By the Numbers (14 page)

I should be celebrating right now, but I can't stop fixating on Chris. Specifically, on what he gave up, having now seen what our home is worth. He was so specific that the house should go to me and me alone, to the point that his attorney yanked him out of the room by his collar. As angry as I was back then, I didn't set out to “get even, get everything,” yet that's exactly what happened.

He let me have it all without a fight.

Was he so anxious to be done, to be away from me, that he was willing to forgo a small fortune? Or was he so racked with guilt that he felt he deserved nothing? For the past year and a half, I've been assuming the former.

But seeing how he behaved at the wedding, how he rose to the occasion, now I'm wondering if his actions were based on the latter.

If so, then truly he worked his whole adult life for nothing, and that seems patently unfair.

Damn it, why is this house so quiet?

I don't want to be alone with my thoughts as this is not a
subject I'd like to contemplate. I'm literally willing to do anything to avoid rehashing this in my mind right now.

Anything.

I text:
You may create a Match.com profile for me if we can meet for dinner—offer good tonight only.

I type in “Patrick,” “Michael,” “Judith,” and “Karin” and click send.

Within thirty seconds, I have confirmed dinner plans with three of my four best buddies.

So there's that.

• • • •

Karin says, “Let's get started and find you a date!”

“Whoa, hold up,” I say, throwing my hands up in front of me in a protective gesture. This was a mistake. A huge mistake. A blunder. A slipup. A terrible gaffe. I should have just been subject to my own thoughts. They couldn't have been that bad, right? I begin to twist my napkin into a rope as I verbally process exactly what a terrible idea this was.

I yelp, “A date? I don't want to date yet! Too soon! Can I test out his writing skills first, before we ever get to the spoken word? I mean, what if he's the kind of guy who doesn't know ‘y-o-u-r' from ‘y-o-u apostrophe r-e'? ‘Y-o-u-r the apple of my eye'? I can't live with that. I can't receive a love note I want to edit with a red pen!”

Karin, Michael, and Patrick say nothing as I twist and fret. Or maybe it's that I don't give them a chance to interject before I continue. “And then we'd
definitely
need to chat on the phone first, or Skype or FaceTime long before a date, long before I worry about
what to wear or, oh God, what kind of underwear to buy, or how high I should shave. I don't want to imagine how stringent the standards of grooming are now. When we were in college? Sexy was shaving below the knee. Sexy was baggy Bermuda shorts and a flipped collar. Sexy was powder-blue eye shadow. Shoulder pads were sexy. Cybill Shepherd was sexy. Spiral perms were sexy.”

“Penny—,” Karin starts to say, but I plow right over her.

“Like, what if he has a weird verbal tic? I worked with another consultant once, heck of a guy, but he ended almost every sentence saying ‘'n 'at,' which was somehow short for ‘and that.' He was from Pittsburgh; I believe it's a bit of regional dialect.”

“Penny, it's just—”

“Anyway, I liked him plenty, as I said, and he was exceptionally competent, but I can't build a life with that, or ‘'n 'at.' I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I guess I'd like to take a time-out here and catch my breath for a minute before I go on an actual date.”

Karin stops me by holding up her iPad and pointing to the screen. “This is
literally
the first line on the screen on Match after we enter your e-mail address. I was reading what it says. You're already fighting this process.”

I stop twisting my napkin.

“She is
absolutely
fighting this process,” Patrick confirms, nodding in a manner I find smug.

“Mmmf mmmf mmmf mmmf,” Michael replies.

“Beg your pardon?” Karin says, leaning forward.

Michael finishes chewing his slice of bread, which he'd drenched in olive oil before sprinkling it with Parmesan cheese. He brushes the crumbs off of his mouth and his shirt. “No, I'm sorry. I said, ‘Give her a chance.'”

Patrick says, “How are you eating from the breadbasket in front of us? That's just mean-spirited.”

Michael places a loving hand on Patrick's shoulder. “I disagree. You're being mean-spirited to yourself by trying to maintain your thirty-one-inch waistline. You're fifty-two, Patrick. What's the worst thing that will happen if you have to size up? That I would love you less? Never in this or any other lifetime. So have some focaccia—it's delicious.”

With some impatience, Karin says, “Yes, yes, we're all super-concerned about Patrick's manorexia. You two have been repeating this conversation for twenty years. At this point, I'm sure this is foreplay for you, like those people who have to get dressed in mascot costumes to become aroused.”

“The Furries,” Patrick confirms.

“That's a
thing
and there's a
name
for it?” I ask.

“Yes,” says Karin. “Ryan dated a girl who was a Furry.”

“I wish I could unknow that,” I say.

She ignores me. “But with the two of you, it's all, ‘I can't eat the ziti!' and ‘You must eat the ziti!' and if that's what you're into, if that's what gets you off, if that's what keeps it hot and fresh for you both, outstanding and God bless. You wanna be Carbies, go ahead, but
not right now
. We have what's probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get Penny on this site, so let's focus and do this and you guys can get back to your erotic eating disorders next time, capisce?”

Michael and Patrick glance at each other and both nod. “Capisce.”

“Super. So, you are a
woman
seeking a
man
aged what to what?” Karin asks.

“What if I give myself a ten-year buffer in either direction?”
I say. “Is that too much or too little? Would we still have the same cultural references that way?”

Michael says, “Yes, for the most part. You don't want to go too young because then they don't know that Bill Clinton was someone other than Hillary's husband.”

“Definitely,” Karin says. “Also, you can probably expect the interested men to skew a little older. A forty-one-year-old guy will be trolling for a chick in her thirties.”

“Ha! Try twenties,” Patrick says.

I grab Michael's butter knife and make pretend slashing motions across my wrists. “Killing myself, thanks.”

“Remember to go
with
the grain,” Patrick tells me, repositioning the knife. “Vertical, never horizontal. Horizontal is a rookie mistake.”

Michael
tsk-tsk
s him and takes the knife from me. “Not funny. Either of you.”

“Was a little funny,” Patrick mutters.

“Search radius—shall we say within fifty miles of your place?” Karin asks.

“No!” Patrick insists. “Too far. Do twenty-five miles. That will include the city but none of the grotesque suburbs. Bolingbrook? Ugh. I think not.”

“What's wrong with Bolingbrook?” Michael asks. “There's an IKEA there.”

“What's right with it should be your question,” he replies.

“Let's see,” she says, scanning the screen. “‘Relationship Status' is ‘Divorced' and under ‘Have Kids,' we'll put ‘Grown and out of the house
.
'”

“Add ‘Thank you, baby Jesus,'” Patrick suggests.

“Don't add that,” I say.

“Under ‘Wants Kids,' ‘No,'” she says.

“Or, ‘No, thank you, baby Jesus,'” Patrick says.

“I feel like Match is no place to joke about the Christ child,” Michael says.

“Unless you're looking for someone who finds that funny, too,” Karin suggests.

“I don't,” I verify.

“Then we won't add it. Okay, ‘Ethnicity.'”

“Is ‘mayonnaise on Wonder Bread' an option?” Patrick asks.

“‘WASP' doesn't seem like the worst drop-down menu choice,” Michael admits.

“‘Caucasian,'” I say, with some finality.

“‘Faith.' Do you want me to put ‘Episcopalian,' or are you willing to walk on the wild side if you were to meet, say, a hot Lutheran?”

“Can you put ‘Christian, but open to all faiths'? Religion isn't a deal-breaker for me.”

“Well, look at you, embracing ecumenical dick!” Patrick exclaims, which makes Michael snort. I glower at both of them.

Michael shoots me an apologetic look and says, “I'm sorry, but that
was
funny.”

Karin begins tapping away as she finishes up the profile. “Alrighty, you're five foot six, you have brownish hair, maybe a bit more gray than I'd like to see—”

“We should work on that,” Patrick says. “Highlights would not kill you.”

“Hush,” I reply.

“Hazel eyes, athletic build—”

“Don't write that. Athletic implies I'm good at sports with balls,” I say.

“No, hon,” Patrick says. “That's the thing with these dating profiles. A lot of times what you say has an entirely differing meaning in a profile. Like in a real estate listing? ‘Motivated seller' means ‘owner losing his shirt.' Saying you're athletic doesn't mean you play sports—it means you're not a fat chick.”

I reply, “Then definitely don't write that I'm athletic. I don't want to date someone who'd be so discriminatory! I want a man who'd care more about someone's heart than her hips! Actually, I'd probably look better if I put on a few pounds. The weight would fill in some of my fine lines.”

“So would Juvéderm,” Patrick says. “As would Restylane or Perlane. P.S. I am not opposed to going on a trip across the pond to see what's up over there, because they're a good three years ahead of us in terms of injectables. Do you know they have more than seventy-seven different types of hyaluronic acid fillers in the EU? Europe has a very simple approval process because they don't have to mess with the FDA like we do here.”

“How do you know this?” Michael asks.

“Marjorie was educating me at the wedding. She's kind of an anti-aging expert. She's like the Stephen Hawking of cosmeceuticals. Did you know she uses a skin cream made out of foreskin?”

“She does not!” Karin exclaims.

“She does!” Patrick says.

“Wow, just when I think she can't be more Cruella De Vil, there she goes,” Karin says.

Patrick says, “She says the serum works miracles—and you've seen her skin. The problem is the lotion is so expensive. You know, I always thought since I wasn't having any kids, the whole circumcision debate was not my business, but now I have an opinion. Off
with their heads! Bring those prices down! Baby wants his college complexion back.”

I start twisting my napkin again. “Do I just look old and worn-out? Is it that I'm hideous and no one thought to mention it to my face? Because my face is too hideous? Is that what you people have been keeping from me all these years?” I take a healthy slug of my wine.

“Pen, sweetie, you're fab. This procedure is horrible. Imagine the online dating profile like a mortgage application—you have to check all the boxes to start the process. Once you get the house, you live in it however you damn well please, but these are the hoops you have to jump through to begin,” Michael says.

Karin says, “Anyway, ‘athletic build,' you drink socially, and one cigarette a year behind your shed doesn't count toward making you a smoker. Now, for the creative part, tell me about
you
in your own words for the ‘About Me' section.”

I ponder this, taking another sip of my Chianti to buy some time. “Hmm. My own words . . . my own words . . . umm . . . I guess. Wow. Tough one.”

“Why don't you let me write it?” Karin says. “My communication degree's gotta be good for something, right?”

I snap, “No! I mean, I can do this. I guess I'd say . . . I'm an actuary.”

“Really, it's no problem. Let me write this part for you.”

“How about—I'm an actuary
and
I like math.”

Karin gives me a blank stare while Patrick pretends to hang himself.

“Sweetie,” Michael says, pity practically emanating out of him. “No.”

Our dinners arrive before anyone can mock me further. A
waitress, not our waiter, sets down the tray and begins to distribute our meals. “Baked eggplant?” she asks.

I raise my hand. “Hello!”

Mind you, I wanted the spinach gnocchi tossed in the gorgonzola sauce for my first course, followed by the filet of beef topped with sun-dried tomato butter and caramelized shallot and port wine reduction, served with horseradish mashed potatoes for my main, but since someone other than Chris or my ob-gyn may see me in my underwear for the first time since 1987, I figured now is not the time to eat my feelings, even if it would fill in a laugh line or two.

“Orecchiette with sausage, brown butter, and sage?”

“Present!” says Michael. The runner passes him the plate with a smile. Michael has that effect on people.

The waitress scans what's left on the tray. “Saltimbocca?” She holds up a luscious-looking plate of veal, wrapped in prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, topped with a brandy and sage sauce.

“Over here!” Patrick says, waving both hands.

“No. You got the roasted radicchio salad, dry, with a side of chicken,” Karin says. “The veal is
mine
.”

Patrick practically eye-rapes Karin's veal as it's placed in front of her.

“Nope,” she says. “Do not give me sad face. You could have had this. You could easily have had this. You tried to steal it, but if you'd been successful, you wouldn't have even eaten it. You'd have just looked at it and sighed and touched it with your fork. You'd have forked it, you motherforker. Again, we're not playing your Carbie reindeer games today, Mary Chapin Carpenter.”