Starting from Square Two

by Caren Lissner

  But she didn’t stop him.

  “You don’t want me to go?” he’d asked her the day before, looking puppy-eyed. He reminded her he’d wanted to go skydiving for many years, long before he’d met her. And it was just one time, he said. Just once.

  She knew that if she stopped him, he’d still have the urge to do it someday. Maybe it would even come at a worse time. He had to get it out of his system.

  “I just don’t understand it, is all,” she said.

  “It’s just something I need to do,” he said.

  When he finally arrived home that night, he took Gert out with his friends to celebrate at the local wings place. They laughed, gorged themselves on chicken and pitchers of beer, and told tales of death-defying feats. Gert said nothing of how she had sat home and worried all day. She smiled at them, never revealing her daylong agony.

  Why not?

  Because she was the cool girl, the one who got along with the guys. The one who flitted around during Marc’s Super Bowl parties making sure the sandwiches were replaced, laughing at playing the subservient better half.

  She always got his friends’ references. She always took and returned their teasing. She appreciated their canon.

  The morning of the accident, Marc had a doctor’s appointment. It was Friday. He had a cold that—it had become apparent the previous night—wasn’t a cold. It was the flu. The worst he’d had in years. He ached. He shivered. He had a fever. He tossed in bed. He asked if there was something he could take.

  Gert told him she’d drive him to their doctor on the Upper West Side. Marc said she shouldn’t go into work late. He could drive himself. “I’m a big boy,” he said.

  Gert told him he looked terrible. He said, sweetly, “I’ll look better by the time you get home.”

  She shrugged, made eggs and coffee for him, and left for work.

  Gert didn’t know that he’d swigged over-the-counter cold medicine, and it probably hadn’t mattered, anyway. He was drowsy from not sleeping the night before. He’d drifted coming off the bridge, gone into the opposite lane and been hit on the driver’s side. The driver of the other car was okay, but Marc had spun out of control. He’d probably been knocked unconscious almost instantly, the police said.

  Why hadn’t she insisted on driving him? Why hadn’t she simply put her foot down?

  Because she wasn’t a nag. She was always the girl who let the guys be.

  But maybe if she’d loved him more, she would have nagged.

  She knew what she should have done. She should have gone into the kitchen, called Missy’s voicemail, left a message saying she’d be in late, returned to their room and told Marc he didn’t have a choice. She’d drive him to the doctor. That would be all there was to it. She fantasized sometimes about having done this, and how he’d still be here.

  She felt the hard subway seat against her back. The people across from her were sleeping, their heads together.

  Gert thought of Marc’s mother. That was why Marc’s mother was angry at her. Marc’s mother blamed her. And why shouldn’t she? Marc’s overbearing mother would never have let Marc drive himself. She would have forced him to let her take him.

  If this had been decades earlier, Gert might have been a housewife and would have been home all day to drive him. It wouldn’t have been an issue.

  But most women worked these days. And Gert wasn’t like Marc’s mother.

  There had been a tension between Mrs. Healy and Gert before that, a subtle one. Mrs. Healy was nice enough at gatherings. But Gert knew Mrs. Healy wouldn’t have thought anyone was good enough for Marc. The little things seemed to make it worse. When the two of them had moved in together without getting married, Marc’s mother had had a big fight with him about it. Mrs. Healy was just hard.

  Inside, Gert knew the accident wasn’t her fault. She knew. But she couldn’t help but think that she should have trained all her attention on Marc that morning.

  She’d given up easily. She was too calm, too matter-of-fact. She’d never struggled much. Everything had always worked out for her.

  The subway lifted a bit. Looking out the window, Gert saw that they were passing a round basilica, then an old stapler factory. She wondered why she tortured herself with such thoughts. Why did she always think about what she hadn’t done, who she hadn’t been?

  Because now she had time for it. All the time in the world.

  There was all the time in the world now—plenty of time for self-analysis, for self-doubts, for regrets. Being part of a couple meant you fit somewhere, that your cracks and erosions were hidden to the rest of the world. When you suddenly had that ripped apart, the hidden blemishes were exposed like cross-sections of a log.

  Gert had her insecurities and imperfections. Marc had had his flaws, too. But their quirks had been covered by each other. Now she was naked, vulnerable to doubts and stabs of insecurity, the kind that people who were alone probably endured every day.

  She’d had a pretty easy life. So she could be easygoing with others. Maybe it had all been too easy. College, Marc and his money, the maid service….

  Should Gert now become stronger? Set her foot down about things more? Be less permissive? Push harder to improve herself? Maybe if she was more in control of things and pushed more, like Mrs. Healy always did, she could prevent tragedies in the future.

  But it didn’t matter, did it?

  It really didn’t matter if she changed. She could do everything right in her life, and the unexpected could still happen.

  That had been her biggest, and worst, revelation of all.

  Before Marc’s death, Gert had pretty much believed that you got the life you deserved. If you worked hard and were a decent person, things fell into place. She’d earned good grades in high school, worked hard at summer jobs, gotten into a decent college, met a great guy and gotten married. Wasn’t that the way it was supposed to go? Wasn’t that a routine chain of events?

  She’d never thought of herself as “lucky”—she had simply done what she was supposed to, and it had worked out like it should. Simple. She wasn’t a person who passed judgment or was picky about men. She was kind and nonjudgmental and hardworking. Most people she knew who had worked hard had gotten the same. Well, not every single time, of course—but most of the time, you got what you deserved.

  Hallie was right: Gert had partially blamed single women for being single. Women like Hallie and Erika had simply made bad choices. They were too selective, or they’d dated the wrong people, or done the wrong things. Gert’s life had made sense.

  But a year and a half ago, she’d gotten a jolt. It wasn’t that simple.

  Her therapist had told her that some day, she’d have to face the question of who she had been before the accident, and who she was after it.

  Before the accident, she’d been a good person. She knew that. Naive—yes, and complacent—probably. But that didn’t mean she was unkind. She was caring, she didn’t stereotype people, and she listened to them. Those were admirable things.

  But now she knew that being a nice person was about the least you could do. And that rewards were not guaranteed.

  It was late in her life, she knew, for her to face this realization. She hadn’t even thought it through until right then, although it had nagged at her before.

  In some ways, though, she didn’t think she really had had to learn such things. What good did it do her? She would gladly relinquish the new knowledge for the chance to run back under the veil of innocence and not have to think about it again.

  “Dead” was such a hard word. Sometimes she had to consider it over and over—dead, dead, dead—twisting it, turning it, the way people did with some phrases, the idea that someone so vibrant and full of life had completely ceased to be. Someone who took charge of everything, who had to have the best and nothing less, would be denied so many wonderful experiences in life. Gert couldn’t help thinking of it over and over—Dead, dead, dead. Gone. Completely. Over. Marc’s body had just stopped wo
rking.

  Sometimes she tried to imagine the terror he’d felt during the split second when he realized he was going to crash. What had he thought of? That he was about to die? That he might never see her again? That he wouldn’t get to do any of the things he’d dreamed of?

  Marc’s father had asked the police a hundred times if someone had cut Marc off on the road. Everyone wanted to believe something different. Mr. Healy wanted to believe another driver was at fault. Mrs. Healy wanted to believe Gert hadn’t taken as good care of him as she should have. Gert didn’t want to believe he was gone.

  There would never be a bright side. There would never be some new information or occurrence that would make this okay. That was another thing Gert had had to learn. In the past, she had always found silver linings: Miss the bus, you can walk and get exercise. Rains on your family picnic, play board games with the kids inside. But for this, there were no silver linings. Just crude realizations.

  Gert wanted to shake herself out of this, to think about her next date with Todd, or spring, or something else. She sometimes descended into this pit where she had to think the worst thoughts ever. She didn’t want to be naive, or be caught by surprise again. She had to face facts. Life could be random. It could be miserable.

  She felt so much older than twenty-nine. She thought about Todd. Could she ever talk to him about feelings like these? Did someone like Todd need to think about what she was thinking about?

  Maybe Todd didn’t need to. He had been patient with her, but he was still in a different world. He didn’t need to analyze tragedy. Maybe her pain really made her too different from people her age. Maybe it would make her unreachable.

  Walking off the train, she saw the sunlight bounce off the railing under the elevated overhang, and it surprised her for a second.

  Maybe I’m being ridiculous, Gert thought. Yes, she had become more aware of the potential for disaster in her life. She’d been complacent before, and she still had much to learn. But there was no reason that she had to dwell on the potential for hidden tragedy all the time. She didn’t have to be guarded for the rest of her life just because of something that had happened when she was twenty-seven.

  Still, it could have held off a little longer. She could have enjoyed a longer honeymoon.

  But she would have gotten that jolt, that reminder of the lurking random unkindnesses of the world, days later anyway. Four days after Marc’s accident, she had felt the world burst open when everyone else had. She had only smashed into reality a few days ahead of schedule.

  Chapter

  10

  Gert was thankful for Hallie and Erika the next day, because they were going to walk around Manhattan asking for men’s phone numbers, and she’d tag along, trying to enjoy the harmless fun. It would take her mind off of—well, her mind.

  It was a sunny Sunday. They met for brunch first. Gert decided she needed a drink. Mimosas sounded good to her. She’d drink a few and watch Hallie and Erika undertake their boy hunt.

  The brunch place was on 72nd Street. Both Hallie and Erika looked good that day. Hallie had gotten her light brown hair cut. It was short and straight. Erika’s dirty-blond hair was in a black bandanna. Gert thought that Hallie was pretty, even if she wasn’t glamorous like Erika. Anyway, glamour could be off-putting.

  “So in case Eden doesn’t work out,” Erika said, sitting across from Gert and Hallie, “and we don’t find anyone today, on Friday I saw this guy who might just be perfect for me.”

  “Great,” Hallie said.

  Gert was hopeful for her. “Where’d you meet him?”

  “Welllll…I didn’t actually meet him,” Erika said.

  Uh-oh, Gert thought.

  “My company’s been designing these facebooks for a law firm,” Erika said. “I was going over them to check for smudges and stuff, and this guy was in there, Tom Rossover. Have you ever seen someone, and just knew right away that the two of you would click?”

  No, Gert thought. Not from a photo in a facebook.

  “All I have to figure out is how to meet him,” Erika said.

  Gert could see Hallie’s mind working.

  Hallie snapped her fingers and said, “Got it. We’ll hang out outside his firm one day. When he comes out, you can go up to him and say, ‘I know you.’ You and Tom will go through all your colleges and careers, which helps him get to know things about you, but then all the sudden you can snap and say, ‘Now I know. You’re in the facebook my firm is designing.’”

  “That’s brilliant,” Erika said.

  Even Gert had to admit it was good.

  Erika smiled. “Who’s up for flower juice?”

  “Flower juice” was the house specialty, a blend of four fruit juices and two mysterious flowers. The girls suspected the juices to be banana, orange, tangerine and grapefruit, although they weren’t sure about the flowers. The waitress had heard their guesses but refused to confirm or deny. Erika said the juice had medicinal properties. Hallie said it prevented dandruff. Gert thought that she’d like to bring Todd to try it one day.

  That was the good thing about new relationships, Gert thought—you got to introduce the things you loved to the person you loved, bring them into your world. It would be the great thing about having kids someday, too.

  When the waitress returned with the heavenly nectar, Erika said, “Can you imagine if guys knew the lengths we went to to get their attention? They think they make the effort.”

  “Brett Stoddard knows,” Hallie said.

  “Oh, how was your date with him last night?” Gert asked.

  Hallie grinned. “He recited the Shelley poem!”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah, and you know what?” Hallie said. “I knew what he was doing, and I still felt seduced by him. I couldn’t help it. He asked me a thousand questions about myself. He asked me what I brought for show-and-tell when I was in kindergarten.”

  “What did you bring?” Gert asked.

  “A box of 64 Crayolas,” Hallie said. “And he asked me my favorite cheese.”

  “What’s your favorite cheese?” Gert asked.

  “Jarlsberg,” Hallie said. Gert wondered why she didn’t know these things about Hallie. She realized she’d never asked. It all went back to the fact that she tried harder with men. Maybe she should ask more questions of Hallie.

  “The point is,” Hallie added, sounding impatient, “I’ve never met a guy who focused on me so much. He’s amazing.”

  “Did you ask anything about him?” Gert asked.

  “I tried, but mostly he kept the questions on me,” she said. “And he kept staring at me like I was the most fascinating person ever.”

  “He’s a player, all right,” Erika said, folding her napkin.

  “Maybe he’s not playing,” Gert said.

  “Oh, he totally is,” Hallie said. “It’s all an act. Do you think he really cares about what I brought for show-and-tell or what my favorite cheese is? He wants me to need him. And it’s hard to resist. I mean, he’s such fun to be with.”

  Erika shook her head, then reached for a Sweet’N Low for her coffee. “It’s the guys you really like that make it impossible to do the dating rules,” she said.

  “Damn straight,” Hallie said. “That’s what’s known as the Rule of Rules. Whichever dating rules you’re following, it’s going to be nearly impossible to follow them for the people you like, and easy to follow them for ones you don’t—which makes them have the reverse effect you intend.”

  She sipped her flower juice, then put down the mug pointedly. “Eventually you have to learn to control yourself,” she said. “When you’ve got the experience and maturity to do that, that’s when you finally move ahead.” She slapped the table. “And by gum, this is that time.”

  Walking from the Eighth Avenue subway stop down to 42nd Street, Gert noticed a baby bawling, and a couple peering into their carriage. Erika seemed to be noticing, too.

  “Look at them,” Erika said. “Letting their baby howl lik
e that. Saying, ‘Look at us. We’re a cute happy couple and now we have a cute happy baby. We’re just cute happy people.’”

  Gert felt concerned. She recognized another rule—or more, a syndrome—that Hallie and Erika had never verbalized: Single-itis. A disease characterized by bitterness and craziness after several years without a fulfilling relationship. The symptoms were vocalizing awful dating rules, hating them and simultaneously following them, being bitter about all members of the opposite sex and resenting anyone in a decent relationship.

  Gert remembered Erika saying, that night at the sleepover, how it wasn’t healthy to be without a boyfriend for that long. When Todd touched her, no matter what they were doing, it was something that she’d missed for a year and a half, and she hadn’t realized how much she needed that. She wondered how Hallie and Erika had survived so long without regular intimacy. She had trouble relating to their level of bitterness and jealousy, but on an intellectual level, she somewhat understood it.

  Right now, she tried to guess what Erika was thinking. Do those people with the carriage know what it’s like to be the rest of us? Do they ever have any problems? Do they think I’m single because of something I did wrong?

  Gert thought that Hallie and Erika couldn’t help being angry, but Gert didn’t know how much longer she could have patience with their games. She had a feeling that unless she could find a way to become closer to them, there would be some sort of blowup.

  On 42nd Street, there were artists drawing caricatures and homeless guys holding signs saying clever things like “I admit it. I need $$$ for booze.” The biggest attraction seemed to be the Asians with their beautiful spray-painted moonscapes, the latest trend in sidewalk art that had suddenly appeared the summer before and snagged tourists’ hearts. Gert didn’t know who the first person to do this was, or why it had suddenly replaced writing kids’ names in Chinese letters in popularity.

  The three women settled into a spot near the economic development office. They leaned against the marble wall of a slanted building. Its face sloped backward slightly at a 110-degree angle and shined despite a thin coating of accumulated dirt.