Warm November

by Kathleen Knowles

  But she’d encouraged Hayley to take Arthur out for walks specifically so she could meet women, and her suggestion was clearly working. She was hovering and being intrusive and really needed to mind her own business. They were becoming closer. They shared dinners a lot of the time, and she planned to let Hayley introduce her to different movies. Well, it was normal roommate stuff, nothing surprising. In addition, after all the horror stories she’d heard, it was a real vindication of her choice. She was blessed by having someone she got along with well and who was pleasant to share space with. Yet this didn’t give her permission to get involved in her love life.

  Merle counseled herself yet again to remember her boundaries. However, they seemed to be growing weaker little by little, and she felt powerless to stop the process. Well, it was fine. Next week she’d go get the TV and they’d get the cable hooked up as soon as possible. She just needed to stop wondering about Hayley’s dates. With that decision made, she was able to get online and stop speculating about Hayley’s love life. Hayley would likely tell her about it anyhow.

  *

  For their lunch date, Sherrie picked Delancey Street. Sherrie had been late for lunch, which made Hayley anxious, but she’d finally arrived. Once they were seated, all was well.

  “What’s good here?” Hayley asked as they read their menus.

  “Oh, everything. I’m not much for eating out, but I thought this would be nice for us.”

  “I’m glad you wanted to meet for lunch. Especially glad,” Hayley said. She’d wanted to see Sherrie again to see if this was what she thought it was, and so far, it was. Sherrie’s dark eyes scrutinized her over the menu, and she kept up her eye contact like Merle had instructed. The effect was mesmerizing. Hayley was growing warm though it wasn’t hot in the restaurant. They were seated at a sunny outside table, and the breeze off the Bay kept them cool. The whole scene was perfect. The sun, the glittering San Francisco Bay, lunch with an attractive woman. Nothing was missing. Hayley dared to hope she was finally making some progress.

  After their lunch, she and Sherrie walked along the Embarcadero and admired the waterfront, continuing to talk.

  “Tell me about your company,” Hayley said.

  “It’s one of those places that sells services online. I do the business-side financial systems.”

  “That must be fun, to be in a start-up.”

  “It is. All the kids there are younger than me. I’m the old lady.” Sherrie laughed.

  “Me too, though the attorneys are all different ages. Some of them are just out of law school. It seems sometimes like they’re from another planet.” She told Sherrie about Britt.

  “Well, getting her perspective is probably good.”

  “It’s eye-opening, I can say that. What’s your experience with dating?”

  “Up and down. Do you use any of those websites or meet-ups?”

  “Oh, sure.” Hayley told Sherrie about her meet-up at the art gallery, and Sherrie rolled her eyes.

  “You know, in our age range, if someone isn’t in a relationship something’s most likely wrong with her.”

  This statement took Hayley aback. Did Sherrie even know how bad that sounded and was she aware that observation could just as easily apply to her? Evidently not. Hayley thought about Merle, which unsettled her. There was nothing at all wrong with Merle. Hayley still didn’t know the whole story about Kay, and she might not ever. Merle wasn’t into spilling her guts about everything. She must have worked through it all in AA.

  But here she was thinking of Merle, again, when she ought to focus on Sherrie, with whom she was on a date and whom, so far, she liked. “Why do you think that? Someone might have lost her lover in an accident or she got sick or whatever.”

  Sherry waved that possibility away. Whoosh. Gone. “Oh, that. Yeah. I’m not talking about that.”

  “So what are you talking about?” Hayley liked to get to the bottom of things, which was another reason she wished Merle would tell her more about her and Kay. Her curiosity was at war with her respect for Merle’s privacy.

  Sherry, on the other hand, had invited the questions by her blanket pronouncement. “You know.”

  “No, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. People get divorced all the time. Look at me.”

  “What about you?” Sherrie seized on this info to avoid explaining herself.

  “Well, I needed out of the marriage because, well, because I’m a lesbian.”

  “I figured you’re a lesbian. Duh. But you were married? To a guy?”

  “Yes, I was. For a long time.” At least she was getting this out of the way quickly. Sherry’s response would likely predict how their relationship would progress.

  “Oh. I see. That’s interesting.”

  “So what do you mean by saying something’s wrong with someone who isn’t with someone, who’s not coupled up after a certain age.”

  “Oh. I, um. You know. Forget it. It was a stupid generalization.” Sherrie was looking at her closely, which was pleasant and flattering. “I’d love to hear more about you.”

  “Sure. It’s not a secret. I got married pretty young and had my son.” And Hayley started to tell Sherrie her life story, but they had to get back to work.

  Hayley returned to her office feeling good, but something was missing. She still wasn’t getting the hit of attraction she got with Merle. She and Sherrie had another date for the weekend. It was finally happening the way she dreamed. She berated herself for being picky. Sherrie had made a silly comment. Who didn’t make those on a regular basis? It was nothing to be alarmed about, but she couldn’t help wondering if Sherrie’s generalization applied to Sherrie herself or not. Well, she’d find out eventually.

  When Hayley returned to her office, she Googled the company name Sherrie had given her, but nothing came up. That was odd. She’d likely misheard or misremembered the name. Sherrie’s card was a personal one and contained only a phone number and an email address.

  *

  “You see how they notice when we’re in the room. They’re very curious.” Merle indicated the white lab rats, who stood with their paws and noses pressed to their plastic cages. They were in the animal room of the Thompson lab, and Merle was training the new postdoc, Anik, on the animal-husbandry routine.

  Anik said nothing, He looked around, his face a bored mask.

  “I like the rats better than the mice. The mice can be a little cranky and aggressive.”

  “Is there anything special I need to know about them?”

  “Most of the info is in the online class. Their diets and their feeding schedules are all listed here. Change the bedding twice a week. The old stuff goes to biohazard waste. Not because it’s harmful. Just because. We can expect a visit soon from the animal regulatory people to check up on us.”

  Anik shrugged and fingered the corner of one of the cage racks idly. “Isn’t the care of the mice the work of the technician?”

  “There’s no technician. You have to look after your own animals. No one is going to do it for you. That’s why I’m explaining all this to you.”

  The corners of his mouth curved down, but he didn’t say anything.

  After they de-gowned, they went back to the break room to talk some more. Merle poured a cup of coffee and sat down with Anik at one of the tables. She swept a pile of scientific journals aside. The lab people could be pigs.

  “How much progress have you made on the checklist I gave you two weeks ago?” Merle asked. “You need to complete that soon.”

  “I’m very busy. Collier has given me a list of experiments he expects me to finish.”

  In her mind, Merle cursed mildly. There it was. The too-busy excuse. The first of many to come, no doubt.

  She didn’t have a doctorate, that was the problem. Anik was the kind of guy who wouldn’t respond unless she had the letters after her name. Well. She couldn’t bother Collier with trivial management issues. She always took care of them herself. Anik was just going have to get with the pro
gram.

  He’d come from Harvard to do two years of postdoctoral work on the way neurons communicate. He’d grown up in India and gone to Oxford for his undergraduate degree. He was smart, handsome, and charming but arrogant. Merle had seen his type and knew what to do, or thought she did. It was a matter of laying the ground rules and letting Anik know she would keep Collier informed of his progress.

  *

  Hayley got several hits on her OkCupid profile and figured she might as well go ahead and meet a few of the responders. She winnowed the possibles down to about three and made plans to meet them, trying to resist the temptation to show the profiles to Merle and ask her opinion. It wasn’t as though she didn’t trust her own instincts, but Merle might be a more astute judge of lesbians than she was. She had to be, right? She’d been at it a lot longer than Hayley.

  Hayley shook her head. She’d been sharing the house with Merle for two and a half months. They weren’t, in her view, that much closer than when she moved in. It wasn’t as though Merle avoided her. She just didn’t seem inclined to talk about herself. She was always open to hearing Hayley’s questions and concerns. They shared pleasant meals and watched some movies, but she stayed behind an invisible barrier Hayley couldn’t seem to penetrate without being too pushy.

  She was annoyed with herself that she couldn’t just let their relationship be what it was and be happy with it. Well. She couldn’t force Merle to be more forthcoming. It was a huge mystery though. She thought about Sherrie’s crack about something being wrong with someone who wasn’t in a relationship.

  That hardly seemed to be the case with Merle. She was obviously sane, intelligent, and kindhearted, and she loved her dog. She was great looking with her silvery hair and eyes that could go from glittering and mischievous to cloudy and sad in an instant. Her strong hands… There went Hayley’s overactive libido. God, she really needed to get laid soon. This was ridiculous. But she still needed a second opinion on the OkCupid girls.

  She went in search of Merle and found her out in the garden, standing in front of some of the monkey flowers near the back fence. Hayley couldn’t see her face, but her body language signaled something was amiss. Her arms were slack at her sides and her shoulders slumped.

  “Merle?”

  She turned, and her usually smooth features were rumpled. She was flushed and had tears on her cheeks.

  “Yeah?” she said, and her voice sounded strangled.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted…I thought…What’s wrong?” Hayley couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Her calm, self-contained roommate was a mess.

  “Nothing.”

  Hayley couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her tone. “Yeah. Right. Try again.” Merle said no more, and Hayley was dismayed. She didn’t want to be unkind.

  “Look. Sorry. That came out wrong. You look like you feel terrible. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Merle’s expression switched to one of surprise, as though she’d only just realized something.

  “Put down the rake.”

  Merle literally dropped her beat-up garden tool she’d been holding loosely.

  “Let’s go inside and get something to drink. I could use some tea. Then we can talk. Come on.”

  Hayley held out her hand, and Merle took it and followed her into the house. Arthur had been lying in his corner of the yard and got up and trotted behind them. Hayley didn’t let go of Merle’s hand, and Merle let herself be drawn into the kitchen. Hayley was curious, but more than that she knew she had to get Merle to talk about what was bothering her. She wanted to understand and be able to comfort her. This suddenly seemed of the utmost importance.

  Chapter Nine

  Merle was weeding and raking and trimming, not thinking of much of anything beyond vague musings on vegetation she needed to cut back and if she should plant pansies in the fall.

  Suddenly out of nowhere, Kay’s face popped into her inner eyesight. She was smiling in that soft, dreamy way Merle knew so well, the way she’d looked when she wanted to make love. Merle felt a sweet little rush of longing, and then she remembered and the grief swept in. It was over. It had been over for months, and God damn it, here she was, in the grip of futile memory. Perhaps the memory of something that had never been real. That made her feel worse, made her feel stupid, then regretful.

  The tears started. She hadn’t cried much since Kay left, a couple of times maybe. This was one of the worst. She stood in her garden, unable to move, pinned in place by despair. My life is over. Then she heard Hayley’s voice behind her, and it was a powerful jolt of reality. She turned around before she could think about it, and there she was. She was staring at Merle, those brown eyes of hers enormous. When had she gotten such huge, consuming eyes? In a daze, she heard Hayley practically order her to come into the house.

  They got some drinks and returned to the backyard to sit by the sundial. Arthur took up a spot close to them, sat down and looked from one to the other, panting, his expression mildly troubled. Hayley sipped her tea and fixed Merle with a stern no-nonsense face.

  “So. What’s up?”

  “Oh, not much. I just got to thinking about my ex.”

  “Oh?”

  “I just got sad is all.” Merle was reluctant to talk. It was silly, of course. The only way to get better, to feel better was to talk and get out of her head. She’d told many an alcoholic the exact same thing. Why was it so hard to take her own advice? Because it was easier to help someone else. That’s why she had people like Sigrid and Clea to talk to. Of course, she wasn’t listening to Sigrid’s repeated suggestions to get out of herself and at least go out with people. She wasn’t yet ready to examine her reluctance too deeply. She could readily attribute it to “just too soon.”

  “I was feeling sad because of the breakup, and then I was getting angry with myself for feeling sad.”

  Hayley looked baffled. “You were angry with yourself?”

  “For one thing, I’m beating myself up for being such a dope and staying with her when the signs were so clear. And I’m feeling crappy because I miss her.”

  “You’re surely not a dope. You shouldn’t feel that way. Why shouldn’t you miss her? You were in love with her but she left you. No wonder you’re sad.”

  Merle looked away, then back at Hayley with a tight smile.

  “Ah. The ‘shoulds,’” Merle said.

  Hayley’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “What does that mean?”

  Oops. That wasn’t a concept Hayley was familiar with. “All the times we say to ourselves shoulda, woulda, coulda. Regret. Remorse. Shame.”

  “So? Seems okay to feel that way.”

  “Yes and no.” Merle sighed, pulled her knees up to her chest, then let her legs drop. She turned to face Hayley.

  “Look. I’ve been clean and sober for a lot of years. Although I’m aware that I’m human and make mistakes, I feel like this was one mistake I shouldn’t have made. I should have been smarter. I should have realized there was something going on with Kay a lot sooner.”

  Merle shook her head and grimaced. “There I go, ‘shoulding’ all over myself.”

  Hayley laughed. “I think I get it. Not very productive.”

  “No. And worse, if I stay like this, stewing in the juices of my self-pity, I could start thinking a drink is the answer to my woes.”

  “I can’t see that happening. You’re such a strong person.”

  “Hah. If you only knew.” Hayley’s conviction was bracing even if she didn’t know much about alcoholics.

  “She wasn’t good for you, was she?”

  Boy, was that a tough question to answer. “Yes and no. I thought she was everything I ever wanted, but it seems I was in the grip of delusion, and that’s the hardest thing of all to accept.”

  “Well, it’s time to move on.” Again, Hayley’s assurance was attractive, if naive.

  “Acceptance is the key.” Merle said that aloud to remind herself, aware that Hayley didn’t know the meaning of that phrase
either. It was a direct quote from one of AA’s most famous stories.

  “That sounds like a great idea. I’ve got another one. Let’s make dinner and watch a movie. Can you leave the yard work for now?”

  “Sure, no problem.” That sounded like such a wonderful idea. Leave the thoughts of Kay and what might have been behind and live in the now. Isn’t that what she told every new AA person: “Learn to be in the present”?

  “Good. And I want to show you some of the women who’ve contacted me online and figure out which ones I should email. Okay?”

  “Oh, yeah. No problem.”

  Hayley beamed. “I’ll bring my laptop down so we can look at them together.” Merle steeled herself to be positive. She owed Hayley her support, and it would be churlish to decline her request for help after how she’d just pulled Merle out of a major funk.

  She was unenthusiastic about the idea of looking over the pictures and personal information of a collection of strange lesbians whose goals in life were to get into Hayley’s jeans and / or marry her. Like Anik, she needed to get with the program and be helpful. That was what she did; she was helpful and supportive.

  Chapter Ten

  While they were fixing dinner and looking at OkCupid profiles, Hayley’s email pinged. It was from Sherrie. Another one. She frowned and blew out a breath.

  Merle was standing at the stove, and she turned around, eyebrow cocked. “Something wrong?”

  “Nope. It’s just that woman I had lunch with a couple weeks ago.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. I was debating about what to do, and the next day she emailed me this long, long message. It just went on and on about how much we had in common and how much fun lunch was. I thought lunch was okay. Just okay. Then I couldn’t find the name of her company on the net.”

  Merle was stirring soup and looked at Hayley, seeming concerned. “So you want to see her again?”