Mixed Signals

by Diane Barnes

  * * *

  My meeting with Stacy and Renee lasts over ninety minutes. When I get back to my desk, Ben is just returning from lunch. He comes straight to my cube and plops down in the guest chair. “Your brother’s a good guy.”

  “Yeah, he is,” I say, wondering what they were talking about for all that time.

  “He thinks you blame him because your parents moved.”

  I didn’t know Christian was aware of this. “I do,” I admit.

  “Well, he didn’t take them at gunpoint,” Ben says.

  He may as well have. I think about all the times he called them, whining, Molly misses her grandparents. When are you coming to visit? The way he barraged them with irresistible pictures of her angelic face. She changes so much every day! he’d say. You better come see her soon.

  “He brainwashed them into moving.”

  “He said he never expected them to leave Massachusetts,” Ben says.

  “What else did he say?”

  A big goofy smile breaks out on Ben’s face. “You slept with the light on until you left for college because you were afraid of the dark.”

  Of course Christian would tell him embarrassing stories about me. “It was only until I was ten,” I correct.

  “You cried for weeks when he broke your Little Mermaid water globe,” Ben says. “He thinks you still haven’t forgiven him for it.”

  “I haven’t!” The statue was a gift from my grandmother on my ninth birthday, the last present she gave me before she died. We had seen the movie together. Ariel was swimming around the globe in a purple bikini top with a greenish-blue fin, like she was under the sea. The base was purple with fishes and shells glued to it. It sat on my nightstand and was my most treasured possession, until Christian hit it with a baseball, cracking it in half. “I loved that thing. My mother and I searched all over for a replacement, but they stopped making it.” Even thinking about it now makes me sad. “I can’t believe he told you about that.”

  Ben shrugs. “Someday I’ll introduce you to my sisters,” he says. “The stories they tell you about me will be much more embarrassing.”

  I try to picture him as a kid. I see a tall, skinny boy with unruly curls being chased on the playground by a bunch of girls with huge crushes.

  “Your brother is really worried about you,” Ben says. “I promised him I’d keep an eye on you, make sure you have some fun, and don’t spend all your time sulking about Nico.” He taps me on the knee. “So you have to go to Renee’s party with me.”

  Chapter 19

  Branigan’s black Porsche is parked diagonally across two spaces when I pull into the parking lot of the tennis club. It’s my first time back since the doubles tournament. I was apprehensive about coming, and now that I know that Branigan is here, I think about throwing my car in reverse and driving home.

  Inside, there’s a long line at the reception desk. I take my position at the end to get my court assignment. As each person reaches the front, they sign some type of document. “What’s going on?” I ask the woman standing ahead of me.

  “There’s a petition for a rematch of the mixed doubles final,” she explains.

  “You’re kidding me?”

  “Nope. I guess whoever was the linesman purposely made a bad call.”

  The man on the other side of the woman squints at me. I don’t know his name, but I often see him around the club with Branigan. “Weren’t you the one calling that game?”

  The crowd turns toward me like they want to tar and feather me. “The ball was out. Branigan lost. The Longs won. You can’t make them play again.” It’s the helium-injected version of my voice.

  “The ball was on the line,” the man says. Some in the crowd behind him nod.

  “I had the best view,” I say.

  “I was watching from the café window,” the woman in front of me says. “Looked in from there.”

  “You blame Sean for your boyfriend dumping you. That’s why you called it out,” the man says.

  I swallow hard because what he’s saying is close to the truth. The bell rings, and the crowd disperses. David gives me my court assignment. “I might have to do it, you know. Have a rematch,” he says.

  Down in the narrow tunnel that winds under the parking lot to the back courts, I see Sean and Tammy Branigan approaching from the opposite direction. Sean is bragging about a great shot he made in the match he just played and doesn’t notice me right way. When he does see me, all the muscles in his body tense. He stalks up the musty corridor toward me. I am certain he’s fantasizing about choking the life out of me. I can practically see images of his hands around my neck dancing through his head as he gets closer. He stops directly in front of me, so close to me that the tips of our sneakers touch. I can smell on his breath the banana he eats after each match. He extends his racquet toward the concrete wall, blocking my path.

  Tammy races up to him. “Keep moving, Sean,” she urges.

  “Jillian,” he spits. “You are persona non grata here. Most members agree you stole the match from me.”

  I swallow and step backward. “The ball was out.”

  Branigan leans forward, the vein in his forehead pulsates, and his bulbous nose glows redder than usual. “It wasn’t!”

  “Sean, you need to calm down,” Tammy says.

  He clenches and unclenches his fist. “I want you to come on the air and admit what you did,” he says.

  I think he’s kidding, but no, he’s just lost his mind. “I won’t do that.”

  “Well, I’ll find a reason to keep talking about you until you do.”

  The second bell rings. “Let me by, please.”

  “You still have the ring, don’t you?” He smiles. “We’ll see what our listeners have to say about that.”

  * * *

  After seeing Branigan at the club, BS Morning Sports Talk becomes an addiction again. I know it’s bad for me, but I can’t stop listening. I set my alarm so that every weekday I wake up to the sound of his pompous voice. I jack up the volume of my radio so I can hear the show over the shower. I wait for a commercial before dashing out of my apartment into my car or from my car into the office, as though if I miss one word they say about me, I’ll be putting my life in grave danger.

  This morning as I get dressed, Branigan and Smyth are talking to Nico. “How many dates has it been now?” Branigan asks.

  “I lost count,” Nico says, his voice steadier than the first few times he spoke on air.

  “Well, how long has it been? Five weeks, six?” Smyth asks.

  “Our nine-week anniversary is Saturday,” Nico answers.

  I’m stepping into my tights, so his response literally catches me off balance. I stumble forward. In six years, he never once remembered our anniversary, but he has no trouble recollecting his first date with the Namaste Nitwit. Jerk!

  “So things are getting serious?” Branigan asks.

  “I like her,” Nico answers. “Really, really like her.”

  And I really, really hate you.

  “We’ve talked about her moving in,” Nico continues.

  “Sounds like things are heating up fast,” Smyth says. “Will you have to make another call to our friends at Kaufman’s Jewelers?”

  “It’s crossed my mind,” Nico says.

  I pull out the leg that was in my tights and sink to the floor. Crossed his mind. It hasn’t even been three months. Why did it take six years before it crossed his mind when he was dating me?

  I remember a few days after my thirtieth birthday, Rachel asked me to watch Sophie. She was seven months pregnant with Laurence and was having an ultrasound that day. We were in her living room looking at the images when she got back from her appointment. Sophie was sitting on my lap. Rachel turned to me, her expression reminding me of the one she had when we were fifteen and she was comforting me after my dog Pete Sampras died. “At your party, I asked Nico when he was going to propose,” she began, putting her hand on my shoulder before continuing. “He said it’s
much too soon to be thinking about that.” Nico and I had been dating for just about two years then.

  “Well, he’s not going to tell you when he’s going to do it,” I said, sure he didn’t mean it. I even laughed.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “You might want to cut your losses.” Sophie reached for her mother. Rachel took her from my arms. “We’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  I considered her advice and thought about breaking up with Nico, but a few days later my parents announced they were moving to Georgia. Nico was the closest I had to family in Boston. I couldn’t cut him loose and lose everyone at once. Then, over the years, maybe I just became too dependent on him to part ways.

  On the radio now, I hear Branigan say my name and something about how the time might be right to return the ring. The show breaks for a commercial. I force myself to stand. Instead of dressing in the cute dress I planned to wear today, I slip back into my pajamas, suddenly feeling too exhausted to work. The little men are back in my head, jackhammering away. I go to the kitchen, where my phone is, so that I can call Stacy to tell her I won’t be coming in today. Nico’s jacket hanging on the back of the chair stops me in my tracks.

  Get rid of it.

  He’ll be back for it.

  The competing thoughts make my head hurt worse. I need a pill but still haven’t bought more. Before Nico left, I didn’t get headaches. That was his thing. They were so bad that he had to have his head scanned. Everything checked out. The doctor said they were most likely stress induced. “It’s the damn job,” Nico told me, like he was an emergency room physician or a soldier deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of a producer for a stupid sports talk radio show.

  Outside, Mr. O’Brien’s car pulls into the driveway. I watch him plod up the driveway and across the walkway. The cup of coffee he’s holding still steams. When he makes it to the front porch, I open my door and call out to him, “Do you have any aspirin?”

  He passes by his side of the house and comes to mine. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just not feeling well.”

  He stares at me through the storm door. “You don’t look sick.”

  A FedEx truck rumbles down the street.

  “Well, then I look better than I feel.”

  “Did it come on suddenly?”

  For crying out loud. What was I thinking, calling out to him?

  He sips his coffee, waiting for me to answer. Water drips from the icicles hanging off the roof. A drop lands on Mr. O’Brien’s shoulder. He wipes it off.

  “I had a headache when I woke up. It got worse as I got ready for work.”

  “Were you listening to the radio?” he asks. Another drop splashes on the bill of his baseball cap. He glances up. “I’ll be right back.”

  He returns a few minutes later with the biggest bottle of ibuprofen I have ever seen and a shovel. “Return it when you feel better,” he says, handing me the pills. After I close the storm door, he extends the shovel high into the air and swipes it to the right. The icicles that have re-formed since he last whacked them off fall from the roof, shattering on the porch. “Sometimes there are easy solutions to things that bother you,” he says.

  “Thanks for these,” I say, shaking the bottle and closing the door. Back in my bedroom, Branigan and Smyth are talking about diamonds. “Don’t you think some men feel the need to buy big ones to compensate for, um, some of their smaller body parts?” Branigan asks.

  I kill the radio’s power and go back to bed.

  Chapter 20

  Rachel almost sideswipes my passenger side as she pulls into the spot next to me. She’s been driving that minivan for almost five years, but still can’t remember it’s double the size of the tiny Toyota she drove before Sophie was born. I get out of my car and make my way to her driver’s-side rear door, expecting to see a backseat full of kids, but it’s empty.

  “Where is everyone?” I ask.

  “With Mark. I have exactly forty-five minutes to find what I need and get home.” She races for the mall’s entrance before all the words are out of her mouth. I hustle to keep up with her as she makes a beeline for Lord and Taylor. She needs a dress for a party she’s going to tonight and a gift for a birthday party Sophie’s attending tomorrow. I agreed to meet her here to keep an eye on the kids while she did her errands, because Mark was supposed to go to the office to prepare for a big trial that starts Monday.

  In the store, Rachel blazes through the women’s clothing section, ripping dresses off racks. I stop to pick up the ones she’s knocked off the hangers. When I catch up to her, her arms are full. “Here,” she says, thrusting two identical dresses in different sizes at me.

  A saleswoman who looks old enough to be Mr. O’Brien’s mother approaches us. “Do you want me to take those to a dressing room for you?” she asks in a weak voice.

  Rachel shakes her head but hands the woman half of her pile. “You can start ringing these up. Keep them all on the hangers and in different bags so they don’t get wrinkled, please.”

  “Don’t you want to try them on?” the saleswoman asks. I reach for the clothes Rachel gave her, because honestly they look too heavy for her to carry. I’m pretty sure her knees buckled when Rachel piled them on top of her.

  “No time,” Rachel says as she continues to ransack the racks. She ends up with six different dresses, each in two sizes. As the saleswoman rings up the twelve items, Rachel taps her credit card on the counter. Finally, she lays it down on the register. “Sign my name and meet me at the toy store.” She dashes off before I can respond.

  The saleswoman frowns. “She’ll be back later this week, making more work for me when she returns all the ones that don’t fit.”

  I don’t say anything because the woman is right.

  Weighed down with a dozen large bags across my arms, I plod through the mall toward the toy store. I curse Rachel under my breath for leaving me with all these dresses to carry. Other shoppers brush my shoulder on their way past me without saying excuse me. I walk by a store with an overpowering smell of flowery perfume coming out its door and try not to breathe in the scent. A little later, rap music blasting from a teenage clothing shop assaults my eardrums. I quicken my step and pass a window with posters of ridiculously young models dressed in sexy lingerie. A woman looking down at her phone rushes out of the store and crashes into me hard, knocking all my bags to the floor.

  “So sorry, my bad,” she says, finally looking up from her screen.

  Something about her heart-shaped face is familiar. I stare, trying to figure out where I’ve seen her before.

  She bends to help me pick up the dresses. “Looks like someone went on a shopping spree.” She makes a noise that sounds like hiccups. It takes me a moment to realize she’s laughing. “Did you buy out the entire store or what?” She laughs again. I want to offer her a glass of water or suggest she hold her breath and count to ten.

  She hands me the bags. “Do you need help getting these to your car?” she asks.

  I tilt my head in the direction of the toy store. “I’m meeting my friend over there.”

  The woman says something else, but I don’t hear her words because I’m distracted by the man approaching from behind. It can’t be. My underarms get sticky as he gets closer. It is. What is he doing at the mall? He would never go with me. It’s like he was afraid shopping would cause his testosterone levels to plummet. I can tell by the way his familiar slanted dark eyes blink repeatedly that he has just noticed me as well.

  I expect him to pretend he doesn’t see me and keep walking, turn around, or duck into a store. Instead, he heads directly for me, stopping so close to the woman who crashed into me that their shoulders touch.

  “Jill,” he says.

  “Nico.” It comes out as barely a whisper. His usual five o’clock shadow is gone. In its place is a full mustache and goatee. They make him look older because several gray hairs are mixed among the black.

  He places his hand on the small of the woma
n’s back. My knees buckle as I study her face. Bonnie, the Namaste Nitwit. It’s just my freaking luck that the idiot who smashes into me is her. I look back toward Nico. He’s wearing a dark blue ski coat with the Ralph Lauren Polo logo that I have never seen before and is most definitely not his style. Nitwit here must have picked it out for him. Holy hell! What’s that in his hand? It’s a small pink bag from Victoria’s Secret. Why did I have to see that?

  “You two know each other?” Bonnie, the brain surgeon, asks.

  “This is Jillian,” Nico says. He makes a soft clicking noise with his tongue. It’s a tic he has the rare times he loses his composure. I doubt anyone else has ever noticed it.

  Bonnie swipes a piece of blond hair away from her eye. “Oh!”

  Oh? What does that mean? What did he tell her about me?

  “I’m Bonnie,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”

  No! It’s not nice to meet you. “The contest winner,” I say.

  “Nico’s girlfriend,” she corrects.

  Nico stares down at the floor of the mall. It occurs to me that if I say anything else, it will somehow be a subject of discussion on Monday’s talk show. Heck, if Nico tells Branigan he saw me, Branigan will spin it as evidence of stalking, even though we’re less than ten minutes from where I live and almost thirty minutes from Nico’s new apartment. I have to get out of here. “I have to run,” I say.

  Nico’s standing directly in front of me, blocking my path. “Excuse me,” I say, trying to sound confident as I step around him.

  “Well, that was awkward,” I hear Bonnie say with her hiccup-like laugh.

  By the time I make it to the other end of the mall, I’m shaking. I plop down on a bench next to the toy store and wait for Rachel. I’m keeping an eye on the direction I came from to make sure Nico and Bonnie aren’t coming my way, so I miss Rachel exiting the store. “Who are you looking for?” she asks.

  “Nico and his new girlfriend. I just ran into them. Literally.”

  “Nico’s here? At the mall?”

  I nod. “Shopping at Victoria’s Secret.” My voice breaks as I say it.