Until the Real Thing Comes Along (8 page)

“Okay.”

“Mom,” I said. “You don’t understand. When I kissed him, it was like watching someone else do it.”

“I don’t think I need to hear any of these personal details, Patty.”

“But you do! Don’t you see how lucky you were? Don’t you see how hard it is to find what you found?”

“Well, now, she’s got a point there, Marilyn,” my father said.

She got up, started bussing dishes angrily.

“Mom!” I said. “Why are you so
angry
?”

“Marilyn!” my father said.

She turned to him. “What?!”

“I’m not done!”

He pointed to the half-full plate she had in her hand.

She gave it back to him, then left the room.

“Jesus,” I said, extremely quietly.

My father raised his eyebrows, stared at me over his glasses. “This is what I mean. Lately, she’ll fly right off the handle, just like that. Ten or fifteen minutes go by, she’s fine again.” He reached across me for another dinner roll. It made him grunt a little, doing it.

“I can’t do it, Dad. I can’t stay in a relationship just because the guy looks good on paper.”

“You don’t have to, honey.”

“Well, she seems to think—”

“She’s worried about you. She wants you to be happy. She wants you to have a baby before it’s too late. Not that it’s anywhere near too late, Scout, you’ve got lots of time. Lots of time.” He buttered a roll. Generously.

“Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Since when do you use butter?”

“Shh!”

“But your—”

“Listen, kiddo. You make the most out of a situation, you know?”

I said nothing.

“Am I right?”

“Okay,” I said. And then, “Dad? I don’t really have a lot of time.”

“Well.” He put his roll down, took my hand. “I know.”

Now Amber says, “I don’t blame you for honoring your true feelings. It’s very important to do that. I know too many people who tried to talk themselves into love and then suffered terribly
for it. Terribly.” She squints at a nick in my thumbnail, tsks, sighs, starts filing it smooth.

“How?”

“What?”

“How did they suffer?”

She stares at me blankly.

“The people who tried to talk themselves into it. Into love. How did they suffer?”

“Oh. Well, I don’t really know anyone like that. I was just trying to make you feel better.” She shrugs, cracks her gum.

“I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Hey. Get a cat. You know? People who live with cats are 70 percent happier than those who live with people.”

“That’s not true!”

“I swear to God.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It is. Dogs, 40 percent.”

I stop talking, take some comfort from the sounds of female chatter and blow-dryers. I watch a very thin young woman dressed entirely in black use a wide broom to clean up varying shades of hair. It’s probably all married hair. I look around at the women in the place. Yup, nearly all of them wear wedding rings.

“I am incapable of having a meaningful relationship,” I tell Amber. “That’s it. It’s a very interesting form of self-sabotage, because what I want most in my life is to have a family. But every time I get anywhere close, I make sure to mess it up. Now why do I do that?”

Amber sits back in her chair. “This is a nine-dollar manicure. You know?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What color do you want?”

“You pick.”

She selects a bottle of colorless polish.

“What, are you mad at me?”

She smiles, shakes her head. “I think you’ve got that all taken care of, hon. No, you don’t get color because your nails look like shit. Have you been biting them?”

“No!”

“You can tell me.”

“A little.”

“Well, cut it out.”

“Okay.”

She starts painting my thumbnail.

“The problem is, I’m in love with a gay man,” I say quietly.

“I know,” she says. Not quietly.

I am getting pretty tired of telling this story. But not nearly as tired as people are of hearing it.

Back at the office, there is another message from Artie. This time he answers. “Is that cottage on Green Street still for sale?” His voice is low, secretive.

“Yes, I think so. You want to see it again?”

“No, I want to buy it.”

“But don’t you want to see it again first? It was a few months ago-”

“No, I want to buy it. I got the money. What do we need to do?”

“Well, we’ll need to make an offer first, see what they come back with.”

“Give them full price.”

“Oh, I don’t think you—”

“Give them full price, I’ll be in tomorrow, we’ll do the paperwork.”

“All right. But you’ll have to give me a check with the offer. A thousand dollars. Earnest money. You know.”

“Oh yeah, right. I forgot about that. Been a long time since I bought a house. How late are you there?”

“I can meet you anytime, Artie.”

“All right. Eight o’clock tonight.”

“Is Muriel coming?”

“No.”

I’d thought not.

I think about Artie handing me the earnest money and I get a notion, suddenly, that it will be cash. Out of a coffee can. A big stack of dollar bills, bent in half, or maybe rolled up in a rubber band that Muriel took off a bunch of celery long ago. And then I get another notion. That, taking that money, I’ll feel really bad.

The phone rings again. Mrs. Dugan. Could they see the colonial again, tonight? Sure, I say, surprised. She tells me they’ll be there in twenty minutes.

An hour later, I am sitting on the kitchen floor of the colonial, admiring my manicure, looking in my purse to see if there’s anything I can play with in there. Nothing. Once more, I go to the window to look out and see if there are any cars coming. No. Well, this could be a couple of things. It could be that Joanne is paying me back for calling her kid an asshole. Or it could be that she just won’t show up. This happens all the time in real estate. You show up somewhere, the clients don’t.

I turn out the kitchen light, then walk around the house, turning out all the other lights. Then, in the beautiful light of the full moon outside, I pretend I live here. I go to the door of a bedroom, lean in. “Good night,” I say. The boy, Lego creations lined up on the windowsill. Then I go to another bedroom door, lean in that one, say, “Good niiiiight.” The girl, irresistible dresses hanging in her closet, though she prefers her bib overalls. On which I have embroidered things. Little flowers. A sun with a face.

I go down into the kitchen, open the empty ice box. “Hon?” I say. “I’m making a sandwich. Do you want one?”

I close the refrigerator door, lean against it, sigh. I have books on the shelves of the little den; I have a sewing basket in the family room; I have miniature marshmallows in the cupboard. I have whimsically decorated Band-Aids in the medicine chest: cartoon figures, stars, glitter. I have a kitchen calendar with writing all over it. Every day, there are human events for which I am responsible. Things done by and for the children I made, the husband who loves me.

“Wait for me, okay?” I call out. I’m talking to my husband who wants to start the movie we rented. I think that’s who I’m talking to.

Back at the office, I turn on the lights and call the answering service. Dugans called. Sorry they missed me. But right before our appointment, they decided on another house. Uh-huh. And Muriel Berkenheimer. What in the hell is going on with them?

I dial their number. Muriel answers.

“It’s Patty,” I say.

“Oh, Patty.” She starts to cry.

“Muriel?”

“Can you come over?”

“I—come over to your house?”

“Yes, it’s not so far. Thirty, thirty-five minutes. Have you had dinner?”

“Well, no, actually.”

“So you’ll come, we’ll have some dinner. We have to talk.”

“Muriel, did Artie—”

“I know, Patty. Come over. We’ll talk.”

A
rtie and Muriel live in a small but thoroughly charming Cape. When Muriel opens the door and shows me into the living room, I see gorgeous moldings, a fireplace with a carved mantel, a fire burning there. The furniture is exactly what I might have envisioned for them: Sears-type colonial, the upholstery shades of green and rust. A maple coffee table is crowded with photographs, and there is a candy dish full of butterscotch. The lamps remind me of the extravagant hats worn by Victorian women. I can smell beef roasting, and it comes to me that it’s been a long time since I’ve smelled that most substantial of smells.

“Came for dinner, huh?” Artie asks, rising up out of his recliner to greet me.

“Yes, Muriel was kind enough to invite me. It smells great, too.”

“It’s just pot roast,” Muriel says. “It’s nothing. Although it was a very nice cut, I must say. You have to ask the butcher, they keep the best stuff in the back, I have no idea why.”

“Their families,” Artie says.

“What?” Muriel holds her hand out for my coat, and I give it to her.

“It’s for their
families
, they keep it back there for their families.”

Muriel stares at him. “What would you know about it? When was the last time you shopped? If it weren’t for me, you’d never eat.” She looks at me. “If it weren’t for me, he’d never eat.”

“You just
said
that, Muriel, what do you think, the girl doesn’t hear? You think she’s deaf?”

“I was telling
her,
” Muriel says. “First I was just
saying
, then I was telling her specifically. You don’t mind, do you, Patty?”

I smile, shake my head no.

“You see?” she asks Artie.

“I see, Muriel.” He sits back down.

Artie’s lost weight—his knit-shirt collar gapes around his neck. It is, as usual, buttoned all the way up to the top. He wears a lime green cardigan that looks like a golf sweater, brown pants belted high, leather slippers. Muriel wears slippers, too, a fleece-lined type that look warm and comfortable and very old. This is my idea of a good way to spend married life: in your house that is just big enough, a fire going, dinner in the oven, and slippers on your feet. And a sure love, regardless of the form it takes.

“People like to be addressed specifically, Artie, it makes them feel important,” Muriel says.

Artie sighs. “She never stops.”

Muriel might have lost weight, too. Her face looks thinner. Or maybe it’s just that she’s tired. There are bags under her eyes.

She hangs up my coat in the tiny hall closet. Then, hands clasped nervously in front of her, she asks, “Would you like a drink?”

“A drink?”

“Yeah, you know, a cocktail.”

“I can make you a martini that’ll curl you hair,” Artie says. Then, looking at my hair, “More.”

“Okay. I’ve never had one.”

“You’re kidding!” Muriel says. And then, to Artie, “Can you believe it? She’s never had a martini!”

“Come on down to my bar,” Artie says, “I’ll fix you right up.”

I follow him through the dining room, where our places are set with china, with flowered cloth napkins. Two forks! Then through the warm kitchen to the basement door. “Come right back up,” Muriel tells us, manning her position in front of the stove. “I’m starting the gravy right now. And I don’t want things to get cold.”

Gravy! My spirits lift like a dog’s head when he hears the word
out
. Gravy is something single people don’t make. It’s something my mother never makes anymore, either, because of my father’s severely restricted diet. If there’s gravy, surely the potatoes will be browned and crisp at the edges, the carrots curled, the onions softened into a yellow sweetness that can be spread on bread like butter.

“Ta-da!” Artie says, turning on a light switch that bathes a corner of the basement—his bar—with a pinkish neon light. This must have been his paradise, at one time. Perhaps it still is. The bar is huge, a burgundy Naugahyde with diamond-shaped tufting accented by round gold studs. There are six stools, their padded seats also burgundy Naugahyde, rips in two of them inexpertly repaired with silver duct tape. Next to the bar is a wooden clothes rack draped with Muriel’s flag-sized underpants and industrial-strength bras. Artie moves it to the other side of the
basement. I wonder why she air-dries her lingerie; it looks as though it could withstand being laundered on rocks at the river.

“Now!” Artie rubs his hands together briskly, then goes behind the bar. “Used to be the hot spot of the neighborhood,” he says. “ ‘Artie’s place,’ we called it. We had parties down here almost every weekend.”

Along the back wall of the bar a smoke-colored mirror veined with gold reflects a bit of fringe on the back of Artie’s head; his baldness shines above it. He turns on a phonograph, puts on an album, and Sinatra begins singing, “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Artie sings along under his breath so wildly off-key I think maybe he’s joking, but when I look at him closely I see he is not. He reaches under the bar for glasses, raises his eyebrows up and down at me. It is the fifties; he is Hugh Heffner. Then, looking at the dust on the glasses, he says, “Well. Let me just wash these off first.” It is the nineties; he is Artie Berkenheimer, who carries two bottles of pills in his front shirt pocket. Sometimes they click together, making a sound like ill-fitting dentures.

“Two MINutes!” Muriel screams down the stairs.

“Oy.” Artie turns his back to me to pull down bottles of liquor from the shelf above the mirror. He nudges the phonograph so Frank stops skipping, then opens the little refrigerator for ice, dumps some into a tall silver shaker. “Been a long time since I drank anything but seltzer down here,” he says. But his movements are smooth and practiced; it’s like watching a real bartender.

I look around a little, see a weight bench and some barbells in another dim corner of the basement.

“Do you work out?” I ask.

He looks across the room, smiles. “Years ago,” he says. “I had a little book, charts and everything. Jack La Lanne. You measured yourself once a week—biceps, abdomen. Thighs.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what happened, why I stopped. Maybe I hurt myself. I don’t remember, it was a long time ago.” He goes back to making drinks. I settle back on the bar stool, cross my legs. “So,” I say.