Been There, Done That (3 page)

That’s when I knew. Richard had set her up. Sheila and I pretended to be friends, but she was, first and foremost, my boss’s wife, mouthpiece and spy. And my secret was out. Most of the time, Richard didn’t know squat, but even he had recognized what I’d already suspected: that my articles about education were deadly dull.

No, they were worse than dull. They were uplifting. The first article I wrote profiled Cassandra, a blind sixteen-year-old who attended a regular high school with the assistance of Fritz, a German shepherd trained by Evelyn Archer. I quoted her parents (“She is our inspiration.”) and her math teacher (“It’s incredible how much she has taught me.”). I neglected to mention the kid who sneezed her way through French class because she was allergic to Fritz. Exploring that angle might have made a better article: more provocative, more honest. But it just seemed mean.

After that, I wrote about a local high school that required students to perform community service as a requirement for graduation. I spent a lot of hours at nursing homes on that one. I wrote about a fifth grade teacher who spent Saturdays teaching illiterate prisoners to write their names. (I took the teacher’s word for it; a trip to the prison just didn’t fit into my schedule.)

Stacey dimmed the lights and turned up the ocean. “IT’S TIME TO COOL DOWN AND CALM DOWN!” she shouted, as she did every class, lest someone get carried away and doze off on the stinky carpet. I tried to visualize the ocean, but the waves kept knocking me over. I allowed myself to be swept ashore, only to be attacked by biting flies. This was hopeless. All I could think about was how badly I needed to pee.

“Maybe Richard could help you brainstorm,” Sheila murmured. I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured diving back into the sea, swimming as far down as I could and holding my breath till I burst.

 
 
One good thing came from obsessing about my inadequate job performance: I stopped obsessing about Tim and the reason he’d called. As my evening at home wore on, though, the doubts about my career and my future began to overwhelm me. So I called Tim.

I had his home number; he’d been in the same apartment since moving from Boston to D.C. three years ago. I’d called him a couple of times to update him on mutual friends—an engagement here, a baby there. Those were excuses, of course. When you’ve been close to someone for so long, it’s hard to just break things off forever. It’s not that I expected to rekindle anything with those phone calls. But he’d been there for so long: the first person to hear about all of my failures and triumphs, the friend with whom I shared all the best gossip and speculation. I thought that talking to him would make me feel less alone. After every conversation, though, I felt even more disconnected. He’d tell me about his job—he was the star writer for
New Nation
, an on-line publication that focused on politics and other “serious” issues. He’d go on for a bit about, oh God, social injustices in Zimbabwe, say, then I’d take my turn with, “The current trend in master baths is to do away with a door from the bedroom. It’s supposed to make things look more open and airy, but I think it’s dopey.”

Finally, I stopped calling. Since he never started calling—at least until now—we hadn’t spoken for over a year. As I dialed the phone, my heart boomed and my throat constricted. The phone rang once, and I hung up. I went into the kitchen and put water on for a cup of Sleepytime tea. The phone rang.

“It’s Tim,” he said, as if I wouldn’t recognize his voice.

“Hi!” I tried to sound surprised. “Sorry I didn’t call you today—just got too caught up in things.”

“But you just did.”

“Excuse me?”

“I have Caller ID.”

I hate Caller ID even more than I love answering machines. “Right.” I tried to laugh. “I decided to make a cup of tea. Then I was going to call you back.” I had a sudden vision of myself as he must imagine me: hunched over, wearing a moth-eaten cardigan, surrounded by fourteen cats.

“You’re probably wondering why I called you,” he said. And then I knew: he was getting married. I clutched the counter.

“I hadn’t really thought about it.” I was trying to maintain a last shred of self-respect.

“Oh.” He sounded miffed? Even as he was about to get married? Bastard. “It’s a professional call, actually.”

“Oh?” He was still a bastard—I mean, that I knew—but perhaps not on quite the scale I’d been imagining.

“I heard you were the new education editor at
Salad
.”

“I am.” I enjoyed a self-esteem rush. Free tile samples be damned—I had arrived. I’ve never been one of those people whose lives center around living up to their parents’ expectations, but I’d never gotten over trying to impress Tim. I accepted his congratulations as nonchalantly as I could muster. Eventually, he got to the business at hand. “Do you have any contacts at Mercer College?”

I made a face at the phone. How had he found out about my humiliation at the restaurant? Was he stalking me? The thought of Tim stalking me was more appealing that I liked to admit. “I had lunch with the dean of admissions this afternoon,” I said as casually as I could manage, as if I was keyed in to every institution of higher learning in New England.

“You always had a knack for networking,” Tim said, absurdly. When we were together, this translated into: “How can you stand to spend that much time talking to gay men about upholstery?”

“I’ve got a lead on something going on at Mercer,” he announced. “Could be big. Interested?”

For one surreal moment, I thought an alarm had gone off in my head. Then I realized it was simply the tea kettle whistling. “One second. I’ve got to get the tea.” I put the phone down on the counter even though it was portable—and even though I could have easily reached the kettle, mug and sugar even if I were restrained by a cord. (My apartment is drop-dead charming, but it isn’t exactly what you would call large. Even with an old-fashioned corded phone, I could have stayed on the line while I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed.) I poured water over the bag, dunked it a couple of times and let it sit. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone. “Sorry,” I said. “This big story—what is it about?”

“I don’t feel comfortable discussing it on the phone.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Not while I’m on my mobile. I was going to come up later this week. Maybe we could talk it over. Thursday afternoon work for you?”

My heart surged with even more adrenaline. I almost said yes immediately, but then I remembered how busy I was covering our nation’s collapsing educational system. “I could move some things around.” Very, very cool.

“I gotta run now, can’t really talk. But you know, Kath, I’m really . . . it’ll be nice to see you.”

“Same here. And, Tim? Just out of curiosity, why do you think I might be good for this story?” I braced myself for the bullshit about how much he respects my mind and my writing, how pleased he is that I’ve finally focused my career on something worthwhile. I steeled myself against the warm fuzzies and a nasty flutter in my heart.

“Why? Well . . .” He sounded momentarily baffled. Then, the truth: “It’s hard to do this story from D.C. and you’re, you know—there.”

three

The first time I saw Tim he was wearing aviator eyeglasses and a paper hat. We were in a Cornell dining hall; I was eating, he was working. I wanted ice cream—vanilla soft serve, to be exact—but the machine was empty. Tim, wearing a red Cornell T-shirt under a white apron, stood next to me, replenishing paper napkins. He tilted his chin toward the hulking stainless steel soft-serve machine. “I’ll refill that.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. “I’ll just have the chocolate.”

“The lady wants vanilla, the lady will have vanilla.” He gave me a huge smile. There was a slight gap between his two front teeth. I smiled back because he was cute in a goofy sort of way and because no one had ever called me a lady before.

And then he was gone. I stood there uncomfortably, feeling like everyone was looking at me, although, of course, no one was. I gave him at least ninety seconds before I snagged a brownie and scurried out the door, feeling oddly rejected.

The next morning, I was sitting alone in a crowded auditorium, waiting for my Intro to Shakespeare class to begin. I’d chosen an aisle seat about a third of the way back: close enough to hear, but not so close that I’d risk eye contact with the professor. My notebook sat poised on the swing-arm desk.

“Anyone sitting there?”

I said no and moved my knees to the side without looking to see who’d be sitting next to me.

“You stood me up yesterday,” he said, and I looked up, shocked. He was wearing a dark sweater, and he looked much more serious without the paper hat. I felt my face flush. He grinned, and the gap between his teeth made me think of Howdy Doody.

I settled back in my chair and raised my eyebrows. “Did you expect me to wait for you forever?”

 
 
The day after Tim’s phone call, I did what any woman in the midst of an emotional crisis would do: I went shopping. The minute the clock struck five o’clock (okay, it was four fifty-eight), I made my way to Washington Street. My goal was to find an outfit for Thursday, something chic and sophisticated—or, barring that, at least something that fit right. I was getting a mushy tummy, compliments of my candy bar and cookies diet.

“You are not fat,” assured my friend Marcy. “
I
am fat.” Five months pregnant with her third child, she was still carting around excess thigh and butt baggage from kids one and two, who were home with a fifteen-year-old girl who lived down the street. An associate lawyer toiling on the partner track, Marcy’s husband, Dan, risked jeopardizing his career if he left before nine.

“Dan’s worked weekends for the past month,” Marcy said. “The boys and I were in the Walgreen’s parking lot a couple of weeks ago—I was buying Tucks pads; don’t ask—and Joshy spots this tall guy and starts yelling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ The guy didn’t even look like Dan! He was blond, for God’s sake! So I tell Dan, ‘Your own son can’t even remember what you look like.’”

“Guilt is good,” I said.

In the dressing room, I peeled off a ribbed T-shirt dress that revealed me to be curvaceous in all the wrong places. I tossed it to Marcy, who shifted uncomfortably on the hard bench. She stuck the dress back on the hanger.

“You are not fat,” I assured her, staring at my white body in the full-length mirror. “You are filled with life. I, on the other hand, am filled with Doritos and TV dinners.” Normally, I am not comfortable traipsing around in my undies and inspecting my body in front of other people, but Marcy was my college roommate for three years. She has seen me vomit, and she has seen me through my big hair phase. Nothing can shock her.

“You look great,” she assured me.

“I was so much skinnier in college,” I sighed. I saw her narrow her eyes. “Okay, except for that fat phase freshman year.”

“And junior year,” she snorted. “You look a hell of a lot better now than you did junior year.”

Dan, who I’ve known almost as long as I’ve known Marcy, once declared that he’d give anything to hear what Marcy and I said to each other when we thought no one else was listening. I occasionally worried that he would—and that our mystique, such as it was, would be gone forever.

In truth, I’d been feeling neglected by Marcy of late. For years we spoke at least once a day. Now she forgot to return my phone calls and apologized for not having more time to spend with me, even as she amassed a small army of minivan-driving mommy friends. She had missed my birthday two years running.

In the end, I picked out a brightly colored scarf to go with a black shirt and stretchy black skirt I already owned. This would draw the eye up to my youthful face. If I chose a dark restaurant for lunch, Tim might not see my body at all.

I got in line while Marcy went off to the baby section to look for some stretchies. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned. There was Dennis, smiling and holding the shirt of my dreams: pale blue linen, sleeveless with a Chinese collar. “That for you?” I asked after a moment of awkwardness. His face, already ruddy, turned apple red, starting at the neck and working its way up. From his reaction, I wondered for a moment if he actually did enjoy a little cross-dressing.

“It’s for my sister’s birthday.” He smiled, revealing straight, tiny teeth. I feel bad for red-haired guys. You take one look and think, “Here’s a guy I could never take to the beach.”

“It’s pretty,” I said, eyeing the blouse and wondering if it would fit me. “Were there, um, any more? Maybe in a smaller size?”

“No, this was the only one,” he said. Damn. “The scarf you’re buying is nice, too. Is it for you?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s pretty.”

“Thanks.”

We smiled at each other. When we’d gone out to dinner the other night, our conversation had run pretty much along the same lines: What looks good to you? I was thinking about the salmon. I love salmon. And you? The pasta special or maybe the steak. Everything looks so delicious. Sure does. Pretty place. Sure is.