by Margo Rabb
HOW TO FIND LOVE
Love may happen to some women—goddesses, movie stars, models—knights descend on them, scooping them onto white horses, hunks of the month call and ask them for dates. But the rest of us have to go out and find our true loves.
It isn’t as hard as you think. He’s out there; you just have to look for him. If you seem friendly and receptive, someone will notice and take an interest in you. So here’s the secret to finding love: get out there, make yourself available, be open to love! Here are some places to start your search.
Libraries. Find an attractive man and ask, “How do I use this microfiche?”
Grocery stores. Check his shopping cart and ask where he got the fresh basil. (Stay away from men with tampons in their carts—they’re spoken for.)
Hospitals. A wealth of opportunities here: doctors, medical students, patients—they do recover!
Car shows. Men flock to them . . .
“What the hell kind of guy are you gonna meet at a car show, someone from Grease? Danny Zucco? Kenickie?” a voice said over my shoulder. It was Kelsey Kang, my Spanish Level Two deskmate. I hadn’t noticed when she’d gotten on the train, I’d been so engrossed in the article, and it was strange seeing her on the subway; I’d never seen her outside of school before. Mornings on the 7 train were always the worst, most crowded time, and in the hot weather it only grew smellier.
I smiled at her and stuffed the magazine into my book bag, embarrassed to have been caught reading it. What if she thought I was desperate?
But I was desperate. I was always daydreaming, getting a crush on some guy. Unrequited or not, during even the most awful day a crush could change everything—it could make you forget the two classes you failed last semester, and the general overall suckiness of your life. A crush removed the world, at least for a little while.
And it wasn’t so different with friendships. At Grand Central several passengers got up and we took their seats, and I loved the thought of riding the subway with Kelsey, walking the long blocks to school beside her. I stared at our reflections in the darkened window. I wanted a best friend as much as a boyfriend, someone I could talk to about everything. But was it a myth, that kind of friend? A myth like having a mother was a myth, or a father like the ones on TV?
Kelsey glanced at her watch. “How come you’re going to school so early?”
I shrugged. “I woke up early.” I didn’t want to say that it was my birthday, that I had nothing special going on. “What about you?”
“I usually get to school early to do homework. I never have time after school—I work at my parents’ store or am making dinner for my stupid brothers or something. I’m a nerd now,” she added with a resigned sigh, though with her sleek black hair and high-heeled boots she clearly wasn’t. “I’m turning over a new leaf. You really just woke up early?” She looked at me oddly, as if she couldn’t imagine a stranger thing to do.
“Well, actually . . .” Why not just say it? “It’s my birthday.”
Her eyes lit up. “Happy birthday! How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“What do you have planned? Are you having a sweet sixteen?”
“I don’t think so.” My father and I hadn’t made any plans except for eating the Sara Lee cake in the freezer. “It’s not such a big deal.”
“It is,” Kelsey said. “The last place you should be on your birthday is in school.”
I nodded. Aside from the unbearably dull classes and diabolical teachers, the building itself was miserable—the soiled bathrooms, the cafeteria that smelled like cold oatmeal and cottage cheese. Then there were the guards who wouldn’t let you in without your ID card, and the whole prisonlike, nameless, faceless state of being in high school.
At the Fifth Avenue station, we walked down the corridor to switch to the D train. “I know what we should do today,” Kelsey said. “We should hang out in a supermarket and ask some guy where he got the basil.”
“Or we could stroll around a hospital, looking for cute patients,” I said. I didn’t admit that I’d already done that, sort of.
“I always wanted to be a candy striper.”
“We should do it. We should stay out until we fall in love.” I said it jokingly, but Kelsey looked up.
“It’s Friday,” she said. “Not much happening—no tests or anything. Nothing due. Did you have breakfast yet? I am kind of hungry. . . .”
I imagined it, the two of us off on our own, roaming around the city. “Have you been to Manhattan Bakery?” I said. “It’s right near here. They have the best croissants in the world.”
Before we could change our minds we were out on the street.
Businessmen marched up Fifth like a gray tweed parade; we strode to the bakery and gazed at the pastries rising like a hundred half-moons in the window. We bought three croissants—chocolate, almond, and regular—and shared them in the park, digging our fingers into the soft, buttery insides, pulling out puffs of cotton. How good they tasted, how good everything tastes when you’re not supposed to be eating it, when right then we should’ve been saying hola to Mrs. Torres.
We walked up to Central Park and bought a romance novel at the Strand carts; at the Sheep Meadow we lay reading in the grass, skipping to the good parts, watching Frisbees slice up the sun. Kelsey read aloud:
Tristan reached his hand down to Anastasia’s furry domain. He let it rest there, as the sensations swelled and swarmed through her tawny thighs and womanly petals . . .
I groaned.
She smiled. “My sister and I own more at home. Three shelves.”
“I have two shelves of them.”
We saw a movie at the Paris Theatre, with subtitles and a plot neither of us understood, and we took the train to the Village, where we could shop.
Shopping: a girl’s true cure for any ailment of the soul. It had begun to rain lightly, and we wandered through the dampened Village streets, pausing in stores, admiring clothes in shop windows, buying earrings from the umbrella-covered street vendors, sharing honey-roasted peanuts beneath an awning, the sweetness whirling out from the cart like a cloud.
We bought sleek black barrettes, the same kind, and silver rings with imitation rubies; we huddled under an umbrella and laughed at the crazy people walking by, muttering; we dipped our fingers into the peanut bag and clutched our packages by our sides.
I was enamored of her elegant stance and her effortless beauty, which she didn’t even seem aware of; her easy laughter, trying on a leopard-print prom dress and velvet pillbox hat; the way her eyes darkened and widened as she spoke; and the circles underneath her eyes, like a sadness.
We shared bits of ourselves in passing:
My father sold gum on the streets of Seoul to put himself through college, and what was the fucking point of it, to own a goddamn store?
I wish my father’d reopen his shoe repair shop and get off the damn couch. I almost even miss the stories of everyone’s smelly feet and bunions and corns. . . .
This old Jewish man steals from us. Bread stuffed in his shirt. My mother lets him because she feels sorry for him. . . .
Oh my God, what if he’s my father?
Clutching our packages, we stopped in Roy Rogers for dinner. We loaded our sandwiches up high and took them to the top section, which we had all to ourselves. “We still haven’t met our true loves,” she said.
I glanced at my watch. “I think the libraries are closed.” It was already five o’clock; my father was probably home on the couch, ready to tell me how his grilled chicken was.
“Do you have to be home at a certain time?”
“No,” I said, thinking of the cake holding vigil in the freezer. We hadn’t set a specific hour for when we’d eat it; it was surely still frozen rock-hard in its foil pan. “Maybe I should call my father,” I said.
I fished out a quarter and used the pay phone by the entrance. “Daddy? It’s me. I’m out with my friend Kelsey. I think I’m going to be home a little late, okay?”
I hadn’t been out late since Jay Kasper. I half expected him, like my mother had, to launch into a barrage of questions—wanting the full itinerary, with phone numbers, addresses, exact latitude and longitude of where I’d be—but he didn’t. He told me happy birthday, and then said, “You’re going to miss Murder, She Wrote.”
“Oh. Well.”
“I can tape it for you. Do you want me to tape The Cosby Show too?”
“Sure . . . thanks.”
He yawned and told me to have a good time, and we hung up.
Back at the table I asked Kelsey, “What about you? Do you have to call your parents?”
She shook her head. “They keep the store open till midnight; usually they don’t get home till one. I never even see them. I could stay out all night and they wouldn’t notice—it’s fine as long as I don’t wake them up, barging in at two.” She smiled. “Let’s do that—let’s stay out all night.”
I nodded. “Until our womanly petals bloom.”
We didn’t have to enter a hospital, a supermarket, or a car show; we only had to sit in the Tenth Street Bar for fifteen minutes before two men approached us. Miraculous, I thought.
“You must be a wonderful Spanish teacher,” Gil was saying to Kelsey. Gil and Corky: Corky was mine. They sounded like the names of goldfish, but they were handsome, they were gorgeous, they were men. They were from London, recent university grads, on vacation in New York for three nights.
Kelsey laughed delightedly. She’d clearly done this before; she’d said we’d have no problem sneaking in, they never carded, and she was right. The two men were swallowing her stories as eagerly as their drinks: she was a Spanish teacher at a high school, she’d told them, and, staring into her Black Bunny beer, explained that I was studying to be a vet.
I’d sipped half my gin and tonic, but already I could feel it. “Ready for another?” Corky asked.
I shook my head. “Work tomorrow,” I said gravely.
“Veterinary medicine—I imagine that must be a rewarding profession.”
“Oh, it is. You get that sick bunny on the examining table and—oh, it’s rewarding.”
What the hell were we doing? It was thrilling and exciting (were these men really taking us seriously? Could they really be interested in us?), but it also made me feel a little ill and frightened, as if we were crossing over into territory I wanted to enter, but wasn’t sure how. Earlier, in Central Park, Kelsey and I’d mutually confessed our virginities, and agreed we’d wait until we fell in love. This wasn’t love with these men, that much was clear, but it was intimidating just the same. It was one thing to read romance novels and another to have the physical fact of a man right there, itching to get into your furry domain.
“Have you been in class all day?” Gil asked.
“No,” Kelsey said. “We’ve been celebrating Mia’s twenty-second birthday. Feliz cumpleaños!”
She and Gil raised their glasses, and Corky bought me another drink. The clock ticked away, midnight, one. Kelsey told them about relaxing in Sheep Meadow, and the movie, and shopping, as if she and I’d been friends for years.
“Do you do this on your birthday every year? Make it a full holiday?” Corky asked me.
“Kind of,” I said, and for the first time I thought of my previous birthday, before my mother got sick. She’d bought me half a cake from a gourmet shop in Manhattan, because she didn’t have time to make one, and she figured we never ate the whole thing anyway. She’d placed it on the table and I’d peered around it, looking for the other half. “What happened? Did you get hungry?” I’d asked her, and she shook her head and blushed, saying it was expensive and she’d thought half seemed like a better idea. I’d sulked, feeling sorry for my measly half-cake, and I could kill myself now for not appreciating it then. Why had it seemed so imperfect?
And why, in the morning when I’d awoken, had my memories of past birthdays been so sugarcoated? Why had I not thought of the less-than-perfect ones too? I hated the way these types of memories still haunted me, dredging themselves up, unwarranted, constantly poking through—remember me, remember me—when I didn’t want to remember any of them.
I stared at the floor. Tears brimmed in my eyes, and I blinked them back, but they poured out anyway; I cried into my drink. This always happened—it was pathetic. I was a professional weeper; if they had a course in it at school, I’d excel in something besides hygiene for once. I cried on every holiday, on Mother’s Day, her birthday, and the seventeenth of every month, the anniversary of her death.
Corky looked horrified; he stood back. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head.
“What’s up with her?” Gil asked Kelsey, as if I was some kind of freak. Kelsey didn’t answer; she put her hand on my shoulder and waited for me to stop crying, which I didn’t. We went to the bathroom for a tissue, and when we came out the two men had left.
We sat on the wooden bench in the subway station, waiting for the train to take us home. “Why did you do that?” Kelsey asked. “Why did you start crying?”
I shrugged. We hadn’t spoken since we’d left the bar. I looked around the station. It was surprisingly packed, but only with men. A big toothless guy paced by us back and forth, leering like he was hungry and we were lunch. Perhaps we’re just going to die, I thought, and at two in the morning this began to sound good: then the humiliation would end.
I stared at the tracks. “I don’t know.”
After a few moments she said, “Where’s your mom? You’ve never talked about her.”
My heart jumped, as it did whenever anybody asked; each time it was still a surprise. I shrugged. I looked down at the floor. Scuff on my black shoes. Snickers wrapper. Discarded gum. She’s in the cemetery, decomposing, I once thought to say. But I said the usual: “She died in January,” as if giving the month made it real. It didn’t. Eight months had passed and here I was, the words still crumbled into me, hollow breaking lumps, screws in the chest, never-ending.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything else, just looked at me, but not in an odd, surprised way—she looked at me plainly, like she was taking me in. Like she was waiting for me to say something more. And that plainness surprised me. I stared back at my shoes, the dirty ground. What was the purpose of it, all the crying, the heartbreak? I’d ruined our chances with those guys, I’d ruined our perfect day, I’d ruined love.
“I’m sorry I made those guys run off.” I sniffed.
“They were creeps—I’m glad you did.”
I wiped my nose on my sleeve; a few latent sobs were still working their way out.
“I’ve cried in the worst places, too,” she said quietly as the train finally pulled into the station. “When my parents first opened the store, I cried nearly every day, I couldn’t understand why they were working such long hours. I thought each morning when they left that they were never coming back.”
“But you were like six or seven.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
At Queensborough Plaza, three stops before my house and six before hers, Kelsey checked her watch. “It’s almost three. My parents’ll kill me if I come home now and wake them up. Do you mind—can I stay at your house?”
“Oh, sure,” I croaked, horror rising in my throat at the idea. How could I bring her to Spooky House? But I didn’t have a choice; I couldn’t say no. I braced myself during the rest of the ride and cringed as we walked the three long blocks from the subway to my house, past the weeds, the litter, the slanting trees, the overgrown roots cracking the sidewalk, the peeling paint on our red stoop. That stoop I’d played on, hiked up jauntily so many years, and now winced to even look at.
I drew in my breath as we entered our dark living room. Pillows and newspapers were strewn on the floor; dirty mugs, plates, and the partly eaten Sara Lee cake cluttered the coffee table. My father was asleep on the couch in his sweatpants and undershirt; he woke up when I shut the door, and blinked at us. For a mom
ent he seemed alarmed, and then confused, and then he just looked awkward, and I wondered if he was thinking, Oh, now she brings a friend over, at last, at three in the morning.
He pulled his button-down shirt off the chair and buttoned it off-kilter, so it hung about him loosely, like a smock. He hadn’t shaved in days. There was dried ketchup on the pocket of his shirt. The hair he usually brushed over his bald spot hung down one side of his face, like a new-wave haircut. I told him we were at a party that ended late, and introduced them to each other.
“You’d like some coffee, Leslie?” my father said.
“Kelsey,” I said.
“Kell-see. Kell-see. A slice of cake? Skim milk?”
I shook my head. “Maybe in the morning. I’m sorry. We’re really tired.”
But Kelsey was eyeing the chocolate cake. “I’d love a slice,” she said.
So the three of us sat there, on our living room couch, drinking skim milk and eating birthday cake (it was still partly frozen in the middle) off yellow napkins imprinted with WENDY’S. My father pulled my birthday presents out of a grocery bag beneath the table; they were wrapped in newspaper and tied with a bow of string.
“Oh wow,” I said, tearing off the paper, “Teen Lady. I love them.” My father seemed pleased; we said good night, and I led Kelsey upstairs to my room, all the time waiting for her to revolt, to refuse to be with me any longer in my crazy, decrepit house.
I opened the door to my room—the old single bed, the satiny star mobile, the Rob Lowe poster, the Barbies. I hated it, our frozen house, my stupid childhood room, which I’d never changed or redecorated; I was never able to part with a damn thing. I thought we’d go to bed quickly: I gave her a toothbrush, nightgown, and towel and set up the chair bed, but she didn’t seem ready to sleep.
The scrapbook, the one of my mother, lay on the shelf beside my bed; she picked it up. My heart flinched to watch her open the quilted cover: there were my insides, spilling out on the page. I was embarrassed for her to see this raw, doting, unharnessed outpouring. My mother, in every period of her life, and every year of mine. Ridiculous things, I’d pasted in there: not just the birthday cards and postcards, which might be all right, but I’d included a doodle on a Post-it, a price tag from a skirt we’d bought together, a grocery list in her handwriting, a wrapper from her favorite Fannie Farmer chocolate bar. Even December’s phone bill was in there. My father had given it to me so I could check my calling-card charges, to ensure that AT&T hadn’t ripped us off. Three minutes, a call to her office had been. Two minutes. One. I couldn’t remember where I’d called from or what we’d talked about, only that I should’ve talked longer.