Until the Real Thing Comes Along

by Elizabeth Berg

  I wash up for bed, then put the phone back on the hook. And then pick it up again, to be sure the dial tone’s there, so someone can call. Sometimes I’m a liar. But sometimes the truth is just too tiresome to bear.

  9

  Elaine and I are at our favorite Mexican restaurant, on our third margarita. “Well, that’s it, I can’t even see straight,” Elaine says. “We’re going to have to take a cab home.”

  “I know.” As for me, I can no longer feel the roof of my mouth.

  “I hope I don’t puke,” she says. “I get carsick in backseats.”

  “I saw a movie where she puked in her purse.”

  “That’s no better. That’s worse!”

  I consider this. True. “Well, if you do puke in the cab, wait till after I get out. I know all the drivers.”

  “So do I!”

  “Yeah, but the cabdriver won’t be mad if it’s you. He’ll think it’s cute.”

  Elaine puts her glass down, settles back in her chair. “Okay, fine. Let’s talk about it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been sitting here all night waiting for you to bring it up.”

  “Bring what up?”

  “Your jealousy.”

  It occurs to me to deny it. But I don’t.

  “What am I supposed to do, Patty? What will make you not so mad at me? I see it all the time. When we go into the ladies’ room and we’re putting our lipstick on, I feel you watching me and I … I feel this rage coming from you.”

  “It’s not rage, Elaine.” Yes it is. That’s exactly what it is. I hate that it’s in me. But it is.

  “Well, what is it, then?”

  I shrug, lick some salt off my glass, find a very interesting spot on the tablecloth.

  Our waiter glides up to our table like a swan. “How’s everything here?” he asks, smiling at Elaine. She doesn’t answer. Nor do I.

  “Ladies?”

  “I want to ask you something,” I say. “Do you guys watch people, and wait until they’re obviously involved in an important conversation, and then come flying over to ask about the chimichangas?”

  “You didn’t get chimichangas.”

  “We need some privacy,” Elaine says quietly.

  “Fine.” He lays the check on the table. “Whenever you’re ready.” He spins smartly on one heel, starts to walk away.

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  He turns back, wary.

  “I’m sorry. It’s her I’m mad at. Because I’m jealous of her.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  “It feels kind of good to just say it.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet it does.”

  “Patty,” Elaine says.

  “Could we have another drink?” I ask. I don’t really want one. I just thought it might be nice to order more.

  “Sure.”

  I hold up the check. “I think you’ll need this.”

  “On the house.”

  After he leaves, Elaine says, “I just want to say something. I’m sick of talking about relationships and problems. I’m sick of everyone being in therapy, overanalyzing everything to death. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, you know? Well, okay, maybe not a cigar. But let’s just say everything’s fine between you and me. Okay? Mostly, it is.”

  “True. That’s true.” I take in a breath. “So. How’s Mark?”

  She sits up, looks straight at me. “I love him. All right?” She picks up the new margarita the waiter has set before her, holds it up to me.

  I clink glasses with her. “Well!”

  “I guess that doesn’t tell you how he is, though.”

  “Do you think … you might get married?”

  “I think we might.”

  “Okay, I have to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Please don’t make the bridesmaids’ dresses have big bows at the waist. Or be pastel lace.”

  “You mean like at Linda Beauman’s wedding, where all the bridesmaids looked like gigantic after-dinner mints?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I would do that to you?”

  “No. But if I ever get married, I’m going to do it to you.”

  “If you ever get married, I’ll wear a Hefty garbage bag if you want.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be so decent, Elaine.”

  “Maybe I’m not always.”

  “I want to know something. Is he good in bed?”

  She sighs. “Well, first I loved him. So it’s different.”

  “Come on, Elaine.”

  She smiles, nods.

  “I’m happy for you,” I say. And I am. I also feel a roaring inside my chest, doing all it can to stay there and not come out of my mouth.

  When I was in high school, I hung out with a big bunch of girls, there were nine of us. Every morning, we went to the girls’ bathroom so we could smoke. We would sit on the floor and everyone had to step over us. It was very satisfying; I have yet to feel such a strong sense of righteous belonging. One day we were talking about marriage. “Patty will be first, that’s for sure,” Trudy Oldsman said, blowing a perfect smoke ring my way. “No I won’t!” I said. “Uh-huh!” they all chorused back. And really, I secretly thought so, too.

  After I get home, I call Elaine. “Are you sick?” I ask.

  “No. I just have to keep holding onto the wall so the room stays still.”

  “Elaine, I want to tell you something. I am jealous of you.”

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  “You know, I’ve never gotten to be first. All my life, every time I’ve tried for something, I might come close, but I never win. I think the precedent was set when I was nine, when I got second prize on Captain Cody’s show for ‘Guess the Silhouette.’ It was a hot dog, I knew right away, and I called and was told I was the winner, but then the person on the line said, ‘Oh, wait a minute.’ And then it turned out someone else was first. Hey, that wasn’t you, Elaine, was it? Did you win that hot-dog silhouette contest?”

  “No, thank God, or you might never speak to me again.”

  “Well, I was Ms. Runner-up.”

  “Runner-up isn’t so bad.”

  “It is when that’s what you always are. And when your best friend is always the winner. But … I’ve been lying here thinking, and that’s not what’s really wrong. It’s not you I’m mad at. It’s me. You know? I’m mad at me.”

  “For what?”

  “For … I don’t know. For missing the boat. For running out of time.”

  “You’re not out of time.”

  “Well …”

  “You’re not!”

  “Oh, Elaine. You know when you’re taking a plane in the middle of the afternoon, and you wake up that day and you can’t really do anything and so you end up leaving for the airport early?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I feel like.”

  “Patty, if you could just—”

  “I know what you’re going to say. About Ethan, right? But I can’t. I can’t stop loving him. And I just don’t think I can tell you why.”

  “Try.”

  “He’s … I just find him so … beautiful, and so easy to be with. I love his sense of humor. I feel a kind of safety with him that I never … Oh, what’s the use? How can I explain it to you? Sometimes the difference between what I feel and what I want to say is so vast. It makes me think the invention of language was only a step backward.”

  “It’s just that you keep yourself from so much by loving him,” Elaine says. “Maybe you don’t want a relationship, really. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “I do want a relationship!”

  “Well … think about that the next time you waste a weekend with Ethan.”

  I turn on my back, sigh.

  After I hang up the phone, I go into the kitchen for a drink of water, stare out at the moonlit backyard. I think about how I used to like playing “Truth or Dare,” but only for the truth part of it. I wished, in fact, that the game could
simply be “Truth,” and that you would play it by going into a small closet with your partner. You would close the door to absent yourself from the usual world and sit in velvety darkness, necessarily close to a person who would put their lips to your ear to whisper something absolutely real to you. Something primal. Whenever I imagined this, I could feel the movement of air coming from the person’s mouth into my ear. I could feel the warmth in it, and the damp. I could smell earth and sun. I could feel the small hairs on the back of my neck rise up from the relief of hearing one small thing at last spoken so truly it made my insides feel righted.

  When we played “Truth or Dare,” I chose truth every time, but the questions and answers were only those calculated to embarrass one person and thrill the others. That kind of truth was not what I was interested in. That was not at all what I wanted to know. But what could I say? How could I ask? I was never in a closet, in the dark, the lies of my eyes obliterated and the moment for revelation finally at hand.

  I’ve told a few other people this story, and they either got uncomfortable or said, “Oh, uh-huh.” But when I told Ethan, his eyes filled with tears. “I know,” he said, and held me for a long time. I took that moment for what I wanted it to be: an acknowledgment that he too ached for that kind of intimacy, and I was the one to give it to him. I was as helpless as an addict before he can even think of changing: stuck in overwhelming want, governed by bone-deep need. Oh, that bad pleasure—it’s amazingly good.

  The next morning, someone in the office tells me there’s a call for me on line three. “Patty Murphy,” I say into the phone—quietly, out of respect for my hangover. I’m hoping someone will say, “I want to buy a very big house. You don’t have to do anything.” The last rental I did will barely bring me enough to buy a bag of groceries. But if the Flanagans decide on the high-priced condo I’ve shown them four times now, I’ll be all right for a while. I like the Flanagans. They’ve been married for six years but they’re still wildly in love. They look like brother and sister: both black-haired, blue-eyed people. Maybe a kind of narcissism is a good thing in a relationship.

  The voice I hear at the other end of the phone says, “I want to buy your most expensive property. I’ll pay cash and there’s a good tip in it for you, too,” but it doesn’t count—it’s only my brother, Johnny.

  “Hey, come sign the papers,” I say. “I’m about to starve.”

  In the background, I hear the sounds coming from the garage Johnny owns. “Intensive Car,” he calls it. There are metal parts banging together, the low sound of men’s voices, country and western on the radio, of course—Johnny lives in Nashville. He married a gorgeous redhead who used to be on Hee-Haw and now sings in the clubs around town. I like her, Nancy’s her name, although she pronounces it “Ninecy.” They already have three kids, all boys, all with little baby southern accents. “Aint Patty,” they call me. I wonder if this time they’ll get a sister.

  “Listen,” Johnny says now. “What’s up with Mom?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know; she sounded strange last time I talked to her. Kind of distant.”

  “Oh, she’s just mad at me. Her wrath makes her preoccupied. It’s her hobby lately, like needlepoint.”

  “Why is she mad at you?”

  “Because I stopped seeing someone she thought I should marry.”

  “Is that right?”

  “That’s right, and don’t you go getting on the bandwagon with her.”

  “Hey, I just want you to be happy.”

  “I know.”

  “But Dad says Mom is—”

  “I check on them, Johnny. You know I’d tell you if anything was up.”

  “It’s just hard being this far away, you know? She really didn’t sound like herself.”

  “Well, she’s getting older. You change.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe that’s all it is.”

  “I’ll go see them this weekend. I’ll call you and let you know how they are.”

  After I hang up the phone, I lean back in my swivel chair, clasp my hands behind my head. I hate being the oldest. I hate being the only one who stayed, the one responsible for my parents while my sisters and brother do whatever they want. I hate being the only one unmarried and childless, the one with zero prospects, the one they all worry about in ways that are just a little too self-satisfied, the one who is the unspoken agenda at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, at any other significant family gathering. I need something. Right now, I just need something. I wish someone would walk in the office and hand me a bouquet. Or a cheeseburger. Anything. I shoot a rubber band across the room, hit Melanie Olson in the back of the head. There.

  “Hey!” she says, turning around.

  “Sorry.”

  “What’s the matter, you need a break?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take off. I’ll do the phones.”

  I open my desk drawer, take out my purse.

  “Patty?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bring me back a cheeseburger?”

  “Sure.” My fantasy. That someone else gets to have. Story of my life, as they say. I might as well bring her back a little bouquet, too. You can get a nice mix for a few dollars over at Quick Mart. I’ll bring her purples and pinks; I like purples and pinks.

  10

  Sometimes, not often, it happens that I can’t sleep. It’s worst when I’ve already been asleep for a little while, and then suddenly get jerked into hyperawareness. It’s the opposite of a natural awakening, when you open your eyes rested and calm and perfectly willing to give the world another go. This is more like a hand reaching into your center to squeeze it. And then squeeze it again, harder.

  I look at the clocks. One-ten, they agree. Fine. That’s not so bad. I can pretend I’ve been out to a party and have just gotten into bed. And as long as I’m pretending, I will say that I had quite a wonderful time. Yes, I did. I said many good and clever things. People were thinking, Oh, thank goodness someone like her came. What did she say her name was? And she said she was single?

  No. I am not believing myself. My hand is not holding a drink and some clever canapé. It is lying all by itself against my stomach, which is dressed in stained flannel pajamas.

  I sit up, notice a dime-sized area of headache in each temple. I can feel sleep scratching against the insides of my eyelids, but I know it will be a long time before I can relax back into it. I look at the clock again. 1:11. It is so dark. I feel my hands clench into fists. I feel my breathing start to quicken.

  Here we go.

  Nothing will help this, I know. Not the sight of a calm container of cottage cheese in my refrigerator, not some late-night movie, not even a phone call to the Samaritans, which I am ashamed to say I actually tried once. I said right away that I was not really suicidal, but I still felt guilty, hogging a phone line when someone might be standing on a bridge, trying to get through on their cellular phone—which was yet another thing that did not bring the person happiness. Anyway, the highly trained volunteer didn’t believe I was only anxious. She spoke to me so tenderly she made me sob. She got me in touch with a deep kind of grief that made me think maybe I was suicidal. All in all, not a particularly helpful experience.

  I get up, go into the living room, turn on all the lights. It is so quiet I swear I can hear the disturbance in the air every time I move. The darkness does not dissipate, but only seems pushed up into the corners of the room, where it hangs, vulturelike. I sit on the sofa, pull my knees up to my chest, rest my chin on them. Sniff. Think: I am thirty-six years old and no one knows me, not one person, not really. Not my family. Not Elaine. Not Ethan. My mind catches on this last one. Because Elaine may not know the realest, deepest me, but Ethan does. There has always been a kind of holding back in me from Elaine. I can’t help this particular smallness of heart; find me one woman who doesn’t withhold just a bit from another woman who looks like that. But Ethan really does know me. I can be all of my selves with him. I wore an emerald
-green evening gown with him on a night I spent fifteen minutes just getting my lipstick on, and I can tell you that that night I looked as good as I ever will and felt it, too, I felt beautiful. I have also sat on the sofa with Ethan wearing a sweat outfit and a robe and mismatched socks, watching Blazing Saddles for the ninth (9th) time. I wore adult-formula Clearasil smeared across my entire forehead that time too, then sabotaged my efforts by stuffing myself with Cape Cod potato chips dipped in Lipton’s famous recipe for insti–weight gain.

  I pick up the phone. He is the one I can call, he is always the one. His phone rings once, twice, part of a third time. And then there is his sleepy “Hello?”

  “Ethan?”

  “Patty. What happened?”

  “Nothing. I can’t sleep. I feel anxious as hell.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Death?”

  “No.”

  “Did you say something bad to someone important?”

  “No. It’s … Here. Here’s what it is. I fell asleep the other night, and I woke up the next morning and went to the bathroom and I saw myself in the mirror and I still had red lipstick on from the day before and no one had even seen it.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He yawns noisily. “I feel like that sometimes when I clean the house really well and then a week goes by and no one even comes over. Nobody sees any of the casual arrangements of stuff I left lying around to try to impress them. So I clean it all over again. I feel like Sisyphus in an apron.”

  “It’s more than that, Ethan. It’s that I think, oh God, I’m going to be a woman sitting all by herself forever. It’s not going to happen to me; I won’t ever get to have a family. I will be in this painful part of life for a while and then I will be too old to have children and then I will be a spinster—oh, yes, people still think that way, yes they do!—and then I will start slowly getting ridiculous and then I will die alone and they will find me because of the smell. Oh God, Ethan, think of it, it will just be so embarrassing.”

  “You know, Patty—”

  “No. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that all my thoughts are black like this because I need to go to sleep. You’re going to say that it will all look different in the morning. But it’s not true.”