Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  “Thanks, Henry. For coming to the hospital yesterday.”

  “No problema.”

  I’m feeling so warm and cozy by the end of our conversation that I don’t bring up the fact that I was engaged to Rick Squires. It seems like such a mood-killer. Why burden Henry with my problems.

  I try calling Wendy, but get no answer.

  As it is, I don’t reach Wendy until the next day, Monday. I wake up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed except for the dull pain above my eye, but at least I can shower without having to twist my head around funny. I’m feeling so good that I actually make a to-do list, even scheduling the whole day out into timed increments. Nine-thirty to eleven—job hunt. Eleven to noon—redo résumé. Noon to one—lunch. You get the picture.

  When I arrive in the kitchen, Gina is already there popping toaster strudels onto a plate. This is the last day before Fred comes home, the last opportunity for prefab food. She glances at my shorts and T-shirt and looks confused.

  “Is that what you’re wearing into the shop?” she says as she squeezes gooey glaze over a cherry strudel.

  “I was going to job hunt today—you know, look at ads.” I walk behind her and pop my own strudel into the toaster oven, then grab a glass of OJ from the fridge. “Make some calls.”

  “Who’s minding the store?”

  I resist the urge to say “Brad” and finish my orange juice before answering. “Nobody. But since it’s going to close anyway, I thought I’d grab the opportunity to get a head start on my job search.”

  Gina frowns. “Ame, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The owner probably expects you to be there every day, selling the stock, taking care of orders and that sort of thing.”

  “What’s he going to do—fire me?” I laugh. “Give me a bad recommendation? It’s not like I’ll be looking for another flower shop job.” And didn’t Gina tell me just the other day that I could job hunt from home?

  Gina takes her plate and mug and sits at the kitchen table. “I’m relieved to hear you say that—that you’ll be looking outside of retail. I always thought of this job as a temporary thing. But that still doesn’t allay my concerns about letting your current employer down.”

  Uh-oh. Anytime your sister throws the word allay at you, you know she’s serious. As soon as I drizzle the glaze on my just-popped strudel, I join her at the table.

  “I guess I never thought of the shop as anything but a tax write-off for Fred’s client. I mean, I never see the owner. I always deal with Fred. And nobody seems to care if I do a good job or a lousy one. When I had the flu this year and didn’t have anyone to cover for me, there wasn’t a peep. That was an eye-opener.”

  “Actually, Fred wondered about that. But I told him you were sick and couldn’t do anything about it.” Red fruit filling leaks on her hand and she wipes it off with a paper napkin.

  Ah, now I see. Gina’s been talking to Fred.

  “You should have said something. He should have said something.” No coffee. I forgot my coffee. I get up to grab a mug and fill it. “Okay, I’ll go in today. I can make some calls from there, anyway.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.” Gina’s good mood returns, her cheerful voice, the one that sounds like a mother asking little Johnny what he did in school today. “So tell me, what field are you looking in—communications again? Do you want Fred to nose around for you?”

  “No. I’ll be okay. I’m going to ask Wendy for some leads.” I have to call her, anyway, to catch up. Wendy—I sure hope the reason I couldn’t reach her wasn’t because she’d been out with Sam. Something deep inside me growls at that prospect.

  Gina’s day consists of grocery shopping—probably to load in more Fred-friendly food—and an oil change. She heads out before I do since she’s all dressed and ready, and I need to change. Damn responsibility.

  I slip into khakis and keep my T on, then remember Henry suggesting we get together for lunch some time this week, and so I change instead into tight black pants and the fuchsia wrap blouse Gina bought me. I even put on those uncomfortable sandals we picked up. I can take them off in the store and throw on my loafers. I put my loafers in a bag and I’m off.

  At the shop a few minutes later, I realize I drove into town without once thinking of Tess Wintergarten and her Circle of Doom.

  Despite the fact that I told Gina I’d be opening the shop, I keep the closed sign turned over until I have a chance to reach Wendy. When I do, her voice is mellow and quiet, which she attributes to the fact that the office is mellow and quiet and she has to keep it down or everyone will hear her. But I suspect something is going on.

  “I’m sorry if I snapped at you the other night,” she says, and for a minute, I don’t know what she’s talking about. Then I remember our evening with Sam at Zabo’s. It seems like an epoch away. Dog years. “How are you doing? What happened with your eye? How can you even drive?”

  I imagine Gina telling her I’d poked my eye out when Wendy called during the whole unfortunate business with the mower and the hairpin, so I allay her fears (allay can be a nice word) and give her the whole story. Including the part about Henry showing up and having dinner together and him calling me last night.

  “Thanks for calling him,” I tell her, knowing that she probably called him as a makeup for her bad behavior at Zabo’s. “Where’d you get his number?”

  “I looked it up,” she says. “You and Henry—who would have guessed you’d find someone your first time out? You always were a lucky stiff.”

  I let that pass. I don’t consider myself too lucky given the circumstances. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions,” I warn her, “Henry and I are just having fun together. Lots of fun.” It feels good to make it sound light and easy. Maybe if I tell enough people, I’ll start believing it, too.

  “Besides,” I add, “I’m not convinced Henry is looking for anything serious—either.”

  “Well, he sounded, I don’t know, concerned when I called him about your accident. Like he cared.” She herself sounds wistful, as if Henry’s tone made her realize what she was lacking with Sam. “Like it was more than just fun.”

  I can’t help myself. I have to know more. “What did he say? I mean, what did you say and what did he say?”

  “The way Gina described it, it sounded like you were barely breathing,” she says. “And, well, my car has been running kind of ragged and I couldn’t come to see you—and…”

  “So you called Henry for a ride?”

  “Sort of. But I never got around to asking because he was asking me for lots of details that I didn’t have. And he sounded in a rush—like he wanted to get to you as soon as possible, so he was off the phone before I had a chance to ask if he could pick me up.”

  I think Wendy is stretching the truth, but I don’t care. My guess is, at first, she might have called Henry to get a ride, but once she sensed his concern, she let him run with it, as a gift to me. She would know how good it would make me feel to have him show up at my side, so she let me enjoy it. Wendy is such a good friend. I wish I could do more for her. I wish I could come to her aid the way she’s come to mine, but I feel inadequate. My attempts at slaying her devotion to Sam failed, and only made her feel bad.

  “I tried to call you a couple times,” I tell her. “Where were you this weekend?”

  “Just around.”

  Around with Sam. I sigh and slump against the counter. Now I have her to the point where she won’t even confide in me. What a great friend I’ve turned out to be. “Look, Wen, if you were out with Sam you don’t need to hide it from me. I know it must be hard.”

  “Well, he did come over. We just went to an art exhibit. We’d been planning it. Before.” She doesn’t sound happy, not the way she used to sound when she told me about what she and Sam did on weekends.

  “Do you know anything more about his situation?” Oh, to hell with being reserved. “About his wife, I mean.”

  “She teaches at Berkeley.”

  “So there are two Prof
essor Terrills out there.”

  “No. One Professor Terrill and another Professor Moroni. She kept her name.”

  So Sam ponied up more info on the wife. Did he do it to make Wendy feel a part of this problem? Or sympathetic to his wife?

  “She hasn’t been able to find a position on the East Coast and she’s not sure she wants to,” Wendy volunteers softly. “So they’ve been separated.”

  Separated? Sure, they have three thousand miles between them. But that’s not the same thing as a legal document. I suspect Sam did not include that nuance in his explanation, and I doubt Wendy pressed him on it. Far better to imagine some mean hag out in the Golden State taunting him and harassing him until he reaches for the Make-Your-Own-Divorce kit.

  “What does she teach?”

  “Political science.”

  Of course. She’s a Marxist. No wonder Sam won’t give her up. Marxists are de rigueur on college campuses. Why should he give up his own private stash?

  “So what are you going to do?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know. Think about it. I need to use up some vacation. Maybe I’ll go away somewhere by myself. The beach.” Her voice is really sad and I know why. For months now she’s been hoarding her vacation time so that she and Sam could go away together. Now she’s facing the prospect of doing that alone. Wait a minute—she doesn’t have to go alone.

  “We could go together.”

  She laughs, a good sound. “Amy, how could you afford to go to the beach?”

  “I have some money saved up. For emergencies.” To be exact, I have $2,347.89 in the bank. It will be enough for a down payment on a car or the security deposit on a new place if I’m careful. But I need a job first.

  “You shouldn’t be using emergency money to go to the beach with me! Besides, you won’t want to run off and leave Henry.”

  “If we get a place together, it won’t be that expensive.” No, it will only be half a kajillion dollars instead of a full kajillion. “And as to Henry—I told you, we’re just having a good time.” Yup, back to that one.

  A week on the beach might be nice. Maybe a week of sun and sand will bring some equilibrium back to my life, help me get some perspective on Henry. Does he really care—was his ride to the rescue sincere or just part of his whole seduction package? Surely the beach would provide the answers. After all, the ocean is like one huge in-ground pool, right?

  “I might go see my parents next weekend,” Wendy says.

  Wow—this is bad. Wendy’s parents are wealthy but cantankerous. She’s the only friend I’ve ever had who wished her parents would have divorced when she was younger. Her mother, from the way she’s described her, would fit right in with Tess and her crew. If Wendy’s thinking of going to see her parents, especially after she just saw them, she must really be hurting. Or trying to keep herself from seeing Sam.

  I try to keep myself from calling Henry and she tries to keep herself from seeing Sam. This is hopeless. There must be a support group for this.

  Her mood makes me reluctant to go on about Henry, which disappoints me because I’m at that stage where I do want to talk and speculate with a buddy and I want to ask her advice on how to tell him about Rick. But the Sam situation has created a barrier between us, and I hold back. I don’t want to inflict any more pain by giggling like a schoolgirl over my new “crush” while she’s dying inside. She has to go back to work, anyway, so we leave it that I’ll call her this evening.

  “I wish you still lived in the city,” she says mournfully. “We could grab a beer or something after work.”

  “That reminds me,” I say, “do you know of any job openings—in public relations, communications?”

  “Hey, I’m glad to hear you’re getting back in the saddle. Nothing’s open here. In fact, Gelman is making noises about cutting back again. But I’ll look around!” Cheer has returned to her voice and we end the conversation on that note.

  Getting back in the saddle, up on the bike—I guess I need to do all those things. I clean up some papers and rue the fact that I left the Sunday want ads at Gina’s. This is becoming a habit—leaving the want ads anywhere except where I need them. Am I subconsciously sabotaging myself? Hell no. Nothing subconscious about it.

  Refusing to be defeated by my inner evil twin, I pull up the Sunpapers Web page again and look online at the want ads. I actually copy down a few—a PR specialist at a local hospital, a director of communications for a trade organization, a PR chief of the local orchestra, “communications specialist” at Center Stage, and a few other nonprofits. Nothing in the corporate world, though, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I need to ride a slow-moving pony before I jump on a Triple Crown contender.

  I’m feeling happy and upbeat for the first time in ages, and before I log off I decide to do a little Googling. First, I do Henry and come up with about a dozen entries. It’s mostly his name popping up in charity events, a couple of alumni association gigs from his alma maters, and a Sunpapers story about a divorce of two prominent Baltimore attorneys in which Henry represented the wife. I don’t know what I had expected to find, but I’m relieved not to have found it. Maybe I thought I’d see a list of his former lovers, complete with footnotes.

  Before I put my cyber surfboard away, I impulsively type in “Professor Moroni.”

  I end up with a few hundred hits, but I quickly eliminate the Web sites where some girl named La Professora Alfonsa Moroni does things with barnyard animals, and find Berkeley, where I point and click my way into the political science department before you can say “break my friend’s heart.”

  Moroni has a rap sheet as long as Henry’s…well, you know—conferences, papers, books, awards for teaching excellence, plus a sizable amount of community service work, as well as a soupçon of student protest leadership. Hey, what’s a Marxist without some good old-fashioned student protesting? Her bio provides some convenient links to some of her rants, er, papers, so I zoom to a few of these, looking not for her philosophy but her photo. On the third try, I find it, and I slump back in my chair feeling as defeated as Wendy is.

  For every woman, there is an archfiend, a woman who embodies all your crushed hopes about yourself, all your fears about your aspirations, the kind of woman you secretly wish you were and know you’re not hardwired to be. The kind of woman most likely to cut your heart out if you lose your boyfriend to her.

  Wendy could take losing Sam to a bimbo or a slut or even some jiggly co-ed. None of those kinds of women would assault Wendy’s core beliefs about herself or her fears about her deficits. But losing Sam to a woman who is attractive in a dark, ethnic way, whose heavily lidded eyes seem to hide the secrets of harlots from days gone by, whose political beliefs are as passionate and intellectual as they are cockamamy and passé—that is a blow.

  Rosa Moroni is an attractive woman with dark, shoulder-length hair, thick, serious lips, and large eyes. Although the photo is only a head shot, it’s clear from the way her sweater tugs at her shoulders that she’s probably stacked, too. From her bio, I know she’s a first-generation immigrant. Her parents are Italian and Greek. She speaks three languages, including English and the languages of her parents.

  Wendy is honey-topped whole wheat bread. Rosa Moroni is foccaccia with olive oil, peppers and hard-to-pronounce cheese.

  And I know in my heart of hearts that Wendy knows this. Like I said, she’s no slouch—she probably Googled her as soon as she got the name from Sam. She probably pried the name from Sam, in fact, just so she could Google it. And if she saw this, she knows Sam is not going to leave Rosa Moroni for a bright, sexy, but no-spaghetti-on-the-menu-part-of-town Wendy Jackson. Wendy might be willing to wait for Sam, but it’s clear to me that the only woman Sam is willing to wait for is Rosa Moroni. She’s a talisman, a good-luck charm to bring fortune in his climb up the ladders of academe. Wendy, on the other hand, is merely a knickknack with no mystical powers.

  Wendy knows. No wonder she wants to go to her parents. She wants to curl up in
her nest, no matter how uncomfortable it is, and lick her wounds. I ache for her. I feel like calling Sam and chewing him out. No, I feel like calling his boss, the dean of his department, and the president of the college, and making up a story about how Sam Terrill cheated on his SATs or lied on his résumé or sexually harassed students, both male and female. I want Sam to suffer.

  Maybe I’ll enroll in one of his classes.

  chapter 12

  Fig: Fecundity

  On my first birthday with Rick, his parents sent me a basket of fruit! He explained that his mother didn’t think it polite to choose personal gifts for people she didn’t know well, but she had wanted to remember my special day in some way. I remember that day well—a cloud of worry hung over me because I thought I might be pregnant. As it turned out, I wasn’t, and I never shared my worries with Rick. Our relationship was starting to deepen, and I didn’t want to cloud it with troubling decisions. Because of my worries, I hardly appreciated Rick’s gift, a small book of love poems.

  Who needs Sam to make you feel bad when you can get anonymous prospective employers to do it with only a little more effort?

  In the space of a week, I’ve received two rejection letters without even the courtesy of an interview.

  After a marathon session at Fred’s computer Monday night, I had a résumé polished up that would occupy a shrine in a college career counselor’s office. I’ve got snappy cover letters and promises of references. I hand deliver a couple of these puppies and put the rest in the mail.

  My recent job-hunting efforts are but faint parries compared to the rigorous jab I make at the beginning of this week.

  The hospital and the trade organization say “no, thanks” so fast I’m reeling. Neither’s probably a good fit for me, anyway. A little too efficient for my freewheeling style. Application in. Rejection out. Ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom. At least I know where I stand.

  Over dinner Thursday night—pork loin marinated in lime juice and tequila served with wild rice and asparagus—Fred tells me those places probably had internal candidates lined up and that between the flower shop job and the accident, it’s as if I haven’t been working for two years, anyway.