I’ve written in my head a whole scenario of the dramatic life we’ll have—he’ll save lives and I’ll quit my job and write full-time—and then when I walk into the Starbucks where we are to meet, there he is. I know him immediately. Unlike the rest of the people in there, he radiates confident heroism. It’s crowded so I thread my way among the tables to get to him, a tall guy with dark brown hair, and he’s reading the front section of the Times and looking like he could leap into action at any moment if, say, someone started choking on their latte. If the milk foamer behind the counter caught fire, he would be our man.
From his profile, I already know his name is Oliver Tansey, and although he is not wearing his firefighter suit, he looks like he might have just taken it off and put on civilian clothes. I start immediately wondering if I should keep my maiden name because Phronsie Tansey may just be the most absurd name ever.
When he sees me, he puts the paper down and uncrosses his legs and stands up with a slight smile on his face. He has lovely brown eyes. And one of those heroic clefts in his chin. A denim shirt. Jeans.
“Phronsie Linnelle?” he says.
“Oliver,” I say. “How nice to meet you.” My voice is only the slightest bit squeaky.
We shake hands, and he offers to go up to get us something to drink. “Just coffee,” I say. “Venti caffè Americano with cream. No sugar. Thank you.”
“Decaf?” he asks.
“Why? What have you heard?” I say. He blinks in surprise, not expecting me to be so humorous, I guess, and I say, “No. Regular. Sorry. I was joking.”
“Oh,” he says.
“I’ll try to behave myself. But maybe ask for a double shot of espresso for my Americano. Unless you’re already too frightened of me.”
“No, no. Coming right up,” he says. Eyes crinkle in a facsimile of a smile, but he looks a little frightened maybe. See? This is a problem I keep having. Men do not seem to appreciate my jokes. Maybe all the men with my kind of humor were snapped up long ago and aren’t on dating sites.
As he makes his way to the counter, I sit down and watch him. He’s slender and wiry. Nice butt. Probably excellent at leaping from burning buildings if that becomes necessary. He’s probably the guy you want to hold the net while people jump. But maybe not the guy you want with you at the comedy club.
He comes back with our steaming cups and sits down across from me, smiling, and we start the business of oiling the creaky dating machinery. We both know the drill. The questions. What do you do when you have time off? Have you ever been married? Are you dating a lot these days? What’s your idea of a really fun time? Mountains or seashore? Sleep late or get up early? Wine or beer? Star Wars or Star Trek?
When it’s my turn to talk, I veer off script. I’ve been on too many dates, and so I decide not to do the usual patter anymore. I take a deep breath, lean forward, and smile, and I start expounding about my complete lack of knowledge about the Stars—both Trek and Wars. And telling him some vaguely adorable stories about New Hampshire farm life—the day the chicken got into the kitchen and challenged the cat to a duel, and that time that someone spiked the punch at the 4-H dance—and I’m just about to ask if he believes we’re in for a zombie apocalypse sometime in the future, a fun question I just thought up, when suddenly his face changes. He puts down his cup of coffee and says to me in the voice a college admissions dean might use when he’s seen your unfortunate transcript from junior year: “Okay, well. Thank you so much. It’s been awfully nice to meet you.”
“Um . . . yes,” I say uncertainly. He’s looking over my head at someone. I turn around, and sure enough, there’s a woman who has just come in, and she’s looking at him like she may have murder on her mind.
“You know her?” I say, swiveling back to look at his face, which has turned the color of one of the fires he’s put out. “Should we be concerned?”
“Yes. No,” he says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think she’d show up.”
“She looks mad,” I say. “Is she stalking you or something?”
“I’m sorry. I have to go,” he says.
She’s not making her way any closer; in fact, when I peek around, I see that she seems to have decided to lean against the window, studying him. She’s wearing all black, and her blonde hair is slicked back. She looks like she might be packing heat, if you ask me.
“Why is she so angry? You’re allowed to be here, aren’t you?”
“Listen, I might have married her. By mistake. We went to Vegas . . . a group trip . . . I might have had too much to drink.”
“You married someone by mistake?” I laugh, and then I see his face and see that it’s not funny at all. He’s married, and he’s dating, and his wife is right here in the building with us. I make a quick executive decision to go to the restroom rather than walk past her, and when I come out, thank goodness they are both gone.
Date forty-four: Lying Cheating Firefighter. This is a first: the wife showing up. It will make a good report. I might have to lead with this when I write my story about online dating.
Chalk up another point for Judd.
CHAPTER FOUR
My stepmother calls me on the phone when I’m getting on the subway to go back home. “I’ll have to call you back, Mags,” I say, “I’m going underground,” which sounds pleasantly ominous, I think.
I don’t think she hears me because she says, “Oh, Phronsie, your father—” and then sure enough, the service goes off, and the subway is whisking me off in a subterranean rush. I turn my phone over and over in my hand, stare at the overhead ads for hair transplants, look at a woman across from me kissing a baby’s head. I would like to kiss that baby’s head myself.
Let’s see. Your father . . . what? Your father . . . is dead? Your father . . . loves you so much even though he never acts like it? Your father . . . is the hardest man I’ve ever had to deal with, and I wish he’d never left your mother and come back to me . . . ?
Any of these feel possible.
I feel all the pricklings of dread coming over me. It’s been a tough few years for him and for Maggie, worse than usual in a series of routine hard ones. This was the year they had to make the difficult decision to sell off a lot of the farmland. Government subsidies had dried up, the price of milk had gone down, the prices for feed had skyrocketed. Add to that years of bad weather—springtime snowstorms, followed by floods and then hot, dry summers—so that when developers with money moved in closer, it was harder to say no. Friends were selling and moving away. My father clenched his jaw and said no way. He’d keep going.
And he had good reason, I suppose. The farm had been bought by his great-great-grandfather Hiram Linnelle and kept in the family for well over a century. We were all raised on the stories, told with a kind of stubborn New Hampshire pride. We are the Linnelle family. We survive everything. Each generation worked the land, growing corn, raising cows and chickens, facing hardships. Everybody succeeding at it, more or less, until my dad.
Yet for years, he kept plugging away at it because he had to. How would it look if he was the one who let it all go to hell? He invested in equipment. Added a little farm stand. He got up early in the mornings, he stayed out in the barn or in the fields until late at night; he worked alongside the field hands, planting and fertilizing and organizing. He was always tired, always sunburned, always halfway fed up, ready to explode. He had a way of taking off his hat and rubbing his hands across his hair real fast, like he had some demons in there he was trying to evict by force.