19
Sandman
"M
Y GOD!" SHE SAID, spinning around from the purple flowers she was planting in the ground.
"Hey," said Doug.
"You
scared
me! Where did you come from?" She looked around like he might have brought a surprise party with him. "What are you doing here?"
Her smile made Doug forget who and what he was, made him forget everything. "I was in the area, thought I'd take a chance."
She brushed at the browned knees of her jeans, as though he cared that they were dirty. "You spying on me?"
"Maybe just a little."
"Well, stop it and come on in here."
The gate catch was a simple wire loop. Inside, he stuck to the neat, S-shaped path of small, crunchy stones. A hello kiss would have come off too forced and awkward, too formal even. She stayed close to him as he looked around. A weathered wooden chest was open behind the bench, stocked with hand tools, fertilizer, Miracle Grow. "This is nice," he said.
"Yeah, well...." She surveyed it with the backs of her wrists curled against her hips. "My perennials are perennially frustrating, and my annuals are a semi-annual disappointment. Oh, and the spearmint is strangling my phlox."
"I thought I smelled gum."
"Other than that-- welcome to my little patch of heaven. I was just putting in some impatiens for color. If you want to wait, I'm almost done."
"I'll sit."
His shoulders rustled some weeping-willow tendrils-- and just like that he was sitting on her stone garden bench. He was in. He tried to see across to where he used to watch her from, but couldn't make it out now.
She knelt on a foam pad, facing away from him, planting and patting the rest of the flowers in a bed of overturned dirt. The lilac band of her panties showed over the stressed belt of her jeans, panties he had once picked up off the Laundromat floor.
"This is a surprise," she said.
"Time on my hands. I was in the area, and I remembered you raving about this place at dinner."
"Right. Now-- were you really in the area? Or did you sort of
put
yourself in the area?"
"I put myself here, definitely."
She looked back at him over her shoulder with a smile. "Good."
"Plus I'm a big fan of flowers."
"I could tell." She returned to them. "What's your favorite kind?"
"Oh, lilac."
She reached forward, patting the soil around a short stem in the manner of one tucking in a blanket around a baby. "You can see my underwear from there, can't you."
"It's all right. I don't mind."
She didn't straighten, didn't cover up, a very simple, sexy thing, just letting it be. She finished and splashed some hose water on the beds and her own dirty hands, then packed away her tools, smoothed her hair back into a scrunchy, and took him for a stroll through the gardens.
"I have to tell you," she said, twirling a green leaf by the stem as they walked, "I did a terrible thing yesterday."
"What was that?"
"I watched a soap opera. Used to schedule my college classes around them. Anyway, there was this typically ridiculous scene where two people stand across the room from each other and talk, talk, talk, until the woman turns to the window, gazing off for her big close-up, sighing, 'Why am I falling for you?' It was so crazy and overblown, I was smiling when I turned it off. But then I got to thinking." She glanced at him. "Why
am
I falling for you?"
"Wow," he said, the words hitting him like booze.
"You're not at all my type. My girlfriends, I've told them about you, and they think it's just, like, big rebound. And I'm like-- rebound from what? The robbery? I mean-- are we that different? Really? I think we have more in common than we have differences."
"Agreed."
"We both love flowers."
He laughed. "Right."
"Anyway, my friends." She shook her hands like she couldn't express herself clearly. "I feel sort of estranged from them, I think maybe that's what they're picking up on. I have changed. I can feel it. They still have this, like, carelessness about them-- which I sort of envy, but at the same time, I don't really understand anymore. It's scary to think that I might be, you know, leaving them behind."
"Yeah," Doug said, following this closely. "I think I know exactly what you mean."
They turned the corner at a double-wide plot with pebble paths and a big bonsai tree. A barefoot Asian woman was practicing slow-motion, invisible-wall-pushing tai chi.
"But this, you and me-- it's happening too fast," said Claire. "I don't trust it. I think about you and I feel like... I can picture you in my mind for a second, but then you're gone. It's like I know you really well, but almost not at all. Like you're not real-- like I invented you, or you invented me, some Zen thing like that. Are you real, Doug?"
"I think so."
"Because I can't root you in anything. Charlestown, I guess, but that's too vague. I don't even have your phone number. I can't call you. Or your address-- no house to drive by and torment myself and wonder, 'Is he home? Is he thinking about me?' "
"You mean you want references?"
"Yes! And a look at your driver's license and another valid form of ID. I want to stand in your bathroom. I want five minutes alone in your closet. I want to know that you're not just going to turn to smoke on me someday."
"I'm not."
"And fine, I know this is stupid, it's only been two dates. I
know
that I'm crazy, okay? But I can't help this feeling that there's something..." She shook her head, throwing the leaf to the dirt path. "Are you married?"
Doug sputtered. "You said
married
?"
"Can't you see-- you're making me ask!
Making
me embarrass myself here."
"Married?"
he said, wanting to scoff and laugh at the same time.
"I need to know that there's water in the pool. Even if-- okay, fine, even if I've already jumped, I still want to know whether or not there's water in the pool."
"There's-- there's water in the pool," he said, confused.
"We could go to your apartment. You could show me where you live."
He started to say no.
"Five minutes." She showed him that many fingers, growing frantic. "So I can
plant
you somewhere in my mind, so you're not this, this sandman. I met you in a
Laundromat,
Doug MacRay. It is Doug MacRay-- right?"
He couldn't give in here, and she slowed along the path, hands falling to her sides. "See, this is-- now my mind is filling with possibilities."
"Whoa, what? Like centerfolds all over the walls or something? Dirty laundry hanging from the ceiling fan?"
"That's...
minimum
."
"I am not married." That time he did laugh, angering her.
"Neither am I," she said. "So far as you know."
"My place-- " He stopped himself. "I was going to blame it on my neighbors, but that's not true, it's me, all me. See, I'm making some changes in my life"-- Doug was hearing this himself for the first time-- "and my place-- that's the old me. Something I'm trying to fix."
She jumped on that. "But I want to see-- "
"The old me? No, you don't. Would you want me poking around your college dorm room to find out about you now?"
"But, wait-- "
"Listen. I just grew up. Just a little while ago. The day I met you, maybe. Already, I've turned over so many bad cards for you."
"And I'm still here."
"And you're still here. So what I'm asking for now is, please-- let me work on trying to impress you for a change. Please."
She nodded, unconvinced.
Doug made a pretend move for his wallet. "I have a license and a Blockbuster card."
"Just tell me, Doug." She reached out and gripped his wrists. "Tell me if I'm making a mistake. I will still make the mistake. That's no problem. I just want to know now."
"I'm saying there is no-- "
"Aaah!"
Her tiny scream startled a nearby family of ducks. She pulled on his arms, staring into his eyes. "Yes or no. Am I making a mistake here, or not?"
Doug looked down at her hands manacling his wrists. He knew what he wanted to say, and he knew what she was waiting for him to say. All he had to do was say it.
"No."
She stared hard, then let go of him, pointing a finger at his chest. "You promised."
Doug nodded. "Okay."
A bird fluttering to a nearby trellis caught her eye, and she watched it peck at some vines, softening her mood a bit. "So much agitation around me these days," she said. "Stuff swirling. But with you, when I'm alone with you-- there's a silence, there's peace. You make all that other stuff go away." The bird disappeared to a high branch. "But again-- whether any of this is real or not, I have no idea."
"Maybe if we just stop talking about it. Maybe if we just let it be."
"I'm not looking for a guarantee. Just good faith."
Doug nodded, feeling better about it now himself. "And that's what I gave you."
She relented then, turning to start back, one hand finding its way to the pocket of her jeans, the other into his hand. "Do you think that was our first fight?"
"Was it?"
"Maybe just my first freak-out."
Relief filled him like breath. "Our first
discussion,
maybe."
"That's it, a
discussion
." She swung their joined hands a little. "I don't even think true fights are possible between a couple until sex enters the equation."
"Yeah," said Doug at first. "Wait. Is that a vote for fighting, or...?"
"A relationship filled only with firsts. Wouldn't that be the best? No past, no history to worry about, things moving too fast. You and me up on the rooftop, over and over again. Everything light and new."
"We could do that."
"Could we? Every date our first?"
"Why not?" He let go of her hand. "Hey, I'm Doug."
She smiled. "Claire. Nice to meet you."
They shook hands, then Doug looked at his empty palm, shrugging. "Nah. No chemistry."
She pushed him away, laughing, then grabbed his hand again, hooking her arm around his, pulling him close.
* * *
CANESTARO'S WAS A PIZZERIA and bistro with cafe seating on the park end of Peterborough Street. Nice without the Chart House finery, no table linen, butter with the bread instead of oil. He was comfortable here. With the sun still peeking over the high wall of apartment buildings lining the other side of the street, they claimed one of the sidewalk tables and split a pizza, half 'roni, half chicken and broccoli. Echoes of Fenway Park reached them from two streets away, the announcer droning, "Vaughn. First base, Vaughn."
Claire was better by the time the food came, and the meal passed as the best ones do, offering few great revelations but constant little connections, two people dining on each other's character, curious and gentle as nibbling fish. Then she said something about his mother that threw him. "Just that, how, whenever you talk about your mother leaving, it's like she
escaped
from you and your father. As opposed to, well-- deserting you."
"Yeah," he said, surprised both by the change in topic and the observation itself, never having thought of it that way. "Guess you're right."
"Why?"
"I guess," he said, "because it's true."
"But you were six years old. How can you blame yourself?"
"No, I hear you."
"No one ever told you what she was going through? There must have been some signs...."
"No one told me anything about my mother. Not my father, that's for sure. But that's also because, pretty much, he was the problem."
"How so?"
Cars rolled past while he deliberated. "Well," he said, "you're not gonna like it."
"What do you mean,
I'm
not gonna like it?"
The strangest thing was, he wanted to tell her this. It amazed him how honest he wanted to be, how dry he felt under the broad umbrella of the lie. "You know how you asked me one time about Charlestown, bank robbers?"
She just looked at him, waiting for him to say something other than what she was thinking.
"Yeah," said Doug, unable to spare her. "I didn't say anything because... well, because."
