“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. No, I’m demanding it, John.”
“But won’t that be worse than my not calling at all?” I argued. “I mean, in a few days she’ll probably get the idea that I’m not interested. If I call, if she sees my number on caller ID or the minute she hears my voice, won’t her expectations be raised? And then I’ll have to let her down again.” The words sounded lame even to my ears.
“John. Call Cheryl tonight. But not too late,” she added, “she goes to bed around nine.”
“Most nights I’m just getting home from the office by nine. You see how incompatible we are?”
“Call her from the office, John.” Teri was really angry. I did understand. Cheryl was her friend. My bad behavior might rebound on their relationship. “Apologize for leading her on.”
“Okay, okay,” I said resignedly. “If you really think it’s the best thing, I’ll do it. I’ll call her. But it won’t be easy.”
“Poor you. I’m sure you’ll survive.”
“I can’t wait until Mom and Dad get home.”
“Why?” Teri asked.
“Maybe then you and Chrissy will stop bossing me around.”
“You’d rather Mom boss you around?”
“Sure. She’s the mother, that’s her job. You and Chrissy are my little sisters. I’m supposed to be telling you what to do, not the other way around.”
“Well, when you learn how to behave like a human being we’ll leave you alone. Until then, you’re fair game.”
“Good-bye, Teri. I’ve got to work up the nerve to call Cheryl.”
“Thanks, John.” Teri’s tone had softened. “I know this whole dating thing is hard.”
“I hate it,” I admitted. “I really hate it.”
“Someday you’ll look back on these days as just a bad dream.”
“Promise?” I asked with a rueful laugh.
“I’m talking to God about it, John. He’s working on it.”
“Well, in that case, I’m golden.”
“Not until you call Cheryl.”
That’s Teri—tough and tenacious. And she’s got faith. If anyone is golden, it’s my little sister.
25
Get your tail out from between your legs. Faithful is for dogs. Opportunistic is for humans.
—Wake Up and Smell the Treachery
JOHN
“Cheryl, this is John Felitti.”
“Oh, hi!” she said enthusiastically. “I was hoping you would call.”
My courage took a nosedive. “Is this a good time to talk?” I asked, shamefully stalling.
“Oh, sure. I was just washing the kitchen floor but, here, let me take off my gloves . . . Okay.”
Could things get any worse? This woman was about to be rejected while clutching a mop.
“This is very awkward,” I said, then rushed on with my miserable task. “I had a nice time with you last night, Cheryl. A very nice time. But—I don’t think things are going to work out between us. I’m sorry.”
There was an awful moment of silence before Cheryl said: “So, you didn’t call to ask me out?”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“You called to say you’re not going to see me again?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s right.”
“You know,” she said, not belligerently, “when a man says that he’ll call you, it’s supposed to mean he’ll call you for another date. It’s not supposed to mean he’ll call you to tell you he doesn’t want to see you again.”
Oh, I was going to have a word with Teri. I’d been right all along. I should never have called. Eventually, my silence would have conveyed my disinterest. Or would silence really have been more hurtful, like Teri believed it would be?
“Yes,” I said, “I know. Again, I’m sorry. I was just—I was just trying to be polite last night.”
Cheryl laughed awkwardly. “Well, I guess that’s that.”
“Yes, I guess so. Good—”
“Wait,” Cheryl interrupted. “What did you tell Teri?”
“What did I tell her?” I repeated stupidly.
“It’s okay,” she said and I thought I heard a catch in her voice. “It’s fine.”
No, it wasn’t fine. “I told her I thought you were a very nice person.”
“I am,” Cheryl replied, with that little awkward laugh. I felt like a bum for being the cause of it.
“Yes, okay then . . .”
“Good-bye, John,” Cheryl said, and then our mutual misery was over.
26
Dear Answer Lady:
I’m in big trouble. I forgot my stepmother’s birthday. I mean, I forgot until I woke up that morning and realized that it was her birthday and that I’d forgotten to send her a card, let alone a present. So I called her that afternoon and asked how she liked the sweater and card I’d sent. What sweater and card? she asked. Didn’t you get a package from UPS? I asked. No, she said. I acted all angry and told her that I’d get right on tracking the package. But then she said, No, I’ll take care of this, I know someone who’s a big shot at UPS and he owes me a favor so just give me the tracking information. Long story short, I got caught in my lie and finally had to confess that there was no package. Now I’m in deep doo-doo with my stepmother and with my dad. How could I have handled this differently?
Dear Big Mouth:
I suggest that you buy a copy of my latest book, entitled The Rubberband of Truth: How to Stretch It Without Getting Smacked in the Face. It is certain to guide you when encountering some of life’s stickier situations. In the meantime, send your stepmother a dozen roses in her favorite color (even if it’s plaid) and a bottle of her favorite champagne (even if it sets you back a fortune) and eat humble pie until you puke.
EVA
We always met at Jake’s apartment. It was hardly a room at the Ritz but the place was clean and generally tidy. I tipped an imaginary hat to Sophie for having raised a boy familiar with the pleasures of a mop and a bottle of ammonia—until Jake mentioned that he hired someone to come in once a week and clean.
“I’m hopeless,” he said with a shrug. “My mother did everything for me until I went away to college. I was lucky the campus was only an hour from home. Every Sunday afternoon I’d show up with my laundry and on Monday morning, I’d drive back to school with clean sheets, towels, and clothes, and enough food to feed me and my roommates for a week.”
Unaccountably, I found this bit of information charming. See, I liked Sam as far as I was willing to, which wasn’t very far; I had no interest in his life outside of the bed on which we were sprawled. But with Jake, things were different. I wasn’t quite sure why and it worried me at first that I might be becoming emotionally attached. Why did I ask questions of Jake? Why did I listen to his answers with interest? Maybe it had something to do with Sophie, after all. As much as I didn’t want her in bed with Jake and me, she was. Maybe I felt I owed it to her to know more about her son than the size of his penis.
On the other hand, I continued to guard my own privacy religiously. Jake might want to know all about me but he wasn’t going to learn very much at the source.
About a week after our first tryst I asked Jake a question that had been on my mind since his performance in the lobby. I asked him if I was the first older woman he’d slept with.
Jake looked at me with some amusement. “Hell, no,” he said.
His answer disappointed me. I hadn’t drawn Jake’s attention; my age had attracted him. Not my intelligence or my long legs but my experience and my crow’s feet.
“So, you’re in the habit of sleeping with women old enough to be your mother.” I cringed at the foolish choice of words.
“I suppose it is a habit,” he admitted. “Though it’s not as if I have some rule about only dating women over forty. It’s just that most often I find myself attracted to them.”
“You must have been imprinted at an early age,” I said, half-jokingly. I wasn’t sure how deeply I
wanted to delve into Jake’s psychological makeup.
Jake propped himself up on one elbow and said, very seriously, “I guess I was imprinted. I lost my virginity at the age of sixteen to a twenty-six-year-old. She was a dental hygienist. We met at the dentist’s office.”
“Naturally,” I replied. “So, did she seduce you?”
“No,” Jake said matter-of-factly. “It was pretty much mutual. She knew I was sixteen but it didn’t seem to bother her. I mean, neither of us was interested in anything long-term so what did it matter? It was all about sex. It was great.”
“It was illegal.”
Jake laughed and dropped back onto the pillow. “Yeah, I guess it was.”
My young lover, I suspected, had quite a sexual history. Maybe that was to account for his prowess. And I’m not one to complain about prowess. “How did it end?” I asked.
“She met a guy around her own age. Last I heard, they were married and had a kid.”
“And since then?” I prodded. “I can’t believe you’ve been a heartbroken recluse since sixteen.”
Jake looked at me with a mix of amusement and suspicion. “Why so interested in my romantic résumé?”
“No reason. Just curiosity.”
“Can I ask you about your romantic past?”
“No,” I said, a bit harshly. I softened my tone to say, “Well, of course you can ask but I’m not going to tell you anything. So, go on. What have you been doing with yourself since the hygienist?”
Jake wasn’t put off. Young men like to talk about themselves. I suppose all men do.
“Well,” he said, “since Gina I’ve been involved with several significantly older women.”
“Ah, significantly older, not just older.”
“I told you I must have been imprinted.”
Or, I thought with sudden distaste, you’re unconsciously in love with your mother.
As if he’d read my mind, Jake said: “I’ve always kept my choice of sexual partners from my mother. She wouldn’t be cool with it. She’s kind of old-fashioned.”
Yes, I thought, she was. Or maybe naive was a better term to describe Sophie. Or, maybe, average. A person who lived comfortably within convention.
“Didn’t she ever wonder why you weren’t dating like a normal, red-blooded American boy?” I asked.
Jake laughed. “No. Every once in a while I’d show up at the house with a girl my own age to keep her from bugging me.”
“What a little trickster! Did the girls know they were being used as a cover for your less ordinary sexual pursuits?”
“Of course not,” Jake said, as if I was nuts to have asked. “I went out with them, too. I just wasn’t all that into them. Girls my own age never seemed to have anything interesting to say, you know? Not like older women.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “with age comes experience, if not necessarily wisdom. What about your father? Does he know you sleep with older women?”
“My father,” Jake said with an air of mild criticism, “is into much younger, artificially enhanced women these days. He doesn’t understand my interest in mature women—in real women. But he isn’t bothered by it, either. He’s always lived his own life and let me live mine.”
“Does he know about your twenty-six-year-old?”
“No.” Jake laughed. “I know when to keep my mouth shut. Let’s go to your apartment next time,” he said suddenly. “I want to see where you live.”
“No.”
“No?” Jake looked at me. “Why not?”
“There’s another condition to this relationship besides secrecy,” I told him. “No more showing up in the lobby of my office, okay? And we don’t go to my apartment.”
Jake’s expression darkened but his tone was even. “I’m getting the feeling that you’re embarrassed by me.”
“No. It’s not that.” Oh, how I hated to excuse or explain my choices. “It’s just that I need my space, Jake.”
“That old cliché!”
“Don’t laugh,” I scolded. “Or, you know what, go ahead and laugh, I don’t care. I require a certain amount of distance in a relationship.”
“Eva,” Jake said with the patience of a parent explaining a simple rule of social behavior to a lazy child, “relationships aren’t about distance. They’re about closeness.”
We don’t hit our friends, Eva, we hug them.
“Maybe your relationships are,” I said, “but mine aren’t. Come on, Jake, we don’t even have a relationship, not really. We have sex. That’s great, that’s fantastic, but that’s all.”
I thought for a moment that I’d gone too far for Jake’s delicate sensibilities. He shifted a bit away from me and didn’t answer right away.
“That’s a relationship in my book,” he said evenly.
Oh, crap, I’d offended him. Poor kid. And poor me if I lost my incredibly gifted lover before I was done with him. So I made nice and we made up by having more sex. Sex works every time.
I watched as Jake slipped into the male postcoital doze. He looked so very young and vulnerable. I knew he thought it was only a matter of time before he was curled up on my couch watching baseball and I was in the kitchen making dinner.
But he was wrong and he would learn that someday. But not now. Now, he was a young, sexy guy sure of his powers of persuasion. I’d let him enjoy the delusion—and the nap—while it lasted.
27
We live in a crazy, out-of-control world where headlines routinely announce the most bizarre occurrences as newsworthy fact. Who’s to say anymore what’s real and what’s not real? The time has never been so right for the flourishing of liars. History is calling; stand up and be noticed!
—You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: When Fact Is Stranger Than Fiction
SOPHIE
There are two types of people: those who like to go to parties and those who like to give parties. I’m absolutely one of the latter. I love being the hostess. I’m far less comfortable being a guest. Aside from my own wedding (where I was, in a way, the hostess), I can’t think of one party I’ve ever enjoyed.
Knowing this about myself, you’d think I’d stay far away from the singles “mixer” being held in the basement of the local nondenominational church. You’d think that but in this case, you’d be wrong.
I suppose it was news of Brad’s impending marriage proposal to Carly that propelled me out of the apartment and into the church basement where about thirty other middle-aged singles were gathered to talk about nothing while nibbling limp crackers and sipping flat soda out of plastic cups.
So, there I was, dressed, I hoped, appropriately (I’m sure Eva would have criticized the length of my skirt) in order to present myself to total strangers as a potential mate. My anxiety level rose the moment I crossed the threshold. But to turn around and dash away, especially when two women had noted my arrival with brief smiles, seemed cowardly and also, somehow rude. I walked directly to the table on which were laid out the meager refreshments (The church, I thought, must devote most of its money to family-oriented programs.) and reached for a cup of soda. My throat felt dry as sand.
Over the rim of the cup I surveyed the room. The women outnumbered the men. No surprise there. Two men in their sixties were deep in conversation; one wore a fishing cap studded with flies. And I suspected they weren’t there to meet women as much as to hang out with a fellow sportsman. A few women looked to be near seventy. It made me unbearably sad to think of any person that age being “on the market,” as Eva might say, for a companion.
One woman seemed much younger than the rest of us and I wondered why someone barely thirty and fairly attractive would need to meet a man in this depressing place. Had she simply gotten tired of the harshness of bars and the absurdity of five-minute dating? Finally, there were a few men in their forties and fifties, men I might consider eligible. But though each periodically surveyed the room, no one’s eyes lingered on me. Feeling increasingly ridiculous (Someone had put on a tape of some old Billy Joel music, w
hich seemed wildly inappropriate.), I was just about to leave when a tall, handsome man with an air of authority appeared at my side and said hello.
I wished he hadn’t. With effort I looked up at him.
“Hello,” I managed to say.
“I’m Ted.” Ted nodded but didn’t put out his hand. I was glad. My own hands felt uncomfortably sweaty.
“Sophie.”
More silence.
“Do you—”
“I’m not very good at parties,” I blurted, inadvertently cutting him off.
“Really?” Ted asked. His eyes wandered across the room, as if scouting a more interesting guest. I really couldn’t blame him for wanting to move off. Anyway, I wasn’t attracted to him. He reminded me of some of Brad’s corporate buddies, a bit too perfect for my taste.
But maybe not for Eva.
“This might seem kind of odd,” I said, “but I know someone I think you might like.”
Ted looked back to me with some interest. I’m sure he was relieved I wasn’t suggesting a date with me. “Well,” he said with a charming smile, “it does seem a bit unusual. You don’t know anything about me.”
“So, tell me a few things.” Now that the focus was off me, I felt almost relaxed.
He did tell me about himself and I told him about Eva, not the strange things or the inconsistencies, but all the good and impressive things, like how successful she was and how beautiful.
Ted handed me a business card. “I’d love to hear from her,” he said. “She sounds fascinating.”
“Great. I’ll call her right away,” I promised.
“Great. Well . . .”
“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” I said, suddenly awkward again. “I’m not much for parties.”
“Yes, you mentioned that.” Ted’s eyes were already roaming.
The Friends We Keep Page 10