Happiness for Beginners (32 page)

GiGi watched me as I thought about it.

“Anyway,” I said. “Then we were interrupted. By Mike.”

“Mike who?” GiGi said.

“Mike, my ex-husband.”

She squinted like she'd forgotten him. “Oh. Him.”

“He was having a bad night.”

“I didn't know you were still in touch.”

“I wasn't,” I said. “Until then. Once the mood was broken, Jake said we should stop. Then I got mad at him—and so I told him not to talk to me anymore and I tried to ignore him for the rest of the trip.”

GiGi nodded like that was all very reasonable. “And were you able to?”

I sighed. “Yes. Sort of. Not really. And then he kissed me again.”

“Interesting.”

“But really, right from the beginning, the damage was done.”

“Doesn't sound like damage to me.”

“He sabotaged my healing process!”

“I'm sure he didn't mean to, darling.”

“Doesn't matter.”

“It matters a little.”

“He was selfish,” I said. “He admitted as much. And he ruined everything. Twice!”

“Not everything. You gained some wilderness skills.”

“I don't care about wilderness skills!”

“Well,” she said. “That's progress.”

“He messed with my head.”

“And your heart, it sounds like.”

“That, too.”

“Good thing the heart is so resilient.”

“Mine's not.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, pausing to meet my eyes. “It is.”

I took a sip of wine.

“And how could you blame him?” she said, shaking her head. “He's been so in love with you for so long.”

I swallowed. “He told you that?”

“He didn't have to. It was plain to see. Every holiday meal. If you were in the kitchen mashing potatoes, he was in the kitchen washing dishes. If you had to run out to the market for something, he'd offer to go with. You'd say, ‘I don't need your help to carry a bag of cranberries,' but he'd insist on going, nonetheless. He switched the place cards every year to sit next to you.”

“I thought that was you.”

“No. But I was rooting for him. He was so charmingly, obviously lovesick.”

“It wasn't obvious to me.”

“You weren't paying attention.”

I reached up to rub my shoulder.

“And then!” GiGi went on. “For him to get you alone on a car ride! And you're single now! It's a wonder he didn't eat you alive like the Big Bad Wolf.”

“GiGi!”

“It sounds like he was a perfect gentleman.”

“Not exactly perfect.”

“Poor thing,” she said. “Now you've ruined his life.”

“He ruined mine!” I said. “He got over me. On the trip. He's moved on now—already. With someone else.”

“So that's why you're angry.”

“No!” I said. “I'm angry because I did not get what I wanted. I wanted to transcend all these dumb human shenanigans. I wanted to do something amazing! I wanted to be transformed! I wanted to be fully immersed!”

“Sounds like you were pretty immersed to me.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“All I'll say is this: You were a ghost of a person when you left. Now, you're flesh and blood again.”

“It was the hiking! And the mountain air! And the sunshine!”

“If you say so.”

“I'm telling you, he likes somebody else now.”

“I don't believe that for a second.”

“He's gone to Colorado with her. She's amazing.”

“So are you.”

“I'm really not.”

“You don't give yourself enough credit. Or Jake, either.” Gigi paused then, holding her fork in the air. “Do you remember when he brought that blond girl to Thanksgiving? What was her name? Pippi? Piper?”

“No,” I said.

“This was a couple of years ago. You were still married. And that girl what's-her-name was lovely! And charming! And guess what?”

“What?”

“He still switched the place cards.”

I held my breath until I couldn't anymore. “This is a disaster.”

She took a sip of wine. “Love is always a disaster, darling. That's what makes it fun.”

“I was mean to him. I ran him off.”

She shook her head. “You've been mean to him for years.”

A thought occurred to me. “Maybe he has a thing for mean women. Maybe he can only like me if I'm mean.”

Now GiGi smiled like I was terribly funny. “He doesn't like you because you're mean,” she said. “He likes you in spite of it.”

“We don't know that. He could be completely messed up.”

She met my eyes. “But he isn't.”

No. He wasn't.

“He just likes you. He's always liked you. He sees all the good things about you. He has that gift—those wonderful, loving eyes.”

“GiGi,” I said then, breaking Jake's confidence, but unable to stop myself. “He's losing his sight.”

I thought I'd have to go on and explain all about the rods and cones to make it all clear, but she held up her hand. “I know.”

I frowned. “How do you know?”

“Duncan told me. He tells me everything.”

Duncan told her e
verything
?

“Jake will still have that vision, you know,” she said then. “Even if he can't see.”

I nodded. She was right, of course.

“It's his heart he sees with, sweetheart.”

At those words, my eyes stung with tears. I wiped them away fast, but too late. More followed. Thinking of Jake and what he was facing, and how he was facing it, made me feel ashamed. My troubles looked awfully small in comparison. I was self-pitying and self-centered and self-indulgent. No wonder he'd gone to the mountains. No wonder at all.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Don't be,” she said. “I always like you best when you're a mess.”

“You do?”

She nodded, and said in a softer voice, “You're going to be okay.”

But “okay” seemed far away. “I'm not sure I know how.”

GiGi leaned across the table to take both my hands. “You never liked the boys who liked you. You know that about yourself, right?”

I shook my head.

“You always ignored the boys who liked you in favor of the ones who didn't.”

“That's not true!”

“What about Dave from high school? He left you for your best friend.”

“He liked me!”

“But not enough. And you had that cute little poet boy who wrote you all those sonnets, but what did you do?”

“I ignored him.”

“That's right. And the same thing in college when you had to choose between the rugby player and that boy with the stupid little car.”

“A Dodge Dart.”

“You should have gone for the Dart! He adored you. But what did you do, instead?”

“I went to rugby games.”

“Exactly.” She nodded. “It was like you only wanted the ones who didn't want you. Like you needed the challenge of getting their attention.”

She wasn't wrong. “And then I married Mike. The alcoholic.”

GiGi nodded. “Who loved you—”

“But loved drinking more.”

GiGi nodded again.

She was right. I let it sink in. “Why didn't you ever point this out before?”

She shook her head. “You can't tell people their lives.”

I shut my eyes. “Because they have to figure it out themselves.”

“That's right,” GiGi said. “And now you have.”

“But too late.”

“You broke a pattern,” she said. “That's something. Maybe you lost Jake. Maybe he'll never come back. Maybe he'll marry this girl and have a hundred babies—”

“That's enough of that.”

“But it's okay. He taught you something. He taught you how to let somebody love you a little bit. That lesson right there is enough to change your life.”

Something about that idea brought a fresh sting of tears. Maybe she was right. Maybe I would change my life, and maybe I would get better at love, and maybe by the time the next person came along, I'd finally get it right at last. But I didn't want the next person. I just wanted Jake.

I let out a little laugh. Then I wiped my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt. “It doesn't matter. I just have to get through the bar mitzvah, go home, see my dog, pick myself up, and start a new-and-improved life.” The prospect of it all seemed awfully bleak. So, after a minute, I added, “Maybe I'll take some dancing lessons.”

GiGi nodded. “That's a brilliant idea, darling,” she said, as if that one idea would solve everything. “You were always a fantastic dancer.”

We let that idea sit with us in the room for a while as I digested all the things we'd just talked about. At last, after a long pause, I said, “Duncan tells you everything, huh?”

“Everything,” she said, with a little eye roll. “Far more than I want to know.”

“Do you think it makes you like him more than you would otherwise? Or less?”

“More,” she said. “Certainly more.”

“I'm not sure I'd have that same response.”

“You'll get there,” she said. “Keep working on it.” Then she met my eyes and said, “He's always better at trying than succeeding.”

“That's a family trait.”

She smiled. “Keep that in mind when he shows you the cooler.”

I frowned. “What cooler?”

But she just shook her head and stood to take her plate to the sink. “I am not at liberty to say.”

*   *   *

The next morning, I woke up late. GiGi was in the kitchen, making coffee, barely awake herself. This was the bar mitzvah day. My day to face the future and the past at the same event. I had to get a haircut, assemble an outfit, and figure out a way to convince everybody—including myself—that, despite all the facts that argued otherwise, my life had turned out well.

I should have hopped up, showered, and headed out for errands. But I really just wanted to lounge around in my robe.

GiGi eyed me as we drank our coffee.

“Let me paint you,” she said, at last.

I wrinkled my nose. “I don't want to be painted.”

“Yes,” she insisted. “You will curl up on the green sofa and tell me more about your trip, and I will capture
you in love
.” She gestured at my aura.

“More like me in agony.”

“Same thing.”

What can I say? When your eighty-three-year-old grandmother wants to paint your portrait, you let her.

She kept all her paints and brushes and easels on the sun porch. She'd painted my portrait often when I was a kid, but then, after we came to live with her, she did it less. I guess kid-free grandmas have more time for projects like that. One exception was the portrait she did of me before my wedding, in my bridal gown, which hung above her fireplace. I loved that portrait best of all. She'd captured me exactly, but somehow made me much prettier than I was in real life. I'd asked her to give it to me many times, but she wouldn't.

So I sat on her green velvet couch on the sun porch, sipped my coffee, and told her all about the wilderness, and what I learned in the mountains. I told her about the blizzard, and Hugh's evac, and getting lost on the Solo. I told her about wiping with pinecones and smelling like a skunk. I told her that I'd been terrified and shy at the beginning, but I'd found a way to make some friends. I'd surprised myself. I'd been brave in all kinds of ways.

“You've always been brave,” she said. “You were my brave one.”

“I was?”

She nodded. “And Duncan was my scaredy-cat. Just like your mom.”

I frowned. “My mom was a scaredy-cat?”

GiGi nodded. “She was terrified of everything. Still is.”

“But she's a yoga instructor!”

GiGi nodded. “I think that helps. She does seem to find that soothing.”

I had never once thought of my mother as a “scaredy-cat.” “I don't think of her as scared,” I said.

“Well, children can't see their parents clearly until they grow up.”

“What is she scared of?”

“Oh, everything, just about. Dogs. People. Life.”

I took a breath. “Is that why she gave us up?”

GiGi held very still, and moved only her eyes to look over at me. “In part, I suppose.”

Then I said, “On the trip, Jake was asking me about what happened that day. I told him we were too much for her. She dropped us with you and never came back. But he didn't think that could be the whole story.”

“Jake's a smart boy.”

“So that's not the whole story?”

“Is there any story in the world that can be told in two sentences?”

We all knew what happened—the basics, anyway—but I suddenly realized I was fuzzy on the details. “Tell me,” I said.

“Well,” GiGi said, carefully continuing to paint, “she did drop you off for a sleepover with me that day. I don't know if she intended to come back or not. I've often wondered what was going through her head as she said good-bye to you.”

“She said she'd see us in the morning.”

“Yes, she did. But I think she knew she wouldn't. She lingered over the two of you a little too long.”

“Did you know she wouldn't be back?”

“No! I was going to make you pancakes in the morning, drop you off at home, and then head out to a sitting.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, she drove away. I fed the two of you spaghetti and then it was time for bed. But your brother had forgotten his blankie. What did he call that thing?”

“Softie.”

“That's right! He'd forgotten Softie. When he realized it was bedtime, and he didn't have it, he wailed like a widow at a wake.”

“I remember,” I said. He was three then. He had those striped, footed pajamas.