Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  “Sorry to hear that,” I say. “Does he know who the someone is?”

  “Squires Financial.”

  Ah, the Squires family—their tentacles are in Baltimore’s law, financial and shipping businesses. Squires Financial is owned by Rick’s uncle. I warm from guilt. The dots aren’t that hard to connect. I mention to Henry that my building is about to be sold to a Japanese firm. Henry mentions it to Squires. Squires mentions it to his brother. His brother does some nosing around and lures the Japanese to one of his many real estate holdings.

  Hmm…at least this means my job might not go.

  “Fred says if the building doesn’t sell in the next month, the owner goes into bankruptcy.”

  Scratch that idea about still having a job.

  “The owner doesn’t blame Fred, does he?” I ask, and my voice sounds like a guilty thief. I clear my throat. “I mean Fred can’t control the market.”

  “I’m not sure what the owner is saying. I just know poor Fred feels pretty bad.”

  Poor Fred probably made Gina feel pretty bad, too. I’m wondering what she wants me to do, or even why she bothered to call me about this, but then again, it’s probably because she expected me to say I didn’t mention the potential sale to a living soul. What the hell—I’ve been lying about so many things, what’s one more?

  “You know, I didn’t mention the sale to another living soul,” I say nonchalantly. “I wonder if Fred has a leak in his office or something.”

  I hear Gina exhale. Just what she wants to hear. Some ammunition to lob at Fred when he starts getting huffy about the incident.

  “Are you coming home for lunch?” she asks.

  “No. Probably not. I was thinking of going to an employment agency.”

  “Don’t those mostly do secretarial positions?”

  “I guess I’ll find out.”

  “Well, don’t settle for just anything.”

  “I will definitely not settle for anything that doesn’t pay.”

  Gina laughs. “If you’re going to be out tonight, I might have some friends in for a drink and a movie.”

  “That’s okay. You won’t disturb me.”

  After I hang up with her, I dial Wendy’s number, swallowing my disappointment that none of my phone calls to date have been from Henry. Because I’ve been so busy feeling sorry for myself about hunting for a job, I’ve managed not to feel sorry for myself for not getting a call from Henry. Or for stalking him.

  Wendy answers her own phone on the second ring and gushes with sincere regret as soon as she hears my voice.

  “I might not be able to go out with you tonight,” she says.

  “Why not?” My fingers tighten on the receiver and fear warms my face. I already know. Sam has sucked her into doing something. I swear there’s a vortex of evil centered on North Charles Street. She’s under some spell. I need to get her to a deprogramming center and fast.

  “Sam wants to talk.”

  “Wen-dy,” I whine.

  “It’s just to talk, okay? It’s the least I can do.”

  “I thought the least he could do was take you to Jamaica.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like it’s going to work.”

  I can’t help myself. I let out a snort of derision. “Of course it’s not going to work—he had no intention of it working! He just said it to get back in with you—so you could have this little talk.”

  “That’s not true. He couldn’t help it. He was just asked to co-chair an important conference this summer. It means a lot for his career.” Her voice is tired but not angry when I don’t buy her explanations for Sam the Schmuck. Her ability to defend him is being worn down. I soften my own tone.

  “So what are you going to talk about?”

  “The divorce, I guess.”

  “No, Wendy,” I say slowly, “what are you going to talk about? Not him. You.”

  She pauses and I visualize silent tears streaming down her face. When she speaks again, her voice is congested. “I don’t know. I was going to listen mostly.”

  Sighing, I press the phone into my ear, lean on the counter and begin to rip an old order sheet into tiny bits. “Wendy, you wanted me to be straight with you, so here goes. I’m worried about you and don’t want you hurt any more. You should go into this talk as if it were a business meeting. What’s your goal? What is it you want from Sam?”

  When she doesn’t answer, I answer for her. “You want him clean from other obligations. You can’t be running around with a married man. You’re not that kind of woman. You wouldn’t do that to yourself or another woman. You need to tell Sam you won’t see him until the divorce is final.”

  I hear her sniffle. “We’ve been together a long time,” she says, and I can hardly hear her.

  “Do you want me to come get you and take you…” I am about to say “to my place” when I realize I don’t have a place. “We can go get a cup of tea or coffee or something.”

  “Thanks, Ame, but I have a project proposal due by the end of the day.”

  Remembering what a stickler our boss used to be about deadlines, I wince for her.

  “Then how about this? You talk to Sam tonight and we get together afterward.” That, at least, might keep her from caving too deeply to his “charms.” If she knows she is going to see me and have to explain what happened, she might find enough spine to stand up to him.

  “All right,” she says a little reluctantly. “What time?”

  “Ten?”

  “He’s not coming over until after eight.”

  “He’s coming over to your place? Why not have him take you out to dinner?”

  She says nothing, so I’m the one doing the caving. “Okay. I’ll meet you at Zabo’s,” I say, mentioning a bar on Centre Street. If she knows I’m waiting for her, surely she’ll come. “Ten o’clock. Try not to be late. I haven’t been sleeping well and will probably be tired.”

  Mistake. “Then maybe we shouldn’t…”

  “No, I’m fine. Ten o’clock. I want to talk with you. Really.”

  When she hangs up, I am not optimistic. If he’s going to her place, I can envision what will happen. They won’t talk. They’ll just do. She’ll get weepy. He’ll be understanding. Hug hug, kiss kiss, why don’t we take this to the bedroom, honey.

  It’s disconcerting to watch Wendy go through this. I’d always thought of her as strong and directed, not like me, not a swirling mass of indecisiveness. If even Wendy can be felled by an imperfect man, what chance do I have?

  At least our ten o’clock meeting should keep her from doing anything too rash….

  Off the phone, my life feels as empty as my shop. I want to call Henry and pour my heart out about Wendy’s heart. I want to rant and scream because I can’t do it to Wendy. My hand even hovers on the phone, gently touching it, as if this physical connection will be enough to satisfy me and I’ll be able to stop myself from phoning him. I even turn it over and punch in his office number, but as soon as I hear the receptionist at Squires answer with her perky hello, I go zooming down into an abyss of depression as I feel the full weight of what has become of me, and I hang up before saying a word.

  I used to be a fiancée. I used to call Squires and talk to Rick, kind, laughing Rick. Rick would always have a smile in his voice when he heard it was me. I never had to debate whether I should call him. I could call him five times a day and he’d listen to me. I could have talked to him about Wendy and I can imagine his clucking agreement, his quick assessment of how right I was to give Wendy the advice I did, his offer to talk to her himself. I start to choke up. With Rick, I didn’t wonder if I was too needy or too aloof or too jealous of Tess Wintergarten.

  And now…and now I live in early-relationship purgatory, suffering the torments of those who have not yet entered the kingdom, still poised to be thrown back into frigid hell.

  I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I have to stop this. It’s Henry who deserves my ire, flower-giving Henry. Fixate on that thought. Henry took
Tess out last night. Who knows what he’d be doing tonight? Besides, I’ve got plans for tonight anyway, so I shouldn’t really expect him to nose around.

  But, oh, yes, I can expect it. I do expect it. If he wants to see me this weekend, shouldn’t he call to set it up today? And shouldn’t he miss me—as much as I miss him?

  Miss him? When did this happen? And when did other bad things happen—like men expecting women to be sexually available and women thinking it’s what we should do? Why did I have to be born just as they changed the rules?

  An image appears—me in ruffled apron, pearls, mock turtleneck and plaid skirt, welcoming Henry home from work as if we were characters in an old kitchen-appliance ad. Then I turn the page and see Henry, like my father, an adulterer, and me, like my mother, tolerating it because it’s part of the deal.

  I don’t want that deal either.

  I want my old deal back! The one where I get the house, the car, the honeymoon and the happily ever after! The one with the in-ground pool.

  When Rick and I were engaged, we used to daydream together. He wanted a house in Roland Park, not far from his family. I wanted to stay in the city for a few years, then move way out to the country. Since we couldn’t agree on the exact location of our ideal abode, we focused on other areas of concord. An in-ground pool. We both wanted an in-ground pool. He for the exercise and me for…well, the memory of that perfect carefree summer, where everything was kept safe from the hurly-burly of the world, away from the Sams and Freds and Henrys.

  After the accident and the physical therapy, my sister convinced me to see a grief counselor for a while. He was an unconventional guy. I had trouble relating to him. He looked like Freud, for crying out loud, with the neatly clipped beard and the piercing eyes. When I first went into his office, I half expected him to say, “Zo, vass ist deine problemen, meine susse liebchen?” Instead, he’d offered me coffee in a Southern drawl. Wow, talk about a double take. Freud with a Southern accent. That knocked the grief out of me for at least one afternoon.

  Dr. Freud—his real name was Waylon Witherspoon—didn’t say much. He just sat there with a pen and paper on his knee listening to me ramble on about how my leg still hurt and I was afraid I wouldn’t walk right again and it hardly seemed fair, and he would offer me tissues. Occasionally, he’d ask a question that usually had the same effect on me as the misfit accent. I can remember the questions clearly, there were so few. “Did Rick remind you of your father?” “Did you ever lose a pet when you were younger?” “Are both your parents still alive?”

  These usually followed some outpouring completely unrelated to the question. And I’d stare at him, suddenly dry-eyed, wondering if he had been paying attention at all. And the absurdity of sitting in the office of a grief counselor whose failing was that he wasn’t a good listener would hit me like a cold shower and I’d want to laugh. Pretty shrewd, that Dr. Waylon Freud. Throwing those non sequitur questions at me to put me off the grief scent. Very clever.

  Funny, even though I told him a lot of stuff about my struggle to get through the days after the accident, I never got around to telling him how much I wanted an in-ground pool. I didn’t get to a lot of things with him. The insurance money ran out and I couldn’t justify paying his fees out of my own pocket just for an occasional laugh.

  With not much to do in the afternoon, I think of going home, to Gina’s, but stop myself because I don’t want to be in her way and I don’t want her to think I’m not trying, even though I’m not. Trying, that is.

  I do some more halfhearted job searches after I find a local business weekly among the mail. Mostly I read stories about who’s moving into what jobs in the communications field in Baltimore. Once someone takes another job, it’s like musical chairs—everyone else in the field scurries to try for the now-empty slot. I notice that a public relations assistant has just left her job at a local college and moved on to the Red Cross. Hmm…working on a college campus. That perks me up. I’d like that. I look for the phone book and call the college, asking for Human Resources. When I get a secretary, I ask about the job. It should be posted by the beginning of next week. Better to wait until then to send in an application, she tells me helpfully, because they might rewrite the job description.

  Eureka! A job lead at last. This has been a productive day after all. My brief incursion into possible employment energizes me and I’m able to finish straightening the store and the inventory. By the time five o’clock rolls around, I feel like I’ve really done something.

  The day is dying on me and I don’t want to stick around to view its rotting corpse so I decide to leave. Scratch the women’s night out if Wendy’s not going. I don’t know a number of her friends. I’ll have dinner with my sister, then hightail it down to Zabo’s at ten, and try to control my addict-like desire to call Henry. Maybe I’ll take up smoking instead.

  Outside, the day is warm again. It’s one of those phony summer days that Baltimore throws at us in the spring—like the phony war, they precede the real thing. I hop into Gina’s Volvo, shove my sunglasses on my head and crank up her stereo, pretending that I’m young and carefree. At least I have half of that equation right.

  Becoming so engrossed in trying to feel cool I forget where I’m driving and head past the Tess Badlands. Frustration grows as I creep along Charles Street, caught in some jam due to a faulty light that I’m sure is just one more example of the reach of her powers. Damn that Tess—she does like to show off when I’m in the neighborhood.

  At least I manage to keep the car safe. No grinding noises or oil leaks, no bumpers falling off or hood ornaments rotating while a gravel-toned voice murmurs “I want your soul.”

  When I reach Gina’s, though, I’m chagrined to find she isn’t home, and I have no key. Perhaps this is part of Tess’s spell. If so, I mock her powers by sitting on Gina’s patio, cool in the shade of umbrella and trees, while I pet a purring and contented Trixie.

  “Don’t get too comfortable, girl,” I tell her. “We don’t know how long we’ll be here. I might be getting a job. A good job.”

  Gazing out at Gina’s perfect pool-size lawn, I can’t help but notice that it’s looking a little ragged. The grass is in need of mowing and weeds sprout among her landscaped gardens.

  At least sitting out on Gina’s flagstone patio keeps me away from the phone. I hear it ring inside and smugly imagine it to be Henry until I realize that I don’t think I’ve given him Gina’s number. No wonder he hasn’t called! Now I have a legitimate excuse to call him.

  But Gina arrives in such a rush that I am saved from calling Henry. She’s loaded down with groceries so I help her take them into the house.

  “I thought you’d be out all day,” she says, juggling bags as she unlocks the door. I can’t tell if she’s disappointed. Besides, I was out all day. What did she expect—that I’d stay at the store until midnight?

  “Things quieted down. Hope you don’t mind.” I start unloading the bags in the kitchen while she goes for more in the trunk of Fred’s Saab. She’s bought what is called “comfort food” nowadays, and most of it’s instant—boxed potatoes au gratin and a prepared roast beef, frozen French fries and Pepperidge Farm layer cake. This is not the way Gina normally cooks for Fred. For Fred, she makes Silver Palate recipes with ingredients we couldn’t even pronounce growing up, let alone identify as vegetable, animal or mineral.

  Seeing me eye the box of potatoes, she says, sheepishly, “I thought I’d try some of these things while Fred’s out of town.”

  “Mom made this sometimes,” I say, fingering a box of Rice-A-Roni, “with those frozen hamburgers.”

  Smiling, Gina pulls a box of said hamburgers from the grocery bag. “We can have some tonight.”

  For the first time all day, I laugh. “I’ll help cook.”

  Maybe it’s the fact that we’re eating food from our childhood, but over dinner Gina and I bond by sharing memories of when we grew up. She rattles off names of girls she went to high school with and wha
t she thought of them and I screech in happy agreement with her assessments, never realizing she felt the same way. We talk about Mom and Dad and she tells me things I didn’t know—that Mom went to the parish priest for counseling at one time when she was upset about Dad and that she confided in Gina, which bothered her a great deal.

  And here I’d always imagined my sister as not having any burdens, of breezing through life, an A student, meeting her fiancé and getting married after college, living the good life. She tells me that she hopes to work on a family soon, and that if Fred doesn’t come around she might just forget to take her pills.

  We have such a good time talking that I even manage to forget about trying to call Henry. After dinner, I offer to clean up so Gina can get ready for her friends. She invites me to join them, but they’re going to watch Pretty Woman and Thelma and Louise, and frankly, both those movies leave me kind of cold. I just don’t get the whole glamorizing a prostitute’s lifestyle, and two women riding off a cliff isn’t my idea of an affirmation of life either. Henry agrees with me. Those were some of the movies in our movie-discussion at the Fell’s Point tavern.

  I do help her set out glasses and popcorn bowls, and enjoy watching her flit around happy and carefree.

  “How’d you manage to get married women together on a Friday night?” I ask, tossing some popcorn in my mouth while I sit on a stool and watch her mix up daiquiris.

  “Two are divorced, and one’s husband’s out of town like Fred,” she explains.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” I say. “I mean about the divorces.” Unless, of course, one of them is Sam’s wife.

  “They did okay financially. And one of them has a steady boyfriend who’s looking serious. He’s a college professor.”

  Egads. I nearly choke. A college professor? Why do I instantly think of Sam as the only dating college professor around? But he’s a schmuck and of course a schmuck could have more than one girlfriend even if he is married.

  “Really? What does he teach?” I ask after gulping down some water.