What a Kiss Can Do

by Kathy Johncox

  “I have an interview. Be back around five o’clock.”

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Boss blocked my way to the door. “What happened? You’re not getting out of here until you tell us.”

  She and Bill were lined up like a small phalanx, blocking my way to the door. Their eyes were full of concern, not curiosity, and I knew at that moment, we all cared about each other.

  I wondered how to put it. I chose “Fergie’s going his own way” because that’s really what he was doing.

  “What about you and Rudy?” Bill said.

  Boss was hovering over his shoulder. “The swine,” she said.

  “We’ve been fine and we’ll be fine,” I said firmly. “I didn’t count on anything from him, so I wasn’t disappointed. It’s his claim to her in the future I worry about, but I’ll have to take one step at a time, I guess.”

  “You go, girl,” said Bill, so out of character that Boss and I both burst out laughing.

  Great tension breaker, laughter, and I listened to them bad-mouth the “evil” Fergie for a few minutes; and the more they talked the less evil he seemed. How were his choices so much different than mine? It occurred to me that maybe it was just that he had a dream he was chasing, and I was living a reality show.

  Then, as I got ready to leave, Boss put her hand on my shoulder.

  “I feel responsible. You know, hiring Fergie as a freelancer, throwing you two together on all these assignments. Something was bound to happen and I wanted it to. And because of me, now look.”

  “And now look what? We are all grown-ups traveling on the journey of life. The stops are different for different people. My journey is just now getting interesting.” God, I was sounding like my sister.

  “Really, I have to go. Interview with Hinkley, the school superintendent, about the smoking issue.” I hurried out the door.

  I met with Mr. Hinckley and he was defensive about kids smoking outside of the school building. I could tell because he kept me waiting and didn’t make eye contact which was an effort not to do, as we sat directly across from each other in his office. He had done everything he could. Parents needed to be responsible. Stores needed not to sell cigs to kids, yadda, yadda, yadda. I couldn’t find a single new angle in that, so instead of going back to write the article, I thought I’d let it simmer for a while.

  I called Derek and got voicemail, so I left a message saying I’d heard that he called. Then I went to the library to look up girls’ names. Funny though, I couldn’t find any that I liked more than Rudy, so I gave that up, went online and found myself at Google typing in the word “dwarf.”

  There was quite a bit of information, from incidence of dwarfism to physical attributes, to medical conditions, to social problems, to sexuality. I printed out the most interesting articles and stuffed them in my backpack. Then I typed in the word “father.” I visited some sites and skimmed information quickly, printed out a number of interesting articles and stuffed them in my backpack as well.

  I climbed in my car and called Derek again.

  I felt a sinking feeling like maybe he was screening my calls when I got his answering machine yet again, but he picked up when he heard my voice.

  “It’s you.”

  “It’s you,” I said back.

  “Now that we’ve established that.”

  “Coffee at Gracie’s?”

  “Fine.”

  “Actually, pick me up at home, would you?” I asked.

  “When?”

  “In about an hour. Can you?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I didn’t like the tone of my friend Derek’s voice. It was the voice of the person I knew before we were friends, before the dinners and phone calls, and discussions and UFOs and Rudy. And before the kiss. It was the voice of the affluent, British, hold-you-at-arm’s-length attorney.

  So there I was waiting on my condo stoop in the late afternoon sun. Rudy was calm after all the agita Fergie caused me. And even with everything that had happened, I felt happy.

  I climbed into the Rover and smiled at Derek, who kept his eyes on the road. I felt magnanimous, willing to accept blame. I just wanted us to be the way we were. Not being sure what that was, I was ready to wait. I felt he would tell me where he was coming from. And I would tell him. That’s what was good about us. Us.

  I kept smiling. He kept driving. Finally I couldn’t stand the silence one more minute.

  “How’ve you been?” I finally asked, still smiling.

  “Unbelievably bad,” he said.

  “Because of me?”

  “In part.”

  “You’re not going to make this easy.”

  “And why should I?” he asked, eyes glued to the road.

  “Because we’re friends.”

  “Ah. There’s the rub.”

  “And that means?”

  “Well, flat out, it means that I don’t like it when you tell me to get out of your life, that I’m not important and that I don’t have any say over how you take care of yourself. That includes Rudy.”

  “Of course you’re referring to the incident of last weekend? Where I was very upset and in a moment of anger and frustration, told you to bug off?”

  “Precisely.” He looked at me now for the first time, and it was close to a glare.

  I hated apologizing for things. Especially when I didn’t think I should have to, so this was new ground for me.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Derek pulled up in front of the coffee shop, pulled the emergency brake with authority and turned to face me.

  “That’s just it. You never mean anything by it. It’s hard to know what you do mean. That’s why in the past week, I’ve been considering where I wanted this relationship to go.”

  “Well, I think I have something to say about that as well.”

  “Okay, then say it.”

  “Well, if you had asked me if I could ever see myself being with the kind of person who would not want to be with his daughter, and who wouldn’t care about the mother of his child, I would’ve said you were nuts. And here I am. Can you understand how that can make a person doubt herself? Then I realized I had to go it alone. Made up my mind it was Rudy and me. Then when I think of going it alone, I think about my mother. And I think about how my sister and I are excellent women, and what it took to get here.”

  Derek nodded a lot and didn’t say much.

  When I stopped talking for a minute, he motioned for us to get out of the car and got us a table outside the coffee shop. He ordered us coffees. He ordered me the iced decaf without my even asking for it.

  Was it the late afternoon sun? Was it the iced decaf? Was it the way Derek, even though he was angry, made me feel cared for? Who knows? But I felt ready to take a risk. I took a chance.

  “I’m sure of something now, after all this,” I said.

  “All right. But hold that thought. Let me say a few things before you make what I assume will be a confession. Initially, at that party, that first party, I thought you were foolish for leaving with him. But I could understand it. Tall, I repeat tall, good-looking chaps like him, they always get the girl. Chaps like me have learned not to try.

  “And that kiss under that mistletoe. Damned if something magic didn’t come over your face. Some soul-felt surprise, whatever that looks like. And I knew I was in trouble. So I slipped you my business card hoping that would bring you back to reality. To me. To a chance with me. I thought you were smarter. But no. Then you continued to be with him. So the best I could do was friendship. Dinners, which I entirely enjoyed and looked forward to. Adventures together. Then finding out you were pregnant. Watching Rudy grow. And watching you.

  “And then the other night, after the emergency room. That kiss on your couch, another goddamned kiss, and this time with me, and something else magic happened. And what the bloody hell is it with you and kisses anyway?”

  I burst out laughing. He glared at me. Then my phone started playing “Yankee Doodle.”<
br />
  I held up a finger for him to wait, mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry” and called Boss back on my cell phone.

  “It’s the cornfield people,” I cupped my hand over the phone. “They want me to come out. What do you say? The adventure continues.”

  Derek sighed, grimaced, and got paper cups for our coffees. We walked silently toward the Rover. Well, I did. Derek was muttering something about women, phones, serious conversation. It made me laugh softly, and briefly.

  He drove fast. He asked me what I knew and I said not much, Boss just said the people were asking for me.

  “Now, no funny stuff this time. No eating anything. No touching anything. Nothing, you understand? If there’s ingesting of substances to be done, it’s me, got it?”

  “Derek,” I began.

  “No, not now. Let’s do this thing and maybe I can cool down enough to listen to you explain why you persist in finding my observations on us amusing. And maybe I can forgive you for that and a lot of other things.”

  “Forgive me? That’s rich. You’re the one who doesn’t call, gets in a snit, sulks obsessively, and I might add, compulsively. And you’re going to forgive me? Remember me? The one with the hormones?”

  “No crutches. You either care for a person, or you don’t. If you do, you are honest with them and take whatever comes from being that way.”

  “All right then. Slow down. We’re almost there and I have more to say. Yes, I thought you were a snooty, uppity little person, is that what I’m supposed to call you? With a big chip on your shoulder. But you were intriguing nonetheless. But Fergie was available and not high maintenance, at least at the time. And God help me, I’d had enough high maintenance men, married or single. Fergie, good-old-take-care-of-it Fergie, was looking mighty good. But then I was seeing you, as a friend. And I started thinking about you in a different way, in a romantic way. But Derek, honestly, for a long time I couldn’t see it happening for us. Then, for whatever reasons, I decided to take a chance, hence the kiss. And it was a show stopper.”

  “And, oh, let me see, because we were both so turned on by the touching of our lips, so that’s why you chose to tell me to get out of your and Rudy’s life? Makes perfect female illogic.”

  “So as I started to say before when you told me to hold my thought is what I am sure of, after all this….oh, we’re here. I’ll elaborate later.”

  “That wasn’t fair,” Suzanne, the mother said, meeting me at the door, and ignoring Derek totally.

  “We don’t deserve this.” She slapped at a piece of newspaper and clutched it to her.

  “You’ll have to help me....” I began, but Derek pulled me back.

  “It’s that tabloid,” he said, under his breath. “I was going to call you but we weren’t speaking...”

  I flashed him a combination of gratitude and anger.

  “I’m so sorry,” I started. “It’s the wire service. They asked me to write a piece, which I did and then they cruised away and rewrote it the way they wanted.”

  “We trusted you,” she said.

  “I was reporting the story. You had me trust the story, which I did. I did a piece for a larger paper, but....” I skimmed the text. “I knew it. This isn’t it. This isn’t what I wrote. This has some of my words and my name, but it’s not what I wrote.”

  “Oh, really? If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. So fix it! We can’t look like lunatics. My husband will lose his business.”

  “We’re not nuts, you know,” her husband said angrily. “You know we aren’t. If only you had felt what we felt, you wouldn’t have done this.”

  “Bernie, tell her we’re getting calls from whackos, absolute whackos. They’ll probably turn up here,” Suzanne said.

  Derek and I looked at each other.

  “I need more information,” Derek said to the couple. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure what you are talking about.”

  “Who are you?” Bernie said. “And what do you have to do with this?”

  “He’s an attorney and a good friend of mine,” I said quickly. “I came out one night to see for myself and I brought him along.”

  “When was that? You didn’t stop in to tell us you were trespassing? Your newspaper will pay for this, I swear it will,” said Bernie.

  “I’ll look into what happened. How this story got out,” I said, very professionally, I thought.

  “A lot of good that’s going to do,” he said.

  “Look here,” said Derek. “I am an attorney and I will work with Rita to figure out what’s happened here. We’ll call you tomorrow with what we’ve found.”

  I was about to say I don’t need a lawyer, but Derek nudged me in the back.

  “That won’t do any good. The whackos are on their way, I feel it,” Suzanne said. She was crying.

  I thought I might cry with her but Derek was poking me in the back, steering me toward the car.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow.” His voice was firm and no-nonsense.

  Chapter Twenty

  Close Encounter

  “What the bloody hell was that?” Derek said, as he backed down the long driveway.

  I was crying now because I saw it all going away. I would have to tell Boss about this. Then she would call the lawyers, which she had had to do only once before over some political drivel my predecessor had fabricated. She had not spoken of that incident with joy. I’d have to confess that Bill and I made an independent decision to sell the story. She’d fire me. I’d be unemployed and a single parent and if that wasn’t my worst nightmare, I don’t know what was. My mind was reaching for everything chaotic I could think of when I heard Derek talking.

  “Well, we’ve got some work to do.”

  “This isn’t your problem,” I said, wiping my eyes and feeling, if not looking, vulnerable.

  He slammed on the brakes and pulled over by the cornstalks.

  “Goddamnit,” Derek said emphatically. “Can you ever just let me help you? Can you ever just let me in there, in that Rita cocoon you safeguard so earnestly?”

  “Let me spell it out,” he continued with a voice full of anger, barely controlled. “You need me. There, is that so hard to say?” His voice sounded harsh but his eyes were soft and hopeful.

  “Putting words in my mouth?” I sniffled.

  “Someone has to. If someone cares for you, make that me, your problems are my problems. You don’t get to say it’s not my problem.”

  I cleared my throat and wiped my eyes.

  “All right,” I said. “Say I do need you and I care for you. Then what do we do?”

  “What people who care for each other do. They begin work on a relationship, work out the kinks. They eat together, sleep together, argue, make up, kiss, hug, have sex, go shopping, you know how it goes.”

  I was truly touched by his examples and I did know. It was something I had thought about many times, and wondered what it would feel like to have that kind of relationship. First I felt warm and excited that this time, I was not the one bringing this up. Then the commitment phobia set in and I said, “But, I mean, say it were true that I do need you to help with the extraterrestrials.”

  I didn’t really mean that and from the look on his face, he knew it. At that moment I realized, and appreciated, how perceptive he was, how he knew me perhaps better than anyone ever had.

  “I’m going to let you weasel out of this discussion for now, because I know you,” he said. “You need to handle this before you can do or think about anything else. But we’re getting back to this. I promise you.” He sounded stern, but his eyes were sending a different message.

  “Well, then. What do we do about the extraterrestrials, if there are any?” Derek continued. “Here’s what we do. You are telling Boss because you have to. I am coming back out here tonight at dusk, with permission of the family, of course, because I want to. I just have a feeling. I got it when I was standing there. Didn’t you feel it? I poked you.”

  “I thought that was
to get me to leave.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “All right. I’ll call Boss, but I’m coming with you tonight,” I said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You won’t eat any strange candy?” Derek turned his head to glare at me again.

  “Promise. Don’t know if my doctor could take another round of what I just dished out.”

  “I’m not sure I could, either.” Derek seemed calmer now.

  I decided to tell Boss in the morning, since right now we needed to go home to get pants and bug spray before we ventured into the cornfield on Derek’s hunch. I had Derek call the couple on his cell phone and ask permission for one more visit, which they were reluctant to give. When he told them he “had a feeling,” they calmed down a bit, but asked to speak to me. He handed me the phone and I had to practically swear on my firstborn, who was kicking ferociously, that I wouldn’t do anything with whatever we saw or experienced that night.

  We stopped by my place and I struggled into my old jeans, which I now had to pin together with safety pins stretched across my belly. Derek stopped by his place and I waited with the car running. He opted for jeans as well, and we both had chosen dark long-sleeve shirts, against the mosquitoes, against anyone who might be looking out over the cornfield, maybe even against aliens.

  We gobbled chicken pesto artichoke focaccia sandwiches at Gracie’s, I went to the ladies’ room twice, and we left for the adventure. I had heartburn from eating too much too fast, and Derek was talking nonstop about UFOs, aliens, are they good or bad, and pretty much about everything but us. I wanted to talk about nothing but, however, I couldn’t get a word in.

  He’d been reading about extraterrestrials and other worlds and all that, and he was becoming more convinced, albeit reluctantly he said, that they were reaching out to us.

  That, plus thinking about my sister and her palm reading and psychic run-ins, was making me jittery, so I let my mind wander to areas more mundane and started thinking about mistletoe again. I wondered if I would find any in the field, on a tree, did it grow here?

  We parked and sprayed each other with the bug spray, grabbed a blanket from the trunk and then tramped out into the field with flashlights turned off. An occasional grunt or curse from Derek reminded me of that night on Caroline’s front porch. And I thought about all that had happened since. Terrific. I was a focused reporter who now apparently couldn’t keep her mind on any one thing for any longer than few seconds.