The Hazards of Sleeping Alone (40 page)

Howie's hand moves back to his turtleneck, prompting her to touch her scarf. She wonders if he's unused to turtlenecks. Wouldn't it be a coincidence if both things clutching at their necks were unfamiliar? Both worn, perhaps, on the advice of their children?

“You know,” Howie lurches, as Charlotte reaches for her glass again. The nerves on his face are a mirror of her own, but thankfully, it seems their responses to awkward silence balance each other out: she can't talk, he can't stop talking. “They say wine is supposed to be good for cholesterol too. I never would have thought it, but recent studies show. My son just sent me an article. He's in med school, so he's always sending me articles about eating right, living longer. You'd think I was on my deathbed.”

Charlotte smiles, apologetically. The waiter appears with a basket of dark rolls and a silver dish with seashell-shaped pats of butter.

“The last one he sent,” Howie says, “was about the magic of garlic.” He shakes his head. “I don't know where they come up with this stuff.”

Charlotte, perhaps buoyed by twenty-four hours without food and four sips of wine, finally finds her tongue. “My daughter is the same way.”

“Oh?” Howie brightens. “The vegetarian?”

“Yes. Well, she's been a vegetarian since—well, you know, since
she was five. But her phases don't usually last that long. She's always full of some new idea or—or new project.” Funny, Charlotte thinks, how things that have historically frustrated her, even intimidated her, about Emily now feel like a source of pride.

“Like what?”

“Let's see …” Nylon is sliding rapidly down her belly: noncontrol top pantyhose out of control. “There was reflexology. Palm reading. Mindfulness.”

“Mindfulness?” Howie tears a roll in half. “That's a new one.”

“It's all about being in the moment,” Charlotte recites. “Being in the body and not the mind. For instance, when you butter that roll, you would want to really experience the moment of buttering the roll. Make it the best buttered roll it can be.” She stops and bursts into an awkward laugh.

“It does sound kind of funny,” Howie says.

“Oh, no. It isn't. Or it is, but only because—I've never explained it before, to anyone. I'm always the one having it explained to me.”

“Ah.” He picks up his knife and slices into a butter shell. “Sounds like me and the cholesterol. I have to tell you, Charlotte, I might work with pharmaceuticals, but I really don't know the first thing about medicine. All that stuff before, that was my son talking.”

His words make something awaken inside her, like a stirred ember: her conversation on the porch in New Hampshire with Emily. She feels a cool ripple in her chest, as if the air from that night is still trapped inside her. “Maybe,” she says, “the longer we're parents, the more we speak through our children.”

The moment the words leave her she is surprised. And quickly, embarrassed. She wants to run to the ladies' room and hide in a stall. Maybe try taking some deep breaths.

But Howie is looking at her with interest. “I think that might be true,” he says, nodding. “I find it much easier to talk about my children than myself.” Then he reddens, and they both look at their plates, until he clears his throat. “How's this?”

Charlotte looks up. He is holding up his roll.

“My buttering job,” he says. “Is it mindful?”

She laughs. “Oh, very. Very mindful.”

Howie laughs too. Her chest blooms with relief. It is, in fact, as Bea had promised: a nice conversation with a nice man. Whether sparks are flying, Charlotte couldn't say for sure. All she knows, for now, is that she wants to keep on talking. “So,” she says. “Tell me about your children.”

As Howie talks about his kids, he's transformed before her eyes. His face simultaneously drains and brightens, the dark red of embarrassment fading and replaced by an inner glow. He has two children, he tells her, one boy and one girl. Meg is twenty-six, Doug twenty-eight.

“You probably thought they were younger, judging from the key chain.” He smiles sheepishly. “Meg made it when she was seven and won't let me get rid of it because she says it's the first project she started and actually finished. I even tell her how my keys get stuck in it all the time, but she won't budge.”

Charlotte smiles. This attitude sounds familiar. “Do they live near you?”

“Meg does. Which gives her all the access she wants to dear old Dad. She's always stopping by with vitamin supplements and leftover suppers and … oh, who knows. I think she's afraid I forgot how to cook. And she doesn't like it that I go to Friendly's.” He pauses. “That must seem strange to you too.”

“I wouldn't say strange—”

“I'm a creature of habit.” He shrugs. “What can I say. And
going there feels homey. It's, well, it's friendly. And it's the same thing every week. It's nice to have a ritual like that.”

Charlotte nods, thinking of Pretty Nails. “I think I know just what you mean.”

Howie pauses, and his look lingers on her face an extra moment, recognizing that she isn't just being polite: she means it.

“Well.” He clears his throat again. “I don't think Meg gets it like we do. She's been trying to monitor my diet ever since the cholesterol test. She's the one who made the appointment in the first place.”

Typical man,
Charlotte thinks. The response is automatic, and takes her by surprise.
Needs a woman to make his appointments. Otherwise, except for being born, men could go their whole lives without seeing the inside of a doctor's office.
It's as if Bea's voice has crept into her own head. She takes a gulp of wine to conceal her smile.

“Then after the results came back, my son stuck his nose in, calling the doctor and asking all kinds of questions. So it goes.” He sighs, but Charlotte can tell their meddling pleases him. “I used to be the one embarrassing my kids, now my kids are embarrassing me.”

“Your son—he's a doctor?”

“Not yet. Med school. He's in his third year, in St. Louis.” Howie leans forward, and the candle heightens his glow to a beam. “He got married last summer. A wonderful girl. Very—unique. They got married on the top of a hill in Arizona—that's where she comes from—and I was never much for outdoor weddings, Charlotte, but I'll tell you, it was really very nice. There's less worry about rain in a place like that, I guess.She's studying to be a doctor too. Between the two of them I'll
live to be a hundred and ten. I'll get my birthday read on the
Today Show.
”

He stops, and Charlotte smiles, appreciating the reference.

“I'm talking too much,” Howie says.

“You're not, really.”

“Sometimes I have the tendency to ramble.” He sits back in his chair. “But I want to hear about you. Tell me about your children. You have just the one daughter?”

“Emily. Yes.” Now it's Charlotte's turn to glow. “She graduated from Wesleyan this spring. Now she lives in New Hampshire. She teaches elementary school at, well, it's called an alternative learning environment.”

Howie's eyebrows rise.

“No grades, no report cards. That sort of thing.”

“Huh.” He bites into his roll. “Wish they had schools like that when I was going. And is she—did Bea say—having a baby? Or am I—do I have my facts straight?”

“Yes,” Charlotte says. “You do.”

Although she wishes the facts were different. She wishes that, when Howie asks about the father, she could tell him her daughter was having a wedding too. But he doesn't ask. Instead he stammers, rather endearingly, “When is it—the baby—arriving?”

And like a reflex, Charlotte feels that knowing instinct kick in again.
Typical.
The voice is waitressy, worldly.
Men never know how to talk about pregnancy. They don't want to say “deliver,” don't want to say “expecting.” “Arriving”—as if the baby shows up in a FedEx truck.

“May,” she tells him. “May twenty-first. She—well, they think it's a she, they don't really know—she'll be right between a Taurus and a Gemini. On the cusp.”

“Cusp?” Howie's eyebrows rise again, and it occurs to Charlotte that he might be getting a very wrong impression of who she is. “Do you know a lot about astrology?”

“Oh, no. Almost nothing, really. That's my daughter again. She knows all about these things—astrology, mindfulness, all kinds of spiritual things. I'm much more, I guess you would say, traditional. But Emily …” Charlotte trails off. She feels her spirits dip, gazes at her empty glass. “We're just very different,” she says. “She's not like me. Not at all.” Her mind feels fuzzy, swimmy, sad.

“Charlotte?” she hears Howie asking. “Are you all right?”

She looks up. Blinks and sees his face. She feels a tremor inside her, somewhere deep beneath the knotted scarf and unrolling nylons and hammering heart, at a layer of herself she hadn't known existed. Something about the gentle lilt of Howie's voice, the use of her name, the concern on his face, makes her want to tell him everything.

“She lives with her boyfriend.” The first admittance: like dipping a test toe into water. “Walter. He's the baby's father, and they live together. But they're not getting married. At least right now.”

Howie waits, listening.
You can have an honest conversation,
Charlotte remembers,
and the world won't flinch.
“Actually,” she admits, submerging to the thigh, “I don't think they ever will.”

“And you wish they would?”

“Walter wants to.” Then she confesses what she hasn't confessed to anyone. “He showed me the ring. He has it hiding in their barn.” Suddenly she is back there again: a night she had reduced to a kind of hallucination, afraid that if she acknowledged what happened, she would have to acknowledge what might happen next. “And I knew when he showed me that she
didn't love him the same way he loves her, and I think when he asks her, she'll say no, but I couldn't bear to tell him. But if she does, they'll have to break up.” Her eyes sting. “Won't they?”

“I wouldn't know,” Howie says tenderly. “I'm no authority on these things.”

Charlotte smiles. She thinks: He is kind. Like all the “essential qualities in a man” she's heard Emily assert over the years, “kindness” may well be Charlotte's number one. Who would have thought kindness could provoke a fluttering of butterflies in a rib cage? Who knew kindness could, just maybe, coax a spark?

Then the waiter appears. The moment dissolves. Charlotte's fuzzy cocoon is punctured by the reality of sizzling chicken. Her memory of the barn, shadowy, smudged like an old slide, is replaced by the artificial green of parsley, the alarming flesh-pink of Howie's salmon, the dark hairs on the waiter's wrist as he refills their glasses. She clutches at her napkin and dabs quickly at her eyes, realizing how much she's just confided. Whereas two hours ago she just wanted to get this date over with, now she worries she might have ruined everything.

But when she looks up, trying to formulate some comment on the food—
Everything looks delicious, Howie
—he isn't looking at the table. He's looking at Charlotte, his mouth twisting as if searching for the right words.

“Who was it,” he says, “who wrote, the older I get the less I know?”

Or, maybe he's mulling over a nagging crossword clue. “I'm not sure,” she says.

“Me either.” He shakes his head. “And it's not important. It could have been me, is what I'm saying, because most of the time that's how I feel.” She realizes that he is indeed trying to
comfort her, and the fact of his effort is a comfort in itself. “Except when it comes to marriage. There I think I've learned a thing or two.”

It's the first allusion either has made to their divorces, and Charlotte tenses, sensing the sudden presence of former lives, marriages, ex-spouses lurking in the room.

“I learned you can't take it too seriously,” Howie says. When Charlotte looks confused, he amends: “Not, I mean, not that you
shouldn't
take it seriously. That it's not possible to take it seriously
enough.
“ He looks down at his salmon. “This is why I should never give advice.”

“It's good advice.”

“It probably sounds obvious, take marriage seriously, but I learned it the hard way. So I'd much rather see my own kids being cautious than jumping in if they're not as sure as they can be.” He adds, “I hope that didn't sound preachy.”

“It didn't.”

“Because like I said, what do I know.” He picks up his fork, then just looks at it. “My kids”—a blush fills his face again—“they think I'm an old fuddy-duddy. That's my daughter's nickname for me.” He looks up. “Fuddy-Daddy.”

Charlotte giggles. Howie's face is visibly deepening, one shade of red to the next, like swatches of house paint. But this time the blush doesn't bother her. She is grateful for it. Grateful to Howie for not being suave, for not claiming to know everything, for offering his own vulnerability in exchange for hers.

“Even though these kids really have no business talking,” he goes on. “I may be an old fuddy-duddy, but some of the things they do are out of left field.” His mouth pinches into a small, reluctant smile. “Jennifer, my new daughter-in-law, she started spelling her name differently right before the wedding. She
never said a word, it just showed up that way on the invitations.” “Jennifer?” Charlotte pauses. “But how else would you-” “You'll love this.” Howie leans toward her, the candlelight dancing on his face. “J-e-n-a”—he lingers on each letter, smile stretching wider—“p-h-y-r.”

Charlotte's laugh is an explosion of delight.

By the time Howie walks her to the door, it's started to rain again. On the way home he turned the defroster way up, then drove hunched way down, squinting to see through the single unfogged patch at the bottom of the windshield. They hadn't talked much, which was fine by Charlotte. She was preoccupied with their pending good night.