Living Single

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Dad? You okay?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.” He sighed. “Erin, honestly, I don’t know. This is all so sudden. I need to think a bit. I’m not sure I have anything to say to her, really. I’m not sure I can handle asking about her life and hearing about her young men.”

  He had a point. If her postcards were any indication, Mom was not into keeping her love life under wraps. At least, not with me. But I doubted she’d be discreet with Dad, either. And there was always the possibility she’d arrive at Logan with that greasy-haired stud muffin in tow.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Let’s just wait and see what happens. Maybe she won’t even show up.”

  “Would you be disappointed if she didn’t?” Dad asked.

  I didn’t have to think hard about my answer. “Yeah, I would. Not devastated. But I do want to see her, now that she’s made the first move.”

  “You’re a good person, Erin Weston.”

  I smiled. “I had an excellent role model.”

  The following morning I had a dentist appointment so I didn’t get to the office until around ten-thirty. The mail had already been delivered. On my desk sat a plain, white, letter-sized envelope. There was no return address. My name and office address were typed; the postage was from an office meter.

  I’d never seen anything more ominous.

  A scathing, attacking letter from Doug?

  If it was, I’d throw it away immediately, unread. No, I’d tear it to shreds first, then throw it away, unread.

  I closed my office door behind me and without taking off my coat, opened the envelope. Inside was one folded sheet of white paper. The note was also typed.

  This is what it said:

  You don’t know me but I know of you through our extended business connections. I probably should have written before now. I wanted to warn you but I was too jealous and angry; I wanted you to suffer.

  Doug Spears and I had an affair two years ago. We met through work. Eventually, I found out I wasn’t the first. Believe it—you won’t be the last.

  I don’t know what he told you or even if you’re still with him, but I just couldn’t stay quiet any longer. Watch out for yourself. He’s not a good man. The sick thing is I still have feelings for him. I hope you make it out in better shape than I did.

  A friend.

  I don’t know quite how to explain what I felt in that moment. They say that actions speak louder than words. That actions articulate feeling far more lucidly than words.

  This is what I did.

  I tore the letter into little bits and tossed them into the trash. It wasn’t something I’d ever forget; no need to keep the evidence.

  I opened the top drawer of my desk. The chunky lucite ring Doug had given me back in the summer—a belated birthday present, he’d said—was there, amidst the mess of paper clips, rubber bands, a single dried-out red rose, and emergency packs of knee-highs and trouser socks.

  I took the ring from the drawer and wiped it against my coat. It was a pretty thing and somehow it, more than the anonymous letter, made my heart ache. I knew I could never bear to wear it again, probably because it had given me so much pleasure. But a voice inside me I didn’t immediately recognize said, Let someone else enjoy its prettiness, Erin. Make it a gift and by doing so you’ll find pleasure again.

  Well, I wasn’t so sure but, still wearing my coat, I walked down the hall to Edmund’s office. He was just coming in, cheeks red with cold, a slightly leaky brown paper bag in his gloved hand.

  “Careful,” I said. “Coffee’s leaking.”

  Edmund grunted. “Story of my morning.”

  “Edmund, you have a daughter, right? She’s—six?”

  “Just seven, actually. Why?”

  I hesitated, then held out the ring.

  “Well, someone gave me this and it’s really, you know, not right for me. It’s really more for a little girl. I wonder . . . I thought that ...”

  Edmund smiled and reached for the ring. “Hey, thanks, Erin. Becky will love this. She’s wild for anything pink.”

  I smiled and felt—okay.

  “No problem,” I said and went back to my office.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Christmas shopping lacked its usual thrill for me. Still it had to be done so on a Sunday in mid-month I headed through the Gardens then the Common for Filene’s Basement. If you’re a good girl, I told myself, and buy presents for all your little friends, you can treat yourself to a stroll through DSW.

  Just past the Frog Pond there’s a playground. And around the slide were gathered a family. A family who looked oddly familiar.

  I came to a stop. It couldn’t be. I peered more closely, hoping I wasn’t looking like a child molester scoping out her next victim.

  It was a bit hard to tell for sure. For one thing, the mom was hatless. The woman I’d seen on the ice had been wearing a fuzzy, brightly colored hat. They all had, and they all were now, except for Mom.

  Boston’s a small city, I told myself. It’s entirely possible this family is the same one I saw back in January. At the Frog Pond. The night I met Doug.

  Then the mom laughed and I knew. Almost a year later I recognized the joy in a stranger’s voice.

  Still, the symmetry of the thing was hard to believe. A sign? A message? A confirmation from—above? Or simply an accident. A coincidence.

  Whatever. I chose to give meaning to this family’s reappearing in my life. It was a not-so-gentle reminder of the promises I’d made to myself almost a year earlier. It was a tough reminder of how I’d failed myself.

  I walked on and left the family to get back to their own lives, unwatched by a lonely single woman.

  I passed out of the Common and stood waiting for the light on Tremont.

  I’d been battered and buffeted. I hadn’t asked for the pain but I’d grabbed for the experience, so there was no one to blame but myself. I was almost a year older and if not deeper in financial debt, then certainly more aware of my emotional deficits.

  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, Romance told me with a trembling, brave little voice. And a little more saggy, wrinkled, and battle-scarred, Reason added. Unnecessarily.

  A facial was what I needed. And change.

  Life was going to have to change all around. My life was going to have to change.

  JoAnne had been on me for months to take a yoga class. She swore—as did the experts—that yoga helped reduce the powerful effects of stress on the body. Considering I could hardly turn my neck from left to right most mornings—worse after sleepless nights—I decided finally to sign up for an introductory class at The Yoga Studio on Joy Street in Beacon Hill. It was as close as I was ever going to get to working out, that much I knew for sure.

  My life was going to change, but within the boundaries of me. The point was to explore and expand those boundaries to their real, not assumed, limits. JoAnne was exploring her boundaries. Ditto, Maggie. Even Abby had talked about making some healthy changes.

  For the first time, the word “health” and all it implied sounded mighty appealing to me. There’d be no nuts and berries diet, but there would be calm and productivity and love. Definitely love.

  When I got home late that afternoon I busied myself with some straightening up. Among the pile of papers on my kitchen table I found a business card I’d almost forgotten I had.

  CANDACE RECKLET, LIFE EXPRESSIONS CONSULTANT.

  Suddenly, I remembered my embarrassment at Candace’s suggesting I show the group at Abby’s house pictures of Fuzzer. Almost everyone in that room had been married; many had also been mothers.

  And suddenly, I was mad at myself for having been ashamed of being without husband or child. And I remembered now the part of Candace’s message I hadn’t taken to heart that night. That every life has value. That every life should be celebrated in words and pictures, as well as in song and action. Candace hadn’t said it in so many words but her message had been clear: Living single did not make me unworthy o
f praise.

  I thought of all I’d accomplished. I thought of the wise career choice I’d recently made. I thought of the dear, dear friendships I’d built over time. I thought of Fuzzer, whom I adored. And I thought of my maturing relationships with each of my parents. John and Marie. No longer just Mom and Dad.

  I had a lot to celebrate and even more to be proud of.

  I looked again at the card and made the call. Candace’s answering machine picked up.

  “Hi, Candace? This is Erin Weston. I was at a class at Abby Walker’s house a few months ago? I was wondering if I could host a class here sometime. In my home. Maybe before Christmas?”

  About a week before the wedding, I went over to Maggie’s place to help her box up the last of her belongings. She’d finally found a renter and was completing the move into Jan’s house the following morning.

  Naturally, as we worked we talked, interrupted only by the scream of clear plastic packing tape coming off the roll.

  “Have you told any of your brothers and sisters about Jan?” I asked.

  Maggie laughed. “Are you on drugs? Of course not. I don’t need the grief.”

  “Okay, that’s what I thought. But are you going to let them know your new address?”

  Maggie considered. “No,” she said, “at least, not right yet. I’m not selling my place for a while so I can still have mail sent there if I want. I’ll work it out somehow. I just don’t want to be—tracked down at this point in my life. I’m too happy for family.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “I so know what you mean. Hey, I never told anyone this but ... When I turned twenty-one and was still unmarried, my grandfather called a family conference. He wanted to discuss the very disturbing likelihood that I would wind up an Old Maid. He wanted the family to talk about how my future would be provided for.”

  Maggie grimaced. “At least he cared. Sort of.”

  “It was downright surreal. I mean, I’d just graduated from college suma cum laude and my death knell was being tolled because I hadn’t yet managed to drag a man down the aisle.”

  “Did you tell him you were quite capable of taking care of yourself?”

  I taped up another box before answering. “No. I took the high road. I laughed off the incident as quaint and harmless, but it got to me. On some level, it really got to me.”

  “Poor kid.”

  “The point is, you know, it’s so hard to shake off those prejudices of your youth. It’s so hard to completely reject those ‘truths’ you were taught for years.”

  “Don’t I know it. So, how do you feel now?”

  I stopped working and looked at Maggie. Her eyes were kind.

  “I feel—I feel that even though I’m most definitely not ashamed of being single—on some level I am. Especially since I turned thirty.”

  “That’s horrible, Erin. I wish you wouldn’t feel that way.”

  “I know,” I said, fighting back sudden tears. “Me, too.”

  Later in the day we took a break for sodas and a pizza from Trentino’s. Maggie flipped on the TV she was leaving for the tenant’s use. It was tuned to CNN. As we munched we watched a report on the latest developments in cloning.

  “I just can’t get my head around the whole idea,” I said finally. “I’m embarrassed to admit that. I mean, I’m not anti-intellectual. I don’t believe in circumscribing human endeavor. I don’t even think it’s really possible without disastrous results. Still, reproducing a human being, making a copy ... ”

  “I know,” Maggie agreed. “There’s something so Frankensteinian about it.”

  “Yeah and look what happened to him,” I said. “Dr. Frankenstein died ‘blasted’ in his hopes and his poor monster ended his days referring to himself as ‘miserable’ and ‘abandoned’ and an ‘abortion.’ ”

  “I always did have a soft spot for the monster. The original, the character in the book, not the dopey movie monster.”

  “The whole cloning thing... . It just doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know, Maggie. Maybe I’m just paralyzed by fear of the possible negative consequences. Maybe I’m just too morally provincial to handle such a challenging circumstance. Maybe the vestiges of my Catholicism won’t let me support the idea of cloning. I don’t know. Stem-cell research—okay. But once you start learning, how can you possibly stop? Why would you want to?”

  “You could stop because you’re afraid of what you’ll find, of what horrors you’ll unleash. But scientists aren’t by nature afraid of the unknown, right? Even the ones concerned with the ethics of their work.”

  “I guess. So, maybe we have no choice. As a species we’re going to go forward into ever more strange places and eventually we might not be able to back our way out. Maybe we’re just inherently suicidal.”

  Maggie considered.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe we’re just hubristic slobs. Either way, we’re going to kill ourselves.”

  I nodded. Yeah. Maggie was probably right.

  “You know, Maggie,” I said, snagging the last slice of pizza. “You’re the only one in my life I can talk to about stuff like—important stuff, issues and all. I don’t know why that is, but it is.”

  Maggie smiled. “Glad to be of service. Can I have half of that slice?”

  And it occurred to me full blast that after Maggie and Jan finally moved in together one hundred percent and especially after they got married, I might hardly ever—never?—have the chance to hang out with Maggie and just talk. About important stuff. About our childhoods. About how I still somehow missed Doug, at least our early days together. About anything.

  “Come on,” Maggie said, getting up from the floor where we’d picnicked. “We still have lots to do.”

  In a way, that day of packing was a farewell, if not to a friendship then to a stage of a friendship. Maggie was moving on. I was releasing her to do so with my blessing. And with sadness. I wasn’t afraid for Maggie. But I was afraid for me.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Almost two weeks Doug-free. It was hard but not as hard as I’d once thought it would be.

  I wasn’t the only one moving on with my life, no matter how slowly. Abby had decided to go into therapy. She wanted to examine why she, too, was still single when she wanted so badly to be married. She also wanted to know why she wanted so badly to be married in the first place. At least, why she said she did.

  JoAnne, on the other hand, had quit therapy, stating it wasn’t really her style. But I saw a change in her, a change for the better. It was subtle—JoAnne was never going to be all warm and cuddly—but it was there all the same. She’d begun to have feelings for a doctor, an oncologist she’d known for years and with whom she occasionally consulted on particularly difficult cases. His name was Merv Frankl and he was fifty years old. He’d been married once before and had a daughter in college. Most interestingly, he was a grandfather; his son had married young. On the surface, JoAnne said, he wasn’t the sort of guy she would ever have expected to fall for. He was even slightly overweight and hated Cancun. But things between them were moving along nicely and JoAnne was pleased.

  I was pleased for her. I was pleased for us all.

  Maggie Branley and Jan Ward tied the knot on December 18th at a little nondenominational church in Kendall Square. It was a simple ceremony. Maggie wore a red blazer; Jan, a red blouse. Each wore a sprig of holly, all in honor of the season. Afterward, the guests went to lunch at a family-style Italian restaurant, where more friends joined the party. Plans for that night included another gathering at Jillian’s to play pool and eat nachos. I declined that invitation out of sheer weariness. Weddings take it out of me.

  “Well, that was depressing,” JoAnne said once we were back on the T after lunch.

  “And lovely.” Abby was still dabbing at her eyes.

  I thought for a moment. “And encouraging. At least one of us has found true love.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily increase our chances, Erin.”

  “I know, JoAnne. J
eez, I’m just trying to be optimistic.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Let’s get off at Park Street and go to the Federalist and have a celebratory drink. We’ll toast Maggie and Jan ...”

  “And maybe I’ll meet my soul mate!” Abby said brightly.

  I laughed. It felt good and genuine.

  “Oh, Abby,” I said. “For our sake, I hope so.”

  I was awake far into the night.

  I was wiped out. It was a stupid, self-defeating thing I’d done, especially right after a wedding ceremony, looking at photos Doug had given me of his life before his marriage. All the photos he’d been able to sneak out of his house without Carol noticing them gone. The photos he’d kept in shoeboxes marked “personal storage”—shoeboxes I’d heard about but would never see.

  “Why do you want to see this old crap?” Doug had asked when he handed over the photos.

  “It’s not crap to me,” I’d answered.

  “You’re sentimental.”

  Doug, it seemed, wasn’t. He’d never asked me to return the photos.

  I’d asked him once why he’d never put his childhood and young adult photos in an album. He had no answer. I’d wanted to ask if Carol had ever expressed a desire to see photos of her husband as a boy. I didn’t have the nerve.

  Now, my decision had been made. I’d send all the photos back, have them delivered to Doug’s office, marked “personal and private,” of course, because no matter how badly I’d been hurt, no matter how devastated I felt, getting Doug into trouble was not going to make me feel any better. I’ve said it before—I’m no saint but I’m not an evil soul-sucker. And, the sorry truth was that I still loved the man. Hated him, too, but still loved him. The love part, maybe, was habit. Someday, hopefully, both feelings would pass into oblivion. For the time being, as odd as it seems, I still cared about what Doug thought of me and didn’t want him to know me as a vindictive bitch.