The line at the cash register at the Starbuck’s is snaking out the door. I take another sip of my hot chocolate, which is no longer hot. I’ve been sitting at my table for so long the other patrons are giving me dirty looks. I do the only thing I can do. I look away.
“Being a concerned mother, I even went a step further,” I admit to Mackie after I’ve filled her in on my latest conversation with Natalie.
“At the risk of being too stalkeriffic, I tried surfing the Web to find Natalie’s profile on that Internet dating service she subscribes to. I didn’t have much luck. There was this one hot-looking guy listed, but he doesn’t make enough money.”
“Enough for you or for Natalie?” Mackie asks.
“His profile says he is looking for a woman between the ages of 19 and 51,” I report.
“Hey, we just make the cutoff,” Mackie replies, her voice perking up an octave.
“He reminds me of Ricardo, the man who fixed my washing machine yesterday,” I muse, biting my bottom lip.
“Ricardo? You two are on a first-name basis?” Mackie sounds suspicious.
“Well, yes, he’s very interesting. He told me how he escaped from Chile on a cargo ship. He’s going to school to learn English. He can speak it but can’t write it.”
“You learned all that on a service call? So what are you telling me, that you’re interested in the Maytag repairman?”
“Just to look, mind you. You know how lonely these washing machine repairmen can get. He has the most adorable little butt crack when he bends over behind the washer.”
“You’re hitting on the washing machine repairman?” Mackie sounds horrified. “This is serious. We need to find you a hobby, or you need to start wearing a warning sign that says, ‘Dangerous when bored.’ Natalie’s right. You obviously don’t have enough going on in your life. And she’ll flip out if she finds out you’re looking up her profile. Besides, what does she need with a dating service when she has Greg?”
“True, but as long as she’s looking, I need to know what’s out there, to see what she’s up against.” I continue to vet the candidates on my laptop as Mackie listens politely, secure in the delusion that my daughter and her son are ultimately headed for matrimonial bliss.
“The best match I found was a guy named Danny Fier. He’s pre-med at the University of Florida.”
“What does it say about his perfect first date?” Mackie wants to know. “You have nothing to fear but Fier itself?”
“Okay, then what about a guy who says he likes to work outdoors with his hands?”
“Beware of men wielding power tools,” Mackie cautions. “Everyone knows power tools are just penis extensions.”
“Mackie, you’re outrageous!” That is one of the things I love about my best friend. Nobody has ever accused me of being outrageous. But that is all about to change.
“I did find another attractive guy, but there’s a red flag,” I point out. “It says his hobby is decoupage.”
“Doing decoupage is not a red flag,” Mackie objects. “It’s a frigging deal breaker.”
“Well, then, what about a handsome man in uniform? He’s in ROTC. You know he has to be brave to be willing to defend his country.”
“Hmm,” Mackie says thoughtfully. “ROTC...isn’t that for boys who need structure and like to kill?”
I hesitate. “Maybe I should let Natalie find her own dates. I think I’ve passed on enough advice to my daughter for one week.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that you’re great at giving advice but you just can’t take it?” Mackie asks, with what sounds to me like latent hostility. Met with a stony silence (she knows I don’t like to be criticized), she tries to lighten the mood. “By the way, have you passed on the secret ingredient in your grandfather’s brisket recipe?”
“Not yet. Natalie isn’t interested in cooking.”
“She takes after her mother.”
“I can cook—when I want to,” I object.
“Frozen pizza,” Mackie says.
“Matt won’t even eat that anymore. He has an aversion to anything that might be convenient for me. You have to admit, I do make a great brisket!”
“Yes, you do,” Mackie concedes, trying to wriggle her way back into my good graces. “And hey, I know I’m not family, but after all these years, I think I deserve to know what the secret ingredient is.”
Mackie is closer than family, and I tell her everything, well almost everything. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to tell her how bad things have gotten between Matt and me in the bedroom, or about Natalie’s battle with anorexia, and keeping those secrets is killing me. I don’t know who I am trying to maintain the illusion for, Mackie or myself. But in any event, she is like the sister I never had, so she deserves to know. About the brisket, not the bedroom.
“Chewing tobacco,” I whisper conspiratorially into the cell phone.
“Are you serious?”
“I am. My grandfather always had a cheek full of chewing tobacco, and my grandmother swore he spit some into the brisket to add flavor.”
“Remind me never to eat brisket at your house again.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve always heard. But you’re safe. I substitute Worcestershire sauce.”
Now I am considering a substitute for the man in my life.
Matt says I have no goals. But he’s wrong. My goal is to achieve closure. In this world, that is very difficult, maybe even impossible, to accomplish. Bottom line—nothing can ever be accomplished in the first go-round. Everything has to be redone. As a result, there is never any closure.
Take, for example, the call on my answering machine urging me to call the Breast Health Center right away because there was an area on my mammogram that required further evaluation. The radiologist recommended I return for special views of my left breast. If I want special views, I can get a room with a balcony on a Mediterranean cruise.
The message said I needed to come in for a follow-up mammogram and possible ultrasound. Which meant another visit for additional imaging. Lucky for me the results of the further evaluation turned out to be normal.
And of course there was that horrible month that I was considering a hysterectomy. Or rather, my doctor was considering giving me one.
“You’re in a lot of pain,” I remember him saying as he bobbed his head with all the sympathy of a politician’s nod.
“I’m not in any pain,” I disagreed, interrupting his unimpressive flow of empathy.
“But you are experiencing heavy bleeding,” he reasoned.
“I’m not experiencing any bleeding,” I protested, in case he was looking for my opinion, which he wasn’t. Hello, are you even listening to me?
“You have a growth the size of a small grapefruit in your uterus...it measures seven centimeters!”
I couldn’t relate to that concept. I had been told to avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice because it reacts negatively with the medicine I take to reduce my cholesterol.
“I read that tumors can dissolve,” I offered hopefully.
“Reading can be dangerous to your health. I’m your doctor, and I recommend an operation right away.”
Then, as a casual aside, he remarked, “You don’t really need your uterus anyway. You already have two children. At your age, you don’t want any more.”
Well, what if I do want more? And anyway, you’re a man—translation: moron—so how could you possibly know whether or not I still need my uterus? It’s a part of me and I still want it, whether I need it or not.
“What I want,” I calmly told my doctor, clenching my teeth, “is to be able to have that choice.”
So I went for a second opinion, which of course meant a second appointment, this time with a female gynecologist. Believe me, it was a lot more complicated than having my washing machine fixed. In the final analysis, the radiologist who read the ultrasound confirmed that, in fact, I didn’t have a growth. Apparently, it had disappeared. It was a miracle. I still believe in them,
even at my age.
“Could it have dissolved?” I asked Dr. Second Opinion.
“Of course,” she replied.
So I changed doctors and kept my working parts intact, just in case. Closure, at last.
Now that I’m planning my son’s wedding, I can’t help flashing back to the time I married Matt and put an end to the life I thought I was meant to have with Manny Gellar. No matter how much, in my imagination, I try to reengineer the twists and turns of my life, or how much I’m eaten up with regret, I can’t alter that outcome. Or achieve closure.
At my age, closure is an extremely important concept. Because—let’s face it—I’m running out of time here.
Closure. That’s what this trip to Palm Coast tomorrow is all about. Knowing that I’m about to reconnect with my old boyfriend while I’m still married—no matter how much I rationalize that Matt has driven me to it—poses a question I’ve been grappling with for days and still haven’t resolved.
If I could, I’d fix what is wrong with my marriage and put it back the way it was before, as easily as Ricardo fixed my washing machine. Before Matt yanked me out of Miami by my roots, as if I were a noxious weed he was tossing out of a flower garden, and carelessly transplanted us to Atlanta. Before we moved a state away from my family and my best friend and a business I’d worked a lifetime to create.
Before Matt sold his freight-expediting business to a German conglomerate for mega-millions and agreed to run the company for them from Atlanta for the next two years, barely consulting me. Before the German occupation, or rather before he became preoccupied with his sexy-sounding German second-in-command, Gretchen. Before he stopped sleeping with me in the biblical sense. Before I turned fifty.
From my experience in the jewelry business, I know that precious gems and metals may sparkle and appear perfect on the outside. But at fifty, I’m finding that, more often than not, there are flaws and inclusions if you look beneath the surface. And soul-searching involves a heavy dose of looking beneath the surface.
I’ve been so busy fretting over the pros and cons of this trip to Palm Coast and thinking about the kids, the wedding, the viper Gretchen, and how out of hand things have gotten with Matt in the bedroom, that I have somehow lost the core of myself. Or maybe I’m just trying to justify the actions I know I’m about to take.
I’m not just some pathetic, premenopausal woman reacting to the fact that she will never again have sex in her life. Or that sneaking around behind my husband’s back isn’t taking its toll on me.
All I really want is closure. I’m convinced that meeting Manny Gellar again is the only way I will ever come full circle and reconnect with my life, maybe find my way back to Matt.
Tomorrow, I’ll be one step closer to closure.
Chapter Two:
Hormones Trump Hurricanes
[email protected]: Matt’s been talking to some chick in Germany named Gretchen. She calls at all hours of the night. They seem to be joined at the hip and who knows what other body parts. Apparently they’ve formed their own European Union. He says it’s just business, but it sounds more like monkey business to me.
[email protected]: Maybe she calls late at night because of the time difference.
[email protected]: Too convenient.
[email protected]: She’s probably some mousy-looking fräulein with glasses.
[email protected]: I wear glasses. And she doesn’t sound mousy-looking. She sounds...irresistible. Like some sleek, cream-swallowing cat. She purrs.
[email protected]: In German?
[email protected]: Yes!
[email protected]: Did you listen in?
[email protected]: They were speaking German!
[email protected]: I didn’t know Matt spoke German.
[email protected]: Neither did I. There’s a lot I don’t know about Matt. My mother said he ordered an exquisite piece of diamond jewelry from Stones, and he was so anxious to get it, he had her ship it to Germany.
[email protected]: Matt never buys you jewelry.
[email protected]: Bingo. That’s why I think Gretchen is getting my diamonds!
[email protected]: If that’s true, she’s getting something much more valuable.
[email protected]: I thought Matt was different. But he’s just like all the rest of those snakes who come into my shop hiding their dirty little secrets; looking for the perfect diamond for the perfect mistress or the not-so-perfect parting gifts for the wives they’ve grown tired of who don’t have a clue they’re about to be sacked. The stinker is cheating on me. He’s buying diamonds for Gretchen, from my mother!
[email protected]: Matt would never cheat on you. He’s not wired that way.
[email protected]: He’s a man, isn’t he?
****
My hand is trembling. In it is an unopened RSVP, from the fräulein, received in the mail today after I got back from Starbucks. I know it’s from Gretchen because it has a Berlin postmark. Okay, so now is the moment of truth. Is she or is she not coming to my son’s wedding? I’ll never know if I don’t open the envelope. If Matt has the audacity to flaunt his colleague/lover in my face by asking me to invite her to his son’s wedding, then I should have the courage to open this stupid reply.
When my husband told me to include his business associate Gretchen Kleinmann on the guest list, I had to ask, “What’s she like?”
“Very smart,” he’d answered.
“Pretty?”
“Yes.”
“On a scale of one to 10?”
“Do you want me to lie?”
“Yes,” I pouted. “No. Maybe.”
“She’s an unattractive spinster with no social life, so this wedding will be the highlight of her otherwise pitiful existence. How’s that?”
“Is it true?” When the question I really wanted to ask was, “Are you boinking Gretchen’s brains out?” But I didn’t want to hear him say: “Do you want me to lie?”
“No.”
So now I’m waiting for a drum roll, or at least an appearance by a representative from the firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers, responding to a call for “the envelope, please.” When no one and no sound comes forth, I tear it open.
Gretchen has underlined the appropriate spaces and written in the margins in broken English: Gretchen Kleinmann will be pleasured to attend.
That’s pleased, you bitch. I wander over to the living room and pick up the seating chart I left on the coffee table. Where can I place her? As far away from Matt as possible. Maybe at the kids’ table? Ha! Perfect.
Then I notice my answering machine flashing with three new messages.
“Mama. Just wanted to let you know that not only am I burning the candle at both ends but I’m also pushing the envelope. Ha. Ha. Bernard is going home again this weekend (dramatic pause) to break up with his girlfriend! Guess the jealousy thing worked. He says he can’t wait to get back to me. Thanks. Oh, and I want to bring him as my date to Josh and Zandy’s wedding. Bye. Love you.” Beep. Natalie.
“I know you don’t read the papers or listen to TV anymore and you don’t know what’s going on in the world, so I thought I’d tell you that there’s a killer hurricane heading to Palm Coast. I hope you’re not going anywhere near that place. Don’t go down there thinking you can call me for help if you get stranded. I have nothing to do with this hurricane. It’s run by God. Beep. My mother.
In case you don’t know, Sylvia Goldsmith and God are on a first-name basis, as in, “I was going to buy that Little Black Dress at Macy’s yesterday, but they don’t make the Little Black Dress in big sizes anymore. But God must have been looking out for me, because I waited until today and I found my size and it’s on sale!”
I’m sure God has better things to do than make sure the merchandise my mother wants is marked down at Macy’s.
“Hello, número uno. (My father always calls me his number one daughter, even though I am his only daughter.) “I have one word for you. Hegira.” Beep. My father.
My dad issued the obscure word
like a verbal challenge, stumping me again. I chuckled and took a second to look it up on the Internet. Hegira. Any flight or journey to a more desirable place. Maybe my father was trying to tell me something.
Mackie says I’m decathexing.
“Defecating?”
“No, that’s what we did the night before our colonoscopies. You’re experiencing decathexis.”
“Is that word even in the dictionary?”
“I assure you it really exists. I should know. My husband’s a psychiatrist. It’s when you’ve already left a place in your mind and moved on to your new destination, invested yourself in your new life.”
Is that what I’m doing by going to Palm Coast? Disengaging from my marriage? Hiding my head in the sand? People frequently accuse me of hiding my head in the sand to avoid life’s unpleasantries.
My mother, who believes she’s an authority on absolutely everything, thinks I have sand in my shoes.
“You were born in Florida and you’re trying to get back there—to the sun and the sea and the sand,” she says.
Well, actually, I am trying to get back there. But not just for the beach. I do crave the soothing feel of sun on my skin and the scratchy sensation of sand under my feet. And I don’t even mind the heat, if it comes with a sea breeze and a water view. But there’s something else—someone else—in Florida I crave. Or want to find out if I still crave after all these years. The someone who’s been on the back burner of my mind—the proverbial old flame who has chosen the perfect time in my life to turn up the heat.
It’s probably too late to call anyone back tonight, I rationalize. If I call my mother, she will immediately sense something is wrong, because besides being a conduit to God, that woman has X-ray vision, I’m convinced, and can see through telephone lines. If I tell her I am going to meet Manny Gellar, she will rat me out to Matt, because she and my husband are, and always have been, in cahoots.
Stones Page 2
