My Life as a Doormat (in Three Acts) (2 page)

“Sure,” I finally said, noticing Joel's mouth had stopped moving and both men seemed to be waiting for an answer. “The baked cod sounds lovely.”

Edward leaned back in his chair and smiled. The smile stretched into a grin. “So, I've been working on my speech all day.”

It was a speech he was to give five months from now, but Edward had a long and distinguished history of speech phobias. To nearly everyone but me, he was Dr. Edward Crowse, professor of physics at Boston University. I still did not understand what exactly the speech was for or to whom he was giving it, but I knew it was important. Edward had been talking about it nonstop for five weeks.

“Yes. I think I've finally got the perfect opening joke.” He rubbed his hands together with anticipation.

“Well, let me hear it.” I grinned.

“Okay. There's this farmer, who is having a great deal of problems with his chickens. They're quite sick, and he has no idea what to do about them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And so after trying all conventional means to find why his chickens are sick, he decides to call a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist to see if they can help figure out why the chickens are sick.”

“Okay.”

“So the biologist takes a look at the chickens, handles them a bit, and looks them over. But he cannot figure out what's wrong with the roosters.”

“I thought they were chickens.”

“Right. Yes. Chickens.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Well, then the chemist takes some tests and makes some measurements, but he cannot come to any conclusions about the chickens either.”

“Interesting.”

“So the physicist tries. He stands there for the longest time looking at the chickens. Not touching them. Just looking at them. Then, all of a sudden, he starts scribbling away in his notebook! The farmer rushes to his side, wondering if he's figured it out. After several lengthy calculations, he suddenly states, ‘I've got it! But it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum!'”

Edward leaned toward me, his eyes wide with expectation.“

In a vacuum. That's funny.”

“Do you get it?”

“Sure. That's good.”

Edward leaned back in his chair, scratching his chin. Then, flopping a lock of moppy golden hair to its proper side, he said, “I don't know.”

“Well, joke-telling is really all about the timing—”

“Maybe it's too long.”

“How long do you have?”

“Forty-five minutes, but I have to make some introductions and things like that. What about this one? Two atoms accidentally bump into each other. One atom says, ‘I think I lost an electron.' The other asks, ‘Are you sure?' to which he replies, ‘I'm positive.'”

“Too obvious.”

“Yes, I guess you're right.” Edward sighed, and the conversation continued about his day until Joel returned with our meals.

I stared down at my baked cod, then looked up at Joel. “Would you mind lighting this on fire just for kicks?”

The startled expression covered Joel's face again and Edward's fork dangled from his long fingers as he stared across the table.

“I'm kidding.” I laughed, a warm blush crawling up my neck. I liked to call it a blush sometimes, as if that single word would somehow add a femininity and attractiveness to what was really just splotching. “I'm sorry,” I said to Edward after Joel left. “I don't know what's gotten into me.”

Edward shook his head. “That's okay. The cod does look a little dull, doesn't it?”

“It's okay. Fish is better for me than mushroom-and-cream–filled crepes, right?”

Edward went on to a new joke. “Two pheromones walk into a bar. One orders a drink. The other says, ‘I'll have what he's having.'”

“I don't get it.”

Edward was looking dejected. “I suppose I do have to worry about the wives and girlfriends in attendance. I have to tell something universally funny.”

I tried again. “Edward, telling a joke successfully is all about the timing and delivery. For instance, remember that joke you told me last week at the party? About the superconductor in Alaska?”

“I don't remember.”

“Sure you do.”

Edward shook his head.

“Come on. You told it to Tom, and then to Jeff, and I think later to Mr. and Mrs. Lavonte. About the researchers in Fairbanks?”

“What researchers?”

“In the joke.”

“Oh, I know. About the fish.”

“No. About the superconductor. How the researchers in Fairbanks, Alaska, had discovered a superconductor that would operate at room temperature.”

Edward blinked, his eyes dimmed for a moment of thought, and then he raised his fork, indicating he did remember.

“Well,” I said, holding back a sigh, “that right there is a great example of how not to tell a joke.”

Edward didn't get what a remarkable display of bad timing that was. Instead, he suddenly seemed interested in his pasta, poking around in it with his fork.

“There's an odd spice in here. I can't quite identify it. It's not French, I can tell you that. Strange. It definitely doesn't belong in this dish.”

“Hmm. Maybe the chef is trying something new.”

“Maybe. But he should be careful. A spice this strong can really wreck the medley of flavors a dish such as this is supposed to have.” He moved the pasta around some more. “Maybe you could come over tonight. Help me out. This is, after all, your area of expertise.” He managed a smile and a glance at me in the midst of his search for the mysterious spice.

“Don't you have chess club tonight?”

“Didn't I mention it? They're changing it to Wednesdays on the third week of every month. What is this spice? It's nearly overwhelming the entire platter.”

I found myself staring at the cod, flaking its flesh with my fork tines, realizing that in a strange way Edward had put into words what I was feeling. There was an odd spice inside me. Something that was bold and strong and distinct, yet misplaced. It was interrupting all the flavors that were important to my daily life. Tiny and unidentifiable, yet there, nevertheless.

What was it? And on what dish in my life did it belong? Was it there intentionally, or had it been put there by mistake?

“I think I'm going to call for the chef,” Edward said.

“Edward.”

He looked up. “Yes?”

I gazed at his delicate face, his amazingly beautiful eyes, his blond, curly hair. How could I tell him all that I was feeling? How could I explain that once in a while I wanted to have dinner on Wednesday and eat hot dogs at the park? Could this simply be about food?

“Leah, are you okay?” He set down his fork. “Is something wrong? You've been acting strangely all night.”

“It's just that . . .”

His eyebrows rose, his lips pursed in an expectant manner.

“What?”

“Well, it's about . . .”

“Yes, Leah? What is it?”

I sighed. Who was I kidding? “I think I taste that spice in my food too.”

He beckoned Joel.

Chapter 2

[She turns, examining herself.]

I
met Elisabeth Bates six years ago. She lived in the apartment across from mine, and we instantly hit it off. We spent hours together watching movies, decorating each other's walls, shopping, and complaining about other tenants.

Then she met Henry Jameson. Now she has three children under the age of six. She's always called herself a forward thinker, refusing Henry's last name, wearing her wedding ring on her left middle finger (which somehow was supposed to represent balance), and naming all of her children after people she's forgiven in her life, two of them being former boyfriends. She swears it never creates an awkward moment. Maybe not for her.

So, what with her being a forward thinker, I always considered it amusing that she had a bad habit of referring to her nondeceased mother in the past tense. She told me it helped her say nice things. For the longest time I actually thought her mother was dead.

And Elisabeth is one of those mothers who doesn't understand how important the basics of parenting are. Conventional mothering—things like discipline and social instruction—aren't relevant today, she claims. But in my view Danny, Cedric, and little Amelia are the reason more and more parents are deciding to homeschool their children.

My apartment door opened as I hid my last piece of valuable decor. Elisabeth never, ever knocked. I greeted her with a hug, looking behind her. No trailing children. “Where are the kids?”

“At my neighbor's,” she said, throwing her bag on my couch and looking around. “Leah, your place is so dull. It wouldn't kill you to have a nice crystal vase sitting around, you know. And I'm not a knickknack person, but in your case, I'd go for it.”

I laughed. I didn't want to, but it was one of those crazy, instant reactions, like gagging or swatting at a fly around your face. “Have a seat,” I said.

“Thanks.” She sat on the end of the couch and looked at me. “You look good. Vibrant. Life is treating you well?”

“It is.” I took a seat in my oversized leather chair, just catty-corner to Elisabeth, pushing the ottoman to the side.

Four weeks had passed since I'd talked to Elisabeth. I never could quite understand what it was that still drew me to her after all these years, but I'd finally decided it must be the familiarity of the older days. I hadn't seen those days in a long while, but they were vivid in my memory, and maybe I always hoped they would be back.

“How are the kids?”

I expected the usual answer, which consisted of detailed descriptions of each of their latest and greatest accomplishments, such as wiping their own bottoms or graduating from bottle to sippy cup. I waited, but then I realized she wasn't answering. She was staring. At my carpet. Then I expected a quip about how I should add more color to the living room and get rid of the grays. But she was still staring. I stared too. Was there a stain? A crumb? A faux pas of some other sort?

“We're all fine.” Dullness filled her voice, a tone that suggested exhaustion. And as I studied her, I found other signs. Dark circles that hadn't seen the light of day since her last child was a newborn. The top of her hair pulled back unevenly with a rubber band. Top-lip fuzz that could've used some bleaching cream. Though her children usually looked like extras in the cast of
Annie,
Elisabeth had always taken pride in appearing polished.

“Are you sure?”

“I read a review of your last play.”

I cringed.

“It wasn't bad.”

“It couldn't have been good.”

“Critics. What do they know?”

“The best way to make a playwright suicidal.”

“She actually said something good about it.”

I looked up. “Really?”

“She said had the dialogue been any more predictable, she might've signed up to be a psychic.”

I blinked. “That's not a compliment.”

“It's not?”

“Dialogue is not supposed to be predictable.”

Elisabeth frowned, staring at the carpet again. But then she raised a finger. “Wait. I know she said something good about it, because she used a word like
clinched
. It was clinching dialogue. That's good, right?”

“Are you sure she didn't say clichéd?”

Elisabeth looked blank.

“Was there an accent over the
e
?”

“Yes, but I thought she was just trying to be fancy. I could've sworn I saw an
n
in that word.”

Maybe the critic did say clinched, describing the way her jaw was set while she was watching it. I didn't ask, but I knew the woman was probably Dora Mendez, other-wise known around the theater community as Dora the Exploder. She had a tendency to take out her frustrations with her personal life on anything that came with a playbill.

“So what are you working on now?” Elisabeth asked. That was unusual. She was hardly ever interested in my plays. She would come to see them, more out of obligation than interest. That was actually one of the things that had drawn me to her in the first place. She was a nice vacation away from the relentlessly aesthetic theater world that I seemed to live in 24/7.

“It's a romantic comedy.”

“Oh! Like a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks kind of thing?”

Well, no. In fact, it was really more an antiromantic comedy. I was calling it a “romanti comedy,” leaving off the
c
in order to form the word
anti
. I thought this descriptor very clever until I discovered that it took a good ten minutes to explain it to everyone. And even then I'd get vague nods and hear whispering as people walked off.

In all actuality, Jodie Bellarusa, the main character, was about as close to a Meg Ryan type as Cher. She wasn't perky. She wasn't blonde. And she didn't like men who continued to be in romantic comedies long after they were considered adorable.

You're going to do it, aren't you? You're actually going to
nod your head. Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks—repulsive and com
pletely unrealistic. Look, you know I respect you. You created
me, after all, and who wouldn't respect their creator? But I have
to question this relationship sometimes. I mean, I've been in
some unhealthy relationships, thanks to you. But what good
is a relationship when you can't be real? That's what I've been
preaching since I came into existence! Forget the romance.
Forget the flowers. Let's all be real here! Be real!

“Sure. Wouldn't I be lucky to get Meg Ryan?” I lied.

“I'd kill for her curls. And her body. And her money.”

“Speaking of no curls, no body and, well, no money, I need your help. Your fashion help.”

That perked her up. “Oh?”

“I've got to go to this
thing
with Edward tonight. It's a semiformal outdoor dinner party, but the real challenge is the company I'll be keeping. Physicists. And some other scientist-types.”