by Claire Cook
Ray stared at me with brown eyes that were framed by deep, outdoorsy wrinkles. Forgetting that I’d even asked a question, I explored his craggy features with enthusiasm. “Yeah, I know, Sarah. Get over it. Right, that’s what you’re thinking? But it’s not just about the hockey. I think I did the same thing with everything else in my life. I was engaged twice. Well, three times, but once was only for a month. Anyway, each time, perfectly nice girls, women….” He slid his watch around on his wrist but kept looking at me. “Well, I couldn’t go through with it. I kept thinking, What if I meet someone better tomorrow? You know, I’m standing on the altar and the perfect woman walks by and then what do I do? — ”
“More coffee?” the waitress asked, interrupting. She poured without waiting for an answer.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to spew out my whole life story,” Ray said. Immediately, I felt guilty for not listening more closely. Ray’s face was so distracting. I hoped I hadn’t missed anything important. “You’re just so easy to talk to, Sarah.”
“Thanks. And you’re easy to listen to. I mean….I think that came out wrong.”
Ray laughed. “All right. My turn to listen. Tell me about yourself.”
We talked through the second cup of coffee, and then Ray walked me to my car. Standing in the mostly deserted parking lot, glittery lights everywhere, he kissed me. It was a kiss that might have meant more kisses down the road. Or it might have been just to keep in practice for when the perfect woman came along.
“I’ll call you,” he said, holding the door as I got into my car.
Chapter 25
“Dad is seeing Marlene? She’s the one from the Brennan Bake, right? In the sailor suit?”
“Right. You let her brother slip through your fingers.”
“He was repulsive.”
“He was rich. And single.”
I tried to distract Carol from the brother. “What was up with that sailor suit, anyway? I mean, do you think she rented it at a costume shop or had it just been sitting in her closet for a couple of decades?”
“I think it’s the frugal Yankee thing where you don’t throw clothes out unless they have holes, even though you give catered dinner parties twice a month. She probably thought it was the perfect outfit for a quaint little Irish gathering.”
I had to stop myself from bragging to Carol that I was doing just fine in the date department without Marlene’s rich brother, who wasn’t much of a dresser himself, as I remembered. That if things worked out and he actually called, I’d have a date with Ray Santia. And I was still considering the possibility of dating Bob Connor, though I hadn’t heard from him since he asked me to think about it. Maybe he knew I was a slow thinker. And, speaking of slow thinking, then there was John. I’d tucked the details of our dinner into the back corners of my mind, hoping they’d make more sense when I took them out again. Anyway, the last thing I needed was for Carol to meddle in what might actually become a real live social life. I nudged the subject back to Dad. “So when did Marlene come back into the picture?”
“I don’t think she was ever out of the picture. I think Dad’s been seeing her all along.” Carol must have been starting dinner. I heard pans clattering and her voice kept getting louder and softer.
“Does Dolly know?”
“Be serious. He’s still alive, isn’t he?”
“Do you have any idea what he sees in Dolly?”
“Absolutely. Men like Dad feel safe with a woman like Dolly keeping an eye on them. He can be the charming rogue, and know that she’ll catch him before he gets himself into any real trouble.”
“Wow. How about Marlene?”
“I think she might give him enough rope to hang himself. You know, all that freedom would make him nervous because he might have to stand on his own two feet for a change.”
“What about Mom? Did she watch his every move?”
“Yeah, I think she did, in a quieter way, though. He didn’t get away with much for long, that’s for sure.”
“Mom and Dad really loved each other, didn’t they, Carol?”
“Yes,” she said. “They did.”
“Good. I’m glad — I mean, I always thought so. So, explain it again. What is this invitation we’re not allowed to say no to?” Thank goodness for cordless phones. I had mine tucked in the crook of my neck so I could do biceps curls while I talked to Carol. It wouldn’t hurt to be relatively buff while I was dating. I dropped to the floor, held the five-pound weights at my chest, did a few crunches. The phone worked its way loose and rolled away.
Carol was too busy talking to notice. “….private holiday performance of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra,” she was saying when I put the weights down on the floor and picked up the phone. “For patrons and their guests. Marlene bought out the whole first balcony. She told Dad to bring the entire family and as many friends as we want. So Dad rented a tour bus.”
“A tour bus?”
“Yeah, you know Dad. Marlene wouldn’t let him pay for the tickets, so he had to make some kind of grand gesture.”
“Why not a limo?”
“We’d never fit in one limo, and Dad wanted us all to ride together. He looked into a trolley but decided a bus would be a more luxurious ride. Plus it has bathrooms and we can even watch movies. He also took the catering option so they’ll serve beer and wine and appetizers.”
It didn’t seem worth pointing out that Marshbury was only about an hour’s drive from Cambridge. With traffic, maybe an hour and a half. I picked up the weights again and did a few presses, working my triceps this time. I was trying to decide if a bus trip with my family to the symphony could possibly be fun. And if it was too early to invite Ray Santia to come with me. Or, if that didn’t work out, to consider inviting Bob Connor.
*
The kids were seated happily at circle, and I was in such a good mood. I’d accomplished a lot yesterday, the actual meeting of Ray Santia all by myself, the actual drinking of coffee with him, which had led to an actual phone call from him last night inviting me to dinner. After I hung up, I even thought about calling Bob Connor, just to make sure I wasn’t putting too many eggs in the Ray Santia basket. Decided I’d had enough excitement and should save something for later. I’d always been that way. When my brothers and sisters had long since finished their Easter or Halloween candy, after gorging away on it for weeks, I’d still have a small stash tucked away for a rainy day.
Now I found the United States, then held the vinyl globe up at shoulder height and moved it slowly in an arc from left to right.
“I can’t see,” Brittany yelled, standing up.
“You will in a minute,” Max Meehan assured her. I smiled at him, turned my head to stare at Brittany until she sat down.
“Today we’re going to learn a game from Australia,” I said. I handed June the globe, just to prove to both of us that I really did like her. “First let’s find Australia.” I waited while June hunted.
“It’s on the bottom, June,” Austin said.
“Shh, don’t tell her,” Molly Greene whispered. Molly had come to school that day dressed for the new season in a white fur jacket with a matching muff. She’d taken off the coat but insisted on wearing the muff, which hung on a white velvet cord around her neck. She’d been filling it with assorted items all morning. A black beaded headband, a couple of crayons, her gold bangle bracelets. Right now she was sliding off her patent leathers and trying to stuff them in too. I pretended not to notice.
“Here it is!” June held the globe up in both hands, flipping her shining glory out of her face with a practiced shake of her head. Molly and Amanda McAlpine both imitated the movement, although Molly’s hair flopped back into her eyes and Amanda’s was too short to do much of anything.
I gave June a benevolent smile, without even a hint of What took you so long? in it. “Australia is a continent where many animals live. Koalas — ”
Molly stuck her hand up in the air and yelled, “I have a koala bear!”
Jenny’s hand w
ent up. “Not a real koala bear.”
“It is too real.”
Austin jumped in. “Technically,” he began, “koalas aren’t bears — ”
Molly was still waving her hand in the air. “Mine is a bear.”
“Technically,” Austin said firmly, “koalas are marsupials.”
“Shut up, Austin. You’re not the boss of knowing everything.”
I made a peace sign, our classroom signal to stop talking, stop fighting. “And in Australia there are also kangaroos, kookaburras, dingoes, and emus.” The children started to giggle. I picked up the pace. “But all of you have probably seen the most important animal in Australia. Sheep. Australians count on sheep for their wool.”
“How do they get the wool off the sheep?”
“With sheep shears. It’s just like getting a haircut,” I answered.
“Does it hurt?”
“No,” I assured them.
“How do you know?”
Good question, I thought. I stood up, walked to the closet, came back with two laundry baskets, two beach balls with cardboard ears glued on them, two Ping- Pong paddles. “You are the sheepdogs,” I announced, “and these are the sheep.” I held the beach balls up. “And these are the sheep pens,” I said, pointing to the laundry baskets. “Your job is to use the paddles to get the sheep to their pens.”
“We get to hit the sheep?” Jack Kaplan asked.
“No, we just pretend we’re going to if they won’t get in,” Austin answered.
I’d have to rethink this game later, but right now I just wanted to finish it so that we could move on to snack. June and I put the kids in two lines, let them take turns whacking the sheep into their pens. I was so grateful that June didn’t utter a word of reproach about the game’s shortcomings that I actually invited her to the symphony with my family. I even said she could bring a date if she wanted to.
“That is just so nice, Sarah. Of course I’ll come. I don’t really have a boyfriend right now, but maybe I’ll think of someone.”
*
I was eating tuna from a can. Dolphin-safe, extra-fancy solid white meat tuna. I’d drained it in the kitchen sink, poured some bottled lemon juice over it, swirled it around for a while, then drained it again. I put a dollop of mayonnaise on a paper plate, grabbed a plastic fork. I found paper towels, tore off two rectangles and tucked them under the plate. I managed to get a glass of milk into the hand that was holding the can of tuna. I carried everything into the living room.
Carefully, I arranged it all on the coffee table, leaving space in the center to stretch out my feet. I turned on the TV. Perfect timing, the opening photos of TheBrady Bunch were still flashing while everyone sang about the way they all became the Brady Bunch. I speared a chunk of tuna, dipped it in the mayonnaise. The lemon juice gave it just the right tang, kept it from tasting too fishy.
Jan Brady was jealous because her older sister Marcia had so many boyfriends. Well, I could certainly relate to that. Except it was worse for me when I was Jan’s age because it was my younger sister who had all the boyfriends. Christine was as softly feminine as I was gawky and angular, as irresistible as I was resistible. She was two years behind me in school but light-years ahead of me in the date department.
I caught another lump of tuna, gave it a generous dunk in the mayo. Jan Brady couldn’t take it anymore. I watched her invent an imaginary boyfriend, George Glass. Then she asked the operator to check their line so she could pretend it was a call from George. This seemed to work pretty well. I wish I’d thought of it.
I remembered that the worst part was that boys were always talking to me to get to Christine. They’d sidle up to me after math or English or out at the lockers. No matter how many times it happened, I always felt a small flutter of hope in my chest when a cute guy like Timmy Stack or Jackie Gordon approached. It could be me they wanted. Couldn’t it? And then the kick, like Charlie Brown and the football, that landed a couple of inches below my rib cage, in my exact center. Does Christine have a date for the dance? Just curious, do you think Christine would go out with me?
Hi, George. Sure, I can talk. It’s so sweet of you to call, George. Poor Jan Brady. I pierced some more tuna, felt Jan’s pain, her heartbreaking attempt to invent a shred of romance that Marcia couldn’t touch. My eyes teared up, so I ditched the tuna, gulped down some milk to distract myself. Oh, no. Mrs. Brady was deciding to invite George to Jan’s birthday party to surprise her. The Brady kids agreed to help track him down. Jesus, why couldn’t they just stay out of it, leave poor Jan alone.
When she noticed I was seriously date-delayed, Christine started trying to fix me up. She offered me her hand-me-downs, “good kids” who weren’t quite up to her standards. Big sister Carol jumped right in. I’d get a phone call from a boy and I’d want to ask, okay, which one of my sisters made you call?
It’s a mystery. There’s no George in Jan’s class.
No George in the entire school.
No George in this part of town.
And, of course, the Brady Bunch being the Brady Bunch, they got to the bottom of it by the end of the half hour. Why can’t Jan find a real boyfriend? They put their heads together to problem-solve. Decided to go out and do a little investigating. Long story short, it turned out the boys all did like her, just thought she was a real good guy. Aswell guy. And so Mrs. Brady dressed her in a light blue dropped-waist dress with a white satin bow. Put a matching satin ribbon in her long blond hair. You make a great-looking girl, the neighborhood boys agreed, falling in love with her at last.
I sighed, glancing down at my nubby sweatpants with the baggy knees. Before long, I’d have such a busy life that I’d almost never get to sit around by myself looking like this. I probably wouldn’t even have much time for The Brady Bunch.
Chapter 26
It was going to be an important day, so I washed my hair twice. Instead of rinsing off the conditioner immediately the way I usually did, I left it on long enough for it to accomplish something. I made good use of the extra time by shaving my legs while I waited. When I was married, I had shaved my legs on a regular basis. I didn’t miss it.
I’d woken up this morning feeling great. It was more than having a date. I couldn’t wait to get out in the fresh air, to see the kids at school. I turned off the water, climbed out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my hair. Dried myself with another towel while I tried to decide whether this was a permanent change in my disposition or maybe just a temporary aberration. Or if my days had a sneaky little tendency to start strong, then go quickly downhill. Hard to tell.
I applied a thick coating of moisturizer to my entire body. I looked at myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, while I waited for my skin to absorb it. I looked like a snowperson, my body encased in white cream. Apparently, it was not possible to make up for lost moisturizing. I rubbed the surplus off with a towel, checked myself out again. Not bad. I mean, not great, but not bad either. I still had a fairly decent waistline, unlike those of my sisters, which had mutated with repeated pregnancies. My breasts were not quite as chipper as they’d been at twenty but, again, not bad.
“You’re a catch, Sarah, an absolute catch,” I said to my reflection. “And if that doesn’t get ‘em, there’s always your scintillating conversation.” I congratulated myself on actually making it to a second date with Ray Santia. Whatever I wore would have to go through a Tuesday at school first, because the final afterschool jewelry-making class was today and I wouldn’t have time to go home and change before I met him.
I dropped both towels on the bathroom floor, hurried to my bedroom. Found a comfy black jacket and matching pants I could bend in at school, threw them on over a black top. Boring. So I grabbed a pink chiffon scarf to dress it up, gnawed at the plastic thread that attached the tags. The scarf had been hanging in my closet, unworn, for well over a year. I reached back in and grabbed another virgin scarf, black splashed with jeweled shades of red and green, flecks of gold. I’d swit
ch scarves for dinner with Ray. I’d seen it done on TV — outfits turned into other outfits with just the right accessory.
*
Austin came to circle gripping a toy mouse tightly with both hands. Before I could remind him that toys from home needed to spend the school day zipped into their owners’ backpacks, Austin said, “Topo Grigio is my new friend. He’s still adjusting. Can he stay with me until he doesn’t feel anxious? He gets a stomachache.”
“Isn’t that Topo Gigio?” I asked, stalling so I could think. I was having a hard time focusing today. I wondered if I was up to negotiating with Austin. I could feel the other children waiting to see what I would do.
“No, Topo Gigio was in Pinocchio. This is Topo Grigio.”
“Topo Gigio wasn’t in Pinocchio, honey. He was the little Italian mouse on The EdSullivan Show.” I remembered him vividly from those Sunday nights of my childhood. I loved Topo Gigio, attempted week after week to figure out if he was magical or mechanical. I tried to see a key sticking out of his back or strings rising above him on the snowy TV screen. I also loved Señor Wences and his talking box. “S’all right?” “S’all right!” Those were the days, curled up with both parents and my brothers and sisters and our weekly ration of Jiffy Pop and root beer Fizzies.
“Then who was in Pinocchio?” Austin’s face was all scrunched up as if he were trying to remember back to decades before he was born.
“Geppetto?” I tried, then immediately thought Jiminy Cricket might have been the better answer.
“Are they, like, related?” June asked. She’d been speaking up more often at group since I started being nice to her.
“Who?” I asked.
“Any of them.”
“No, silly.” Austin hugged the mouse in to his chest. “But two of them are both mouses.”
I fought for direction. Took another look at Austin’s mouse. It was crocheted, dark gray yarn edged with white. Somehow the tail curled downward in a long spiral. I wondered if there was a special crochet stitch for that or if it was done afterward. Maybe you sprayed the tail with starch and wrapped it around a pencil until it dried. My mother would have known.