Getting Warmer (8 page)

In the garage, I heard an engine purring, followed by a car door closing.

“The Lexus is still running smoothly,” my father announced as he entered the kitchen. Unlike my mother, my father dressed exactly the same as always, in khakis, polo shirts and the occasional sport jacket. The Lexus was his one concession to Arizona flash. He worried that his last car, a Camry, stuck out at the AJ’s parking lot. Whenever I bought groceries at AJ’s (not often; I couldn’t afford them), I parked my crappy Civic as far away from the other cars as possible. I didn’t care about appearances; it was the possibility of scratching a BMW, Mercedes or, God forbid, a Bentley that terrified me. I’d never recover from the increased insurance premium.

“So, who’s the stalker?” my father asked after putting down his paper grocery bags and giving me a hug.

“He’s not a stalker. He’s just . . . this guy.”

“He ran like hell when your mother opened the door.”

“Maybe he’s shy,” my mother said. I was twenty-nine years old. My mother was willing to overlook a little social awkwardness in my suitors. “Did you have any plans with him tonight?” she asked. “I mean, here at the house? Because your father and I could go out.”

“We just got here!” he said, pulling a carton of lactose-free milk out of a paper bag. “Where does this go?”

My mother raised her eyebrows. “Where do you
think
it goes?” “Refrigerator?” He paused a moment before opening the stainless steel door, putting the carton on an empty shelf and closing the door softly.

“If you’ve made plans, Natalie, we wouldn’t want to be in the way.” My mother smiled expectantly. If only she had been this accommodating when I was sixteen.

“I don’t have any plans,” I said. Her face fell, just a little. “And I am happy to see you. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you’d be in Connecticut about now.”

“We went to Connecticut. Humid. Would you believe your aunt and uncle still don’t have air-conditioning? They kept saying, ‘There’s only three or four days a year when we wish we had it.’”

“Unfortunately, we were there for those four days,” my father interjected. “Does potato salad have to be refrigerated?”

“Only if you don’t want botulism,” I said.

“What did you buy potato salad for?” my mother asked.

“I like potato salad,” he said. “Besides, we needed something to go with the soup.”

“Soup?” I asked.

“It’s too hot to cook,” my mother said. “I told your father to pick up some soup for dinner.”

If it’s too hot to cook, it’s too hot for soup, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Potato salad doesn’t go with soup,” my mother said, reaching into the brown bags my father had now abandoned and stacking the items on the counter.

“It does if you want it to,” my father said.

“Why didn’t you just go back to Rhode Island?” I asked.

“Our month with your sister turned into two weeks because I couldn’t stand another minute with
that man
. Honestly, he did everything he could to avoid us. He spent most of his time in their bedroom with the television blaring.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked. “I mean, if you didn’t have to talk to him?”

“No,” my mother said, pouring a carton of fresh salsa into a little dish and opening a bag of tortilla chips. My parents eat a lot of salsa because they can feel southwestern and get their recommended intake of lycopene—at the same time!

“Your sister was tense.
Tense
. I try to hide my feelings about Frederick, but she knows me so well that she can tell that I disapprove of their situation.” Pretty much anyone within a hundred-mile radius of my mother knows that she disapproves of their situation.

“And Pennsylvania?” I asked, still holding out hope that they’d popped by to pick up a few tennis togs before catching a red-eye out of Sky Harbor Airport. It’s not that I don’t love my parents or enjoy spending time with them, but after two months alone in the house, it felt like they were invading my space—and not the other way around.

“Well, my sister-in-law called two nights ago—two nights ago!” That would be my father’s brother’s wife, a.k.a. Aunt Marilyn, a.k.a. The Hypochondriac. “She said she had a cold and didn’t want to get us sick.” My mother took a supersize box of Cheerios and stuck it in the pantry. “I said that was very considerate of her, but we’d take our chances.” She rolled her eyes. “And then, suddenly, it was more than a cold, it was probably pneumonia, and she didn’t feel up to entertaining. Well. I can take a hint. So I got on the phone to Southwest. There’s no penalty if you’re over sixty.” She gazed around at the majestic kitchen. “Let me tell you, it’s good to be back in my own house.”

“Yeah, it must be,” I said.

I took Jonathan’s note up to my room, shut the door and put on a CD that one of my favorite kids from last year had burned for me (she swore it was legal). Hiding out like this made me feel like a teenager myself. Next thing you knew, I’d be instant messaging Jonathan:
I can’t w8 2 c u!
In truth, as much as I wanted to see him, as much as I smiled every time I heard his voice on my voice mail, I’d been avoiding him—or, more precisely, avoiding the inevitable moment when I’d have to come clean.

He’d written his note on a simple white piece of copy paper:

 

Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I called him.

“I didn’t expect to hear from you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Well . . . when a guy leaves three phone messages for a woman and she doesn’t call back, he usually takes the hint.”

“Then why did you come to my house?”

“Because I am especially persistent. Or especially dense. It was my last-ditch effort. I had a couple more planned in case that didn’t work out.”

“More last-ditch efforts?”

“Yup. A last, last-ditch effort. And a last, last, last-ditch effort.” He paused. “Unless . . . are you calling to tell me to stop calling? If that’s the case, let me know now before I humiliate myself further.”

“That’s not the case.”

“Okay, then.”

“Okay.”

He asked me to have dinner with him. I couldn’t, of course; I could hardly abandon my parents on their first day home. Besides, I had at least four hours’ worth of grading and lesson planning to do. But I was free Saturday night, I told him—though maybe he could pick me up in a parking lot somewhere.

Here is what I planned to say to Jonathan at dinner: “I hope that what I am about to tell you won’t change the way you feel about me. The night we met, I was hating life and feeling bad about myself. I never thought I’d see you again. I had no idea how much I’d like you. I told you some lies, and then one lie built upon another. If you give me another chance, I promise I will never lie to you again.”

Here is what I actually said to Jonathan: “I guess I thought it was just going to be the two of us at dinner.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to have dinner with my dad and Krista. I thought about calling them and saying I was sick, but I really hate to lie. I should have warned you. But I was afraid you’d back out.”

I would have, but not for the reasons he thought.

He laughed. “Oh, God. First I leave notes at your house, now I’m introducing you to my parents on our first real date. You’re probably ready to take out a restraining order.”

I bit my lip and looked out the window.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, his smile fading. “Am I not supposed to make criminal jokes?”

I smiled—or tried to, anyway. “You can make all the criminal jokes you want. Really.” I shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat of his gigantic truck.

He noticed my expression and pulled into a shopping center parking lot. He put the truck in park but left the engine running and the air-conditioning at full blast. “Look. If you want me to take you home, I will. I thought we had something going, but maybe I misread your signals.” He shook his head. “Most of the women I meet are waitresses or bartenders. And it’s not that they’re not nice—a lot of them are. But . . . you’re different. You’re just so . . . real.”

My throat ached with a pent-up wail. “My job—” I said, and then stopped.

I took a deep breath, but before I’d had a chance to form the right words (as if there were any right words), he said, “Your job is amazing. There aren’t a lot of people who could do that day after day.” We were quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you want me to take you home? I like you. I’ve made that embarrassingly obvious. But if you don’t feel the same way, you don’t have to keep pretending just to spare my feelings.” He smiled wryly. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

“I’m not pretending anything as far as my feelings go,” I whispered. This was my moment to come clean, to fess up, to tell him what I
had
been pretending. But a funny thing happened. Jonathan leaned forward. And I leaned forward, too, at least until my seat belt snapped into place. I released it with a seductive click.

His lips were slightly rough, but the skin around them was smooth. He must have shaved right before he picked me up. He tasted of mint and smelled of lemons. My stomach grew warm.

When we parted, our faces still inches away from each other, he ran a finger along my cheek. “So you aren’t just being nice?”

“I’m not as nice as you think I am,” I whispered.

 

 

Even without humidity, Krista Pomeroy’s blond hair looked fabulous: smooth yet buoyant. Her highlights looked so natural they had to be fake. She probably had salon expenses the way I have student loans. Her left hand glittered with the kind of gem never simply referred to as a diamond but rather, more bluntly, as “a rock”—though “boulder” might be more apt. She wore a simple coral-colored silk shift that set off her tan just so and delicate pearl earrings that coordinated with the strand around her neck.

I wore my navy blue skirt that should have been taken up an inch because it hit me at mid-calf, which any women’s magazine will tell you is the most unflattering, leg-shortening length. Up until this moment, I hadn’t cared.

We met Jonathan’s father and stepmother at the door to Clarke’s, which was located inside the intimate and ever-so-swishy Golden Palms Hotel. In Scottsdale, most good restaurants are located inside hotels, which unsettles me, as if the Phoenix Valley is just a nice place to visit and living here is a kind of extended vacation and not real life at all. Everything is geared toward visitors, as if the several million residents don’t count. Still, I was excited to be eating here; my parents, in the process of working their way through Fodor’s restaurant recommendations, had eaten here with the Gillespies, after which Mrs. Gillespie said to me, “It is so fabulous, you
must
get a date to take you there.” I didn’t know whether to feel insulted that Mrs. Gillespie didn’t think I could afford to pay my own way or flattered that she’d think I could find a guy willing to spend that kind of money on me. Now I found myself wondering which guy was going to pick up the tab. I couldn’t see Jonathan and his father splitting the bill.

As immaculate as she was, Krista looked older in person than in her pictures. She was forty-three, and she looked it—but in a “lived the good life” kind of way: countless mornings spent squinting at tennis and golf balls had left lines around her eyes, while afternoons at the pool had resulted in sun spots on her face and arms. I made a mental note to throw out my 4 SPF sunscreen and stick to the thirty. Krista’s tan hands were flawless, though: long-fingered and perfectly manicured.

As for Krista’s husband, there were many older husbands with younger wives in Scottsdale. Typically, they had full heads of silver hair, deep tans, toned physiques and self-satisfied, if slightly tired, smiles. But Jack Pomeroy looked like a man who had split his almost-seventy years between fine restaurants and expensive golf courses (where he wouldn’t dream of walking between holes). Jonathan had described his father (whose name was also Jonathan, he informed me, as if I didn’t know) as “a heart attack waiting to happen.” For some reason—the young wife, I suppose—I had taken the description as an indication of a life led too quickly and filled with too much stress. As it turned out, Jack enjoyed his surf and his turf, preferably in large portions and doused with butter. His cheeks were mottled red and littered with sun spots. His navy blazer fit so well that it must have been custom-made to cover his girth. His scalp shone red through his sparse white hair.

Krista placed one of her delicate hands on Jack’s elbow and said to me, “Is this your first time at Clarke’s? It’s Jack’s absolute favorite place. We eat here at least once a week.”

I said I had never had the pleasure but that my parents had recommended it. I caught myself and said quietly to Jonathan, “Though of course they haven’t been able to come for several years.”

Jonathan’s father said, “Let’s do a quick tour of the grounds, then.” I smiled politely at him and his wife, trying not to gawk at their differences. I wondered if his previous three wives had been so attractive. What could all of those women have seen in him? And then it struck me: Jack Pomeroy was loaded.

“The Golden Palms was originally a private residence,” Krista informed me as we walked under a Moroccan-style arch dripping with flowering vines and out onto a lawn flanked by orange and palm trees, their trunks painted white to protect them from the sun.

“You’re probably hoping I’ll build you a house like this,” Jack said, squeezing his young wife around the shoulders.