“Lately, Mom likes to ask if I find Adam interesting,” Lucy says, imitating the way her mother drags out the word. “What she really means by that is that Adam doesn’t make her feel interesting.”
“I don’t get it,” Martha says. “Adam’s supposed to laugh more at her jokes?”
“No, that would mean he has a wonderful sense of humor,” Lucy explains. “To be interesting, he must hang on her every word.”
“Poor Adam. He’s no match for Virginia.” Martha signals for the check. “How’s he doing, anyway?”
“He’s okay,” Lucy says, but her voice lingers on all that’s mediocre in the word.
“What’s going on?”
“He didn’t get the fellowship he was hoping for, so he has to TA again this semester: Freshman Economics 101. I think he’s discouraged. And possibly humiliated.”
Martha imagines that having a girlfriend who’s the rising superstar in her department can’t make things easier. “How are you feeling about him these days?” she asks.
“I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t having my doubts,” Lucy says. “Adam drags his insecurity around with him like it’s mud on his shoes, and I want to scream, ‘Don’t track that shit in here!’ ”
Martha almost laughs, but sees how serious Lucy is.
“I don’t know how often a guy can tell you that he isn’t worthy of you before some part of you starts to believe it. What’s worse is, I think it’s changing the way he feels about me, too.” Lucy’s eyes start to water and she looks up, blinking.
“Are you crazy?” Martha asks. “The man leaves Post-it love notes all over your apartment, for God’s sake. He might be going through a rough time, but he’s not backing off.” She puts her hand on Lucy’s. “You guys still going away over Valentine’s Day?”
Lucy nods, brightening at the thought of the rustic yellow farmhouse her colleagues, the Wolfs, are loaning them for a long weekend. The house is two hours up the Hudson and she and Adam will spend four days in the woods with only a Franklin stove to cook on.
“My idea of hell,” Martha says. She flips over the check and her eyes widen. “Lucy Stone, I hope you feel guilty making your poor single friend pay for her spinsterhood.” She slaps down a credit card and looks at her watch. She was supposed to meet Jesse ten minutes ago.
MARTHA HEARS LA BOHÈME blaring in the hallway before she even reaches her apartment door and feels inexplicably annoyed that Jesse has brought his own music. Is hers all that bad? Her brother’s love of opera started at the age of fourteen (a particularly inopportune moment in a boy’s life to develop such a passion), while Martha was at Boston College. At the time, she cursed her parents’ influence and did her best to intervene, sending Jesse tapes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and R.E.M., none of which had the intended effect.
Martha turns the key, but her door won’t open. She tries again, this time jiggling the lock, but still nothing. Then it occurs to her that her nervous brother has dead-bolted it from the inside. She pounds on the door and calls his name, but the music is too loud for him to hear her. She wonders whom exactly he thinks he’s keeping out, but Jesse’s been high-strung his whole life.
Martha goes down to the concierge and gets her spare key. As soon as she walks into her apartment, she hits the eject button on her CD player and the machine spits out La Bohème and swallows up Bob Marley. She calms herself by practicing a square breathing technique an acting coach taught her: in on four, hold for four, out on four, hold for four. Immediately she feels better, listening to “No Woman, No Cry,” anticipating her first glass of wine and glancing around her apartment, which feels more like a lounge with its plush velvet sofas, dim lighting, and ever-present smell of cigarette smoke. “It’s all about mood,” Martha explained to Lucy the first time she visited after they met in the Kingston’s laundry room five years ago.
Lucy dubbed the apartment the Bordello, a name Martha protests but secretly loves.
In a better frame of mind now, Martha, swaying to the beat of the reggae, moseys into the kitchen to greet her brother. “Hey, larva,” she says. “Don’t you think it’s a tad excessive to bolt the top lock?”
“Don’t you think it’s a tad rude to be half an hour late when I’m here to do you a favor?”
Jesse has a slender six-foot frame with nice shoulders and an angular face not unlike Martha’s, only his chin ends in a deep cleft and there’s no gray in his curly hair, which he wears neatly parted on the side, glued down with a little too much styling gel. He’s in his casual clothes—creased blue jeans and a perfectly pressed white oxford.
Martha apologizes. “I’m a little stressed out from my conversation with Lucy.” When Jesse doesn’t ask about it, she says, “We talked about the sorry-ass state of men in New York.”
Jesse mumbles something sympathetic and goes back to doing what he was doing when she got there: searching through his small toolbox.
“Need help?” Martha asks. “Or should I stick to pouring wine?”
“I’m okay. Just having a little trouble finding my screws.” He peers into the orderly, wooden box. “They should be in the S-through-Z section.”
He didn’t just say that, Martha thinks, squeezing past him to get to the refrigerator. “White okay?” she asks. It’s all she has. Then she can’t stop herself: “Your tools are alphabetized?”
Ignoring her, Jesse begins elaborately washing his hands, soaping from his fingertips to his wrists and back. When he’s done, he holds his hands up surgeon-style and scans the room for something to dry them with. He rules out a germy dish towel, opting instead for a paper napkin. “Where do you want the shelf to go?”
Martha points to a spot above the sink. “There. Basically, I want to be able to put my cookbooks on it, and maybe a vase or two. What do you think?”
“Perfect,” he says, nodding with confidence, which for some reason makes Martha nervous.
“Don’t forget to use wall anchors,” she says, picturing the ugly holes Jesse seems about to inflict on her walls.
“What?”
“Wall anchors. You know what they are, don’t you?”
“M-a-r-t-h-a,” Jesse says, stretching her name into a warning.
“What? I can’t ask a question?”
Jesse picks up the little kitchen stool Martha uses to reach the bowls and platters that are stored on top of her cabinets and places it at the far end of the kitchen. “Sit down, drink your wine, and no backseat carpentry.”
“Fair enough,” she says, and does as she’s told. The wineglass is cool in her hands and she takes a large swallow, resigning her shelf and her wall to their fates. “So, what’s up in the world of editing children’s books?”
“I’ve discovered two wonderful new writers,” he says, rising onto his toes in excitement.
Martha makes a mental note to discuss his tiptoeing habit with him at some point.
Jesse fills her in on his latest book acquisitions, Chicken Bedtime Is Early and Wheezy Weed Gets Whacked. His face is animated as he describes the stories, their illustrations, and the children the books will appeal to, and Martha is reminded how much her brother loves his work. She only wishes that the rest of his life were as easy. Jesse is wound too tightly. He leaps when trucks drive over manholes and he worries constantly about germ warfare; anxiety attacks keep him up at night and allergies bother him during the day; the skin on his hands is chapped from over-washing and the prolific use of antibacterial wipes. Recently, he bought four identical pairs of shatterproof eyeglasses.
“What’s up with that woman you told me about? How’s that going?” Martha asks.
“Andrea?” Jesse says with a shy smile. “We had our third date last night.”
“And?”
“I think it’s going pretty well,” he says, putting in the fourth of six screws along a line he’s drawn on the wall. Plaster and paint chips and dust crumble out with each twist.
Martha wants to avert her eyes, but can’t make herself. Listen to what your brothe
r is saying, don’t look at what he’s destroying. “Any canoodling to report?”
Jesse blushes. “Andrea hasn’t given me very clear signs.”
Martha notices that the line he’s penciled onto the wall slopes downward. “Don’t you think agreeing to a third date is a clear signal?”
“I guess I was hoping she’d let me know if she wanted to, uh, be kissed.”
Martha rolls her eyes. “Why’s that her job?”
Jesse looks at his sister. “Well, it’s not her job per se, but I don’t want to be offensive or overly aggressive.” He resumes his work. “Andrea is just so smart and capable and independent that I figure she’ll let me know when she’s ready to step things up.”
This is what Andrea gets for being smart, capable, and independent! Martha thinks. “There’s nothing offensive about letting her know how you feel.”
Jesse loses his grip and the screwdriver slips from its groove and out of his hand, skittering across the kitchen counter and landing on the floor. “How about some help?” Together they pick up the shelf, guide the six loop fixtures over the six screws, and lower it into place.
“Do you know how I’d like to be treated by a man?” Martha asks.
“With respect?” Jesse says hopefully. He tightens the screws, oblivious to the shelf’s slant.
“Yes, of course, but I also want to be pursued and courted and seduced.”
A look of discomfort crosses Jesse’s face.
“How about letting your natural alpha-male instincts come out a little with Andrea?” Martha suggests.
Jesse starts to hum “The Toreador Song” from his favorite opera, Carmen, and Martha can tell from his faraway look that he’s testing his alpha-male instincts by imagining he’s a charging bull about to confront a matador. He’s standing tall with his chest thrust forward and his shoulders square.
“Da dum da-dum, dum da de da-de-dum,” he sings until he stops abruptly and his shoulders slump.
“What happened, Toreador?” Martha asks.
Jesse looks at his sister. “I started thinking about Ferdinand.”
Ferdinand the Bull is the story of a sweet bull who’s mistakenly thought to be fierce when matadors see him bucking wildly after being stung by a bee. They cart him off to a bullring in Madrid, where he’s expected to fight, but all Ferdinand does is admire the flowers that decorate the ladies’ hats. It’s Jesse’s favorite book from childhood.
“Look, Martha, you know as well as I do that I was raised to be a nice Catholic boy. Plus, I’ve had to listen to you for thirty-plus years and I’ve dated New York women for the last twelve. As a result, any alpha-male instinct I had has either been bred or beaten out of me.”
“But don’t you sometimes want to completely ravish Andrea?”
“Ravish?” Jesse couldn’t sound more shocked if Martha had suggested slipping Andrea some Spanish fly. “You’re the one who trained me to be sensitive, remember?”
“I know I did. Sorry.”
“You’re freaking me out here.”
Martha stands up. “It’s a disaster!”
Jesse looks at his handiwork.
“Not the shelf. You and Andrea! You can’t expect her to do all the work.” Martha strides into the living room. “Think of how courtship works in nature: males strut and fight and sing their little hearts out to get females. Ask Lucy.”
Jesse closes his toolbox and follows her.
“Why don’t you kiss Andrea tonight?” Martha asks. “Just call her right now and tell her you can’t stop thinking about her.”
A loud meow interrupts them and gives Jesse the out he needs. “I have to go,” he says, gathering his belongings. “I locked psycho kitty in the bathroom.” He folds his scarf carefully over his chest, leaving one end free to place discreetly over his nose and mouth should he need to protect himself from coughing passengers on the bus.
Martha hands him his coat and kisses his cheek. “Thanks for the help.”
“Glad to do it.” Jesse puts on his hat and pulls down the earflaps, just like a six-year-old might.
Martha hopes that if he does muster the courage to see Andrea tonight, he’ll take off the hat.
Once Jesse leaves, Martha opens the bathroom door and her orange tabby, Hannibal, shoots out and begins to circle her ankles, madly rubbing and purring and mewing, simultaneously demanding to be fed and petted. The cat might be one of Jesse’s few justifiable fears. Hannibal ambushes the ankles of anyone other than Martha who enters the Bordello.
“Is it any wonder no man will spend the night with me with you here?” she asks Hannibal, as she pours kibbles into his bowl. Martha studies her brother’s handiwork and very gingerly places The Joy of Cooking on the slanted shelf.
CHAPTER 3
“Men lose more conquests by their own awkwardness than by any virtue in the woman.”
Ninon de Lenclos
MATCHES, COMPASS, CANDLES, wool socks, red wine, snow boots, bird book. As Lucy makes a mental list of what she and Adam will need for their weekend in the woods, her brow furrows. Call Hertz. Get map of Ulster County. Bake cookies. Bring corkscrew. Unable to keep track of it all, she grabs a legal pad and scribbles down her questions: Should we bring water? Wood? Supplies for outhouse? Kerosene for lamps? First-aid kit? Her stress level grows proportionally to the list and before she realizes what she’s doing, her fingers are tapping Cooper’s number onto the phone pad. His answering machine picks up.
“Cooper? Are you there? It’s me.” She pauses for a moment, stepping over a pile of supplies for the trip: hiking boots, strike-anywhere matches, long underwear. “Okay. I guess you’re not in. Call me back. Today, if possible. We’re going upstate this weekend to a friend’s farmhouse that has no running water, no electricity, only a woodstove—”
“Hey, Lucy-goose,” Cooper says, slightly out of breath when he finally picks up. “I was out back working on my truck. Now, what’s got your feathers in a ruffle?”
All at once her feathers settle and she feels silly for being nervous in the first place. “Hey, Coop,” she says. “How’s everything down there?”
“Everything’s grand, sweetheart.”
“Why’s it always so grand with you, anyway?”
“Visit someday and find out.”
It’s a running joke between them: In the twelve years since they’ve known each other, Lucy’s never been to Tuckington Farm.
“Yeah, I know. I’d be a sweeter, happier person if I woke up to cows mooing instead of horns honking,” Lucy says. “But I think you grossly underestimate the competitive edge that crankiness gives a city girl.”
“Perhaps I do,” he says. “Maybe I should come up and suss out the situation in person.”
“Oh, why don’t you, Cooper? Your annual visit is long overdue.”
“You’re right about that. And I could sure use a break about now.”
“Mi casa es su casa,” Lucy says.
“Well, maybe I’ll look into flights later in the week. But first things first. How can I help with this terrifying trip into the savage wilderness of upstate New York?”
Lucy ignores his teasing and starts right in with her questions: “There’s some kind of a siphon system that transports water from the well to the house through hoses. Have you ever used one?”
“Sure. They’re temperamental,” Cooper says, all business now. “You might want to bring a few gallons of water with you, especially if you plan to arrive at night and it’s cold. You don’t want to mess with frozen hoses.”
She adds water to her list. “What about firewood? Should we buy some?”
“I guarantee your friends have a well-stocked woodpile,” he says, and reassures her that small houses are easy to heat.
“But what if the logs are wet?” Lucy persists. “What do we do then?” Suddenly nervous again, she reads off her entire list in one frantic breath.
“It’s only a weekend, Luce, but if you’re so worried, maybe you and Martha shouldn’t go it alone.”
“Just what a little worrier you are. Good God! You’re going to suck the romance right out of this weekend if you don’t relax.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen, Luce, Adam can handle this stuff. In fact, you need to let him handle it. Your questions are right out of the Boy Scout manual.”
Lucy sifts through her memory to see if she can recall Adam ever mentioning building a campfire, whittling a stick, or partaking in any Boy Scout–like rituals. She’s sure he’s had no such training. What Adam’s good at is abstract thinking, advanced mathematics, and the occasional love note. Not wilderness survival.
“You Yankee girls need to learn how to let men be men,” Cooper says.
THE WIND IS GUSTING, and tiny, dry snowflakes swirl around the Hertz rental garage on West Thirty-fourth Street, where Adam and Lucy rendezvous for their weekend. It’s a blustery day and they’re bundled up, Lucy looking ready for the Iditarod in a blue down parka with a fur-trimmed hood, and Adam in his heavy navy peacoat, with a gray wool hat-and-scarf set that his mother gave him for Christmas.
Adam says hello to the small patch of Lucy’s face that’s visible and kisses her pink nose. As planned, they arrive at the rental office at noon to eliminate any chance that they won’t find the Wolfs’ farmhouse by dark.
Lucy takes the first shift behind the wheel, trying not to be annoyed that Adam forgot his driver’s license.
“I remembered the flashlight you told me to bring,” he says, as if the one makes up for the other.
Lucy gives him her best no-problem smile and steps on the gas. There’s no traffic and they speed up the West Side Highway, over the George Washington Bridge, and along the Palisades Parkway, where she and Adam get intermittent peeks of the ice-covered Hudson River, which has a path cut through the center so that boats can pass. Excited to be going away with Adam, Lucy tears along the highway, maneuvering in and out of lanes and between cars with the grace of a professional hockey player.
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