down next to him on the bed and started to undress, since it seemed the right thing to do. The sheets were perfect and white and clean. I noticed that there was music playing. A woman’s voice, achingly sad, accompanied by a solo guitar.
“Who is that singing?” I asked.
>
“It’s Patty Griffin.” It was just the woman and her guitar. The words reminded me of Joni Mitchell lyrics, poetic yet never obscure. I knew just the kind of sadness she was talking about. There was loneliness, men she couldn’t hold on to, bars she spent too much time in, children growing up poor. One song, titled “Forgiveness,” was so apt that I decided to buy the CD as soon as I got back home.
He pulled back the sheets and welcomed me into the bed. We made love quietly, accompanied by the sad songs. He was incredibly attentive and affectionate. I was nervous but wanting to enjoy myself for whatever this was. I cried when I came. I still felt confused about my feelings for this man, but at least I felt engaged and present and had no urge to run away. After, we spoke about our lives and marriages, and I observed that he was a good listener, even when I rambled on a bit. I slept for a time in his arms, then woke up with a start, in time to get dressed quickly and rush off to pick Liza up at her bus stop. As I stood chatting with the other moms, the time with Daniel had already become one of those strange, disconnected experiences where you feel like everyone must know where you have been all afternoon. But of course they had been busy with their own days and noticed nothing different.
I worried that Daniel’s steadiness would incite me to behave badly, like the moderately rebellious teenager I had been but absolutely was not anymore. At forty-four, I was a responsible working mother, who shopped, cooked, did laundry, paid bills. Mostly, I wanted to integrate my life as a mother with my time with him. After his visit to meet Liza with his dog, there had been no more meetings. I wondered if he already knew what I suspected—our lives were not well suited to each other, and there was no use pretending otherwise. Yet every night when we spoke on the phone, he told me he loved me. I began to say the same, though I still wasn’t sure exactly how I felt. It was not the love I had once felt for Henry, or even Tomas. It was a sincere respect and affection.