“So,” I say to Marina, “what’s the verdict?”
“You’ve only missed one appointment, and I rescheduled.”
“Thank you much. Is someone in my chair?” I ask without looking over the schedule.
“A newbie. And not to sound corny, but she really is black and beautiful. First name Cleo. Last name is Strawberry. How cool is that? We must thank our lovely florist for the referral. Cleo just wants new contacts, and Ms. Kwon has made it very clear she’ll wait. You need a tall Peet’s?”
“It won’t help. But thanks, Marina.”
She hands me my appointment list and the patient’s folder. Strawberry? I head to my office, grab a clean lab coat from the closet, slip it over my boring blue dress, then sanitize my hands. I read over her chart quickly and head two doors down. I tap lightly on the door. When I hear an energetic voice say, “All is clear!” I feel better already. Marina was right. She looks like a black princess. Probably in her mid-twenties. She closes the Dwell magazine in her lap like a child who’s been caught reading something illicit. She reaches over to set it on the instrument table but knows that’s wrong, so I hold my hand out along with a smile and take it. She looks up at me and smiles back.
“Good morning, Ms. Strawberry. I’m Dr. Young, and I’m so sorry I’m late.”
“Good morning to you as well. I was probably right in front of you, because I just got here about fifteen minutes ago. So no need to apologize, Dr. Young. I just pray no one was seriously injured.”
“I hope not, too. Apparently we’re going to have to thank Noelle for the referral. Her floral arrangements are like sculpture. We never know what to expect from one week to the next. So. Your last name is Strawberry. That’s not a very common name.”
“No it isn’t. That’s why I like it!”
“Eons ago, when I was an undergrad, I had a good friend with that same last name.”
“What college?”
“UCSF.”
“My dad went to UCSF for undergrad, too!”
“I graduated in ’76.”
“He was the class of ’75! His first name is Raymond.”
I can’t believe what she’s just said. Ray Strawberry and I always thought of each other as Best Friends with Benefits, because his girlfriend was at Harvard and he was madly in love with her. I wasn’t really attracted to him at first. Ray and I were both studying our butts off and lonely and needed some relief, so we made a pact that we would call each other up for sex with no strings attached, which at first we did once a week, but then it got up to twice weekly and then whenever we could steal a half hour. All was going well until his girlfriend came for spring break and I realized I was jealous, because unbeknownst to me I had accidentally fallen in love with him.
“I can’t believe you’re his daughter! We kind of lost touch after he went off to Yale. Ray was serious about becoming a surgeon. So did he? And is he practicing in the Bay Area? How is he? I’d love to say hello. Wow. What a small world this is.”
“Well, he’s passed on.”
I gently put the ophthalmoscope back on the instrument tray. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t seen or thought much about Ray in all these years. I can’t believe his daughter is sitting in this chair, in my office, and has just told me that the first man I fell in love with is dead.
“It’s been five years now,” she says as she brushes her fingers through those thick black tendrils. “A six-car pile-up. A deer.”
Shit.
“I am so sorry to hear this. So very sorry.”
Shit.
I grab a Kleenex for myself and then hand her one. I give her the exam, measure her vision, and dilate her pupils in total silence. She starts to tell me her father’s history but suddenly stops. She knows. When we’re finished, I write her a prescription for new contacts, tell her how nice it was to meet her, that her vision will probably be blurred for the next few hours, and to avoid direct sunlight. On her way out, she hugs me like it’s good-bye, and I know she won’t be coming back.
—
I’m melancholy for the rest of the day. I don’t feel like driving in rush-hour traffic and don’t feel like going home. I walk six blocks toward Fisherman’s Wharf. Even though it’s only six o’clock, it’s almost dark, and the breeze coming from the bay bites. No matter how warm it is in San Francisco during the day, the temperature is guaranteed to drop as much as twenty degrees by evening, which is why I have on my lined trench coat with a wool scarf wrapped around my neck four or five times. My hands are in my pockets. I turn left on the Embarcadero and almost bump into a homeless woman blocking the sidewalk. She’s wrapped in a grimy green blanket. Her hair is colorless, and her face is dirty. I can’t tell how old she is, but what I do know is right now this sidewalk is her home. I open my purse and pull out a bill that happens to be a twenty. I put it in her can and keep walking. I do not feel generous.
I have no destination in mind. I’m just trying to register the fact that someone I was once very close to, and loved, is dead. It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s been over thirty years since I saw him. It doesn’t seem to matter that I can’t remember the last time he even entered my mind. What’s making me so sad is he never even knew that I loved him.
I cross the street and go into a restaurant that’s holding happy hour. A handsome host asks if I’ll be having dinner, and I tell him I’m not sure. He asks where I’d like to sit, and I point to outside. I follow him and luckily am seated right under a giant heater. Almost all the tables are full of professionals who work nearby. The water in the bay looks black, and the waves are high and heavy. Ferries to Sausalito, Tiburon, and Larkspur are crossing paths out there. They pass right by Alcatraz. The Oakland and Berkeley hills twinkle on the other side of the bay, and to the left, through light fog, the Golden Gate Bridge still looks red even at night. I take off my coat. Instead of white wine, I order a cappuccino.
I should’ve told Ray I loved him before he graduated. I should’ve taken the risk of finding out he didn’t love me. And what if he did? When my coffee arrives, I sip the foam and then wipe the rim of the cup with my index finger. As I listen to the waves crashing against the dock below, I’m now wondering where the other men I once loved might be. Whatever happened to them? What are they doing? How did their lives turn out? And are they happy? And are they alive? I’ve done a pretty good job of airbrushing most of them out of my memory, but now I wonder if they’ve erased me, too.
I’ve been in love at least five or six or maybe even seven times. Two, I married. Three were full-throttle love, but then the transmission died, and the other two were over before we got started. This doesn’t include the men I only had sex with. That number is much higher.
Over the years it became clear that sometimes you fall in love only to realize you don’t even like the person. I liked Ray before I loved him. Respected him. And he certainly respected me. He had integrity. He was honest. We talked about anything and everything. He was also a good listener. I learned to be one, too. I didn’t put on airs and didn’t have to work to impress him. He liked me as is. Which is why we didn’t play any silly games. In fact, he was probably the first guy I could say I was friends with. After Ray graduated, he went on to Yale and disappeared from my radar.
I became a better person because of the time I spent with him, knowing him. I never got a chance to tell him that. But I think I would like to let the other men know what I gained from loving them, maybe even hating them. Right now I don’t exactly know, because I’ve never thought about it before. What I do know is that men have occupied almost thirty-five years of my entire adult life. That’s a whole lot of time. It now seems obvious that the way we’re raised has a major impact on what kind of person we turn out to be, but so does who we love.
I want to find them.
I want them to know they were once important to me.
I want to tell them what they gave me.
I want to find out what I gave them.
I want to remember wh
y I loved them.
I want to find out why they loved me.
I want to understand why we stopped loving each other.
I want to find out why we stopped caring for each other.
I want to find out why we hurt each other.
I want to apologize.
I want to explain.
I want to forgive them.
I want to find out if they’ve forgiven me.
I want to figure out why it’s so hard to forgive.
I want them to know I didn’t forget about them and I just chose now to remember.
But more than anything, I really want to know if they’re still alive and healthy and happy and thriving and if they’ve become the man—the person—they wanted to become. I hope so. And I thank Raymond Strawberry for helping me see this.
—
On the way home, there’s no traffic. I feel different. Lighter. Clearer. As if I’ve just opened a lane for myself and I’m about to enter it. When we’re young, we think we’re always going to be young. We thought life was going to be one long party. One thrill after another. We knew we could get over heartache and disappointment and failure in a snap, because we were going to have hundreds if not thousands of opportunities and do-overs. We knew that success and happiness and love were in the cards. We didn’t worry about the future. We were more worried about the next time we were going to get laid.
Now you fall across the bed when you’re not sleepy but just tired of the way you live—or aren’t living. From the outside you shouldn’t be complaining, but success and a good credit score can’t love you. Or give you an orgasm. You even empty the trash and wonder what you’re really throwing away. You comb your hair and put on makeup and buy something pretty to wear and get your nails and toes painted hot pink even though you don’t feel hot, and you wonder who will even notice. You shave your legs and under your arms and get your eyebrows waxed, and you wonder who will notice. And then one day, out of nowhere, you stop wondering and start worrying that the best part of your life is behind you. Is this how it’s going to be forever? Is this all there is?
God, you hope not.
—
On Friday night I decide not to help Detective Goren solve any murders. Fuck him. In fact, I don’t turn the television on at all. I take a bubble bath. I shave my legs and my underarms. I give myself a mud facial. I pluck my eyebrows. I put on a comfy pair of pink cotton pajamas that I folded quite nicely last week. They still smell clean. I fall asleep before ten.
On Saturday I decide not to go to Costco or Home Depot or Target or the grocery store for anything, because there is really nothing I need.
I go to the movies.
I buy a ticket to see You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger not realizing it’s a Woody Allen movie, and as usual it’s smart and entertaining but there’s not a single person of color in it. I manage to laugh anyway.
Afterward I walk outside and into a nice restaurant and have lunch: butternut squash soup and a Caesar salad.
When I get home, I decide to reread The Alchemist.
Oh. What a night.
On Sunday morning at seven o’clock sharp, I text Wanda, meet you at the reservoir. i’ll be there at eight.
She replies, will meet you there! hooray!
Wanda happens to be my cheerleader. She’s worried that her best friend might die a lonely spinster, which is why she’s the nostalgia queen and continues to remind me of when we were hot young things who used to make men take a number. Well, now my number is 175 pounds. She’s been happily married to Nelson for thirty-two years. They chose not to have children and never apologized for it. “Three’s a crowd,” she told me right after they eloped in Maui. Wanda’s been my best friend since college. And even though she’s opinionated, often misses the mark as well as the point, it’s also the reason I love her. She stands her ground, and I can count on her getting on my nerves at least once a week. She’s the sister I never had. She pretends to golf for a living but has yet to earn a dime. Not that she needs it. Wanda’s also the only black person I know who was born with a gold spoon in her mouth, which is probably why she’s on so many benevolent boards. There isn’t a week that goes by she’s not at some dull dinner celebrating or honoring someone worthy, but Nelson just stopped coming up with excuses and just started saying, “I don’t want to go.” He’s an accountant who spends most of his free time reading espionage novels and watching reruns of Star Trek. These banquets are also an excuse for Wanda to get dressed up. But for some pathological reason, she’s cheap as hell, can’t dress to save her life, and doesn’t buy anything unless it’s on sale. She spends most of her free time in outlets.
Wanda decided over pizza one night to major in psychology, which is probably one reason she was unemployable. But she’s enjoyed not working and is addicted to a number of old-lady hobbies. Scrapbooking is one, and because they had zero children, her scrapbooks are full of pictures of all the dogs she and Nelson have rescued from the pound over the years that have since passed on. Creepy. Then there’s needlepoint: ugly needlepoints are scattered all over their house, and three loud, shivering, newly purchased Chihuahuas sleep on the ones they can reach. I have never been able to sit there and watch her do it without needing a drink. I don’t understand the purpose of needlepoint, because none of the pictures are ever interesting. In fact, I find most of them to be depressing and eerie. But because she’s my best friend—or BFF, as my younger daughter, Frankie, has reminded me to call her and Violet—I’ve lied and said I loved them, since she gives me one every single Christmas regardless. But so as not to hurt her feelings, I put them in low-traffic areas.
They say you should never tell anyone what you’re going to do until after you’ve done it. I disagree, because there’s something to be said for intention. Plus, I’ve always had a hard time keeping my mouth shut when I’m itching to share what I’d like to think is good news.
I drive up the entrance road lined on both sides with giant oak and pine trees. It feels like an enchanted forest, and when I reach the top, where the parking lot is, a huge blue body of water is surrounded by hundreds of acres of green-and-gold hills. I spot Wanda stretching on a park bench and pull in to a parking space. To my dismay, Violet and Velvet pull up right next to me. Why didn’t Wanda bother telling me that Violet was coming and bringing her daughter? I wave and smile and don’t get out of the car. This spoils my plans. How can I have a personal, grown-up conversation with a hip-hopper right next to us?
Before I can figure out how to handle this, Velvet jumps out of Violet’s white Range Rover, runs over, opens my door, and gives me a big hug. “Hi, Auntie! Thought I’d join you guys this morning.”
“It’s been too long,” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. She runs over and does the same thing to Wanda. Like mother, like daughter. She’s in skintight orange leggings and an even tighter white tank top. She has about a thousand blond braids that hang down past her shoulders. She runs back to the SUV and hops back in.
Wanda turns and waves, hunches her shoulders, and I can tell she isn’t thrilled to see Velvet either. Velvet not only runs her mouth nonstop like her mother, but she’s loud.
Violet is my other college friend whom I love like a stepsister, but I’m not crazy about her standards. For being so smart, she’s dumb as hell and gets on my nerves, but I just can’t bring myself to divorce her. She won’t let me. We’ve gone months without speaking, but eventually she always calls back. Or I break down and call her. She’s the youngest of nine and apparently had a lot to prove, because she’s competitive and hates to lose. Her brains and beauty merged quite well and she became a top sports attorney, but I still wonder how she managed to pass the bar. In her heyday Violet probably slept with half the NBA, MLB, and the NFL in her quest to represent players. She finally cooled her jets when word got around she was a legal slut and her client list started diminishing. This, however, hasn’t stopped her from dressing like one. Even after three children and at fifty-four, she sti
ll has the body of a thirty-six-year-old.
Violet is married to Violet. She never believed in the institution, but she did believe in cohabiting. For the last five or six years, she’s been what she calls a free agent, except that Wanda and I think Velvet has been cramping her style. At twenty-five, Velvet has yet to find a college she likes or a college that likes her, so she’s been trying to figure out why, while living rent-free and asking, “Do you want fries with that?” Violet treats her daughter more like a girlfriend and is stupid enough to confer with her on things that Velvet knows nothing about. One son lives with his father in Toronto, and the other one plays basketball in Spain. Neither of them visits, and Wanda and I know why. Because Violet was not a great mother.
Of course she’s on her cell and holds up her index finger to give her a minute. I text Wanda, i’m going to call you in a sec. answer it, but don’t look up or at me.
I dial her number and pretend I’m getting an incoming call. I put a glad-to-hear-from-you look on my face. “On our walk this morning, I had planned on telling you that I’m seriously thinking about putting my house on the market and I’m considering selling my share of the practice and trying to change professions sometime in the near future and not necessarily in that order, and, Wanda, I just found out that Ray Strawberry died five years ago, which has really broken me up, and even though it might sound like a crazy thing to do, I’ve decided I’m going to look up all the men I’ve loved just to let them know I’m glad I had the opportunity to know and love them and just to see if they’re alive and well. I know it may be a lot to take in, but now that Violet has brought Miss Thang, you know we can’t talk about anything real, so I’m hanging up and we can talk about this another time.” I end the call, get out of the car, and smile as if I’ve just received the best news.
Violet and I trot over toward Wanda, and I can’t believe she’s wearing loose brown sweats and a beige zip-up jacket. She must be depressed about something, but I can’t tell because she’s also wearing Ray-Bans. “Hi-di-ho, ladies. After we warm up, I’m going to jog on the upper trail for a half hour with Velvet, and then we’ll meet you guys on the lower one for the last twenty. Okay?”
I Almost Forgot About You Page 2