Starting from Square Two

by Caren Lissner

  Todd called that afternoon.

  Gert was scrubbing the house. When they’d first moved in, they had used a maid service once a week. She’d felt a little spoiled, but all of the neighbors in the condo building used the service, and it was something good to spend their money on when they were making more than enough of it. One day, Marc had been on the phone with his mother and had mentioned something about the maid coming, and his mother had had a fit, saying they were being lazy. Gert knew it was aimed at her. Marc’s mother liked Gert, but she could also be hard on her. Gert had, after all, taken over the duty of raising her little boy. Marc’s father was a big bear of a man who made bad jokes and always greeted everyone with a new dopey nickname. Marc had picked up this habit, with his own litany of nicknames. He and his father competed over who could make up the worst one. Gert missed Mr. Healy’s cheerful face.

  Gert had always felt much more comfortable around Marc’s father than Marc’s mother. Mrs. Healy was overbearing. Everything had to be the best. Marc and his older brothers were driven, all in finance and real estate, all hustling tirelessly. That’s how they’d been raised. That’s what they got praised for.

  Gert pushed thoughts of the Healys out of her mind and moved the mop slowly across the kitchen floor. There was a tiny rainbow near a corner where the sunlight bent through a glass candy dish, and she mopped the spot.

  A shrill sound startled Gert. The phone. She stared at it for two rings, then picked it up.

  “Is Gert there?” a voice asked.

  Gert knew instantly who it was. She smiled. If nothing else, Todd was disarming. Even if she wasn’t going to date him, or anyone else right now, she certainly could be friends with him. She had felt incredibly comfortable talking to him at the bar. He was completely different from Marc, though. Marc was sure of himself, maybe even a little cocky. Todd was just Todd.

  “It’s the Sober Guy,” Todd said.

  “Ah,” Gert said. “Is that what your friends call you?”

  “Sometimes,” Todd said. “They’re always saying, ‘Come on, just have one little drink.’ They don’t care that I’d lose my job. My company is like the CIA. They do drug tests when they hire you that can track marijuana you smoked two months ago.”

  “Better stick to crack,” Gert joked, then winced, wondering if it was too sharp a comment to make to someone she barely knew. It would have made Marc smile, if he were there.

  Todd laughed. “So how are you doing?”

  Gert hadn’t had anyone ask her that in weeks, except her parents, who were still trying to convince her to move back to the West Coast. She’d confirmed their worst fears right after college when she’d married a guy from Boston and moved to Queens.

  “Not bad,” Gert said.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Just cleaning my place.”

  “I need to do that,” Todd said. “My roommate’s a slob. Do you live alone?”

  “Yes,” Gert said, balancing the phone on her shoulder so she could keep mopping. Yes, she thought. I live in a condo with two bedrooms. The second one eventually would have been the baby’s room. It’s ridiculous that I live here, but I don’t want to move.

  “How was your day?” Gert asked.

  “Great,” Todd said. “I ate lunch at this bar by my old job. And I just had tea, and the bartender looked at me like I was crazy, but I told her I’m not allowed to drink because of work, and you know what she guessed I must be? A brain surgeon. Do I look like a brain surgeon?”

  “Anyone can look like a brain surgeon,” Gert said.

  “Wow. I feel so important now.”

  “What’s your old job?”

  “Oh. For a little while after college I was a courier in the diamond district. My friend’s family owned a jewelry store. They needed people they trusted to do those jobs, so we both worked there for a while, walking around the city transporting jewelry and hoping not to get mugged. It was kind of fun, and I got to hang out with my friend’s family, who have this old-fashioned business that not a lot of people have anymore. One time, on a Friday after work, they took us to their apartment on the Lower East Side and they had a zillion relatives over and cooked Romanian food. It was incredible.”

  Gert realized that Todd liked long answers, long explanations. He wasn’t concerned about boring her. It didn’t mean he was full of himself—just that he wasn’t constantly checking to see if he was saying and doing the right thing. He had no affectations, no pretensions.

  She liked it.

  The other line beeped, and Gert ignored it.

  “Do you have to go?” Todd asked.

  “No. But I am cleaning….”

  “Okay. Well, what I wanted to ask was…do you want to have dinner some night?”

  “Um…” Gert said, looking around the room. “I guess, maybe.” She realized she was being too tentative. “I mean, sure. Why not?”

  “Great,” he said. “My schedule gets a little strange. I’m working nights the rest of the week, but I’m free after next weekend. Unless you wanted to get together tonight.”

  Gert thought putting it off for a week would be wise. She could use the week to work up to it. But looking around again, she realized she didn’t have anything to do that night. She might as well go. Todd seemed harmless enough.

  “Either way is fine,” Gert said. “I didn’t have any major plans tonight.”

  “Really?” Todd said. “Do you want to do it tonight? I don’t want to push, but it might be nice to see you before my schedule gets crazy.”

  Gert was flattered. She accepted.

  When she put down the phone, it rang instantly.

  “Hey!” Hallie said.

  “Hey,” Gert said. “You sound excited. What’s up?”

  “Erika knows this bar where some of the Giants hang out. Do you want to come tonight?”

  Gert hesitated. “I could,” she said. “But I probably can’t.”

  “Why not?” Hallie asked.

  “Well,” Gert said, “do you remember that guy Todd, from the bar?”

  “Choo-Choo Boy?” Hallie suddenly seemed intrigued. “Did he call you? Did he ask you out?”

  “Yes,” Gert said. “He asked if I wanted to have dinner.”

  “That’s great!” Hallie said. Gert was glad Hallie was excited for her. “It’s at least a start,” Hallie added. “When are you going?”

  “Tonight,” Gert said.

  Hallie was quiet for a second.

  “Tonight?” she said.

  Gert hesitated. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. “I said I would,” she said.

  Hallie was quiet again.

  “You haven’t been out on a date in a long time,” Hallie said. “Maybe you should have a powwow with me first to plot strategies.”

  “Okay.”

  They met at four outside a coffee shop. Hallie snuffed out her cigarette before entering. The New York smoking ban still wasn’t to take effect for two months, but Hallie wanted to practice. Gert was glad for the ban, but kept her opinion to herself. It wasn’t that she was a priss; it was just that secondhand smoke gave her a sore throat.

  “Here’s the thing,” Hallie said, sitting down at a square white table with gold flecks in it. The coffee shop was filthy, but cozy. “You know that you can’t accept a date for the same night. It makes you seem desperate.”

  “It’s not a date,” Gert protested. “It’s just a friendly dinner. Besides, Todd’s going to be busy next week. His schedule’s going to get crazy.”

  “With work? Or with dates?”

  “With work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Why would Todd lie?” Gert said. “I just met him.”

  “I don’t know.” Hallie shrugged, winding paper from someone else’s straw around her pinkie. “For some reason, he just struck me as a little off. I wouldn’t be so trusting so soon. Believe me, I’ve seen what’s out there. You have to be careful.”

  “I will,” Gert sai
d, knowing Hallie was only trying to help but wondering how she’d gotten so cynical. Todd was a nice guy, right?

  Gert looked around. She noticed that many of the people in the coffee shop were reading the paper. But the women who were reading it kept peering over the top, to see who else might be there.

  Hallie said, “I think I’ve met half the weirdos in Manhattan. And I think Erika’s met the other half. I don’t want you to get disillusioned.”

  “Did you ever think,” Gert said, choosing her words carefully, “that maybe you and Erika try too hard and obsess too much? You strategize and analyze, and men can probably sense your frustrations.”

  Hallie looked hurt. “I can’t act relaxed and happy with my station in life when I’m not,” she said.

  Gert wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Do you remember when I dated Steve for six months after college?” Hallie asked. “While I was dating him, guys hit on me all the time. And of course, I didn’t need them, because I was with him. They must have sensed that I was happy. And then, after Steve and I broke up and I was miserable, no one ever came up to me. But I couldn’t help being miserable. So there’s a Spiral Deathtrap of Dating: When you’re with someone, you look happy and relaxed, and thus, a lot more people than you need are attracted to you. When you’re sulky and alone, no one is attracted to you, and thus, you stay sulky and alone. I can’t look content when I’m not.”

  “I know you can’t look happy all the time,” Gert said. “Maybe what I’m getting at is that when you and Erika are together, you both come off as less approachable.”

  Hallie looked beyond Gert, at the wall. “That’s not the real problem,” she said. “The real problem is that the ratio of women to men around here is too high. I should move to Silicon Valley or Alaska, where the male-to-female ratio makes sense. Or, I could get silicone implants.”

  Gert cringed. “Guys hate silicone implants,” she said.

  “You know so much about guys,” Hallie said to her, “but you’ve only really been with one.”

  It struck Gert as odd that Hallie and Erika always claimed to know so much more than she did about men, yet they were still single. They were always trumpeting their dating rules and they were still alone.

  There’s a law Hallie should cite, Gert thought. Gert’s Law of Dating: The more rules you cite about it, the less you really know about it.

  “Anyway,” Hallie said, toying with a cigarette she didn’t intend to light, “I want you to have a good time with Todd tonight.”

  Gert smiled. “Thanks,” she said.

  “But,” Hallie continued, looking serious, “don’t let your guard down. If a guy seems too good to be true, he usually is.”

  “Oh, I know it could end up a total disaster,” Gert said, waving someone else’s smoke away. “But we’ll be in a public place. What could happen?”

  “You have my cell phone number, right?” Hallie said. “Call me if there’s any trouble. Even if I’m talking to Jeremy Shockey, I’ll be there for you.”

  Gert laughed. “I will.”

  The houses across the street from Gert’s were white and connected to each other. From window to window dripped a string of unlit Christmas lights, which normally hung there until just before Easter. On a dark, overcast day like that one, they looked like buds. Flurries coated the barren branches outside and made little hammocks in the corners of the windows. Not much of an accumulation was expected—it was too warm.

  Gert stood in the room with Marc’s trophies, staring across the street. She saw a little blond-haired girl peeking out a round third-story window. She remembered when the girl had been a tiny baby in a carriage. Seeing the infants in her neighborhood go from carriages to walking on their own two feet made Gert conscious of her age. Lots of things were making her conscious of that lately. She wasn’t fond of the reminders.

  The girl was part of an extended Greek family who lived in attached houses on the block. Gert’s section of Queens, only a few subway stops east of Manhattan, was very Greek.

  She returned to her bedroom, to her mirror.

  The anticipatory feeling of a date was one of the nicest parts, she had always thought. You knew you were going to see someone you liked. You could scrub extra hard in the shower. You could get a haircut. You could stare at yourself in the mirror. Well, not for too long.

  Even though Gert was just going to be friends with Todd, she still felt compelled to at least look half-decent for him.

  She stared at her reflection and tried to figure out what she could say to him.

  I rode on a train once.

  Nah, that wouldn’t do.

  My uncle used to work for Conrail.

  Trains are cool. I’ve got a full complement of HO models.

  Somehow he’d see through the lie. And just because he worked on a train, didn’t mean he collected them.

  She could hum the song about “getting the train through” from Sesame Street. They could talk about kids’ TV shows from the 1970s. Marc’s oldest brother had been on Zoom, which was taped in Boston. That always impressed people of a certain age.

  There she was, thinking about Marc again.

  She had to stop.

  How would she tell Todd about him?

  She probably shouldn’t mention Marc to Todd right away, she decided. The only way to talk about Marc was to give him his proper due, to tell everything that had happened. He wasn’t something you could chat about like the news or weather. If it wasn’t the right time to tell everything about him, you shouldn’t broach it.

  Okay. She needed a conversation topic.

  The male canon. Oops—she’d left something off the list when she’d told Hallie and Erika about it: Fletch. Guys loved Fletch.

  What were some lines from Fletch?

  “Excuse me, miss? Can I borrow your towel? My car just hit a water buffalo.”

  Didn’t really work too well in conversation.

  It wasn’t a good quote for tonight, anyway. It was too base. Guys didn’t necessarily like girls to get too base. Except guys you’d been married to for five years and dated for three, whom you could say just about anything to. Who you could wrestle with at 10:00 a.m. during a blizzard when the city was locked down and the mayor had ordered everyone to stay home. They should have worked on having a baby that day, just like everyone else. They were both waiting for promotions at work. Just one year each at their new salaries, and then they were going to try. There was always more you could have. More, more, more. And all of a sudden, you’d lose the most important thing of all.

  “Hi,” Todd said, coming into the entrance of Sal’s, an Italian restaurant in Chelsea near the movie theater. He was wearing sneakers, but he looked like he’d just gotten a haircut, and he was smiling.

  “Hi,” Gert said, standing inside the door. The restaurant was moderate-sized, with a family of six chattering near the back. The tablecloths and walls were a rich red. A waitress appeared and led them back.

  “I was just on the subway,” Todd told Gert, “and some woman insisted I’d gone to school with her brother. She kept saying my name was Cody. The whole ride, she stared at me, going, ‘You’re sure you’re not Cody?’”

  “You should have showed her your driver’s license.”

  “Imagine if I pulled it out, and it said ‘Cody,’” Todd said. “That would be freaky. Like The Twilight Zone.”

  “I loved The Twilight Zone!”

  “Me, too. The old episodes.”

  As they sat down, Gert was glad the conversation had started easily. She was also grateful for the dinner-and-movie date. It was simple, it was inexpensive, and it guaranteed that after dinner you wouldn’t be asked back to the guy’s apartment to watch a video—a common male strategy in college that had meant something else.

  “I like this place,” Todd said. “The food’s good, and the prices are right.”

  So he was practical. Gert was glad. She didn’t like when people tried to impress her with fancy restaurants that provide
d mouse-sized meals. Marc’s co-workers at the brokerage firm had taken them to places like that all the time. She had always left starving.

  “So,” Todd said, “thanks for coming out on such short notice.”

  He seemed a little nervous. Gert smiled. “I wasn’t doing anything special,” she said. Ooh! Her friends would smack her for admitting she was alone on a Saturday. She added, “I could have gone out with my friends tonight, but I can see them anytime.”

  “How long have you known them?”

  “Since college,” she said. “Well, Hallie since college. Erika is her high school friend.”

  “Who was the one with big hair?” Todd asked.

  Gert laughed. Everyone had such varying perceptions of looks. Erika had been dressed to kill that night, and Hallie had been practically naked, but what Todd had noticed was big hair.

  “I didn’t think either of them had big hair,” Gert said.

  “I didn’t mean any offense,” Todd said. “Brian was the one who thought so. I didn’t notice anyone having big hair.”

  “That’s okay,” Gert said. “I think Erika was sort of interested in Brian.”

  “Girls always like Brian. He’s engaged to a woman he works with.”

  “Then why was he at the bar?”

  “Why not? We were waiting to meet friends.”

  The waitress brought their water, and she stood at the table expectantly. “You ready?” she asked.

  “I guess we should pick up our menus first,” Todd said, smiling, and the waitress nodded and took off.

  Todd added, “Brian lived in England for a year and he said they never give you water when you sit down. You have to ask for it or you’ll never ever get it.”

  “Really?” Gert said. Then, in a barely passable British accent, she added, “That’s rather peculiar, don’t you think?”

  “I rather believe so,” Todd said.

  “A shame, old boy.”

  They ordered appetizers and talked more. Todd spoke animatedly about his job. He said his company’s trains ran from Croxton Yards in Jersey City up to Binghamton, New York. It was a six-hour run, and usually it was just him on the train, plus an engineer who was driving it. There was a children’s hospital that they passed in upstate New York each time, and the kids would always wave out the window at the train. Sometimes, they’d make a sign, like Blow Your Horn! This was Todd’s favorite part of the run.