Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  Because I can’t give up until I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, whether this is worth any further energy expenditure on my part.

  I turn, trying to read his expression in the half light coming from a shop window. “Do you love me, Greg?”

  He looks a little startled, but then he says, “Of course I do.”

  “Then how come you never said it? I mean, I can’t remember you ever once telling me you loved me, not even when you asked me to marry you.”

  He shrugs. I’m beginning to find that a very annoying habit. “I don’t know. I’m just not very demonstrative, I guess. Besides, I thought I was doing a pretty good job of showing you how much I cared.”

  “Yes, I know. But…a woman likes to hear the words, you know?”

  He stops, grabs my hand. “Okay, fine. I love you, Ginger. Is that better?”

  I glance around; we’re standing in the middle of Broadway at nine o’clock at night. The sidewalk is teeming with people, as it is almost any hour of the day or night in this town. I notice a narrow passageway between two buildings, obviously leading to an airshaft.

  A very dark, very private airshaft.

  A desperate craziness surges through my veins, almost blinding me. I have to give Greg one more chance to prove to me that…that he’s alive. That he’s got the guts to do something crazy. Wild. Unplanned.

  “Come here,” I whisper, my blood pounding in my temples. I entwine my fingers with Greg’s, yank him toward the passageway.

  “Ginger? What are you doing?”

  Okay, so this might take a little convincing. I steer the two of us into the shadows, latching onto Greg’s lapels, then kiss him, tongue and everything. He sorta kisses back. “Make love to me,” I whisper into his mouth.

  He backs up, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Your place or mine?” he says, even as I realize…wait—I don’t want this, not really, that I’m hanging on to something I’ve already outgrown.

  Yet the craziness makes me say, “Neither. Here. Back there, I mean.”

  Even in the faint light, I can see the grin die. “Christ, Ginger!” His head torques, as if he’s petrified someone’s heard us. “What the hell has gotten into you? I can’t make love to you in public!”

  Reason shrieks inside my head, to laugh it off, forget about it, tell him I’m kidding. Yet I press my breasts into his chest, rock my hips to join our crotches. Hmm, I’m not exactly being overwhelmed by what I’m finding here.

  “It’s totally dark back there,” I whisper, frantic now. But not for sex. For the truth. “No one else will know. Well, unless you make me scream—”

  “Stop it!” He jerks out of my grasp, nearly stumbling back out onto the sidewalk. And that’s not mounting arousal contorting his face. I follow, far less disappointed than I should be. “God, you really are just as insane as your mother, aren’t you?”

  I halt in my tracks. “What?”

  “Dad was so convinced you’d be right for me, that you’d be so good for my career, and I tried to go along with him, I really did. He was furious when I ran out on our wedding. I mean, all my life, I’ve busted my ass to please the Great Robert Munson, to be the kind of son he wanted, even to the point of being willing to marry someone I—”

  “Didn’t love?” I finished for him.

  He scrubs a hand across his face, shoves his hands into his pockets. A few passersby give us mildly curious looks, but keep going. “I do care about you, Ginger, I really do. Enough that I couldn’t go through with the wedding when I realized it was a lie on my part. And I thought, well, Dad will just have to get over it. Except I hated the way he looked at me, that awful disappointment in his eyes, as if I’d failed him. It was exactly the same way he looks at Bill, you know? And I’d do anything to wipe that disgust out of his eyes. Anything.”

  “Including pretending you wanted me back.”

  He glances away, then back at me, letting out “Yeah” on a brutal sigh.

  Well. I suppose this is one way to take the decision out of my hands.

  And then it hits me: all of Greg’s charm and consideration and agreeableness had been nothing more than finely tuned technique. A lie, in layman’s terms. Just like his lovemaking had been, I thought with a start. Press Button A, get this result, stroke Slot B, get this one. Twice, if all goes well.

  What was I thinking? Greg wasn’t safe. Hell, he wasn’t even sane. All he was, was a weak little man unable to stand up to his own father.

  I turn away, start back up the street.

  “Ginger?”

  I twist around, but keep walking backward.

  “You don’t have anything to say?”

  So I stop. Think a second. Then say—and by now, I’m a good fifteen, twenty feet away, far enough to have to raise my voice, “Yeah. Two things. One, my grandmother’s right. You’re definitely not enough man for me. And two, I should be so lucky as to be exactly like my weird, eccentric, generous, aggravating, dynamic, ballsy mother. Who, by the way, is carrying your brother’s baby.”

  Even in the dark, I can see him blanch.

  I, however, smile all the way back to the apartment.

  I find my mother in the living room, in jeans and a stretched-out T-shirt, cleaning.

  Wait. My mother. Cleaning. What’s wrong with this picture?

  Nesting, I think they call it. I’ve watched Shelby go through this, twice. But usually not until her eighth month.

  “What’s this all about?”

  Nedra straightens. I notice her face is already beginning to fill out a bit.

  She unhooks the barrette holding back her hair, reclips it off her face. “Apparently, with this new hormonal shift, I get the urge to clean when I get nervous.”

  “What are you nervous about?”

  A stack of ancient magazines slides into a black garbage bag. “How’d it go tonight?”

  I laugh, then sigh. “About as well as I imagine you expected it would.”

  Her eyes meet mine. “It’s over?”

  “Dead and buried.”

  She shoves a pile of stuff aside to perch on the edge of the coffee table. “You okay with that?”

  I think a moment, then nod. “Yeah. I am.”

  “What happened?”

  I tell her. Some of it, anyway. I mean, she knew how the Munsons felt about her. No point going into ugly details.

  “I can’t believe Bill told his mother,” she says.

  “Just as well. Now it’s out in the open.”

  “Yeah. I suppose.”

  “Then Greg said something, something Nonna had actually said to me weeks ago, only it didn’t make sense until I heard it come out of his mouth.”

  “And that was?”

  “That I’m exactly like you.”

  “As insane as I am, you mean?”

  “Apparently so.”

  A smile twitches around her mouth. “That must have come as quite a shock.”

  “Actually, it’s kind of a relief. Like having a name to attach to the symptoms.” I ditch my shoes and stockings, then cross to a now-clear chair into which I flop. Geoff plods over to wash my toes, his tongue warm and soothing. About all I want in a male right now, I think. Except then I hear myself say, “Nick found a home for Rocky, did I tell you?”

  “No. Where?”

  “Somebody he knows. Well, this guy’s brother. Upstate. He asked me if I’d like to drive up with him tomorrow.”

  “And you said?”

  I link my hands over my stomach, grimace. “The wrong thing.”

  “So go call him and say the right thing.”

  I grimace some more.

  “How do you feel about him?”

  “I don’t know. Except…I don’t know. I mean, I keep thinking…maybe I could really go nuts over this man? Someday? When I figure out who the hell I am? Except then I think, that’s nuts. We’re totally different. I mean, Greg and I at least shared common interests, we liked the same music, the same movies…”

  “And look how t
hat turned out.”

  There is that.

  “Better to be with someone who provokes you, surprises you, on a daily basis than someone who bores you to tears.”

  That, too, I guess. Although it’s a little scary.

  Then my mother says, “As for the figuring-out-who-you-are bit—just when do you think that’s gonna happen? Besides—” Now she’s actually lifting up sofa cushions. This could get interesting. “There’s nothing that says you have to look for yourself alone. Might even be more fun, with the right guy. And it doesn’t hurt if he makes you so hot, you can’t stand it. Hey, here’s a couple of tokens.”

  She hands them to me.

  “They don’t use these anymore,” I say.

  “Damn.”

  I laugh, but it’s not one of my better ones.

  “What if he thinks I’m an idiot?”

  She shrugs. “I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

  I’m so nervous on the train ride out to Greenpoint the next morning, I keep fiddling with the buttons on my dress like they’re worry beads. I mean, I blew the man off. He could tell me to stuff it, and he’d be well within his rights. But like I told Terrie, you can’t let fear stop you, just because there aren’t any guarantees.

  After what seems like about twelve hours, I emerge into nearly blinding, late summer light. I can’t help it; I run toward Nick’s street (good thing I decided to wear my Keds) even though my stomach’s churning and my legs are so wobbly I’m amazed I haven’t toppled over. Finally, I turn the corner onto his block; I can see the old Impala, parked at the curb. I speed up, as does my heartrate. I wipe my sweaty palms down the front of the dress.

  Eight houses away. Six houses away. Four…three…

  The door opens; a very pretty blonde comes out onto the top step, clutching her shoulder bag to her stomach. Nick follows. Reflexes I didn’t know I had send me ducking behind another parked car, peering over the trunk. Something cold and vicious slices through me as I watch Nick take hold of the woman’s shoulders, frowning into her face. She lays a hand on his chest; he briefly covers it with his own before leaning down to—

  Well, I don’t see what comes after that, because I turn tail and head back to the subway like a rabbit with a starving fox on her tail.

  Not that I have any reason, none at all, to be jealous. After all, I’d just been out with Greg, even tried to get him to have sex with me in a dark alley, even if I didn’t really mean it or really didn’t want it…

  “Ginger! Wait!”

  But I can’t. Won’t. My feet have taken on a life of their own, like winged Mercury, as I sprint past neatly kept up brownstones and brick houses, past the occasional elderly person out walking his or her dog. I hit the subway station at a run, zip down the steps with the speed and grace of someone who’s been practicing that trick since she was five, the hem of my dress billowing out behind me. The train is just pulling into the station; I fumble for my metrocard in my pocket, shove it through the slot, barrel through the turnstile and jump onto the train just as the doors close. I hear Nick, right on the other side, bellowing to the engineer, spin around to see him flashing his badge toward the front of the train.

  On either side of me, people spring up like spooked pigeons and surge for the adjacent cars. I, however, have just been pinned to the opposite doors by one very large, very mad, hardly out of breath cop.

  Oh, my.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in listening?”

  “Why?” I yell over the wheels’s whining against the steel rails. “You don’t owe me any kind of explanation. I mean, there’s nothing between us, I had a date last night, so why shouldn’t you bring someone home—”

  “Ginger, shut up.”

  So I do.

  The train screeches into the next station—which is when I realize I was going in the wrong direction—and Nick pulls me off of it, his grasp tight around my wrist.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere where I can turn you over my knee, maybe.”

  “I’ll yell police brutality.”

  “Oh, baby, you’d yell, all right, but not because I was brutalizing you.”

  Oh.

  He takes me to a little coffee shop on Manhattan Avenue, practically shoves me into a booth. “You want coffee?”

  I nod. A timid little waitress brings us two heavy ceramic cups, a silver pitcher of Half-and-Half, leaves without meeting our eyes.

  “First off, I didn’t have anybody at my place last night, okay? Second, that wasn’t somebody new. It was Amy.”

  I spend a long time stirring my two packets of Sweet’n Low into my coffee. “So you’re back together, that’s nice—”

  “Dammit, Ginger—” He lets out his breath in a gusty sigh, then pins me with his gaze. “You gotta stop this jumpin’-to-conclusions business, ’cause it’s really startin’ to annoy me.”

  “Sorry.”

  He nods, but his brows are knotted. “Okay, it’s like this. We’re not back together, there was never any possibility of that happening. Are we clear on that?”

  I nod. God, his eyes are going to sear straight through me.

  “The thing is, see, she came over to tell me…a couple things. One is that she’s leavin’. That she got a job she’d been hopin’ for in Albany, in a private hospital up there—”

  “Oh. Oh, I see. I’m sorry, it was just—”

  “—and the second thing is that she’s pregnant.”

  The bottom drops right out of my stomach. I look suspiciously at the glass of water set in front of me.

  Nobody says anything for a very long time.

  “But I thought…” I take a breath, start over. “I mean, didn’t you tell me…but she’s the one who doesn’t want kids, right?”

  His fingers plow through his short hair, and I realize, Oh, crud, he’s just found out about this himself.

  “She doesn’t. Believe me, we weren’t bein’ careless. In fact, she told me she’d only have the kid if I was willing to take it after it was born.”

  I suck in my breath, even as tears sting my eyes. “She doesn’t even want to help raise her own child?”

  He shrugs, a helpless gesture from a man who I imagine isn’t used to feeling helpless.

  No profound words of wisdom are springing forth from my tongue. Hell, at the moment, I’d settle for banal. Instead, all I do is sit and sip my coffee, wondering at all this. Finally, Nick breaks the silence with, “I mean, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions myself, but I take it you didn’t come all the way out here to tell me you and Munson were getting married, did you?”

  I shake my head. “No. That’s over for good.”

  “What happened?”

  He sounds genuinely concerned. Interested, even. But I wave my hand. “Long story. Which I’ll be more than happy to explain someday when I’ve got a little better perspective on it. Let’s just say…I woke up.”

  He lets out a relieved-sounding sigh, then says, “So…why did you come out here?”

  “I’m not sure, actually.”

  “Mmm.” He leans his head in the palm of his hand, studying me. “Just like you’re not sure why you ran hell-for-leather when you thought I’d spent the night with someone else.”

  I make a face. He reaches across the table, covers my hand with his great big one. It feels much better than “nice.”

  “We’d be a total mess together, Ginger.”

  “I know.”

  “And we’d fight all the time.”

  “I know.”

  With his other hand, he lifts his cup to his lips. “And I’m gonna have this baby to take care of in a few months.”

  “So am I, so I guess we’re even on that score.”

  He spews coffee all over the table.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry! My mother’s pregnant! Not me.”

  He grabs a napkin, wipes up his mess. “You sure?”

  “That my mother’s pregnant?”

  “Tha
t you’re not.”

  “Positive on both counts. Well, negative on mine…oh, hell, you know what I mean.”

  He seems to need a second or two to absorb this. “Jesus.”

  “Oh, it gets better. Greg’s brother is the father.”

  At that, he lets out an enormous boom of laughter, loud enough to make heads turn. “No shit?”

  “God’s honest truth.”

  Still chuckling, he says, “Your family has got a serious screw loose, Ginger.”

  Then his face gets all serious. “This is really…complicated.”

  All I do is lift one brow. He laughs. Looks sheepish. And so…solid and sure, I can barely swallow. “So,” he says, “you sayin’ we should give this a try?”

  I nod. After several seconds, he grins.

  Then he stands, gathers the guest check, and holds out his hand. Which, after maybe a nanosecond’s hesitation, I accept.

  “Where are we going?” I ask when we get out on the sidewalk.

  He slips one arm around my waist. “It’s about this frickin’ chicken we have to take upstate?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say, and with that, my world makes more sense than it has in, well, forever.

  Epilogue

  The following May

  I think it’s a riot that it’s taken me this long to figure out that trying to make myself into who I thought I wanted to be, rather than accepting who I am, is a colossal waste of time. And if it hadn’t been for that whacko succession of disasters/crises last summer, I’d probably still be clueless. Or worse, married to the Munsons.

  Pardon me while I shudder.

  Of course, if anything, things are whackier now than they ever were. I’ve got babies coming out of my ears, for one thing, what with Paula’s twin boys and Shelby’s new one, and of course my baby sister, who is so incredibly perfect and beautiful, Bride-of-Frankenstein hair and all. And then there’s Nick’s little girl, a bald, blue-eyed cutie who’s got her daddy, who’s taken an extended family leave to care for her, alternately stymied and totally wrapped around her little finger. I am totally besotted with all these tiny people, and for the moment, not quite so eager to have one of my own.