Someone to Love

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “Oh, Mitch!”

  “No, I mean it. What I did with Lynell is one thing. And what you did with him is something else.”

  “You mean, worse.”

  “You said it.”

  “I don’t believe this. That’s crazy! And you know something else crazy? All this time and you never even asked me why it happened. There was a reason.”

  “I don’t want to know, Nina. I really … don’t … want … to … know.”

  “But I want to tell you! You told me your reason. You said you were depressed being out of work. Well, I was depressed, too. I was depressed because—”

  “Nina, you could have the best reason in the world, and it would still cut me to pieces knowing what you did.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  His eyes darkened. “It’s the way I feel.”

  “Well, then, I hate your feelings!”

  “We’re fighting again,” he said.

  “We’re not fighting,” she said. “We’re not fighting! Every time someone raises their voice, you call it fighting.” She wrapped herself in a towel. “It’s all yours.” Stepping out of the tub, she took another towel for her hair.

  “Listen … I want to ask you something,” he said. “How’d you feel the first time you saw him—afterward?”

  “Embarrassed,” she said tightly. “Scared! Stupid! Attracted! Afraid! Okay, okay? Is your curiosity satisfied?”

  “Why are you getting so mad?”

  “I told you, it was just once, but you harp on it.”

  “I don’t mean to,” he said. “I really don’t mean to but—” He dropped his jeans on the floor and stepped into the shower.

  “But what?” Nina said.

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Come on, Mitch!”

  “Nina, it’s stupid. You don’t want to hear it. I’m sorry I started this, if I’m the one who started it.”

  Nina toweled her hair hard. These fights of theirs! Over before they began. She couldn’t grab on to anything, couldn’t find a hard, solid reason for that little ball of anger sitting in her stomach. Mitch, with his reasonableness—reasonable-sounding even when he was unreasonable—seemed to slip through her fingers. Just at the moment when he got her raging mad, when she finally had something to pin on him, he would do a little dance, sidestep, apologize, fade away. I didn’t mean … sorry … forget it…. And she was left as unsatisfied as a hungry person who’d had a plate of food snatched away just as she began to eat.

  “Mitch, I want to know what you were going to say.”

  “Nina—”

  “Say—it!”

  Silence from behind the shower curtain. Then, so low she had to strain to hear, he said, “I keep thinking about you, you and him. Thinking about the two of you. Not every minute, but enough …”

  “Well, stop,” she said. “Just stop thinking about it. Because there’s nothing to think about anymore.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said humbly.

  “There you go again! You start something, and then you stop. And another thing, you’re so sensitive, you’ve got me afraid to even say his name.”

  “Say it. I don’t give a damn about that.”

  “Neither do I, then.” She pulled open the curtain. “Nicholas,” she breathed into his face. “Nicholas, Nicholas.”

  Water streamed over Mitch’s shoulders. “Don’t, Nina. Please don’t. Please!”

  Nina laughed miserably. “All right, Mitch, I won’t. I won’t say his name again.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  On Thursday Nina took her last two exams, then spent the rest of the day leaving job applications in stores. A hard, cold rain fell. It was late when she got home, and she was wet and weary. Their apartment was cozy, lit up. Mitch was in the big chair, reading and eating a slice of pizza. “Hi,” he said. “I bought supper. Why so late?”

  “Looking for work. I went to at least a dozen places.”

  “Have some pizza. Are you starved?” She shook her head. The greasy cardboard box reminded her of that day she’d come back, crampy and tired, and found Lynell here. How distant all that seemed now. How ignorant and naive she appeared to herself in retrospect.

  “Any luck with work?”

  “Nothing.” She hung her slicker over a chair. “I should have done this months ago. All the summer jobs are already sewed up. I blew it.” She didn’t remind him that she hadn’t gone job hunting because she’d counted on summer work from Nicholas Lehman.

  “How was the exam?” Mitch asked.

  “Exams, plural,” Nina said, going into the kitchen. “I think I did okay.”

  “Return of the Pink Panther is playing at the Sneller. Want to go? No studying tonight, Nina. No more studying until next semester. You ought to celebrate.”

  She took a can of cat food from the cupboard, got the can opener. “I can’t believe it’s over. Tell me it’s over. Tell me it’s really true.”

  “It’s true, it’s true,” Mitch said, standing in the doorway.

  “Now I’ll worry until I get my marks.”

  “That’s what I call useless. Nina, what are you doing?”

  “Getting Emmett’s food,” she said. Stricken, she looked at Mitch. “I was going to feed him, Mitch. I was going to feed Emmett. I forgot … blanked it right out.… I thought he was here, I was going to call him. Come on, Emmett, time for supper! Mitch, did you see what I was doing?”

  He took the can and threw it into the garbage. “I thought we got rid of all that. I thought I threw everything out.”

  “You didn’t. You didn’t throw out everything.”

  “Nina, what are you crying for? Don’t, Nina. God, I’m sorry. Nina, Emmett’s gone. You’ve been used to it for weeks.”

  “No, it’s not about Emmett,” she said. “It’s not him. I’m not crying about him. It’s us.”

  She blew her nose in a napkin. “It’s not working, Mitch. Staying together—it’s not working.”

  “What are you talking about?” His face reddened. He threw the can opener back into the drawer with a clatter.

  “That’s what I mean,” Nina said.

  “What? Make sense!” He slammed the door shut with his hip.

  “And that. You’re mad. So am I. I try not to be, but I am. And we don’t trust each other anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” he said quickly. He pushed his hands through his hair, making it stand up in wild curls. “I trust you. Why shouldn’t I? All that other stuff is in the past.”

  “Maybe I’m not saying it right. It’s a state of mind I’m talking about. Sort of a cloud in your mind—”

  “You don’t know what’s in my mind.”

  “Okay, my mind. A cloud in my mind. As if I don’t …” She spoke slowly. “… don’t really know you anymore. Maybe never did. What you’re thinking about me … or yourself.”

  “I’m thinking the same things I always thought.”

  “I guess I’m not saying it right,” she said again. “But I know what I mean.” She’d opened the can, opened everything up. Then he’d thrown away the can, but couldn’t throw away what she was saying about them: that it—all that stuff, as Mitch put it—wasn’t “in the past.”

  “Mitch, it’s right here with us,” she said. “It’s been with us every minute. What you did. What I did. I didn’t forget. I wanted to. I tried to! But even when I wasn’t thinking about it, it was there in the back of my mind. Sort of snagged. Today I saw a plastic bag caught in a tree, and I thought, Oh, you see that every spring, bags and newspapers and junk caught in tree branches. And then I wondered if it was the same plastic bag from last winter. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “Great metaphor,” he said. “Your mind’s a tree and there’s a plastic bag stuck in it. You know what you can do with that bag! Stick it over your head!” He hit his fist on the wall. “We made some mistakes. We both made some little mistakes, and you—”

  “Stop it! Don’t say that again. Little mistake!
Not good enough.” In her agitation she was sweating and shivering. “Living together … okay, it’s not love, honor, and cherish forever, but it’s something, isn’t it? I thought it was something. So did you. You know you did.”

  “I still do,” he said.

  “Then why call it a little mistake? Don’t you feel crummy about it?”

  “Sure I do. But what good does it do to beat ourselves?”

  She shook her head, her lips pressed together. She couldn’t stop shivering. “I just go on feeling so bad. Thought I knew you, thought the person you are would never have done that with Lynell—”

  He sagged against the door. “Nobody knows anybody, not really, Nina. This is a lonely world. Haven’t you figured that one out yet?”

  “Lonely even when you live with someone? I don’t want to believe that, Mitch. It hurts too much!”

  “I thought you were a realist, my friend.” He almost smiled. “My practical, working-class chick, you can’t make things not be the way they are by refusing to believe them.”

  “Maybe we just don’t see things in the same light, Mitch.”

  After a moment he said, “You’re more of a dreamer than I realized.”

  “You call it dreaming because I feel rotten about what we did?”

  “Too damn bad I told you about the thing with Lynell,” he said, almost to himself. “Did you have to know? Did I do you any favors?”

  “We keep saying the thing with Lynell. The thing with Nicholas. I hate that. It’s such a lie.”

  “What do you want to call it? The fornication? The adultery?”

  She flushed. “Did you always get your kicks mocking me?”

  “Ahh, Nina—!” He walked away, came back. “I’m just trying to stir you up, wake you up. You see a can of cat food and, all of a sudden, the world is falling apart. Our world. Why now? Why this minute?”

  She looked out of the rain-streaked window, remembering other rainy days, remembering Sunday breakfasts … music on the street … drinking wine from a green gallon jug … a pillow fight … eating cinnamon toast in bed.…

  What if she and Mitch had known more? Or believed in each other more? Believed enough to stay away from other people, from Lynell and Nicholas? Would that have saved them? Or was it not that simple? Was it that they hadn’t loved each other enough? That what they had thought and said was love was—something else. A little love. Only the beginning of love, not the real thing, not the lasting thing.

  She turned away from the window. “What I’m thinking—It’s time. I have to move out.”

  “Move out?” he said, as if he’d never heard the words.

  “We said we’d give ourselves time. We did, but …” She shook her head.

  “Where will you go?” he said, his face drawing down.

  “Home …” Back home with her parents, who would never know that “little” Nina had lived with her lover. She wondered if life had been easier for her mother, growing up with such straight, clear yes-you-mays and no-you-may-nots that she would as soon have robbed a bank as lived with Nina’s father without marriage.

  And all these years that her parents had stayed together—was it happily? Or was it despite? Despite their longings for other people? Despite their separateness? Their differences?

  She tried to see them as they must once have been. Could see them only as they were—Mom and Dad. Coupled. Linked. Joined forever. Maybe after all these years, all that was between them—time, events, children, grief and joy—had grown back in a circular motion into some of the love Nina longed to believe they had once had for each other.

  “It was good,” Mitch said. “Nina, it can be good again.”

  Her head began to ache. Easier for her when he was angry, when she could meet his anger with hers. “Mitch, it’s all gone.…”

  “Neenah …” The old soft way of saying her name. “Nina, all because you opened a can of cat food?” He planted himself in front of her. His face worked. “I know I did wrong. I admitted it—”

  “Not you. We. We both did it. When it was good, we did that together. And now, when it’s not good, we did that, too.”

  “What do you want from me now? What do you want me to do?”

  She held out her hands hopelessly. “Nothing,” she said, sadly. “I don’t want you to do anything. Not anymore.”

  “A lousy can of cat food.” He opened the cupboard, swept it clear of cans. Cans hit the counter, rolled onto the floor. “Lousy can of cat food.” He kicked a can across the room, opened the door, kicked it down the steps.

  “Mitch …” Nina stood in the doorway, laughing helplessly. “Mitch, you madman!”

  “Do you mean it?” he yelled. “You’re moving out?”

  She heard a door opening on the floor above.

  “Yes!” she yelled back.

  “You won’t change your mind?”

  “I can’t!”

  He came bounding back up the steps, ran toward her, his face wet, gleaming as if lighted from within by joy. But he was crying. She had never seen him cry. She held out her arms, held him, and cried with him.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “Mitch?” From the couch, Nina leaned over and touched Mitch’s shoulder. “It’s morning. Are you awake.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Don’t you always?”

  “See how much better off you’re going to be without me?”

  They had talked late into the night. Nina’s timing, as Mitch said only half sarcastically, was perfect. “Your exams are over, you haven’t got a job, so what’s holding you here? No reason for you not to go home. You could go tomorrow.”

  “You sound anxious to get rid of me.”

  “It’s true in a way. Now that you’re going, I want to see you gone.”

  “Okay! I’ll go tomorrow. Fine!”

  “I’ll help you pack.”

  That had been the low moment of the night, the closest they had come to lashing out at each other. But they had stopped themselves, agreeing they would try not to part in bitterness. “Harder for me than you,” Mitch had pointed out. “You’re leaving me. I’m the left-ee.”

  Nothing to say to that. Nothing to say to a lot of things.

  For hours last night they’d gone over and over the same territory. When they started remembering the good times, they had cried again. By then they were both exhausted and finally went to sleep, holding hands between couch and bed, like a couple of kids lost in the woods.

  Mitch didn’t go in to work that morning; instead he hung around as Nina sorted and packed. She’d take home only what she needed and could carry. Mitch had promised to bring her household goods, such as they were, to Sonia to store until the fall, when Nina would figure out where she was going to live.

  “What are you going to do, Mitch?” she said, taking an armload of shirts out of the closet. “Are you going to stay on here, in this apartment?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I thought you didn’t like living around the college.”

  He straddled a chair. “Maybe I will move. After a while I guess I’ll find someone else. Maybe she won’t like living here, either. Does that bother you, Nina? That I’ll get another girl friend? Does that bother you even a little bit?”

  Nina wanted to deny it, but it did bother her. Mitch serious about another girl? Yeah, it bothered her. She dumped socks and underwear into a suitcase. “It doesn’t matter if it bothers me or not.”

  “I want it to bother you.”

  “Okay, it does!”

  “Good!”

  “Yeah, points for you.” Her eyes were sore. Not enough sleep.

  “You want some lunch?” Mitch said. “I’ll make you a toasted cheese with onions.”

  “Add some tomatoes.”

  “My last service,” he said, going into the kitchen.

  “It sounds like a funeral.”

  He came to the door. “In a way, it is a funeral, isn’t it?”

  N
ina stopped in the middle of folding a scarf. “I guess you’re right,” she said at last.

  She was almost ready to leave. Suitcases packed, knapsack open for last-minute things. The radio was tuned to a news station. “A religious cult known as All God’s Children has forecast the end of the world for three forty-five P.M. today.”

  “Precisely,” Mitch said, switching off the radio.

  “Good thing you didn’t go in to work. You wouldn’t want to miss that.”

  They smiled wanly at each other.

  Nina washed her face, combed her hair. “You don’t have to come to the bus station with me, Mitch.”

  “You’ll need help with all that junk.” He glanced at her. “What are you doing now?”

  “Cutting my toenails.”

  “Now?”

  “I noticed they were growing too long, and I’ve started wearing sandals again,” she explained.

  He looked at his watch. “Do you realize you have a bus to catch in a little over an hour.”

  “Plenty of time,” she said, snipping carefully.

  “You’re weird, Bloom. You really are weird.”

  “That’s why you love me so,” she teased. Then, hearing her words, she blushed deeply, as if she’d said something unforgivably rude.

  “It’s really hard to believe I won’t be coming back here,” Nina said, locking the door.

  “You can still change your mind.”

  She held out the key to him. He grabbed her suitcase, ran ahead of her down the stairs.

  She caught up with him. “Mitch—we stayed together six months. That’s not so bad, is it?”

  “Seven months. Your arithmetic is lousy. November, December, January—”

  “It’s May, isn’t it? You’re right.”

  “I thought it would be more than seven months,” he said. “I wanted it to be more than seven months.”

  “So did I.”

  “Seven years would have been nice.”

  “How about seventeen? Can you imagine it?” She went out the door. “I don’t know how people do it.”

  “Why not seventy?” Mitch said in her ear.

  “Seventy.” Nina shifted her knapsack. “Who’s a dreamer now?” She started off, walking fast, head thrust forward. Above her, the sky was wide, and blue as a plate.