The Truth About Love and Lightning (30 page)

Books and Boys . . .

One

“PLEASE, DON’T LET MY DAUGHTER TURN INTO A CRAZY CAT LADY.”

Turning forty didn’t faze me.

Reaching twenty and leaving my teens behind felt far more unsettling. Even thirty seemed more pivotal, since that’s the age when we’re supposed to get our act together, be invested, own property, and leave singlehood behind for suburbia, procreation, and minivans.

Still, I wasn’t at all sad at bidding adieu to my thirties. They’d been a great learning curve, a chance to see some major goals accomplished; namely, getting published and beginning my professional writing career after more than a decade filled with hard work and rejection. Being able to support myself doing something I love was a gift, and I treasured it all the more because it had not come without great sacrifice. In the years I’d spent working to get my foot in the door, I’d endured lots of rejection from the publishing world and plenty of digs from less than true believers inside and outside my family, like The Jerk at my grandmother’s funeral who strongly suggested I “hang it up.” (Somehow, I refrained from punching him in the nose.)

My outside jobs had kept my bills paid, and I had saved enough to buy a condo that I filled with furniture and doodads I’d been collecting in anticipation of finally jumping into the wonderful world of thirty-year mortgages. Finally, at forty, I felt settled, like a bird who’d built a really cool nest, and it didn’t bother me that I hadn’t met Mr. Right to share it with.

Heck, I hadn’t even met Mr. Maybe. But I had good friends and a good life. I was downright content and didn’t feel incomplete in any sense. Not until I got a kick in the pants in the form of a less than stellar physical exam. My cholesterol was too high (who knew that Snickers wasn’t a vegetable?), and I had palpitations due to anxiety. My maternal grandfather had died after multiple heart attacks, and it unnerved me to think that I could be heading down that path.

My internist at the time suggested I find some way to better deal with stress. “Why don’t you start drinking?” she suggested (she was totally serious). Since I’m not fond of alcohol, I went cold turkey on junk food, eating lots of fruits and vegetables and no red meat, and I began to work out with a vengeance. Within six weeks, I’d toned up, dropped several sizes, gained strength and stamina, and lowered my total cholesterol from the mid-200s to 187. An added benefit: my heart rate quit accelerating like a Lamborghini on crack whenever I found myself worrying (which was often enough—I’m a natural-born type A).

Fueled by renewed energy and a surge of confidence, I set up a shoot for a new author photo, meeting with a renowned photographer in St. Louis who initially deemed me “too skinny” and advised I “eat some steak” to prepare for the appointment. (Definitely the first time in my life I’d been called “too skinny” by anyone.) The makeup artist flipped out my “anchorwoman hair” in a very cool, messy style that I ended up adopting postshoot. Not only did I get some great photos out of that session (which I’ll be using until I’m ninety-three and pushing a walker), but I felt reborn, like the new, improved me!

That photo session occurred in July of 2005, four months shy of my forty-first birthday; yet I felt younger than ever, both inside and out. Inspired by the positive changes in my health and body—and the forward trajectory of my writing career, sparked by surprisingly good sales of
Blue Blood
and the release of my second series mystery,
The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
—I had a newfound desire to step out of my comfort zone. I would carve out precious time to try new restaurants, see exhibits at local museums, and expand my social circle as well as my horizons.

That included a conscious decision to be more open about the men I met and not shut anyone down just because they didn’t look a particular way or wore funny shoes (my mom likes to remind me of a brilliant guy I dumped in high school because of his fondness for desert boots). To be honest, I’d spent a lot of time in my adult life avoiding the dating scene, preferring to be alone—say, reading a good book—rather than waste my time with some random dude just for the sake of going out. Not being much of a drinker, I was never big on the bar or club scene.

But as forty-one came and went, and I was still single—albeit happily—I figured it wouldn’t hurt to change my list of “must haves” regarding men, which hadn’t altered much since high school. I needed to look less at the physical package and more at what was inside. My criteria basically came down to this:

• Does he make me laugh?
  
• Do we have plenty to talk about?
  
• Does he keep me on my toes?
  
• Does he smell good?
  
• Does he eat with utensils?
  
• Does he drive his own car and not live with his mother?
  

These new criteria certainly opened up a brave, new dating world.

It inspired me to say yes more often than no, and my social life blossomed. Still, I didn’t seem to meet anyone who floated my boat. Perhaps I was meant to be a modern-day Amelia Earhart, albeit flying without a copilot (and minus the “disappearing from the face of the earth” part).

My boyfriendless state concerned my family far more than it did me, as one of my male cousins approached me privately during the weekend of my brother’s wedding and asked, “Are you a lesbian? Because if you are, that’s okay.”

I told him that, while I wasn’t a lesbian, I appreciated that he was so open-minded.

“I just can’t find the right guy,” I confessed, thinking surely I couldn’t be the only single woman over forty on the planet who hadn’t yet met her Prince Charming.

Call me Pollyanna, but I didn’t dwell on my state of singlehood often. My days were filled with writing the books I loved, my weekends were often spent traveling, and my friends and family filled any space between. Yet no matter how I expressed my satisfaction with my life, my mother feared that I was destined to become a crazy cat lady (though I only had two cats!), shuffling around in bathrobe and slippers, cleaning litter boxes in between book deadlines.

I think it made her even more nervous that I wasn’t afraid of being alone for the rest of my life. My philosophy: if that was how it worked out, that was how it worked out. It wasn’t like I was going to mail-order a groom from Russia or Thailand. I didn’t feel like I was missing out, even when I got cards and e-mails from friends with photos of their spouses and children. Not everyone is meant to go the marriage-with-two-point-five-kids route.

Surely I wasn’t the only female who didn’t obsess over weddings or buy bridal magazines and pore through them, picking out wedding dresses well before finding my mate and falling madly in love.

Perhaps I was just being practical, having read a study that insisted a woman over forty had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than she did of getting hitched. Or else I was too set in my ways, content with doing things on my own terms, never having to compromise (not a bad thing!).

Yes, there were times when I pondered how lovely it would be to have a committed hand to hold and adoring eyes to gaze at over candlelight, a best friend slash lover who understood me like no one else.

“So you’d get married if you found the right man?” my mom would ask now and then, just to reassure herself.

“I would certainly consider it,” I’d say. “So long as I was really in love and we could live in a duplex so I could lock myself inside my half when I needed privacy.”

“I’m sure that would be just fine,” she’d reply and pat my hand, a hopeful—or was it delusional?—smile on her face.

I realized quickly enough that Mom’s deep-seated need to marry me off was bound tightly to her desire to have a grandchild. Though my younger brother was newly married, he and his bride seemed in no hurry to pop out the rug rats. So I think my mother was putting all my eggs in
her
basket.

What happened next is something straight out of a TV sitcom: my enterprising mom took it upon herself to send an e-mail to
St. Louis Magazine,
at the time searching for a new crop of “top singles” for their November 2005 issue. If I had the e-mail right now, I’d share it, but, unfortunately, I don’t. All I know is that she said something akin to “Please, find a man for my daughter so she doesn’t end up a crazy cat lady.”

The magazine took the bait and sent me a questionnaire as they narrowed down likely candidates. It wasn’t but a few months later that I learned I was one of ten women selected (only two of us over forty). They chose ten men as well (one over forty). Reminding myself of my promise to broaden my dating horizons—and the fact that I had a third mystery coming out,
The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club,
appropriately enough—I figured, “What have I got to lose?” And I jumped in wholeheartedly.

At the September photo shoot with the other nineteen singles, I met a handful who would become friends throughout the process. One of them, Jeremy Nolle, was a software applications engineer. Not only was he smart, but he was very good-looking (I hadn’t realized they made computer geeks that appeared to have leaped off the pages of
GQ
!). He was also twentysomething, too young for me. But there were no rules against having younger male friends, right?

The party to debut the 2005 “Top Singles” issue on November 3, 2005, was held at the Contemporary Art Museum in downtown St. Louis. Somehow, I managed to find Jeremy amidst the three hundred or so people in attendance. I wanted to set him up with my older sister, who happened to be (um, still happens to be!) a serial dater of younger men. I was chatting with Jeremy when several of his coworkers showed up. One was tall and slim with dark hair, a shy smile, and warm brown eyes. “This is Ed,” Jeremy said, and we aimlessly babbled over the very loud music.

Though I had no idea at the time, meeting Ed that night would change my life.

P. S.
Insights, Interviews & More . . .

About the author

Meet Susan McBride

S
USAN
M
C
B
RIDE
is the author of
Little Black Dress
, a Literary Guild bestseller and a Target Recommended Read. She has also written
The Cougar Club
, named a Target Bookmarked Breakout Title and one of
More
Magazine’s “Books We’re Buzzing About.” Foreign editions of
Cougar
have been published in France, Croatia, and Turkey. Susan lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband, Ed, and their daughter, Emily. You can visit her website at http://susanmcbride.com.

About the book

Discussion Questions for
The Truth About Love and Lightning

1. What do you think is worse: telling lies, like Gretchen, or being so blunt it’s hurtful, like Annika? Have you ever told a lie to spare someone’s feelings?

2. How is Abigail’s situation similar to her mother’s situation nearly forty years before? How does Gretchen’s raising her as a single parent affect the choices Abby makes?

3. Why do all the Brink women jump to the conclusion that the stranger who “fell from the sky” is Sam Winston?

4. Have you ever had someone from your past—a lost love, perhaps— appear from out of the blue? How did it affect you?

5. How does the loss of one sense cause other senses to sharpen? Do you think Bennie and Trudy see themselves as anything other than normal, since clearly Gretchen finds their heightened senses extraordinary?

6. Are there really magic men (or women), like Hank Littlefoot, who can make it rain or otherwise influence our surroundings? Do you believe in the supernatural?

7. What is it about the walnut farm that keeps drawing its inhabitants home? Is it something paranormal or more of an emotional pull?

8. What is the significance of the weather throughout the story, particularly the “walnut rain”?

9. Have you ever realized you truly loved someone only after it’s too late, as is the case with Gretchen and Sam? Do you believe in soul mates?

10. Was Gretchen wrong to not tell Abby the truth in the end?

Read on

Have You Read?
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