In spite of his mother's dire warnings about potential alcoholism, and telling him that even migraine headaches could result, he poured himself a drink before he went to bed, and lay there after he did, trying to recover from the strain of the evening on Long Island. He hated going home and seeing them. It was an exquisite form of torture. It always took him days to recover from it. What was the point of having him, if they were going to treat him like an outcast all his life? He lay in bed, thinking of them, as the headache his mother had warned him about began to pound. It took him nearly an hour after that to fall asleep.
An hour later, he was in a deep sleep when the telephone rang. He dreamed that it was monsters from outer space, trying to eat him alive, and making strange buzzing sounds while they did. And all the while, his mother stood laughing at him, waving newspapers in his face. He put the covers over his head, and dreamed that he was running screaming from them, until he realized it was the phone. He put the receiver to his ear, and was still more than half asleep when he answered.
“…llo…”
“Adam?” He didn't recognize the voice, and realized as he woke up that the headache was even worse than it had been when he went to bed.
“Who is this?” He didn't know, and no longer cared, as he rolled over in bed and started to go back to sleep.
“It's Maggie. You left a message on my machine.”
“Maggie who?” He was still too out of it to understand.
“Maggie O'Malley. You called me. Did I wake you up?”
“Yeah. You did.” His mind was a little clearer then, as he glanced at the alarm clock next to his bed. It was just after two. “Why are you calling me at this hour?” As his head cleared, the headache did too. But he knew that if he talked to her, he would have trouble going back to sleep.
“I thought it was important. You called me at midnight. I just got home from work. I thought you'd still be up.”
“I'm not,” he said, lying in bed and thinking about her. His call to her must have sounded like a booty call to her at that hour. But calling him back at two A.M. was hardly any better. In fact, slightly worse. And now it was too late to see her anyway. He was half asleep.
“What were you calling me about?” She sounded curious, and somewhat ill at ease. She had liked meeting him, and was grateful for the seat he'd gotten her. But she was disappointed he hadn't called her afterward. When she mentioned it to them, her friends at the restaurant where she worked didn't think he would. They thought the fact that she hadn't slept with him might make him less interested. Maybe if she had, he might have felt some bond to her. Although the maître d' insisted it was just the reverse.
“I was just wondering if you were busy,” Adam said sleepily.
“At midnight?” She sounded shocked, and as he woke up and turned on the light, he was faintly embarrassed. Most of the women he knew would have hung up on him at that point, except those who were truly desperate. Maggie wasn't, and sounded insulted by his explanation. “What was that, a booty call?” She had called it. Except in his case, it had been an antidote to the venom of his mother. Her particular brand was singularly potent, and he'd been hoping some sympathetic soul would provide the antivenom he needed. And if sexual favors were involved, that wouldn't hurt either. It was just slightly more awkward in Maggie's case, because he really didn't know her.
“No, it wasn't a booty call, I was just lonely. And I had a headache.” Even to his own ears, he sounded pathetic.
“You called me because you had a headache?”
“Yeah, sort of,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I had a shit evening with my parents on Long Island. It's Yom Kippur.” He guessed correctly that with a name like O'Malley, she wouldn't know beans about Yom Kippur. Most of his dates didn't.
“Well, Happy Yom Kippur,” she said a little tartly.
“Not exactly. It's the Day of Atonement,” he informed her.
“How come you didn't call me before this?” She was justifiably suspicious.
“I've been busy.” He was growing sorrier by the minute. The last thing he needed was to deal with this girl he had planned never to call, at two o'clock in the morning. It served him right, he realized, for calling her in the first place. So much for booty calls to strangers at midnight.
“Yeah, I've been busy too,” she said in her distinctly New York accent. “Thanks for the seat anyway, and a nice evening. You weren't going to call me again, were you?” She sounded sad when she said it.
“Apparently I was, since I did call you. Two hours ago in fact,” he said, sounding irritated. He didn't owe her any explanations, and now his headache was coming back with a vengeance. Evenings on Long Island always did that. And Maggie wasn't helping, contrary to what he'd intended.
“No, you weren't going to call me. My girlfriends said you wouldn't.”
“You discussed this with them?” It was embarrassing to think about. Maybe the entire neighborhood had been polled about whether or not he'd call her.
“I just asked what they thought. Would you have called me if I slept with you?” she asked, curious, as Adam groaned, closed his eyes again, and rolled over.
“For God's sake, what do I know? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Depends if we liked each other.”
“To be honest, I'm not sure I like you. I thought I did the night I met you. Now I think you were just playing with me. Maybe you and Charlie thought I was funny.” She sounded insulted. With his limousine and the places he'd taken her to, it was obvious that he had money. Guys like him took advantage of girls like her all the time, and afterward they never called them. That's what her friends had said, and when he didn't call, she decided they were right. She was even happier now that she hadn't slept with him, although she'd thought about it and decided against it. She didn't know him. And she wasn't willing to trade a seat on the stage for her body.
“Charlie thought you were very nice,” Adam lied to her. He had no idea what Charlie had thought. He couldn't remember. Neither of them had ever mentioned her again. She was just someone who had quickly crossed their radar screen one night, and vanished, never to be seen again. She was right. He wasn't going to call her. Until the nightmare on Long Island, and no one else answered. He'd been desperate for human contact. And now he was getting more than he wanted.
“And what about you, Adam? Did you think I was nice too?” She was pushing. He opened his eyes again, and stared at the ceiling, wondering why he was talking to her. It was all his mother's fault. He had had just enough to drink to believe that most things in his life were his mother's fault. The rest were Rachel's.
“Look, why are we doing this? I don't know you. You don't know me. We're strangers. I have a headache, a big one, my stomach hurts. My mother thinks I'm an alcoholic. Maybe I am. I don't think so. But whatever I am, I feel like shit. I was born into the family from hell, and I just spent an evening with them. That's nothing to mess around with. I'm pissed off. I hate my parents, and they don't like me either. I don't know why I called you, but I did. You weren't home. Why don't we just let it go at that? Just pretend you never got the message. Maybe it was a booty call. I don't know why the hell I called you, except that I feel like shit. And I always feel like shit after I see my mother.” He was getting seriously worked up over it, as Maggie listened quietly at her end.
“I'm sorry, Adam. I didn't have such great parents either. My father died when I was three. And my mother was an alcoholic. I haven't seen her since I was seven.”
“So who did you grow up with?” He had no idea why he was pursuing the conversation, but he was curious about her.
“I grew up with an aunt until I was fourteen. Then she died, and I was in foster care till I graduated from high school. Actually, I didn't really graduate. I got my GED at sixteen. I've been on my own ever since.” She said it matter-of-factly, and seemed to have no need for pity.
“Jesus. That sounds like a bunch of bad breaks.” But a lot of the women he knew had histories like that. The kind of women
he went out with had rarely had easy lives, most of them had been molested by male relatives, left home at sixteen, and had gone to work as actresses and models. There were few women he knew who had had normal lives, or were debutantes like the ones who went out with Charlie. Maggie was no different. She just sounded more philosophical about it, and she didn't sound as though she expected him to do anything about it. She didn't expect him to pay for implants for her, in order to make up for the fact that her mother had been a hooker, or she'd been molested by her father. Whatever had happened to her, she sounded as though she'd made her peace with it. If anything, she sounded sympathetic to Adam.
“Do you have any family at all?” He was intrigued.
“Nope. It kind of sucks on holidays, but I see my foster parents once in a while.”
“Believe me,” Adam said cynically, “not having a family is a blessing. You wouldn't have wanted to have one like mine.” Maggie wasn't sure she agreed with him, but she wasn't about to debate it with him at two-thirty in the morning. They had been chatting aimlessly for half an hour. And she still believed his call to her had been a booty call, which she thought was just plain rude and downright insulting. She wondered how many other women he had called, and if he would have bothered to call her at all, if one of the others had come to his aid. Apparently, they hadn't, since he was obviously alone, and had been sleeping soundly when she called him.
“Most of the time, I think I'd like to have a family, even a bad one.” And then she thought of something. She was wide awake, despite the hour, and by now so was he. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“Maggie, could we talk about this some other time? I'll call you tomorrow. I'll give you my entire family history. I promise.” And with that, she heard a crashing sound, he groaned, and shouted a single word: “Shit!” He sounded like he'd gotten hurt.
“What happened?” She sounded worried.
“I just got out of bed and stubbed my toe on the night table, and the alarm clock fell on my foot. Now I'm not only tired and upset, I'm injured.” He sounded like a five-year-old about to burst into tears, and she repressed a giggle.
“You're a mess. Maybe you should go back to sleep.”
“No kidding. I've been suggesting that for the past half hour.”
“Don't be rude,” she chided him. “You know, sometimes you're very rude.”
“Now you sound like my mother. She always says things like that to me. Just how polite is it to send me tabloid clippings of me looking like shit, or when my clients go to jail? How rude is it to call me an alcoholic and tell how much she loves my ex-wife, although she cheated on me and dumped me, and then married someone else?” He was getting worked up again, as he got back in bed, and Maggie listened.
“That's not rude. It's mean. She says stuff like that to you?” Maggie sounded surprised, and sympathetic yet again. Although he was nearly yelling at her, he realized she was a sweet person. He had realized it the night they met. He just didn't have room in his life for someone like her. He wanted sex, glamour, and excitement. She was none of the above, although her figure was fantastic. But since she hadn't been willing to share her body with him, he had no way of knowing just how much fun it was. She had made him some silly speech about not doing things like that on a first date. And if so, with Adam, there would be no second. And now she was talking to him at nearly three A.M., and listening to him complain about his mother. She didn't even seem to mind, although his call to her had clearly been a booty call. She disapproved of that, and told him so, but she still hadn't hung up. “You shouldn't let her say things like that to you, Adam,” she said gently. Her mother had been mean to her too, and then one night, without saying good-bye, she was gone.
“Why do you think I have a headache?” Adam said, almost shouting again. “Because I bottle it all up inside.” He realized he sounded like a nutcase, and felt like one. This was phone therapy, without sex. It was the weirdest conversation he'd ever had. He was almost sorry he'd answered the phone, and yet not. He liked talking to Maggie.
“You shouldn't bottle up your feelings. Maybe you should talk to her sometime, and just tell her how you feel.” Adam lay in bed and rolled his eyes. She was a little simplistic in her point of view, but she was not without compassion. But she also didn't know his mother. Lucky for her. “What did you take for your headache?”
“Vodka and red wine at my mother's house. And a shot of tequila when I got home.”
“That's really bad for you. Did you take aspirin?”
“Of course not, and believe me, brandy and champagne are worse.”
“I think you should take aspirin or a Tylenol or something.”
“I don't have any,” he said, lying in bed and feeling sorry for himself. But in a weird way, it was nice talking to her. She really was a nice person. If she weren't, she wouldn't have been listening to him complain about his parents, and tell her all his woes.
“How come you don't have Tylenol in the house?” And then she thought of something. “Are you a Christian Scientist?” She had known one once. He never took any medicine, or went to the doctor. He just prayed. It seemed strange to her, but it worked for him.
“No, of course not. Remember. Tonight is Yom Kippur. I'm Jewish. That's what started this whole mess. That's why I had dinner with my parents. Yom Kippur. And I don't have aspirin in the house because I'm not married. Married people have things like that. Wives buy all that stuff. My secretary buys me aspirin at the office. I always forget to buy any for here.”
“You should go out and buy some tomorrow, before you forget again.” She had a childlike voice, but it was soothing to listen to. In the end, she had given him just what he needed. Sympathy, and someone to talk to.
“I should get some sleep,” he reminded her. “And so should you. I'll call you tomorrow. And this time I really will.” If nothing else, to thank her.
“No, you won't,” she said sadly. “I'm not fancy enough for you, Adam. I saw the kind of places you went that night. You probably go out with some pretty jazzy women.” And she was only a waitress from Pier 92. It had been an accident of fate that they had met atall, and yet another that he had left a message on her machine that night. Accident number three: she had called him back, and woken him up.
“You're sounding like my mother again. That's the kind of thing she says. She doesn't approve. She thinks I should have found another nice Jewish girl years ago, and remarried. And now that you mention it, the women I go out with are no fancier than you.” Their clothes were a little more expensive maybe, but whenever that was the case, they had been paid for by someone else. In many ways, although his mother wouldn't have agreed with him, Maggie was more respectable than they were.
“Then how come you never remarried?”
“I don't want to. I got burned once, badly in fact. My ex-wife turned out to be just like my mother. And I have no desire to try the experiment again.”
“Do you have kids?” She had never asked him the night they met, there had been too much going on. She hadn't had time.
“Yes. Amanda and Jacob, respectively fourteen and thirteen.” He smiled as he said it, and Maggie could hear it in his voice.
“Where did you go to college?”
“I can't believe this,” he said, amazed at himself that he was continuing to answer her questions. It was addictive. “Harvard. Undergraduate and law school. I graduated from law school magna cum laude.” It was a pompous thing to say to her, but what the hell, he couldn't see her anyway, and anything they said on the phone was fair game.
“I knew it,” she said, sounding excited. “I just knew it. I knew you'd gone to Harvard! And you're a genius!” For once, the appropriate reaction. He lay in bed and grinned. “That's amazing!”
“No, it's not,” he said more modestly this time. “A lot of people do it. In fact, much as I hate to admit it to you, Rachel the Horrible graduated summa cum laude and passed the bar on the first try. I didn't.” He was confessing all his weaknesses a
nd sins.
“Who cares, if she was a bitch?”
“That's a nice thing to say.” He sounded pleased. Without even intending to, he had found an ally.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that about your children's mother.”
“Yes, you should. I say it all the time. She is. I hate her. Well,” he corrected himself, “I don't hate her, I dislike her strongly.” It was a religious holiday after all. But Maggie was Catholic presumably. She could say it. “You're Catholic, aren't you, by the way?”
“I used to be. I'm not much of anything these days. I go to church and light candles sometimes, but that's about it. I guess I'm nothing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a nun.”
Toxic Bachelors Page 20
