A Girl Like You

by Maureen Lindley

  “Thank you, but I’m with someone.” He points across the room to where a girl, a frowning girl in a shiny dress, is looking toward them.

  “Oh, of course, you must go.”

  “It would be better not to drink anymore, you’re going to need a hefty dose of painkillers for a couple of days.” He fumbles in his pocket for a pen, picks up a napkin, and hands both to her. “I can call on you tomorrow, if you like. Check your ankle.”

  She writes the address down, hands it to him, and feels a pang as he walks back toward the waiting girl. Stupid, she tells herself. A few minutes in his presence and she hardly knows herself. It must be the champagne, it always puts her in a silly mood.

  Joseph returns just as Abe Robinson turns and says, “Ice, lots of it. And keep the leg up.”

  “How high?”

  “Oh, above your heart if you can.”

  Four months on, and Joseph is still blaming himself. If he hadn’t been so high that night at the hospital benefit, Satomi never would have met Abe Robinson, and she wouldn’t be leaving him now. He thinks of it as leaving him, as though he is the lover in this threesome, although she has been dating Abe from the first moment they met.

  “So I’m going to lose out to Mr. America,” he says.

  “Oh, Joseph, you and I, we’re better off as friends,” she says consolingly.

  “Ouch.” He slaps his hand to his chest as though she has cracked open his heart.

  “It’s true, Joseph, you know it is.” She’s sad for him, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

  “Damn that dance,” Joseph says brightly. “That damn dance.”

  He can hardly remember the dance that brought Abe Robinson into her life, except that it had a rumba sort of beat about it. But whatever the stupid rhythm had been, he should have caught her. Would have, if it hadn’t been for the snort he’d taken discreetly behind a pillar in the moment before Satomi found him and pulled him onto the dance floor.

  “All my stupid fault,” he says now. “That’s the trouble with the good stuff, you never know if it will take you mellow or hard.”

  “I’m glad of it, Joseph.”

  She is more than glad, despite the fact that she has wavered over the months, that she still has her doubts about her and Abe. The love between them feels equal and she can’t get used to it. Strange, she thinks, that it should be so hard to trust in love. She had imagined when love came it would drown doubt, but perhaps doubt is the ingredient in the mix between men and women that keeps the love alive. Where there is light there must be shadows too.

  But doubts aside, she feels blessed, blessed to have slipped, to have broken the heel of her beautiful shoe, to have turned her ankle.

  Abe had felt the current between them on that first night too. Such a beautiful patient, flushed cheeks, strands of dark hair escaping from their burnished knot, the grace of her. He took it all in and knew he was setting his sights high.

  Earlier that evening he had watched her from across the floor until something in him had faltered so that he had to look away to steady himself. He had been struck by the odd couple that she and Joseph made. The man appeared obsessively neat, hair tamed, his smooth skin so closely shaved as to make you wonder if he had a beard at all. And the tux so perfectly cut it might have been carved on him. Not the sort, he thought with distaste, to have gone for girls.

  “She’s in all the magazines,” his girlfriend Corrine said sharply, following his gaze. “She’s got it all, the looks and the money.”

  “His money?”

  “I guess. He’s the Rodman heir.”

  “They’re married?”

  “Engaged, perhaps. Not sure.”

  She didn’t project socialite, he thought. Rather she looked lost, out of place. He wanted to know her, to save her, he thought, at the same time as telling himself that was a ridiculous idea. He couldn’t shake the thought, though. Not for the first time he felt false being with Corrine. Something must be done about that. To think that he nearly hadn’t come. That he had dreaded it. Corrine had been stupidly excited at him winning the tickets in the hospital raffle, wouldn’t hear of him giving them away.

  “It’ll be stiff, formal. I hate that kinda thing,” he had said, trying to talk her out of it. “We won’t know anyone.”

  “It’ll be great,” she had insisted. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Her medical jokes had been wearing thin for months, but he gave in, hired the ridiculous suit, and polished his shoes to a patent shine. And now he and Satomi are together and it’s how it should be, or at least it will be when he gets her away from Joseph. It makes him uneasy that she lives with the man, even though he believes her explanation as to why.

  “We’re friends, Abe,” she says. “Nothing more.”

  “But it’s odd, Sati. You have to give me that.”

  “Why not think of us as landlord and tenant, then?”

  “It’s the ‘us’ about it that I don’t like, honey.”

  Satomi hates that Abe doesn’t want to know Joseph, that he avoids him whenever possible. She understands it, though, they are poles apart in everything, and despite the fact that Abe has chosen her, he is in most ways a conventional man.

  At their first meeting Abe’s smile had made her want to run and to draw closer at the same time. Everything about him connected with her at what later she would remember with fondness as being her heart. At the time, though, it had felt more visceral, stomach-dropping, throat-constricting.

  Nothing about him had jarred, still doesn’t. His physicality touches her more than anything, his brown unwary eyes, his dark curly hair, and the scent of him that brings the earth to mind. There is symmetry in his weather-worn face, an open-aired look that sets him apart from the more usual pale-faced New Yorkers.

  She had liked immediately the authoritative pitch of his voice, the way he had loosened his bow tie, which he was obviously ill at ease in, the way without being asked people had cleared a space for him.

  But she questions now if there is such a thing as love at first sight. All that drowning, heart-pounding, mouth-drying thing that night may simply have been lust, the girlish longing for a man as masculine as Abe to carry her off. But it’s love now, all right, the sweet and the bitter of it, the open and the guarded heart, the full-blown flower of it. Being with Abe is like being taken by a river: there’s nothing you can do about it except let the water have you.

  A regular caller now, Abe never comes up in the elevator. He gets the doorman to call the apartment while he waits downstairs in the lofty atrium.

  It has set a pattern, Joseph thinks. Abe summoning, Sati running.

  “He doesn’t like me,” he tells her flatly.

  “He doesn’t know you,” she says. “He will like you when he gets to know you.”

  Abe’s dislike, which Joseph senses is more like distaste, feels familiar to him. He has experienced it before. Abe’s kind of man judges his kind harshly. It’s to be expected. He has no doubt that Abe will ride off into the sunset with Satomi. His kind, the tall, tieless kind, always get the girl. Money, he knows, isn’t going to get him out of this one.

  “He’s too conventional for you,” he attempts. “He’ll always be a doctor, nothing more. You won’t have travel, or new people, adventures.”

  Satomi is living the life now that has always been a mystery to him: walks, and the movies, and meals in diners that he has never heard of. And bike rides in the park. Bikes when there are cabs. It makes no sense. And what’s worse, every weekend in Freeport with Abe Robinson’s mother, Frances, a woman who Satomi says is reserved with her.

  “She has a good heart, though,” she assures him. “It’s just that Freeport’s a pretty tight community, friendly enough but wary of strangers, I guess.”

  “Just as you told me Angelina was.”

  “I never said friendly, did I?”

  He has shown her the best of New York, given her a cultured life, and she is settling for Freeport.

 
; He can’t fake being pleased for her, he is too sorry for himself. But there is time, he thinks, time for them to fall out of love. They have only known each other a few months, after all, less than half a year. Flash fires burn out quickly. In his less optimistic moments, though, he’s resigned to her leaving; the pair are hopelessly attracted, it’s just a question of when, he knows.

  When comes on an evening when a buttery sky, pinkish to the west, leaks its color into the apartment as Joseph is mixing their drinks.

  “Abe has asked me to marry him,” she ventures, accepting the whiskey he is offering.

  “And?”

  “And I’ve said yes, of course.”

  “Are you sure, really certain? It’s all a bit whirlwind, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t feel like that. And we both want it.”

  “Well, marriage, it’s a big step. You might live to regret it.”

  “What else can we do? Abe hates me living here with you. That’s natural, isn’t it? And we want to be together.”

  “Have an affair. Get it out of your system.”

  “I don’t want an affair, and neither does Abe. We’re sure about each other and we’re going to marry. Be happy for me, Joseph.”

  “So when will it be, this marriage?”

  “As soon as we can arrange it. A couple of months or so.”

  “I’m used to you, Sati. I’ll never find anyone like you. You’re abandoning me to those uptown mustangs with their long teeth—it’s cruel, you know. I’ll get eaten.”

  “Joseph, you shouldn’t marry at all.” She is firm. “Your father loved you; if he had known how hard the promise would make your life, he would never have let you make it.”

  “But I did make it, and broken promises breach the dam.”

  “So do lies, Joseph.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that.”

  “I don’t mind, it’s only that you didn’t…”

  “Tell you, I know. I should have been honest. I’ve always been devious when I want my way.”

  “Well, I know now.”

  “I guess you think I’m all out of sync?”

  “I can’t say I understand it. It seems strange to me, I’ve never heard or read a word that describes it.”

  “Oh, there are plenty. ‘Homosexual,’ ‘queer,’ ‘ponce,’ ‘nancy boy,’ take your pick.”

  “I don’t like any of them. It doesn’t matter anyway, we’ll always be friends.”

  “Mmm, if it’s to be allowed.”

  “I’ll allow it. Don’t worry about that.”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  “I’ll still be in New York.”

  “But not my New York. I mean, a doctor, dear girl! You’ll end up spewing out babies, living in Queens or somewhere just as awful. Where do doctors live anyway?”

  “Queens, actually! Jackson Heights, to be precise. And I don’t think that I’ll be spewing babies out, as you so charmingly put it, but I want them. Abe wants them too.”

  “And what about Cora? You’re not going to ditch her too, are you?” It’s a cheap shot, he knows.

  “Oh, Joseph.”

  “Sorry, Sati. It’s the wound speaking.”

  She feels guilty, found out. She has hardly given Cora a thought since meeting Abe. Of course she will never give up on finding Cora, but she has finally found something that holds its own against Manzanar. There is a sweet sort of mathematics in the balance now between good and bad luck.

  “All’s well that ends well, eh?” Joseph says when she tells him as much.

  She packs a small suitcase, skirts and tops, a warm jacket, and the chocolate box wrapped against damage in a nightdress. She takes a last look at the jewelry, the evening gowns, the furs that have always made her think of the fox in Angelina’s woods. She’s sure now that she won’t miss any of the fancy dress that never truly belonged to her.

  “For God’s sake, Sati, it’s your jewelry, what would I do with it?”

  “Sell it, I suppose.”

  “You should sell it. It will give you more than enough to see those babies through college.”

  “Abe doesn’t want me to take anything. He says that he wants to be the one to buy me things.”

  “Very caveman, very masterful, but pretty stupid. Can you really see yourself managing on a doctor’s pay?”

  “I’ve managed on less, much less. In any case, why do you imagine that everyone who doesn’t have a fortune is poor? Abe isn’t poor.”

  “Let me open an account for you. I want you to have your own money.”

  “Look, Joseph, I can’t take your money. Abe won’t stand for it. I can’t go against him. Put me in your will, and then live to be a hundred, please.”

  “Okay, sweet girl, if I must.”

  They kiss awkwardly, and she feels a stab of guilt for leaving him hurt. Joseph has joined those she thinks of as her family, him and Dr. Harper and Eriko, a small band but true, she believes.

  “How will I manage without you, Sati?”

  “Just as you did before you met me.”

  “Oh, yes, that way, I remember now.”

  The room has darkened as they speak. She puts the suitcase down, and from habit begins switching on the table lamps. Joseph draws the curtains against the dismal evening.

  “See what a happy domestic scene we make?” he says.

  Outside the window, gray clouds fold in on themselves, a southerly wind pelts rain at the pedestrians. It’s the kind of rain Joseph hates, the kind that uses up the cabs, and soaks you through as though your clothes were made of blotting paper.

  In the lobby Abe is waiting for her impatiently. Waiting for his girl. He is feeling out of place in the company of the deferential doorman, among the Jackson Pollocks and the huge showy arrangements of silk flowers. He is too outdoorsy to appreciate such man-made displays of wealth. He likes walking, and eating in homely restaurants; he likes the humanity of his patients, his mother’s warm house in Freeport, and the little sailing boat that was his father’s, his now. He loves his dog, Wilson, loves the friends he would go the whole mile for, and now he loves Satomi, the girl who makes him feel as though luck loves him.

  “I have to go, Joseph.” She is eager to be with Abe, to have the goodbyes behind her.

  “Yes, you must.”

  “See you soon, then.” She settles for the prosaic.

  “Yes, on Saturday at your wedding. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “It’s not too late to change your mind. It’s a woman’s prerogative, after all.”

  “Joseph!”

  “Sorry, Sati. Go claim your life.”

  The elevator doors open to Abe’s back as he paces the lobby. She pauses, watching his long stride, feeling the heat rising in her. Little beads of rain are quivering on Abe’s dark coat like tiny balls of mercury. As he turns toward her, she smiles, imagining a hundred little stars shining in his hair too.

  It’s not to be a big-deal wedding. No St. James’ Church, no big fat reception at the Plaza, as it would have been with Joseph. She’s relieved.

  “A New York justice of the peace will do us, honey?” Abe had said. “Simple. Our way.”

  Dr. Harper has sent his best wishes:

  I’m relieved to see that I haven’t put you off marrying a doctor.

  Eriko has splurged on a wire: her words are formal, the usual congratulations. Satomi had hoped for more, but wires are expensive, and formalities on such occasions are the Japanese way, she knows.

  Abe’s mother, Frances, stands at his side in front of the big mahogany table in City Hall. She’s almost as tall as Abe, conscious of it, so that she stoops a little. She is puffy under the same brown eyes as her son’s, hoping that no one thinks that she has been crying. The little bags are annoyingly hereditary, what can she do?

  She would have preferred a church wedding for Abe in Freeport, the minister she knows, the sea as the backdrop. Her son and this girl have only known each other a few mon
ths. Why couldn’t they wait a decent amount of time? He had been going out with Corrine for longer, after all. She doesn’t know yet whether she likes Satomi or not. The girl is challenging and not at all the sort of daughter-in-law she has pictured for her son. She would have liked the known, not Corrine, if the choice was hers, but still a local girl, someone like herself, she supposes, a more familiar kind of girl. She wants to be happy for him, and Abe, by her side, is grinning at her, brimming over with happiness, so what has she got to complain about? She tells herself it’s not so much to do with Satomi, it’s just that she’s suffering the jealousy of a mother losing her son to another woman.

  As Satomi walks the length of the room to stand by Abe’s side, she is a little unsteady on her feet. It’s the aspirins she took earlier, she supposes. She shouldn’t have washed them down with champagne, but the headache had been bad and Joseph had said they would work quicker that way. And they did, accounting now, she suspects, for her dreamlike state.

  “It’s your wedding day,” Joseph said. “You must drink champagne, it’s the law.”

  “Whose law?”

  “Mine, of course.”

  He had booked the suite at the Carlyle for her. Somewhere for her to stay in the few days before the marriage.

  “A time of grace, dear girl. A good place to think things over.”

  “It’s lovely, Joseph, but a whole suite …”

  “My wedding present,” he had insisted. “The bone doctor can’t object to that, can he?”

  Surprisingly, Abe hadn’t.

  “Enjoy it while you can,” he had warned lightheartedly. “Our finances aren’t quite up to the Carlyle.”

  Our finances, us, we—the words fit, not strange at all, she is finally home.

  But bathing in the spacious bathroom with the hotel’s scented soap, she had experienced a wobble. Would this feeling of euphoria burn out somewhere soon along the line? Does true love really exist? Is Joseph right, has it all happened too quickly? It won’t work if, like her father, like Haru, Abe wants to change her. She has looked for signs of that but has found none. All she has seen is his approval.

  Wrapping herself in a huge white towel, she returned to the glamorous bedroom to dress. If only Tamura could have been with her, if she could have known Abe, reassured her.