Until the Real Thing Comes Along

by Elizabeth Berg

  “There are, too,” I say.

  She looks up. “Such as?”

  “You could need to hear something right away.”

  “What, there’s nothing in your house you can use to open a CD?”

  “You might be in your car.”

  “You have a CD player in your car?”

  “No.”

  “Your fingernails are not a toolbox,” she says, not even bothering to look up.

  “Fine.”

  “So what are you doing tonight?” She files my already short nails down farther. It tickles a little. I love getting manicures. I got my first one when I sold the house; it seemed like a ritzy treat. Now I do it about every two weeks. It makes me feel good. And I love Amber. She knows things.

  I take a quick breath in, say quietly, “Blind date.”

  “Oy,” she says, sympathetically. Everybody says “Oy” now. Everybody says “Enjoy.” Soon there will be one amalgamated culture and it will be so boring. There’ll be no one to gossip about because everyone will be just like everyone else. However, I’ll be dead by then.

  “You know what percentage of blind dates turn into a serious relationship?” she asks.

  I don’t answer.

  “Two point four.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Read it.”

  “That’s higher than I’d have guessed.”

  She snorts. “I had a blind date once, and the guy was a fucking undertaker.”

  “Oh, God. You didn’t know?”

  “No! He told me he was in public relations.”

  “So when did he tell you the truth?”

  “When I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  “Oh. I see. Gee, funny it didn’t work. Quite the aphrodisiac, being an undertaker.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “What he called it was ‘laying out stiffs.’ I walked home from his house. Went flying out of there. Didn’t have enough money for a cab.”

  I’ll leave her a big tip. I feel a little responsible for her having to walk.

  “So what color?” Amber asks.

  “Oh! Uh … red?”

  She raises her eyebrows.

  “Just never mind,” I say.

  “You’re kind of excited about this date, huh?”

  “Please,” I say. Meaning everything, I guess.

  At two in the afternoon, I meet Ethan at the Tick-Tock Diner, our favorite. When one of the octogenarian regulars there complained about the café opening too late on the weekends (seven rather than six), Ed, the owner, gave him a key. Said he found him there the next morning making toast—had the coffee all brewed, too. It was kind of nice, Ed said.

  “Now, let’s just get something to drink,” Ethan said on the way in—we’ve both put on a few—but when the waitress came, he ordered a double bacon cheeseburger and banana cream pie.

  “This is great,” he says now, around his first bite. “Want some?”

  “No. We’re dieting, remember?”

  Ethan looks at my sandwich, at the mile-high pile of stringy barbecued beef, the side order of cheese fries.

  “I’m not going to eat all this,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not!”

  “So can I have a fry?”

  “One.”

  “So,” he says. “Are you excited?”

  “I don’t get excited about blind dates anymore. I get sick.”

  “You’re not sick. You’re excited.”

  I shrug, take another bite of sandwich, then smile at him. “Maybe.”

  Ethan picks a piece of meat off my sandwich, wedges it between his front teeth. “Hey, guess who I am?”

  I sigh, inspect my teeth in the napkin holder, remove the offending morsel. “You know, you could have just quietly told me.”

  “I can’t take you anywhere,” he says, and uses his napkin to wipe a spot of sauce off my cheek.

  “What if he doesn’t like me?” I ask.

  “He’ll love you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know him.”

  “What if I don’t like him?”

  “Now there will be something new. Why, you’ll be able to knock me over with a feather!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You never even try, Patty.”

  “Yes, I do!” No, I don’t.

  “Just try this time. For me.”

  “It wouldn’t be for you.”

  “Yes, it would. I want you to find someone. One of us might as well.”

  “I thought you were seeing someone.”

  “Didn’t work out. I have a blind date tonight, too.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “But I try. I really try.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you scared to?”

  “I’m scared to death. For lots of reasons. But I do it anyway. You have to. Can I have more?”

  I slide my plate to him, watch the way he picks up a fry, then chews it. I love everything about him, the way his leather jacket lies in the booth, the way he makes his capital Es, the way he eats. I look at my watch and wish it were hours later and I were sitting here with Ethan again, both of us done with what separates us.

  Later, in the bathtub, I look through the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. I want every hairdo I see. Plus every body. Even a few of the clothes. Which I won’t get. I will dog-ear the pages, maybe even fill out the order form, but I won’t get anything.

  There was a message from Mark on my machine when I got home: dress very casually. So the guy’s cheap.

  I dress in jeans and a T-shirt, a white one, which I got on sale at Ann Taylor and which I think is pretty classy-looking, especially when I wear just my little gold earrings with it, no other jewelry except my watch, which I would not be caught dead without. I heard of a woman who wears two watches, in case one stops working. I understand completely. I must know what time it is, at all times. It’s interesting to me. Plus I need a watch so I can tell the exact second tonight when it wouldn’t be too rude to say, “Well, I do have to work tomorrow.…” One good thing about real estate is you can say that. You can say you have to work anytime—weekends, late nights, early mornings—because you do.

  At 7:15, I’m ready. I lie down on my bed and close my eyes, take some deep breaths. If I weren’t doing this, I’d have nothing to do tonight. I’d watch some movie, or read, or go to a mall and walk around aimlessly. I’ve heard you can meet men at those gigantic bookstores, but all I ever see there are married men. Or gay men. Or men who are going to qualify for Social Security in fifteen minutes. Actually, those are the kind of men I meet no matter where I go. So, fine. I have a date. Maybe I’ll have some fun.

  The doorbell rings. I startle, check my watch: 7:20. Could it be wrong? This makes me more anxious than the fact that my date is here. I check the clock by my bedside: 7:20, it says, and so does the one on my dresser.

  I look out the window. In front of my house is a green Jeep, a few years old. Clean. Well, this tells me nothing. A Saab, I would know something. A pickup with a gun rack, I would know something. Or, you know, a Porsche. But a Jeep could be great or awful. I hate that.

  The doorbell rings again. I run to the mirror, fluff up my hair, smile at myself, and then go to the door and open it. Because I have to.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m early, aren’t I?”

  “Well …” I say. Blue eyes, brown hair, a nice, shaggy cut. Not too fat and not too skinny. Jeans, a plaid shirt. Sleeves rolled up. A slight smell of some nice aftershave.

  “Wait—you are Patty, right?”

  “Yes,” I say, and smile for real.

  “Wow,” he says. “You’re pretty.”

  “Let me get my jacket,” I say, and boy, do I step lightly to get it. Because for once in my life I am not thinking, Oh, God. Well, maybe I am. But in an entirely different way.

  5

  My mother has made lemonade for me, which I appreciate. She used real
lemons, and served it in a tall, frosted tumbler with a jaunty sprig of mint. Now I am sitting at the kitchen table, watching her make marinade for the salmon she’s serving for dinner.

  “What’s his name again?” she asks.

  “Mark Hansen.”

  “Well …” she says, smiling. I know she wants to say more, but is afraid to. In her head, she is no doubt saying this: Patty Hansen. Patty Hansen. Not bad.

  “I think I’m, you know, probably going to see him again,” I say.

  “I would think so.” She runs water into a bowl, looks at me, then away.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing! Just … I’ve got a feeling, all right?”

  “What feeling?”

  “That this … It might … Never mind.” She wipes her hands on the striped dishtowel, hangs it neatly over the edge of the sink. Then she comes to the table and sits down with me. “I just think this is a very unusual man you’ve met here.”

  “He’s okay.”

  “You want to clean some carrots with me?”

  “Sure.”

  She is a marvel in self-restraint. As am I. We are being so careful to avoid looking at each other I have a sudden fear that if we do, we might both ignite.

  She divides up a pile of carrots, hands me one of the peelers. And then, when both of our heads are safely bowed over our work, she says, “I have to say, I really do like the idea of a nighttime picnic. The candles and all.”

  “And at his old Boy Scout camp!” I say.

  “And running down that hill together, that was charming.”

  “He did that when he was a little boy.”

  “Yes, you said.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  I put down the peeler. “Mom. I don’t know what this is.”

  She nods, reaches for my hand. “Maybe it’s love, honey.”

  “It can’t be, already.”

  She leans back, sighs. “Oh, yes it can. How do you think it happened to me and your father?”

  “I don’t think you ever told me.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, my. Well, we met at a dance. He was in uniform. I know what you think of uniforms, but I’m telling you, he was such a handsome sight. And it was instant, I swear to you. It just was. One look, and I was in love.”

  “Was he?”

  “Well, I never asked him. But I think so.”

  “You never asked him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, ask him!”

  She smiles, and in it I see the nineteen-year-old she was when she met my father: the forties curls, the limp corsage on her padded-shoulder suit jacket.

  “Ask him!”

  She turns toward the den, yells, “Robert?”

  No response.

  Again, louder, she yells, “Robert?”

  “WHAT?” he yells back.

  “Did you fall in love with me at first sight?”

  A moment. And now he is here, holding the newspaper, his glasses barely hanging on to the end of his nose, his hair sticking up a little in the back. I think he was sleeping. “What did you say?” he asks.

  “Did you fall in love with me at first sight?”

  “What, are you kidding?”

  She shrugs.

  He puts the paper down on the counter, comes over to her, takes her face between his large hands. “The instant I saw you.”

  “Well,” she says, laughing a little.

  “Don’t you know that?”

  “Well, I thought so.”

  “Haven’t I told you a million times?”

  “I guess you have, Robert.”

  “She was a vision in blue,” he tells me.

  “Yellow,” my mother says.

  “Whatever,” my father says, continuing to look at me. His eyes narrow. “There was not a doubt in my mind. I had to have her.” He turns back to my mother. “And I got her! Didn’t I?”

  “Yes you did, Robert.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” He kisses her, then goes back to the counter, retrieves his newspaper. “What’s for dinner?”

  “Salmon.”

  “And?”

  “Red potatoes, green beans, carrots, a nice salad.”

  “And?”

  “No, Robert.”

  “Not even sorbet?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “She’s killing me,” he tells me. “But I did fall in love with her at first sight.” He stretches, scratches lazily at his side. “Anything else?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “All right. I’m busy, then.”

  My mother and I look at each other, smile.

  Everything they have, I want. I know that when he puts his hands to her face, she recognizes his smell, claims the larger part of his history. I can’t stand it that they still blush around each other. Their love seems at times to have weight and take up space. Like matter. Like what matters.

  My mother resumes peeling carrots. I sigh loudly.

  “What?” she says.

  “You and Dad. Sometimes it’s sort of depressing to be around you.”

  She looks up.

  “No, it’s … You know, you’re just so right for each other.”

  “That will come to you, too.”

  I look out the window. The wind has picked up. “I don’t know.”

  “It will,” my mother says. “It will happen when you’re not looking for it to. Love likes to take you by surprise. And anyway, you’re just … destined to get married and have children. I knew it about you from the time you were a little girl. I could tell from the way you played dolls—you were a natural. You’ll make a wonderful mother.”

  “Oh, we all played dolls. Even Johnny, remember? He took my Betsy-Wetsy to school with him on the first day of kindergarten.”

  “Yes, and you were so furious at him.”

  “Well, there was finger paint all over her when he brought her home!”

  “It washed out.”

  “Not from her sunsuit. And that was her favorite sunsuit.”

  My mother reaches across the table, touches my face. “You see what I mean, then.”

  I look away, remembering my life as mother to Betsy. How she slept in a crib my father made her, covered with an afghan my mother had knitted. How I would wake up sometimes at night and turn on my light to look down at her. I truly thought she might have awakened and be looking up at me, asking for something I was entirely ready to give. Even then. Truly, even then.

  I played a lot of games growing up: jacks, Mother, May I?, hide-and-seek, endless rounds of Monopoly that went on for entire Christmas vacations. I dressed unfortunate kittens in doll dresses with round collars and short, puffy sleeves before I gave them a ride on the swing.

  I also did things like ring doorbells and run away, and call strangers to ask, “Is your refrigerator running?” I explored half-built houses and swamps with water thick as stew, though my hands were held in close to me at those times, and a pastel ribbon usually fluttered in my hair, announcing my not-really-tomboy status. I walked down storm drains until I got scared I’d gone too far in; then, thrilled to the bone by visions of drowning, I’d run out. I scaled the fierce-looking but easily climbed fence at the transportation department in order to slide down the huge piles of sand stored there, until I heard that a kid had suffocated doing that. He was a kid who also had epilepsy; everyone in my small gang met at our clubhouse—a deserted garage furnished with an army blanket, cardboard boxes, and Oreos—to discuss the scary unfairness of the situation.

  But it was always dolls I liked playing with the best. I treated them with great respect: washed their little dresses in a dishpan out on the front porch, hung them out to dry, then ironed and folded them and put them away in their Whitman’s candy-box bureaus. I never cut their hair into fright wigs like all my other friends did with their dolls. I heard about one girl w
ho dumped catsup all over her life-sized doll, then put her in the bushes and waited for someone to come along and start screaming. That news depressed me. If I’d known where the horrible event occurred, I would have gone over to rescue the doll immediately, would have tenderly bathed her and then dressed her in the finest outfit I owned, my First Communion ensemble. That sparkly white dress and veil lived in a plastic bag in my closet for years, making my other clothes feel guilty.

  It’s true that I had a particular passion for Betsy-Wetsy; but I loved all my dolls, the baby dolls especially, with their sweetly needy faces and uncomplaining dispositions. Not that I didn’t understand what the real deal was with babies—my younger siblings showed me what red-faced squalling and leaky diapers were all about. But I wanted this. On one inspired occasion I put scrambled eggs in my dolls’ diapers. Then I carefully pinned the diapers back on, went away to attend to some task, and later came back into the room to wave the air before my nose and say, “Oh, my goodness! What have we got in-a britches?” which is, of course, exactly what my mother said.

  I imagined the baby dolls’ sweet smiles replaced by mouths open and trembling in baby rage; and at those times I swaddled the dolls in receiving blankets and paced and patted and sighed wearily and worried mightily and felt satisfied to the core.

  I played dolls until I was fourteen, and only stopped then because I was too afraid someone would catch me, and I would be embarrassed for the rest of my life. I would play dolls now if anyone would play seriously with me. Once, when Ethan and I were dating, I showed him my doll collection and we played a bit. He was very good at it. But we were both a little drunk; it didn’t count.

  I also loved playing house. I thought domesticity was a many-splendored thing; I didn’t know what could possibly be more satisfying than looking in the Sears catalogue for a new club chair while pineapple-upside-down cake baked in the oven. I liked all the trappings of the modern home: the steam iron, the copper-bottomed pots and pans, the scientifically engineered cleaning products, the pull-out vegetable bin of the frost-free refrigerator. I liked TV trays and paper doilies and the stately Mixmaster.

  I learned to make chocolate-chip cookies by the time I was seven and it gave me a real sense of power. “Please, please!” my little brother and sisters would clamor when I removed the cookies from the baking trays to store them in the cookie jar. “No sweets until after dinner,” I would say, prim-mouthed, and then, finally, “Oh all right, but just one.” My mother’s white ruffled apron hung low on me, swayed languidly over my official Brownie oxfords. I was a model of cheerful righteousness and authority. I thought all you needed was a husband, a house, children, and a decent oven, and you could be happy. I still think that. It’s just that now I’m afraid to admit it.