Matchmaking for Beginners

by Dawson, Maddie

  I stare at him. “Patrick, I am dumbfounded at this side of your personality.”

  He shrugs. “What? I’m just stating the facts. The way I see it, there are no victims here. And also—look at it this way—you’ve now freed him up to find the true love of his life. And he’ll always have a great story to tell about Thanksgiving in Brooklyn. How many people get such a good breakup story?”

  “I hope he’ll be all right. It’s like he’s a person who has his emotions in a safety-deposit box somewhere, and he forgot where he put the key.” I realize with some surprise that this really is what makes him boring. He’s protected himself with layers of emotional padding, tamping down every single true feeling that might cross his mind. Maybe it’s because of losing his father at an early age and having that anxious mother he had to take care of. Emotion was a luxury item on the menu, and he couldn’t afford it.

  “Even when he asked me to marry him, he wasn’t overjoyed,” I say slowly. “When I said yes, he looked absolutely shocked. Happy, maybe, but mostly shocked. And even when we had sex, it was—”

  “Okay. I’m willing to listen to most things, but I draw the line here. Your sex life. I used to have to put on headphones when you and—oh, never mind.”

  “Sorry.” I look over at him and think about him listening to Noah and me making love. Fighting. Crabbing about things. Making up again. And him knowing all along how Blix hadn’t wanted Noah there.

  Then his phone rings, and he picks it up and says, “Hi, Elizabeth.”

  He takes the phone into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking the second week in December most likely,” I hear him say as he paces the kitchen. “No, no. I’m renting a U-Haul. Sure . . . No, people do drive in winter. I’ve heard it can be done . . . I think the drive will do me good.”

  Ah, his sister. He really is going to Wyoming. With a U-Haul.

  I slump down into the couch even farther. I feel exhausted to my very core. My head is throbbing and now my leg aches where I knocked it when I slipped, and I just want to close my eyes and disappear.

  And I’m so tired, so paralyzingly tired, and everything I’ve thought and believed here has been wrong. I don’t know what Blix saw in me, but I didn’t help anybody. And I’m certainly not a matchmaker. I’ve lost the one guy who, boring or not, actually wanted to marry me, all because I cheated with the guy who had left me! And I’ve made a mess of things with Lola, whom I like so much, and somehow I feel like I’ve even betrayed Blix, by not protecting her papers. And because of that, her stupid grandnephew and his unscrupulous family are now going to try to get the will changed.

  And Patrick, the one person here that I can talk to, who makes me laugh—though he thinks I pity him—is going to move far away. Retreating even farther away from people. So much for Blix’s plan.

  “I’m going to drive straight through,” he is saying. He laughs. “Right. It’s not like me to stop. In public.”

  And what am I going to do, now that I’m not heading home to marry Jeremy?

  Am I just to go back home and face my family’s exasperation? They’ll hear tomorrow from Jeremy what happened. They may even be hearing about it right this minute! He will, of course, move on with his life—so much for the fun little team we were going to create. Working in his office together and being all happily married and going to Cancun when we retire. Why couldn’t I have just done that? What the hell is wrong with me, anyway? I’ll be back in my childhood bedroom once again, seeing the consternation on everybody’s faces as they try to figure out once again what I should do with my life.

  Ohhh, Marnie!

  What are we going to do about Marnie?

  And Natalie—sorry, sis, but I won’t be having a baby and raising it right alongside yours. No barbecues by the pool with our tanned, relaxed husbands. I screwed everything up.

  Of course I don’t have to go back there. Once I leave here, having disrupted and/or ruined everyone’s lives, I can pick somewhere else to go. Look on the map and select a new location where no one knows the havoc I can wreak. Honestly, I should be required to have a sign on me: MENACE! THINKS SHE’S GOT MATCHMAKING SKILLS. STAY AWAY!

  I close my eyes.

  Patrick, as if speaking from a great distance: “Well, yeah. Myself, yes. No—well, not much furniture, of course, but I have the computers.” He laughs. “No, of course I need them! I’m not exactly going to leave them behind.”

  I open one eye and see the computers across the room, blinking approvingly as I slide away, down into the darkness.

  Later I feel something being placed over me, and I struggle to open my eyes. Patrick says, “Let me make sure your pupils aren’t dilated.” He lifts my lids, one at a time, and says, “Hmmm.”

  “Patrick,” I say through a thickness in my mouth. “I don’t believe in magic anymore.”

  “Bullshit,” he says.

  “No, it’s not bullshit. And I have to go home.” I struggle to sit up. Roy has been sleeping in the crook of my arm, and he jumps off the couch. My head is throbbing like there are a million tiny hammers inside my brain. My eyes don’t seem to be operational in the usual way.

  “Absolutely not,” says Patrick. “You need to stay here. You shouldn’t be alone with a possible head thing. Come on. You can sleep in my bed. I’ll get you settled.”

  He gently helps me up and leads me to his room, which, even in my sleepy state, I can tell is so spare it’s almost monkish. Hardly any lights. And he draws back the covers, and then he puts his hands on my shoulders and sits me down on the side of the bed and takes off my shoes. Then he sits back on his heels. I feel his eyes on me.

  “Hmmm. Your clothes still have turkey stains all over them. Shall I go upstairs and get your pajamas?”

  I don’t answer. I just plop down on the bed on my back.

  “Right. I know. You can wear one of my sweatshirts.”

  “Too hot.”

  “Okay, then a T-shirt.” There’s the sound of drawers opening and closing, and then he’s back—I smell his presence more than see him—and he puts something in my hands: a shirt, I realize. “Do you need help? Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought much about this part.”

  “I can do it,” I mumble. And then sleep overtakes me again; I am thinking about the computers blinking—but they’re not here, are they? Not in here. Patrick says, “No, no, sit up. Here. Alllll right. I’ll do it for you. Lift your arms. I’m going to slide your sweater up over your head. There.”

  The air is cold on my skin all of a sudden. Then he’s sliding a shirt down over my chest and arms. My bra, I think. No one likes to sleep in a bra. Men probably don’t know that. I feel like laughing about that, but I can’t.

  And anyway now he’s eased me back down on the bed and is tugging at my pants, which are so tight that he has to yank them, but then they’re off, one leg and then the other is free, and I’m trying not to think of what underpants I have on, that he’s seeing, and then the covers are over me, and there was something else I wanted to say to him, but I can’t think just now of what it is, and anyway, I’m too tired to get the words out. I’ll think about Patrick seeing my underpants tomorrow. And oh yes, I want to ask him not to go. I want to tell him that Blix really wants him to stay. That there’s other art he could do. I want to try one more last, desperate, begging thing.

  And I will, just as soon as I can hold my head up again.

  Later—how much later?—I turn over, and the cat jumps down off me. I hear Patrick breathing deeply somewhere, and when I open my eyes, he is right there, next to me in the bed. I command myself: touch his arm, but I can’t tell if that really happens or if I am just thinking it, and then when I wake up, there is the smell of cinnamon, and Patrick is coming into the room saying, “How’s the head? Did you sleep okay?”

  The first words out of my mouth are maybe not the best ones. “What time is it? What’s that smell?”

  Patrick says, “Deep breaths. I made cinnamon buns.”

  “Cinnamon buns. I
thought I was dreaming. You made them?”

  “I made them.” He’s smiling at me. “I also made you some tea, so if you want to get up and come in the kitchen . . . or do you want me to bring it to you here?”

  “Wait. Did I sleep here?”

  “You did sleep here. You bumped your head, remember? So I put you to bed here.”

  “Of course I remember.” And then I remember the rest—how everything blew up, how I don’t believe in magic anymore, or matchmaking, or being extraordinary, and that makes me so sad, because I wanted to believe in Blix and all the things she said about me. I wanted to believe I was here for a reason, but I’m not. I feel tears just behind my eyes, and then they’re rolling down my face, and my nose is running, too, and this is going to be ugly.

  “Oh, dear,” he says. “Here, come in the kitchen and have some tea and cinnamon buns. Let’s get you moving again.”

  I obediently swing my legs over the side of the bed and look down at myself. Bare legs and a T-shirt I’ve never seen before. Oh God. I look back up at him.

  “Yes. You’re wearing my T-shirt. I couldn’t let you sleep upstairs with a head injury. And your clothes had a lot of turkey fat on them.”

  Ah yes. Then I sort of remember. Underpants. Being put to bed. Patrick there in the middle of the night, snoring softly next to me. It’s all coming back to me. Oh God God God God. I look around for my clothes, which he hands me, folded neatly in a little pile.

  “Well. Thank you,” I say primly. I don’t want to look at him, and I wish to hell he’d stop looking at me. Maybe if I don’t look at him for long enough, he’ll get the idea and head somewhere else. Go scare somebody about cancer or something.

  “Well,” he says. “Well. You’re welcome.” He stands there for what seems like another whole eternity, and then he says, “So, uh, I’ll get out of your way and let you get dressed.”

  “Okay.”

  “When you get dressed, come into the kitchen, because I have something of a surprise for you. Well, let’s not call it a surprise, shall we, because that word got ruined yesterday by Jeremy. Let’s call it a plan.”

  Oh, yes, Jeremy. Ugh.

  When he leaves, I blow my nose on tissues he has by the bed, and then I get up and struggle into my clothes. There are no mirrors in his apartment—it occurs to me that he probably doesn’t like to look at himself, which is another thing that threatens to make me cry again—but I comb my hair as best I can. There may be some dried blood here and there. I wish I had a toothbrush.

  Where are my shoes?

  Oh my God, I think a real estate agent is coming! And the place is probably a wreck! Please tell me there’s not a turkey carcass in the living room anymore.

  Patrick slept beside me last night. He took care of me!

  Wait . . . so Noah had moved out and yet he came to Thanksgiving, and why was he there, again?

  And Jeremy. I have broken Jeremy.

  So this is going to be the way life is for a while—thoughts showing up in my brain without notice, each one feeling like an emergency that needed to bump the previous thought out of the way.

  I go into the kitchen, blinking from the fluorescent light.

  “Hmm,” he says. “You may want to work with that jaunty bandage before the real estate agent comes. You look a little like a pirate.”

  There’s a bump from upstairs.

  “Noah,” I say. “Did I tell you he was taking things off the wall yesterday in the middle of everything? Blix’s stuff. I’ll bet he’s back. Doing it again.”

  “Well, that,” Patrick says. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about last night, but then my sister called. I have to show you something. Can you follow me?”

  He steers me over to the back door and unlocks all the bolts and—out on his little stunted terrace—there is a whole stack of cardboard boxes. Three, maybe. Large ones.

  I look at him blankly. He smiles.

  “Frankly, this is the most unethical thing I have ever done in my life, but I kind of don’t feel bad about it.”

  “But what is it?”

  “The stuff Noah’s been packing,” he says. “Blix’s stuff. It’s all here.”

  “But how did you get it?” This is hurting my head even more.

  “This is my brand of magic.” His eyes are twinkling. I’ve never seen him look so happy.

  “You magically got the boxes to get on your terrace?”

  “Well. I magically overheard Noah asking Paco if the UPS driver stops at his bodega, and if he’d take these boxes, since Noah didn’t feel like schlepping them to a post office, God forbid, or to a mailing center. And Paco said sure, no problem. And then I—”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did. I made an arrangement with Paco. He brought the boxes over here—Noah had brought some over to him on Wednesday afternoon, which means they must contain Blix’s journal and your letter.”

  “Oh, Patrick!”

  “So we can go through them and take out what we need—or rather what Blix needs us to have. And decide if we want to mail the rest.”

  “Can I kiss you?”

  “No.”

  He says it so quickly that I laugh. First laugh since the fall.

  “Come on. Technically we’ve slept together, so I think I could give you one kiss on the cheek.”

  He seems to consider this. “Well. Is it a pity kiss?”

  “No! It’s a legitimate thank-you-for-the-magic kiss,” I tell him, and I go over and stand on tiptoes and kiss him on the cheek. “And by the way, just so you know, the other one wasn’t a pity kiss either.”

  But then he says he knows pity kisses; in fact, he is all too familiar with pity kisses, pity looks, pity chocolate chip cookies, pity invitations, pity car rides, pity flowers, pity conversations, pity sandwiches.

  I would argue, but I am not in my right mind, and also it’s time to go upstairs and see the new real estate agent, the person who might solve everything.

  FORTY-TWO

  MARNIE

  I’m relieved to see that the real estate agent, Anne Tyrone, is not a Brooklyn hipster. She’s motherly, bosomy, and comforting. Not the type to expect perfection in a house the day after Thanksgiving.

  She’s wearing her glasses on a little filigreed chain around her neck, like a proper older lady, and she walks through the house without making a single note, just soaking up the ambiance and looking around.

  “Lovely, just lovely,” she murmurs.

  I am pleased to see that no one would know that a near riot took place in here just hours ago—probably thanks to Patrick cleaning everything up. The only hint that there might have been a disaster is that the kitchen floor has a wonderful gleam to it this morning, the gleam of being well oiled with turkey fat perhaps. Four pumpkin pies are sitting calmly on the counter with plastic wrap over them. There is no turkey carcass in the living room. Bedford isn’t even there—he was taken upstairs by Jessica to sleep off his turkey hangover, according to a note I see on the counter.

  So then Anne Tyrone goes upstairs and looks at Jessica’s apartment and then downstairs to look at Patrick’s, and when she comes back up, she says to me, “So, darling, how much work do you want to do here before we put it on the market?”

  I explain about my life, Blix, my head injury, the three-month legal agreement, my move back to Florida, and I’m about to launch into a speech about my uncertainty about whether that’s the right place for me, when she pats me on the arm and says, “So, basically nothing then? Is that what I’m hearing?”

  Yes. I can’t. I can’t do one single thing.

  “Well,” she says. “I think you’re going to be fighting the market the whole time. This isn’t a good time for sales anyway . . . blah blah blah . . . and with so much needing to be done . . . blah blah and additional blah . . .”

  “Can’t it be a fixer-upper?” I say. I like the concept of the fixer-upper. We’re all fixer-uppers in this building, I tell her. Seems like we should be sticking together, i
n a place that understands us—but we’re not. We’re scattering like tumbleweeds, and it may be all my fault.

  She is polite enough to let all that news go right by her. “I’ll try,” she says at last. “In the meantime, you may want to do what you can to make it look normal. You know, maybe paint that refrigerator a different color. At least that.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Thank you, thank you.”

  Whatever.

  After she leaves, I go outside. I take down the tattered Tibetan prayer flags and pick up some of the leaves on the stoop. I go down and look at Patrick’s door. His curtains are closed, and the leaves are still piled up in the little entryway by the stairs.

  Ah, Patrick.

  I remember hearing the conversation he was having with his sister—the U-Haul truck, his computers going with him—and I feel like crying again. I am going to miss him so much. How is it that I was able to withstand losing both Jeremy and Noah, and yet the thought of Patrick leaving—Patrick, who won’t touch me; Patrick, who is so damaged that he thinks everything is about pity; Patrick, who will never go out in public with me EVER—pierces me almost to my core?

  Is this love? Or is it what he thinks it is—pity, perhaps mixed with some adoration because he was this tragic superhero, trying to save his girlfriend from the fire? He would say I love his story, not him. Not the reality of a man whose soul and body have been burned beyond his own recognition.

  Lola comes outside on her stoop, and she waves to me, a listless wave. Nothing like before.

  “That the real estate agent?” she calls.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re going with her then?”

  “I guess so. How are you?” I ask her, and she says she’s fine.

  Then she leans over the railing and says, “I’m sorry I got so mad at you yesterday. It’s really my old argument with Blix, I realized. I loved her to pieces, but damned if that woman didn’t always think she knew best about everybody else’s life! I can’t stand the feeling of being manipulated—even by magic. Especially by magic.”