“Almost three years,” I said. “Two before I came to Cedars. And what about you?” I asked. “How or why did you become an attorney?”
“Not as romantic a reason as you have for a career, I’m afraid. My father was an attorney, a divorce attorney. I admired him, but I thought the work he was doing was more in the sewer of the legal world. Satisfaction was in the money, of course, but also in how well you could screw the other guy or girl. I wanted to be in law, too, but something different.
“I’m also afraid my parents were the stereotype story,” he continued. Yes, the armor was falling.
“Meaning?”
“My mother was one of his earliest clients, previously married only two years when she hired him to handle her divorce. Soon after, they had an affair that turned into an engagement and another marriage for her. My mother had just started her teaching career when she filed for divorce. From the way she talks, my father was an unexpected bonus.”
“Your father must be a charming man.”
“He’s a persuasive guy,” he said, and smiled. I remember wondering if he was smiling with pride or just acknowledging that he had a slick dad.
“And then you were born?”
“Not right off. I’m the youngest of three. The other two, my sisters, are both married and live on the East Coast, Julia in New York and Lydia in New Hampshire. We all grew up in California. Julia is married to a psychiatrist and has two teenage daughters. Lydia married a broker. They have a son, Clifton, who is in his second year at Yale.
“Three years ago, my father retired. My mother already had. They now live in the Hamptons.”
“New York?”
“Yes. My father’s younger brother, Winston, lives on Long Island, too. Let’s see, what did I leave out?” he asked, pretending to really think about it.
“Blood type.”
He laughed and nodded simultaneously, like someone who was confirming what he had instinctively believed before he sat across from me.
“Figures a nurse would say that. Are you from here?”
“Maryland,” I said. “My father sold dental equipment and was on the road a lot until my mother contracted breast cancer. He worked in the company office then and remained there after she died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Double sad ending, I’m afraid. My father was killed in a car accident a year after. Trailer truck jackknifed on him.”
“How terrible. Brothers or sisters?” he asked quickly. He obviously wanted to know if I had to bear the burden of such tragedy myself.
“No, just me. I had an aunt in California who for a while was a surrogate mother, my mother’s younger sister, a poster woman for spinster. Even an amateur psychiatrist could diagnose her sexual paranoia.”
“So she’s no longer your surrogate mother?”
“She passed away last year. A brain aneurysm.”
“I’m sorry.”
He looked lost for words after hearing such a stream of tragedy.
“I wasn’t that close to her. She wasn’t excited about my coming to live with her. People who have lived most of their mature lives alone develop pretty firm habits. A teenage girl can easily disrupt them.”
“I bet. You’re not married, I see,” he said, nodding at the absence of a ring.
“I came close but no gold ring or silver,” I said.
“Anyone in the running presently?”
We had told each other so much so quickly. At least for me, it was unique. I felt like putting on the brakes.
“I think I’m beginning to feel like I’m on the witness stand,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’d claim habit, but it’s more than that. I really want to know more about you.”
I didn’t miss his meaning.
“What about you? I don’t even see an imprint on your finger.”
“Similar. Close to being close, but I’m too much of a workaholic. At least, that’s what I’ve been accused of being.”
“Ditto,” I said.
“Romance happens only by accident for people like us, or at least me, for sure. I doubt that you like to be fixed up. I don’t.”
“Spontaneity has its charm,” I admitted.
“Like right now?”
I laughed. A laugh was such a simple way to avoid a commitment.
“Where do you live?” he asked. I described it.
“I’m leasing a place in Brentwood,” he said. “Live alone?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I find it easier when there isn’t a roommate.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘easier’?”
“Asking you out,” he said. “Otherwise, there’s the roommate who’s either jealous or deliberately too critical until she gets a date.”
“You sound like too much of an expert,” I said. “I’m just a helpless single woman with limited romantic experience, struggling to make a life in the City of Angels.”
He kept his smile. He was looking at me more intently. “Why is it I doubt that? I think you’re keeping your secrets.”
I shrugged. “My father used to say when you lose the mystery, you lose a great deal of the passion.”
“Sounds like a wise comment.”
“But mystery has become more dangerous these days,” I said. “Some people wouldn’t have considered my comment about blood type off the mark. People are down to learning their prospective date’s DNA before agreeing to meet.”
“I’m willing to take a chance only on the little I know about you,” he said. “Can I call you?”
No lack of self-confidence in him, I thought, but I hadn’t felt a single negative note flowing my way from the moment I set eyes on him. Maybe I was more careful than most women these days, but even though he was handsome, charming, and obviously successful, I forced myself to be cautious.
I gave him my phone number but made it clear that I would only meet him for lunch sometime.
“Baby steps,” I added.
“Why? You’re not in maternity?” he joked, and then he put up his hands quickly. “I’m not greedy. Lunch it will be,” he said. “I have confidence you’ll fall in love with me.”
Another safe laugh was my response.
Recalling all that fondly now, I scraped off the dish from the living room and began to rinse it and the other dishes before loading them in the dishwasher. My mother had taught me to do that.
“Dishwashers don’t get it all. Nothing gets it all.” Despite my wishful defiance, her instructions haunted me. Sometimes I’d swear she was at my side, giving me that critical look, shaking her head and muttering, “What am I to do with you? Hope you marry someone so wealthy that you’re surrounded by servants, even someone to help you dress in the morning? Princess Pru,” she’d add. Funnily, it didn’t sound like something critical. It was almost as if she wished it would come true for me.
After I turned on the dishwasher, I started for the bedroom and then stopped. Ever since I had started nursing at Cedars, I had made it a point never to wear my uniform into the bedroom. Chandler swore he never had smelled that aseptic hospital odor, but I did. Funnily, it never bothered me at work, but when I was out of the hospital and especially at home, it reeked and practically turned my stomach. I never told anyone that. It wasn’t something they would recommend you say when applying for a nursing position or when you’re trying to please patients.
I stripped off my uniform and brought it to the washing machine in the nook off the hall and dropped it in. Then I took off my shoes and deposited my socks. I’d wash it all later with other things that were piled in the clothes basket. It was teeming over, which was another sight that wouldn’t please my mother, but I ignored it.
I went to my bedroom to take off my bra and panties. I hadn’t made the king-size four-poster bed before I left for work. The oversize pillows looked trampled upon, and the pink blanket was still bunched and pushed to one side. It had been another restless night, but whenever I did make my bed, I made it almost military-style
. You could bounce a coin off the top sheet.
I heard my mother’s voice again, reminding me, “When you do something, do it right, or don’t do it.”
That was echoing in my memory this afternoon, so I didn’t do it. I wasn’t in the mood to do it right.
The only reason I would do it now was that Chandler was coming, and there was something about an unmade bed that discouraged sex in it for him. It didn’t matter to me. I told him I could make love with him on bedsprings.
He kidded me about not being the best homemaker, but I suspected he wasn’t kidding, as much as I wished he was.
“How can a nurse be so messy? Isn’t immaculate built in to your work?” he asked.
“I’m a different person at work,” I told him. “I’m sure you’re a different person when you go to court or negotiate a contract.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, but no matter how I explained it, when I was compared to him, I was Miss Slob USA. He was one of the cleanest and tidiest men I knew. Of course, he didn’t have to wear a uniform to work like I did and make sure that it wasn’t rumpled and unkempt, unless I wanted to count his suit and tie as a uniform. Still, his clothing always looked pressed and cleaned, even at the end of his workday. My father was like that.
I put my purse on the dresser table and the gift box of pearls beside it. My telephone stalker had left a good question in her message. How would I explain it to Chandler? He was a Boy Scout when it came to procedure. He’d wonder why I didn’t report it to the hospital manager or something. Wasn’t there any rule about accepting gifts from patients? There had to be something, he’d say. Patients were so vulnerable and so dependent. People could claim that it was taking advantage of them to accept their gifts. There surely had to be guidance for things like this in the American Nurses Association code of ethics.
My head was reeling with all the questions. It actually felt heavier. My neck ached. Still naked, I went out to get myself that glass of Pinot. After I poured it, I went into the bathroom and started running water into the tub. I paused and stood before the full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door, something I had attached on my own, which impressed Chandler. I inspected myself like a pre–Civil War slave owner looking at prospects.
Despite the lack of real exercise, my figure was intact. My breasts were firm, full, shapely, helping to form this hourglass figure that was still quite evident when I wore my nurse’s uniform. My stomach was flat, and I had the legs of a ballet dancer. Gravely ill men still looked at me with those judgmental eyes, especially the ones wearing oxygen masks. They looked like supersonic pilots. The mask emphasized their eyes following me about the room, making me self-conscious about my shapely bum. Surely they were thinking I was a ten.
What about them? Couldn’t I put a number on my male patients, not for looks so much as for cooperation and respect? Mr. Thomas had turned out to be a ten for sure, but especially during the last few days, even he’d look at me with that “healthy male interest,” as my mother used to call it, and see me more as a woman than a nurse.
Scarletta’s latest messages were full of references to my figure and especially how I walked. “It leaves so little to the imagination. Stroking your ass would feel like smoothing out clay. I bet you’d love to feel my fingers between your legs. They’d feel like butterfly wings.”
I could hear the real lust in her voice. She sounded like she was salivating over the possibilities. Where did anyone get the idea that I could have a boyfriend and also be gay or, as my father used to joke, AC/DC? It was just another way to intimidate me. I was sure of it. But admittedly, sometimes it stirred my sexual imagination. Was it only natural for a woman to look at another attractive woman and think of intimacy?
Maybe Scarletta hoped Chandler would get that idea and end his relationship with me. Maybe one of these days, she would call him and claim I had encouraged her. She might even make up assignations, cite some birthmark or dimple, and add some detail that would convince him. Shouldn’t I prepare him for such an event?
Not yet, I told myself. I might still end all this without anyone knowing what had gone on. Then, later, I could accept the accolades. How brave you were. I could just hear some of them admitting that they wouldn’t have had the courage.
I sipped more wine, closed my eyes, and took deep breaths to get myself relaxed, just the way I often instructed anxious patients to do.
In fact, I was so comfortable in the tub when Chandler arrived that I was almost asleep. I loved that easy space between consciousness and slumber, a space filled with nothing, no images, no threats, and no painfully sad memories. I was floating in true limbo.
It took a good few seconds for me to realize he was standing there in the bathroom doorway, watching me, that sexy grin on his face, his lips moist, the excitement brightening his eyes.
“I don’t know how you can be a great negotiator,” I told him once. “One look at your face, and I’d know when to demand more.”
“I don’t make love to my opponents,” he had said when I suggested this to him.
“None you wish to? No pretty opponents?”
“The pretty women who negotiate are too unisex for me. They all look like they would demand to be on top all the time no matter what, controlling everything, even when I can have my orgasm. ‘Don’t you dare have an orgasm before I say,’ ” he said, putting his hands on his hips and imitating an arrogant woman. “Some look like they’d give you a grade afterward.”
“You’ll always be A-plus to me.”
“That’s all?”
“How long have you been standing there?” I asked. He was leaning against the doorjamb now, smiling with just a hint of evil, like a boy in grade school teasing a girl he really wished would like him.
“About a minute, waiting for you to realize it. I do love watching you when you don’t know I am.”
“That’s sly. And unfair.” I sat up and laid my arms on the sides of the tub. I wasn’t eager to get out.
“Only when you have something to hide,” he said. I didn’t reply. “Tougher than usual day?” he asked.
“Yes. We had three STATs on my shift, all involving defibrillation. One didn’t make it. All occurred during the first few hours of my shift.”
“Oh. You have to be so cool and strong to get used to that and continue working.”
I appreciated that he didn’t ask how old the expired patient was. Whoever died was someone’s husband, wife, grandparent, or child. It was a loss that would take away a major reason for living, especially when it was a child, and sometimes as painful when it was a wife or husband of someone married a long time.
My father was fond of quoting Dante Gabriel Rossetti after my mother died. “Beauty without the beloved is like a sword through the heart.” I thought of it at his funeral. It eased my pain to think he would no longer suffer a sword through his heart.
When I had told Chandler that, he actually teared up. I would never call him an overly sentimental man, but he did have his heavy romantic moments.
“I want us to feel that way about each other,” he had said. I was afraid to agree. That seemed to be a bar too high, but I gave him just a smile and hoped it was enough.
He loosened his dark blue tie and took off his suit jacket.
“Coming in?” I asked.
“Does it snow in Alaska?”
I added some warm water as he took off his clothes. Men never think women can get hot watching them undress. Maybe it’s a little true—maybe because they do it too quickly. They practically rip off everything so we don’t have time to work up sexual excitement. They’re so anxious to get it on. At least, most of the men I knew were. Chandler was different. Everything he did, even making love, had a grace to it, an elegance, even when he was a little overheated. His eyes always searched mine to be sure I wanted it as much at that moment.
Sex for a man had to have a resolution. There was such a clear and immediate goal to achieve. Sex for a woman was a never-ending journey. We coul
d pause to sip some wine, even make a phone call. Maybe that was an unfair comparison, an exaggeration. We had the power of multiple orgasms. We had to wait to reload.
I believed that Chandler wasn’t constantly thinking of all this. Underneath it all, he was really shy, although he’d hate to admit it or be accused of it. Masculinity required aggressiveness, not blushing and being tentative and unsure. Most of the women I knew expected that. Besides, confidence brought better orgasms.
Chandler was no virgin when we met, but I suppose the better way to describe him was that he was a man who would never trivialize his sex. If anything, he even took that too seriously. He reminded me of my father, who treated anything he had to do as if it was life or death. That was something that irked my mother.
“Why do you take so long to decide something so simple?” she’d complain. But he impressed me. Being cautious, analyzing carefully, paid off. Whatever persistence and ambition, whatever success I had really had been thanks to him. I don’t think a day had gone by without his giving me some sort of advice. He was always so serious. It was truly as if he was my life coach, guiding me through every challenge, encouraging me after any disappointment.
“Don’t be a woman who giggles after something she says that she’s not sure of. It will warp your self-confidence and the confidence others have in you,” he told me when I was barely more than twelve. “Sometimes your girlfriends sound like those old-time laugh tracks on television. They all giggle in unison.”
But unlike my father, Chandler had a great sense of humor, sometimes too dry and sometimes bordering on sarcasm, especially with other people.
He tried to be oblivious about his undressing. The subtlety in his clever legal work carried over to his personal life. After all, he was a successful negotiator, catching his opponent off-guard, leading him or her into a trap, and bringing it to a satisfactory conclusion. I loved listening to him describe his strategies with an opposing attorney. When it came to sex, he would put on that innocent face for me, too. Oh, am I getting you excited? Did I do something, say something?
Naked, he approached the tub slowly. My apartment came with this very lengthy tub, more like a seven-foot-long bathtub for a queen. It wasn’t all that deep. The fixtures were practically antiques. He thought there was something romantic about it. He said we were taking a bath together in the nineteenth century. He was right. At least my tub had character. The rest of the apartment was cookie-cutter but quite up to date with appliances.
The Silhouette Girl Page 4
