Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  Gina refuses aid and shoos us into the living room while she cooks. I wonder what she’ll make since her recent supplies aren’t of the gourmet variety. Hearing her opening and closing cabinets, I know she’s wondering the same thing.

  In the cool blue living room, Henry sits on Gina’s white sofa and looks admiringly around.

  “Nice place,” he says. “Squires doesn’t live far from here.”

  Ah, yes. The Squires. Old money. Old Baltimore. Old Amy.

  “I better take a shower,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  In the shower I try to pretend I’m diving into a clear warm pool and leaving everything behind, but nothing dulls the throbbing of the scar. Every time I duck my head under the spray, I spring back as the water hits the wound, so I have to bend my neck in a contorted way to shampoo my hair.

  Not wanting Henry to wait too long, I rush through dressing, quickly fluffing my hair with the dryer and throwing on the sundress Gina bought for me, a red print number that floats around my ankles and makes me feel pretty the way Maria felt pretty in West Side Story. Lucky for me we went shopping or I’d have nothing to wear. I haven’t done laundry yet and my “good clothes” repertoire is limited and stored away.

  Earrings, a dusting of powder and smear of lipstick, as well as a spritz of a knockoff of a designer perfume, and I’m good to go.

  When I reenter the living room, Gina sits perched on an ottoman listening to Henry talk about his work at Squires. For an ice-cold minute, I worry that she has told him about Rick, which I have yet to do. But I can tell from her stricken face that she’s not let on. She looks at me with raised eyebrows as she makes an excuse to leave the room. This time, I catch the code. She is saying: you didn’t tell me he worked for Rick’s old firm.

  Henry pats the seat beside him and for the twenty minutes while Gina finishes dinner, he and I are like two sparking teenagers. He draws a soft line around my cut, asks about my headache and kisses me on the forehead. Inside, a little voice (a good voice, my voice, not the Inner Feminista or the Babushka Crone) keeps saying in wonder, “You were hurt and he came to you” over and over again. And it didn’t take much. Just a scratch on the forehead. Like Sally Fields, I feel like saying “You like me, you really like me.”

  By the time Gina calls us to the table, I’m ready to melt into his arms due to a whole different kind of painkiller.

  For dinner, Gina has thrown together boneless pork chops, Betty Crocker potatoes au gratin and a salad. We eat at the kitchen table, and I see the Pepperidge Farm chocolate layer cake thawing on the counter. She’s even uncorked a bottle of rosé, but I have only half a glass, Gina barely touches hers, and Henry limits himself to one because he’s had the bourbon and he’s risk-averse when it comes to drinking and driving.

  “The cops like to pull me over,” he says to Gina.

  Gina manages to ask him all the questions I have not.

  “So, Henry,” she says nonchalantly as she passes the potatoes, “have you ever been married?”

  I nearly do the gagging routine, expecting him to get all huffy about invading his privacy, remembering Sam’s performance the night before. But Henry smiles, acknowledging what my sister is up to, and shakes his head no.

  Note to self: send Gina a thank-you note.

  She segues from that into his law work, and talks about various divorce lawyers she knows who represent friends. When she’s finished with that chitchat, she casually asks if handling so many divorce cases turns him off to the idea of marriage. Now I’m feeling my veins pulse in my neck and my eyes are saucers but she ignores the death rays coming from them.

  “Nope,” Henry answers between mouthfuls. “Not at all. I’ll get married one of these days.” He says it like it’s the same as buying a car. He’ll get around to it eventually. He has so many to choose from, after all.

  Gina then manages to get him talking about his goals, other than owning a boat and a Porsche. He wants to own his own law firm some day, to be the Squires of his own little empire, and he wants to live in the country.

  “The city scene is important when you’re young and hungry,” he says, wiping his mouth. Even though we haven’t offered gourmet cooking, his plate looks as if a canine licked it. Maybe Henry is part canine. Maybe he’s part wolf. I try to remember if it was a full moon when we met.

  “But it’s crowded and noisy and it’s hard to find parking spots,” he complains.

  “Wendy likes it,” I say. I want to say that I liked it, too, but that would lead to a question about when I lived in the city, and then Gina would send me Morse Code messages with her eyebrows telling me to fess up about Rick.

  “You’ll have to introduce me to Wendy,” he says, winking at me.

  Note to self: do not introduce Henry to Wendy. He’ll be sending her flowers in a heartbeat.

  After dinner, Gina serves cake and coffee and won’t accept our offer to help her clean up. Henry stretches and yawns like a cat, not like a canine, then taps me on the knee.

  “I should be going.”

  Going where? It’s only eight o’clock.

  “We could sit outside for a while.”

  “You’re exhausted. And I have to get up early tomorrow.” He strokes my leg.

  “Why?” I don’t want him to leave. For the first time in a long time, I feel the same as I did when I was with Rick. Normal. Comfortable. Safe. The same way I used to feel diving into Sheila Vleznevchik’s pool.

  “I’m driving to the Eastern Shore.” Standing, he walks to the glass door and looks out. Gina is running water and rinsing dishes, but I would like to talk to Henry alone to find out why he’s going to the shore tomorrow and who he’s going to meet there. I’m too embarrassed to carry out my interrogation in front of my sister. I haven’t attended interrogation school the way she has and I’m afraid my questioning isn’t up to her standards. And hey, I do have some pride.

  Opening the door, I step outside so that he’ll follow me, which he does.

  “This is the scene of the crime.” I point to the edge of the patio where the lilies of the valley smirk at us, and where Old Blue failed to protect me.

  “Too bad Gina’s your sister. You could sue. I’d represent you.” He puts his arm around me and kisses my head. Oh, man, if Henry’s not getting serious, he sure does a good imitation of it.

  “Why are you going to the shore?” I ask, now that we’re out of Gina’s earshot.

  “Prospective client. I was going to drive down tonight. I’m meeting her at ten tomorrow.”

  Meeting her? Dang. A near escape. Why does the client have to be a her? And why can’t I just enjoy Henry for who he is? Why do I need to be constantly scouring his future for signs of Sam? For signs of heartbreak.

  “Weather’s supposed to be nice,” I say, looking up at the clear sky. A faint moon is painted in the corner of the washed-out blue.

  “Yeah. It won’t be that bad.” He draws me to him in a hot kiss, and by the time he’s done, I feel gooey and normal and not normal all at once. Stay, Henry, I want to say. Or even, “Take me with you.” Just don’t leave me here on the verge of something.

  “I really have to be going.” Turning, he pops his head in the kitchen and thanks Gina for dinner, then comes back outside and we walk around the house to the driveway. At his car, I lean inside while he gets ready to leave.

  “Thanks for coming today,” I say, smiling. “It was really thoughtful.”

  “No problem.” He looks at my white shoulders. “Next time you mow a lawn, you might want to wear a tank top.”

  I have a faint “tennis shoulder”—bare, white skin where my T kept the sun at bay. Now I realize that while I thought of myself as sexy and sweet in my new sundress all night, he’d seen those stupid shirt lines.

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll call you,” he says and puts the car into gear.

  “You have Gina’s number now?” I don’t remember giving it to him.

  “I can look it up.” He inches out of t
he driveway.

  “What if it’s unlisted?” I call after him.

  “Is it?”

  “No.”

  His teeth flash in a broad smile.

  chapter 11

  Calla lily: Panache

  Rick and I chose a small band for our reception, but I was nervous about dancing. He had no fears—his private prep school had included dancing lessons in the curriculum. After I was through teasing him about how cute he must have looked in his short pants and bow tie waltzing with pigtailed princesses from the all-girls’ academy down the road, he suggested the way to alleviate my apprehension was to take a few dancing lessons together. He could use the brushup, he announced, and I would feel better after a class or two. He arranged for private lessons at Peabody Prep, and our teacher was a bohemian-looking woman whose age was masked by pancake makeup and Cleopatra eyeliner, and who wore a long-fringed shawl imprinted with a swirling calla lily design. Her body had lost the slenderness of youth but none of its dignified hauteur. Even the most regal model would have looked like a slump-shouldered teenybopper next to Madame Duarte’s rod-straight posture. The lessons helped—not so much because of what she taught me, but rather because of what I learned about Rick. He could dance, but not with any flair. We were perfectly matched, and would have fared competently, if not brilliantly, on the dance floor when the band struck up our favorite song.

  Of course Henry sends me flowers. This time, it’s a big spray of mixed varieties—yellow daffodils (regard), white lilies (youthful innocence) and some bachelor’s buttons (celibacy.) Talk about mixed messages. You figure it out because I can’t. The card reads, “Hoping you’re feeling better. All my love, Henry.” It’s certainly better than getting flowers that signal “distrust” and “beware” and “unfaithful.” Hell, it’s better than getting no flowers at all.

  And when they arrive on Sunday afternoon, it helps me forget that he’s probably meeting with some Southern-accented, long-legged beauty on the Eastern Shore, giving her his lopsided grin and “conchita” look just to get her business. Henry knows his assets and uses them well.

  Gina likes Henry. She told me after he drove off the night before, and she tells me again today. “Any man who would come to your side when you’re hurt is a decent human being,” she says seriously.

  Wary as I am, I have to admit that Henry’s riding to the rescue when I was in the hospital impresses me. It gives me a warm feeling, a contentment, a sense that I am loved.

  I analyzed it all last night. Gina spent the evening watching Designing for the Sexes on HGTV and I sat up with her a little while to be companionable. During commercial breaks, she talked about the accident, looked at my scar with concern, and pronounced Henry’s likeability. But I was tuckered out from the day and my eyelids were drooping fast, so I excused myself and went up to my room, where I sat on a window bench staring into the night sky, my legs curled under my dress, my chin resting on my arms.

  The inner voices were all gone and there was only me, Amy Sheldon, left to figure things out on my own. Exactly a week ago, I had been dateless and clueless and sex-starved. Now, seven days later, I could lay claim to a real date of a guy, with whom I could have fantastic sex whenever he was in the mood (which seemed about any time I was). But I was still clueless.

  What do you want? I whispered to myself. What about that life plan Gina urged you to write? What would it say now? What would it say about Henry and you?

  The problem is I don’t want to write a life plan. I want someone else to write it for me. If I could stare into a crystal ball and see happiness with Henry, even for a short time, I’d race toward it, no holds barred. But since no crystal ball is available, I’m left at sea with no rudder, nothing to guide me except my own fears of heartbreak. That’s the trouble with heartbreak. Once you experience it like I did with Rick, the bruise never quite heals. Even that night I felt it throb and strain and issue its own warnings to beware.

  I must have sat in the window seat for an hour because I heard Gina going to bed before I moved. By then, my legs were cramped from being under me so long. My right leg in particular, the one that had been injured, ached like hell. I forget I need to coddle it, like a difficult pet.

  But my physical pain served as a reminder of what Henry did that day—come to me in a time of need. That counts for something. Doesn’t it?

  Neither of us has used the L word. Way too soon for that, and maybe we’ll never get that far. After all, I keep reminding myself, this is all about getting on the bicycle again. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about getting into the BMW. The allegorical BMW, that is.

  Anyway, this languid Sunday afternoon Gina tells me that she thinks Henry is like me. Although, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how she came to this conclusion after one evening’s conversation. She says that the way he ate her prepackaged dinner, the way he was comfortable talking to his “girlfriend’s” sister, the way he obviously didn’t care how I looked (thanks, Gina, I really needed to be reminded how awful I must have looked)—all these make Henry Castle a “keeper” in her book.

  The only thing she manages to chide me on is my behavior, not his.

  “Why haven’t you told him about Rick?” she asks as we sun ourselves on the patio. She’s fixed wine spritzers for us and we’re pretending to be pampered ladies of leisure. For dinner, she is making the prepared roast beef with the gravy in a plastic packet, and frozen fries, with Dove bars for dessert.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess because it’s such a downer.”

  “Amy! He was part of your life!”

  “Yeah, but when do you bring it up? Right after the introduction? Hello, I’m Amy Sheldon and my fiancé was killed in an accident two years ago? I might as well smack a Caution—Fragile label on my forehead.”

  At the mention of my forehead, Gina looks at my wound. “How are your stitches?”

  “Just a little itchy and sore.”

  She takes another sip of her spritzer and slathers some sunblock on her chest. “You have to tell him sometime. He works for Squires. I would have thought that was a good time to bring it up—when you found that out.”

  I remember when I found out he worked at Rick’s firm—the angry moment in the flower shop that seems like years ago now. A love affair is like a dog’s life—multiply each day by twenty.

  “I’ll tell him. Maybe I’ll tell him tonight.” That shuts Gina up about my responsibilities, but she then talks about having Henry over to dinner when Fred gets home, and I don’t care if Henry is up to that because I’m not.

  “I need to talk with Fred about the shop,” I say, veering off into another direction. “If it’s closing regardless what happens, I should just start folding it up and looking for something else full-time.” I don’t tell her that I’ve been closing it up all week.

  “That’s not a bad idea. I’m glad you’re getting out of that, anyway. You could always go back to school, you know.”

  “How would I do that?”

  She rolls over. “At night. You could go to law school.”

  I have never, in my life, expressed an interest in becoming a lawyer. Does she think I should do it just to show an interest in Henry’s work? Isn’t that taking things a little too far? Hmm…an idea occurs to me.

  “Is that something you’ve thought of?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Aha. More Dream Transference. “Well, Gina, you should do it. Fred has enough money. And you’re not working. I never knew you thought of going to law school!”

  “Well, you know, Mom and Dad never thought of careers for us—just marriage.”

  Yup. Life in the burbs. Grow up and get married. Career? Raising kids is a career! Sit down and eat your peas!

  “I say ‘go for it!’ I bet you could get into law school in a snap. You were always tops in your class.”

  “I don’t know. I think that moment has passed, if you know what I mean.”

  Not at first, but then I figure it out. She wants kids n
ow. Not law school. Kids. Kids will be her career.

  Later, we gorge on the roast and fries and forget about the salad, which is one of those bagged things, anyway. Gina says she’ll make chef’s salad for lunch the next day. I insist on cleaning up and she spends nearly a half hour on the phone with Fred in the evening, her bedroom door closed. Who knows why, but she does seem to love the guy.

  When she comes back into the kitchen, she is smiling like a Cheshire cat.

  “Guess who called while I was on the phone?”

  “Wendy?”

  “Well, yeah. But Henry called, too.”

  I resist the urge to race through the house to grab the phone and return the calls. Instead, I wipe my hands, glance out back at the waning day, demurely pick up the cordless in the kitchen and set a leisurely pace up the stairs. Once out of sight, though, I skip to my room feeling like a teenager who knows she’s getting asked to the prom.

  I’ll call Henry first, but only so I’ll have some real news to share with Wendy when I call her. Not because I really want to talk with him. No. Not at all. Not. At. All.

  He answers on the third ring and sounds tired. Not “just had sex with yet another babe” tired, but “worked hard today” tired. He asks me how I’m feeling. I ask him how his meeting went. Both of us answer “okay.” He tells me about his week, which is very busy. I tell him about mine, which is not.

  At the end of the conversation, I’m feeling that ache. It’s the “I wish he would say he loves me” ache and I despise myself for needing that so early in the game. Riding a bike. This is all about getting on and riding the bike. Nothing more.

  “Call me this week,” I manage to say. “I’ll be at the shop a few days. And doing some job hunting.”

  “I’ll try. Maybe we can have lunch some day.”

  “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  “I liked your sister. Nice, down-to-earth lady.”

  “She wants you to come to dinner when her husband is home.”

  “To inspect me?”

  “No,” I laugh, thinking “yes, of course.”

  “Just tell me the time and the day, conchita, and I’ll have my people talk to your people.”