Starting from Square Two

by Caren Lissner

  Erika was looking around.

  She turned to face Gert. She wiped her hand across her face.

  “What time is it?” she asked, squinting.

  “It’s five-thirty,” Gert said.

  Hallie woke up, too. “Sleep,” Hallie said to Erika. “It’s okay.”

  Erika wiped her eyes. “I want to say something,” she said. Todd stirred. “I want to thank you guys for coming to get me in the middle of the night. I know it was a lot to do. I’d still be back there if it wasn’t for you.”

  “It’s okay,” Hallie said. “It’s what friends are for.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude to you, Todd,” Erika said. “You have a lot of balls to come up here at this time of night.”

  Todd smiled. “I don’t have work today,” he said. Gert squeezed his knee.

  It was around 6:00 a.m. when they finally coasted back over the bridge into New York City, just as the first tiny windows of the skyscrapers were lighting up.

  Chapter

  19

  Gert was exhausted at work when she got in. She lay her head on the desk. She thought about how her father’s law firm in L.A. actually had a room where tired employees could sleep. It was more like a chamber than a room.

  Gert couldn’t take a nap anyway. Months ago, she’d scheduled her gynecologist checkup for that day at lunchtime, which meant she didn’t have time to waste in the morning.

  Gert’s gynecologist was an older woman to whom Gert had never really liked talking about her sex life. She always reminded herself that there were probably three thousand people like Gert passing through the door each year. The doctor probably wouldn’t say, “You slut!” when Gert answered questions. Although that might make a good Saturday Night Live skit: the prudish gynecologist.

  Maybe she could work that into one of her PR campaign ideas. She had talked with Missy about those the day before. Gert had been nervous about approaching her, but Missy had understood. Missy’s guilt had probably worked in Gert’s favor. Gert let it.

  In the gynecologist’s waiting room, there were two pregnant women Gert’s age. One of them saw her looking and smiled at her, and she smiled briefly but averted her gaze. She felt jealous, behind and barren.

  She reached for one of the magazines on the center table. Unfortunately, they were all women’s and parenting magazines. She immediately became angry upon looking through one. It contained one of those articles implying that women gave up marriage and babies in their twenties in order to “focus on their careers.” She was tired of hearing people repeat the same stupid thing, as if there were massive herds of women declining dates with wonderful men or trying not to meet their match so that they could work more. What did happen, as far as she saw, was people she knew tried very hard to find love, but if they weren’t lucky enough, at least they had jobs to put their energy into. Gert wondered if the writers of these articles wanted women to simply sit at home all day crying to their mothers. Who wrote these articles—people who had gotten married at twenty-one and didn’t have a clue?

  Gert wondered if maybe most of the world was like she had been—needing to believe that anyone who hadn’t gotten to a certain stage in their lives had simply made the wrong choices. So then, how would they explain Gert, a woman who had found the right guy—but was now single?

  Gert looked up from the magazine. She had actually been like those people. Blaming herself for Marc’s death—that had been a logical way to explain why she was alone now. She’d done something wrong, and gotten punished for it. Then the world still made sense.

  She felt a stab of selfishness in her stomach. So many of her thoughts of Marc had been self-centered lately—about her facing the world alone, not as much about the fact that he’d never get to enjoy this world with her. She shifted in her seat, feeling a great sadness, wishing he was in that room with her, waiting to find out what sex their baby was.

  She again thought of Mrs. Healy. Mrs. Healy was wrong to blame her. She knew Mrs. Healy had her own failings. Probably, she needed to blame her. Gert felt better, thinking about this. That’s how Mrs. Healy was. Maybe she wouldn’t confront Mrs. Healy at the wedding or afterward. Maybe she’d simply feel sorry for her.

  Gert suffered through her annual exam. When it ended, her doctor asked her whether she wanted an AIDS test. Gert had to think about it for a second. Every year she had automatically said, “No.” It was something she’d assumed she would never have to worry about again in her entire life. Something she’d always been relieved about.

  Now it was just one more thing about starting over that was hard.

  She thought for a minute.

  “No,” she said, finally.

  When Gert got back to work, Missy was near her desk, filing documents in the metal cabinet. Gert thought it was strange. Missy never did filing herself.

  “How was the doctor’s?” Missy asked. “Are you okay?”

  Gert saw that her face looked just as clammy and tired as Erika’s had last night. “It was just a checkup,” Gert said. She wished she was in a job where she didn’t have to always tell her boss where she was going.

  “Oh,” Missy said. “One of those kinds of checkups?”

  “Yes,” Gert said.

  “Everything in the right place?”

  Gert grimaced.

  “I don’t like them, either.” Missy looked at her. “Look, I’m going to be out for a few days.”

  Gert felt relieved. But she asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But Derek wants to spend time apart. I have to look at apartments, get my life together. I shouldn’t have pushed him so fast. Moving in together was not a good idea.”

  Missy kept flipping through the papers in the cabinet, but it didn’t look like she was getting anywhere.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Gert asked.

  “No,” Missy said, keeping her eyes on the papers. “I’m not. Maybe Derek isn’t the right person for me, but I liked having him around.” She turned to Gert and shook her head. “Dennis kept calling his house and harassing us, which didn’t help. I’ll kill him if I see him again.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I will. I told Dennis not to come near me. But now Derek doesn’t want to deal with me. I tried to make things okay, and I couldn’t.”

  “Then Derek doesn’t deserve you.”

  Missy went back to the papers, but didn’t file. “I know that,” she said. “I know he doesn’t. But I don’t feel like that. I feel like just another old divorcée.”

  “Stop it,” Gert said, looking at her. She was pretty. “There are a ton of men who’ll like you.”

  “I don’t want to go through a ton.”

  “No one does.” Gert felt weird trying to comfort Missy. “Hey. My friends are having this, uh, gathering next weekend.” Gert explained the Stud Party. “But the guys who come to it will be young.”

  Missy grinned. “I don’t mind…” she said. Then she went to the window to look out at the buildings.

  “You know,” she said, “neither Dennis nor I is the person we used to be. Sometimes I miss us. When we were young and uncomplicated. But I couldn’t go back. Still, sometimes I remember how it felt back then. Maybe I’ll feel that way again someday.”

  “I hope you will,” Gert said.

  “I know that you will,” Missy said, turning to her. “Because of the way you are.”

  “I think I might be on the way,” Gert said.

  That night, Hallie called sounding frazzled.

  “What’s the matter?” Gert asked, shifting the phone around as she fried herself eggs with Ranch dressing, a dish she and Marc had concocted.

  “It’s Brett,” Hallie said. “He hasn’t called in three days!”

  “Does he usually?” She turned the gas down.

  “He always did,” Hallie sobbed. “Even when I thought he wasn’t going to, he did. And now, nothing. I played the game too long, and he gave up! He probably thinks I don’t like him.”r />
  “Well, call him,” Gert said.

  “I can’t call a guy!”

  Gert sighed. “Hallie.” Her eggs were going to get cold.

  “What would I say? ‘I changed my mind about us sleeping together, so please come over now’?”

  “Honesty might be a start….”

  “I’m desperate, but not that desperate,” Hallie said. “Has Todd said anything?”

  Gert said, “Do you want me to ask him?”

  “Please, can you?”

  Gert called Todd, then ate her eggs, then called Hallie back. “Todd thinks Brett likes having women in love with him,” Gert said. “Brett’s not sure you even like him.”

  “I knew it!” Hallie said. “What should I do?”

  “Well, you knew how Brett is,” Gert said, drying dishes. “You can’t help it if he’s that way.”

  “It’s not fair,” Hallie said. “I thought I’d be different.”

  They both let that sentence hang in the air, knowing how naive it sounded. Maybe Gert wasn’t the only one who was naive. Her most cynical friends were still women—still hopeful at heart.

  Gert put a dish on the rack. “Maybe you should call him,” she said. “You have nothing to lose. Don’t tell him you lied in the past, but say you miss him. Then he’ll at least know how you feel.”

  “I don’t know,” Hallie said. “Maybe I should wait a day. You’re coming to the Stud Party, right?”

  “As long as I don’t have to pursue any studs,” Gert said.

  “No,” Hallie said. “Erika and I need them for ourselves. We just have to make it look like there are more girls there so the guys won’t leave. Your boss is coming, right? And that girl, Chase.”

  “She’s coming later.”

  “As long as she comes. The more, the merrier.”

  Only a half hour later, when Gert was watching TV, Hallie called back.

  “Erika has a new boyfriend!” Hallie said.

  “Really?” Gert asked, hooking her finger in the phone cord.

  “She said her therapist is making her feel better, and she’s been going out to bars alone and meeting guys. She met this older guy who’s really into her.”

  “That’s great,” Gert said, although she could tell Hallie was a little jealous. Still, Gert had always known Hallie and Erika would do better separately.

  “Yeah,” Hallie said. “She met him at some bar in the Upper West Side and they spent hours commiserating on their exes.” Hallie paused before adding, “She’d just better come to the party. She promised!”

  Chapter

  20

  Hallie’s living room was awash in posters: The Blues Brothers, Reservoir Dogs, The Empire Strikes Back.

  There were already three studs in the room, drinking bottled beers, waiting for more girls to arrive.

  “Gert!” Hallie said, hugging her when she came in.

  “I don’t believe you!” Gert said, looking at the posters.

  Hallie said, “I couldn’t get Star Wars, so I had to go with Empire.”

  “That’s fine. But I don’t know if guys want women who are exactly like them….”

  “Why not?” Hallie asked. “You kept telling me about the canon. These posters are perfect.”

  “The canon is about seeing if you share men’s humor, not pretending.”

  “I’m all about pretending,” Hallie said. “Truthfully, there’s manipulation in all relationships, isn’t there? When you surprise someone with a gift or a vacation or when you whisper sweet nothings, isn’t it all designed to get them to like you?”

  Gert thought about it. “I guess,” she had to concede.

  “Anyway, if they like the posters, I’ll say they’re mine,” Hallie said. “If not, I’ll say Cat left them when she moved out. It’s brilliant.”

  Cat had left the previous week. Her parents thought the city was changing her too much. They hadn’t been too happy to hear about her breaking friends out of jail, or the upcoming “Stud Party.”

  Cat was only twenty-seven, anyway. She said she might come back when she turned twenty-eight.

  “Speaking of manipulation,” Hallie said, “I wouldn’t mind manipulating a few of the guys here tonight. It might get my mind off Brett.”

  Gert looked around. “Have you called him?”

  “Not yet,” Hallie said. “I want to. But I won’t yet. He needs to be the one who wants to see me.”

  “Where’s Erika?” Gert asked.

  “She’s coming,” Hallie said. “Boyfriend or no, she’s coming.”

  Studs poured into the room. And they brought friends! Single male friends. “See?” Hallie said to Gert. “There are normal single guys out there. But they’re not in bars.”

  “I knew it,” Gert said. “Hey, there’s Missy.”

  Missy looked more like a cat than Cat, prancing in in a one-piece, snug-fitting suit. A few heads turned when she came into the room.

  “Good!” Hallie said. “She’ll keep the studs here.”

  “She might actually take a few home with her,” Gert said.

  “That’s okay,” Hallie said. “I was feeling bad that the ratio was so low. No one’s getting lucky tonight.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Gert said. “Stud Number Three and Stud Number Eight just walked out the door together.”

  “You must be Hallie,” Missy said, shaking Hallie’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Me, too,” Hallie said. “Good things.” Even Gert had to wince and look away when she said that.

  “What’s everyone drinking?” Missy asked.

  “We’re drinking club soda,” Hallie said, “but we’re making sure that the guys get drunk.”

  Missy looked around the room. “Wow, they’re cute,” she said. “Where did you get them?”

  “Times Square,” Hallie said.

  “And you didn’t have to pay? I like your style.”

  Gert overheard a guy in a corner say to a friend, “Girls just have to accept that men are pigs,” so she went over to them. They looked at her as if she was intruding.

  “I happened to overhear,” Gert said.

  “And you’re going to argue with me, right?” the guy said. He was average height, with a round face and thinning hair. “Girls aren’t any better.”

  “How so?” Gert demanded, folding her arms.

  “Women say they want to find a guy who’s nice and has a sense of humor,” he said, “but what they really mean is, they want a guy who’s nice like Mel Gibson and has a sense of humor like Brad Pitt.”

  “I’ve heard guys say that,” Gert said, “but that’s because they do the same thing, except worse. They go to bars and talk only to women who are extremely beautiful, and then they get turned down because the women they chose are just as superficial as they are. And then they run around saying, ‘Girls don’t like nice guys.’ Why don’t you try going up to nice, average women? Then you’ll meet women who like nice, average guys. If you pick only the most beautiful women in the bar, you can’t turn around and complain that they made the same choice you made.”

  Gert suddenly stopped herself. She realized she was beginning to sound as bitter as Hallie. But she was starting to understand what drove Hallie. How were her friends ever supposed to find a guy who wasn’t a jerk when guys themselves thought that to get a girl they should act like jerks?

  The guy’s friends were smiling, seemingly amused.

  “So you’re claiming women aren’t judgmental,” the guy said.

  “All women aren’t anything,” Gert said. “No one is all everything. All women aren’t superficial, and all men aren’t superficial. Just like all men aren’t jerks, and all women aren’t jerks. Everyone is different. To make blanket statements about the opposite sex is both bitter and immature.”

  The guy glowered at her. “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Gert said.

  “Does he look like Brad Pitt?”

  “No,” Gert sa
id. “And he’s a nice guy, too.”

  “Well, he’s ruining it for the rest of us.”

  “You don’t want to try,” Gert said. “You say ‘Men are pigs’ because you want to convince us that all men are like you so that you don’t have to do the work of being a decent human being. Someday you’ll fall in love—guys like you always do. Then you’ll stop being so immature.”

  The guy rolled his eyes. His friends were still amused.

  Hallie had noticed Gert talking to the men and floated over. “Who are your friends?” she asked.

  “This guy was just insisting that men are jerks,” Gert said.

  “Are you a jerk?” Hallie asked him.

  “Sure,” the guy said.

  Hallie looked at his friends. “Are you jerks?”

  “No,” one of them said.

  “See?” Hallie said.

  The first guy said, “Well, men are either jerks, or they’re liars. I know for a fact that my friends came to this party expecting to have sex.”

  “That doesn’t make you a jerk,” Hallie said. “But if you use someone for that and pretend it’s otherwise, or if that’s the only thing you care about in the world, then that makes you a jerk. And boring, to boot.”

  “Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t,” the guy said.

  “Well, then you’re not a full jerk. Congratulations. Now, grow up. Come on, Gert. There are too many guys at this party for us to be the ones at a disadvantage.”

  Gert blew them a kiss as she left.

  “Where the hell is Erika?” Hallie said. “She better not dis me because of this new guy. She’s been promising since she was twenty-four never to be like people who do that.”

  “You two need drinks,” Missy said. She handed them each a cosmo.

  “If you liquor us up, you have to promise not to fire Gert if she gets drunk,” Hallie said.