Five Women (49 page)

“She doesn't run around,” Eve said. “She's a very serious girl.”

“I'm serious, too.”

“You'll be my son-in-law,” Eve said, elbowing him, and laughed. “Then I guess I'll have to hire you all the time, won't I?” he said, laughing too.

You think you're kidding, Eve thought. Just you wait. She thought she would never be able to stop laughing, and although they didn't know what she thought was so funny, or why she was so manic, eventually they were all laughing just as hard as she was, for no reason at all.

Chapter Forty-three

T
HE MORNING AFTER THEY HAD MET
at Yellowbird Michael Hinthorn called Gara and invited her to go to a screening with him of the new Bertolucci movie.
This is a date
, she thought, feeling younger than she had in years, and unexpectedly excited, the way she had been when she was much younger and dating, looking forward to fun. It was safe but intriguing: an event, out with other people to protect her, doing something interesting, maybe even flirting, knowing a man was curious enough about her to want to spend a few hours in her company. She could not imagine falling in love. She was not unaware of what she had done all these years in her ambivalence; she had protected herself, and avoided men even when she was asking people to introduce her to one. She had never even noticed Michael Hinthorn in Yellowbird, although he had noticed her. She had been content, she had made her compromise. She didn't know if the compromise had come from fear or realism, but she had made her world safe and comfortable, and that had been enough.

But one night a month ago, alone as always in her apartment, just as an exercise Gara had made a theoretical list of the kind of man she would want to meet. Number one: I should feel comfortable with him. That was essential. Two: Intelligent and interesting to talk to, hopefully even funny. Three: Likes to go out and do things with me. Four: Presentable enough to fit in with my friends. She did not ask for gorgeous, just acceptable. She did not think she was asking for anything too unreasonable.

She had not asked for Emotionally Available, although she knew that should have been at the top of her list. She was not emotionally available, so why should he be? She just did not want him to be involved with another woman, because then he would not fit number three: Likes to go out and do things with me. What she was looking for, she realized, was a companion. Of course, eventually, she would have to deal with the sex part of it, because if she only wanted a companion she could go out with Brad. She knew she wanted sex too, and she didn't know if she would have the courage ever to go to bed with a man again. You couldn't have sex in the dark forever, although people said you could, and what if he recoiled? He would have to love her first. If he really loved her enough it wouldn't matter. But she could not imagine that kind of love happening to her anymore.

They met at the screening room in an office building on the West Side. In the crowd outside the little screening room she saw him before he saw her, and she thought again that he was attractive. She had thought that when she first saw him at Yellowbird, but then she had withdrawn into her shell and not let herself think about it at all. Watching the movie they sat in huge comfortable upholstered seats, and did not touch, although they glanced at each other from time to time. She didn't know what that meant.

The movie was called
Stealing Beauty
, and it was apparently about a very pretty young woman with enormous, mobile red lips, who was looking to lose her virginity, and all the men who were eager to help, or just to know her, or to watch her. The scenery was spectacular. Gara thought of Carl, and the trips they had taken, and then she glanced at Michael and wondered if they would ever know each other well enough to want to go to Europe together. Now that she was sure she had her life back there were many things she wanted to do.

“I liked that,” he said afterward.

“So did I.”

“Where do you want to have dinner?”

“I don't know.”

He took her to a small French bistro on the East Side. Gara had a few glasses of wine for courage, and over the salad and grilled fish they talked about the movie and others they had seen, about books, about art, about his clients and hers (the little she could reveal), and about ideas. Neither of them said a word about their pasts. Not about former marriages, not about affairs since then, not about dysfunctional childhoods. The closest they came to any discussion of the past was to tell each other what schools they had gone to, and that they had both grown up in New York.

There was something about living in the present that Gara found surprisingly reassuring. It was as if they were both too tired to reopen old wounds or to grieve over old losses. If they liked each other it would have to be through instinct, through enjoyment of the moment, through little things they did that were considerate or made the other smile. Eventually, she knew, they would have to pry, or at least hint, but right now everything was fresh and new, and . . . she felt comfortable with him.

“I'm glad we met,” he said to her when he walked her to her door.

“Yes,” Gara said. “Thank you for the wonderful evening.”

She was not surprised when he kissed her goodnight. She had felt he would when she saw the instants of hesitation and resolve cross his face, and when he did, she liked it. Then he was gone.

I'm glad we met
, she thought, remembering his voice when he said it, liking his husky voice, his charming smile, his thick, gray-flecked dark hair, the way he dressed, the sense she had that he was in very good shape, younger than Carl, still eager but not looking for youth and beauty like that girl in the movie if he was content to be here with her. The one thing she had not noticed was his eyes. She didn't even know what color they were. She had been too afraid to look into his eyes, because then he might see her.

It will all take time, Gara thought. Maybe we can be friends. I would love that, having a man to go out with. I expect nothing more, and I am still amazed to have this.

When Michael called her two days later she was surprised it was so soon, and unexpectedly happy that she would see him. He took her to an art gallery opening downtown, where he bought a drawing for the new apartment he had moved into and was still fixing up after his divorce, and then he took her to dinner in SoHo. When they talked about their usual nonthreatening intellectual subjects, enthusiastically, appreciating each other's opinions, rising to gratifyingly unexpected heights of insight like two well-matched tennis players, Gara realized how hungry she had been for just this kind of intelligent conversation. In her world of single women it had all been jokes, laughter, repartee, commiseration, complaints, and always, always the subject of men. Would they find one, did they want one, how they had lost one, or gotten away from one, how could they get one; the existence of these unconquered men hovering on the horizons of their lives like some kind of rainbow.

When they were drinking their espresso she felt as if she had been doubly filled, mind and body. “Thank you for another wonderful evening,” Gara said.

“You know what I like?” he said. “That we never talk about ourselves.”

She looked at him. Did he mean it, or was he being ironic? Perhaps both. “There's plenty of time for that,” she said.

“But I think I know you already,” he said. “You're a good person.”

“That's very perceptive.”

“Aren't you?”

“Yes. And are you?”

“I try to be.”

“That's a step.”

She had never flattered him, feeling uncomfortable verbalizing anything positive for fear he would run away, or that her discomfort with emotion would make him think she was being insincere. But now as they smiled at each other she thought that he must know that she liked him. She looked at his eyes. They were blue.

We must be the two most terrified people in the world, Gara thought. That night when he kissed her goodnight at her door they both opened their mouths and fed on each other. We're not too scared for that, she thought. But she didn't ask him up, and he ran away as soon as she turned to go in. “I'll call you,” he said, his voice trailing away from his flight.

She knew he would.

“So you've found another frightened bunny,” Felicity said at dinner in Yellowbird. There were only the two of them now. Felicity was delighted Gara was dating and wanted to hear all about it. “He sounds just like you.”

“It's good,” Gara said. “We can learn to trust together. Or not. Somebody must have done an excellent job of destroying him.”

“Like you were damaged. Like we all were. That's why we find each other.”

“Maybe you're right,” Gara said.

“Think of it this way,” Felicity said. “If it doesn't work out with you two, at least he will have been practice. Then you can find another man. But maybe it will work. Just have fun.”

“How did you get so mature, finally?” Gara said.

Felicity smiled. “I've been working really hard with my therapist, and also it's been almost a year since Eben dumped me. Sometimes I still get very upset when I remember all the lies he told me, but I'm okay now. I would have been happier if it had worked for us, of course, but I see him as he is. He will never make any woman happy for long. He isn't happy either. But he was my bridge person.”

“Bridge person?”

“Bridging my two lives: Slugger's Baby, and a free, independent woman. I know I still have a long way to go, and I want to learn.”

“That sounds good,” Gara said.

“I spoke to my parents a few times on the phone,” Felicity said. “My mother has reconciled with my father, but only because she's sixty-five years old and her last boyfriend left her and she doesn't think she'll ever get another one. My father is glad she's being nice to him. I think in a funny way my mother has fallen in love with my father, finally, because she needs someone to take care of her and he's willing to do it. Of course she keeps yelling at me for divorcing Russell. She says I'll never get such a good husband again, and that more likely I'll never get one at all.”

“That's supportive,” Gara said sarcastically.

“I realized that I'm still trying to get her love and approval, even though I don't approve of what
she
does. But it's becoming clearer to me that it doesn't matter that I'm not the daughter she wanted me to be. I want to become the woman I want myself to be.”

“And you will,” Gara said.

They were getting ready to leave when Michael came in, looking around. Gara knew the person he was looking for was her. He had said he was going to be out with a client and she had said she was going to have dinner with Felicity at Yellowbird. She was surprised at how happy she was to see him.

“That's Michael,” Gara said, waving.

“He's cute.”

“Do you think so?” But she thought he was.

He came over to their table, obviously glad to see her. Gara introduced him to Felicity and he sat down. Walking by, Billie gave them a knowing glance. Billie, who always knew which man at the bar would like her, also knew which of her customers would discover each other. Often they were mismatched, but nothing surprised her, neither when they met nor when they broke up. On the sound system LaBelle was singing “Lady Marmalade,” and the energy in the room was high. Michael ordered more wine for them, and as soon as she had finished hers Felicity insisted on leaving them alone together, making a great show of looking at her watch.

“What were you two in such deep conversation about?” he asked.

“Parents and childhood.”

“Oh.” He nodded noncommittally.

The wine had made Gara bold. She leaned over and looked into Michael's face. “What kind of parents did you have?” she asked.

So then he finally told her, and about his childhood, and as he did Gara realized that his was as bad as hers had been in a way that was both unique and similar. A father who had abandoned him while physically remaining at home; a helpless, demanding mother who had spousified him, leaning on him too much and too often to make him be her little man; and finally, a wife who had left him, the way Carl had left her. He sketched in his life with short, sharp strokes, and as she listened Gara thought how lucky she was that he had not ended up as another confused caretaker of the nonthreatening wounded, those wary and conflicted men entangled with women young enough to be their daughters.

And then she thought: But I am the nonthreatening wounded. For all my bravery and independence during the time I was trying to save my life, the other part of me remains, too. He can probably sense it, even if he doesn't really know. And I thought I was so good at fooling everybody.

It was late; they both had to leave. He walked her to her door, their cab waiting, and they kissed in that same brief, frantic way that was almost experimental. She thought for the first time that some night she would actually invite him up.

After that when she thought about him she was often physically aroused, a feeling she had thought was lost to her forever. She looked at her breasts in the mirror, and touched them, wondering what he would think, pretending he was with her and didn't notice. In the years that had passed she had begun to think of the artificial one as real, as much a part of her as the other. It
was
part of her; she was who she was. “He'll like the whole gestalt,” she would tell her women patients, trying to convince them that the unreal standards of beauty they tried to live up to were so mingled with who they were as lovable people that all would be well. “If you're his fantasy you can vomit and he won't care,” she would say. Was she his fantasy? And did his fantasy also include the specter of the recurrence of disease and a possible early death? Gara did not believe she would get sick again, she was sure she would live a normal life the way all her doctors felt she would, but what would he believe? Would he think caring about her was worth the risk?

I won't have to find out if I don't let him near me, she thought. It felt comfortable to have more time, to be guarded again.

She allowed herself to think about him only when she had nothing else to do. When her work day was finished, when she had been to the gym, when she had done her professional reading, then she could relax and let him enter her mind and take over. She knew it was not obsession if she doled out these little periods of emotional passion in this way. She and Michael had been out together twelve times now, and sometimes when she thought about him she was so nervous that she never wanted to see him again. She wondered if he noticed. At other times she thought she was in love. She hoped he did not notice that.