“Shit,” I say. “So, it’s true. You really don’t talk about the book in Book Club. You talk about everything but the book.”
Your voice is loose with liquor but you’re nervous—it is a first date—and you’re babbling about Billy Joel—you’ve always loved “Italian Restaurant”—as you text your daughter and tuck your phone into your purse. You tell me about your Book Club, how my fecal-eyed neighbor Nancy picked apart the book. We agree that there is always a Nancy and I tell you about a reading I hosted in New York when a Nancy had notes for the author. We’re in flow. The talk is small, but we’ve never been like this, alone in the dark, at night, in a booth.
“Okay,” you say. “I have to ask. I know you were done with New York and L.A. But I’ve been thinking about you…” You said it. “And I feel like there has to be more. A single guy moves into a big house on Bainbridge. What’s her name? The reason you’re here.”
I groan the way any guy does when a girl wants to hear about his past and you plead. You endured three hours with a bunch of women you’ve known since high school, most of whom are married to men or women you’ve known for aeons.
“Come on,” you say. “Tell me why you really bit the bullet. Who are you running from?”
It’s the dream—you want to know everything about me—and it’s the nightmare—I can’t tell you everything about me. I learned the hard way, with Love, but there is no way for us to move on unless you learn why I am the way I am, handsome, available, good.
I start at the beginning, my first love in New York. I tell you that I fell hard for Heather (RIP Candace). It was lust at first sight. I saw her in a play—pretty as Linda Ronstadt—and I tracked her down at the playhouse.
You wipe your glass with a napkin. “Wow. You went all out for this girl.”
“I was young. It’s different when you’re young. You get obsessed.”
You give me a yeah and you are jealous, the idea of me obsessed with another woman. I sip my drink while you picture Linda Ronstadt on top of me and I tell you what you need to hear, that Heather broke my heart. You perk up. You want to know more and I tell you about the day she dumped me. “I’m checking out this apartment in Brighton Beach because I think we’re gonna move in together,” I begin, remembering that day on the beach, Candace. “It was a hot summer night. I’ll never forget the smell, the gnats…”
You’re happy because this girl made me unhappy and you pout. “Please don’t ruin New York for me, Joe.”
I laugh and I tell you that Heather dumped me over voicemail while I was in that apartment and you gasp—no—and I laugh defensively, lovingly, the way you do when enough time has passed and you’re ready to love again, in a way you never have before. “Yep.”
My chicken sandwich arrives and you pick up one of my French fries and you chew. “Wow. You lost the girl and the apartment.”
I take a bite of my chicken and you reach for another fry. We are clicking. You want the bacon, I can tell, and I pull it out of my sandwich like it’s a block of wood in Jenga and you pick it up. Crunch.
“If you think Heather’s bad, oh God, let me tell you about Melissa.”
You rub your hands together and this is fun. It’s cathartic for me to tell you about Melissa (RIP Beck). In this version, I was a waiter at a diner on the Upper West Side and Melissa came into the restaurant, sat in my section, and wrote her number on the bill. You take a big sip—Well, that’s aggressive—and I say that Melissa was too young for me. Your cheeks turn as red as the Red Bed. You like that I’m the anti-Seamus, that I want a woman, not what our youth-obsessed society would call a trophy.
“Yeah,” I say. “Way too young, but I thought she had an old soul. Her favorite book was Desperate Characters.”
You wipe your hands, feeling threatened again. I tell you what I learned from Melissa, that reading doesn’t always promote empathy. She was a competitive fencer and she was in a love-hate codependent relationship with her best friend Apple (RIP Peach Salinger). “But that wasn’t the problem,” I say. “In the end, Melissa was in a relationship with one person and one person only.”
We say it at the same time: “Melissa.”
You feel for me. I endured Melissa’s numerous microbetrayals. I tried to love her, help her focus on her fencing (writing). And then she cheated on me. She slept with her coach (psychologist). You bury your head in your hands. “No,” you say. “Oh God, that’s horrible on so many levels.”
“I know.”
“A coach.”
“I know.”
I’m eating my sandwich and you’re looking at me like I should be crying. “It’s really not so bad,” I say, realizing that it isn’t, because look where it got me, to you. “You’re lucky to get your heart broken. That just means you have a heart.” I’m not ready to talk about Amy, about Love, so I move us past anecdotes into theory. “Everyone is the wrong person until you meet the right person…” You rub your empty ring finger. “I’m not bitter, Mary Kay. If anything, I hope they’re doing great…” Up in heaven, or dust in the wind. “I hope they found the right person.” I pray for a remorseful almighty lord—Hare Forty—and I take a big bite of my sandwich.
You let the waitress know that we would like another round—fuck yes—and you admire my healthy outlook on life. I tell you it’s no big deal. “So,” I say, because the door to your heart is cracked now, the tequila, the details about my life, and you’re finally ready for me to enter. “You and Nomi… real-life Gilmore Girls. What’s the story there?”
You let out a deep sigh. You look around the restaurant, but no one is listening to us. No one is close. I know it’s not easy for you, being on a date, but you are. You know it. You begin. “I was young but I wasn’t that young, and my life… well, I told you about my parents.”
“Mary Kay mom and dear old dad.”
You smile. “Yeah.”
“Did your dad put up a fight when you moved up here?”
I smell onions, layers peeling away, revealing the truth under the truth. You tell me you didn’t understand the divorce. There was no scandal, no cheating. “It was like one day, my mom woke up and she didn’t want her pink Cadillac anymore. She didn’t want him either.”
“Were there signs?”
“I missed them,” you say. “Are you good about signs? Reading people…”
Yes. “Well, who can say?”
“I think we all see what we want to see.” You look around again, so nervous, as if one of these people is going to text Nomi and tell her that her mother is on a date. And then you relax again. “Well, my mom sort of just announced that she was done with Mary Kay, that we were moving to Bainbridge Island, that she was craving nature.”
“And you don’t know why she left him?”
“No clue,” you say. “It was amiable. There was no custody battle, no fight. He was so calm that he drove us to the airport! He’s my dad and he’s kissing us goodbye like we were going away for the weekend. We left him all alone. My mother made me complicit. But then, that’s not fair to say because it’s like I said. It was all so damn amiable.”