Loves Me, Loves Me Not

by Libby Malin

  “No message,” I say, “I’ll try later.”

  As soon as I disconnect, I try his condo. He’s there, and answers immediately in a gruff, almost angry voice.

  “It’s Amy,” I say, very straightforward. “I just called your office and they said you were home.”

  “Yeah. Waiting for the damned plumber to show up,” he says quickly. “Broken pipe in the bathroom.”

  Broken pipe in the bathroom? And when did that happen—as soon as Tess stepped over the threshold, perhaps?

  “I need to get my stuff.”

  “Okay.”

  Just “okay?” I plough forward. “And I was wondering if you’d keep Trixie for a while. She seems to like you more than me.” That sounds funny. As if I’m saying she likes him more than I like him. Maybe that is what I’m trying to say. “Wendy’s allergic to cats.”

  “All right.”

  He doesn’t say anything else, and I hear his doorbell ring, so I quickly squeeze in that I’ll probably stop by either today or tomorrow for my stuff. “Bye!” I yell into the receiver, rushing to get off before he tells me he has to go.

  A very unsatisfying call. In between each word, I’d really wanted to hear him say he didn’t want me to go. Very simple. Not a declaration of love or undying commitment. Just that he doesn’t want me to go.

  And that’s when it becomes crystal clear to me why I wouldn’t commit right away to Wendy’s invitation to accompany her to France. It’s because I was secretly hoping Henry will ask me to stay, and I would stay if he asked me.

  Damn, I want that in-ground pool. I wish Wendy’s apartment house had one. I feel like diving into something cold that shocks and penetrates. Something that surrounds me with its protective transparent layers through which I can watch but not feel.

  As luck would have it, I don’t get over to Henry’s condo until Wednesday. Because she’s not supposed to drive for a week, Wendy asks me to run some errands for her on Monday, and on Tuesday I take her to get her hair cut because she’s looking so blue I’m desperate to find something to cheer her.

  I’ve been borrowing Wendy’s clothes for four days, washing them quickly in the evening so I don’t need to intrude too far into her wardrobe. This is growing thin. I want my stuff.

  When I drive up to the condo on Wednesday, I can’t help it—I want the pipes to still be broken and Henry to still be there. Maybe I’ll break them myself and call him at the office to let him know? Nope. He’d probably just ask me to hang around until the plumber comes.

  I tell myself I want to see him because I haven’t yet felt a real sense of “closure.” That was a word Dr. Waylon Freud used a lot. He used to talk about the importance of finding “closure” with Rick’s passing. Except when he said it the first time, with his Southern drawl and funny inflections, I thought he was saying I needed “clothes, sure,” and for a full quarter hour I’d reddened and felt angry and humiliated all at once that this grief counselor, who was supposed to be helping me, was insulting my wardrobe. Even after I figured out my mistake, I still felt embarrassed, and kept my hands glued to the spot on my gray slacks where a faded grease stain was barely visible.

  When I think of getting “closure” with Henry, though, I zero in on one scenario. It’s where Henry kneels at my feet while I look into a Gone-With-the-Wind blue-and-pink sky, and he rests his head on my calico skirt saying he hurts like hell now that I’m gone, and that he really does love me and what was he thinking not to come out and say it, and would I please stay, please, oh please, oh please.

  Or maybe that’s Rick I see on his knees.

  Henry’s not home and the condo smells like bacon. In the kitchen, I see the frying pan in the dish drainer, along with his morning mug. Everything neat and clean, probably even neater and cleaner than when I was the Little Woman.

  After I gather my stuff together, I decide to give the place one quick once-over to make sure I’m not leaving anything behind. So I go through all of Henry’s things. But I come up with nothing. No coffee ice cream in the freezer. No herbal shampoos in the shower. Not even a stray hair in a different shade. Or a dropped petal from a flower arrangement.

  I figure I’ll spend a lot of time patting Trixie and having a heart-to-heart about not getting too emotionally attached to Henry, but she hardly gives me a passing glance and heads for her cat-food dish in the kitchen with a diffident purr. No reason to linger. I lug my suitcase to the front door where I’m greeted by the UPS man delivering a thick envelope for me.

  In the foyer I excitedly rip it open—but hell, it’s a rejection letter from the tutoring program! I didn’t get the job. Good thing I didn’t celebrate last Friday, huh? Boy would I feel foolish now.

  They’ve sent all my work samples back, which was nice of them, but not enough to soften the blow. “We were very impressed with your skills and attitude but hired another person whose qualifications more closely suit our needs,” the letter says. Who knows what happened—another internal candidate? Someone who walked in off the street after my interview?

  Note to all employers: do not use UPS for rejection letters. UPS is the Christmas gift man, the catalog-order man, the special present from Great Aunt Susy man. It’s cruel to set up the expectation that something cool is arriving by the man in brown only to have him drop a little cloud of gloom in your lap.

  Rejected, cross and still sad, I head back to Wendy’s. It’s been a red-letter day. Moving out of my boyfriend’s condo and losing out on a good job prospect all in one afternoon. And Tess is nowhere to be seen.

  Wendy’s reading a magazine in the living room when I return. She’s looking better—the color’s returned to her cheeks, and her new haircut frames her face and shows off her eyes.

  “Henry called,” she says after I drag my suitcase over the threshold.

  My heart races.

  “He left a message. Your sister called him looking for you, and he just told her he’d give you the message.”

  Thud. That’s my racing heart hitting the ground.

  “Thanks,” I say. I don’t ask her how he sounded or if he said anything else. I suspect if he’d been sobbing or had blurted out he couldn’t live without me she would have passed it along as well.

  When I don’t make a move for the phone right away, she puts her magazine aside. “I was going to take a nap.” She smiles. And she follows through by heading for her bedroom. Man, but her apartment is small. I have to do something soon. I can’t stay here. Maybe I need to head back to Gina’s.

  Feeling suddenly tired, I call Gina. She answers on the third ring, and when she hears my voice, she doesn’t even ask me how I’ve been or why she couldn’t find me at the condo. She launches into her news immediately. And what news it is.

  “I’m pregnant!” she shrieks into the phone. I look over my shoulder to make sure Wendy couldn’t have overheard. This wouldn’t necessarily brighten her day.

  “Wow! That’s fantastic,” I whisper. “When did you find out?”

  “This morning. Just got back from the doctor’s a little while ago. I almost told Henry when I called him looking for you. But I wanted to tell you first. After Fred, that is.” She sounds hysterical with joy.

  “How’s Fred taking it?” I ask tentatively.

  “What? He’s thrilled! And why are you whispering? Are you at Henry’s office or something?”

  No, I’m just in the apartment of a woman who recently suffered a miscarriage. And I don’t want to tell said woman about Gina’s pregnancy. And I don’t want to tell Gina about said woman’s miscarriage. Bad karma. So instead, I tell Gina about my breakup.

  “Oh, damn. That’s too bad,” she says, and I get the impression she’s impatient with my bad news and eager to get back to her good news. “You’ll find someone else. You’ve just started dating again, after all, Ame. It would have been awfully lucky if you’d found Mr. Right on your first time out.” And to think—just a few months ago she was telling me how awfully lucky I was to have found Henry so early in t
he game.

  “Oh, and I never had him over for dinner,” she says, as if that’s the important thing and not the shattered pieces of my heart.

  I tell Gina I’m going to France with Wendy now that I don’t have any more job prospects. I haven’t even told Wendy this. Hell, I haven’t even told myself. Note to subconscious: tell yourself important things before blurting them out to others.

  “Whoa—you’re going to France? When did this happen?”

  I explain how Wendy’s been planning this “vacation” for quite a while and she wants somebody to go with her.

  “She broke up with her boyfriend, too,” I say.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” she says. “But I have to say that a woman who dates a married man doesn’t rank very high on my list.”

  I wonder if suffering a miscarriage will place Wendy higher on the list.

  “Where will you get the money?” Gina asks me. “For the trip?”

  “I just need the airfare and some expenses. Wendy’s parents rented a place for her. I’ve got a little money saved.”

  “Maybe you should keep it, though. You know—for a rainy day.”

  A rainy day? I’m in a deluge with no land in sight. My rainy-day money isn’t going to do me any good on my lonesome little ark. Better to use it up and have some fun.

  “Well, Wendy doesn’t want to go alone. I’d be like her traveling companion.”

  Gina grills me a little more on the trip, then goes on and on about the baby, telling me pretty much all the same things Wendy told me when she got excited about the prospect of becoming a mother—when she’d hear the first heartbeat, what to expect during pregnancy, whether she’d try to go the natural route with childbirth. Except with Gina, there’s no dark cloud—an absent adulterer father—in the background. It’s blue skies all the way. Damn, it feels good.

  When I get off the phone, Wendy wanders into the living room. Despite my effort to talk low, she’s overheard—at least the part about me going to France. Smiling broadly, she grabs a magazine as if that’s why she came back out.

  “This trip will be like high school,” she says, even though we didn’t go to high school together. “It will be so much fun! Wait till you see the place we’ll be staying in. Close to the beach, with a little terrace, and even an in-ground pool!”

  Did she say in-ground pool? Why didn’t she tell me this earlier? It’s kismet. No more wishy-washy wondering. Destiny calls. Who am I to question it?

  chapter 21

  Cypress: Mourning, death, despair

  The Mediterranean was supposed to be my honeymoon destination with Rick. White sand, blue water, tall cypress trees swaying in the late-day breezes. His parents sent me a thank-you-for-your-sympathy note after I sent them flowers and a sympathy card filled with incoherent ramblings. I don’t know what flowers I sent—Gina ordered them for me. Their note was more a transmittal slip than an outpouring of gratitude. “Thank you for your kind thoughts at this difficult time,” it read in embossed script, and was signed “Emily Squires.” No words of comfort or healing for me. Had Sally gone to the funeral, or sent flowers, or stopped by their house? What had they written to her? When I was well enough to start handling my own affairs again, I was wounded afresh by my telephone bills. In sterile black ink on blue paper was the tale of my heartbreak. At least one call a month to a North Carolina number. Starting the month after Rick returned from the conference near Duke. He always took care of the phone bills while I handled gas and electric and we split the rent. Sally, I realized, could well have been more a part of the Squires’s lives than I ever was. He had known Sally for three years, she was part of their “crowd,” whereas I had been an outsider, and we’d been together for a little over a year. Not only was my future with Rick destroyed by the accident, my past was demolished as well.

  In the next two weeks, Wendy perks up. Instead of moping around every day, she’s on the phone with a travel agent and her mother planning out every aspect of this six-week sojourn. As soon as the doctor gives Wendy the thumbs-up, she goes out shopping, buying a completely new travel wardrobe, and graciously showering me with hand-me-downs she doesn’t want any longer.

  Having started the summer with a nearly empty closet, I am now awash in clothes. I have the items my sister bought for me when I first moved out of my country home. I have the items I bought myself before starting my illfated job at the College of Our Lady of the Air Freshener. And now I have designer castoffs from Wendy. Soon there won’t be any more room for us in her apartment. The clothes will have taken over.

  Which is another reason it’s a good thing we’ll be leaving soon. Although we manage to stay out of each other’s way as best we can, Wendy’s flat is just too damned tight. On one particularly difficult night all I want to do is either talk with Henry or be alone and brood about him, but I have to sit and artificially smile while Wendy giggles her way through sitcom reruns. I’m ready to move back in with Gina if only for the few remaining days before we leave.

  But I stay, hanging on with my fingernails, not calling Henry and trying not to think of my future. But damn, it hurts. It hurts more than I figured it would. I miss Henry and I keep feeling like I’m on a temporary leave, taking care of a good friend, and I’ll be back and he’ll be waiting. But in my dark moments, I know he won’t be.

  Planning a trip to France is a decent consolation prize, a lot better than the other one I’ve concocted, which is imagining that Henry tries to call me but loses his nerve and hangs up before it rings through.

  A few days before we are to depart, Wendy has a surprise for me.

  “I never got you a birthday gift,” she says one night after dinner, and hands me an envelope. I’m embarrassed. Is she giving me cash? I know I’m strapped, but this is a little mortifying—taking money from your friends. When I open up the envelope, inside is a handmade sublet lease for her apartment for six months. In the blank where the rent is supposed to go, she’s filled in “zero.”

  “You can stay here when we get back,” she says, “since I’ll be heading to Connecticut.” Wendy is going to reenter the vortex of her old world. Her mother is already talking to her about an eligible young doctor she wants her to meet.

  “Wen, this is too much,” I protest.

  “Don’t be silly. I’m just paying you back, that’s all.”

  Paying me back for what? Being a derelict friend? I didn’t save her from Sam.

  But this feels right, too. At last, at last, I’ll have somewhere to hang my hat while I get back on my feet. Yeah, I know—isn’t that what I was supposed to be doing these last couple years? I’m a slow learner.

  My desire for Henry has faded to a constant, dull ache. Try as I might, I have trouble making the anger come back. Every time I think of our confrontation in the parking lot now, I think of him telling me I was his only serious relationship. And I think about how he questioned me about my fiancé before he knew it was Rick. Maybe Wendy was right—he wanted to know if I was over Rick before committing himself. But I was over Rick, right? Just because I didn’t tell Henry Rick’s name doesn’t mean anything—right?

  It was all about the sex with Henry. The great sex. That’s all. Nothing more. Please, God, make it all about the sex. I can deal with that.

  My ache for Henry intensifies this evening. Wendy goes to bed early, and I sit in the blue light of the waning day in this waning season. Outside the air is catching the whiff of crispness that fall promises, and it’s hard not to think about how just a few weeks ago I daydreamed of spending autumn with Henry. Yes, I did. I might not have admitted it to myself, but I did. I saw us taking drives into the country to see the turning leaves. I saw us picking apples together at an orchard near where I used to live. I saw us giving out trick-or-treat candy to neighborhood kids. Both of them.

  Dammit, I’m not going to be able to give into temptation for six more weeks, and probably by then I’ll be over it. I cave and call him. I figure I need to tell him I’m going because what if something
happens to Trixie and he needs to reach me.

  It’s nearly ten o’clock at night and it sounds like I’ve awakened him.

  “Amy Sheldon here,” I say.

  “Hi.” His voice brightens. “What’s up?”

  “I just wanted you to know I’ll be leaving tomorrow.” Leaving tomorrow? I’ve already left him. “Leaving the country,” I add in a hurry. “I’m going to France with Wendy.”

  “Doesn’t Wendy have to rest?” he asks. Don’t ask about Wendy, my inner voice screams. Ask about me.

  Uh-oh. My inner voice is back. I’m not leaving a moment too soon.

  “She got checked out and the doc says it’s okay as long as she doesn’t over do it.”

  “How can you go to France? I thought you didn’t have any money.”

  “I have a little saved. I’ll use it all up.”

  “What about a passport?”

  “I have one from when Rick and I were together. We were going to go to Greece for our honeymoon.” Oddly, it feels good to be able to talk about Rick to Henry. I hadn’t realized how Rick’s ghost had come between us until now.

  His questions make me wonder if this is his way of saying he doesn’t want me to go, which sets up a desire in me to hear him say that very thing, and by the end of our short conversation, I’m pressing the phone deep into my ear as if listening closely enough will allow me to make out secret coded messages that say, “Don’t go. I’ll miss you.” I’m not able to pick anything up through the static of our conversation, though, so we will have to hang up. Then I remember why I called, or at least the reason I used to let myself call.

  “Uh, about Trixie. I thought I’d give you my number in France. In case something happens to Trixie.”

  He asks me to wait while he gets some paper and a pen, and when he comes back I rattle off the number of the cottage Wendy’s rented.

  “We’ll be there the last four weeks. We’re traveling the first two.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Yeah. I think it will be. I’ve only been to Europe once before. A school trip. Senior year of high school. We went to London.” And I proceed to tell him all about my senior trip. Every detail, even down to how Heather Pakoskyzc threw up on the plane. I’m pathetic. All I want is this nice warm feeling back. Henry and me.