Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (28 page)

He hung up. I called him right back.

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you say you love me?”

“Yep.”

“What am I supposed to do with that? I didn’t expect this, even from you. I so don’t need this right now. I was starting to breathe.”

“You can drop the insults anytime now, I’m really not that bad. I’m just telling you I love you. I have no idea what you’re going to do with it.”

“Are these going to be daily hit and run calls? You don’t even sound like you.”

“No. I know; I hear it too.”

“You haven’t been alone. What bullshit, Mr. Refrigerator Door.”

“How long have you been alone?”

“I’ve never been alone until now; and it’s fine. It’ll be a long time before I stick a toe in those waters again, I can tell you that.”

“What about the Indian man?”

“That will just be a little cultural exchange program,” I said.

“I don’t want to hear about it. And I didn’t ask how many people you’ve slept with. I hope we never think that conversation is a good idea. I asked how long you’ve been alone.”

“I’ve slept with men, Jon, not people.”

“Men, people, goats. I don’t want a head count. How long?”

I thought about that for a minute. He was listening at the other end. I’d always been alone.

“A long time, so what?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You were right about the nothing comment by the way; men are assholes. It’s almost true, but it’s still a shitty way to put it. I’ll call you tomorrow, I hope you’ll answer.”

He hung up again. I called him back.

“Yes.”

“Stop hanging up on me,” I said.

We were both quiet.

“I can’t let you back in here,” I said.

“We don’t have a choice, Hannah. We’re in it; we both know it. We need to move along now. I don’t think either one of us is up for all this struggling.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Yeah you do.”

“It’s too soon.”

“Too soon for what? It is what it is.”

There must be a thousand reasons why it was too soon, but I couldn’t think of one. That was the biggest problem with Jon. He scrambled my brain into thinking I wasn’t wrong about him. I understood him and it drove me crazy.

“So just like that?” I asked.

“Yep, just like that. I’ll call you tomorrow. What’s a good time?”

“After work, seven I guess. Is that good for you?”

“It’s fine. Any time is fine. Have a good night.”

“Why do you tap the coconut all over?”

“I was just trying to wake you up gently. I used to do the same thing with Chana when she was a baby. She hated waking up.”

“I don’t hate waking up.”

“Okay, now I know to just pound on the door.”

“Jon.”

“Yeah, not now, it’s good. We’re okay. Tomorrow. I’m not hanging up by the way, I’m just signing off.”

I went back to my coconut and gave it my normal big fat smack. It broke open and the milk ran across the stones and into the pool. Oops, I forgot about that part. I dug out the meat and munched while I used the shell to scoop water and rinse off the flagstones. Tick tock, tick tock.

I felt a tad manic with the surge of relief energy. Jon had sounded a little crazy too. I wondered if the next thing I’d find out was that he’s completely nuts. I hadn’t picked up on that at all, but people find their own water level, and my family thought I was nuts. Where had he come from? I knew he’d say Santa Barbara. All I could think of was the cosmic soup. The wild animal was humming while a little voice kept screaming at me to wake up!

I still hadn’t heard from Mom. I called her and Arthur answered.

“Hi, Hannah, your mother’s in the shower.”

I couldn’t help it. The relief after talking to Jon mixed with the vision of her scrubbing struck me so sideways; I started laughing out of control. Arthur hung on as long as he could, but then he started in too. We were both choking; I had tears streaming down my face.

“Oh Arthur, how’s she doing?”

“It will take some time. That ink is on pretty thick. I think she got the message.”

“I’m surprised she showed you.”

“I was supposed to have breakfast with you all. She was sitting on the bed in her underwear crying when I got here. She wouldn’t have been able to hide it for too long. We’re past that point. I would have seen her hands anyway. The cat really bothered her.”

“It just came to me. She’s always telling me I’m not a kitten anymore.”

“I know. And it may sound out-of-line coming from me, but cats are more fun.”

“Thanks for that, Arthur. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. She’s fine for now. I’m taking her to a meeting tonight. She won’t go out to dinner with her hands like that. It’s not easy to get sober after Bettina and Amber, but she has a good sponsor.”

He’d tell her I called, but he had no idea when she would call me back. I liked Arthur; he was a straight twelve-stepper. I’d met some real whack jobs at Alanon. People can really complicate a simple spiritual path with crazy shit. If anyone could survive Mom with equanimity it was Arthur.

I hummed around in the sun, eating coconut and scooping leaves out of the pool. It was 4:00 in the afternoon and my entire cosmos of people was out there somewhere besides with me. There was no one to turn to and just talk, no one to answer my phone when I was in the shower, no one under my roof, or in my time zone. Jon, who I guessed was in my cosmos now, was living at 2:00 p.m. It was 4:30 a.m. tomorrow in India, not a time to call anybody about anything. I knew Karin and Oscar were struggling in their own time zone. I was afraid to ask her what she thought, she might not be having one of her philosophical days and she’d point out how nuts I was. I felt like I was coming down off a sugar high. I called Jon. I could hear surf in the background.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m lonesome. Where are you?”

“I’m sitting in front of the house reading. I’m headed in to work in a few minutes.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Which part?”

“I don’t know if I can be out there alone, but I can’t just give up my career. I need to think about the future. It scares me to think about being left alone. I don’t trust this. My mother had to start from scratch with kids. They didn’t see it coming.”

“I won’t pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t expect you to give up your career.”

“How do people do this?”

“I don’t know. But if we want it, we’re about to find out.”

“I know I shouldn’t say this, but I have such an immense longing for you. It never went away, no matter how angry I got. I really don’t know how to fill up the next hour. I feel aimless. How is that going to work for nine months?”

“We better say it if we’re going to get through this. I’ll come there for a few days before you leave, or you can come through Honolulu and I’ll meet you.”

“Let me see what I can do,” I said. “Jon, why didn’t you tell me that night?”

“I thought maybe it was just a licking thing. That was a new one. It seemed soon to start throwing around the word love. I didn’t want to make a mistake with you. I didn’t know what was going on with Mike.”

“But you had me there. You knew that. We could have lost each other.”

“But we didn’t. In a way I think it’s better that we did it this way.”

“Someday you’ll have to explain that to me.”

“I don’t think I need to explain it to you.”

“How did this happen? That we would find each other so far apart?” I asked. “Other people find people close.”

“Do they? It seems pretty random to me.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to hear about even the goats?”

“Were they good dancers?”

“They didn’t hula if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Let me think about it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

I got to work early and started a pot of coffee. Margaret breezed in asking how my weekend had been. I started in. She was hooting with laughter at the body art and the idea of Mom wearing gloves to the luncheon, through the entire meal.

“It’s that kind of inspiration that sets you apart,” she said. “Did Steve get a hold of you?”

I told her the story, that Steve would have wanted the baby with some kind of working things out agreement. She said someone must have been looking out for me.

“Blow me one last kiss?” she asked.

“It’s a Pink song. Jon walked in on the cocktail waitresses dancing to it on the bar. It’s a fuck off song, just how I felt talking to Steve. It was like I was talking to a better-dressed version of my ex-husband. I would have stopped at blow me, but I didn’t want to encourage him.”

She was subdued listening to the story about the burial, about my mother’s wailing and beating on Ted. I told her about Jon and that I planned to stop in Honolulu on the way to India.

“I’m sorry for your mother, it’s out of order,” she said. “Jon sounds real.”

“I hope he is. I keep wondering if I’ll ever turn that corner.”

“It sounds to me like you finally have. We’ll run it by Ed.” She actually winked at me. She’d never winked at me.

“How did this happen, that he should be there?” I asked.

“Or you here from his point-of-view. I don’t know why we get dished these things, but in our business, in some ways, it really doesn’t matter. It always has to be worked out. It’s like the military. We spend a lot of time in different time zones.”

“How did you and Ed work it out all these years?”

She was quiet as she looked out the window of our big workroom.

“It wasn’t a bed of roses. We kept a lot from each other and we always will. It’s not ideal. But we both loved our work, or thought we did, so that was the accommodation we made. We survived, most people didn’t. At a certain point, you realize that you made it all the way through.”

“Would you do it again?”

“I have no idea. The road not traveled or whatever it is. I don’t know how the people who took a more traditional path did. We can’t know what the inside of marriages are all about.”

She thought it must have been easier for the children with a mother and father at home. Their children were mildly estranged; they were more attached to Ed or Margaret depending on which one was home the most when they were young. They called them Margaret and Ed, not mom and dad.

“But you were both happy in your careers,” I said. “That had to make your life more rewarding.”

“It did. And we’ve always been each other’s best friend. We made choices. There were some wrong ones.”

“Did you two have affairs?”

“I didn’t. There were close calls of course. I don’t know about Ed. If he did, he better not get a deathbed urge to confess. I’ll put a pillow over his head.”

I told her about Karin and Oscar.

“They’re at a deciding moment,” she said. “I wish them well. I’ve always liked Karin.”

Our producer Dede came by with paperwork. She had my contract to sign and our passports stamped with visas.

“Did you tell her?” asked Dede.

“I haven’t had a chance,” said Margaret. “She’s going to Hawaii on the way.”

Dede handed me my contract. She said to review the credit language and money with an agent.

“Call the production office, they’ll change your tickets.” Dede answered a call and headed out the door.

An agent? I didn’t have an agent. I flipped to the credit section; Margaret had decided to share screen credit. She had pushed me above-the-line. I was stunned. That was what we all worked for. Not only did it mean a big jump up in pay; it meant she considered me an equal in work. It said it to the whole world. It was the nicest thing that had ever happened to me in our unsentimental business, where even your best friends guard their credit. And it meant that I was in a financially stable place for the first time in my adult life. I could pay off my credit card; I could make plans. I looked at Margaret.

“I don’t know what to say,” I said.

“There’s nothing to say,” she said. “You’ve earned it, you’re gifted. It’s time. Don’t ever feel like you haven’t earned every last thing that comes your way in this business. Believe me, even I wouldn’t give you the lift if you hadn’t shown 150%; it would reflect poorly on me.”

We worked the rest of the morning. Ed came by with lunch; his cooking for us had begun. Margaret gave him the lowdown on Jon. He agreed with her. It sounded like I’d made the turn to a grown up man. He was basing his feeling less on Jon, who he didn’t know, than on the fact that I not only understood what Steve was all about, but that I’d told him to fuck off in such a stylish way. He wanted to know if Jon played golf. I didn’t think so. He said he’d have to remedy that; he loved the idea of playing golf in Hawaii. Sigh. Now my love life was a vehicle for golf vacations. We wrapped our day on schedule.

Jon called right at 7:00. I told him I was coming and about my career boost.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“About the goats?”

“No. Well, yes. I have to admit I’m curious until I remember I’m the one who brought them up. But it was about your nothing comment,” he said.

“You worried about Chana?”

“Yeah.”

“She’ll be fine, just get her to marry her high school sweetheart like my sister-in-law. Although I’m not sure she got through completely unscathed.”

“Her boyfriend’s an idiot, but you can chew the chemistry. Women must have nothings.”

“It’s mostly nothings in the end. But we call it regrets.”

“Do you get over it?”

“Not so far.”

“I’m sorry it’s that way.”

“What did you mean when you said it’s almost true for men?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Jon.”

“It’s never absolutely nothing, once you’ve crossed that line. It’s not possible. But that doesn’t mean it’s anything either. It’s rarely even interesting a few minutes later. We are assholes about that part. ”

“I think you’ve switched into calculus. Do men regret it?”

“Not unless it’s a psycho. We’re different that way, but we don’t forget either.”

“Oscar says he regrets it.”

“He involved his family.”

“What happened to your marriage in the end?”