Love and Other Natural Disasters (22 page)

Noticing my reaction, Julie nodded
sympathetically. "I know. It burns." It had been mere seconds, and it
was inching toward intolerable. "If you really can't stand it, we could
put a fan on you. But you'll get better results if we don't. So you let me know
if you need it, and we'll use the fan."

I didn't want to be a wimp, I
didn't want to jeopardize my results, but for
criminy's
sake, we've got a face on fire here. Perhaps sensing my quandary, Julie started
madly fanning me with her hands. I'd have to ask Lil if that was standard
operating procedure.

Ultimately it was on for less than
five minutes. For the last thirty seconds, as Julie sweetly counted down like
it was New Year's, I felt like crying not because of the pain but because I had
become a woman who would lie on a table and burn her face off while feeling
just the teensiest sense of achievement at not having needed a fan.

When I emerged from the room with
what could only be called the crimsons, the incandescent receptionist lined up
my products on the counter, described my "regime" in detail (complete
with a pantomime of exfoliation), and gave me the tally. It came to $507, much
less than the price of lasers, but still somehow more than I'd expected. I
handed over my credit card numbly, and she ran it through, only to whisper a
minute later, "It's not going through. It says to call this number."

My first thought was that Jon had
cut me off; my second was that he'd run the card up to its limit buying plane
tickets and gifts for Laney. My third was that doing this wasn't going to
change anything for me, nothing that mattered. But the receptionist had already
dialed the number and handed me the phone. A woman answered with a chipper
"Fraud services."

"This is Eve
Gimbel
," I said in a low voice, watching the
receptionist busy herself by straightening the already meticulous product
display. "My marriage is in the crap-per, and I'm trying to spend my way
out of it. Can you make a note on the account? I might not be done yet."

I got lost driving home.

That night, Jacob noticed that my
face "looked funny, like after the beach," but when I said,
"Sometimes Mommy's face will do that," he didn't press further. He
was eager to get to reading time, anyway.

We'd developed a ritual where I sat
on the floor in Olivia's nursery with my legs wide apart, Jacob sat inside the
created triangle with his legs similarly arranged, and Olivia leaned against
him. As I reached around both of them, holding a book and reading aloud, Jacob
took his job of holding Olivia upright very seriously.

Jacob liked for it to be the same
book every time,
Shel
Silverstein's
Where the
Sidewalk Ends.
Dyan said I shouldn't be concerned that he liked to hear his
two favorite poems over and over: "For Sale" (about selling a sister
to the highest bidder) and "Dreadful" (about doing away with a sister
by eating her). As I read the poems and he chimed in with the parts he
remembered, he seemed to like cuddling Liv, kissing the top of her head,
watching her clap her hands and squeal with delight. It was the juxtaposition
that disturbed me most: him enjoying the fantasy of getting rid of Liv, while
being so affectionate toward her. "Some ambivalence is normal," Dyan
assured

me, but I still worried. Maybe he
was going to turn into a sociopath. I thought about how his dad had left the
house so soon after Olivia's arrival, what that might have done to his psyche,
and I worried what would happen when Charlie returned to Orange County, if Jon
stayed gone, and it was just the three of us for good.

"Read it again!" Jacob
said. He pecked the top of
Liv's
head, and she cooed
in response.

"How about a new one?" I
suggested. "How about The Land of Happy'?"

He wrinkled his nose. "I don't
think she likes that."

I tightened my arms around them
both. "Let's just give it a try."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hello?" Since Charlie was
closer, he was the one to answer the phone. He paused, then said, "Sure.
Will do." He hung up and turned to me. "Jon's going to call back so
he can get the machine."

"He didn't ask for me?" I
said.

"No. He said he wanted the
machine." Charlie looked back at the TV as the phone began to ring. I
dashed down the hall to my room as he said, "You married folks are
crazy."

I was in time to hear the beep,
then Jon's voice. "Hi, Eve. I haven't done one of these in a while. I
don't know if you're there. If you are, hello, in real time. To be honest, I
don't really want you to pick up. But you're on my mind, and I wanted you to
know that. I don't know what to do about it, because every time I try
something, it seems to go wrong. I don't know whose fault that is, if it's
anyone's fault. I think we're two good people who've loved each other a long
time. But man, we're off track. I know I am. I just started taking
antidepressants. There, I said it. My name's Jon, and I take
Wellbutrin
. It's not doing anything yet, not that I can
feel.

"I'm not saying this so you'll
feel sorry for me. Tell Charlie that, so he won't try to kick my ass next time
I pick up the kids. So why am I saying it then? I don't know. I'm one confused
man, Eve. I'm like those fish swimming around upside down. And occasionally
I'll be offering you a drunken dispatch from here in the Tender Knob, if you're
okay with that. I just don't want to be forgotten." There was an ambiguous
noise, and I thought maybe he was crying. Another few seconds, and the I
message stopped. I wasn't sure if he'd been cut off by the machine or hung up
himself.

I didn't know what to make of Jon's
message. I'd never expected to be drunk-dialed by my own husband. It's not like
I was in a position to help him sort out his life when mine was one big
question mark, if that was even what he'd been asking.

Tamara suggested I focus on finding
a career; Lil thought I should focus on other men, as if they were lining up
around the block or growing from the tree in my front yard. Lil had recently
started pushing to meet Tamara, thinking it would be good for all of us to be
friends. I'd been stalling. I knew Tamara wanted me back with Jon, and Lil
wanted me to explore my options, and I'd started wanting both in equal measure
— despite the fact that they were diametrically opposed—so I thought if we all
met, my head might explode.

I figured it couldn't hurt to read
the career books Dyan had left in my office. I was secretly hoping that they'd
talk to me in an Old Testament sort of way, like the burning bush spoke to
Moses, but it didn't happen. After paging through lists of jobs, and reaching
no epiphany, I turned to the tests. I answered a hundred questions about my
preferences and skill sets and, somehow, seemed no closer.

While the personality tests didn't
seem likely to find me a job, either, they were enlightening in their own way.
The Myers-Briggs classified personality types along four continuums:
extroverted vs. introverted, sensing vs. intuiting, thinking vs. feeling,
judging vs. perceiving. Without conscious thought, I found myself trying to
figure out Jon's personality type alongside mine, in the way old married
couples instinctively read each other's horoscopes. I was on the line between
extroverted and introverted, with a nod toward introverted, and I suspected Jon
was the same. But on all the other measures, Jon and I were opposites. He got
information from his senses, from facts and figures, while I was intuitive; he
was a thinker (calm, detached, objective—
infuriating),
while I was a
definite feeler; and I was a classic judger (liked to schedule and plan, needed
closure) while he was a perceiver (comfortable with waiting and seeing, liked
to keep his options open—
did he ever).

When I told Dyan that I'd read the
books but remained clueless, she suggested I go down the list of jobs and mark
anything that wasn't an absolute, unequivocal no. Then I could rank that
smaller number, and talk to professors who'd worked in my top three fields.
Public health was number three, but since the Intro to Public Health class
started just as I was finishing work, there I was.

I blamed Lil for the bizarre
reaction I was having to Professor Ray Dubrovnik. She was the one who had me
thinking about other men, and since so few crossed my path, maybe I was trying
to make the most of them. Ray Dubrovnik was five foot eight and stocky, with
what could easily be two fake moustaches pasted where his eyebrows should be.
Not since Dukakis had lost his bid for the presidency had I seen the likes of
those. He was leading a discussion about the relationship between communicable
diseases and meth use, and why it's a particular problem in San Francisco—you'd
be hard-pressed to find a less erotic topic, really—and I was sitting in the
back row, feeling a stirring that I couldn't believe was sexual, only it was.

I stopped following the discussion
and just stared at him, trying to find justification for the attraction I was
feeling. His nose, for example, was actually pretty nice. Straight. No one ever
talks about twinkling brown eyes, but his did. Maybe it was that he was so
confident, he eschewed fashion completely, enough to wear one of those khaki
vests with all the pockets that are normally the province of fishermen or nature
photographers. All that, plus the man was a dynamo. He loved his work, and he
wanted his students to love it, too.

What felt strangest was that I was
presumably allowed to do something about this attraction and this guy was in my
league, with his naked ring finger and my spare tire.

I was the only one in the room
anywhere near his age, which I estimated to be mid-forties.

Class was wrapping up, and he was
at the lectern, packing up his notes. His bag didn't seem to go with the rest
of him. It was sleek, made out of some shiny material, like the kind favored by
bike messengers.

"Professor Dubrovnik?" I
said timidly.

He looked up. "Hello,
unannounced visitor," he said, smiling.

"I'm sorry. I probably should
have cleared it with you. I actually work on campus in Student Services."

"Drop-ins are fine. Uncommon,
but fine. What can I do for you?"

"I'm shopping around for a new
career, and I wanted to get your opinion about public health."

"Teaching it, or working in
the field?"

I'd never considered teaching that
or anything else, but I found myself answering, "Both."

"You want the unvarnished
truth?"

I nodded.

"You know that saying, Those
who can't do, teach'? Well, in my case, it's Those who are burned out, but
still believe in the mission, teach.' Wordy, but true."

"I wouldn't have guessed you
were burned out from the way you taught."

"Oh, I'm not burned out on
teaching. I'm passionate about getting these kids to be passionate about the
thing I had to leave behind for my own sanity. I take that very seriously."

Was he serious? He was
half-smiling. I didn't know what to say, and we stood there for a long,
uncomfortable minute.

"Public health is a great
field, don't get me wrong," he said. "For me, it was time to do
something else, so here I am."

"But now it seems like a
trick."

"What does?"

"Being inspirational. You're
inspiring them to do something that drove you crazy. It seems—unethical
somehow."

"Look, I was them twenty years
ago. I got a good twenty years—well, fifteen years, those last five were
rough—out of public health. Who's to say they won't get forty? Who's to say
they won't be on their deathbeds saying, 'If I'd only created one more needle
exchange program

There was nothing unkind in his
smile; on the contrary, there was something disarming about it. But I felt
unsettled, and I realized what it was: He was talking straight to me because I
wasn't young and impressionable anymore. The kids, they wanted to be
dazzled.
That's what being twenty was all about, believing you could do anything and
be anything and that the world would bend to your will. Then you got kicked
around and you learned better, but you needed that initial dreamy padding. Man,
I felt old.

"I feel old," I said. I
had no other response at the ready, and I didn't want to stand there mutely for
another second.

He laughed. "What are you,
thirty?"

I winced. I hated people guessing
right.

"So you're looking for a
second career? Third career?"

"It's more like a first
career. I've just been killing time, really."

"You have a family?" he
asked.

"I have two kids. I'm
separated."

"Recent?"

I wondered what gave it away. I
nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said, and
I believed him.

"Thanks."

"So now you have to support
your kids on your own?"

"No. He still supports
us."

"Good man."

I didn't understand the turn the
conversation was taking. Was Ray attracted to me? Pitying me? Was he attracted
to me because he pitied me? None of the above?