The Bright Side of Disaster

by Katherine Center

  He left early, waving away a stream of thank-yous from me, and I found myself wondering, much later in the evening as I finished washing the dishes, if he was still thinking about me, too.

  23

  I waited to hear about Gardner and Claudia’s date, but nobody told me anything. Four whole Saturdays at the zoo went by without a word from Claudia. I deliberately didn’t ask her. Officially, it was the type of thing that could slip my mind. And the more time that went by without her saying anything to me, the more I worried that they had met for coffee or some other normal thing—since Claudia, with her nanny and housekeeper, could still do grown-up activities like that—and hit it off so amazingly well that neither of them even wanted to tell me. It was so good, they couldn’t tell another living soul without creating horrible envy.

  After a while I decided they’d gone not for coffee, but for a night out. Claudia had fastened on some earrings and left Nikki home with the nanny and a freezer full of breast milk. I imagined them at that corner Italian restaurant where amateur singers performed light opera on Saturdays. They drank wine and filled their bellies with warm pasta. It was a cool night with a blue sky. They started with current events, like the article about the bear attacks in Los Angeles, then moved on to something more personal, like his college major (botany) and how his father had tried to make him change it, and then wound up on something touching and meaningful, like her grandfather’s funeral near Lake Placid in the snow.

  I just knew that they were seeing each other. The more time that passed, the more certain I became. They were seeing each other and didn’t want to tell me. Maybe they sensed that I would have mixed feelings. Maybe they thought it was fun to have a secret. I didn’t know, and I damn sure wasn’t going to ask.

  And what if Claudia had finally found love? She’d been searching all these years. Was it fair of me to pout in the corner? I did not want to be that kind of friend. They were dating. They were happy. God bless.

  Gardner still came over on Sundays to paint, and still took Maxie on walks afterward while I cooked for us. And we always still ate one at a time, taking turns holding Maxie. But I treated him now like he was somebody else’s man.

  After a while, I told myself that my choice to give him Claudia’s number had probably been an act of self-protection. My unconscious mind, or my inner child, or something in there, had known I wasn’t ready to start anything new. The thought was inconceivable. I was barely learning the ropes with Maxie, and I wasn’t over the Dean debacle—that was for sure. I needed to be a good mom, and to learn how to get at least one shower a day, and heal my heartbreak, and become self-sufficient. I did not need to fling myself at the next available man I saw. Just because he pranced around the neighborhood in his pj’s. Or even just because I was lonesome.

  I’d known kids whose mothers had been left, and those mothers often became so desperate to find new mates that they forgot about their kids. The kids became a barrier to love. And then they’d find some irritable, balding accountant who had left his own first wife, and they’d date for a while, and then suddenly he’d show up at Christmas with some perfunctory and deeply unexciting gifts for the kids, and the next thing you knew they were engaged. But those weren’t his kids. He didn’t care about them. The mother would bend herself into a pretzel trying to pretend that they were a family, the kids would start hot-wiring cars in the neighborhood and parking them at different houses just to be a little naughty, and that marriage, too, would eventually fold under the strain.

  I wasn’t going to be one of those mothers.

  I’d made my choice, and my choice was Maxie. I was not going to pine for Dean, and I wasn’t going to put Maxie second to finding a new man, either. My die was cast. I was a mother now, and that was all I was going to be until Maxie was, at least, in college.

  “That’s too depressing,” my mother said to me when she came to take Maxie. “Don’t ever say that to me again.”

  “Well, that’s the way it is,” I said.

  “A new man can be an asset to your little family if you find a good one,” my mother said.

  But even she wasn’t convinced. There just weren’t a lot of good ones out there. Everybody knew that.

  It was liberating in a way. I could chat with Gardner in his paint-splattered overalls and notice his neck, and the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he talked, and not feel anxious. He was a steak sandwich, yes, but I was a vegetarian. I was eating off a whole different menu.

  I was, in fact, feeling particularly tranquil and free of desire at the zoo one afternoon with Claudia when she said, “That friend of yours never called me.”

  “What friend?”

  “Your neighbor. He was supposed to call me.”

  I was slow on the uptake. How could they be dating if he never called her? “He never called you?”

  “You gave him my number, right?”

  I nodded. “I put it in his mailbox.”

  “Maybe he never got it.”

  “Maybe it got lost in the junk mail.”

  “Or maybe he saw that picture of me on your fridge and got scared away.”

  “Trust me when I tell you: If he’d seen that photo, he’d have raced to your house and knocked down the door.”

  “You think too much of me.”

  “You think too little of you.”

  We were at an impasse.

  “Maybe he found someone else,” she tried again.

  “Or maybe he saw that picture of you and got intimidated.”

  “Please.”

  “I’ll have to ask him.”

  “No!” she said. “Don’t ask him. Then I’ll feel pathetic.”

  “I have to ask him,” I said.

  “If he doesn’t want to call me, then I don’t want him to call me,” she said.

  “But what if it was just a mistake? What if he never got the number?”

  “Then it wasn’t meant to be,” she said.

  “You don’t really believe that. Nobody believes in fate that much.”

  “I sort of do,” she said. “But I don’t believe in much else. Just fate, a little. And horoscopes.”

  On the drive home, I couldn’t locate my easy, detached, live-andlet-love self. My mind was racing instead. What was he thinking? Was he calling my bluff? Or did he snub my friend? Maybe he was feeling shy. Or had met someone else. The old me would have called him as soon as I got home to nose it all out of him. But in this life, I had a very tired and crabby little person in the car with me who had other ideas.

  I raced her into the house as soon as we landed in the driveway. We nursed for a while and that calmed her down, and then we went to change her diaper.

  I was a close watcher of poops. It was one of Maxie’s only forms of communication. Unable to just ask her how she was, I inspected her diapers like they were mood rings.

  By the time she was changed, it was almost bath time. I held her in one arm and ate some spaghetti my mother had made and stored—sauce and all—in separate, meal-size Ziploc bags. It had seemed so over-the-top when she arrived with them. But now that I had only two left, I was wondering if she’d make me some more.

  The next day was Sunday. Gardner had not let me in to see the garage while he’d been working—in the same way that he had never let me inside his house because it “wasn’t finished yet”—and I hadn’t wanted to go out there for fear that the fumes would harm Maxie’s brain development. But today, he said he was ready to let us look. When Maxie and Gardner got back from their walk, the three of us headed to the garage.

  I waited as he unlocked the dead bolt. The potted plants on my back steps were so dry and dead that they could have been wisps of paper. Oh, well. Priorities.

  Gardner started to open the door and said, “So, this is it. I’m pretty much finished.”

  “You are?” I said. “That was fast.”

  “I have a special brush. You know, ’cause I do this type of thing a lot.”

  I was thinking I’d have to come up
with something new for him to do.

  “Don’t you want to see it?”

  I stepped in. I didn’t know what to say. “Holy cow” was what I finally came up with.

  He held Maxie while I looked around. I had expected him only to slap on a coat of paint and replace a few fixtures. And he had. The walls were the French Gray Linen I’d picked out. But he had also repainted the window frames, trim, and ceiling a clean white. He’d replaced the light fixture—a single bulb that had hung like an interrogation lamp—with a gorgeous Craftsman-style one that had four bulbs and shined a warm light into every corner. And in the center, up near the front door, was a display case, handmade, from the looks of it, with a glass front and top and a place for a register.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d been wondering lately if my mother had been right and opening a shop might be a mistake.

  I walked over to the display case. “Did you make this?”

  “No,” he said, waving his hand. “I found it in a junk shop.” There was a pause. “But I did refinish it.”

  “This is too much,” I said. “How did you get all this done?”

  He came over to me and started playing with Maxie’s feet. “You know.” He shrugged. “I’m handy.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said.

  “Say ‘Dinner’s ready,’” he said.

  And so I did.

  24

  We were barely inside when the doorbell rang. I hadn’t heard the sound of the doorbell since I’d put up the sign that said SLEEPING BABY! KNOCK! DON’T RING!

  I opened the door to see my father standing there. Before I even said hello, I checked the bell to see if that sign had fallen off. It hadn’t.

  “Hiya, Jen-Jen,” my dad said. He was still in his scrubs.

  “I have a note here on this bell that says not to ring it.”

  My father was waving his pointer finger at Maxie.

  I continued. “You have to move this note to get to the bell.”

  “Nah,” my father said. “You can just press the note itself.”

  “The baby could have been sleeping,” I said.

  “But she wasn’t.”

  “But she could have been. And you would have woken her.”

  “But she wasn’t.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “And you’re fixating on it.”

  We stared at each other.

  Then he said, “Smells good. What’s for supper?” and let himself inside.

  Gardner had been standing back, watching—not intruding, but keeping an eye on the situation. My father marched right up to him and said, “You the new boyfriend?”

  “He’s just a neighbor, Dad,” I said, and felt instantly like I’d said the wrong thing. I glanced over at Gardner, who looked away as soon as I did.

  “Good,” my father said, making his way back to the kitchen. “No more boyfriends for you. Even if I have to sit on the front porch with a shotgun.”

  “No shotgun necessary,” Gardner said.

  I’d made a Cajun shrimp étouffée, a dish of my mother’s.

  My dad spied it in the pot and said, “Now, that’s just torture.”

  We were ready to eat, but my dad had an announcement. “I did it,” he said as I was ladling bowls. I set my ladle back in the pot. Gardner, who was holding Maxie, waited to see what, exactly, my dad had done.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Just now. On the way over.”

  “On the cell phone?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

  “You’re supposed to ask me how it went,” my dad said.

  “How did it go?”

  And then my dad just smiled.

  I couldn’t believe it. She’d said yes.

  “You’re a miracle worker,” I said. “Is there ever anything you want that you don’t get?”

  My dad got serious. “Yes,” he said.

  “But not today!” I said, and we slapped high fives.

  Gardner was still trying to figure it out. My dad looked over and said, “I’m trying to get Jenny’s mother to fall back in love with me.”

  “After leaving her high and dry on her birthday many years ago,” I added.

  My father nodded, his face tight with guilt. It was true.

  “I did leave a present for her on the hall table that day,” he offered.

  “I don’t think she ever opened it,” I said. “I think she gave it to Goodwill still in the wrapping paper.”

  My father had not heard this before. “There was a gold bracelet in there!”

  “I’m sure it went to a grateful recipient.”

  We all thought about it. Then Gardner said, “Trying to get her back, huh?”

  My father, still thinking, nodded.

  “How’s that going?” Gardner asked.

  “Well, son,” my father said, straightening his shoulders a bit. “Today, it’s going pretty well.”

  Gardner and my dad ate étouffée while I held Maxie and asked every question I could think of. He had followed my advice and confessed all his feelings, most likely while driving fifty in a thirty and shaking his fist at drivers who got in his way. She had listened to him without saying anything and then, when he finally got to the big question, she paused for what he insisted was a full three minutes and then said, “Okay.”

  So they were going out for Brazilian food at this new place that had a “real rain forest” in the middle. “It’s nicer than it sounds,” my dad insisted. “And the steaks are so good they bring tears to your eyes.”

  “She can’t resist a good steak,” I said.

  He wanted suggestions about what to wear, how to act, which topics of conversation to introduce. And he’d need all the help he could get. So I gave him some tips. I told him no cigars, no French food or wine, no knock-knock jokes. I told him to be early for everything. She did not tolerate waiting for people. I told him to compliment something she was wearing every time he saw her, to put his hand on the small of her back when walking through a restaurant, and to watch her eyes and her mouth when she answered a question. I told him not to check his watch at dinner, not to run yellow lights, and not, under any circumstances, to even glance at another woman in my mother’s presence. Even if that other woman was the waitress and speaking directly to him. “Avert your eyes,” I said, “order your food, and get it over with.”

  My father raised his eyebrows at Gardner. “Are you getting this all down?”

  Gardner tapped his finger against his head. “It’s right in here.”

  They finished their bowls, then Gardner held Maxie while I had some myself, and then they both started on seconds. Maxie was getting restless, so I took her out in the backyard and paced around, catching snippets of the conversation whenever I was near the door.

  My father asked Gardner all about himself, and I noticed that Gardner never mentioned that he, too, like my dad, was a doctor. My dad made Gardner laugh several times. He had a way with people. It’s why he was such a beloved doctor. We used to get fan mail at the house when I was a kid. One guy even sent us a Thanksgiving turkey that he’d raised on his own farm.

  “I’ve told every one of my kids that they’re my favorite, but Jenny really is,” I heard my dad say.

  As happy as I was for my dad, I couldn’t help thinking that if he weren’t there, I’d be alone with Gardner. I wanted to be gushing to him about how great the garage looked, thanking him over and over, and praising his painting, light-installing, and furniture-refinishing skills. I stepped back into the kitchen to see if I could subtly encourage my dad to be on his way. Instead, I listened to him talk about fly-fishing. Gardner seemed interested. Was he faking? Who could be interested in fly-fishing?

  “Now, Jenny,” my Dad said, pointing at me, “there’s a fisherman.”

  “You fish, Jenny?” Gardner said.

  “No,” I said. I looked at my dad. “You must be mixing me up with one of your other children.”

  “You don’t remember that tim
e we all went down to Galveston Bay?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You must have been about seven,” he said. “And me and you and your mother, we drove down in the station wagon with a whole coolerful of chicken necks. And we stopped at the bay and your mother set up a picnic while the two of us tied our chicken necks to strings and headed out into the water with our sneakers on.”

  “You went fishing with chicken necks?” Gardner said.

  “Crabbing,” my father said. “The crabs go after the necks, and you scoop them up with a net. It’s easy!”

  “That’s not really fishing, though, is it?” I said.

  “It’s all the same,” my father said, intent on telling his story. “And your mom and I caught a few of them, here and there. But you! You caught a bucketful. One right after the other! Like you were calling them to you!” My father had stopped looking at Gardner and me, and now was gazing into space as if he were watching an old home movie. “I couldn’t believe it!” he went on. “Your mother went to read a magazine after a while, but you and I stayed out there until the horizon turned bright pink. Crab after crab. We had sandwiches on the beach that night, but the next night, at home, I boiled those crabs and we licked every one of them clean.”

  “I have no memory of this,” I said.

  “There’s a picture of us on that shore. I have it somewhere. I’m going to find it to show you.”

  “Okay,” I said as Maxie started to fuss.

  And then dinner was over. My last dinner with Gardner, and I wasn’t able to thank him properly. My father left almost as soon as his second bowl was empty and Gardner left a few minutes later, and just as I was thinking I might stand at the counter and eat some seconds out of the pot, Maxie started to melt down for real and it was time to get bedtime going.

  For some reason, it took me almost an hour and a half to get Maxie down that night. I just kept rocking and rocking and rocking, and humming. I hummed every song I could think of, and made my way from “You Are My Sunshine” to “Just a Gigolo” before starting over. When she was finally in her crib, I cleaned the kitchen quietly and slowly, thinking about my father. He did seem to get everything he wanted. I wondered if he would get my mother. And I wondered if he would still want her when he had her.