A New Lu (11 page)

13

“Hi, Jacob, it's me.” I've driven all the way to Brooklyn before I felt able to make this call.

“Oh, hey, Lu.” There is a quality in his voice of someone who didn't expect a call, as if it's been so very long since we last spoke. Then I realize that's true. It's been nearly three months. “How're you doing?”

“Fine. And you?” Who'd believe this sort of formality was necessary after twenty-seven years?

“Good. Good. It's nice to hear your voice. Nice.” Yet he seems distracted. I've probably interrupted his Sunday afternoon baseball game.

“Listen, I know it's short notice but I need to talk to you about something.”

“I see. Well, I've got a hell of a schedule these days. Flying out to Bogotá on Wednesday. Could this wait a week or two?”

“No.” It can't wait even another day.

“Fine. Then we'll talk Tuesday. Coffee or drinks?”

This sounds irksomely familiar: my overture, his retreat
and counter. But this is nonnegotiable. “I need to see you today.”

“Everything's a crisis, right?” His laugh sounds awkward, embarrassed. Where did that come from? “As long as we're already talking, why not just tell me about it?”

Oh, he's back on track. First the delay, followed by the quick trivializing of my “crisis” into a phone call Band-Aid remedy. How many crises—the real kind—did I handle while he was away on business, blithely reassuring me that I could and would find a solution? I know this is Jacob's way. But today it feels like manipulation.

“I don't want to talk about it over a cell phone.”

“Top-secret business, huh?”

As reply he gets only the rush of air in his ear from my end.

“So, okay. This is not a big crisis, right?” He sounds friendly again because he's gotten the upper hand, or so he thinks. “Want to at least give me a hint?”

Boy, do I. “I've just been to the doctor.”

“Shit.”

He knows. My heart lurches, thumping wildly like a trapped jack-in-the-box against my ribs. Or he suspects. All of a sudden I'm more scared than I've ever been about this.

The ugly blare of a horn and screech of tires makes me wrench the wheel, steering to the right. I was drifting. A cab speeds by. Even though I don't usually look, I see him flip me the bird while shaking it like a fist, and yelling at what must be the top of his lungs. I hope his passengers are local. The average tourist would be cringing on the back-seat floor.

“Lu?” Jacob's voice sounds half its original size. “You better come over.”

“I'll be there by three.”

Jacob lives in a furnished apartment with brand-new furniture that looks like the kind they advertise on those
rent-to-purchase commercials. Just now he's sitting on the sofa staring at the floor in dejection, as if I've come to repossess for nonpayment. Or, more likely, that I've come to repossess his freedom. My news dropped him like a rock.

He looks up at me. “So, what do you want me to do?”

“Don't you think you've done enough?”

“Oh, come on, Lu. You were there, too.”

“Right. I was. And I never thought a thing about it, either.”

I was so nervous just before I rang his bell that I started shaking. But the moment he opened the door, the moment I saw that his back was up, that he was ready for trouble instead of full of potential concern for whatever might be wrong with me, I went icy cold inside, muscles locked and under control. If I'm not the victim, then neither is he.

“Right, so then, here's what we'll do.” He stands up, begins to pace. “I have you on my insurance so—No wait. We better pay cash.” He sends me a weak grin. “I don't want to do any explaining I don't need to, you know?”

Better than he does. But I'm going to be doing a lot more explaining before this is over. And so is he. “I can take care of the bills.”

“You can? I mean, it's going to cost a few thousand.”

“All right. You can help. Fifty-fifty. They have these new installment plans now. A fourth down on diagnosis, then even payments until the delivery. Usually it's all paid up before you get the prize.”

“Now wait a sec!” He approaches me for the first time since I arrived. “You can't keep it. I mean, at your age. You can't possibly be thinking of having it?”

It. Not baby. Not child. Not even kid.
It.
“Yes, I am keeping the
child,
after I have the
child.
The doctor says I'm strong as a horse.” Okay, the doctor did sound more like Jacob, but it's the spirit of the point I'm trying to make. “I just came to make certain you knew first.”

“First? First!” He's losing ground faster with every second. “You're going to actually tell people about this?”

“In a couple of months even strangers will know.” I make an arc motion over my belly with my hand.

He pales and backs off. “Jesus H. Christ!”

“I never liked that phrase, Jacob.”

“Holy shit!”

Not a lot better, but why quibble? “I'm giving you a chance to get your feet under you about this. I don't expect anything from you—”

He snorts at this.

“I don't. Hear me. I do N-O-T.” It's juvenile to spell, but I'm feeling pretty schoolyard-bullied right about now. “But you are the father and I thought you should be the first to know.”

“Who else would you tell?” Just about the time that challenge is out of his mouth, he thinks of two. “Dallas and Davin. Jes—Shit. You can't tell the kids. What will they think?”

“That they have idiots for parents. I think they had a suspicion long before this.”

“No, I forbid it. Absolutely forbid it.” Red-faced, he comes huffing up to me again, finger pointing at nose level. “Do you hear me?”

I look at him a long time. He's angry, afraid and unprepared. What the hell did we think we were doing in February that was worth this moment?

I don't know why, but I look past him and notice a bowl of fresh flowers on his kitchen table. Jacob never bought fresh flowers. He always said he didn't know what to buy. Besides, they are damned expensive for something you couldn't use, and didn't last very long. So then, who's responsible for the flowers?

“You're seeing someone.” Statement.

“How do you know?” He looks so guilty I expect her to pop out of the bouquet.

I'm so damned slow! “What's her name?”

He sticks out his chin. “Sandra.”

“How long?”

“A month, yeah. What of it? I'm free.” But the bluster doesn't last. “Christ. What am I going to say to Sandra?”

I sidestep him and go to perch on a nearby chair. Icy disdain doesn't last forever, and I'm afraid when I thaw I will collapse. “I won't tell the children immediately. You need time to adjust. But I have a couple of things pending at work that make it imperative that I tell my boss very soon about my condition.”

“Oh, yeah?” I see derision enter his expression. “What the hell kinds of things do you have pending at work that require you to reveal your condition? You write a damned magazine column.”

“I've been offered a free face-lift and lipo in exchange for writing about the experience.”

He looks genuinely surprised. “You think you need a face-lift?”

“Do you?” I can take it, I really can.

He wags his head. “You got a couple wrinkles, maybe, but that's all. Nothing worth that kind of grief and dough.”

“I'm not sure whether I should be flattered that money enters into your consideration, but thank you.”

I stand up and turn toward his door. “I need to go.”

“Now, Lu.” He rushes up to intercept me, but stops just short of touching me. “You need to think about this. This has got to have been a shock for you. I'm freaking out, thinking about it.”

I soften. “I know. Me, too.” I touch his cheek. “I'll wait until you come back from Bogotá. Then we can talk to the kids together, if you want.”

He flinches back. “Did you do this on purpose? Because if you think I'm going to just pack up and come…” He can't even finish the thought before choking.

I look at him. He's thinner, his hair is darker, but his expression makes him seem a hundred years old. He can't handle the idea of a return to before. Neither can I.

“I don't want you back, Jacob. I mean it. If you want to be part of your new son's or daughter's life, I would like that. But that's all.”

“Yeah, sure.” He's nodding, but his gaze dances all about, looking everywhere but at me. “Shit! I thought you had cancer.”

“What?”

He glances at me, looking sort of funny around the eyes. “It's what happened to Rod's wife. Six months after the divorce, she developed breast cancer. The guys at the gym say it's what sometimes happens to older women who can't cope with the idea of a future alone. They develop life-threatening illnesses, so the husbands have to go home.”

“Doesn't look like being alone is going to be my particular problem.”

“Yeah, well, cancer would be easier to explain to people.”

And just like that, I know I'm done here.

I move past him and put my hand on the doorknob. “I'll call you when you get back.”

“Don't do anything crazy, Lu.” He tosses this line at my back as I leave.

He's three months too late with that advice.

Jacob was totally shocked by my news. It never even occurred to him that the old girl might have it in her, at least while he was in there.

And what was that crack about women developing cancer to get their exes to come back? This is what passes for locker-room talk among middle-aged men these days? Bloody hell!

The only part of his thought process that doesn't throw me completely is the news that he is seeing someone. Sandra.
I can't be angry. I have—had—could have… Oh damn!

Once out on the sidewalk, the strangest thing happens. I realize that my face is getting wet. Big fat hot tears run down my cheeks until once again, though not quite uncontrollably, I'm sobbing.

I really didn't expect Jacob to take me into his arms and promise me that everything would be all right. I knew he'd be shocked and upset and very unhappy. I don't know where it came from, that tiny irrational hope that he'd kiss me and say, “I'm here for you now, okay? Let's just go home and forget about the past year.”

I didn't want that. Wouldn't have agreed to it. But it would have been nice to hear, all the same.

“You told him? Just like that? Why, Lu?”

I'm sitting in Andrea's kitchen. I couldn't face going home to an empty house just yet. When you need neutral territory, you go to a girlfriend's place. Even to one who thinks you're royally screwing up your life.

I'm nursing the cup of chai tea she insisted I drink before I told her why I showed up with a tear-soaked face at 7:00 p.m. on a Sunday evening.

“I needed to make it real, Andrea. As long as no one knew—” I offer her a sour smile. “You know what I mean. No one who had the power to make me deal with it. As long as I was safe, it was like a game of make-believe. Now it's real.”

“It's real, all right.” Andrea sits back and crosses her arms. “So, how did Jacob take it?”

“He said it would be easier if I had cancer instead.”

Andrea sputters in gutter Spanish…and the Thai, I don't even want to think!

“So this is the man you married.
Pttthhoou!”
She actually spits! On her spotless Italian marble kitchen floor. “He's worthless. For you, I am sorry, but for him—”

“He's just upset,” I answer, as surprised as she that I'm defending him. “He's not good at coping with personal crises.”

“Don't you defend him! Look what he did to you. You think sex was your idea. But,
mi ja,
I got news for you. Sex was on his mind before you even agreed to go with him. He's a man. It was on his mind. But he didn't even think to protect you. That's what you've got to remember.”

I'm sure she's right. But Jacob and I came of age in an age when a condom was still a thing people giggled and whispered about, and that was the guys. A woman with a condom in her purse was a slut. I went on the pill in college, which was easier to deal with than packets of latex, and neither of us, to my knowledge, ever had much experience with condoms since.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Andrea has gotten out the antibacterial cleaner and is spraying the spot she spit.

“Keep living my life. The thing is, I—”

The doorbell rings.

“Can you get that, Lu?”

I open the door. It's Dr. Yummy.

“Hi.” He looks past me. “Andrea here?”

“Sure. Come in.”

“Baby!” Andrea's voice tells me all I need to know about this relationship.

I turn around so he can't see my face as I mouth
I thought he was too poor.

Andrea grins and moves past me to drag him in the door by the arm. “You remember my friend, Lu. This is Mark. He's doing a fellowship in heart surgery.”

Ka-
ching!

14

“You're seeing Dr. Templeton? Why didn't you tell me?”

Aunt Marvelle believes in privacy, but the fact that someone beat her to the punch with gossip about her own niece, well, that's practically family disloyalty. I suppose I could have left a note tacked to her fridge.
Great weekend! Screwed your doc. Thanks for the use of your place. Lu.

“There's nothing to tell, Aunt Marvelle.” Nothing I want to tell, anyway.

“Now, listen to me, Tallulah. Any time an eligible man is seen in the company of a new woman, it's news in this town.”

I have just walked through my door after spending the night at Andrea's. She thought I was in no shape to be alone after my run-in with Jacob. So I lay in bed in one of her guest rooms until 11:00 a.m.—total slug—marveling at the perfection of the crocheted flowers in the bed canopy. My grandmother could whip up a crocheted sweater with a day's notice. She reared three daughters who could complete a layette for triplets in a week. I'm
the maternal embarrassment. Projects completed by me are like life: uneven, full of holes and never according to plan.

As I lay there thinking this and other totally irrelevant thoughts, it never occurred to me that I might be the subject of salacious speculation in an area that usually gets its gossip from real celeb sightings. But perhaps I exaggerate my importance. The phone message from Aunt Marvelle said she had heard from Cleo, who had it from the owner of the Paradise, that I had left said premises on Friday afternoon in the company of Dr. William Templeton. That involves only four people. Still, I was intrigued enough to call her back.

“We bumped into each other, Aunt Marvelle. Dr. Templeton was with another woman. A much younger, truly gorgeous woman. My date was a banana split.”

“I see. Of course, you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Tallulah.”

I can see where this is heading. The less I say the bigger the traitor I become. “Dr. Templeton was with his daughter, Jolie.”

The rarely glimpsed daughter is so good a topic that I am able to shamelessly distract my aunt from the subject of him-with-me. The clincher in the gossip diversion is that Jolie's pregnant. I stop short of reporting the estrangement with her husband. That would be disloyal to William's friendship.

Aunt Marvelle hangs up, satisfied that she now possesses her circle's top news morsel of the day. At least for about five minutes.

My phone rings again, just as I'm relieving a bladder that seems to have shrunk to the size of a pea. I survived two successful pregnancies with no bladder repercussions. This youngster seems determined to rectify that good fortune in the first trimester. A phone in the bathroom was to give me access from the tub. I would never admit
this to anyone, but I sometimes pick up from my seat on the throne.

“Tallulah!” Aunt Marvelle again. “Jane just dropped by. She had an appointment with Dr. Templeton today, and I think you should hear what she has to say. Now, just hold on.”

“Tallulah, sweetie. Marvelle's just been telling me about you and Dr. Templeton. You sly thing!” No need to correct Jane. I won't be believed. “That's why I thought you should know that you've got some competition for Dr. Templeton's favor.”

I love the language of the elder set. For them, men still pledge their favors, the knight-in-shining-armor kind. “Really?”

“Luckily, I had just arrived for my appointment when a deliveryman brought in a huge bouquet of flowers. Huge! And expensive, in a very showy kind of way. There were roses and peonies and snapdragons and tulips in that arrangement, not your standard mums and daylilies. The nurses made such a fuss Dr. Templeton came out to the waiting room to see what was going on. Are you ready for this? After he read the card he just smiled and returned to work, leaving the bouquet out there for all prying eyes to see.”

You've got to admire the way these women tell stories. It's the way they play bridge, cards held close to the chest as they wait to see who will trump who with what.

“Did someone else read the card?”

“Who didn't? I would never have actually touched it. That's just not done. But when I stopped to get weighed, the flowers were there on the counter right next to the scale. The card was in its plastic holder, facing out.”

“Wow. What did it say?” I feel like the straight woman in a comedy routine.

“The thrill! The rapture! Life is a banquet, after all!
Your secret admirer.” Cleo whispers the last, as though it's obscene.

“Gee.” It seems a like-minded kind of response.

“I tried to finesse a confession out of Dr. Templeton while in the examining room. Pretended I was jealous, for fun. Tallulah, he didn't turn a hair. Just smiled that inscrutable smile he has, and told me that as long as I kept our quarterly assignations, I will never lose his favor! Now, what do you think of that?”

That you've got to admire the savoir faire of a man who's being leaned on by a seventy-eight-year-old flirt. “I had no idea he was so popular.”

“That's what we were just saying. The nurses swear they don't know who he's seeing. So, I stopped at the florist who'd made the delivery to make some inquiries. I said I wanted to order a bouquet exactly like the one they made for Dr. Templeton. I was certain the girl would tell me who ordered it. Merchants out here like to brag on certain clientele.”

“Don't tell her that,” I hear my aunt Marvelle say in the background. “She'll think we spy on people!”

“No, she won't. Besides, I couldn't get a peep out of the clerk. Probably a summer hire. Personally, I think the sender's married. Or an actress. You get all those aging Broadway types moving out here, looking for a little tea and sympathy.”

“Give me that phone!” I listen as a short, dignified scuffle, accompanied by jangling jewelry, takes place on the other end before Aunt Marvelle says, “Jane never gets to the point of anything. Tea and sympathy!”

“That means sex!” Jane calls out, in case I might be in doubt.

“Cleo didn't tell you the most important part. Subtlety is not her strong suit. That's why she prefers musicals to dramas. Who cares about the flowers? Women are always throwing themselves at Dr. Templeton. The point is, Cleo
says Dr. Templeton wasn't wearing his wedding band when he examined her.” I have to admit this tidbit makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “Was he wearing a wedding band when you saw him last Friday?”

“I particularly noticed that he was.” At the beginning of the evening.

“I knew you'd notice. That's because you're related to me. I'm going to say this only once, Tallulah. If he's made up his mind to start looking for companionship, he won't stay in the market long.”

Wonder if William knows he's being talked about like a side of beef with an expiration date on the wrapper? “Thanks for the advice, Aunt Marvelle. But I really just finished dealing with one man. I don't need another in my life right now. Bye.”

Time to fess up. I did one other thing while lying in Andrea's guest bed. I ordered flowers and composed that “mash” note. It was the least possessive way I could think of to say thanks to William for the resuscitation of Lu Nichols.

And to think I wondered if I was being paranoid to tell the florist I did not want that bouquet traceable to me. Marvelle's Marvelous Matrons are dangerous.

William isn't wearing his wedding band! I feel the ancient seminal female urge to confess to my indiscreet weekend to my best girlfriend after all. But how can I gush to Andrea about my Dr. Yummy after she sacrificed a night with her doc for me?

I think of calling Mom. But she had a bad week last week, what with the news that she needs a double root canal. If you don't know someone with a real and true phobia about dentists, you can't imagine what that news did to her, or what my father has been dealing with since. He's offered her a Hawaiian cruise as amends for being born with such mutinous teeth. This is not a woman who needs to hear that her eldest child is pregnant by her ex,
and sleeping with abandon with a stranger who makes love as if he invented it!

The wage of this sinning must be that I have to bear the guilty pleasure of it alone.

I wander into the breakfast room where the mail and weekend newspapers that Cy picked up are neatly arranged on my kitchen table. He's such a good friend. Too bad his kids would have him committed if he tried to marry again.

He will absolutely understand my situation. I think. I hope. When I tell him. But I have to tell my family first.

I pick up the phone and call Dallas's home phone and leave a message, inviting her to spend Saturday night of Memorial weekend with me. Davin will be home by then, serving his one-week parental duty time before heading off to his summer job in the Berkshires. We'll make it a family sleepover.