Do Not Deny Me

by Jean Thompson

  Lynn parked, got out, stretched again. A couple of kids were playing tennis, making crisp, ponging sounds as the ball hit. No one was paying any attention to her. She launched herself forward.

  It felt unnatural, peg-legged. Her hip joints hurt. Each step jostled her breathing so she couldn’t get air all the way into her lungs. She got around the track twice, then limped over to a bench.

  She’d never see forty again. What was she thinking, she was going to turn into some Kenyan marathoner? Her muscles shrieked. So maybe it was a stupid idea, but it was the only idea she’d had in a long time. She sat for awhile and watched the tennis players. They were horsing around now, hitting smash shots into the net, chasing down balls they had no hope of returning. Sunsets were getting later each day, minute by minute. The topmost leaves caught the last horizontal rays and blazed gold. She was able to observe, without feeling tragic, that it was a nice evening.

  The next day at work Lynn listened as Mike and Rigo went through their usual morning routine of scorn and putdowns. Rigo was a Cubs fan. Mike, the Cardinals. Or maybe it was the other way around. She so often lost track.

  “Some weak-shit pitching. He got the arm of a little che-ild.”

  “Says you. You guys are gonna have your usual season. El-foldo. Saving the worst for last.”

  “Yeah, yeah, big talk. Little bitty bats.”

  “Ah, you characters wear rubbers for hats.”

  “Guys?” said Lynn, and they looked up, surprised, having forgotten she was there. “Explain to me why it’s so important. This team, that team. What difference does it make? A hundred years from now, will it matter to anybody?”

  Now they looked at each other. Rigo, all biceps and nostrils. Mike and his flaccid blond good looks. “Seriously?” Mike asked.

  “I’m trying to understand the man thing. After all these years, it’s still a foreign language.”

  Rigo said, “When you’re a fan, you have a passion in your life. I know everything my team does, every player, coach, manager. I know all their stats. I know what they did last year and the year before that and the year before that. When my team wins, I win.”

  “The players are the last warriors. Used to be, men would go out and do battle, do hard and bloody things, stand or fall by their actions. It was that simple. These days, life is way too complicated.”

  “Your team, man, it makes you feel alive, when everything else in your world beats you down.”

  Mike said, “My team is like me, but better. They live large. People know their names, care about them. They’re on television. They are cool.”

  “Yeah, but my guys are cooler than your guys.”

  “Oh right, like your guys aren’t crying their way straight to the bottom of the league.”

  “It’s gonna be a long season for you, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, what a putdown. I’m dyin’.”

  Lynn said, “Okay, thanks, this is very helpful. But why does somebody always have to win or lose?”

  Again they looked at each other. They were both on the same team now, and she was only the lady who smiled and sometimes brought cookies in to the office. She was nice but totally out of it. Rigo said, “I guess it’s an evolution thing. Like sperm have to beat out all the other sperm.”

  “Ick.”

  “Hey, you asked.”

  That night on the way home she saw a bumper sticker: it’s better to have loved and lost than to live with a psycho the rest of your life. Another message from the universe. Not that Jay was a psycho. Just a pig. Then there was the loved and lost part, which also required some thought, since, if she was honest, there had been more loss than love. She hadn’t liked losing. Maybe she was more like the sports fans than she cared to admit, except that no one else was on her team.

  Still, she liked the bumper sticker’s spunky attitude. Maybe she was the psycho it was better to live without. Psycho wives, unite! At home she changed into her running clothes and drove to the park. She managed to go four times around the track, then walked two more laps to cool out.

  Christine said, “Tony called. He sounded lonesome.” Tony was her ex. “He kept me on the phone a long time, for no real reason.”

  “Oh, I bet there was a reason,” Lynn said. “A reason will rear its ugly head.”

  “Don’t be so negative. Maybe he just wanted to talk to me.”

  “Sure he did.”

  “You suck,” Christine said. “Why can’t you even pretend that this might be a good sign?”

  “I am pretending. Honest.”

  “Is there any fried rice left? Gimme.”

  Lynn passed her the take-out carton. They were in Christine’s kitchen, eating Chinese food and ice cream. Christine, like Lynn, was a house widow. Both of them still inhabited the homes of their marriages, overlarge and expensive suburban money pits. Christine’s lawn, Lynn had noticed, was looking feathery and untended, even this early in the season. It was possible to mourn, in the abstract, the loss of those suburban men who marched behind lawnmowers and spent their weekends spraying and clipping and wielding power tools.

  Christine poked at the empty carton. A tidal residue of grease and rice grains coated the sides. “I’m going to get control of the food thing. I’m serious. I can’t stand my naked body. I bet nobody else could either.” She had gained a lot of divorce weight. All her pants had elastic waistbands now.

  “Any fish bites if you got good bait.”

  “This isn’t about Tony. I’m thinking, all those fish in the sea.”

  “Sure,” Lynn said. Of course it was about Tony. Christine still had those hopes. Tony had not remarried. He had wanted a divorce so that he could be his own person. Lynn could see how it would all turn out. Christine would diet, turn sleek and catlike, take Tony back again. Christine would become a happy person and would listen with cheerful remoteness to Lynn’s sad-sack complaints. “Here,” Lynn said, pushing another carton across the table. “Kung pao chicken. All yours.”

  “No thanks. Where are the fortune cookies? I can eat one of those. They have about zero calories.”

  “I’m not going to even read mine. I don’t want to know my fortune.”

  “Then I’ll read yours for you.” Christine got up to get the fortune cookies from the counter. She was wearing sweatpants with the drawstring untied and she used one hand to hold them up. “All right, here, this one’s mine: Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Yeah, like, comic books. Here’s yours: You will soon be more aware of your growing awareness. That’s a little tricky.”

  “Would you really want Tony back again? After everything he put you through?”

  “You don’t like him. You never did.”

  “So you’re saying, yes.”

  Christine flicked some rice off her sweater. “Look at that. I should just pour a bottle of Crisco oil over my head. So Tony’s not perfect. I don’t think anybody perfect is going to come my way. I don’t think anybody else is going to come my way, period. What am I supposed to do for the rest of my stupid life?”

  “I know, hon.”

  “Do you? I mean, of course you do, but you’re pretty, you don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to. You’ll find somebody sooner or later. Me, it’s either Tony or somebody who’ll murder me for a life insurance policy.”

  Once, at a dinner party, Tony had spent some time instructing Lynn on the basics of the stock market, using salad plates and dinner plates as props. “See, this little plate here is an individual stock, and the big one is your mutual fund portfolio. See how all the little guys fit into the big one?”

  It was hard not to have an opinion. It was hard to remember what a nice person would do. Lynn said, “I could definitely see you and Tony together again.”

  “You think?”

  “See what happens. Be brave.”

  “Do me a favor, take the ice cream home with you. Oh come on, a shrimp like you? I could eat Weight Watchers ten times a day and ne
ver be that skinny.”

  On her way home Lynn detoured to drive past Jay’s new house. She guessed that if she kept doing this, there would eventually be some kind of restraining order. Jay and Margot had purchased a woodsy, faux chalet in a desirable district. The house had architecturally significant features and a stained glass oriole window. Maybe she could nibble off a chunk of it, like a gingerbread house, and use it for the boys’ college expenses. She rolled slowly past, noting the dim light in the no doubt spacious kitchen, and the illuminated upstairs window where Jay massaged his pregnant bride’s swollen feet. Or consulted with her over the hipster version of What to Name the Baby. (Elijah? Paola?) Or any of the other things he’d never done with her. By now she had imagined and catalogued all manner of painful scenarios, sexual and otherwise.

  She turned a corner and veered around the block to make a second pass. Stupid and degrading behavior. How long did she intend to keep it up? The child would be born, learn to walk, head off for school, develop questionable friendships. The saplings in the yard would grow to mighty shade trees. The neighbors would wave at her as she made her rounds. Jay would be balding and fiercely deaf. She would have long ago forgotten the different layers of their life together: love, married struggle, boredom, acrimony, but still her curses would gather round him like crows on a wire.

  Lynn changed directions and headed home. What could you tell from the outside of a house anyway? Wouldn’t her own look just as peaceful and welcoming, no matter how forlorn the life inside it was? She was tired of chewing on her own black heart.

  Back home, she sat down at the computer and went to the singles website. She needed a nom de guerre, an email handle with which to conduct naughty transactions. AngerMom. SweetnSassy. ExurbPrincess. She settled for the tamer Ladybird400 (ladybirds 1 through 399 presumably spoken for), and after some effort, composed her post:

  Hi, I’m a DWF, 43, 5’3” and slim, looking for a friend/soul mate to share quiet evenings in or dinners out, conversation, laughs, daytrips, etc. Please be employed, available, grown-up, sane. Shall we dance?

  Lynn lingered a long moment over the Send button. On the margin of the site, a red banner flashed: find your fun and only! Fun and only? Who wrote this stuff? What further indignities would be required of her? Oh love, love, why do you choose a fool’s disguise? She hit Send.

  Within twelve hours, she had multiple responses. A couple seemed, well, nuts, from men who claimed they felt an instant and deep connection with her, or provided detailed accounts of the character flaws of previous girlfriends. Another asked, broodingly, why she thought dancing was so important. Did she have something against people who didn’t dance?

  Some sent pictures. These were disappointing. Life, or maybe genetics, had been unkind. There was a reason, Lynn decided, that people paired off when they were young, before they began molting and shedding. There was a gentleman who described himself as a “sprightly seventy” and who hinted at his financial generosity. Discouraged, Lynn clicked the screen away. There might be a lot of fish in the sea, but the waters were fraught and murky.

  The next time she checked, there were a couple of more promising answers. A pharmaceutical salesman, a man who described himself as “part-time poet, part-time airline pilot.” Both had hopeful, presentable faces. Lynn wrote back to each of them, enclosing her own picture and a few words of attempted goodwill.

  The poet-pilot wrote back: Hey, I’m new at this too. Awkward, isn’t it? If you’re free for lunch on Saturday, we can share a meal and some mutual embarrassment.

  She was free. She screwed her courage to the sticking point, made the date. It felt like arranging a drug deal or embarrassing surgery.

  The pharmaceutical salesman never wrote again. Were you allowed to feel spurned? Was any of this real? Were people even who they said they were? Was she? She examined her photograph, which portrayed her smiling, with apparent delight, at nothing at all. It was the face she always made for cameras, a dazzling grimace. Age showed in the corners of her eyes and the corners of her mouth. This was her avatar, her image, the face that attracted some and, it seemed, repelled others. Somewhere behind it her flesh-and-blood self lurked, ready to shriek, attack, devour.

  She went running at the park. Her wind was better by now, and she could manage twenty minutes’ worth of laps, even if she was the slowest one out there. She took it as a good sign. Her great leap forward and upward!

  Saturday came. What to wear for her big-deal date? Something that wouldn’t make her son suspect what she was doing. Something you wouldn’t mind getting stood up in. It was possible that the poet-pilot would lose his nerve or change his mind, or, observing her from the safety of the parking lot, put his car into gear and drive away. It was possible that she would do the same. Lynn chose some nice pants and a sweater, her raciest peep-toe shoes, some of her boring jewelry. Perhaps she should update and reinvent herself. She was the very model of a Michigan matron, as a careless ex-friend told her once. She would grow her hair out, wear leopard print and gypsy hoops.

  At the restaurant she spotted him right away. He both did and did not look like his online picture, just as she guessed she did and did not resemble hers. His name was Scott. He was tall, stoop-shouldered, with a narrow, eager face and a bit of shining scalp poking up through his sandy hair. They shook hands. He laughed. “See,” he said, “that wasn’t so hard.” Lynn agreed. He had a jerky, tootling laugh. She was already keeping score, adding up and subtracting points.

  The restaurant was busy, noisy. It was one of those places where you stood in line to order your food, but they sat down first, feeling the need to get some conversation out of the way. Scott hitched his chair closer to let a woman with a laden tray pass behind him. He said, “Is this place okay? It’s not fancy or anything.”

  “It’s fine.” The last thing she wanted was fancy.

  “You’re sure? I mean, we can go somewhere else if you want.”

  “No, this is great. Really.” He seemed to need reassurance. “They have good sandwiches.”

  “Yeah, they do.” Scott. She had to remember his name. His hands had big, arthritic-looking knuckles. She tried not to look at them, or any other part of him. She hadn’t been on a date in more than twenty-five years. She had forgotten everything about it. “I like their soups too,” Scott added. “Or maybe it’s a little warm for soup.”

  “No, soup’s good anytime.” Oh, let’s be awkward. She tried another conversational lurch. “You’re a commercial pilot?”

  He laughed his jerky laugh again. Something funny? No, just a kind of tic. “That’s right. I was with Northwest for fifteen years, then I was furloughed, then I got on with ATA. Then they went under. The whole industry’s consolidating.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lynn said. Had he just told her he was unemployed? So much for conversation about the exciting life of a pilot. “I can’t remember the last time I flew,” she offered.

  “Yeah, so it goes.” He let his gaze make a circuit of the room, then turned back to Lynn with another antic face. “Kind of puts the ‘real’ in real life.”

  Was it time for her to offer up a personal failure of her own? Was he waiting for her to start? She opened her mouth, reconsidered, closed it again. Scott watched her losing fight with her tongue, then said, “If you know what you want to get, I’ll go order it.”

  “Chicken pesto sandwich, side of chips, lemonade. Thanks.” She watched as he made his way up to the counter. He didn’t look like a pilot, or a laid-off pilot, but presumably the uniforms did a lot for them. Of course there was the poetry component too, but she wasn’t anxious to talk poetry with him. He was okay. Just that. She couldn’t pretend excitement, but maybe you weren’t supposed to be excited. That was for younger people. Graying, discouraged moms and pops were meant to match up their mutual interests and personality profiles, shrug off the inevitable disappointment. Did Scott have any children? Had he ever been married? It seemed like something she should have remembered from the ad. His stooped
, angular figure moved patiently through the line. He wore a shrunken-looking blue polo shirt with yellow stripes. It wasn’t the sort of thing a skinny guy should wear. It was awful to think of him picking out this shirt, regarding himself in the mirror, deciding he looked all right.

  Then he was back, carrying her lemonade and a Coke for himself. “Look what they give you,” he said, showing her something that resembled a television remote control. “It buzzes when your order’s ready.”

  “Amazing, all the trouble they’ve gone to so they could replace waitresses. I’m sorry, I really can’t remember if your ad mentioned this, but were you married, ever?”

  “A long time ago. Just out of college. I guess I should have put it in the ad, but honestly, sometimes I have to remind myself of it. Like it happened to some different person. So you . . .”

  “I was married for more than twenty years. Divorced about one. I have two boys. How about you, any kids?”

  “Not that I know of.” Oh, funny. Lynn had an ever-expanding collection of things she told her sons never to say, and that crack was one of them. The remote control thing began buzzing in an angry, peremptory way. “Excuse me.” He got up.

  She looked out the window, scanning the parking lot, thinking vaguely of escape. The car pulled up just outside had a license plate that read gonogo 7. The universe wasn’t giving her much direction today.

  “Here you are.” He set the plates down and they got busy with the mechanics of napkins and forks. He asked her how her sandwich was and she said it was good, and then he said his was good also. She would be nice to him, which was not the same as being a genuinely benevolent human being.

  “So, who did you end up marrying?”

  Lynn finished her bite of sandwich, swallowed it down. “Excuse me?”

  “I was just wondering, what was your husband like?”

  He was smiling again. Lynn decided not to. “He isn’t dead or anything.”

  “Sorry. Just doing the cut-to-the-chase thing. Diagnostics. You know, learning from the errors of the past so as to start afresh.”