Isn't It Bro-Mantic?

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Flash backward to last night, right after I got home:

  Apparently, I was not supposed to do that, the that in question being me going out drinking with the cat after telling Helen and Carla that I couldn’t go to karaoke with them. I can tell that that that was the wrong thing to do, simply by seeing the look on Helen’s face: sadness, disappointment—and is that a flash of anger there?

  But just as quickly as the flash goes on, it switches off. Maybe I was seeing things?

  Naturally, I apologize. I say, “I’m sorry. I guess once you left, I missed you and then I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I just went out.” In truth, I don’t really know why I’m apologizing. I mean, what’s the big deal? Still, it feels like an apology is required, like it’s the sort of thing you do in these situations.

  “You missed me,” Helen says, in an unfamiliar tone of voice. Then she pats me on the cheek, as she adds, “That’s sweet.”

  She turns and heads for the staircase.

  “So, we’re good?” I call after her as I bend to let Fluffy off his leash.

  “We’re good,” she says, back still turned.

  By the time I top off the cat’s food bowl, put the house to sleep, wash up in the bathroom—I wish the ticking on that off-centered clock weren’t so loud—and crawl into bed beside Helen, she’s fast asleep.

  Fast forward to this morning, which is still backward from now:

  I wake in a good mood, which is not unusual for me and is in fact pretty much well the norm. What can I say? I’m a happy guy.

  Helen, when she gets up a short time after me, appears to be in a good mood too as she wraps herself in a white silk shortie robe—I love that robe.

  After retrieving the New York Times from outside and getting the coffee going, I make us a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and bacon. It comes out really well. Salty, sweet—we got all the food groups represented here.

  Helen and I breakfast together very well. We eat, read the paper—since she starts and finishes with the front section while I’m cooking, and then leaves it near my plate, there’s never any awkward competition for sections; when I’m ready to receive Sports, it’s perfect timing because she’s already done with it. Eating and reading in companionable married silence—there’s even time in between for a little conversation.

  “I know you never asked,” Helen says, eyes on the Metropolitan section, “but Carla and I had a great time last night.”

  I’m a little puzzled by this; dually puzzled, really: 1) I didn’t ask last night? that doesn’t sound like me; and 2) was I supposed to ask, like some kind of requirement? And really, if she wants to tell me something or share something with me, does she need to wait for me to ask? Can’t she just go ahead and tell or share, just say whatever she wants to say?

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I can’t believe I didn’t ask and obviously I should have.” There, that should cover it. “So, tell me now: How great of a time did you have last night?”

  She sets down the paper and her smile is genuine when she says, “Really great! You would not believe what an amazing singer Carla is.”

  This is true. I would not believe that of Carla or anything else that might constitute a positive attribute. The only thing I’d believe is what a bitch she is.

  Helen must see some of that on my face because “I’m serious,” she objects. “And it’s not just me saying so. You should have seen the crowd. People gave her standing O’s, they kept asking her to sing again. Honestly, sometimes people will clap for a singer at karaoke just to be polite, particularly if the singer is attractive—”

  !!!

  “—but people don’t beg for more unless the singer is extraordinarily good. I mean, that’s never even happened to me.”

  !!!

  There are so many things I don’t think it’s safe for me to comment about in there, so I just don’t. Instead I ask, “What did Carla sing that was so good?”

  I’m expecting the choices to come from Helen’s awful playlist: ABBA, Bee Gees—really anything that seems to be alphabet-oriented. But instead Helen comes out with, “Pat Benatar.”

  Huh. Pat Benatar’s not bad. And I can definitely picture Carla doing angry-chick rock.

  “It’s not just the singing, though,” Helen continues. “Carla’s just a lot of fun to be around.”

  I’m finding that hard to believe. The last word I’d ever use to describe Carla would be “fun.”

  “Really,” Helen says, taking in my expression. “You just don’t know her.”

  “Oh?” I fold my arms across my chest. “Enlighten me then.”

  In truth, I am curious. Come to think of it, a part of me has always been curious about what Helen sees in Carla. I mean, I fell in love with Helen. Carla, being Helen’s BFF, naturally becomes part of the package, but I’ve never understood what Helen sees in her. My BFF is Sam and despite her shortcomings—her co-opting of my beer when we were neighbors, the fact that she can ride my ass like nobody’s business—I don’t see how anyone can look at her and not want a BFF like her. But Carla? Is it possible that there’s a side of her I don’t know? Could she actually even have more than one side?

  “I realize that in the past few years,” Helen says, “Carla’s gotten a bit…buttoned-down.”

  Buttoned-down? Oh, is that the term for what she is? I thought it was colossally bitchy.

  “But that’s just appearances,” Helen continues. “She takes her job seriously and thinks it’s important to look the part. But before that? When we were in law school together? Carla drove a Harley.”

  Carla was a biker chick? Apparently, she’s a real tough cookie with a long history.

  “She was the life of the party. People loved being around her—still do. You know, she’s got that dry wit. On top of that, she’s an extremely supportive friend.”

  I guess she is a good friend to Helen. I mean, she was in our wedding party, she came to our house last night even though it meant spending time with me, something she clearly does not enjoy doing.

  “I guess I just never saw that side of her,” I say.

  “I know, right?”

  I give an internal wince when she says that—I still haven’t found a way to tell her that one’s out of play.

  Helen looks puzzled as she continues. “I’m not blind. I do see that there’s a certain…tension between you and Carla, always has been. But she’s not like that with anyone else.”

  Oh, great. So she’s the ‘life of the party’ with everyone else, but with me she’s…whatever the hell she is with me? And I suppose this is somehow my fault?

  Helen shakes her head at the mystery of it all. “I don’t know why that is.”

  We go back to our papers and before long it’s time for The Chris Matthews Show. We cuddle on the couch to watch. I love how enthusiastic Chris is about everything, even when he’s wrong—it’s important to have passion for your work—and I love it that Helen and I are in synch when it comes to politics. But as tempting as it is to segue right into Meet the Press afterward, we don’t really have time.

  “We should get showering and stuff,” I say, “if we want to make it to Big John’s by noon.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I think I’m going to pass on that today.”

  She’s going to pass?

  “What do you mean, you’re going to pass?” Is she still upset about last night? But I thought she said we were good.

  “I’m just not feeling all that well today.”

  But she looked fine a second ago. Come to think of it, she looks fine right now.

  I point this out.

  “I may look fine,” she says, “but I don’t feel fine. You know, I did have a lot to drink last night.”

  Actually, I don’t know, since I wasn’t with them at karaoke, although Helen seemed perfectly sober to me when I got home. But maybe that was just because I was pretty buzzed myself?

  Wait a second, though.

  “Is this, I don’t know,” I say, “because I didn�
�t go with you guys last night? Like, I didn’t go to your thing so you won’t go to my thing?”

  “Your thing, my thing—what are we, little kids?” Helen looks at me, shocked, offended. “Are you accusing me of immaturely tit-for-tatting you?”

  Immediately, I back down.

  “No, of course not. You would never do that.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t.”

  And now I’m back in real time, faced by Big John and Aunt Alfresca wondering why Helen’s not with me, the latter demanding to know if we had a fight.

  “No, we didn’t have a fight.” I feel myself feeling unreasonably exasperated, so I tone it down when I add, “She’s just feeling a little under the weather today. Helen and I don’t fight.”

  And I realize as I say this that it is absolutely true. Helen may have been a little…chilly when I got home last night, she may be chilly in general from time to time about things that make no sense to me—and I, in turn, am occasionally…mildly bugged by this or that little thing—but we’ve never, in all the time we’ve known each other, had an actual fight.

  Still, as I go through the day—eating, drinking, watching the Mets, trying to convince Aunt Alfresca not to tweet about my life—I do wonder:

  Really, is the reason Helen’s not with me right now because somehow she’s getting even with me?

  Alice May Not Live Here Anymore

  On Monday, contrary to normal patterns of behavior, I don’t tell Sam about what I did with the rest of my weekend after I saw her on Friday. The evening with Carla, going to the bar with Fluffy, Helen not coming to Big John’s and Aunt Alfresca’s with me—for some reason, I don’t feel like discussing any of it. So, instead, I simply mostly listen to her tell me what she did as we work through the day, finishing in time to go back to my place so we can watch GH.

  It’s an OK enough episode—the baby-switch storyline is heating up, although why anyone would ever depend on a DNA test at General Hospital, I’ll never know; their reliability rate is something like zero. But soon the show is over, and there’s a promo about how, starting on September 10, GH will begin airing one hour earlier, at two P.M., to make room for the new Katie Couric gabfest.

  “I’m going to hate that,” I say.

  “Me too,” Sam says. “I hate change.”

  Her and me both. But I guess everything changes at some point, whether you want it to or not.

  “Not to mention,” I point out, “we’ll have to knock off painting even earlier to watch, which hardly seems conducive to a strong work ethic.”

  “We could always DVR it.”

  True. But somehow that doesn’t seem the same.

  “Hey,” Sam says. “Wasn’t something missing today?”

  I think about it. “Well, there was no Todd Manning, which qualifies as a minus, but no matter how fun he is to watch, they can’t have him on every day.”

  “Not that. I mean, obviously the lack of Todd is a minus. No, I meant Alice. How come she’s not here watching with us?”

  Huh. I guess maybe, underneath my GH-watching exterior, I’ve still been obsessed with events of the weekend, so I hadn’t noticed the absence of Alice. Given that she came every day last week, it is odd her not being here today.

  I shrug. “Maybe she had something else to do?”

  But the next day, when the show comes and goes and still no Alice, I actually find myself growing a little concerned. Someone sets a pattern, you get used to that pattern and suddenly they break it—it’s a little worrisome.

  “Maybe I should just give her a call,” I say, locating the number she gave me on my cell phone.

  “Hello?” she answers.

  “Hey, it’s Johnny.”

  “I know. I saw that on Caller ID.”

  “Oh. Right. Listen, Sam and me were just wondering: Where’ve you been the last two days? Did you give up on GH or something?”

  “No, I’m still watching. The show could’ve used more Todd yesterday, but otherwise it’s been good.”

  “Then where’ve you been?” I repeat. “Are you not feeling well? Are you sick? Do you need me to bring you something?”

  “That is…” There’s a long pause and then: “very sweet.” Another long pause. “But I’m fine, really, not sick at all.”

  “So you’ll be back tomorrow?”

  “Actually, no.”

  No?

  “No,” she says again. “Don’t get me wrong. Last week was a lot of fun—I can’t remember when I ever had as much fun watching as I did with you and Sam—but I think we should just leave it at that.”

  What? It feels like she’s TV-watching breaking up with me.

  “I just don’t feel right coming there by myself anymore,” she says. “I don’t think Helen really appreciates it, and I can’t say that I blame her.”

  Oh. Oh!

  “But thanks,” Alice says. “Thanks for letting me hang out with you guys last week. It really was, you know, a blast.”

  And that, as they say, is that.

  Sunday in the Park with Stavros

  The previous weekend’s pattern repeats itself with mild variation. On Friday we play poker in the basement with my friends and Big John. On Saturday, we have more of Helen’s people over—this time her oldest brother Frankie and his wife Mary Agnes—and the evening is much more pleasant than the previous Saturday; the evening being much more pleasant is the mild variation. I do not, at any point, blow off doing something with Helen or go out by myself with the cat to the bar. And yet still, on Sunday, she doesn’t come to Big John’s and Aunt Alfresca’s with me.

  In a way, this is good, I tell myself. When she didn’t come last Sunday, even though she denied it, I still got the sense it was a payback for the stuff with Carla, the bar and the cat. But I’ve done absolutely nothing in the last week to—for want of a better way to put it—make her want to get even with me; hell, she doesn’t even find Alice here anymore when she comes home from work. But still, when Sunday morning comes, Chris Matthews ends and it’s time to get ready to go, she claims to not feel well again. And yet she looks fine. So, not a get-even but not an ideal situation either. I can’t make her go, though, and I can’t accuse her of lying about how she feels—if she says she’s not physically up to it, I have to respect that. But I did make a commitment to Big John, to come every Sunday, so off I go: alone.

  The Mets win, which is good, and rare these days. Big John looks tired, and he’s a lot quieter than usual, which is bad. Aunt Alfresca tweets about all of it, plus the fact that her “step-DIL is MIA”, adding something she calls a twitpic of my haircut, followed by speculation that the hair is some kind of explanation for the absence of the step-DIL. This is all definitely not good, although it’s not bad along the lines of world hunger, so let’s just call it supremely annoying.

  Driving back home, I’m wondering if this is the wave of the future—me going alone to my dad’s every Sunday—so my mind is a little distracted as I pass Stavros of Greece meaning I don’t notice anything strange at first. But there’s a stoplight just beyond the shop that turns red right before I can squeak through and when I stop, I glance to the side and that’s when I see all the lights in the shop blazing, Stavros standing in the window wearing his barber jacket, staring out at the street. When the light changes, instead of going forward and on to home, I pull over to the side and get out.

  A bell jingles overhead as I yank open the door.

  “Stavros,” I say, “what’re you doing here?”

  “Johnny!” Apparently excited to see me, Stavros ignores my question. “It’s so good to see you! Come on, come sit in the chair.”

  He turns his back on me, goes to the chair and picks up a towel draped over the back of it.

  “I’m not here for a haircut,” I say and he stops. “It’s Sunday,” I say. “You’re not open on Sundays.”

  “Of course it’s not Sunday!”

  Oh no. He doesn’t know what day of the week it is?

  “No,” I say gently, “
really, it is.”

  “It is?” He sets the towel back down. “Huh. I was wondering why there were no customers. Was it something I said? Something I did?”

  “It’s not you. It’s just, you know, the wrong day of the week, that’s all.” I pause. “Just how long were you standing in front of the window, looking for customers?”

  He shrugs. “Since regular opening time?”

  He normally opens at nine, it’s now four, so if he’s remembering the day accurately, he’s been standing at that window for seven hours waiting for customers who were never going to come.

  “You must be hungry,” I say.

  He shrugs again. “I could eat.”

  “Here, let me buy you a hot dog.”

  Stavros locks up the shop and I drive him over to Roger’s Park, buy us each hot dogs from one of the food trucks lining the street there. Sure, I just ate a short time ago, and I’ll be eating dinner soon enough with Helen, but a guy can always eat a hot dog. Well, unless he’s already had five. Of course, even after he’s had five, he can still eat more if he’s in one of those stupid lots-of-food eating contests, but that’s an exception.

  “Good dog,” Stavros says, saluting me with a hot dog that has one bite missing.

  We stand and eat, watching the game for a while. On the field there’s an adult-league men’s softball game going on.

  “I wish it were football,” Stavros says. “I only like football.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And who plays softball anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Old, out-of-shape guys who don’t want to get hurt?”

  “This would be more fun if it was football.”

  I can’t do anything about that, but I remember something Helen said.

  “Hey, Stavros. You got any family?”

  “Family?” He says the word like it’s something bad-tasting you spit out of your mouth. “You mean like a wife? You know I never got married, Johnny, don’t have any kids, least not as far as I know.”