Matchmaking for Beginners

by Maddie Dawson

  I open the door, and Sammy runs into my arms. Jessica told me that I’ve inherited him along with the house. Then he goes over and hugs Lola, too, and Jessica dabs at her eyes and blows kisses, and once we’re all hugged and they’re on their way, Lola looks at me and says, “So do you think you love him?”

  At first I think she means Sammy, but then I know what she really means.

  “Who? Noah? No. You can’t be serious! No!”

  “It’s okay if you do,” she says. “Love is so complicated, isn’t it? You probably had him figured out and filed away, and then look what happened: Blix gave you this house, and railroaded you right back with your ex! Damnedest thing in the world. Unintended consequences, I call it.”

  “But I don’t love him.”

  “No, but you’re sleeping with him,” she says. “So there’s that.”

  “Oh God. You can tell?”

  She nods. “So, if I may ask, what happened to the guy back home?”

  I groan. “He’s still hanging in there. Listen, I’m just bad, I tell you. I was always the good girl who did everything she was supposed to. And now every day I tell myself that I’m not going to have anything to do with Noah again, and then at night . . . I don’t know . . .”

  She smiles at me. “I get it. You’re just having that year of life when you’re like a magnet. Sweetie, you’re attracting everything to you. Situations and lovers and life—you’re pulling stuff in all over the place! It’s my theory that everybody gets one of those years. It passes, don’t worry.”

  “It’s not dangerous? Because it feels kind of awful.”

  “Well. If you stop at one year, then it’s not dangerous. How old are you anyway?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Perfect! See? You’re going to be fine. It’ll run its course, trust me,” she says. “And just so you know, I think Blix approves of this.”

  I look at her closely while I’m stirring cream and sugar into my coffee. “So . . . am I allowed to ask about the man who comes and picks you up? The man with the New Jersey plates? Is that the love you wanted to talk to me about?”

  She scowls at me. “Well, yes. But first you need to know that he’s not anywhere close to being somebody I could ever love.”

  “No?”

  “Marnie, he was my husband’s best friend.”

  “So . . . ?”

  She purses her lips. “Can’t you see what’s wrong with that? I can’t believe you matchmaking people! Do you have any scruples?”

  “Clearly I don’t. But I don’t see why this—”

  “Okay, I’ll explain it all to you. Blix sent him to me. She told me as much. With all her little tricks and sending out vibes into the universe. Whatever. She said she was going to work on finding me a man to love, even though I said I didn’t need one, and time passes, and one day, out of the blue, I get a call from William Sullivan. William Sullivan, my husband’s best friend! Wants to see me. Catch up. Old times. You know. Has no idea that he’s the subject of any kind of vibe being sent out! He just shows up.”

  I look at her blankly. “And . . . ?”

  “And, Marnie, this is never going to work because I can’t be romantically involved with William! He was like a brother to my husband! Walter and I used to go on family picnics with him and his kids and his wife!”

  “He has a wife?”

  “Had. He’s a widower. Patricia, her name was. Perfectly lovely woman. And I am not going to kiss her husband.”

  “Does he want kissing? Maybe he wants a nice friendship, too.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes we’ll be sitting in his car, and at a certain point I can feel his hand start to crawl along the back of the seat—in a very suggestive way.”

  “Wait. It crawls?” I am fascinated with everything about this story, and also intrigued with Lola’s animated face, turning pinker and pinker, and then the spirals of sparkles distracting me by going off behind her head.

  “You know how they do,” she says. “How a man will just snake his hand along the back of the seat, thinking he’s being so innocent, but clearly he’s intending to put his arm around you. To pull you in! And he gets this shy, sort of sly look on his face. It’s awful. Just awful. I’m embarrassed for him really.”

  I burst out laughing. “Lola, really? Snakes? And his crawling hand? Do you hear yourself? It sounds to me like it might be lovely, talking to somebody who knew you from before. He’s safe. He knows you. He likes you.” She is glaring at me, so I say, “But if you don’t want him, then why are we spending so much time talking about him?”

  “Because I saw you looking the other day when he came to pick me up, and I know you’re like Blix, and I want you to stop thinking everything you’re thinking about William and me. Just stop it. Blix thinks everybody should be like her and Houndy. If you’ve lost your partner, get another one. As if everybody’s replaceable.”

  “Huh,” I say.

  She looks at me. “I was happily married for forty-two years and that chapter of my life is over. Who needs it? Who needs the bother of it? I’ve got my television programs and my bridge club ladies and the neighbors who come by, and the people at church—and do I really need to take a chance on some other man? Right now I’ve got everything just the way I like it. I told Blix I don’t need another man. Somebody with opinions I’d have to pay attention to.”

  “Soooo . . . I take it this didn’t sit too well with her?”

  She shakes her finger at me, and there’s an explosion of sparks all around her. “Let me tell you something about Blix. Blix the adventurer! I’m quite sure she still thinks that someday she and Houndy and this man, William Sullivan, and I are going to be frolicking around together in the afterlife—and we are so not, because when I’m in the afterlife, I’m going to be over in Walter’s corner, sipping tea with him and not having to explain to him that I have a second husband who happens to be his old friend.”

  For a moment my mind is boggled with this view of the afterlife, in which we’re all traipsing around between little bistro tables where our old friends and lovers are drinking their tea and noticing who we’re talking to more than them. It sounds so much like eighth grade.

  “That can’t be what it’s like!” I say. “And don’t you really think that if it is, both Walter and William Sullivan will be evolved enough to want to know that you can sit with both of them at the same table in the afterlife—you and everybody else they ever loved? I think that’s what the afterlife is going to be all about—that’s when we’re finally going to understand all the love stuff that confuses us now. It’s going to be magnificent, all the Walters and Williams and Lolas and Blixes and Houndys all together!”

  I look over at her: all the color has left her face, and in a low, panicky voice, she says, “Marnie. Oh, no! I can’t breathe so well, and my heart is . . .”

  And then, almost in slow motion, she falls right over.

  Patrick takes one look at her and says she has to go to the hospital.

  By the time he gets upstairs, of course, she’s come to, and is even arguing about things. She wants to go home and get in bed.

  But he’s not having it.

  She needs to go to the hospital, he says. Find out what’s going on.

  “What could it be?” she says in a wavery voice. She looks so nervous, it’s like she’s a little child dressed in a grandma costume, perhaps to be in a play.

  “Well,” he says, “it could be nothing, or it could be you drank too much coffee, or it could be . . . something they’ll want to help you with.” He’s already calling 911.

  Our eyes meet, and he smiles at me. She makes little murmuring sounds of distress.

  “Marnie, are you going with her to the hospital, do you think?”

  “Of course,” I say. I know that Patrick can’t go. He’d have a meltdown in a medical place, among strangers. He mouths the words “Thank you” and then he’s talking to the dispatcher.

  While he’s on the phone, she gives me specific
directions for what items she needs, and I go next door and get her pocketbook and her warm jacket, both of which just happen to be in her bedroom. No clothing because she won’t be staying—she’s positive of that.

  I love how her house is dark and cool and filled with large pieces of old-people upholstered furniture, grandparent furniture. It’s like a cave in here, with the shades all pulled down. There are tons of pictures of her and Walter and their two boys set out on every surface and hanging on the walls—Lola with red, fluffy hair cut in layers like petals, and Walter a slim, handsome man with laughing eyes. The boys look just like boys of any era: crew-cutted and freckled, wearing striped T-shirts, grinning at the camera, and then turning into handsome teenagers and finally bridegrooms—and then there are snapshots of them with their families. Far away.

  There’s a framed portrait of Walter next to her bed, and I pick it up and look at his aquiline nose, his blue eyes. “Walter,” I tell him. “You old rascal, you know as well as I do that you’ve got to give her a sign you release her, don’t you? You and I both know she needs the love and care of your old friend now.”

  When I turn, I notice the little gold sparkles are back, showing up tentatively around the curtains, like little fireflies at dusk.

  I’m no maga, but it does seem to be kind of a coincidence that all those sparkles showed up right when we were getting to the heart of love in the afterlife.

  I come home from the hospital that evening to find a dog on the stairs—or rather, the stoop. He’s lying there at the top, and when I reach him, he stands up and wags his tail and licks my hand, like I’m his owner and he’s been told to stay there until I return, and now his whole body is vibrating and saying, AT LAST YOU ARE HERE! HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY TO FIND YOU AT LAST, YOU WONDERFUL, BEAUTIFUL, KIND, ELEGANT CREATURE OF LOVE AND BY THE WAY DO YOU KNOW HOW TO OPERATE A CAN OPENER?

  “No,” I tell him. “I am not looking for a dog. I am moving back to Florida in another two months, and I can’t take you with me.”

  He looks away and then looks back at me. I search through my purse for my keys, glancing over at Lola’s dark house. The hospital is keeping her for a few days, so tomorrow morning I’m to take her a change of clothes, a decent nightgown, and some toiletries. She’ll be fine for tonight, she told me in a quavery voice that had a distinct “not fine” undertone. Still, she is being brave. She has a room overlooking the river, and a roommate who likes the same television programs as she does. I sat in a chair next to her and didn’t leave until they made me.

  The dog makes a little sound and licks my hand with his soft, pink tongue.

  I stare at him helplessly. I know exactly nothing about dogs except that they are dirty and they like to eat things, particularly human shoes. This one is a medium-sized brown-and-white one with floppy ears and big brown eyes, and when I open the front door, he bounds inside like he knows where the bones are hidden.

  He hasn’t been here for five minutes when some switch in his doggie brain gets activated, and suddenly he’s dashing through the rooms, racing around in circles, leaping up on the couch and off again, zooming up the stairs, then down again, zigzagging through the bedrooms, and back into the living room. I can do nothing but stand by in amazement, leaping out of his way when necessary, and then finally laughing so hard I have to run to the bathroom.

  Later, because he seems hungry, I go over to Paco’s and buy some dog food and ask if anybody might know who he belongs to.

  “A brown-and-white dog with floppy ears? I think he’s your dog,” says Paco with a laugh. “At least now he is. No, seriously. He’s a stray. He hang around here sometimes and then go somewhere else for a while, but he always show up again.”

  Great. So he’s a freelance dog. Available on the open market. Everybody in the store has advice for how much to feed him and how to check him for fleas and ticks, and then in the back, it turns out, Paco has shelves with dog collars and one leash, so I buy those, too. As well as a water dish and a food dish. A brush to brush him with. Just because.

  “And I’d give that boy a bath before you let him up on the furniture,” says a woman who’s carrying a fat, smiling, drooling baby.

  So when I get home, even though I’m exhausted, I fill up the bathtub with warm water and put towels down all across the bathroom floor. I get out my bottle of shampoo and go out in the hallway and say, “Here boy, here boy!” and Mr. Floppy Ears comes crashing around the corner and into the bathroom, where I scoop him up and try to lower him into the tub. He is having none of it. You would think I’d decided to drown him by the way he thrashes around and tries to use my body to help himself climb back out.

  “It’s okay . . . it’s okay . . . ,” I keep saying, but he is all wild-eyed, panting, and scrambling now to get out of the tub, churning up the water until I’m hit with a tidal wave so huge that even as it’s soaking me, I’m laughing. This doggie, this bath—both are such antidotes to the earnest, businesslike, life-saving hospital with all its protocols and forms, all the danger lurking right around the next doorway.

  “Okay! Okay! You gotta stop with this!” I say to him, and then clamber into the tub with him, still wearing my jeans and sweater, and he settles right down, as if even he is amazed at such craziness. He stands still then while I lather him up and scratch his ears, and he’s panting and I’m trying not to get soap in his eyes and scare him even further. Then he gives me his paw, almost like an offering. A handshake of thanks.

  That’s how Noah finds us when he opens the bathroom door—both of us in the tub, covered in soapsuds, the dog with his head propped on the side of the tub, looking contented.

  “What the hell?” Noah says. “What is this?”

  “This is my new dog. I think I’m going to name him Bedford. It’s my favorite avenue, I’ve decided.”

  “Wait. You bought a dog?”

  “No and yes. I didn’t buy him. He picked me, as it turns out. He was on the stoop when I got home. Waiting for me. And I do have a favorite avenue. Bedford is everything Driggs Avenue wishes it could be.”

  “Oh my God. Who are you, really? I don’t even know you anymore.”

  “I’m me. And I’m giving him a bath so he can sleep on the bed. A lady at Paco’s said I had to.”

  “I’m sorry, but that mutt is not sleeping with me in any bed.”

  I smile at him. Because that’s just fine with me. I had already decided today that I am going to try not to sleep with Noah Spinnaker anymore. After he closes the bathroom door, I write my vow in soap on the tile. Not that it shows, but I know it’s there.

  “Bedford,” I say, scratching him under the wet chin. “Already you are solving so many problems, boy!”

  The next day is Halloween, and when I go to the hospital to visit Lola, I take her some candy corn as well as some clothes to wear. She looks dried out from the hospital air and exhausted from all the tests, but she says she’s feeling better. They keep poking her with needles, she says. She misses her houseplants and her pictures of Walter. I tell her that I’ve somehow acquired a dog, and she says, “See? Your attraction quotient is at work! You’ve now manifested a dog for yourself.”

  “I need to figure out how to manifest you some good health so we can spring you from this joint,” I say, and she sinks back among the pillows and says, “Oh, would you, darling? Let’s forget about love for me and just get me some good health.”

  “Maybe both,” I say.

  “Just health, sweetie.”

  Also there is this: I think the nurse’s aide who comes into the room is in love with the guy who brings the wheelchair to take Lola for a scan. I also think the woman in the next bed is in love with her doctor. I wouldn’t be surprised if I wandered around the hospital for hours and found so many matches we could hold a dance party on the roof and have everybody paired up.

  Later that day I take Bedford to Prospect Park, where we find ourselves partaking in a Halloween street fair/farmers’ market clearly attended by every child, parent, and dog in Br
ooklyn. There are games set up and face-painting booths, an artisanal ice cream truck, a guy selling both organic vegetables and hand lotion. I spend a lot of time looking at a table filled with vintage clothing, candles, soaps, and stained glass lamps. And here I am, just another human who has a dog on a leash, a human carrying a take-out cup of coffee and a phone.

  And then he is out of sight. The leash slips from my hands when I stop to pick up a bar of olive oil soap, and away he goes.

  I walk for a bit, then sigh and lie down on the grass. Okay, I think, watching the sky. I had a dog. Maybe this is what life is teaching me now, how to let go. I had a life in California and a marriage. Then I had a life in Florida with a man who wants to marry me. Now I have a moment in Brooklyn with a house and my ex and a guy downstairs who is maimed and claims to be irredeemably misanthropic, and I have a new friend who has a child and a wound where her heart is supposed to be, and an old lady who thinks she can’t possibly love again.

  The gold sparkles are all around me still. If I squint, I can see them. The same ones Blix saw. It makes me feel so close to her, as if maybe she’s somewhere nearby, floating about in the ether.

  After a while, I feel something touching my leg, and then I hear panting and feel hot breath on my face. I sit up quickly and put my hands over my mouth. But Bedford doesn’t care that I don’t want dog slobber all over my face. He stretches out next to me, wagging his tail, smiling, and his eyes look right into mine.

  I’m back, he says. When shall we head back home? Oh, and by the way, I brought you a baby shoe.

  Please know that I am totally on your side, no matter what is going on upstairs, but IS there a cattle drive situation you are living with? Should I be concerned?

  Oh, sorry. I seem to have acquired a canine.

  You see? I thought it must be a greyhound, but Roy was sure it was a whole pack of wolves.

  LOL. A mutt. Named Bedford. His middle name is Avenue, but that’s only used on formal occasions or when he has ripped up all the garbage in the kitchen. Which, by the way, he just did.

  I suspect you are turning into a Brooklynista. There is no other excuse for that name. Fun fact: Roy’s original name was Seventh, and Avenue was HIS middle name, too. #justkidding