Starting from Square Two

by Caren Lissner

  If she scared him off, she’d be alone again. She really liked Todd. She wondered if there was any way to mitigate what she was about to tell him.

  She would just have to tell it to him straight.

  On the subway, Gert slumped forward in her seat, exhausted. The first section of the New York Times was lying beside her, smudged and dirty. She picked it up.

  The cover held stories about Iraq, the depressed economy and a twenty-one-year-old kid who’d just been elected mayor of the town of Lola, Indiana.

  Gert read the Lola article. Then she looked at the story beside the jump. It was one of those “Times Neediest Cases Fund” stories. The Times ran profiles of people throughout the city who needed help through the paper’s charity fund. The idea was that if you sent the money to the fund, rather than tossing it to a sea of administrators, it went directly to the poor. And you would know, from the article, who the people were who needed your help.

  Bronx Tale Turns To Bronx Tragedy

  It wasn’t love at first sight for Sherell Lewis and Martin Charms. Lewis acknowledges that there was a long period during which she barely said hello to Charms, her next-door neighbor, each morning when she was leaving for work and he was coming home. But after they stopped to chat in the doorway one day, they began dating. Their long work hours and different schedules made their time together short, but soon they realized they were in love.

  They saved a few hours each weekend to be together, with Charms feeling lagged from night shifts at a book factory and Lewis worn out from cleaning apartments for a local maid service. For eight months they saw each other twice a week.

  Then, on one moonlit night on the roof, Charms asked Lewis to marry him.

  They moved into Charms’s tiny one-bedroom apartment. Eventually they had a son. A daughter followed. Money was tight, and so was space, but they worked hard to stay afloat. Charms switched to a day job as a cook so he could spend time with the family at night. Lewis accepted a promotion to assistant manager at the cleaning company. Charms’s mother moved in to help with the children during the day. She slept in the living room in a small bed. They pinched pennies, but they were happy.

  In November Charms’s mother had a stroke.

  When she came home from the hospital, she was bedridden. Lewis and Charms tried to cut their hours at work. But when Lewis asked the manager of her maid service for different hours, he said he needed to save money due to the economic downturn and had been planning to eliminate her position. He let her go.

  Charms doubled his hours at the restaurant, trying to keep up with his mother’s bills that Medicare didn’t cover. Lewis did some baby-sitting in her home, but taking care of three or four children wore her out.

  A month later Charms’s mother died. The burial left little for child care or even the next month’s rent.

  Charms kept his shift from eleven in the morning to midnight at the grill. Lewis stayed home with the children. One afternoon she got a call in the middle of the day from Charms’s boss. Charms had had a heart attack.

  Gert put down the paper. The Neediest Cases stories were all like this. Part of her wanted to believe they were exaggerated. How could so many bad things hit one person at the same time?

  She had always believed somewhere in the back of her mind that after a person suffered a tragedy, fate left them alone for a while. People who got leukemia didn’t then get Parkinson’s disease. But she knew that realistically, mankind had no compact with God limiting heartbreaks to one per customer.

  As hard as Gert’s tragedy was, she was conscious of the fact that there were people who had suffered a similar tragedy and had no support network to deal with it.

  Gert didn’t like acknowledging such things. Dealing with her own problems was hard enough. But she forced herself to stare at the picture of Sherell Lewis with her children. How did you lose your job, then your mother-in-law, then your husband? There was too much sadness, she thought. How did some people go on?

  She wanted to send her money. She folded the article and put it into her purse.

  She thought of how much she’d hedged on telling Todd the truth about her own tragedy. Too bad, she thought. If she had to deal with tragedy, and if Sherell Lewis had to, then Todd could, too.

  But she didn’t want to be angry when she told him. It wasn’t his fault that the girl he’d met at a bar was a widow.

  Start at the beginning, she thought. Don’t overload him.

  She moved her finger over the folded article sticking out of her pocketbook.

  She’d never donated money to anyone she didn’t know—not in her entire life. Thinking about it, she realized that Marc never had, either.

  Why hadn’t they?

  Whenever they’d had extra, they had always spent it on things like the maid service. The only time Marc had donated anything was the $1,000 he’d given to their college alumni association. It had gotten them a nice mention in the class bulletin and helped the class set a record.

  At home, Gert sat at the kitchen table and gazed at the yellow refrigerator. The fridge was the oldest thing in the condo. It had half-torn Barney stickers on it, left from the family who’d lived there before.

  Gert looked around the condo. Except for a print of the falling leaves she’d put up in the living room, the walls were fairly bare. It was because Marc was a minimalist. He hadn’t really liked to have things on the walls. He wasn’t into art in general, except as an investment. He’d gone gallery-hopping with Gert and some friends in SoHo on one sunny afternoon, because he said it seemed like a “New York thing to do.” His pet peeve was government funding for the arts. “Who’s the government to tell us what’s good?” he’d asked. Gert had agreed on that point. Marc liked music, but as far as visual art, he just couldn’t be moved.

  It was something she’d accepted about him. He was quirky, but he definitely tended toward the practical side with certain things.

  Gert got up and put the fondue pot on the table. Todd was bringing some of the groceries. They were first going to have bread and cheese fondue and follow it up with shrimp cacciatore.

  When the doorbell rang, she was lost in thought, playing out how best to bring up Marc.

  Gert buzzed Todd in, checked her hair in the mirror. Don’t chicken out, she thought.

  Todd laid a paper shopping bag on the table. He looked happy. He was wearing a brown lamb’s wool sweater with bits of pink and dark brown in it.

  Gert smiled, pinching his shoulder. “Admit that a girl bought that for you,” she said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Men never have taste in sweaters.” She tried not to be nervous.

  “Wrong,” Todd said. “We just don’t buy them because we don’t want to hand-wash them. We buy them when we have girlfriends so we can trick them into doing it.”

  “Sexist.”

  “But you like it.”

  “Sure. We love scrubbing your smelly sweaty sweaters.” She pushed the container of shrimp into his hands. “Peel some shrimp.”

  She stood there a minute.

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “This is never good.”

  “It’s not anything awful, but every time I’ve wanted to tell you, something came up.”

  He looked up.

  “It’s just…I was married before.”

  She’d practiced it, but now she’d still stumbled when she had to say it to his face.

  He stopped peeling shrimp and turned to face her. “What?”

  Gert didn’t say anything.

  “You’re divorced?” He put the shrimp down and looked as though someone had smacked him in the face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t not tell you. At first it didn’t come up…”

  “But we were talking the other night,” he said. “I know you said something. What was it? You said you’d dated your last boyfriend for three years.”

  “We did.”

  “A husband isn’t a boyfriend.”

>   “We did date for three years first.”

  “That’s like lying.”

  “I didn’t lie to you.”

  “It’s a half truth.”

  “Now you’ve found something worth worrying about,” she said, thinking of the FedEx incident.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

  “I didn’t not tell you. I—”

  “What if I told you I was divorced all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not divorced.”

  “You mean you’re still married to the guy?”

  “No,” Gert said. “He’s—” She couldn’t look at him. “He died in a car accident,” Gert said.

  Todd took a deep breath.

  “…a year and a half ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I was scared.”

  He looked at her. “Maybe we should sit down.”

  As the shrimp thawed on the table, Todd and Gert sat side by side on the couch. The side of her left leg was touching his right. She wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know.

  He said to tell him everything.

  “We were married for five years,” Gert said.

  “Where did you meet?”

  “In college.”

  She told him about meeting Marc in the bookstore. She told him about their first date, to a school play that his friend was in, and how he was good at supporting friends’ projects. She talked about the first moment she realized how much she cared about him: during history class one morning, when she kept seeing his face, and thinking of things he’d said without even trying. She kept flashing back to their dates and smiling. She realized this was something beyond a crush or casual dating.

  “Go on,” Todd said.

  “We graduated and moved to New York,” Gert said. “I was at his apartment all the time. His parents were kind of old-fashioned. They didn’t like that much. But it was silly to live apart. I moved in, and we got engaged.”

  She told him a little more. When Marc had the accident, he’d been on the way to a doctor’s appointment. He’d taken off work because he was sick with the flu. According to the police, he’d drifted into another lane and been hit head-on.

  Gert didn’t go into her feelings of guilt, or all the reasons Marc’s mother might be angry at her. She had trouble thinking about them herself.

  When she finished, Todd was silent for a few seconds.

  She waited for him to say something. It’s too much for him, she thought. I knew it.

  He said finally, “It’s a lot to tell someone you just met.”

  “I know it’s a lot,” she said. “I just didn’t know how you’d react. What you said when I told you—‘I’m sorry’—that’s all you have to say. But some people don’t say anything. They’re afraid of saying something wrong.”

  He looked at her uncertainly. She had no idea what he was thinking or what he would do next. Would he walk out? Pretend everything was fine then leave after dinner?

  Finally, he said, “You’re pretty brave.”

  “I don’t think so.” She tried not to cry.

  He leaned over and hugged her. She held in her tears, which wasn’t easy. Todd took her hand. He was quiet for a long time. Finally she had to break the silence.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just processing it. It’s a major thing about you that I didn’t know before. It’s just not what I’m used to.”

  “You think I am?”

  “I’m sure you’re not.”

  “When I got married, I thought I’d be married forever,” she said. “I never thought I’d have to date again.”

  “Well,” he said, looking at her, “I’m glad you did.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You hungry?”

  “God, yes.”

  After they’d eaten, they were back on the couch, resting. He had dimmed the lights, but she could still see the serious expression on his face.

  “Will you show me your pictures?” he asked.

  “What pictures?”

  “Your family. Um, your wedding.”

  “You really want to see those?” she asked.

  “I want to know about all the things you care about.”

  Gert had three photo albums. The purple one contained old pictures her mom had given her before college. She’d put them into the album the first week she’d gotten to campus. Hallie had helped. That was how they’d gotten to know each other so quickly—Hallie had learned about Gert’s past right away.

  The second album was from college. There were freshman year photos showing the guys on her floor hanging out in the dorm lounge, and later photos of her, Marc and Marc’s fraternity brothers.

  The third album was her wedding album. It was white, with gold around the sides.

  Gert started with the purple album, the family one. She held it on her lap, and Todd looked on. The sides of their legs were again touching.

  Todd looked slightly ambivalent, as if part of him really didn’t want to be confronted with his predecessor. But they’d get through this.

  “These are my parents, when they were young,” Gert said, turning the pages of the purple album.

  “He looks like that guy from Welcome Back, Kotter,” Todd said.

  “Epstein? You’re not the first to say that. But he doesn’t look like him anymore.”

  “That look doesn’t do it for lawyers,” Todd said. “Is he sensitive about that? Should I call him Mr. Epstein?”

  “Don’t,” she said. “This is me as a baby.”

  “You look like Telly Savalas.”

  “It’s gotta be the hair.”

  “Okay, Miss Savalas.”

  “This is my brother Henry.”

  “Now, he’s got hair.”

  They moved on to the college album. There was a picture of Marc painting his off-campus apartment. There was one of Marc and his best friend Craig hamming it up with their short-lived college band, Crusty Oatmeal Spoon.

  Craig was coming to New York soon, Gert remembered. They were going to do lunch. It would be good to see him.

  “You don’t have to go so fast,” Todd said.

  Gert slowed down. “I just don’t know how much you want to see,” she said.

  “I want to see everything.”

  She felt a lump in her throat.

  “This was Marc’s house off-campus,” Gert said. “Sophomore year. When I met him.”

  “I like the color.”

  “I know! It’s a strange green and most people didn’t like it, but I thought it was great. So I guess you and I have something in common.”

  “Hopefully more than one thing,” Todd said, putting his hand on her knee.

  “These are Marc’s brothers,” she said. “Michael’s the one who…” She had to stop herself. She hadn’t told Todd about Michael’s wedding. She knew she couldn’t bring him.

  But could she?

  She’d have to think about that.

  She finished her sentence: “Michael’s the one I got along with best out of the brothers.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, he was the youngest, and he’s shy,” Gert said. “Marc’s other brothers are very outgoing. It took Michael a while to know how to talk to girls. When he went to college and started bringing girlfriends to family gatherings, I always paid a lot of attention to them, to make them feel less nervous.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Well, he’s a nice guy. Sensitive. Knows more than two poems.”

  Todd laughed.

  “This was our senior formal,” Gert said. “Marc and I felt weird, because we were doing adult things but we didn’t feel like adults yet. We felt like we were playing dress-up in our parents’ closet. We got hotel rooms downtown after the formal and had a party in one of them. It was probably the biggest thing we’d ever paid for with our own money and not our parents’.”

  “I don’t feel like an adult,
” Todd said.

  “Me, neither,” Gert said. “I don’t know when I will.”

  “I think you will when you buy a house,” Todd said. “I think that must be where it starts.”

  “Oh,” Gert said. “We did. This condo’s ours. Well, I’m still paying off the mortgage.”

  “Oh,” Todd said. He sounded uncomfortable. But she had to be honest now. What was one more thing?

  “I did feel a little older when we finally bought it,” she admitted. “I said to myself, ‘We’re buying a condo. I guess this is it. We must be grown up now.’”

  Todd said, “What about when you got engaged?”

  Gert said, “That wasn’t so hard. Getting engaged was just like making a promise to always be with my best friend.”

  Todd looked at her for a second, then back at the album. “Hey, this photo’s funny.”

  “That’s Marc’s best friend, Craig. They did all kinds of pranks together.”

  They turned pages together now, slowly.

  “You really do have a lot of memories with him,” Todd said.

  “Well,” Gert said, “we were together for eight years.” She looked at him. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I’m a little…jealous. I know it’s stupid.”

  “Nothing’s stupid.”

  “If all your experiences added up to the way you are now, then it’s good.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at him.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. She sucked her lower lip.

  “What did you like best about him?”

  “You really want to know?”

  He looked her in the eye. “Yes.”

  She took a deep breath. “He always took care of me and everyone else,” she said. “He constantly did things for his friends, helped them move and lent them books and saw their plays and improv sets. He was the person who, when something was wrong and you were afraid to be a burden but you vaguely mentioned it, he sprang into action no matter what.” She took a breath. “He prided himself on his loyalty to friends. And he was so close to his family. He had simple tastes, but he knew how to splurge when he wanted to make people happy. He had these idiosyncrasies, I’m not going to get into them, but they were just the kind of things that attract you to someone and you can’t forget.” She closed her eyes and thought of the way his nose crinkled when he laughed. “He was always making these goals, lists of things he wanted to accomplish by the end of each month, and he always did. And every year before Christmas, he put together this long newsletter for all his friends. It went on about everything that was happening in our lives: Our job changes, what members of his family were doing, which projects he was pursuing at work, but he’d always throw in a few funny comments, too. One year he included a bar graph of how much my musical tastes had improved since meeting him. And he always made sure to put a line at the end of the letter about how much everyone meant to him and how he was glad Christmas came around once a year because it was a good excuse to remind everyone how much he cared about them. He sent this to like fifty people each Christmas. And then he’d be busy for the entire next week because each and every person on that list would write us back practically a book on what was going on in their lives. Marc would respond to everything they wrote.” She slowed down. She’d been talking quickly. “To be the other half of someone like that, to be the person supporting him…he was just someone I would have been thrilled to know. And I got to marry him.”