Starting from Square Two (16 page)

“Yes,” Hallie said. “Erika and I are meeting at the Internet café after work to celebrate. Want to come?”

Gert hadn't done anything with the both of them in two weeks. But why end such a wonderful streak?

“The Internet café?” Gert asked. “Is she going to be writing stuff to Challa?”

Hallie sighed. “Yes,” she said. “She's really upset today. Remember Erika told us there was an artist coming to the Whitney she wanted to see? Well, I swear to God, Gert, Erika just checked Challa's Web log from work, and in one of the entries, it said that Challa and Ben were in New York all weekend and went to the Whitney to see this artist! And Erika didn't even know. It just shows how well she knows him. When she sees stuff like that, she thinks more and more that she made a mistake.”

Gert felt bad. It was hard to get over someone when you remembered just how good a couple you were. “She should just stop reading the blog,” Gert said.

“She can't help it,” Hallie said. “I know you think it's crazy, but she said something to me before that really touched me. She said, ‘Everyone says this feeling will go away, but it never ever does. I've tried to kill it, but it doesn't go away.' And I don't think it does. She tries to pursue a lot of guys, but no one she's met has come close to the way she felt about Ben.”

“I can understand, sort of,” Gert said. “I do like Todd, but then I think of Marc, and suddenly I can't feel as much for Todd anymore. And I had a dream about Marc on Friday.”

“Again?”

“Yes,” Gert said. “I guess Erika's holding on, too. We just have to accept that people are going to stay in our hearts even when they don't stay in our lives.”

“You know,” Hallie said, “they make all these antidepressants. They should make a pill that stops you from loving the people you can't have, and makes you attracted to those you can.”

“Oh, God,” Gert said. “I'd sign right up.”

G
ert ran as if she was being chased by a rabid pit bull. She ran as if she was representing the U.S. in the Olympics. She ran as if she was late for final exams.

Annoying Gym Guy appeared next to her. He hadn't bothered her in a while. She kept her pace on the treadmill.

He said something that she couldn't hear.

“Excuse me?” she said, lifting her headphones. The gym had just installed CD players in the treadmills, and she was glad. It was easier than clipping a Discman to her waist.

“You seem disoriented,” Annoying Gym Guy said.

“I had headphones on,” Gert said. “I couldn't hear you.”

“Is your workout going okay?”

“It's fine,” she said, staring straight ahead.

“I didn't mean to bother you, ma'am.”

Then don't,
she thought.

 

She slowed down the treadmill so she could walk. Every time she thought about what might happen that night, she lost her resolve.

Todd was coming at eight for dinner.

If she scared him off, she'd be alone again. She really liked Todd. She wondered if there was any way to mitigate what she was about to tell him.

She would just have to tell it to him straight.

 

On the subway, Gert slumped forward in her seat, exhausted. The first section of the
New York Times
was lying beside her, smudged and dirty. She picked it up.

The cover held stories about Iraq, the depressed economy and a twenty-one-year-old kid who'd just been elected mayor of the town of Lola, Indiana.

Gert read the Lola article. Then she looked at the story beside the jump. It was one of those “
Times
Neediest Cases Fund” stories. The
Times
ran profiles of people throughout the city who needed help through the paper's charity fund. The idea was that if you sent the money to the fund, rather than tossing it to a sea of administrators, it went directly to the poor. And you would know, from the article, who the people were who needed your help.

Gert put down the paper. The Neediest Cases stories were all like this. Part of her wanted to believe they were exaggerated. How could so many bad things hit one person at the same time?

She had always believed somewhere in the back of her mind that after a person suffered a tragedy, fate left them
alone for a while. People who got leukemia didn't then get Parkinson's disease. But she knew that realistically, mankind had no compact with God limiting heartbreaks to one per customer.

As hard as Gert's tragedy was, she was conscious of the fact that there were people who had suffered a similar tragedy and had no support network to deal with it.

Gert didn't like acknowledging such things. Dealing with her own problems was hard enough. But she forced herself to stare at the picture of Sherell Lewis with her children. How did you lose your job, then your mother-in-law, then your husband? There was too much sadness, she thought. How did some people go on?

She wanted to send her money. She folded the article and put it into her purse.

She thought of how much she'd hedged on telling Todd the truth about her own tragedy.
Too bad,
she thought. If she had to deal with tragedy, and if Sherell Lewis had to, then Todd could, too.

But she didn't want to be angry when she told him. It wasn't his fault that the girl he'd met at a bar was a widow.

Start at the beginning,
she thought.
Don't overload him.

She moved her finger over the folded article sticking out of her pocketbook.

She'd never donated money to anyone she didn't know—not in her entire life. Thinking about it, she realized that Marc never had, either.

Why hadn't they?

Whenever they'd had extra, they had always spent it on things like the maid service. The only time Marc had donated anything was the $1,000 he'd given to their college alumni association. It had gotten them a nice mention in the class bulletin and helped the class set a record.

 

At home, Gert sat at the kitchen table and gazed at the yellow refrigerator. The fridge was the oldest thing in the condo.
It had half-torn Barney stickers on it, left from the family who'd lived there before.

Gert looked around the condo. Except for a print of the falling leaves she'd put up in the living room, the walls were fairly bare. It was because Marc was a minimalist. He hadn't really liked to have things on the walls. He wasn't into art in general, except as an investment. He'd gone gallery-hopping with Gert and some friends in SoHo on one sunny afternoon, because he said it seemed like a “New York thing to do.” His pet peeve was government funding for the arts. “Who's the government to tell us what's good?” he'd asked. Gert had agreed on that point. Marc liked music, but as far as visual art, he just couldn't be moved.

It was something she'd accepted about him. He was quirky, but he definitely tended toward the practical side with certain things.

Gert got up and put the fondue pot on the table. Todd was bringing some of the groceries. They were first going to have bread and cheese fondue and follow it up with shrimp cacciatore.

When the doorbell rang, she was lost in thought, playing out how best to bring up Marc.

Gert buzzed Todd in, checked her hair in the mirror.
Don't chicken out,
she thought.

Todd laid a paper shopping bag on the table. He looked happy. He was wearing a brown lamb's wool sweater with bits of pink and dark brown in it.

Gert smiled, pinching his shoulder. “Admit that a girl bought that for you,” she said.

“How'd you know?”

“Men never have taste in sweaters.” She tried not to be nervous.

“Wrong,” Todd said. “We just don't buy them because we don't want to hand-wash them. We buy them when we have girlfriends so we can trick them into doing it.”

“Sexist.”

“But you
like
it.”

“Sure. We love scrubbing your smelly sweaty sweaters.” She pushed the container of shrimp into his hands. “Peel some shrimp.”

She stood there a minute.

“I have something to tell you.”

“This is never good.”

“It's not anything awful, but every time I've wanted to tell you, something came up.”

He looked up.

“It's just…I was married before.”

She'd practiced it, but now she'd still stumbled when she had to say it to his face.

He stopped peeling shrimp and turned to face her. “What?”

Gert didn't say anything.

“You're divorced?” He put the shrimp down and looked as though someone had smacked him in the face. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't
not
tell you. At first it didn't come up…”

“But we were talking the other night,” he said. “I know you said something. What was it? You said you'd dated your last boyfriend for three years.”

“We
did.
”

“A husband isn't a boyfriend.”

“We did date for three years first.”

“That's like lying.”

“I didn't lie to you.”

“It's a half truth.”

“
Now
you've found something worth worrying about,” she said, thinking of the FedEx incident.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he said.

“I didn't
not
tell you. I—”

“What if
I
told you I was divorced all of a sudden?”

“I'm not divorced.”

“You mean you're still married to the guy?”

“No,” Gert said. “He's—” She couldn't look at him. “He died in a car accident,” Gert said.

Todd took a deep breath.

“…a year and a half ago.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I was scared.”

He looked at her. “Maybe we should sit down.”

 

As the shrimp thawed on the table, Todd and Gert sat side by side on the couch. The side of her left leg was touching his right. She wasn't sure how much he wanted to know.

He said to tell him everything.

“We were married for five years,” Gert said.

“Where did you meet?”

“In college.”

She told him about meeting Marc in the bookstore. She told him about their first date, to a school play that his friend was in, and how he was good at supporting friends' projects. She talked about the first moment she realized how much she cared about him: during history class one morning, when she kept seeing his face, and thinking of things he'd said without even trying. She kept flashing back to their dates and smiling. She realized this was something beyond a crush or casual dating.

“Go on,” Todd said.

“We graduated and moved to New York,” Gert said. “I was at his apartment all the time. His parents were kind of old-fashioned. They didn't like that much. But it was silly to live apart. I moved in, and we got engaged.”

She told him a little more. When Marc had the accident, he'd been on the way to a doctor's appointment. He'd taken off work because he was sick with the flu. According to the police, he'd drifted into another lane and been hit head-on.

Gert didn't go into her feelings of guilt, or all the reasons Marc's mother might be angry at her. She had trouble thinking about them herself.

When she finished, Todd was silent for a few seconds.

She waited for him to say something.
It's too much for him,
she thought.
I knew it.

He said finally, “It's a lot to tell someone you just met.”

“I know it's a lot,” she said. “I just didn't know how you'd react. What you said when I told you—‘I'm sorry'—that's all you have to say. But some people don't say anything. They're afraid of saying something wrong.”

He looked at her uncertainly. She had no idea what he was thinking or what he would do next. Would he walk out? Pretend everything was fine then leave after dinner?

Finally, he said, “You're pretty brave.”

“I don't think so.” She tried not to cry.

He leaned over and hugged her. She held in her tears, which wasn't easy. Todd took her hand. He was quiet for a long time. Finally she had to break the silence.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I'm just processing it. It's a major thing about you that I didn't know before. It's just not what I'm used to.”

“You think I am?”

“I'm sure you're not.”

“When I got married, I thought I'd be married forever,” she said. “I never thought I'd have to date again.”

“Well,” he said, looking at her, “I'm glad you did.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said. “You hungry?”

“God, yes.”

 

After they'd eaten, they were back on the couch, resting. He had dimmed the lights, but she could still see the serious expression on his face.

“Will you show me your pictures?” he asked.

“What pictures?”

“Your family. Um, your wedding.”

“You really want to see those?” she asked.

“I want to know about all the things you care about.”

 

Gert had three photo albums. The purple one contained old pictures her mom had given her before college. She'd put them
into the album the first week she'd gotten to campus. Hallie had helped. That was how they'd gotten to know each other so quickly—Hallie had learned about Gert's past right away.

The second album was from college. There were freshman year photos showing the guys on her floor hanging out in the dorm lounge, and later photos of her, Marc and Marc's fraternity brothers.