Nancy nodded in understanding. “May I ask you another question?” she said after a few seconds of silence.
“Sure. What?”
“Why did you call me?”
“Why did I call you in particular, or why did I ask you to join me for dinner?”
“Both.”
I took another sip of my drink and watched the ice make tiny eddies in the amber liquor as I tried to think of an answer to her question.
“I don’t know why I called you,” I finally said, still staring into my glass. “I really don’t. I just saw your name on that blood donor list…”
I looked up at her, and our eyes met. “…and something told me I should call you. I know that was totally inappropriate, not the right thing to do at all, but…”
Without intending to, I sighed.
“As to why I asked you to join me for dinner…the truth is, I didn’t mean to. That wasn’t my intent when I called you. Then I heard your voice, and the next thing I knew, I was asking you out. But that doesn’t answer your question as to why, does it? I guess the answer is I needed…need…someone to talk to. Someone who isn’t affected by my wife’s death. Someone who’s not emotionally involved. I can’t talk to my folks because, quite frankly, they’re wrecks. I can’t talk to my friends because they’re too caught up in the whole situation and have their own issues to deal with. And I can’t talk to co-workers because I have none in the usual sense. I’m the boss’s son.” I waited a second before continuing. “I don’t know why I thought I could talk to you. But I think I was right.”
Nancy took a sip of her drink. “I almost cancelled,” she said.
I smiled sadly. “I’m not surprised. Why?”
“A lot of reasons. First…” she hesitated before continuing. “First, your wife died two weeks ago. And I said to myself, this is just not right. I don’t know why John Herbert is calling me or what he expects from me, but no one should be doing what he’s doing. No one. And I certainly shouldn’t be part of it. Then I thought about how much older you are. And I wondered how I could possibly talk to you.” She shrugged and looked down at her drink. “I guess I didn’t feel experienced enough or mature enough. I don’t know. I was just terrified I’d sit here and not know what to say.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Because I felt so bad for you. And because I knew you were a nice guy.” She stopped and gave me a little smile. “And because something told me I should,” she continued. “Like what you said. I knew this wasn’t right, but something wouldn’t let me cancel. Something told me this was…okay. Even if it didn’t seem okay.”
I started to take another sip of my drink but realized my glass was empty. “And what about now?” I asked. I looked at my watch. “I realize we’ve only been together for an hour, but what about now? Are you glad you came?”
Nancy looked at me thoughtfully before answering. “Yes,” she finally said. “I’m glad I came. And I’m not terrified anymore.”
We looked at each other, and as we did, different feelings washed over me, one after another, all in the space of those few seconds. Happiness first when I realized how much I was enjoying being with this woman, then contentment at how comfortable I felt with her even though I barely knew her, followed by guilt because I knew I shouldn’t be feeling either of those things—and culminating in sadness, a deep, deep sadness, because the good feelings of a moment ago had just been shattered.
But I was experiencing something else, I realized. A sense of being out of place. A sense of inappropriateness, for lack of a better word. I didn’t belong here tonight. I belonged home with my kids.
“Would you like another drink?” I asked, anxious to move away from where my thoughts were taking me.
“Please,” Nancy replied, finishing the Tom Collins in front of her with two long swallows.
I caught our waiter’s eye and signaled him to bring us another round.
Nancy leaned back in her chair with her hands in her lap. “You mentioned before you were the boss’s son. What do you do?”
“I work in a family-owned manufacturing company called Herbert Products. We make equipment for the printing industry. Accessory equipment. I’ve worked there twelve years now.”
“Is it a big company?”
“No. Not really. We employ seventy, seventy-five people.”
“That’s big. Big to me, anyway. What’s your position there?”
“Well, my father’s president of the firm; I’m executive vice president. I manage new product introductions, pricing, product design. I work with our sales force and our VP of sales. I handle our advertising, marketing, trade shows. And I get involved a lot with customer service.”
“Do you like your job?”
“I do. Like you, I’m not doing what I thought I’d be doing with my life, but I enjoy my work.”
“Now it’s my turn to ask you,” Nancy said. “What did you expect to be doing?”
“I was going to be a doctor. A surgeon. At least that was the plan when I went to college. But my grades weren’t good enough to get me into medical school. So, when the last rejection came in from the last school, I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be a doctor and went to work for my father while I waited to be drafted and sent to Viet Nam. Which didn’t happen, thank God, but that’s another story.”
“Tell me about your children. Jennie and…?”
“John.”
“That’s right. John. The Tom Collins must be hitting bottom.”
“Well…what can I say? They’re both great little kids, but completely different from one another. John’s nine months old and always has this great big smile on his face. He’s the happiest little guy you can imagine and needs almost no attention from anyone. Plop him down; he’ll find something to amuse himself with. And Jennie…” I smiled at the thought of Jennie. “Jennie’s the most beautiful little girl in the world. Everyone says that. And she’s my angel. But she’s very serious and very grown up, even though she just turned three. So on the one hand, I have my happy-go-lucky little guy; and on the other hand, I have my very serious, very grown-up china doll. Quite a combination.”
I thought about the kids, at home tonight with their grandmother and grandfather, and that made me think again about where I was. I needed to change the topic.
“So, let’s get back to you,” I said more abruptly than I’d intended. “What made you leave college, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind. I’m just a little sensitive about not having finished.”
“Why didn’t you?” I pressed.
“A couple of reasons. I guess number one was that I was an A student in high school. I was on the honor roll all four years, in the Honor Society, graduated thirty-third in a class of six hundred ten. So I thought I was pretty smart. Then I went to Lebanon Valley College and started getting C’s and D’s for the first time in my life. In my major, no less. I felt like a total failure.”
She stopped talking for a moment and looked past me, a faraway look in her eye. “Reason number two was…my family was in turmoil. My father had dreamed all his life of owning his own business, and when I was a junior in high school, he quit his job of thirty years as a salesman for a restaurant equipment manufacturer and used his life savings to buy a convenience store up in Swan Lake, New York. Near Liberty. Without ever telling my mother, I might add, until the night he came home to announce he was now in business for himself.”
She shook her head sadly. “Looking back, it was the dumbest thing he ever could have done. Swan Lake, that whole area, is a vacation spot for orthodox Jews from New York City. And here was my dad, as Norwegian as Leif Erickson, trying to make a living running a kosher delicatessen serving orthodox Jews on their vacations. Anyway, he couldn’t run it all by himself during the summer vacation months, so for four years my mother, my brother and I spent our summers working eighteen-hour days, trying to help him keep it afloat.
“But finally, after four years and a horrible fourth summer, he admitted defeat and gave up. Gave up, locked the door and came home to Huntington. Never tried to sell the business. Just emptied the shelves of everything we might be able to use at home and walked away. He lost every cent he paid for it—which was everything he had. So here I was, at home at the end of summer vacation, about to start my junior year, still feeling like a total academic failure, not sure I still wanted to be a veterinarian; and here my family was, almost broke, my father without a job. So I decided not to go back to college. Decided I needed to step back. Reassess my goals. I knew I hadn’t been happy at Lebanon Valley, but I didn’t know what other direction to follow.
“So I took out a loan—my parents were in no financial shape to help me anymore—and I enrolled at Katharine Gibbs as a kind of stepping stone. I figured at least I’d be able to find work while I tried to sort out what I wanted to do with my life. And things worked out. Even at the ripe old age of twenty, I knew happiness doesn’t just come to you. You have to go out and find it.”
“And you liked Katharine Gibbs?”
Nancy nodded enthusiastically and smiled. “Oh, yeah. I was a round peg in a round hole. I loved every minute, and what other girls struggled with, I breezed through. Effortlessly. I graduated number one in my class, and as I said before, I went into Manhattan for my first job interview—at
National Geographic
—the day after I graduated. When they saw my skill levels, they offered me the job right then and there and asked if I could start the next day. I’d already fallen in love with Manhattan, so I said yes. And I’m still there, and I still love it.”
“That’s great,” I said. “I mean it. That’s really cool. And I liked what you said about happiness not coming to you—that you have to go find it. A lot of truth in that.”
Nancy didn’t reply. She just twirled her straw in her drink and smiled. Sadly, I thought.
“I’m surprised you were free tonight,” I said after a few moments of silence.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
I had intended my statement to be an indirect compliment, but something told me Nancy hadn’t taken it that way.
“Well, you know. I called you Thursday afternoon, and this is a three-day weekend. I was just surprised you didn’t already have a date for tonight.”
“Why would that have surprised you?”
“I would have assumed you were involved with someone,” I answered, knowing that wasn’t the right thing to say either as soon as I said it.
“Why?” Nancy asked.
I chuckled, realizing I was getting in deeper with every word, and tried to figure out how to answer her without making things worse again.
“You’re a very attractive young woman,” I said, “and I would have thought there was someone special in your life.”
“Well, there isn’t,” Nancy replied flatly.
“Kind of between involvements?”
“No. Not between involvements. More like I’ve never been involved. With anyone. Not seriously, at least.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, it’s the truth. Every guy I’ve ever gone out with turned out to be a jerk before the evening was over. So I haven’t had many opportunities to go out with someone more than once. Which means you’re talking to someone who’s never had a serious relationship with anyone and who, truth be known, has no experience with men whatsoever.”
By the time Nancy had finished talking, she was almost whispering. She took another sip of her drink and looked over at me. “I don’t believe I just told you that,” she said shaking her head in embarrassment.
“Me neither,” I replied.
We sat quietly for several seconds, both of us looking into our drinks, each of us wondering whether we should continue this line of conversation or drop it entirely. But before either of us could make up our minds, our waiter appeared to take our order for dinner.
We talked through our appetizers, our entrees and over espressos until Caminari’s was empty, and it was time to take Nancy home. I asked for our check, and Nancy went to the ladies’ room. While I waited for her, I found myself thinking about how surreal the evening had been. I felt married, but I wasn’t. I had little kids to take care of, and I wanted to be home with them, but I wasn’t. In one sense, I didn’t want to be here at all, but I was. I couldn’t deny the evening had been fun, but it had been wrong. Waiting for Nancy to come back to the table, I felt like I was seeing another woman. Like I was cheating on my wife. I felt guilty about that and guilty at the thought of how much I had enjoyed talking to Nancy and listening to her—guilty at the thought of how I had enjoyed being able to forget, if only for a few hours, what my life had become.
We left Caminari’s at nine forty-five. Hardly anyone else was on the road in spite of the relatively early hour, which made the ride back to Nancy’s apartment strangely peaceful. Streetlights in this area were few and far between, usually appearing only at the occasional intersection, so most of the time we sat in darkness except for the light from the dashboard. Again, the interior of the car was filled with the smell of Nancy—the smell of soap and shampoo and perfume. She smelled wonderful. Intoxicating.
We were on a particularly dark stretch of road, one without any streetlights for over a mile, when I reached across the seat and took Nancy’s hand. I had only intended to hold her hand, but as soon as I felt the warmth and softness of her skin, the need to be more intimate with her became irresistible. I could not sit in the dark with her like that, feeling her presence next to me, and not do something more. So without thinking I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the tips of each of her fingers. Then I parted my lips and ran my tongue first around the tips of her fingers, then down the sides of her fingers and finally down to the web of skin between her fingers. I felt her body stiffen, and I felt her eyes on me. But she didn’t pull back her hand, and I kept running my tongue up and down and between her fingers while I stared at the road ahead. As we approached a streetlight, I dried her fingers with a few kisses and brought her hand back down to the seat beside me.
Nancy stared at me as pale yellow light momentarily filled the interior of the car. “Well,” she said. “That was quite something. Although I’m not sure what it was.”
I glanced over at her in the fading light of the street lamp, now behind us. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”