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Authors: Holly Chamberlin

BOOK: Living Single
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Chapter Thirty-four
I
sat slumped on the couch. I’d made no social plans for the weekend. Instead, I’d brought home some work and rented a movie and made a long list of housekeeping chores that were long overdue.
By Saturday afternoon, I’d accomplished absolutely nothing. Unless you count eating three bagels with cream cheese for breakfast “something.”
What was Doug doing at this very moment, out in Newton with his not very bright, sweatshirt-wearing wife Carol?
What was my mother doing with Julio or Jorges or Roberto?
What were Abby and my father doing at this very moment, five-fifteen on a Saturday afteroon, in Newport, Rhode Island? It wasn’t quite cocktail hour. Maybe they were still on the beach.
Was Abby wearing a bikini? Was my father wearing a Speedo? I leapt from the couch and shook my body like a wet dog. Ugh. Ick. The image was repulsive. The beach was not a good way to go. What was? Certainly not the bedroom ...
I put my hands over my ears and like a child sang out, “Lalalalala,” to block the sound of my own thoughts. Of course, the tactic didn’t work.
I sat back down on the couch and rested my head in my hands. Why was I torturing myself this way? Why was I dwelling on something so painful?
Because I was alone and the two people I was most likely to have spent part of the weekend with were spending it together. Without me. And that just sucked.
I made a Note to Self: “Being in a relationship with a married man is a very lonely proposition.”
 
A few days after Abby and my father got back from Newport, we all had dinner at Davio’s on Newbury Street. I’d tried to back out gracefully but Abby had insisted I wouldn’t be in the way. Well, how could I not go after that lovely reassurance? Besides, I had been wanting to get my father’s—and Abby’s—opinion on the Trident offer.
“I can’t tell you what your support means to us,” Abby said, when she and I were seated.
Us? What had happened to Abby as an individual?
“I really think the weekend in Newport made us closer. I feel it solidified our relationship.”
Not mine and yours, I thought.
“Good. That’s, really, that’s great.”
“So, Erin, what did you do this weekend?”
Wallowed in self-pity. Go on, Reason urged, tell her the truth.
“Oh, the usual,” I said. “Some reading. I rented a movie. You know, some stuff around the house.”
“That’s nice,” Abby said distractedly. She smiled past my head. I turned. Yeah, it was Dad.
“John!” she called.
No, I thought, it’s Dad first, John second. He’s mine first, yours later.
“Ladies. Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t get off a phone call.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, it’s fine,” Abby said, pecking him on the cheek.
Yeah, I’ve got buckets of time to waste, I thought. Then: Should I kiss him, too?
I didn’t.
The waiter appeared. He was Uriah Heap. He was unctuous and obsequious and oozing.
He was not getting a big tip from me.
Dad ordered a Scotch on the rocks.
“And what will your lovely daughters have?” asked Uriah.
Abby’s eyes widened to ridiculous proportions.
Dad cleared his throat.
I said, “I’ll have arsenic, please. In a clean glass, hold the ice.”
I wonder where Mom is now, I thought, as the silence thundered on. I wonder if she’d mind a traveling companion. Nothing in the hills and jungles of an Unnamed South American Country could be any weirder than what my life in Boston had become.
 
Doug called late that night. I didn’t bother to ask where he was or how he was managing to make the call.
I told him what had happened at Davio’s.
He laughed. “That’s great. I would have loved to have been there.”
“Yeah, ha, ha. You know, Doug, my life is a pain in the ass sometimes.”
“Am I part of that pain?” he said.
Yes, I thought.
“No,” I said. “You’re the soothing balm that takes away the pain.”
“Good. I’ve got to run, Erin.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bye.”
After I’d hung up I realized that I hadn’t thanked Doug for calling. I wondered what had made me break tradition.
Chapter Thirty-five
E—finally got bday gift—thanks! blouse too big tho—I’ve lost weight—so gave it to local woman with six kids and one dress. Now, just have to find her a skirt. M.
Sunday brunch at Joe’s American on Newbury Street. Always a mob scene, especially in the summer, but it was Maggie’s turn to choose and the policy was not to argue anyone’s choice. Anyway, the food was always good. Basic but good.
We were about halfway through our brunch when ...
JoAnne put down her coffee cup. “So, Abby, have you told your mother about John?”
My God, I thought. Why hadn’t I ever asked that?
Abby took a long sip of her Bloody Mary before answering.
“Well, no. Not yet.”
“Why not?” I said.
“I ... I want to wait until I know we’re really serious. You know how mothers can be, all full of questions.”
“You’ve always told your mother about your boyfriends after the first date,” Maggie pointed out.
“Right,” Abby said quickly. “And, well, I’ve learned my lesson.”
JoAnne eyed Abby suspiciously. “I think you’re lying,” she said. “I think you haven’t told your mother about John because he’s so much older than you are.”
Bingo.
“Oh, Mrs. Walker wouldn’t care,” I said, not believing a word of it. “After all, she’s married to a guy fifteen years her junior.”
“And now her daughter is dating a guy twenty-six years her senior. Interesting.”
“I don’t know what you mean!” Abby said huffily. “And my mother’s name is Mrs. Gilliam now.”
JoAnne laughed. “Come on, honey. You think your mother will disapprove of John. You know she wants to be a grandmother and you know she knows her chances of becoming a grandmother when her only daughter’s seeing an old man are slim.”
“My father’s not an old man!”
“He’ll be sixty in less than two years,” Maggie said. “That’s not young.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” I demanded.
Maggie shrugged and got back to her eggs.
“And it’s reasonable to think your mother might be concerned for you,” JoAnne went on. “She might worry her daughter will be a widow before her first anniversary. She might worry her daughter is going to wind up a caretaker of an Alzheimer’s patient before her second anniversary.”
“It’s not true, any of it,” Abby said, but her protestation sounded lame.
“Are you embarrassed of my father?” I asked. “Have you introduced him to anyone at the BSO?”
“No, and no, I’m not embarrassed! Just, everybody, stop, okay? I’m just not—ready to bring John home.”
“Or to introduce him to your friends at work,” I added grimly.
“You’re being horrible, Erin. All of you.”
“We’re just looking out for your own good, honey, since you don’t seem to be capable of it.”
A moment of stunned silence. Then Abby grabbed her bag and bolted from the table.
“Nice going, JoAnne.” I bolted after Abby.
Behind me, I heard Maggie say, “Pass me her plate, will you?”
 
I found Abby on the sidewalk, standing as if she were waiting for someone.
“Hey,” I said. An all-purpose opener.
“Can we walk for a bit?”
“Sure.”
Abby turned toward the Gardens and I followed. She said nothing and neither did I. When we reached the benches along the pond, Abby said, “Let’s sit,” and we did.
“You okay?”
“She’s right, Erin. All of you are right.”
“About what?” I asked, but I knew.
“About why I haven’t brought John home to meet my mother. And why I haven’t introduced him to anyone at work.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, Erin, I hate myself for it, I really do! It’s just—I don’t know if I’m strong enough to deal with the looks and the questions.”
I smiled. “You’re not dating Quasimodo, Abby. It’s not so unusual for a younger woman to date an older man.”
“I know, but ... What if John has more in common with my mother than he does with me? What if he’s totally uncomfortable going out with my BSO friends and their boyfriends? I mean, most of the women there are in their twenties and thirties. The married people only seem to hang out with other married people. No one will want to go out with me and John.”
“Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions? One step at a time, Abby. And don’t presuppose people’s reactions.”
Though what a twenty-eight-year-old guy-about-town would have in common with a fifty-eight-year-old divorced father, I couldn’t imagine. What would they talk about at dinner? Testicular cancer or prostate problems? Horrible.
“Has Dad introduced you to any of his friends?” I asked, thinking, who? Like most long-married couples, my parents had long-married couple friends. When Mom left Dad, most of those couples had disappeared from view—after an initial show of support for Dad, the dumpee. Not unusual, I’m told. Maybe a divorced couple seemed too much of a threat to the still-married ones.
Anyway, aside from an old law school bachelor buddy—a real bachelor, not an in-the-closet gay guy—my father didn’t have much of a social life these days. Aside from Abby.
“I’ve met his receptionist, Ms. Leonard,” Abby said. “And, well, we were thinking of going to an industry dinner at the Marriott but ...”
“But what?”
Abby shrugged uncomfortably. “John changed his mind a few days before the event. He said he hoped I wasn’t disappointed. . .”
“Were you?”
“Kind of,” Abby admitted. “I wanted to dress up and meet his colleagues. I ... I wondered if he was ashamed of me. But then he took me out to Blue Ginger—he remembered I’d always wanted to go there—and we had a lovely time, just the two of us, so, I just never said anything.”
“Well, that was nice,” I said, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in my voice. Since when did my father pass on an industry dinner? He was an active member of the American Bar Association and a past president of the Boston Bar Association Committee or some such organization. John Weston was a man who knew people and liked it that way.
A pigeon flapped its way across the Gardens, narrowly missing my head. I cringed.
“Oh, Erin,” Abby said with a sigh, “do you think this will work, me and John?”
I debated giving Abby the hope she was asking for. But it would have been false hope.
“I don’t know, Abby. I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”
Chapter Thirty-six
E—Ricardo and I are doing wonderfully. He’s helping me with my budget—you know how bad I am with figures! Hope all’s well. Maria—that’s what R. calls me.
Maureen, my only married-currently-pregnant-twenty-something-friend, my colleague at EastWind, told me one day that week that she was eagerly waiting for her mucus plug to pass. Having determinedly avoided reading
Our Bodies Ourselves,
I knew nothing about said mucus plug. It occured to me, as I listened to Maureen describe in detail the event she was anticipating, that until I was ready to pass a mucus plug of my own, I did not want to know about it. Now, I thought, as I listened in horror, now I am going to lie awake at night imagining the mucus plug. Supposedly, Maureen said, it resembles a clearish slug. Or thick, clear snot.
When I got home that night, desperately hoping not to think of the mucus plug during dinner, I started to obsess. Would I ever be able to eat a raw oyster again? Could you sue someone for ruining your appetite?
Though it was highly unfashionable and not politically correct and all that, the truth was that I liked to know as little as possible about my body without being utterly, stupidly ignorant. I mean, I knew where pee came out. Beyond that, I liked to keep things a mystery. I figured that if something went wrong, the doctor would fix it. Of course, I hardly ever went to the doctor, either.
My chosen ignorance I chalked up to my being of largely Irish-Catholic descent. Add to that a classic American prudishness—a more far-reaching and influential gift from our forefathers and mothers than the turkey and Manifest Destiny—and you had a recipe for supreme denial.
What’s Irish foreplay? Bernie on top, muttering, “Brace yourself, Bridget.” Bridget on bottom, eyes closed, suffering with an overwhelming sense of guilt, beating herself for having entertained even the merest notion of lust, lacerating herself for having succumbed to temptation.
Not for the first time I looked at Fuzzer that night with envy. How nice it would be to act on instinct and need, with no thought to the soul.
Isn’t that what you’re doing by having an affair with Doug? Reason inquired.
Her soul is supremely involved in her relationship with Doug, Romance replied haughtily.
Soul or not, in the eyes of the church I was committing adultery. No matter that I considered myself no longer a Catholic. The church considered me caught until the day I died. Then, I would be handed over to God for judgment and appropriate punishment.
Catholics are admonished to avoid not only sin but the “near temptation of sin.” They’re not even allowed in the same room with sin. If sin is somewhere in the building, Catholics are warned to leave the building immediately. Lest sin tempt them into, say, looking at a coworker with envy. Or stealing staples from the supply room. Or, the good Lord forbid, fantasizing about sex during business hours.
Which thought led me to lascivious thoughts about Doug. Who at that moment was home with his wife.
In some bizarre leap, that depressing thought led to memories of my own depressing presex days. Occasionally, it still amazed me that I’d ever lost my virginity. Of course, alcohol had been involved. And for days afterward I’d felt as if I were walking around with a giant red S plastered to my forehead.
A giant red S for Slut. All anyone had to do was look at me and they’d know that I had done intimate things with a man—well, a college guy—and that I was going to Hell.
It was horrible. Not the actual experience, which was painful and awkward but probably worse by far for the college guy. What a responsibility! But the buildup and aftermath. . . Twelve years later it still made me shudder.
However, once the deed had been done and I realized that sex did not cause devil’s horns to pop out of one’s forehead, I worked rapidly to get over all those feelings of shame and guilt and I succeeded. It was easier than I ever could have guessed, actually.
Maybe that meant I really was slated for a place in Hell. That was okay. Most people I knew were going to be there, too.
I peered into the freezer the night of Maureen’s revelation, hoping to find a Lean Cuisine that included nothing even remotely resembling a mucus plug. In the end, I settled for a box of Hanover pretzels. I couldn’t even handle dipping them in mustard, brown or yellow. Spooning Fuzzer’s ocean whitefish stew almost did me in.
I ate the pretzels dry, sitting in front of the TV, blindly watching sitcom reruns. While my mother tangoed with some leftover Casanova type in the hills of Borneo; and my lover rubbed his wife’s feet and played hide-and-seek with his kids; and my twenty-something colleague and her husband planned their baby’s future; and my father wined and dined a woman young enough to be his daughter.
How did I get here, I wondered suddenly.
And how do I get out?
Doug and I had an assignation—what a great word, so many connotations—the next night. I had to stay late at the office so we weren’t able to have dinner together. I arrived at Doug’s office at almost eight o’clock. He locked his door, opened a bottle of wine, and kissed me hello.
I so needed to spill, especially after my lapse into self-pity and depression the night before when I sat alone munching pretzels for dinner.
“I’m in the mood to talk. Is that okay?” I said. “I feel all wound up.”
“Fine by me,” he said. “As long as we can, you know, later.”
I laughed at the broad comical expression on his face. “Of course.”
Doug was generous as a listener. An hour had passed before I paused to breathe.
Nine o’clock. The lights were off, the room illuminated by the lights from surrounding buildings, other offices, and apartments. We sat on the couch, my legs curled up under me, Doug’s legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles.
For one solid hour I’d been yammering on about my childhood; about the double-standards imposed by the church and my old-world Grandfather Morelli; about my best friend in high school who’d gone to college on the West Coast and never answered my letters; about my best friend in freshman year of college who’d committed suicide when she got a C+ in Advanced Calculus and who in a note had left her collection of Beatles albums to me. A collection I never got because her parents refused to acknowledge the various notes she’d left for various friends. Poor Susanne.
I’m sure the bottle of wine I’d consumed on an empty stomach fueled much of my rambling storytelling.
“You’re sure I’m not boring you?” I said, knowing that I probably was and knowing that Doug would lie about it.
“I’m sure,” he lied. “Go on. Your life is fascinating.”
I laughed. “Well, I don’t know about that. But where was I?”
“Something about priests and nuns.”
“Oh, yeah. The poor nuns. Every nun I had in school, no matter how young she was, wore a cheap dark blue suit and ugly, serviceable shoes. Big black ugly shoes. Why did they have to do that? Every one of them, the nasty ones and the nice ones, just looked so—so poor. So neglected.”
“What about the priests?” Doug asked.
I grimaced. “Most of the priests my family knew seemed to spend an awful lot of time eating at parishioners’ homes and drinking at private clubs. And they dressed far better than nuns. Sleek black suits, shiny black shoes ... They just seemed to be about a much more attractive lifestyle. Some of them even belonged to the country club and played golf every Saturday! Can you imagine a nun on the golf course, wearing her habit? And what about the shoes? What would she do for shoes?”
“And I used to regret my parents were atheists,” Doug said, kissing my hand. “Go on.”
I did.
“It’s odd, you know. My mother didn’t want me to be a nun, but she told me time and again that I wasn’t ‘cut out’ for marriage. Those were her words—cut out for—like everyone was born according to a predetermined pattern and that was that; you couldn’t change, there was no point in even trying. I think she meant it as a compliment—she always said it with a sort of proud smile—though for the longest time I had no idea why she thought not being cut out for marriage was a good thing. And I had no idea how she could tell such a thing about me, anyway. I mean, I was about nine when she started telling me what I was and was not cut out to be. I hadn’t even begun to think about thinking about my future! I remember being worried by the fact that she could see so clearly who and what I was. I wondered if I had some sort of physical trait that gave me away or something. It was all very confusing.”
“Did anyone ever ask you to marry him?” Doug asked.
The question took me by surprise.
“Yes, in fact, one—no, two guys did. Huh. I’d almost forgotten. Both right after college.”
“You said no.”
“I said no. I wasn’t interested. Besides, they weren’t at all right for the job.”
“But they thought you might be. Seems Mother Weston was wrong. Maybe she should stay far away in the jungle.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said, laughing. “Hey, why didn’t I talk to you about all this years ago?”
“We only met months ago.”
“Oh. Right. Here’s another funny thing,” I said. “If not being cut out for marriage was a good thing, then why weren’t the unmarried women we knew happier? Or more glamorous? Or invited over more often? Why did my mother and her sister, my Aunt Margaret, whisper things like, ‘Poor Alice, she doesn’t have a man,’ behind their backs? Where were the single women who weren’t nuns, the single women who were happy and proud and glamorous?”
“In the city, having fun?”
I laughed. “Maybe. That possibility wouldn’t have occurred to me then. See, because from when I was little I’d gotten the loud and clear message that for a woman to be single was for her to be somehow defective and pitiable.”
“That’s not an uncommon notion, Erin.”
Doug opened another bottle of wine, refilled my plastic cup, and settled back.
“I know, I know. But—how did that reconcile with my mother’s being proud I wasn’t cut out for marriage!”
“Mothers. Can’t live with them. Can’t ...”
“Don’t tempt me,” I said, briefly assailed by an image of Marie Weston whooping it up on a beach with a greasy Lothario. “Anyway, the point was that for a man to be single meant that he was a jolly and enviable bachelor. Which meant that, even if he was a priest, he was assumed to be a wonderful conversationalist and a serious gourmand and a connoiseur of fine wine. Which meant he was always invited to dinner. Unlike his skinny, dried-up and bitter female counterpart.”
“Defective and pitiable?”
“Exactly.” I smiled. My head felt a little funny. “You’re such a good listener, Mr. Spears.”
Doug leaned over and kissed me. “Go on. I’m interested.”
“I don’t remember my mother ever inviting a single woman to a meal. But charming Mr. Mahoney and raucous Father Bill, they were at our table all the time. Huh.”
“What?”
“Another lightbulb,” I said slowly. “It occurs to me now that Cousin Katie and Miss Adams were actually quite attractive—and a few years younger than my mother and Aunt Margaret—and that maybe the reason they weren’t invited to dinner had nothing to do with their being defective and pitiable.”
“You think?” Doug’s smile was infectious. And his lips begged to be kissed. I kissed them.
“Oh, I think all right,” I said. “Maybe it had something to do with their being independent and threatening. Wild single women out to steal the bored husbands of boring married women.”
There’s something familiar in those words, my brain said fuzzily. But what?
Doug seemed amused about something.
“Yes, I do believe you’re on to something there, Ms. Weston,” he said. “More wine?”
“Okay.” I held out my empty plastic cup and Doug poured. “Hey, want to hear the real twist to the whole story? Then I’ll shut up, I swear.”
“You’ll have to because I’m going to ravish you.”
“Good. Then, I’ll make it quick. Years later, I think I was in college, I found out that at least two of those jolly and enviable bachelors that were always mooching at our home were gay. Turns out they were just desperately trying to keep up appearances. Deeply in the closet. It’s sad, really.”

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