The Love Book

by Nina Solomon

  “Pardonnez-moi,” he said.

  Beatrice scowled at him; she hated being scrutinized. She covered the book with her tote bag.

  “Say, you look awfully familiar,” he said. “And I pride myself on never forgetting a face.”

  She peered over her half-glasses and examined his features. “People are always mistaking me for someone,” she said. “But I really don’t think we’ve ever met.” She continued the pretense of reading, but sneaked a look and the man was still staring at her. She would have changed seats, but the bus was completely full.

  “I’ve got it!” he said, hitting his forehead. “San Miguel. I used to go there with my late wife.”

  “Sorry, never been.”

  “Captiva Island?”

  She shook her head.

  “Long Boat Key Club?”

  “Still not ringing any bells. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Safari Man sat back. Beatrice had only a few moments of peace before he began pestering her again. “This is driving me crazy, I’m positive we’ve met. I’m Malcolm McBride.”

  “Holy mackerel!” she said. “I dated your brother in college.”

  “I told you I never forget a face!”

  “You’re Freddy’s little brother. The one who played hockey.”

  “One and the same,” he said. “And you’re Beatrice Callahan. As lovely as ever.”

  “What a small world. How is Freddy?”

  As Malcolm gave her the details of Freddy’s life—the kids, the wife, the seven grandchildren, the house in Bedford—along with his private number in case she wanted to get in touch with him, Beatrice slipped back into a time she’d all but forgotten, or at least had tried to forget, almost fifty years ago.

  She and Libby had bummed a ride from a girl at Holyoke up to Hanover for Winter Carnival. They thought the girl was “square,” but she did possess a functioning automotive vehicle and a valid driver’s license, so they ditched her as soon as they reached the green. Those were the days when Dartmouth was really the College on the Hill and the Seven Sisters its loyal sperm bank. She and Libby had found a bench downstairs at the DOC House on Occom Pond and laced up their skates. Beatrice had borrowed her mother’s white fur skating jacket, which she wore over a blue dirndl skirt. She’d done her hair in a neat pageboy, a hairdo that would be her signature look for decades to come. Some dork, who she later discovered was Freddy’s younger brother—Safari Man—brought them two mugs of hot cocoa laced with something and then stood there looking every bit the imbecile who’d swallowed his tongue. Hormones, they’ll be the death of us all. Party weekends with the Wah-Hoo-Wahs always involved pretty heavy drinking. Not a place for debuting debutantes if they knew better. Freddy pushed Malcolm aside and pulled her onto the ice without even asking her name, and a bit later, after they were just tight enough, they skated down to the darkened end, where his frat brothers had sawed through six inches of ice. There they stripped to their birthday suits, took a few fortifying shots, and did The Dip. The rest was history. They dated for three years. At the end of his senior year he proposed, but Freddy’s mother said Beatrice would never fit into Highland Park society, no matter how smartly she was dressed, so the engagement was put on “hold.” When Freddy didn’t stand up to his mother, Beatrice took a job as a clerk to a district court judge in Albany. The next fall she enrolled in law school. She’d spent years resenting Freddy’s snooty mother, but in a way she owed her entire career to her. If she had a drink she’d raise her glass. Here’s to you, Mama Evil.

  “Where are you headed?” Malcolm asked.

  “Black River. You?”

  “Cape May for the fall hawk migration. Hoping to see some osprey too.”

  “That explains the outfit.” Beatrice flipped open her phone, which had begun to vibrate.

  Malcolm adjusted the collar on his safari jacket. “Are you a birder?” he asked.

  “Oh my heavens, no!”

  “We’re not a bad sort,” Malcolm said. “You just have to get used to us.”

  “I didn’t—I mean, I wasn’t talking about you. It’s my friend Libby. She’s been in a terrible accident.”

  * * *

  Cathy’s deviled eggs were always a big hit at parties and church dinners, and were also, along with her spaghetti casserole, a Thanksgiving favorite, so she made an extra dozen for the Soul Mate Soirée. All three women had accepted the invitation. She decorated the eggs with pimento hearts then arranged them on a pink daisy platter, which she hid on the bottom shelf in the refrigerator where she hoped her father wouldn’t find them. She knew there would be a few missing in the morning, despite his doctor’s strict orders.

  She tested the flameless tea lights (she wasn’t taking any chances on burning down her father’s house too), and plugged in a rose-patchouli air freshener, which she bought only after extensive research and was satisfied her fear that they were a fire hazard had been proven unfounded. She surveyed the room. Everything was perfect for tomorrow’s party. Now, if only the ladies could keep on schedule, soul mate–wise. She did the calculations: if they met every two weeks, skipping New Year’s Eve, of course, the final Soul Mate Soirée would be the day before Valentine’s Day, when, providing everything went as planned, all of them, even Max, would be with their soul mates. Talk about divine timing! Cathy had already bought a set of pink satin sheets and a blue terry cloth robe as visual representations of her beloved’s imminent arrival. With a little luck she could have the robe monogrammed with a certain fireman’s initials before long.

  Satisfied, she went to get dressed for her date with Sean. She’d done several days of “prepaving,” putting forth her intention for a wonderful night, down to the smallest detail, from imagining the kiss on the porch to doing a “sensualization” of the two of them watching their first child sleeping in a wicker bassinet. She’d be an inspiration. Nothing was more powerful than being a living, breathing example of love fulfilled.

  Her father was standing by the window when she came downstairs. “You look like your mother more and more every day.”

  Even though he was smiling, Cathy could detect a mournful quality in his voice. “You’re having quite a crowd for your ladies’ lunch tomorrow, I see.”

  “Just a few women I met on the bike trip.”

  “Your mother, God rest her soul, used to send me on an errand when she had her bridge club. Don’t worry, I’ll make myself scarce. I’ll go to the lodge.”

  “No, I’d like you to meet them,” she said.

  It was true; she’d been wanting her father to find a female companion, and now that the soirée had been relocated to his house, there might just be an opportunity. He and Beatrice would be perfect for each other. Yet another manifestation of synchronicity thanks to the fire!

  “Dinner’s in the oven,” she said. “I made your favorite, stuffed shells.”

  “You’re spoiling me. I’ll never let you go at this rate.”

  She gave her father a kiss. “I won’t be late. I have my phone if you need me.”

  “Just have fun, Princess,” he said, suppressing a cough. His breath smelled like cherry lozenges.

  Suddenly, her feet felt nailed to the carpet. “I can cancel if you want.”

  “I wouldn’t hear of it. Now go. You don’t want to keep Mr. Wunderbar waiting.”

  * * *

  On her way to the fire station, she recited her love mantra: Men are attracted to me like bees to honey. I am a magnet for love. I was born to be loved, treasured, and adored. And so it is!

  She’d left early. She was not a good navigator, and lo and behold, even with the GPS her father had won at the church raffle, she found herself driving around in circles and only getting more and more lost.

  The third time she passed the same general store, she unplugged the GPS and went in to ask for directions. The store smelled like cinnamon. Jars of penny candy lined the shelves behind the counter.

  “Welcome to Bixby’s. Can I help you, ma’am?” the clerk asked.r />
  She wasn’t used to being called ma’am, especially not by someone around her own age. It made her feel ancient although she was only thirty-two. Her father and his friends still treated her like she was that sweet ten-year-old who worked the register at her father’s secondhand bookstore on school holidays.

  “Can you tell me how to get to the fire station?” she asked.

  “It’s about a mile up. Go straight until you hit Union Street, then make a right and it will be on the next corner across from the post office. If you pass a KFC you’ve gone too far.”

  She was already completely turned around, but she didn’t want him to think she was the cliché clueless female driver, even though that was exactly what she was.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Left at the second stop sign?”

  “Maybe I should draw you a map. I’d take you there myself if I wasn’t the only one here. My brother works at that firehouse.”

  She looked at the guy’s name tag. “Sean O’Dardy?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “I have a date with him tonight,” she said.

  He lit up. “Are you that cat lady whose house burned down last week?”

  Cathy nodded.

  “He said you were cute, but he didn’t do you justice.”

  She was trying to process the cat lady comment. She didn’t think of Mrs. Beasley as just a cat. More of a spiritual companion. A few months after her mother died, Cathy had gone to the mall and there was Mrs. Beasley in a Bideawee adoption trailer outside the pet store. She purred when Cathy put her hand through the cage to pet her. From that moment, she knew they were meant for each other. That was sixteen years ago.

  “Sean hasn’t stopped talking about you. Can you believe what a killing he made on that grenade extinguisher?”

  “A killing?” she asked, wondering what he’d blown up.

  “Yeah, somebody paid twenty-five hundred dollars for it.”

  “He sold it?”

  “On eBay.”

  “How could he do that?”

  “Easy. He sells lots of things on eBay. There was a bidding war. Isn’t that jim-dandy?”

  “Yeah, you could say that again,” Cathy said, turning to leave.

  “Hey, don’t you want the map?”

  “No, that’s okay, I don’t need it anymore.”

  * * *

  Beatrice was waiting until Libby fell asleep in her hospital room at Saint Claire’s before she went in search of the cafeteria for a cup of dross. What she really needed was a drink. The half bottle of Merlot hadn’t even made a dent. It wasn’t easy to see Libby in a full body brace, but she’d tried to put on a brave front. The prognosis was two weeks of bed rest, then months of physical therapy, and still no guarantee that she’d regain full mobility. But she was alive and as feisty as ever and that’s all that mattered. She laughed when Beatrice read her Cathy’s chipper daily inspirational message: What you give out, the universe gives back to you. If you want love, you have to give love. If you want health, you have to feel health. By this logic Libby had caused her own accident, and in that case Beatrice was in for a doozie. In the last half hour, though, Libby had started to get maudlin, which Beatrice attributed to the drugs.

  “It’s true, Bea. We’re all alone. And it serves us right for being so darn independent. There’s no one to take care of us when we need them.”

  “Look, Libby, I’m here, and if you want some practical advice, you should try not to fall off a horse, let alone get on one again. Once you’re up and around you’ll realize how fortunate you are to be unencumbered. No ingrate children to ask you to cosign car loans or insufferable dinners with in-laws. You’ve got nieces and nephews, but even they can be tiresome. How many school productions of Guys and Dolls can one person go to? You should thank your lucky stars. You have a career, an extended family of good friends and colleagues. A husband? What for? So he could criticize the way you cook, or iron his shirts? Be careful what you wish for. I sure don’t want to be anyone’s nursemaid, or burden for that matter.”

  Finally, Libby closed her eyes and Beatrice slipped out. Prepared for a tasteless cup of tepid coffee, a Starbucks kiosk just meters away from her looked like a mirage.

  “You don’t happen to have a bottle of Baileys back there, do you?” she asked the young man at the counter.

  “The closest we have is hazelnut liqueur. But there’s no alcohol in it. I can whip you up a mocha cookie crumble if you like. It’s insane.”

  Her usual inclination would have been to say something snarky. But he was looking at her with such an earnest expression—as if giving her what she wanted was actually important to him, that the only thing that mattered was that the one thousand–calorie dessert masquerading as coffee please her—she just couldn’t do it. He was only a kid, probably nineteen at the most.

  “Never mind. I’ll take a tall coffee. Black. No sugar.”

  As she sipped her coffee, Libby’s words were still rocking around in her head, and no matter how much internal shooing she did, they refused to budge. We’re born alone, we die alone. That was what Albert always said. All else is vanity and vexation. And he’d done just that, died alone in a Four Seasons after a three-course dinner. Beatrice hadn’t gone to the funeral, not out of respect for the grieving widow, who knew all about her, turning a blind eye every time Albert “missed” the last train from Rensselaer Station, but because she thought funerals were morbid.

  Had it really been ten years?

  She threw her empty cup in the trash and then, like a case study in point-of-purchase marketing, impulsively grabbed from the display a CD of Elizabethan madrigals and a bag of peppermint malted milk balls. She pulled some bills out of her wallet, but the kid behind the counter waved her off.

  “It’s on me. You remind me of my grandmother. She loved malted milk balls. Hope whoever you’re visiting feels better.”

  The kid gave her a high-beam smile she couldn’t help returning. It was probably just some mirror neurons on the fritz—monkey see, monkey do—but it warmed her from the inside out, better than a good shot of whiskey. He could be her grandson and for some reason she didn’t find the thought all that objectionable.

  In the elevator she looked at the back of the CD. Coincidentally, the very first track was a song that Freddy and the Aires, the Dartmouth a cappella group, used to sing at Christmastime: “Lirum, Lirum.” She couldn’t believe she still remembered the first line: You that wont to my pipe’s sound. As soon as she stepped off the elevator she dialed Freddy’s private number.

  “Freddy . . . it’s Beatrice.”

  “Beatrice, well now, it has been a day or so.”

  * * *

  Cathy’s father had left the yellow bug light on. She felt like a teenager breaking curfew, something she’d never done, as she sneaked around back and sat on the swinging bench, careful not to let the hinges squeak. She was planning to stay out there until eleven, the time she would have gotten home had she gone on the date with Sean. The last thing she wanted was to cause her father any needless worry that yet another man had disappointed his daughter.

  The porch wrapped around the side of the house like an embrace. Her mother used to complain about the no-see-ums getting in, so her father had replaced the screens with a finer mesh. Now the porch was impervious not only to all manner of flying things, but to summer breezes too, and Cathy was convinced it was harder to smell the honeysuckle.

  Her father had always been overprotective, but he’d become even more so after her fiancé left her at the altar five years ago. If he had his druthers, he would keep her behind glass like one of his rare books in a climate-controlled environment away from natural light, not in a lending library where she was prey to the plight of dirty fingers, tattered pages, and a broken spine. But there were other perils even more insidious than an infestation of mites or silverfish—those dreaded mildew spores, or books being consumed by acid page by page until eventually disintegrating to dust, for which there was no defense. So, for a
father and true book lover, there was little reason to be sanguine. Either option was fraught with potential disaster.

  For a moment, as she sat on the swinging bench, it seemed like the porch was swinging and she was stationary, a feeling that persisted as she entered the house and tiptoed past the den where her father was dozing in his recliner. An infomercial was playing about a spray-on product for bald spots. She deleted Sean’s three voice mail messages without listening to them then went upstairs. So much for Mr. Wonderful.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TUNNEL VISION

  MAX HAD BEEN A TOMBOY HER ENTIRE LIFE. Still, she knew how to put herself together when the occasion required. Like tonight. In order to make some extra money, she’d been hostessing at Philomel, a chichi restaurant on East Fifty-seventh Street. Tight and short, the owner had suggested, and a pair of killer heels; the tips would be worth it. The heels were where Max drew the line. She wouldn’t compromise her feet for the sake of a few dollars more in tips from some drunken, hot-to-trot businessman, so she wore her biker boots over a pair of fishnets. But judging from the tips she’d been collecting, it turned out the tough-girl look was pretty popular with slimeballs too.

  The subway was surprisingly empty for a Friday evening. Two little girls in matching white cardigans and Mary Janes were playing with a gyroscope. Their mother, laden with pink Conway bags, seemed totally oblivious to the degenerate exposing himself three seats down. What was it about New York City that attracted these creeps? Ever since she’d gotten back from Normandy, they seemed to be coming out of the woodwork. Did the unseasonably warm weather cause miscreants to multiply faster than mealworms in a science experiment? The woman finally noticed the flasher and pulled her young daughters to the far end of the car. When the train pulled into the station, Max glared at the man until he zipped his fly. If she ever had a daughter, she’d teach her to kick ass, just like Calvin had taught her.