Meredith was at a loss for words. She finally chose the easiest thing to tell. “I’m closing on a house on Friday.”
“Oh, my! All by yourself?”
Meredith nodded. “I have a realtor,” she added, as an afterthought.
“But a house. Without a man. Who will unclog the drains and fix the dishwasher?”
Meredith started to laugh. Charlene was refreshingly honest, if not very liberated. Meredith had exactly the same fears, but she would never have spoken them aloud. “I happen to know how to unclog drains,” she told Charlene. “For everything else, there are people called ‘handymen.’ “
Charlene was still talking about Meredith's frightening move at a meeting that afternoon. Peter, who had curtailed his daily visits to her office, was lingering at the head of the table, listening to Charlene as the others filed out.
“You got the house?” he asked her over Charlene’s chatter.
“Yes, I did,” Meredith said, wondering if she should feel guilty for not telling him herself.
“Congratulations,” he seemed happy. “I’m glad. If you need a hand moving in, let me know.”
“Thanks,” Meredith told him, knowing she’d move every stick of furniture alone before she’d call him.
“With no man. She’s moving into a house. I keep telling her how crazy she is. No landlord to depend on for repairs. No man.” Charlene looked at Meredith. “Now, you’re the landlord.”
Meredith wished Charlene would shut up.
“Meredith can handle herself,” Peter told Charlene. He smiled across the room at Meredith. “I’ll bet she’s very handy with a ratchet.”
Charlene suddenly turned on Peter. “Do you even know what a ratchet is?” she asked him.
“Hmmm. You are more perceptive than I gave you credit for, Charlene.” He really did look impressed. “What gave me away?”
“Your confidence in Meredith's knowledge,” Charlene told him. “And your hands. Soft little things. Look at how long and slender your fingers are.”
“I always judge a man by his hands,” Charlene told them. “Now, no offense to you Peter. Your hands are fabulous. Except that they just don’t make you marriage material.”
Peter was a good sport. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll try to roughen them up before I ask the next girl out.” He said “next” as if he had an unlimited supply of women he could ask out. She thought it was time to go.
“Well, while you two discuss the finer points of using coarse hands to lure in women, I’m going to head back to my computer.”
“You should stay and listen,” Charlene called after her. “You need this lesson more than anybody.”
The house felt like a chapel. Meredith came alone, except for Mendra. She wanted some time to absorb the spirit of the house before the chaos of moving began. Mendra wasn’t afraid of the open space. She marched around the living room like an assessor.
“I said I’d be back,” Meredith whispered to the walls. “Thanks for waiting.” As she walked through the rooms, ideas came to her of where her furniture would go. She ran her fingers over some wooden bookshelves that had been sunken right into the adobe walls. She wondered if the story Martha had told her about the horse breeder and his Bostonian was true. “It doesn’t matter either way,” she told the house. “You were meant to be mine.”
Sarah and Victor helped her move in. “It’s fabulous,” Sarah told her when she saw it.
With surprise, Meredith thanked her. She knew the house wasn’t really Sarah's style. “Marriage has mellowed you out, Sarah,” Meredith commented. “You’re less demanding.”
“Was I demanding before?” Sarah asked. Her face was fuller, with fewer angles.
“Mostly on yourself,” Victor said, carrying in the rocking chair. “I think, since you’ve lightened up on you, everyone else has benefited too.”
“Well,” Sarah stated, digesting their comments. After a minute she added, “I hope I haven’t gotten too soft. I’ve still got a business to run.”
Victor put down the chair and wrapped his arms around her. “You’re still as hard as nails.” He kissed her. Meredith had to turn away from their overflowing happiness. She was green with envy.
“I hope I have what you’ve got some day,” Meredith told Sarah. They were having tea in Meredith's new kitchen while Victor put her bed together.
“You will. Now, how do you want to lay out your living room?”
Meredith marveled at Sarah’s instinct to map out plans. “Do you mind if I make a quick phone call? I want to check on Kira. The accountant from Family Practice.” She still wasn’t able to call her “friend” around Sarah.
“Ah. The elusive Kira. So she really exists.”
Meredith was relieved at the sporting manner Sarah was using. “Yes, and her ex-husband, ex since January, just found out he has cancer.”
“Oh no. How old is he?”
“Early thirties.”
“Is it treatable? What kind is it?”
Meredith felt that revealing the kind was a betrayal to Jeremy and Kira's privacy. “I don’t know if it’s treatable. That’s why I want to call. She went with him to his doctor’s appointment today.”
“Sure. Go call her.”
“Shit. I just realized I don’t have a phone yet.” She laughed. “I forgot that the phone won’t get turned on till tomorrow.” She picked up the receiver to listen just in case. But the line was dead.
“Use my cell phone,” Sarah offered, drawing a palm-sized phone out of her purse. “And charge your cell phone!”
“I would but it’s packed away in a box.”
Kira's voice was subdued when she answered.
“How did it go?” Meredith asked, facing the view of her backyard that the kitchen offered. “He came back with me.” Her voice was low.
“He’s there now? At the house?”
“Yes.”
“Can you talk?”
“Not really.”
“Was the news good or bad?”
Kira sighed. “Hard to say.”
“You mean they might be able to treat it?”
“Possibly.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t talk about it.”
Kira sighed again. “Hold on a sec.” Meredith heard a door shut. “Okay. I’m in the pantry. I can’t talk for long. He’s watching TV right now.” She was talking fast to squeeze everything in. “He needs surgery. They’d have to remove a testicle.” She whispered the last word.
“Would that save his life?”
“They don’t know. He’d still need chemo. But either way he’s absolutely refusing to consider it.” Her voice dropped back to a whisper. “‘I’d slit my throat first,’ were his exact words.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Meredith was getting angry. “Lots of men do it. And women have mastectomies.”
“The oncologist said that his is a normal first reaction. He wants him to talk to a psychiatrist. Of course, Jeremy’s refusing.”
“Why’d he come back to your place?” Meredith was losing sympathy for Jeremy.
“He’s distraught. He’s fighting all these battles inside. Losing a piece of his body, a piece of his masculinity. Losing his life. Possibly losing his life even after surgery.” Her voice broke for a second and then she was okay again. “He’s going to have to tell the people at work soon. He needs time off for the chemo and surgery. He couldn’t even get the words out of his mouth in front of the doctor. How is he going to manage telling everyone else?” She took a deep breath and went on. “He first noticed the lump three years ago.” She said this with grim satisfaction. “The doctor said that his fears about the lump, even unconscious, could have contributed to his impotency.” She was whispering again.
Meredith leaned against her sink.
“On the way home, he told me that he wanted our marriage to end because he was tired of me always harping on sex.” She took another deep breath. “He said that when I used to come by his apartment and cry, did I ever tell you
I used to do that? I did. And he said that part of him was sad, but part of him was glad that I was suffering too. And then he apologized.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Shocked. I think. That he was glad I was hurting. I never felt that way toward him. I didn’t think he could feel it for me. Also, vindicated. And released. Now, at least, I know. I know why he wouldn’t have sex with me. And I know I was right, that he was pushing me away. I’m not crazy, after all.”
“True,” Meredith conceded. “And it took courage for him to admit that, too.”
“Yes.” Kira agreed. “I probably would have lied.”
When Meredith hung up, Sarah asked, “Will he be okay?” in such a gentle tone that Meredith found that she didn’t mind telling her that Jeremy had testicular cancer.
“He’ll do the surgery.” Sarah seemed confident.
“What makes you so sure?”
“He’s working through a different fear right now, but fear of death will override everything else. He’s just not there yet.” She looked at her watch. “Do they want to have dinner with us? It might be just the thing for them, to go out with strangers and take their minds off their problems for a couple of hours.”
“Nah. I think they just want to be alone,” Meredith said, but she was touched by Sarah's suggestion.
For her first month in the house, Meredith ran on adrenaline, working ten hour days, then coming home to unpack or complete some house project. She set up her studio in the room with the best light. Her favorite subject was her new house. She painted some part of it in every new piece. When she wasn’t painting, Meredith put up smoke detectors, a fire extinguisher, coat hooks, and a pot holder. She painted her walls and scrubbed her floors and cupboards. She worked on her yard.
One day, on her drive home from work she saw a bumper sticker that said, “Soul mates are an illusion created by screen writers.”
Despite rainy weather, Meredith began a long project of weeding an ancient flower bed in her front yard. Not knowing much about gardening, she had checked out books from the library and propped some of the better ones up on the lawn as she worked. She was afraid of mistaking a flower for a weed and yanking it. Gardening made Meredith feel like she was accomplishing something meaningful.
Her new neighbors seemed friendly. A lot of them were diehard walkers and when they passed her in the yard, they came up to introduce themselves. Most of them were older, with half grown children but some were about her age, mostly they were couples.
Everyone was excited to have her in the house. “We thought it’d never get bought,” one slightly inappropriate neighbor had told her. “The aura is bad, mainly because the owner, two owners ago, not counting you, killed himself in the laundry room.” She was in her fifties, with long, straight gray hair and a purple skirt.
Meredith digested this information carefully, reminding herself that the woman undoubtedly had good intentions. She was wondering if this news would alter her joy at being in the house when the woman had added, “If you want, I could come do a cleansing.”
Meredith realized that her neighbor had a clear crystal around her neck. “Well, I’m kind of strapped for cash,” she began.
“No charge,” the neighbor interjected. “Of course not. A cleansing would benefit the whole neighborhood.”
Joan Damico came to do her cleansing ritual on the following Saturday. Meredith was surprised when she learned her name. She had been expecting something more ethereal, like Aurora.
Joan arrived in a red dress and, after pacing through the house muttering something like a prayer, began to set up small pots of sage in every room. Stray thoughts flowed through Meredith as Joan began to burn the pots of sage. She wondered if Joan had volunteered her services in order to see the inside of the house. But of course, she could have done that for all the months the house was on the market. Maybe she wanted to see how Meredith had decorated.
“Banish your negative thoughts,” Joan suddenly ordered and Meredith was shamed into mental silence.
When the whole process was over, Meredith made tea. They sat out in the backyard on some Adirondack chairs Meredith had found at a flea market. “You practice Feng Shui,” Joan commented.
It took Meredith a moment to remember where she’d heard that term before. Then it came to her: Sarah, mucking up the money corner of her co-op. “No,” Meredith told her.
Joan raised an eyebrow, as if she didn’t really believe her. “You have a red wreath on your door.”
“It was a gift.” From Sarah, Meredith added to herself. How sneaky of her!
“Your love and partnership area has a plant and a pink candle. Are you trying to draw a specific person into your life?”
Meredith tried to remember where in the house she had those two objects together. “No,” she said. She looked out at Mendra, prowling in some long grass in the yard.
“Here’s what I tell my students,” Joan told her. “Don’t be surprised if, when you’ve set up your career area, you suddenly find yourself out of a job.”
Meredith wondered if Sarah had ever gotten her stained glass window. She sighed.
“That’s how most students feel,” Joan said, nodding at Meredith's sigh. “Thanks a lot. Now I’ve just lost my job. But sometimes you can’t bring in the things you want until you’ve cleared away room for them.” Joan turned to face Meredith. “It applies to every area, including the partnership area. You’ve got to wipe out the old to make room for the new.”
When she finally got rid of Joan, Meredith searched through her house and located the plant and pink flower in, of all places, her laundry room. How unromantic, she thought. Then she moved the objects to opposite corners of the house.
A week later, Meredith was in her front yard garden when another neighbor popped in to welcome her. She’d been expanding the ancient bed, digging out rocks and thinking of Kira. Jeremy had walked out of the first appointment with the psychiatrist, but they were trying again this afternoon.
“Meredith Love?” A young man in his mid to late 30s was standing at her gate. He wore jeans, a t-shirt, and running shoes.
“Yes,” Meredith said.
“Hi. I’m Todd Fischer, three houses down. Fischer is German for fishermen,” he smiled. “My ancestors back in Germany caught fish.” His steady gaze was making her blush slightly. “So, were your ancestors experts on love?”
“That or they were prostitutes,” she said. She wanted to get back to her garden.
Todd opened the gate and stepped into her yard. “But that’s not love, is it?”
Meredith marveled at the ritual of flirting. It seemed so useless. “No, I guess it’s not.” She stood to shake hands.
“I’ve been really busy lately or I would have come by sooner. Welcome to the neighborhood.” He eyed the house behind her. “So you live here all alone?”
“Yes.” Her phone started to ring inside. “I’d better get that. I’m expecting a call. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Nice to meet you, Meredith Love.”
He was a little cocky, she decided as she ran in to catch her call. It was Kira. “How was it?” Meredith asked. She looked at her watch. “Aren’t you supposed to be there right now?” She started washing dirt off her hands.
“Yeah. It’s okay. He’s still there. The two of them decided that Jeremy needed to be alone. Without me. So I left.”
“Do you think that will help?”
“I don’t know. The psychiatrist spent some time with me and reminded me that I’m not responsible for what Jeremy decides to do. He said I have to let Jeremy decide what to do. He’s right. So I left. And Jeremy’s going to stop staying here with me. We all three agreed on that. But I’ll still go with him to his other appointments.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“Don’t you know it! We are one big healthy, happy family. Except for the cancer, of course. And the divorce.”
Meredith wondered if it would help Kira to know that an uninvolved observer
, namely Sarah, was certain that Jeremy would get the surgery. She decided that the only thing that would help Kira feel better was Jeremy actually getting the surgery. “Do you want to come over and hang?”
“Thanks. But I can’t. I’m meeting Mike.”
“Pederson?”
“Yes.”
Meredith was silent as she wrestled her prudish response back under the surface of good manners. “Are you still seeing him?” she asked with forced neutrality.
“Yes. Yes I am.” Kira must have sensed a judgment because her voice was defensive. “I need him now. His lightheartedness. And the physical release. After the last few years with Jeremy, it’s like a miracle to date someone with no hidden agenda. Who just wants to have fun and have sex. Who thinks you’re beautiful and desirable.”
Meredith hadn’t realized Kira was sleeping with Mike. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” Kira sniffed.
“Does Mike know that any of this is going on?”
“Very little. I don’t want to complicate things.”
“I understand. Hey. I met another one of my neighbors a few minutes ago.” Meredith paused here to test the water. She wasn’t sure if Kira was ready to start listening to her stories again. Jeremy’s cancer had, understandably, been consuming their conversations.
“Oh yeah?”
Encouraged, Meredith went forward, still ready to stop if Kira seemed unable to focus. “Yeah. Some arrogant guy named Fischer. I forget his first name. His ancestors were German fishermen. Wanted to know what my ancestors were.” She paused. “Get it? Love?”
“Yeah. I got it. Hmmm. A little trite, and yet, give him credit for approaching you. It can’t be easy to walk up to a stranger and start talking. He took along a prop.”
“True. But he was a little too confident. Anyway, I’m not ready to start dating again. I like my life the way it is. And I’m too busy to date.”
Searching For Meredith Love Page 40
