Miss Match

by Leslie Carroll

  Yet, here he was, sabotaging her chances of happiness. Personal jealousy and professional obligation warred side by side in his brain. He’d have to do better by her, because Kathryn deserved everything she’d ever desired, and then some. Besides, she was paying for it. Literally. Including an additional bachelor to compensate for Kitty’s disastrous date with Eddie Benson, Walker had two more tries in which to succeed in finding her a husband. And he would. Then he could add Kathryn Lamb to the list of successful matches achieved by Six in the City.

  Oh, goody.

  The notion sickened him. He reached down to stroke her unruly auburn curls again. This time, she didn’t stop his caress, but she didn’t appear to welcome it either. He gently kissed her cheek and left the room.

  Kathryn didn’t know how long she’d been lying on the cold bathroom floor, with the small throw rug under her belly. Had she drifted off to sleep for a moment, following her argument with Walker? She’d had only the one glass of cabernet, but the room was now spinning and suddenly she was cold. She shivered and tried to put her jumbled thoughts in order.

  Maybe I’ve been trying too hard. Maybe I’m not giving things enough time. Maybe I’m trying to force square pegs into round holes. She wasn’t even exactly sure what she meant, but her myriad thoughts were converging. The hunk was right, damn his myopic eyes. She did love Walker Hart, although his behavior this evening was reprehensible, unconscionable, and insensitive. She had allowed him in her bed, to the extent that she hadn’t kicked him out that night she’d banished him to her boudoir. Her body, if not her mind, welcomed his physical advances. Yes, she wanted to make love with him—desperately— and she had told herself—and him—that she would not do so, for fear he would then break her heart.

  Too late. It had happened already, and she’d been given no warning. If she’d known the consequences would end up the same after all, she wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to sleeping with the man! At least she would have gotten to do the fun part, so she’d have some good sex and great memories to go along with the suffering and the pain.

  Kathryn had always ridiculed women who had the single-minded determination to get married, leaving perfectly wonderful prospects in the dust, just because those men weren’t ready or prepared to make the same commitment. Yet, here she was, doing the same thing for which she’d mocked others. Would it really be so bad to give Walker a chance—in a dating situation, and see if they really had something there—a relationship?

  I can’t believe I’m considering this, after his assholic behavior this evening. With a great effort, Kathryn lifted her head from the floor, her cheek missing the coolness of the tile when she removed it from the hard surface.

  “Okay. I’ll do it,” she groaned. “Forget this marriage thing for a while, Bear. I’m willing to try it your way. You’re right. I fell in love with you. So, let’s go on a date. Just you and me. Start over again from the top. Take two.” Her voice became soft, and she mumbled the words as though resigning herself to her fate.

  But Walker had already gone out the door. And all she heard in response to her proposal, was the faint melodic tinkle of her grandmother’s wind chimes.

  Chapter 19

  Walker was fishing in his pocket for his keys when he noticed that something was wrong with the door to the penthouse. It was ajar. He was sure he’d locked it, or at least closed it after he’d last been up there, working out his aggressions—and his frustrated passions—on the baby grand.

  “Carlos, is that you?” a voice called from inside. “Oh, good. Someone to help me with my luggage!” The all-too-familiar cadences and the omnipresent smoker’s cough made him cringe. He pushed open the door to the accompaniment of a jangling cowbell.

  “You like that? I got it in the duty-free. They make them right in Dafydd’s hometown. It’s the sweetest little village—looks like something right out of Dylan Thomas—with a completely unpronounceable name. I kept telling Dafydd they should ‘buy a vowel,’ but he didn’t know what I was talking about. I guess they don’t have Wheel of Fortune over in Wales.” Rushie, wearing little else but control top panty hose, mules, a pink wonderbra, and a pearl choker and earrings, prattled on without missing a beat or pausing to acknowledge the presence of her son.

  “Speaking of which,” Walker said edgily. “Where is Daffy Daddy Duck?”

  “Dafydd Glendower,” corrected the former Mrs. G. “I imagine he went back to the salt mines. Or the coal mines. Ya know—and this is an important lesson in our business—you should never base an entire relationship upon a common medical condition.” She took another puff of her pastel-wrapped cigarillo and hacked a little.

  “Such as what?” Walker found himself asking, despite his better judgment.

  “What else? A cough! But let me tell you, that adorable accent aside, a chain smoker and a coal miner do not eternal happiness ensure.”

  “So . . . let me guess, Rushie. You’re divorced now? How many is it? Eight?”

  “At my age, who’s counting?” Rushie tossed her son a plushy brown teddy bear dressed in a hand-knitted sweater decorated with the Welsh red lion. “Long story short, things didn’t go so well, but the archbishop of Canterbury is a very nice man. We traded baking tips. That’s for you, by the way,” she added, indicating the toy bear. “In case you’re lonely at night. A mother knows these things.”

  “Whaat?”

  “She intuits.”

  “I meant what is this about you and the archbishop of Canterbury playing Martha Stewart?”

  “He annulled my marriage, sweetheart. It was all very civil. Or very religious, I suppose. Dafydd and I signed a few papers, His Grace waved that pretty Little Bo-Peep thing and then I told him why his babka isn’t coming out of the pan as easily as it should.”

  “The archbishop of Canterbury eats babka?” Walker couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

  “No, of course not. He has to watch his cholesterol and his sugar intake. He serves it to his guests.”

  Walker needed something alcoholic, big-time. He headed for the refrigerator, climbing over his mother’s suitcase. It looked like a bedouin trader’s caravan had exploded.

  “Yes, there’s food in there. You’re shocked?” Rushie asked. “That’s what they’re for. Even a bachelor should keep more than Dom Perignon in the fridge. You never know when someone might want a little nosh, a snack. You had nothing to eat in there. So I picked up a few things. Did you know they have the cutest shop now, over on Bleecker Street? Right next door to the place that sells all those crystal balls and massage oils. It’s called Faux Paws. It’s darling. They have those fake fur coats that look like a teddy bear died to make them, and just about any garment imaginable in fake snake or leopard spots. It’s nice to know that the leopard look is still so timeless,” she rattled on, “because I still have my Diane von Furstenberg animal print wrap-dress from the 1980’s. Now they call it ‘vintage.’ Vintage-shmintage. I call it ‘old.’ By the way, how much did that fancyshmancy decorator charge us for those?” she asked, pointing a freshly manicured hand at the fourteen-inch cheetah print toss pillows. “They have them at Faux Paws for $39.99 apiece on sale, and I could swear you wouldn’t know the difference between these and theirs.”

  His mother’s incessant chatter, entertaining though it was—how did he ever manage to miss that Faux emporium she was talking about—was giving him the beginning of a headache. And how did she have the chance to come home, unpack most of her luggage, and stock a refrigerator in the time it took him to have a dinner date, Walker wondered. Not only that, the kitchen smelled like breakfast. Walker retrieved a can of cold beer and returned to the living room popping the top.

  Rushie emitted a disapproving moan. “Drink light beer. You’ve got the makings of a spare tire there and no woman wants a man who’s high maintenance. You know, after a certain age, it’s much harder to lose the extra weight.”

  “I’ll drink what I like, Mom. And what the hell are you eating?”

 
“A cold matzoh brei sandwich. My favorite. How could you forget?”

  “I’ve worked hard at it. Who else has a mother who eats sandwiches made from the Jewish equivalent of cardboard and scrambled eggs? That bun you put the matzoh brei on looks like a Parker House roll.”

  “It is.” She took another bite of the sandwich. “Speaking of which. It’s a good thing you’ve got a mother with her nose to the ground.” Another bite.

  “Yeah, like a truffle hound,” Walker muttered under his breath.

  “How was your date with the long-legged shiksa attorney?”

  He shuddered. “She’s a barracuda.”

  “The law is a tough profession for a woman,” his mother countered. “A girl has to be twice as sharp to get taken half as seriously.”

  “She’s a Southern barracuda,” Walker added, upping the stakes.

  “So? Every other woman will now look good to you by comparison.”

  “What the hell kind of logic is that?”

  Rushie surveyed her teeth in her compact for signs of a wayward bit of herb. “It’s my trademark ‘matchramonial’ psychology.” She waved her arm around the living room and seemed to notice for the first time that the apartment was in a shambles.

  “This place looks like an ice house. What’s with the roof?”

  “I told you, Ma, it’s been leaking on and off since before you bought the place. Probably since the days of the flood. But you were too busy jetting off to Biarritz or Cardiff or wherever to either notice or care. You always assume that someone else will take care of your messes.”

  “A nice tone for a son to take. I can’t stay here, anyway. I’ve taken a room at the St. Regis. I just love the King Cole Bar there.”

  “So what did you come home for, then? Surely not to eat a cold matzoh brei sandwich for old times’ sake.”

  “You think your mother doesn’t care about you but she does,” Rushie countered. “So, have you met the little redhead yet?” she continued, retrieving an unopened box of Loving Care from her suitcase. “You like this color? It’s called ‘Pumpkin Pie.’ I thought it was very autumnal ,” she added, noticing an unsightly chip on one of her fuchsia lacquered toenails.

  The woman could switch gears like a Formula One.

  “You know the girl I’m talking about,” Rushie said before her son could furnish an answer to either the redhead or the hair dye question. “I sent her to the agency. The redhead. Cute little thing. Lives on the ninth floor.”

  “Kathryn Lamb.” Walker sighed, uncertain where this conversation was going. “Yes, I met her. Not only have I met her, but she’s a client.”

  “Terrific!” Rushie said with the zeal of Dr. Ruth. “She’s such a nice girl. A bubbly personality, a cute little figure, all those curls. You just want to give her a good squeeze. And she always seems so lonely. Whenever I see her in the elevator, she has nothing to say about herself. I find myself doing all the talking.”

  For the briefest of moments, Walker considered sharing everything he knew so far about Kitty Lamb, but thought better of it. Especially given Kathryn’s opinion of Rushie. The more his mother stayed away from his personal life, the better chance it stood of remaining his own.

  He walked out onto the wraparound terrace for some fresh night air. He needed to escape. Escape Rushie and her endless rattling on. Escape her choking clouds of coral-colored smoke. Escape his current itinerant lifestyle. Escape the business he could barely stand, that he was just keeping warm for his mother. Escape his conflicting feelings for Kathryn Lamb. Escape. He was turning into everything he derided. Escape? Who was it who always ran away from any situation that threatened to be in any way difficult or problematic? Oh, God. He was turning into his mother.

  “What the hell time is it?” Kathryn felt like she’d been startled from the sleep of the dead and it took her a few moments to place the source of the reveille. Her doorbell was ringing away, the buzzer gone berserk. Tito hadn’t rung up on the intercom to announce a visitor. So, whoever it was must live in the building. It was all too much information to process after a night out with a character out of Edgar Allan Poe and a fight with Walker over sluts and territory . . . and snapdragons! She headed off to brush her teeth and found the bouquet, still wrapped in paper from the Korean deli, on the bathroom floor where she had left it last night. Kathryn let the doorbell chime away and performed her morning ablutions.

  “Shut up, already!” she yelled at the closed apartment door. She ran her tongue over her freshly Crest-ed upper teeth. “Bear, if your ceiling caved in and you found yourself sleeping under the open sky, and now you want to come crawling back to me, you’re confusing me with someone who cares. So stop giving me a migraine!”

  “Kitty, it’s me,” Eleanor yelled from the hallway.

  Kathryn undid the chain locks and opened the door. Her younger sister’s eyes were swollen and red from crying.

  “Oh, my God. What’s the matter? Are you okay?” Eleanor headed straight for the living room, tossed her purse on the velvet sofa and seated herself in the middle of the couch, her feet squarely planted on the floor. That was a key difference between the two of them, Kathryn silently observed. If she looked like she’d been crying all night, she would have flung herself into a little ball in the corner of the sofa instead.

  “I left Johanna with Mommy and Daddy. And I left Dan. For the moment, anyway.”

  Kathryn looked at her sister incredulously. “You left Dan?”

  “I mean, I just left Dan. Don’t ever get married.”

  A stunned silence was all Kathryn could manage. Clearly, Eleanor needed to vent.

  “Maybe I should have trusted my first instincts. When we first met, Dan and I took things so slowly at first that I thought I was going backwards. When he first asked me out, I wasn’t even sure I thought he was attractive. In fact, I couldn’t imagine kissing him. It’s not that he grossed me out, or anything. It’s just that there weren’t exactly bells and whistles. And during the entire length of our first few dates, I kept wondering whether I was dating him just to prove to Mommy and Daddy that I could marry a doctor.”

  “Well,” Kathryn sighed. “I wouldn’t look to Mommy and Daddy’s marriage as a fine example of wedded bliss.”

  “Kitty, they’ve been together for nearly forty years!”

  “They have nothing to say to each other!”

  “That’s why they’ve been together for forty years.”

  “Be serious,” Kathryn said, wrinkling her nose. “They married only half a year after they met; and for five of those months of courtship, they lived across the continent from each other. And, if you dare to risk revisiting our childhood, El, we grew up in a household without much affection. You used to make a run for the camera every anniversary, when Mommy and Daddy actually kissed each other. They’ve reached some sort of marital stalemate over the decades. And they’ll never get divorced because neither one ever had any practice—or knows how—to live alone. So Mommy reads her crime novels while Daddy disappears into simultaneous NFL games. Hell, they don’t even discuss the nightly news with one another.”

  “I read this in Newsweek,” Eleanor added. “Some psychologist was saying that younger generations are either doomed somehow to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors, or deliberately choose to rebel against their parents’ behavior.”

  Kathryn nodded her head in agreement. “That’s what Bear did. He says he’s never seen a happy marriage, so he decided to never enter the matrimonial state himself, even under a warrant. I’m the opposite, I suppose. I may never have seen what I consider a happy marriage, while we were kids growing up, but I’m totally convinced that they do exist. Until five minutes ago, I thought you and Dan were living proof of that.”

  Eleanor gave Kathryn a leveling glance. “I’m here to admit that it’s not a twenty-four-hour-a-day picnic, especially when you’ve got kids. But I hear tell that it is possible to have frequent and intelligent conversations with one’s husband, and to share common activities
and adventures. Just not with my husband.” She drew a deep breath. “I look at you now, Kitty, and I . . . Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for the past few days and didn’t know whether or how to say anything to you, and then the shit hit the fan at home . . . Look. I see you turning into me and I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re desperate to get married, like I was. And you could make a mistake. Like I did.”

  “Whoa!” Kathryn was flabbergasted. “I understand that you guys are fighting right now, but I thought you two had the perfect marriage. It always seemed to me that you two had it all: career, kids, great home—”

  “I don’t have a career anymore, remember?” Eleanor said, her tone acidic. “I used to have a terrific job, on the fast track to wherever I wanted to go, basically, but I bowed to peer pressure. All the thirty-somethings around me were so frazzled and freaked out that they weren’t married with kids yet, and that they had to hurry up before their uterine walls shriveled up like dried apricots. I fell along in step and the next thing I knew, I was falling—”

  “With a golden parachute,” Kathryn interjected.

  “Yeah, with a golden parachute, but it couldn’t buy me a clue as to what I was doing or why I was really doing it. Dan was proud of the fact that he made enough money so that his wife didn’t have to return to her job. And while I was pregnant with Johanna, I thought to myself that I could work from home, maybe even go back to some of my old marketing ideas and see if I could get them off the ground. I’ve been kicking that notion around for years now and never did anything with it. So, lately, I’ve revisited Brownie Points and have been putting a lot of time into making the project viable. The prototypes are finally working and I took some samples around the neighborhood. And now there’s a specialty store that wants to buy them. One of those gourmet shops that has its own bakery.”