Once Upon a Time, There Was You (3 page)

“He got mad. He started swearing.”

Val stared at her.

“Not at
me
.”

Val’s eyes were wide, her face a little flushed, and Irene thought she must want to ask a million more questions, say a million more things. She feared Val might move away from their friendship, because now she would think Irene was weird. But she didn’t. She bent her head to her books, and after a while she asked Irene if she wanted to share a pizza.

They ordered a large sausage and mushroom and ate the whole thing. And then, at midnight, they heard there was a giant snowball fight happening on the quad, boys versus girls, and they put their coats on over their pajamas, slid their bare feet into their boots, and went out to defend their sex. They came back two
hours later with snow down their backs, snow melting in their boots and caked in their hair, and even though it was widely held that you couldn’t get colds from being cold, they both got very bad colds, which, in the way of the young, they rather enjoyed.

Irene sits in her bedroom recalling that night, the details still so clear. She thinks of how, a month after she met John, she told him about her mother, too; he was the only other person she ever told. She extracted the same promise from him, not to tell anyone else. “I would never do that,” he said. And he said nothing more, but he reached out his arms and she moved into them. All she heard for a long time was the sound of them breathing together, and the distant beating of his heart.

Irene snaps to, and turns to her computer. Now as then: forget the past; concentrate on the present. Here is the present: she is a woman in search of a man. Again.

She stretches her arms out, cracks her knuckles. How to approach it this time?

I believe in defacing books
, she writes.
I think one’s personal library should be full of books with broken spines and meaningful passages underlined, with pages marked by chocolate or coffee or grease stains. If there are comments or questions in the margins, even better. I am otherwise a very neat person, as I believe that external chaos leads to internal chaos. Discuss. (Ha ha.) I believe in going to cafes in the afternoon and enjoying pastry on a porcelain plate, even if it ruins your dinner. This is a bit of an affectation, I suppose, as I only began doing it after I visited Paris and saw all of
them
doing it. “Them” being the French, of course, and who among us does not trust the French when it comes to food and fashion?

I believe in bringing home rocks from every place I visited and loved, because I think rocks hold within them an essence of place, and that you can feel this essence—and therefore the place—if you hold the rock tightly in your hand. Naturally you must have patience, as
well as an open mind and heart, and, like many spiritual things, it works better if your eyes are closed
.

No. She deletes this last paragraph, then continues.

I believe in keeping my eyes closed at the dentist’s and imagining Tahiti even though I have never been there. But I have seen pictures, and every time I go to the dentist I imagine me in those pictures with the blue, blue sea and the waves coming in. (As a kid I had a dentist who gave every patient a card for a free Dairy Queen cone after each visit. Devil or angel? I still can’t decide.) I will never be thin again and I am interested in meeting a man who is just fine with that. Not that I’m fat. But I am average, and average is not thin. Average to zaftig, I guess would be more precise, and I still have very good legs if you care about that sort of thing, which I do. I believe in holding hands in the movie show when all the lights are low, and if you know and like that song, we’re already off to a good start. I kind of hate writing these things, as I’m sure you can tell, but I understand and accept the need for them
.

She rereads what she wrote, then gets up from the little desk in the corner of her bedroom and moves to the window. She crosses her arms and sighs, leans her head against the cool glass. Across the street, an old Asian woman pushes a little cart full of groceries uphill. She has a brightly patterned scarf knotted under her chin, an open black coat, and she is wearing house slippers and nylon stockings rolled to the knees. Irene can see a baguette sticking out of one of the grocery bags, the fernlike tops of carrots, and what look like baby eggplants. She wonders what the woman will make for dinner. She wishes she could call out and ask her; she feels as though the information would comfort her. Would ground her. Life goes on. One makes dinner. One must eat. You are not alone, we are none of us alone, see how we all eat dinner?

Oh, it was a lovely day today, the sky a bleached turquoise color, no fog, only a few clouds that looked like clotted cream,
placed as though by children’s hands—oddly irregular that way. She wishes the dark weren’t coming so soon.

This morning, Don Strauss called to tell her that he was getting back together with his ex-wife. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I was going to tell you to your face, but then I thought it might be less painful if I just called. Because what would we do after I told you to your face, you know? I mean, it would be so awkward for both of us. I want you to know I’ve not had any contact with her since I met you—this came out of the blue. She just now called, we had a really long, really honest talk, and we realized we’re still in love with each other. And I think we have a chance to make it work this time. I’m happy for myself, but I’m sorry for any pain I caused you. I know you were a lot more invested in this relationship than I.”

“What?” Irene said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant—”

“I wasn’t more invested than you! What makes you think I was more invested than you?”

“Well, you did say a number of things that—”

“You know, you make that clicking sound with your jaw when you chew, and it just about drives me up the wall.”

“Okay, Irene.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to tolerate that. And did anyone ever teach you the virtues of using a toilet brush? Have you ever
heard
of a toilet brush?”

“I guess we’re not going to be able to talk about this. I’m sorry for that. You’re a wonderful woman when you’re not outraged, and in fact I wanted to let you know that my friend Larry, whom you met at that art gallery we went to last week, was very taken with you, so if—”

Irene hung up. She called Valerie and got her voice mail and
said, “Call me. Or if you can, come over. Minor crisis.
Minor.
” She went to the refrigerator and looked in, closed the door. Opened it and looked some more, closed the door again. “Damn it,” she said, quietly, and then, louder,
“Damn it!”
And then she cried, just a little, tears more of humiliation, of frustration, than of pain.

She flung herself into the kitchen banquette, and while she cried she looked through the Williams-Sonoma catalogue, and then she blew her nose and called to order the azure blue, three-and-a-half-quart Le Creuset oval Dutch oven, vowing to use it for the white bean soup recipe she’s had taped to her refrigerator for months. After she placed the order, she almost reflexively called Don to tell him she’d gotten the pan—he’d told her she should buy it when she showed it to him after the catalogue arrived last Saturday. Yes, last Saturday, when Sadie had gone to see her father, and Irene and Don had made love in the afternoon and then they’d gotten up in a lovely golden light and she’d made them feta cheese and spinach omelets and Greek toast and served it with retsina and he’d said it was divine. But instead of calling Don—whose number
she had never memorized
, by the way—she’d gone over to her computer to compose yet another ad for the local paper that let you place personals of any length for free, so long as they were in the “Over 55” section. Mercy for the half dead. She’ll write another damn ad—that’s how she had met Don. She doesn’t want to use online dating services, which scare her. She went on Match.com one day, surveyed the men in her specified age group, and felt a little blip of hope. A blond man who was an attorney, wearing a nice blue sweater and gray pants. An international businessman who was bald but still very attractive; he exuded a kind of Yul Brynner confidence. Then she surveyed the women close to her age, her competition, and immediately gave up.
“Why?”
Val asked when Irene told her that. “You’re every bit as good as they are!”

“No,” Irene said. “I’m not. Those women are all happier than I am. Healthier. Nicer. Richer, too.”

“Irene, if you posted a picture, people would say the same thing about you. You look beautiful when you’re smiling. You look happy and healthy, too. You’re supposed to try to make yourself look as good as you can on those websites. That’s what everybody does! Then, after a few dates, the warts come out. That’s the way it works. You pretend you’re perfect, and by the time they find out you’re not, they hopefully like you a little, anyway. And you them.”

“I like blind dates,” Irene said. “And I like to show my warts first.”

“It’s a wonder anybody ever contacts you, with the ads you write.”

“It’s because I’m a relief from the usual love-to-walk-on-the-beach, that’s why.” That’s what Don had told her.

And so here she goes, writing another ad. Back on the horse. Too many fish in the sea. No use crying over spilled milk. Et fucking cetera.

Maybe she swore too much. She does swear too much. But all her friends do, and then it just becomes sort of contagious. Don said “darn” and “gosh” and “heck,” which she initially thought was charming—even trendsettingly retro!—but came to find annoying and possibly passive-aggressive. Recalling him using those pale epithets, she rolls her eyes and nods her head, as though she’s the one who initiated the breakup and now she’s confirming the vote.

“Eeeyup,” she says, and then, alarmed, looks at her watch. Sadie’s plane will be arriving in a couple of hours. Irene had wanted to go to the market and take some time selecting ingredients and then slow-cook a nice dinner for her daughter’s homecoming, but instead they’ll go to Hunan, which they both love.
Over scallion pancakes, she’ll casually mention that she and Don are all done. Sadie will make sure her mother is okay, and then she’ll say she’s glad, Irene would bet on it. She tolerated Don, but Irene knew she didn’t see him as a proper match for her mother.

Sadie often understands things before her mother does. Babies always seem so wise when they’re born, and both Irene and Valerie think Sadie has never lost that quality. There is something in Sadie’s eyes that goes so far back. Valerie calls her “Buddha Girl.” For her part, Sadie calls Valerie “Gypsy Woman” for her long skirts and oversize hoop earrings and many bracelets; and she calls her mother “Betty,” as in Crocker. Irene doesn’t mind. In many ways, she’s flattered. She thinks people who value creating a home and caring for children are vastly underrated. Vastly, vastly, vastly. Plus more vastly than that, and then some. What better thing than to have a skinned knee tended to by someone who feels the injury along with you? What deeper comfort after a bad dream than seeing a familiar silhouette at your doorjamb, feeling a familiar weight settling itself at your bedside? A table set properly, folded clothes, a stocked refrigerator. Who can say they do not appreciate the idea of home when it conveys such riches—not only appreciate it but also, in certain moments, grant it the elevated place it deserves?

Before she had Sadie, Irene was for many years a speech therapist. Sometimes her patients struggled so hard for words she could never understand, and this brought despair to both of them. But whenever Irene asked, “What do these things represent?” and showed them pictures of objects like a lit lamp next to a reading chair, a bathrobe hanging from a hook, a window box full of riotous geraniums, a pie cooling on the counter? Then! They might manage only
“Halk!”
but there would be that earnest look in their eyes, that light, and Irene would say, “Yes.
Home
. Good.”

After Sadie started grade school, Irene went back to work part-time. But when she moved to San Francisco, there were no part-time jobs for speech therapists. So she worked for several years sharing a position as a receptionist at a temporary employment agency—she didn’t want to work full-time until Sadie was in college; and with her own savings and alimony, she didn’t have to.

A couple of years ago, a man named Henry Bliss called the agency, looking for someone to assist with making appetizers at a wedding that Saturday. Irene loves cooking, and she told the man she’d take the job herself. He ended up hiring her to work three, sometimes four times a week as a kind of culinary girl Friday. She does everything from shopping for groceries and general cleanup to food prep. By his own admission, Henry can be a bit of a challenge, but he adores Sadie; and the feeling is mutual. Sometimes he hires Sadie to help at events, too, and he pays her generously—mostly for hanging around and admiring him rather than passing trays of appetizers.

On occasion Henry has advocated for Irene’s position when she and Sadie are having a dispute, and that keeps Irene mostly silent about what she would call the abuse she takes from Henry. In addition to that, she loves grilling eggplant, crimping quiche crusts, lining up three plump raspberries just so next to an artful squiggle of chocolate on a gold-rimmed dessert plate. She loves inhaling the aroma of the fresh herbs she is chopping. But her favorite thing is helping herself (when Henry isn’t looking) to chunks of lobster or slices of exotic cheeses or spoonfuls of lemon curd or whipped cream or cake batter or cold blueberry soup. At her age, another job would be hard to find. She hopes to work for Henry full-time after Sadie starts college.

Irene stretches, then goes back to her computer. She stares at the blank page, then writes:
Yesterday, while waiting in line at the grocery store, I heard the woman behind me say, “Oh, I wish to hell
they’d never even
invented
computers!” I wanted to turn around and hug her, but I didn’t want to interrupt the conversation she was having on her iPhone, which I believe is a computer. This, I think, is the essence of a lot of the problems we face today. We need what we hate. And vice versa. Discuss. (ha ha
)