“Forget me? That’s it? That’s the best you can do? I can’t say something and hop three times on my left foot to make you disappear?” She stomped around in the kitchen getting her coffee, having not ten minutes ago come blissfully awake in his arms.
“As far as I know, that’s how it works. If you’re thinking about me, I’m here.”
“I’m thinking about you because you’re standing right in front of me. I thought you’d disappear last night while I was sleeping?”
“Without saying good-bye?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re doing this on purpose. You changed your mind. You’re not going to leave.”
“It’s not up to me,” he said, looking entirely too pleased. “You know that.”
“Can’t you just, you know, go where you go when you’re not here and stay there?”
“Not if you’re thinking about me.”
“Not if I’m. . . .”
She thought about the times when he wasn’t with her, when she felt he was being discrete and giving her time alone to think and meditate . . . and to work and read and do crossword puzzles . . . until she got stuck on a word. Then all she had to do was call out and he would answer from another room or join her if her concentration was not just momentarily broken but shattered completely by the riddle.
He loved going out and went everywhere with her except. . .that first morning when she wasn’t sure she wanted him around, when she’d snuck out of her office hoping he’d still be asleep, hoping she could leave the apartment without him.
No, it was more than hope. It was will; she willed him to stay asleep because she didn’t want to have another losing conversation with him that morning, because she wanted to leave without him, to be alone to mull things over.
The day before that she’d thrown up a mental and physical wall between them by commanding him to stay out of the apartment . . . so he stayed in the hall.
“I am all you, babe.”
Her gaze rose slowly from the floor and their eyes met, one pair doubtful, the other pleased.
“All I have to do is fill my head with other things. That’s the trick, isn’t it? That’s how it works. This is my life and I control it.”
“Some of it.”
“Well, yes but . . . you, for sure. I can control you.”
He puffed his cheeks and blew out a deep breath as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the kitchen counter with great forbearing. “Ah-ha.”
“I woke up a little shaky this morning, a little nervous about being on my own and that’s why you’re still here. I’m over it.”
“Ah-ha.”
There was nothing to do but show him. She turned on her heel and headed for the shower, thinking how good the hot water would feel on her skin, deciding to use a soft-scented soap instead of her usual body wash, gloating over the great deal she found on her new towels. She thought about the little collagen particles soaking into her skin from her moisturizer, the softness of her sweater and the perfect length of her slacks—tried to remember all the words to Joyce Kilmer’s poem Trees. Listening to the heels of her shoes ticking on her gorgeous new hardwood, she remembered exactly where she left her keys and let herself out of the apartment . . . and looking across at the Whites’ door, she elected to knock on it.
Joe, of course, had gone off to work already, but Marty was happy to see her when she opened the door.
“It’s so good to see you, Charlotte. I’ve been meaning to get over and see you but Ruth has been so busy this summer that, well, I don’t know where the time goes.”
“That’s alright, that’s one of the reasons I came over. I . . . I’ve been meaning to tell you that if you’d ever like an afternoon off or you’d like to go out to lunch or if anything happens to your regular sitter, I’d be glad to watch her . . . Ruth . . . for you, I mean. I didn’t feel like I could offer before—my dad liked his peace and he wasn’t used to children—but now . . . well, I’m available if you need me. I like children. I just don’t know many.”
“That’s so sweet of you.” The amazed look on her face made Charlotte self-conscious. What? She couldn’t be sweet? “But I’d much rather get a sitter and take you to lunch, if you’re interested, that is. I’ve always wanted to get to know you better. I’m not that much older than you, I don’t think. But you looked so busy all the time with your business and your father. . . we barely had time for a ‘howdy’ and a ‘how’s things’ here in the hallway. I’m glad to see you have more time for yourself now.”
Being available was three-quarters of the cure for loneliness. Who knew it was so easy? The first time the front-desk attendant at the gym said, “Good morning, Charlotte,” before she’d even had a chance to sign in, it was . . . a nice surprise. She was quick and enthusiastic when Sidney and Sue invited her shopping—she was a much better shopper now than the last time they’d ventured out together.
“When was the last time the three of us shopped like this?” Sidney asked, scooting—exhausted—into a high-backed booth in the restaurant where they’d stopped for a late lunch and a drink.
“So long ago I don’t remember.” Charlotte remembered perfectly.
“Well, I remember,” said Sue, her brown shoulder-length bob swinging as she got in on the other side. “It was my wedding. We were looking for bridesmaids’ shoes, and my cousin Loretta, who’s always trying to fart higher than her ass, was with us and would not even try on a shoe that didn’t have a four-inch heel and a three-figure price tag, and you said you couldn’t walk in four-inch heels, three was your limit, and Charlotte kept wandering around muttering ‘$250 for a pair of purple shoes that can’t be deducted.’ ”
“Wait.” Sidney picked up a menu but didn’t look at it. “Speaking of farting, wasn’t that the same day you found out that weird aunt of your mother’s, who you didn’t want to invite to your wedding because of her toxic flatulence problem, was, according to your mother, supposedly too sick to come to the wedding, so she insisted that it was safe to send her an invitation but who was, however, feeling very well and would be attending with her son, who, by the way, could power a windmill with his own noxious gases?”
“Yesss! I forgot about that. I remember I sent you off on your own and told you to pick out whatever shoes you wanted, I’d had it. And not only did Charlotte come back in about fifteen minutes, but she’d bought a pair of black loafers and told me no one would see them under her dress. I thought my head would explode.” They all laughed. “I vowed then and there that cars would fly before we shopped together again.”
Charlotte felt her cheeks burning and covered them with her hands. “I was such a dork. Why did you put up with me for so long?”
“You mean aside from the fact that you were the sweetest, most gentle and giving dork at McClure Middle School? I don’t know. Do you, Sidney?”
Sidney shrugged and glanced down at her menu, then up with a droll expression to keep the moment light. “Maybe because friends don’t give up on each other. You haven’t given up on me actually putting money in that savings account you made me open, have you?”
“No, but that reminds me—”
“NO!” they said together. “No job talk today.”
“And no kid talk. This is my afternoon off.” Sue tried to sound firm but there was nothing she liked better than talking about her children.
“Okay, then how about some juicy information on Mrs. Doctor Lacey Booth that I got directly from her aunt?”
Their ears twitched.
It wasn’t hard keeping busy, stuffing her head with the hundreds of things she wanted to do and see. There were moments, of course, when her mind wandered—she glanced up once and saw Mel sitting in a chair across the room, then again leaning against a fence up the street and again riding the down escalator as she rode up. He smiled and gave a little wave; she smiled back, felt the pang of desire and looked away . . . I think that I shall never see . . .
She finally went out with Henry Chancellor’s wife’s uncle’s sister’s nephew, or whatever, Axel Burton, who was quite possibly the nicest man to ever leave Chicago. They liked each other very much but . . . there was no spark, no mating of souls, no magic.
He was, however, interested in scuba diving, so they took lessons together, driving all the way over to Alki Beach in West Seattle three evenings a week.
“We were crazy doing this in November.” Her teeth chattered as she pulled on her thick down jacket, apple green with pink and yellow piping. They were past the pool work and actually swimming off Alki Beach in wet suits, which kept them fairly warm, until they took them off. “Why didn’t we wait until summer?”
“Umm.” He shivered, his knit cap pulled down over his wet hair. “The fewer off-season students get more one-on-one with the instructor? More underwater time? We were too eager? We’re nuts?”
“That’s the one.” She stuffed her damp hair inside her cap and gave him a calculating look. He was only a little taller than she, maybe six foot, a nice, plain-looking man in his early thirties, with true brown hair and kind green eyes behind frameless glasses.
“What?” He held the door open for her.
“Well, don’t take this wrong, it doesn’t mean anything except that I don’t know that many single people, but . . .” As she passed through the door, she saw Mel leaning against a pickup truck on the other side of the parking lot. He held out both hands as if to say it wasn’t his fault she was missing him. She turned to Axel. “Well, I was thinking of trying speed dating and I didn’t want to go alone. I thought if we went together it might not be . . .”
“As humiliating?”
“No, not humiliating just . . . less awkward. Who knows who we’ll meet? And if you do meet someone nice and want to go out afterward for coffee or, you know, whatever, I can take a taxi home. Or vice versa.”
It could happen.
They tried it twice to be fair, and to be fair, they didn’t want to try it again.
She spent Thanksgiving with Sue Butterfield and her young family, her parents and her grandfather, who fell asleep during dessert and tipped whipped cream and pumpkin pie into his lap.
Christmas Eve she and Mrs. Kludinski made reservations and ate dinner in the Space Needle, which she hadn’t done since she was seven or eight years old. She gave more than she received and that was okay. She had the spirit.
The mid-winter months were bleak and lonely. It rained nearly every day, turned to ice at night. She had only to look out her window to see Mel looking entirely pimplike, but warm, in a full-length red-fox fur—faux, naturally. Generally he sat on the bus bench on the corner, reading a newspaper until he felt her looking at him. He’d look up askance; did she want him to come up?
I think that I shall never see . . .
One night, he knocked on her door.
“You can’t come in, Mel; you know that,” she said, watching him through the peephole, enjoying the sight of him, too much.
“Just for tonight. I’ll leave in the morning.”
“I’m going to Cancun.” This was news to her, too.
“Mexico?”
“A winter vacation before tax season hits full bloom.” She wasn’t used to living spontaneously; her hands were shaking. “I can take in the beach or go to the Mayan ruins. Boating. Oh, scuba!” Her enthusiasm soared. “Warm water scuba.”
She was gone for ten days.
She was sorry to see him waiting at the airport for her, but she walked right by him, and for the rest of February, all of March and the first fifteen days of April, she was too busy to look more than two feet in front of her.
And then it was spring again.