Once More with Feeling (19 page)

In fact, she thought, taking a deep breath and boldly ringing the doorbell, the only thing missing was the conviction that she was really ready for this.

Corning to an orientation meeting for Parents on Their Own had taken every bit of nerve Laura possessed. Following up on the newspaper’s suggestion that she
call Dave for information
had been hard enough. She knew perfectly well that, unlike her weekly support group, designed to be therapeutic, Parents on Their Own was a social organization. Still, there’d been no commitment involved in dialing the number listed in the paper. She owed Dave nothing besides listening politely as he rambled on about all the events the group’s members were invited to participate in.

She learned that, for single parents and their kids, the organization hosted ski weekends, day trips to amusement parks, and visits to local ice-skating rinks, video arcades, and restaurants. For single parents on their own, footloose and fancy-free while the kids were weekending with the ex, there were dances, rap groups, and Trivial Pursuit nights, which, Dave informed her with pride, had been known to get pretty raunchy on occasion.

It sounded like fun. Good, clean, innocent fun. Of course, with all those singles together under one roof, hordes of people representing gallons of hormones with no outlet, there was a good chance there’d be a lot more going on than pleasant chitchat about which of the new PG-13 videos were worth renting.

Relax, Laura chided herself. You’re not here on a manhunt. You’re simply following through on a resolution made under the influence of Southern Comfort and cherry Diet Coke.

Her sincere intention in joining this organization was to make new friends—women friends. What she needed was a coterie of divorced and separated women who were up for a Friday-night movie or a raucous Saturday night at Chippendale’s, stuffing grocery money into the B.V.D.s of men so young they really should be home in bed, fast asleep. And Parents on Their Own seemed like the ideal place to start.

Laura was tempted to ring the bell again when she felt the vibrations of something large moving on the other side of the front door. Sure enough, when it opened, standing there was a woman who easily hit the two-hundred mark on the scale.

“You must be Laura. Come in, come in! You’ll freeze standin’ out there!”

Darlene Colletti was either a Brooklyn native or auditioning for the sequel to
My Cousin Vinny.
Her billboard-size frame was draped in a variety of garments, all of them in startlingly bold colors. Her jewelry was also oversized: earrings as big as postcards, an impressive row of bangle bracelets, rings flashier than the pope’s.

It’s not too late to turn back, Laura told herself. But it was. Her hostess for the evening was ushering her inside, holding out her arms to take Laura’s coat.

“You’re here for the POTO new members’ Greeting Meeting, right?”

Clearly a different language was spoken here. It took her a few seconds to change gears. “Right. Parents on Their Own—uh, POTO. That’s me.”

Darlene led her into the living room. The way she grabbed her by the wrist made Laura feel she was being dragged off to the principal’s office.

She glanced around the room, trying to get a feel for what she’d gotten herself into. What struck her first was that too much large, dark furniture had been stuffed into too small a place. Huge, overstuffed couches and chairs, covered in brocade fabric with shiny gold threads running through, were pushed into corners and lined up against walls. Wedged between them were ornate tables with marble tops and molded wooden legs, swirled and twisted and ending in shapes dial resembled the paws of various animals. Decorating the walls were crucifixes, fifteen or twenty at least, Laura estimated. They covered even the doorframes and major appliances, she noticed as she peeked at the refrigerator magnets in the kitchen.

Well, she’d come to meet and greet, not to redecorate, she reminded herself. Twenty or so people had gathered in the living room. A few of them milled about, but most sat up stiffly, in chairs or on the couch, looking as if they were in the waiting room at a proctologist’s office.

They were all wearing name tags with the bright green POTO logo printed across the top. A man with
JOE
on his sweater sat with his legs spread wide, a big bowl of pretzels balanced in his lap. An older woman sat in one corner, smiling and nodding as she knitted away happily. She was dressed in a hand-knit sweater, a hand-knit scarf, and hand-knit socks. None of the garments hung quite straight. Her name, her tag proclaimed, was Natalie. Another woman, Elsa, wearing a dark, tailored suit, looked very much the banker with her silk scarf fashioned into a natty bow tie and her sensible black pumps. Vince was a male version of Elsa. The two of them sat side by side on the couch like a pair of salt and pepper shakers.

“Come in! Come in! Don’t be shy.” Darlene gave Laura a push. “This is the first time for everybody. It’s as if we were all virgins again. But like anything else, it’s only hard the first time.”

The man with the Joe name tag snickered. “If you’re lucky, it’s hard every time.”

Suddenly Laura jumped as someone slapped her on the chest.

“There you go.” Elsa was grinning at her. “You’re Laura, right?”

Peering down, Laura saw that now she, too, wore a name tag.

She was relieved when Darlene glanced at her watch and commanded the last stragglers to take a seat. The setup reminded her of a game of spin the bottle. It took her back, all those nervous males and females sitting in a circle in someone else’s living room, waiting for the evening to get started and hoping desperately they wouldn’t make complete fools of themselves.

Panic rose inside her. What am I doing here? she thought. I have nothing in common with these people.

But she did. And the name tag that Elsa had so unceremoniously stuck onto her chest was proof.

Laura headed for the last vacant seat, a big upholstered chair that nearly swallowed her up. Its soft bottom placed her about ten inches below the people on either side of her, who were sitting on hard folding chairs.

“Comfy?” the man on her right asked, grinning down at her.

“Uh, I guess so.” She studied him more carefully, her interest piqued now that he’d gone out of his way to speak to her. His broad smile was a welcome sight, his friendliness a relief. There was something engaging about him. Open. He wasn’t what she’d call handsome, exactly, although his dark, piercing eyes and thick head of dark hair peppered with gray were appealing. It was more that he had a lot of character in his face, she decided.

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Richie. I’m a dodo.”

“Excuse me?”

“D-O-T-O? Dads on Their Own?”

“Ah.” Laura nodded knowingly. “Then I guess that makes me a moto.”

Before he had a chance to respond, Darlene plopped down on the piano bench at one end of the room.

‘Take a seat, evvybody,” she insisted in her loud, gravelly voice. “First of all, welcome.” Earnestly she looked around the circle. “And Happy New Yeah. How many of yiz made new yeah’s resolutions?”

Amid some tittering, half a dozen hands were raised shyly into the air.

“Now, I’m gonna be nice t’night. I’m not gonna cawl on you and make you tell us what they were. I’m just gonna aks if any of yiz made a resolution to get out and meet some new people. Anybody?”

Four of the raised hands remained in the air. As Darlene’s eyes traveled around the room Laura burrowed more deeply into her chair.

“That’s a very worthwhile resolution. Much better than losin’ ten pounds. But it’s not easy, getting back into the social scene after a divorce. In fact, it’s very, very hard.”

“At least you hope it’s hard!” Joe, the man with the lapful of pretzels, guffawed. Laura wondered how many more times he intended to milk that one tonight. She also wondered what he was hiding underneath that bowl.

“But you’re all off to a good start. Parents on Their Own is a great place to make new friends. And you’re all first-timers here, so there’s no reason to feel self-conscious or anything.”

“Hey, we don’t have to take off our clothes, do we?” Joe called out.

Darlene let out a noise that was more a snort than a laugh, and waved her hands in the air dismissively.

“Then I got nothin’ to feel self-conscious about.” Joe chortled.

Laura wondered if he’d like to go out for a couple of brewskis with Tom and Arnie from the Wednesday night support group sometime.

“Anyways,” Darlene went on, “what we’re gonna do, as a way of evvybody getting to know evvybody else, is play a little game.”

A groan rose up from the crowd.

“No, no, this is a good game. You’re gonna like this one.”

“How ‘bout strip poker?” suggested Joe.

Richie leaned over so that his face was next to Laura’s, no easy feat since he seemed to be well over six feet tall. “I wish somebody’d show that guy the door,” he whispered.

“We’re gonna play a game I call the secret game,” Darlene went on. “The way it works is we go around the circle, one at a time, and evvybody tells a secret about themselves. Something other people wouldn’t necessarily find out unless you told ‘em.”

Whatever happened to name, rank, and serial number? Laura wondered. Desperately she racked her brain, trying to come up with something revealing enough to be interesting, yet tasteful enough to expose to a roomful of complete strangers.

“Natalie, you wanna start?”

Dutifully Natalie put down her yarn. “My secret is that I love to knit.” Conspiratorially she added, “That’s something only my closest friends know about me.”

Laura nodded politely, feeling like Alice on the other side of the looking glass, when Richie caught her eye and grimaced. She responded with a shy smile.

“Okay, thank you, Natalie.” Darlene reached over and patted her hand. “Now we all know you a little better. Who’s next? Elsa?”

Elsa tugged at the hem of her skirt, already covering so much of her legs she could have been a member of a religious order. “Well ... my secret is that even though I’m pretty successful in my job, a loan officer at a bank—

Laura patted herself on the back for having such an astute eye.

“—what I would really like to be is an exotic dancer.”

“I expect some of the men here tonight are gonna want to find out more about that,” Darlene said, without a blink. “Vince? Looks like you’re next.”

Vince looked as if he were about to run from the room. “This isn’t really a secret,” he said, his face turning red, “but it’s something most people don’t know about me. I’m an alcoholic. I’ve been in recovery for two years now, and it’s been a real struggle....”

Joe was up next. “Most people think I’m a pretty easy-goin’ guy,” he said. “But they don’t realize I got a few—I guess they’re what ya’d call compulsions. Like I can’t leave the bedroom unless all my underwear is lined up in the drawer exactly straight. I check the front door ten or twelve times every night to make sure I really locked it. And I can’t date women with the letter
R
in their names.”

I wonder if Phil Donahue’s thought about another go-round with Men Who Lead Secret Lives, Laura thought, struggling to maintain a pleasant, nonjudgmental expression.

“I guess I’ll take my turn next.” Darlene clasped her hands to her abundant chest and raised her eyes upward, as if imploring some higher power to supply her with a secret worth sharing. Finally she looked around the room. “My secret is that I’m very shy.”

A reverent silence fell over the room. Or perhaps it was simply incredulity. At any rate, it didn’t last very long. It was Richie’s turn, and he jumped right in. Laura was so busy trying to slow down her racing heart as she realized she was next, she barely listened to his confession about his passion for skeet shooting.

And then all eyes were upon her. Laura attempted to sit up straighter, struggling unsuccessfully to reach something resembling adult height. “I, uh, guess my secret is that I’m actually enjoying being a single parent. I don’t feel lonely on Saturday nights, and I don’t feel pressured to find myself a new mate. For years I worried about what it would be like, being on my own again, only this time with a child to take care of. But now that I’m doing it, it’s okay.”

She was exhausted after her little spurt of honesty. Fortunately, the group had already moved on. Someone named Pete was talking about his passion for buying lottery tickets.

When the group broke up for refreshments, Laura felt someone tap her on the arm.

Once again, Richie was smiling down at her. Only this time they were both standing. She’d been correct in her estimate of his height. He towered above her a good eight or nine inches.

“That was very interesting, what you said before,” Richie began, “about enjoying being single again. I’ve been finding the same thing.”

The way he looked at her was disconcerting. He stared with such intensity she felt like a specimen pinned against a tray.

“I’m particularly enjoying getting out and meeting women again, after being married for twenty-two years,” he told her, taking a small step forward.

“Really?” Automatically Laura moved back, as if the two of them were doing a dance. As she did she was struck with the alarming realization that this man—nice enough, if a little rough around the edges—was hitting on her.

Oh, my God! she thought. He can’t do that! I’m not here for social purposes. I mean, I am, but I’m looking for friends, not men. Well, men
friends
would be okay, but I’m not looking for men
that
way....

“Listen, I know this is kind of sudden, but would you like to go out sometime?”

“Excuse me?” Of course, she’d heard him. This man was asking her out on a date.

“Thanks, but I don’t think I’m ready to start dating.”

“No? How long’s it been? Since you got separated, I mean.”

“Only a few months.”

‘Tell you what. I’ll give you my number, in case you change your mind.” Already he was scribbling across me back of a paper napkin printed with
EAT
,
DRINK
,
AND
BE
SORRY
.