Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (27 page)

After Dena hung up she didn’t feel any better. Sookie was wrong. Dena could barely remember any of the girls she went to school with, or at times even the names of the schools. Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely.

As a child she had spent hours looking in windows at families, from trains, buses, seeing the people inside that looked so happy and content, longing to get inside but not knowing how to do it. She always thought things might change if she could just find the right apartment, the right house, but she never could. No matter where she lived it never felt like home. In fact, she didn’t even know what “home” felt like.

Did everybody feel alone out there in the world or were they all acting? Was she the only one? She had been flying blind all her life and now suddenly she had started to hit the wall. She sat drinking red wine, and thinking and wondering what was the matter with her. What had gone wrong?

Dena was now making more money than she knew what to do with. She actually had a savings account and one of the first things she did was to move to a new apartment in Gramercy Park, where she had always wanted to live. She had been out of town covering the Bicentennial in Washington and in Philadelphia, and had not had a chance to finish decorating. After living in her new apartment for six weeks, she still had not hung her pictures on the living room wall, and so she asked a studio set designer, Michael Zanella, to come over on Friday night to help her. He was now standing on her sofa in his socks trying to place a large mirror in the middle of the wall. Dena was eating a sandwich, guiding him, when the phone rang. She walked backward toward the phone and before answering told Michael, “A little more to the left … Hello,” she said, not taking her eyes off the wall.

“Dena? Uh … Miss Nordstrom?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Gerry O’Malley.”

“Who?”

“Gerry O’—Dr. O’Malley.”

After all these months? “Oh, yes, Doctor … how are you?”

Dena motioned for Michael to move the mirror just a hair to the right.

“Fine,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“Just fine, Doctor.” As she made an OK gesture to Michael, “What can I do for you?”

“Well, there is something I need to tell you. Actually, to ask you, really. But before I do, I think I owe it to you to be completely honest and up front with you. I think it’s only fair that you know exactly how I feel before you make a decision one way or another.”

“Uh-huh,” Dena said, only half listening. She walked over and touched the next picture and pointed to where she wanted it.

“You know, all my life I have heard that I would meet someone somewhere and no matter how well I knew them or how much or little time we had spent together, that person would just be it for me.”

Dena shook her head when Michael pointed to the wrong picture and nodded yes when he picked up the right one.

“And I have known for a long time that you are that person for me. And the truth is, I am, well, totally and completely mad about you. And have been from the first time you came into my office.”

“Oh?” Dena mouthed yes when Michael pointed to the next picture.

“I know this call must seem out of the blue but I have waited to give you some time. I wanted to call sooner … would you have dinner with me sometime?”

There was no answer on the other end.

“I’m sure you must think I’m insane and this is really bizarre of me to put you on the spot like this … or if you are seriously involved with someone else—”

“Dr. O’Malley,” Dena said, “can I call you back in a few minutes?”

“Oh! Well, sure.”

“It’s just that I have someone here and—”

“Oh—oh, I’m sorry. Sure.”

“I’ll call you back.”

Dena hung up, not really believing what she had heard. It
was
so
out of the blue, it was bizarre. Maybe she had heard wrong or he was crazy or drunk or kidding or something. She did not know what to think so she forgot about it for the moment and kept on with the picture-hanging while she still had Michael there.

Gerry, on the other hand, was shaken. He had just made the most important phone call of his life and he had forgotten to give her his home phone number. He was too embarrassed to call back and hoped she would look his number up in the phone book. But she did not call back.

On Sunday night, he arrived at Elizabeth Diggers’s apartment with a pint of ice cream.

“Hi, Gerry, come on in the kitchen. I was just finishing my supper.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right, glad to have the company.”

She noticed the bag. “What did you bring me?”

“Ice cream.”

“Oh, boy, just in time for dessert. You know the best way to a woman’s heart. Thanks.”

Gerry put the ice cream in the freezer and sat down at the table.

“What’s up? You sounded pretty upset on the phone.”

“Elizabeth, I am afraid I did a pretty stupid thing, idiotic, really, and I think you should know about it.”

“What did you do?”

“I called Dena.”

“Oh, dear … and?”

“I made a complete and total fool out of myself.”

“Gerry, I’m sure you didn’t make a fool out of yourself.” She said it but prepared for the worst. It had been her professional experience that men in love, even the most intelligent, are capable of doing some pretty stupid things.

“Well, ass would be a better word. So I wanted to tell you myself before you heard about it. I really just called to hear her voice. But then, when she answered, I just sort of lost it.”

She looked up from her plate. “What did you say?”

Gerry began to pace. “I said … I know this call might seem out of the blue … but ever since the first day I met you I have been absolutely mad about you … and that I had always heard that someday I would meet the one person in the world for me … and for me she was that person.…”

Diggers quietly put her fork down. “You said that?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Diggers. After a moment of silence she asked, “And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Can I call you back … I’ve got someone here.’ ”

“Oh.”

“That was on Friday and she hasn’t called. So God knows what she thinks of me at this point and, of course, like a fool, I didn’t give her my home number. Anyhow, shall I drown myself now or wait a few more days?”

“I think you have a few more days left.” Dr. Diggers smiled, but thought to herself, Poor Gerry, he’s really done it now.

At her next session Dena did not mention that she had had a phone call from Gerry, and although Dr. Diggers was eager to ask about it, she couldn’t. She was caught in a hard place, between her patient and her friend. She was extremely fond of Gerry; they had been friends for years. They had first met when he was a student and she was still teaching in graduate school. One day in class she mentioned that she wished she could take part in the civil rights marches that were going on. Two days later, Gerry walked in and announced, “Dr. Diggers, you want to go to the march, and you are going to the march. We leave tomorrow. You may not be able to march, but you can sure as hell roll!” He and two of his friends borrowed a van and drove her all the way to Mississippi. They made a strange pair, this handsome, blue-eyed, blond boy pushing a black woman in a wheelchair, but it was an experience that neither of them would ever forget. Later, when the woman’s movement demonstration in New York had been announced, she had called him. “Are you up for another march?” He was and they had a ball, especially Gerry, who got patted on the behind by several very liberated women that day.

Gerry would always be a special person in her eyes and she hated to see him hurt, but there was not a thing she could do.

A week after his call, Dena came in from having drinks with a boring PR man who was trying to charm her into interviewing his client, and she looked up Gerry’s number and dialed. She left a message with his exchange. “So—you call and tell me you’re crazy about me and then I don’t hear from you?”

When Gerry came in later that night he called in for his messages. He had forced himself to go out; he had waited for her to call for days and had given up. When he heard Dena’s message he stood still in shock. At least she was still speaking to him; that was something. But what in the world did that message mean? He was a psychiatrist and even he didn’t know. But he was again hoping for the best.

As for Dena, she had called the way she usually did when it came to something personal; she had called on a whim and it didn’t mean anything, one way or the other.

On another impulse, Dena decided to have a few people over to her new apartment for a cocktail party on Sunday. Although she did not say so, it was her birthday, a day she would have forgotten if, as always, Norma and Macky and Aunt Elner had not sent her birthday cards.

She had invited Ira Wallace and his wife. She liked Mrs. Wallace; she was a lovely lady and must have seen something good in Ira, God knows what. She also invited her agent, Sandy, and his wife, and a few others, including Gerry O’Malley.

When Sunday came around, Gerry was a nervous wreck. He had changed ties five times and wished he had not gotten his hair cut by that stylist who had parted his hair on the wrong side. But Dena made him feel welcome and acted as if he had never called and made a fool out of himself, and he was grateful. He managed to get through the party without doing anything worse than crossing his legs and kicking a glass of Chardonnay off the coffee table. That was a miracle, considering.

Dena, on the other hand, looked at him several times when he didn’t know it and decided he was not a bad-looking guy. She needed somebody she could take places when she needed a date. Someone nice, not in the business. Maybe she would give him a try.

Dr. Diggers knew that Dena had been out with Gerry; however Dena had said nothing about it. But today, as Dr. Diggers went down the hall with her to the door, Dena said offhandedly, “Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Dr. O’Malley, who recommended you, called me?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t believe you mentioned it.”

Dena got her coat from the closet. “Anyhow, I went out with him a couple of times. But he doesn’t say much of anything. All he does is sit there and stare at me and drop things. He’s so nervous, he sort of makes me nervous.”

Oh, dear.

Dena put on her coat. “Do you know anything about him?”