Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  I feel like sobbing.

  Instead, I look up as the bell jangles on my shop door. And I see a mottled-face Wendy clutching a tissue doing enough sobbing for both of us.

  “Honey, what’s the matter?” I ask her, immediately going over to her and putting my arm around her shoulders.

  “He’s married!” she shrieks.

  My heart goes into my stomach. Henry married. He’s not just a gigolo. He’s an adulterer. Stupid, stupid Amy. Giving your heart to the first guy who runs his finger down your spine the right way. Who was I trying to kid? It was my heart, sister, in that bed, encased in a red-hot libido, but my heart all the same. My God, Wendy’s a good friend, sobbing her sympathy out on my shoulder.

  I hold her tight and bite my lower lip to keep myself from crying, too. And I remind myself that it’s better to get the pain over with quick, up front. The flowers should have told me, but I refused to listen. It was too soon to start a serious relationship anyway. Sure, it’s been two years, but at least one of them was consumed with physical therapy. It’s really only been a year since I’ve been feeling myself again, and only half of that where I’ve had enough energy for anything. I can’t really be too disappointed. Hey, it’s not so bad. I’ll get over it. My first breakup since Rick. One day, I’ll look back and think, that was tough but it’s a good thing I started seeing guys again.

  “Married? How’d you find that out?” My voice trembles as I ask her.

  “I went to his office to meet him for lunch,” she sniffles.

  “Huh? What for?” I hand her a tissue from a box on the counter. Wendy met Henry for lunch. What a friend. Trying to check him out for me. I’m touched, despite my anger and my pain.

  “I wanted to surprise him,” she says, sounding annoyed. “But he wasn’t there. Instead, a student comes in and asks me if I’m his wife.”

  Rewind. A student? In Henry’s office? A law office?

  Wait a minute. Another image supplants the one of Henry sitting behind his desk with a picture of his wife and kids for Wendy to see. This new scenario takes place in Sam’s office. Sam the professor. Sam the schmuck.

  And—forgive me, Lord—I’m relieved. My face reddens with shame. Yes, I admit it. I’m glad Henry’s not the adulterer even though it means Sam is, and Wendy’s shaken to the core. All that matters is it’s not my Henry. My unmarried Henry. I’ve been spared, while the Angel of Heartbreak has darkened Wendy’s door.

  “Wendy, that’s hardly evidence,” I manage to sputter out, but inside a little voice is screaming for joy. I pat Wendy’s shoulder and usher her to a stool behind the counter. From the fridge I retrieve the last of my Cokes. Note to self: re-stock Cokes before another migraine hits.

  “No, that’s not all.” She thanks me for the Coke and takes a deep gulp. “A professor came in to leave some papers for Sam. So I said kind of nonchalantly that I was waiting for him to go out to lunch. And he says, ‘So you’re Sam’s wife.’”

  She starts to cry again. I get another tissue while she continues to talk. “He must have overheard the student and assumed…”

  “Still not enough.” But it is enough. I know it. And now my shame is fading away, replaced by gut-wrenching sadness for my friend, who doesn’t deserve this, who deserves fidelity and kindness, which is what she offered to the ungrateful Sam.

  “He starts talking to me about all these things—things that Sam must have told him about his wife. He asks me when I got in, how was the weather in California, anyway, and when did I think I’d be able to move East.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing! I just kind of mumbled ‘Don’t know’ and eventually he went away and so did I!”

  So Sam will return to his office and some friendly professor will compliment him on his wife’s looks. Life is good.

  Eyeing Wendy, I decide life is not good. She’s invested nearly a year in this guy. Who would have thought that a college professor would lie like that? A college professor who looks like Sam?

  “So you haven’t actually talked to Sam yet?” I don’t know what to say. I certainly can’t say that everything will be okay and maybe she’s mistaken and maybe Sam is really as faithful as Fido. I can’t say that. And I certainly can’t say “Thank God you didn’t mean Henry.”

  “Sam’s a schmuck,” I finally manage to blurt out, thinking somehow that this will comfort her.

  “What?”

  “Sam’s a schmuck. I always felt he was a schmuck. He never looks me in the eye.”

  Wendy stops her sniffling and straightens on the stool. “You always felt that way?”

  “Yup. Always. There was always something about him that kind of, I don’t know, smelled wrong.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “You seemed happy. I didn’t think it was my place.”

  “Why not? You’re my best friend.” Her eyes are wide and watery, and her stare cuts me. I am now the betrayer, not Sam.

  “I…I don’t know. I just thought…” What does anyone think under those circumstances? I didn’t want to sound like her mother, who thought dating a college professor was akin to going out with a Communist. “I didn’t want to judge.”

  “But you did judge. You just kept it to yourself. That’s not fair, Amy. I wouldn’t do that to you.” Her wounded look makes my mouth go dry. She’s right. I should have said something. I was being selfish. I was afraid if I said something, I’d ruin our friendship, and I needed her friendship.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Did you know he was married right away?”

  “No, but I guess I suspected something was up.”

  “You suspected he was married and you didn’t say anything at all?” Wendy looks at her watch and shakes her head. “Damn! I have a four o’clock.”

  “What have you been doing since lunch?”

  “Walking around. Thinking.” She’s stopped crying and just looks angry now, but her anger is directed at me.

  “Do you want me to call your office and say you’ll be late? I offer. “Or why don’t I tell them you won’t be back today? You should go home. Relax. Put your feet up. Watch a movie.” I want to do anything to help her now.

  She stares at me as if I have two heads. Which I do if you think about it—the two women inside me are starting to wage a battle over what they have just learned. No, not that Henry’s not the adulterer. They just learned that I care about Henry. Or at least want to care about him.

  “If you had told me you suspected Sam was married, I would have listened,” she says in a low, tired voice.

  “I tried to warn you once,” I say feebly, the memory coming back to me.

  “When?”

  “When Sam couldn’t get together with you at Christmas. Remember? I said ‘That doesn’t sound good.’”

  Wendy leans her head to one side and her lip twists upward. “That was a warning? Why didn’t you just write it in Swahili and send a telegram?”

  “Well, I figured you’d get the message—when a guy can’t be with you at the holidays it can only mean one thing.”

  “He has parents he needs to visit, just like I had parents I needed to visit except they were in Mexico last year.” She has stopped crying. My therapy has worked.

  “Well, okay. It was just a hunch. That he was up to something. I didn’t know. I was like you. In the dark.”

  She glares at me, her eyes thin slits of anger. “You’re not like me. You’re not dating a married man.” She shakes her head in frustration. “I have to leave or I’ll be late.”

  With a flick of her head, she turns and departs. So I have now become the enemy and Sam is safe. That crafty Sam. How’d he do that?

  Another headache nips at my brow. Too much to think about. Philandering boyfriends, angry friends. I can’t compute it all. I’ll call Wendy later after she’s had a chance to have a good cry. The only thing I can do to soothe the blow is offer a shoulder and a box of chocolates.

  No, a box of flowers. I tear off an order s
heet and write Wendy’s address. Chuck will be in soon for the afternoon deliveries. I choose an oak-leaved geranium for true friendship and a white chrysanthemum for truth. Wendy won’t get the message, of course, but it’s enough that I know what I’m saying—that I stand by her as a friend during this time when she learns a hard truth. On the card, I write, “Hoping to cheer you. Ame.”

  When Chuck comes in a little while later, I explain the deliveries to him slowly and carefully, enunciating very clearly and even showing him on a map where some of the folks live. In particular, I point out Wendy’s apartment and instruct him to leave her delivery in front of her apartment door, and not in the lobby.

  Chuck asks me about working part-time during the summer, in the shop itself instead of just on the road.

  “I’ll let you know,” I say. “But Brad has first dibs on the job. Let me see what he wants to do.” Chuck doesn’t know there is no Brad.

  For months now, I’ve been shorthanded. A part-time employee, Danielle, quit to go to Florida with her boyfriend. If I ever get sick or want to go on vacation, the shop is just shut for those days. But since I don’t own the place, I need to clear any new hires with my brother-in-law Fred, who deals with the owner, his client.

  After turning the closed sign over and locking the door, I decide not to head home right away but to trek over to Gina’s. I can spend some quality time with her, mooch some dinner, then talk to Fred about the new hire idea. Trixie has enough cat food to last her through a nuclear winter so I’m good to go.

  During my short drive north of town, I pass Tess Wintergarten’s apartment complex. Damn, that woman’s good! As soon as I drive by the building, my car starts to growl like a bear with an empty stomach. Tess doesn’t even need to give you the Evil Eye for her dirty work to be accomplished.

  By the time I arrive at Gina’s stately home, my car sounds like a souped-up motorcycle. Gina must have heard me coming because she stands on the side porch with her arms crossed over her chest. She’s staring at me.

  “My God, what’s the matter with that thing?” she asks when I tramp into her house. It’s cool inside. Gina has the AC cranked up to do battle with the spring heatwave.

  “Don’t know. Just started.”

  “You better get that checked. Is it going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be fine. I’m sure.” She ushers me into the kitchen and I sit on a stool at the counter while she whips up something from a gourmet cookbook, chopping shallots, garlic and chicken and throwing them in a pan. The dish is similar enough to the one Henry cooked for me that I start to get the hots.

  “Wendy’s boyfriend is married,” I offer as conversation.

  “Sam? I never liked him.”

  “Same here. She’s pretty broken up about it.”

  “She’s dumping him, right?”

  “Sure,” I say, but I’m not quite sure at all. In married-person’s world, the land my sister lives in, it is only logical that one would break up with a married boyfriend. In unmarried-person’s world, it’s not so clear. I rub my forehead with my fingers.

  “You have another headache?” Gina asks. “I’ve got some aspirin.”

  “Any Motrin?”

  “Nope. Some Excedrin. And Extra Strength Tylenol.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll take something when I get home.”

  We chat about our parents for a while and Gina tells me about a new store she’s discovered that sells discount designer clothes, and a new show on HGTV that she loves. Three years older than I am, Gina was an art history major in college, which is how she met Fred. He was taking an art history class to fulfill a liberal arts requirement. They married right after they graduated, which was seven years ago. I know that Gina wants to have kids, but Fred has been a little slow coming around, which is one more reason I’m not too fond of Fred. He likes to take vacations all over the world and go out a lot.

  Speaking of Fred, in about an hour he arrives home hot and weary. After a quick kiss on Gina’s cheek, he looks over at me and smiles. Fred looks a little like a clean-cut version of Sam. Same receding hairline and wispy hair, same skinny figure and long face, but he wears Brooks Brothers clothes and is appropriately shaved and shorn for the workaday world.

  “How’s it going, Ame?” he asks me while he pours himself a Scotch. When he holds up the bottle in my direction, I shake my head no at the invitation.

  “Pretty good,” I say. Then I remember the part-time job I need to talk with him about, so I launch into my spiel. While I talk, he looks down, swirls his drink, grimaces, twists his mouth to one side—not good signs. I wonder if I’ve done something wrong.

  “Business has been slow,” I offer, “but I expect it to pick up soon. Wedding season.”

  “Well, yeah,” he says noncommittally.

  Gina empties a steaming pot of pasta into a colander.

  “You should tell her, Fred.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Fred looks sharply at Gina. “It’s not official.”

  “What’s not official?”

  Gina stacks plates and cutlery on a tray to take outside. We’ll eat on the patio. “She needs to make plans.”

  “What plans?” I open the sliding door to the flagstone patio to let Gina walk through. After she places the tray on the umbrella-shaded table, she starts setting out plates and cutlery. I go out to help.

  “What plans?” I ask again, more insistent.

  “Fred,” Gina says, exasperated, “either you tell her or I will.”

  Fred steps over to the door. “Macgregor is thinking of liquidating his assets.”

  This is accountant-speak for “you’re out of a job.” Macgregor is the man who owns “Flowers by Amy,” a shop he bought for his own daughter Amy to run. She ran all right—all the way to Madrid with some matador wannabe. But the name of the place made it seem like Karma when Fred originally told me about the job.

  “He’s going to sell the store?”

  “Sort of.” Fred takes a slow gulp of Scotch. “He’s going to sell the building. Has a good lead on it and it will probably be final by the end of the week.”

  “I didn’t know he owned the building.”

  “He owns several buildings downtown,” Fred says seriously, as if I’m a dummkopf for not knowing. “But this is not information to be bandying about.” He glares at Gina, who just shrugs her shoulders.

  I swallow hard. “If he sells the building by the end of the week, how much longer before I have to leave? I mean, how long do I have a job?”

  Fred does not answer right away. Instead, he pours himself another Scotch and offers one to Gina, who grabs it on her way back into the kitchen.

  “I don’t really know. Depends on how quickly the new owner acts.”

  “Who is the new owner?”

  “I shouldn’t say.”

  “Some Japanese firm,” my sister blurts. She empties the pasta into an earthenware dish, then pours the chicken over the top. “Dinner’s ready. Grab the glasses, Ame.” I notice she does not ask Fred to grab the glasses. Fred is an old-school kind of guy. Me work. You cook and clean. That sort of thing.

  A Japanese firm? Ouch. Chances are they’re not going to keep a money-losing flower shop going for long. Chances are they’ll close me down before you can say “a sushi bar would work well here.”

  “So I guess this is a bad time to think about hiring new people, huh?” I say and grab wine glasses, a bottle of pinot grigio and the corkscrew.

  chapter 7

  White clover: Think of me

  A month before the accident, Rick and I had dinner at my parents’ house. It was a warm night, and, at my insistence, my mother had set the table outside. She didn’t want to serve al fresco—she warned of insects and rain. But I thought their deck was far more elegant than the dining room. At least we’d be able to stare at the dusky blue sky with its bashful early stars, instead of at a mass-produced painting of a sea at sunset. Knowing Rick’s mother was an excellent cook, Mom knocked herself out a
nd made a shrimp and pasta dish worthy of any gourmand. After dinner, I strolled barefoot with Rick around the back lawn, showing him my mother’s recently planted vegetables. Hidden in the cheerful clover, a bee attached itself to my foot and stung me! I’d made it to adulthood without once being stung by a bee or wasp, so this was more than a physical pain. It was an affront—on my home turf, to be felled by a lowly bumblebee. The foot was still a little sore four weeks later, and I almost used it as an excuse to beg off our commitment that night, the night it all ended.

  To drown my sorrow I have too much to drink at dinner. I polish off three huge glasses of vino while my sister and Fred sip daintily on one apiece. Because of the wine and the fact that my car sounds like a Mack truck on steroids, my sister insists I spend the night. I don’t protest and it feels good to sink into a bed with a new mattress and expensive Duvet. She puts me in one of her house’s four bedrooms—the one farthest from the master suite, on the front corner of the house.

  Damn front corners. Gina and Fred might live in an expensive part of town, but their house is near the corner of Roland Avenue where buses start roaring down the road at 5:00 a.m. as people head off to jobs in the city. When the noise wakes me up, I feel like putting the time to good use by spray-painting sheets and hanging them out the window to warn passersby: “Badlands ahead. Tess Wintergarten.”

  Instead, I wander downstairs and start the coffee, then take a shower. By now I have a headache that has all the makings of a migraine. Shouldn’t have had that wine last night when I already felt a headache coming on. To make matters worse, I left my magic pills at my house and the shop. None in my purse. Way to go, Amy.