She had had crushes on this one and that one, on boys in her classes, teachers, and men she passed for a moment in the street. But everything had happened only in her head. She looked, thought, yearned, wished, wanted. Silently. All in secret. And said to herself, Someday … someday … Someday my prince will come? But she didn’t believe in princes. Or maybe what she didn’t believe was that she was a princess whom a prince would seek out.
She was plain Nina Bloom. And yet, here was Mitch. Who had walked into her life. Who had seen her from a ladder. Who had liked what he saw. And still liked her. Loved her. And she loved him. It was a miracle. Mitch.… This tall, soft-eyed boy-man. Couldn’t he have had any girl? Shouldn’t he have wanted some other girl? Wanted a Sonia, flushed and pretty, dimpled, with silver wound around her wrists? Or a Lynell, tall and slender, sophisticated, her beautiful hair falling down her back? But he wanted her. Try to tell her that wasn’t a miracle!
They sat in the shop for a long time. “I’m stuffed,” D.G. declared. Paper cups, crumpled napkins, and bits of cakes littered the table. When they got up to leave, Nina embraced Sonia and then Lynell. “We’ll be seeing plenty of you, for God’s sake,” Lynell said, but hugged her back.
“You have to invite us over for supper or something,” Sonia said.
“Don’t forget me,” D.G. said.
“Oh, D.G., I couldn’t forget you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, all of you.” Nina’s eyes were wet. And walking away with Mitch, walking down the street hand in hand, she thought again that she was now part of the “us” she had so much longed for. No more just Nina. Now it was Nina and Mitch.
In the morning, waking, Nina saw boxes, the legs of a table, and a laundry bag lying collapsed on top of a rolled-up rug. She had been dreaming about feet.… A tall woman, a Paul Bunyan of a woman, and enormous feet. How odd. Your feet, your big feet, someone had said in her ear.
Next to her Mitch slept with the sheet wrapped around his neck. He looked almost angelic, his lower lip softly drooping. But with his eyes closed, his soul was closed to her; and suddenly he seemed to Nina, in the most profound way, unknown, unknowable. A stitch of panic ran through her. Who was he, really? She had moved in with a stranger. Why?
She couldn’t assemble her reasons. Her feelings had fled. In the half-light of morning, filtered through the disorder in the room, everything came to her with a pang, a distant, dreamlike beat. She remembered making love, the lovemaking itself like a dream in which she saw ships, white sails, blue waves. She had been exhausted, half asleep.
“Hello,” Mitch said, opening his eyes. “Hello, Nina, what a nice surprise.” He moved his foot against hers.
“Hello,” she said tentatively.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“What’s that crazy cat doing?” Mitch raised himself on an elbow, just as Emmett buried his head under a clump of newspapers.
“He’s playing ostrich,” Nina said. “One of his morning games.” With each word the strangeness receded. She touched Mitch’s hand. “Hi,” she said with relief.
Just then the phone rang. “Wonder who that is.” Mitch stretched, pulling the phone closer to the bed.
“Wait,” Nina said. “Don’t answer. What if it’s my mother?”
“Your mother?” He laughed at her. “She doesn’t know you’re here, does she?”
“No, that’s the point,” Nina said, holding his arm. “I don’t want her to know! She can’t know, Mitch.”
“Honey, if she doesn’t know, how could she be calling?” Mitch said reasonably. The phone rang again, and he picked it up. “Oh, hi, Kenny.” He winked reassuringly at Nina.
Out on the street she heard the whine of a motorcycle. Inside, Emmett, hungry, pounced on dustballs. Of course it couldn’t be her mother. She didn’t know Mitch’s phone number. She hardly knew he existed. Nina had walked into this life without her mother’s knowledge, had walked in on her own two big feet.
She fell back against the pillow. So that was what the dream had been telling her. Was it also reminding her that whatever she did, wherever and however far her feet took her, they could never take her far enough to forget that her mother was her mother, and that somehow, in some way, she, Nina, had finally to answer to her … as well as to herself?
Chapter Twelve
Living with Mitch was certainly different from living with Sonia and Lynell. Not in just the obvious ways: that it was he and she, that they were male and female, slept in the same bed and were lovers. What took Nina by surprise was the extraordinary degree of intimacy. It wasn’t just living in a single room, though that, of course, was part of it. But what she hadn’t expected was that although each of them had a routine, almost at once they began to mesh, to do as much as possible at the same time.
Stayed up late together because Nina was hyper, or crawled into bed early because Mitch was wiped out. Mornings, Mitch nearly always woke up first, but they turned out of bed at the same time. After a struggle over breakfast, they began to take most of their meals together. Nina passed up a movie she wanted to see because it would have meant going alone: Mitch knew he’d be bored by it. On the other hand she did get to a Sandy Big Tree Band concert that, alone, she definitely would have overlooked.
They liked being together. Naturally! That was why they were living together. Like was really too pale a word. They craved being together. They crowded into the kitchen together to cook, they showered together, they cleaned and shopped together, and for weeks hardly saw anyone else.
Something was going on: a melding of their individuality, the habits that were unique to each of them. Nina had wanted it, wanted that us-ness. Still, it came as something of a revelation to her. The process began almost immediately after she moved in.
“What is this?” Mitch said as Nina wandered around the room holding a cup. It was a weekday morning.
“What is what?” she said fuzzily. She was never fully awake first thing in the morning.
“Don’t you sit down for breakfast? I mean, a real breakfast, not a cup of coffee.”
“Sure. Saturday … Sunday. Oh, good, here it is.” She found the shirt she wanted, still packed in a box of clothes.
“I’ve noticed the way you eat. It’s a little nutty, Nins. Breakfast on the fly, and not much of it. Not a real good way to start the day.”
“I know, you’re right. I’ve read all those articles about having a big breakfast, too.…” She put down the cup, yawning, and buttoned her shirt. “But I don’t have time on school mornings.” The radio was on. The moment Mitch rolled out of bed, he turned it on. Loud. Nina winced as the announcer blared out the weather forecast for at least the fifth time. “Rainy and cold this morning, so bundle up and take your umbrellas, good buddies—”
“Do you have to have that on so loud?”
“What?” His turn to be bewildered.
“The radio. That idiot voice!”
“I hardly hear him.” He turned the volume down.
“Do you even listen?” Nina fumbled in the drawer for a pair of tights. Damn. The toes were totally gone on her favorite green pair.
“I hear enough. I pick up the news this way.” He took her by the elbow and steered her to the table. “Sit, honey.”
“Mitch, I don’t have my pants on.”
“Oops, sorry. Get them on. Then sit.”
“Gosh, I feel like a dog,” she complained as she pulled on tights and jeans.
Mitch had put out rolls, jelly, a box of cereal, milk and eggs.
“Boiled eggs? Vile!”
“Next time I’ll scramble them.” He sat down next to her, tapping an egg with a knife.
“Don’t bother. I can’t face eggs in the morning. Not even for you.”
“Eggs are the food of life. Full of protein. That coffee is empty calories.”
She leaned on her hand, looking at him sideways. “You should have warned me you were a reformer before I moved in.”
“I’m sneaky.” He
poured Rice Chex into a dish and pushed it in front of her. “My family always sat down together for breakfast.”
“Not mine.” Nina poured milk onto the Rice Chex, and dutifully chewed a spoonful. “There were so many of us, all going in different directions.” Odd how hard it was to fight the feeling that Mitch’s family was, well, not superior to hers, but somehow a family that knew how to do things better or more correctly.
Mitch didn’t let up on his campaign for Nina to eat breakfast, and she began getting up earlier to have time for the food he made. One morning it would be pizza (on an English muffin), the next morning pancakes or French toast drowned in syrup. She didn’t find it easy to face so much food that early in the morning. While they ate, she forbade herself to look at the clock, but as soon as they were done, the scramble was on. Sometimes they stacked the dirty dishes into the sink, more often left everything on the table. “Later … I’ll clean up later.” Since Mitch cooked, it was only fair that she do the clean-up. Feeling overfull, she gathered books and notebooks, pulled on a jacket, and rushed out. Halfway down the stairs—this happened to her half a dozen times—she rushed back, suddenly anxious that Mitch, still not tuned to Emmett’s ways, might have accidentally let him out.
“You worry about the cat like he’s a kid,” Mitch said one night.
“Well, in a way, he is my baby. It would kill me if anything happened to him.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to him, Nins. Cats are smart; they’re instinctive.”
“Ha. I heard you calling him dumbbell this morning.”
Mitch snickered. “Well, on the cat scale of intelligence … Admit it, he doesn’t rate genius.”
Nina kissed Emmett on his broad face. “Don’t listen to him, darling.”
“I don’t see how you can do that. Doesn’t it bother you that he cleans himself with his tongue? I mean that tongue goes everywhere.”
“Here, why don’t you try kissing him?”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on, Mitch, kiss him.” Holding Emmett out, Nina advanced on Mitch. “Kiss him, Mitch. Don’t be in a rut. Don’t be so narrow-minded.” Two of Mitch’s favorite words.
“Think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“Yeah!” She followed him around the room. “Kissy, kissy, Mitchy! Come on, make friends with Emmett. You two boys have to get along.”
“Nina, you big bully, take that cat away from my face.”
Emmett settled the matter by jumping out of Nina’s arms and stalking away, his ears perked indignantly.
For days on end the weather was frigid and gray. Nina rushed home from work, usually arriving before Mitch. Dump books, kick off shoes, turn on radio (he liked music in the background all the time), start supper. While the water boiled for spaghetti she’d run hot, soapy water into the sink for the breakfast dishes. Next, she’d storm through their room, straightening the bed, setting the table, and pushing clothes into the closet and the bureau. Then Mitch would come. “Hello!” He’d smile, drop his lunch pail, kiss her with breath that smelled metallic and sour. He’d go into the bathroom to shower, change his clothes, brush his teeth, and she’d sit on the edge of the tub talking to him about her day. By the time he was in fresh clothes and had shaved, he was getting his second wind and she was running down as fast as a clock that needed rewinding. But food and wine or beer restored her. She ate and drank hungrily, her turn now to listen to his tales.
They were snug in their room. If the heat went off, they got into bed. Nothing bothered them. If they ran out of bread or Band-Aids or bath powder, they bundled up and went out together to shop. On the street they walked with their arms around each other in a tight embrace, and later, back in their room, while Nina studied, Mitch would sit near her, reading and stroking her hair. Lovely … oh, lovely … Like a cat herself, Nina moved closer to Mitch.
Chapter Thirteen
“So! How are you guys doing?” Sonia said one day, meeting Nina on the street just as she came out of the cheese store across from her old apartment.
“Great!” Nina said. “Why don’t you and Lynell come over and visit us?”
“I wouldn’t want to spoil the honeymoon.”
“Oh … the honeymoon!” Nina rolled her eyes. “God, we haven’t seen anyone in ages. We’re total hermits.”
“Still love each other?”
Nina smiled.
“So it was a good move?” Sonia said.
“Did you doubt?”
“You never know about these things.…”
“I guess not.” But she hadn’t had doubts. That was the good part of being impulsive. When things worked out, you could say, airily, Oh, I always knew it was going to be okay…. “How are you doing, Sonia? How’s D.G.?”
“No complaints. He was asking about you the other day.”
“He was, really? I like D.G.; he’s a sweet guy.”
“He has his good points,” Sonia said.
“Listen,” Nina said impulsively, warmed by the contact, “I want you all to come over.” She took Sonia’s arm. “You and Lynell and D.G. and Adam. Come over for breakfast on Sunday.” It would be nice to have company. A change of pace, something different to look forward to—and she wouldn’t mind, at all, showing off a bit: how they lived, how they’d fixed up the place, how close they were. “We’ll have a big, gorgeous gorge. Mitch’s specialty is breakfast.”
The next morning, combing her hair, she remembered the meeting with Sonia and mentioned the invitation. “Sonia’s going to pass it on to everyone else, okay?”
“Too late not to be okay.”
She leaned into the mirror. “Hey, you don’t mind, do you?” She was pleased with the way she looked … something about her face.… Maybe her expression? Or was it her eyes? Were they bigger? Silly. But, really, she did look good. “Sweetie? Do you mind? I thought you’d like it.”
“Sure, but—”
“What?”
“Well, what if I’d planned on doing something else?”
“We didn’t talk about anything else. Was there something else you had in mind?”
“I’ve been thinking it might be fun to go tobogganing.”
“It would be! But we can do that another weekend, okay?”
“Okay, okay.”
“Grump, grump. You just want to make all the decisions.”
“Hey, this is a democracy.”
“Oh, sure.” But she’d noticed that he did like to be in charge; to say yes, no, maybe, right, wrong … just like her father, her brothers.… Oh, well … She hugged him. “It’ll be fun. You can cook your Hawaiian rice.” An incredible concoction he’d introduced her to that put fried eggs, bananas, and rice on the same breakfast plate.
For the rest of the week, in odd moments, Nina would imagine the coming Sunday get-together: the things the other four would say, how they’d look at her and Mitch, how impressed they’d be. She imagined Sonia whispering to Lynell, I don’t know anyone else as close as Mitch and Nina….
How pleasant it would be to talk openly about the two of them! She had to censor the letter she wrote home. After news about herself (classes, marks, her job for Professor Lehman), she would pop in a casual mention of Mitch. “My boyfriend …” And that was it. Undoubtedly enough. They were probably jumping for joy because she finally had a boyfriend. She’d once heard her mother saying to her father, “They’re all over Nancy like flies, but Nina …” And then, “But she’s got brains. She’s going to make something of herself.” When her mother wrote to Nina, it would always be on a sheet of lined paper with, first, news about the other kids, and then reminders to study hard and get enough sleep. The last thing her mother would imagine was that not only did Nina have a lover, but that she was living with him.
No, being open with her family was impossible. Yet she wanted to talk about herself and Mitch. Chafing, she looked for others to tell. Sitting next to freckled Kim Ogun in Nicholas Lehman’s lit class, whenever possible Nina dropped Mitch’s name into the conversatio
n. “Mitch and I went for a walk.… You’ll never believe what Mitch made for supper.… Oh, Mitch and I saw that TV show, too.” But, somehow, sharp Kim never caught on, or, anyway, never asked the pointed questions that would lead to Nina’s saying (she had rehearsed it), We talked it over, and I moved in with him. Right. I’m living with my boyfriend, and it’s working out. It’s really great.
Oddly, though, without meaning to, she blurted the whole thing out to Professor Lehman one afternoon. The weather was dismal; freezing rain ran down the small window, and inside the tiny office, the old rusty pipes running across the ceiling clanked ceaselessly. Around four o’clock Nicholas Lehman called for a coffee break and offered Nina a sticky roll from a paper bag he took out of his briefcase.
“Thanks,” she said, taking one. “It looks just like what I had for breakfast. My boyfriend bought them. He’s always trying to get me to eat more at breakfast.” Then she heard herself, and she saw from the expression on Nicholas Lehman’s face that he understood perfectly. Putting down the roll, she stared hard at the paper she’d just typed. Blabbermouth! Of all people to tell! Kim Ogun was one thing, but Professor Lehman … No, no, no. Now what would he think of her? She didn’t think less of herself for moving in with Mitch, but Professor Lehman was another generation. He wasn’t old, but he wasn’t her age, either.
“My wife and I lived together for a while before we got married,” he said in a moment, in an easy tone.
She looked up and blurted, “We’re not thinking of getting married!” Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Foot in the mouth again. In case he hadn’t been completely sure of the situation … Living together—and not even because they were engaged and planning marriage.
“I should hope not,” he said. “You’re far too young for marriage.”
“Well …” She smiled weakly. How tactful he was! How nice! How very, very nice.
Someone to Love Page 8
