Ex and the Single Girl

by Lani Diane Rich

  “Beauji...” I grumbled.

  Ian glanced from me to Beauji, looking heartily confused. “I apologize. It’s early and I haven’t gotten much sleep. Did you ask me a question?”

  Beauji motioned toward me. “Your intentions toward Portia. What are they?”

  Ian sat back. He opened his mouth, closed it, and looked at me with a confused smile. Beauji tapped her fingers on the table. “Come on. I don’t have all day. I could go into labor at any minute. Tick tock.”

  Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god. I felt a sheet of ice run over my body. Ian rubbed his forehead.

  “Forgive Beauji,” I said. “She’s temporarily insane. I think it’s the pregnancy. The hormones.” I gave her a hard look. “Isn’t that right, Beau?”

  Beauji stood up. “Well, my work here is done. Talk amongst yourselves. I have to go pee.”

  Ian stood, motioning toward the hallway. “It’s just down the hall on the left...”

  She waved him off. “I know, I know, I’ve been coming out here since I was a baby.” She waddled out of the kitchen, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

  Ian sat back down. There was a year of excruciating silence packed into about five seconds. I put my face in my hands.

  “I got arrested for running naked on campus once,” I said. “Excuse me?”

  I pulled my face out of my hands and forced a sardonic smile. “Just searching for a moment more humiliating than this one.”

  He laughed, then leaned forward. “Look, Portia ..

  I stood up. “Beauji’s crazy, and I shouldn’t ever have mentioned the hair tucking, so is there any way we can just forget all of this and go on with our lives like none of it ever happened?”

  He stood up, too, and took a step toward me. “The hair tucking?”

  “The hair. Tucking. Ear. Thing.” I gave a sharp exhale. He reached over and pushed some hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear.

  “You mean this?”

  I jumped back.

  “Yes. That. Stop doing that, okay?”

  His posture straightened and he pulled his hand back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “I know, you didn’t mean to send me...wrong signals and please understand that I don’t mean to send you...wrong signals.” I pushed my chair in, hoping Beauji had faked the pee and was standing outside the door and would take the sound as a signal to come in and save me from myself, because I was heading into a full-tilt ramble.

  “I’m going through a lot of weird stuff right now. My mother is running around town setting farm animals free like some sort of Greenpeace wacko. My father—who abandoned me at the age of two, by the way—is coming to town.”

  Ian’s eyes widened. “Portia. Christ. Why didn’t you mention—?”

  “He doesn’t want to see me,” I said, feeling my throat begin to tighten. Ian’s eyebrows contorted in concern, and he touched my arm.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” I held my hand up, gently shrugging off his touch. The last thing I wanted to do was get started on the whole Jack thing. “It’s just that my family is nuts and Beauji is trying to help and I know that, but she’s making things worse.” I took a deep breath and looked up at him. Oh, hell. Might as well keep going. “You’re the only non-explosive thing in my life right now. And I don’t want anything to mess that up.”

  Ian was quiet for a second, then gave a brief nod.

  “I wish you’d told me about what was going on with your father,” he said.

  “I come here to get away from all that,” I said quietly.

  Ian smiled. “Good. I’m glad coming here makes you feel better. But if you ever need to talk about anything, I want you to know I’d be happy to listen.”

  “I know that. Thank you.”

  Our eyes held. I looked away first.

  “Beauji is usually not this crazy. I mean, she’s crazy, but not like this, not like...” I sighed and put my hand to my forehead. “I am really, really sorry.”

  Ian smiled and rocked back on his heels. “It’s all right, Portia. It’s actually made for a very interesting morning.” He moved forward, then stopped and placed one hand awkwardly on the back of a kitchen chair. “I’m sorry if I’ve been making you uncomfortable.”

  I gave him a weak smile. “You haven’t.”

  He tucked his hands in his pockets. “Yes. I have.”

  “No,” I said, playing with my watch, unable to meet his eye. “I like it. It’s just...”

  My eyes darted up and caught on his.

  I’m afraid. I’m going to be alone forever.

  He smiled that little sincere smile, the smile that refused to be distracted by shiny conversational objects.

  I’m. afraid every man I care about is going to leave me.

  He was supposed to be laughing at me, or annoyed with me, or something aside from unbearably sincere.

  I’m afraid.

  But I couldn’t say any of that. Instead, I said, “She really is crazy, you know.”

  Ian grinned. “I gathered.”

  There was another brief silence. Just as Ian opened his mouth to speak again, the kitchen door swung into the room and Beauji reappeared.

  “Everything settled?”

  I pulled on a forced smile. “Yes.”

  “Good.” She grinned. If she wasn’t supporting the life of an innocent party, I would have strangled her right there. She looked up at Ian. “I’m glad we had this talk. Any chance you could give us a lift back into town?”

  Ian smiled, stepped around her, and pushed the kitchen door open, holding it for both of us. I tried not to look at him, but I did notice his hand move instinctively toward the small of my back as I passed, and I also noticed him jerking it away before he touched me. On the ride back to town, I mentally planned a trip to Babies ’R Us, where I intended to buy Beauji a slew of the noisiest damn baby toys ever made.

  Chapter Six

  “Sit down, baby.”

  I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to go inside for Sunday dinner, when I heard Mags’s voice. I turned to see her sitting on the porch swing, hands clasped in her lap. I glanced inside at the apparently empty house, then looked back at Mags.

  “Where are Vera and Bev?”

  “At a movie.” In the muted glow of seven o’clock, Mags looked young. Vibrant. Her makeup flawless, her dress perfectly smooth, every strand of her hair in place. It was hard to believe that the last time I’d seen her, she’d been covered in mud and cow pies.

  She patted the space next to her. “We need to talk.”

  I sat down. There were two sweating glasses of gin and tonic sitting on the coffee table in front of us. I reached for mine. She reached for hers. We both drank.

  Silence.

  “Well?” I said after a minute. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on or what?”

  Mags sighed and stared down the street, but didn’t say anything.

  “Mags?” I said. “You’re scaring me. I’m worried about you. Vera won’t tell me much, and Bev won’t tell me anything. I just want to know that you’re okay. That’s all.”

  Mags smiled and patted my hand. “I’m gonna go refresh my drink.” She gave a furtive glance at my glass, which was almost full, but Southern women draw comfort from hospitality, so I took a large gulp and handed it to her.

  “Thanks.”

  She smiled and headed inside with our glasses. I stared down the street and remembered riding my first bike down that bumpy sidewalk when I was six, the Mizzes cheering me on from the porch. I remembered looking back at them and waving, not seeing that I was headed straight toward the fire hydrant until it was too late. I knocked into it and got a good scratch on my leg. I played up the crying as the Mizzes played up the rescue, passing me between them as they carried me back to the house until I began to giggle with each pass.

  Mags returned, handed me my drink, and sat down. More silence. A car engine started a block down. A baby cried in the house across the stre
et. Mags sighed.

  “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “Why don’t you start with Jack?” I said. My voice cracked on his name. I took another drink. “You could tell me what that’s all about.”

  Mags stared at her bright red fingernails. “No, I don’t think I can start there.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Fine. Start with the animals. What possessed you to break into Carl Raimi’s farm and set his cows free?”

  Mags put her drink down and stood up. “I can’t talk to you if you’re going to be angry.”

  “Well, then, we’ve got a problem because you can’t expect me to be anything else if you won’t talk to me.”

  She glanced at me and walked over to the porch railing, her arms crossed over her abdomen as she stared out at the fire hydrant where I’d fallen all those ages ago.

  “It’s just a thing, really.”

  “A thing.” I paused, gave her the opportunity to speak. She didn’t take it. Her back was still to me. “What kind of thing?”

  “A thing.” She waved her arm around in the air, her fingers making delicate circles. “I’ve been...thinking. A lot. About things. I’ve been...” She sighed. “I’ve been sad.”

  My eyes widened. Sad? Mags had been sad}

  “That’s impossible,” I said. Two gin and tonics and my thoughts were going straight to my lips. I took another sip. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Well, it’s the truth. I’ve been sad,” Mags said. More silence. “Is that it?” I said. I wondered how much energy I had left for conversations like this. It was just so much work trying to understand her. “That’s how you explain all of this? The finding me a Flyer, the mysterious morning activities, the letting farm animals loose through the streets of Truly? It’s because you’re sad?”

  Mags kept her eyes on the fire hydrant. “There comes a time in a woman’s life when she has to look at herself and fix the things that need fixin'.”

  I tried to process that and failed. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know, I know.” She turned around to face me, leaning against the railing. “So, tell me what happened with you and Peter.”

  I blinked. “That’s it? Were done talking about you and your sad thing?”

  “Yes, we're done.” She sat down in the wicker chair next to the porch swing and leaned forward. “You and Peter were together for a while.”

  “Two years.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Why do you want to know about Peter?”

  “Because I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I do.”

  Well, that line of questioning was obviously going nowhere. I shrugged. What the hell?

  “We were perfectly happy until one day I came home and found all his stuff gone.”

  She sipped her drink. “Were you happy? Really happy? I mean, people who are happy don’t just up and leave, right?”

  “I guess not,” I said. It made sense, but I’d put a lot of hard work into not delving into what happened with me and Peter, and I liked it that way.

  “It just seems to me,” Mags went on, “that people who really love each other find a way to work it out, no matter what.” There was an intensity in her voice that made me unsure if we were actually talking about me. She turned her head to look at me. “Did you love him?”

  I leaned back. “I don’t know. Maybe. I think I did.” I squelched a burp. “I was sad when he was gone.”

  She nodded. I took another drink. It was one of the first times in my life Mags had shown a genuine interest in how I felt, and whether it was about me or not, I sopped up the attention like a dry sponge.

  “To be honest, there were times when I wished he would leave, but once he was gone, I wanted him back. And I don’t know why. Maybe because it was love. Maybe because I thought he was my last chance.”

  “Your last chance? At what?”

  “I don’t know, Mags. Marriage. Children. A man who sticks.”

  Mags looked out at some indistinct point down the street and took a sip of her drink. “Do you think that would make you happy? A man who sticks?”

  “Does it matter? Men don’t stick to Miz Fallons, do they?” Our eyes locked. I was right. We weren’t talking about me. But before I could focus my gin-scattered thoughts enough to figure out exactly what we were talking about, she changed the subject.

  “I’m sorry, darlin’,” she said, touching the corners of her eyes. “I was wrong to get you involved with that Flyer. I don’t think it’s done you any good at all.”

  I gaped at her. “Did you just apologize to me?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a very attractive man. But I think what you need is—”

  I held up my hand. “Stop. Stop, stop, stop. I’m thirty years old. It’s time for you to stop telling me what I need.”

  She sat back and stared at the drink she held in her lap, and as I watched her I was amazed, not for the first time, at what a mystery my own mother was to me. I’ve struck up conversations with strangers on planes who made more sense to me than this woman.

  And yet, I loved her. I loved her and I hated seeing her sad and if whatever she was doing was going to take that sadness away, then I was going to have to just shut up and accept it.

  I reached over and put my hand on hers. She blinked in surprise and looked at me.

  “Mags, are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine,” she said, throwing a smile my way. “Really, you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I mean, are you okay} This...thing you’re going through. It’s not...medical, or anything? You’re not going to die on me, right?”

  She waved me off. “No. No, it’s not anything like that.”

  “And you’re not going to get arrested again, are you?”

  She smiled. “Not if I can help it.”

  “That’s not a comforting answer.”

  She squeezed my hand. “I won’t get arrested again. You have my solemn vow.”

  “So it’s just that you’re fixing things that need fixing?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”

  I took a deep breath. “How about a truce? I agree not to push you on this whole sad thing you’ve got going on, and you agree not to try to fix me. Think you can do that?”

  She looked at me and grinned. “Yes.”

  “Okay, then.” I lifted my glass. She lifted hers.

  “Truce,” I said.

  “Truce,” she said.

  We clinked. We drank. As it turned out, we were both lying, but it was a nice mother-daughter moment all the same.

  I stepped out of the tiny stall shower in my apartment and squinched my toes in the neon pink and yellow daisy bath mat Beauji made me buy. I had to admit, she was right. Every time I looked down at it, I smiled.

  I didn't hear the knocking until I opened the bathroom door, although from the sound of it, whoever was knocking was losing patience. I wrapped my hair in a towel and slipped into my old flannel robe.

  “I’m coming!” I yelled as I opened the door. Bev.

  “Get dressed.” She pushed past me into the apartment. I shut the door and walked around her toward my bedroom.

  “That’s what I was going to do before you decided to beat the hell out of my door.” I tossed the towel on my bed and yanked open the top drawer of the dresser, pulling out socks and underwear. “What’s going on?”

  Bev stopped at the doorway of the room. “We’ve got a fondue.”

  I shut the drawer and turned around to look at her. “A fondue? For who?”

  Her eyes traveled around the barren room and then back to me. “Vera.”

  “Vera? Why? What happened?”

  Bev put her hand on her hip. “I’ll give you the details in the car. I’m supposed to be out getting the oranges and the chocolate. Now get dressed. I’ll wait in the living room.”

  She shut the door. I grabbed my jeans.

  “Oh, y�
�all are making way too big a deal over this,” Vera said, crumpling up another tissue and tossing it in the empty grocery bag at her feet. Her eyes were red, and her face was blotchy, but ever since we’d pulled out the chocolate and the orange slices, she’d at least stopped crying.

  “Nonsense,” Mags said. She grabbed Vera’s fondue fork out of her hand, stabbed a slice of orange, and handed it back. “Dip.”

  Vera leaned over our old avocado green fondue pot and dipped the slice into the melted chocolate. “I’m fine, really. I just wasn’t expecting to see him, is all.”

  “Of course you weren’t, darlin’,” Bev said. I sat back in my chair and played absently with an orange slice on my plate. Mags kicked me lightly under the table. When I looked up at her, she whisked her hands at me. It was my turn to comfort.

  “Oh.” I dropped the orange slice. “Um. Haven’t you seen him before? I mean, it’s been eleven years. There are only six thousand people in town. The odds—ouch!”

  The kick was harder that time. I turned to Mags. “What the hell, Mags?”

  Mags gave me a look of mild contrition. Bev opened her mouth and seemed ready to rip me a new one, but Vera held up her hand to stop her, then turned to me.

  “Yes, I’ve seen him a few times. Usually it’s at the grocery store, like today. Once I saw him at the movie theater in Fort Oglethorpe. But...I don’t know...” She sighed and dumped her chocolate-dipped orange slice on her plate.

  Bev leaned forward. “It’s hard, baby. We know that.”

  Mags leaned over the fondue pot and stirred. “And I think he has a lot of nerve showing up at the Piggly Wiggly on a Tuesday afternoon.”

  I looked at Mags. “Why would Bridge know she shops there on Tuesday afternoons?”

  Bev and Mags gave me glacial stares. Vera put a protective hand on my arm.

  “No, she’s right.” She reached for another tissue. “It’s been long enough. I should be able to bump into him and just say hi like any normal person, ask him about his construction work, and help him pick out a ripe honeydew melon without breaking down like a damn old fool.” Her face contorted and she blew her nose into a tissue.

  “Oh, tell me you didn’t help that man pick a melon,” Bev said. “I hope you picked one out that was rotted right through.”