“Fine!” we both bark at her. She looks like she just got hit in the face. “Take your time,” she says, and walks off.
“She wants to get rid of us,” Matt says.
I shrug. “What kind of issues did you debate at the dinner table?”
“Mostly our discussions were about Ronald Reagan. My dad’s a political science and history professor. He actually teaches the theories, not presidencies or elections. He complains that students today only want to learn about campaigns. They want to read Ted White’s The Making of the President, and he wants to teach Michael Harrington’s The Other America.”
“Ah,” I nod, although I haven’t heard of either of those. But the fact that he believes I do, and that he doesn’t need to stop and explain them to me, is flattering. And I will just keep listening to him, and I will learn. Professor Harrison was like that, too—he would talk to me about things I hadn’t heard of as if it was a given that I had. Like I was his colleague. I loved it. I felt like after every conversation with him, I’d learned at least three new things. And I had also impressed him by revealing my knowledge of three others. It was a challenge, a fantastic give-and-take.
“I don’t agree with my father on everything,” Matt says. “He’s kind of a leftie, and I’m pretty much in the middle. But he always sat back and let us debate. He’d ask my sister and me questions rather than just give us answers. Like, ‘Well, I can see why you’d say that, but what if X and Y happened?’ It was great.”
I can imagine meeting Matt’s parents. I’d sit at the table with his family at Christmas, passing the mashed potatoes, hashing out the tenets of Marxism, then ladling out the gravy and interventions.
“So, you want dessert?” Matt asks. “I think I’ll skip it.”
“Nah,” I say.
“Another margarita?” He grins in mock-sinister fashion because I’ve clearly had enough. “Another,” I say, “and I won’t make it past 14th Street.”
“I’ll get you home,” he says. He orders me another and watches me guzzle it down.
Even though I offer to pay for my share, he insists. I wobble out of the booth. When we’re both in the vestibule, he suddenly puts his hands around my waist and kisses me.
“Sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t wait. I’ve never had this much fun on a workday.”
I smile. “Thanks.”
“I need to get back to work, but I wish I didn’t have to.”
“I can try to squeeze into your briefcase.”
“That makes me sound so old,” Matt says.
“I can try to squeeze into your bookbag.”
“That’s better.”
Outside, the sun has broken through. A cold breeze blows.
“You are so cute,” Matt says. “I mean it. You look so young. Just like, a girl. I mean, I don’t mean that in any offensive way.”
“I don’t get offended by ‘girl.’”
“And then you say these really sharp things. It’s great.”
“Thanks.”
“You want to stop by my place for a little bit?”
I don’t even question the wisdom of this. “Okay.”
He takes my hand. Obviously, neither of us is being responsible, since Shauna could see us.
As if reading my mind, Matt says, “Shauna’s away today. She’s got a meeting in White Plains with some guy her dad works with to talk about PR. He’s a Kraft executive. He might throw her some work.”
Great. “How’s that going?”
“She should land an account soon. I’m not so worried.” He looks off at the sky. “We don’t need the money much, but she feels better when she’s working. I don’t think she just wants to sit around the house waiting for me.”
My hand feels cold in his. He’s still talking about “we.” But maybe it’s just because he’s used to it.
Matt starts swinging my hand, like we’re two kids on the playground, and I let him. This is funny. I start to feel good again.
It seems like it takes forever to get to his place. “Are you sure you won’t get in trouble?” I ask.
“No.”
He leads me upstairs. As soon as he closes the front door, he pulls my blouse out of where it’s tucked in, kneels and kisses my belly button. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just so turned on right now.”
For a second, I feel like I’m someone in some movie, that I’m over by the wall watching this happen. Then the feeling goes away.
“Come on,” Matt says. “In here.”
I enter his room and he pushes the door shut. He takes me in his arms and pulls me onto the bed. Then he gives me a long deep kiss. “I learned this in France,” he whispers.
“You mean, when you were a baby?”
“I had an ambitious nanny.”
He slides his hand down and unbuttons my pants.
It’s been years since I’ve been naked in front of anyone. But I’m not that self-conscious right now. I step out of my pants and then we end up back on the bed.
I look at the pictures of Shauna.
Ignore it, I think. Why does everyone else get to have fun?
Matt firmly puts each of his hands on my shoulders, pinning me. He crawls on top of me and suddenly feels very strong. I like it.
After we’ve kissed a bit more, he gets up and undresses himself. I guess he’s figured out that I won’t do it for him. I’ve never undressed anyone. I’m not that unselfconscious.
But I start thinking about how I need more to keep him interested in me and to get his mind off Shauna. I should save one thing for next time. It’s hard, but I whisper, “We better stop.”
He looks up. “Why?”
“I just think we should wait until next time.” It’s also true that I’m not completely sure about this. I don’t want to do this and then feel awful afterward, like I have about everything lately.
“I want to see you as soon as I can,” Matt says. “Any chance I get. I mean it.”
“Good.”
I pick my clothes off the floor, and Matt sits on the bed, watching me. When I bend down to get my shoes, I notice something among the tangled computer wires under his desk, and I can’t help reading it—a dusty yellow Post-it that fell there. Written in pen is: M—This is my reminder to you to call about the cable thing. I love you to.—S
This depresses me. Something about the misspelling of too. It makes Shauna seem—I don’t know—sweet, or real, or something.
I put my shoes on, and I feel sad. She does love this guy, and trusts him.
But then, I’ll bet she doesn’t feel bad for me. I’ll bet she never even thinks about the people who can’t share their daily responsibilities and struggles with someone else—the people who will always have to call about the Cable Thing themselves.
When I get home, there’s a message on my answering machine. It’s Matt, saying he had a good time and that he wants to see me as soon as he can.
Part of me can’t wait to see Matt again. And part of me feels bad. I know this is wrong, at least partially wrong, no matter what rationalization I put on it. Rationalizations are for other people. I’m supposed to be a person who doesn’t allow herself to dupe herself. Isn’t that what I’ve prided myself on? I can’t just talk myself out of things, push them to the back of my consciousness. I should instead work through them.
Am I really hurting other people by seeing Matt? That should be my standard. Hurting myself—that may be stupid, but at least the odds are that it only affects me. Health issues, like smoking or drinking, are things people do mostly to themselves, so maybe they’re not quite as bad as the moral issues. At least, not until people start pressuring others to do them, which they often do, or until they start hurting others because of them. But what I’m doing with Matt, fooling around, could directly hurt others.
Matt and Shauna are engaged. By my seeing him whenever he decides we can, I may be letting him believe in some uncommitted, unrealistic fantasy. It may hurt his relationship with Shauna. It may take his attention off appreciating her and doin
g things for her as much as he should. They spent all these years together.
I don’t know what’s right anymore.
I have no one to talk to about my confusion. Kara hates adulterers. I don’t have any other female friends. I have my date with Michael from the personals soon, but I don’t think we’ll become best buds. I also can’t tell my father about it, nor Ronald the Rice-Haired Milquetoast, who acts as if he wants to know me but sometimes seems a little slow on the uptake.
There’s Petrov.
He is confidential, right? He is there to listen, right?
I don’t have to tell him about Matt, exactly, but I do want to bounce off him all the moral quandaries that are clanging around in my head. He’s really supposed to be there to listen to problems, not to help me analyze the world, but so what? For what we’re paying him, he should do whatever I want. He should take a course in reflexology and spend each session kneading my wounded tootsies.
The next afternoon, Kara calls.
She invites me to a holiday party at her friend’s on Saturday. I want to see her, but I have to figure out how to properly relate to her. I worry that I might say the wrong thing and then she’ll realize that I’m not cool enough to fit in with her and her friends. I quickly tell her I have a date.
I don’t know why I lied. It was a split-second decision, and one I instantly regret.
“Who’s the date with?” Kara asks. “That guy from last time? Did you sleep with him?”
“Not him,” I lie. “Someone new.”
“You are on a roll! How’d you meet this one?”
“Uh…through friends.”
Her phone clicks. “Oh, I have to take this call!” she says. “I’ll call you back and maybe we can get together a different time.”
“Okay—bye.”
I hang up. I wonder why I was so incredibly stupid. I do want to hang out with her again.
What if she doesn’t really call? What’s wrong with me?
I climb onto my window loft. I decide to hold off on calling Kara back. I’ll do it if I don’t hear from her soon.
I sit there, watching the cars roll past. Cars look more appealing when it’s raining. Especially black ones with square headlights and tiny beads collecting on their hoods. So film noir. I wonder if I should save up for a car. But having a car in New York is like having a baby. They start crying in the middle of the night. You constantly have to worry about where they are. You have to mop up their leaks.
This would be the perfect afternoon for an old movie. But that means I’d have to go out to get the movie. That’s the problem with rain—by the time you realize how nice it would be to stay in and watch a movie, you have to temporarily not stay in in order to get the movie.
I put on my raincoat and pull a hat over my head. I grab my umbrella and trot down the stairs.
The sidewalk is full of puddles. I splash in some as I walk. I do that all the way up the street. If puddles are inevitable, might as well enjoy them.
When I get around the corner of my block, I see someone familiar walking across the street.
I duck behind a parked car so he can’t see me.
The person is wearing an overcoat and a scarf, but I’m pretty sure I know who he is. He pulls his umbrella lower and his head disappears.
I slip into an alleyway to watch. Dr. Petrov climbs some steps to the stoop of a building on the corner. He stands there in order to fold his umbrella and shake it off.
The front door opens and a tall, ponytailed young woman steps out. The two of them kiss romantically. Petrov hugs her tightly. Then they disappear inside.
I stand there, dumbfounded. Last time I bumped into Petrov around here, he said he had a friend in the area. Is this his girlfriend?
I look up. The light comes on in a second-floor window. For a second, I see the two of them together in the window, but then they disappear.
This girl seems rather young.
I wait for a car to pass, then run across the street and step into the vestibule. I pull my usual technique of looking on the mailboxes.
There’s only one apartment listed for the second floor: S. Rubin/D. Leshko. I think I may have seen this girl around the neighborhood before. But I think I’ve seen her with a guy. I can’t be sure. A lot of the girls in my neighborhood look alike.
When I come back out, I head back across the street and look up at the window. I see them in there again for a second.
Only one thing to do.
I run home and thumb through the Manhattan white pages for a number. There are lots of Rubins, but none at that address. There is, however, a Leshko at the address, a Daniel Leshko.
I punch in *67 to stop my number from being traced, and then I dial.
It rings a few times. Gee, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.
A woman answers. “Hello?”
“Is Daniel Leshko there?” I ask.
“He’s away on business,” the woman says. “This is Sheryl. Can I take a message?”
“Actually, I’m doing a quick two-second phone survey for Women’s Week magazine,” I say, “and I know you’re busy, but I just want to ask you two questions, and it would really help me out a lot in completing my quota.”
The woman sighs. “I don’t want my name used.”
“No problem.”
“Okay.”
“We’re calling 500 people in preparation for our next issue,” I say. “All I want to know is, do you live alone, with a roommate, with your significant other, with your spouse, or none of the above?”
“Uh, with a husband,” she says. “With a spouse.”
“Okay,” I say. “Well, thank you.”
“What about the second question?” she asks.
I hadn’t even thought of one. “Uh…to win a free ten-year subscription to Women’s Week, please answer the following. What is the most commonly used phrase in the English language?”
“Uh…I don’t know…”
“I’m sorry, that’s the second most common. Have a nice day.” I hang up.
This woman is fooling around with Petrov while her husband’s away! I can ask him leading questions at my next appointment to be sure. He’s divorced, so he’s not cheating on anyone, but she sure is.
Perhaps she was the one who was at his place during the blizzard. Maybe she’s the one who’s always buying him new socks. Maybe she’s whom Petrov thinks of when he wakes up in the morning.
That’s why I saw Petrov on my block that day.
Now I can come up with a goals list for Petrov: Don’t fool around with a woman in her twenties who’s married. Don’t do it in the same neighborhood as one of your patients.
I seem to know a lot of cheaters lately. Matt. Sheryl. Maybe I’m just paying too much attention. But that doesn’t mean everyone’s like that. Kara, for instance, says she’d never cheat. Maybe I should have faith. Just because a lot of people are doing something doesn’t mean everyone is doing it. Why am I forgetting that? I remembered it well enough at Harvard, when people were beer-guzzling and having one-night stands. I want to stay true to the old me. The old me knew where she stood.
The new me is watching the rules get fuzzy. I don’t like that. How can you make decisions without guidelines? How can you have guidelines if you keep changing them?
I do have one guide: Petrov’s list. And I’m going to do everything on it no matter what, and after that, I’ll have the experience to decide how to live. Yes, that’s a good format to follow. For now, stick to the list.
The thing about the list is that it’s stuff most people do without thinking. Dating. Joining clubs. But I don’t do these things. And maybe the reason I don’t do them is that the people who do them aren’t thinking. And maybe my problem is I think too much. So Petrov’s list is things that normal people, less-smart people, do without thinking, and I have to do them so that they become part of my thinking, because the only way I’ll do them is if they are part of a thought-out list.
From what I glimpsed of
the girl, she’s pretty—tall, with long hair. Poor Petrov. A gray, bespectacled professional, having gotten divorced and raised two kids, trying to keep the attention of this black-haired, dark-eyed Barbie. He’s like that anchorman in Network who’s so impressed when the young vixen actually wants him.
Why am I listening to Petrov’s advice, anyway? Is he really happy? Maybe he’s only happy when this girl’s husband’s away and he can get some of her attention.
In the morning, the sun is out, but the puddles remain to prove that the day before was brutal. I wonder what’s happening in the Rubin/Leshko/Petrov household. Probably, they’re all at work.
I hope Sheryl isn’t one of his patients. That would be disturbing.
Maybe she has it all. She gets a doting father figure at noon and a dutiful young husband at night. Should I want what she has?
Around nine, I get a call to do legal proofreading at a firm I haven’t ever been to. It’s in the daytime, for a change. I fill a backpack with magazines, playing cards, my journal and A Brief History of Time. That should cover at least half the shift.
It feels strange to be sitting in an office while the sun’s out. Everyone is in suits. I do get a few assignments, but mostly, I’m bored. During the course of the day, I manage to: read four months’ worth of the Atlantic Monthly; play solitaire; make a graph of the last ten movies I’ve watched and how they rated on a scale of one to ten; fantasize about beating up the woman two desks over who records her voice mail message fifteen times before she’s satisfied (and it’s just, “Hi, this is Trudy”); create a flip cartoon on the pages of the firm’s directory; create a flip cartoon on the pages of Black’s Law Dictionary; create a flip cartoon in the pages of the regular dictionary; and check my answering machine six times.
To kill more time, I decide to dial David Harrison’s number in Boston. I’ve wanted to do that for a while.
I make sure no one is looking, then slide the phone slightly off its black base and tap the push buttons. I still remember his number, but I’m great at remembering numbers, always. Each one has some relation to some other important number. I can’t ever play the lottery because I would think of too many combinations to pick.
Carrie Pilby Page 21