“Will do. Lynne, will you take leftovers?”
“Thank you, but no,” Lynne says, patting her flat stomach. “I don’t dare.” Which isn’t surprising; she barely dared during the meal.
Lynne and I get up from the table and go into the living room to sit on the couch.
“I assume they don’t know about the bet,” Lynne says.
“It hasn’t come up.” Because I haven’t brought it up. It would be the central focus of every conversation; they’d both be trying to help and support and encourage and advise, which is so lovely and sweet, but I’m just not up for it. It’s all plenty at the moment, and I don’t need a cheering section, at least not yet.
“Well, I’m proud of you,” Lynne says in a serious tone. “Really, El, super proud. I know the dating thing is hard for you, and the whole social thing was never your jam, but you’ve embraced it all, and I think that shows some serious backbone.”
“Thank you.” I’m sort of startled by the intensity of her statement. “I figure go big or go home, right?”
“Right, but look, I mean, I know we had a lot of years go by, but I was always in your corner, you know? I feel bad that you went through a bunch of crap and handled it alone. Made me have to think about my own stuff, you know, my baggage. I know I’m not the warmest, the fuzziest, but when I heard that you came back from Europe, that your dad died, that you were here and suffering and struggling and you didn’t reach out, that was a wake-up for me in a way, you know? Like, it is one thing to be tough, to be independent, to be confident, but it is something else to not be the person someone reaches out to when they are in the shit.”
I feel bad. She thinks that it was some flaw in her that made me not reach out, like maybe I didn’t think she would be good support for me, and now I feel bad for having been thinking ill of her earlier. “Look, Lynne, I didn’t reach out to anyone. You might not be the cushiest place to land, but Teresa couldn’t be more of a nurturer, and I didn’t call her either. I felt shitty that I had let so much time go by, and it seemed even shittier to come back and reach out because I needed something. What could I say? Hi! It’s been over a decade since I bothered to be in touch, but I’ve moved home from Europe, my asshole boyfriend dumped me, and my dad is dying, so maybe you could be focused on being nice to me! I didn’t have the energy to even think about finding something for myself. My sole focus was on my dad and my mom and Claire, who had barely gotten her head above water from losing her husband and now was losing her brother, and then finding a job and trying the whole time to get over Bernard. Trite as it is, it wasn’t you, it was me.”
She nods and looks me in the face. “Well, never again, okay? We have each other’s back. I do not have time or energy to train up a bunch of new bitches to put up with my sorry ass.”
I shake my head and laugh. “Deal. You met with the matchmaker yet?”
“I interviewed two that I didn’t love, but at least one of them signed on as a client, so it wasn’t all bad. I’ve got another meeting this week.”
Only Lynne would go to interview a possible matchmaker and land a new client. She’s a wonder. “That’s cool. Was it really so simple, your divorce?”
“Is it ever?” Lynne sighs. “I dunno. I thought marriage was a box I would check appropriately when the right guy came along, and he seemed like the right guy. When it turned out I was wrong, that we were wrong, I needed to uncheck the box. Which is both simple and complicated. Simple in action, complicated in emotion. I don’t think of it as a failure, per se, but it does feel like, I don’t know, a black mark. It’s on my permanent record. It doesn’t embarrass me, but it does bother me a bit.”
I reach over and squeeze her hand, understanding what she means. My mom comes in with two mugs of tea for us. We sip the hot, sweet beverages and shift talk to Teresa, who requested that we adjust her bet list to accommodate her injury, realizing that until she was more mobile, a lot of her items would fall by the wayside. We said she could take her financial class online; have a reduction on the number of things she had to do in the spicing-up-her-marriage and finding-a-part-time-job departments; and meanwhile focus on researching the non-Italian foods she wants to learn to cook and do volunteer stuff that can be done at home. Apparently next week she is stuffing envelopes for her neighborhood association fund-raiser, and she’s signed herself up at Antony’s school to manage the phone tree for the whole seventh grade. By the time our tea is finished, my mom and Claire come out with a huge bag of leftovers for me and a small one for Lynne.
“We just put in white meat turkey and cranberry sauce and Brussels sprouts and some of the sweet potatoes, and a couple of rolls. None of the really unhealthy stuff.” Aunt Claire winks at Lynne. “You have to have leftovers from Thanksgiving, otherwise it’s un-American.”
“You get the works,” my mom says, handing me a bag that weighs roughly forty pounds.
There are kisses and hugs all around, and a promise to come back to visit from Lynne. I kiss her good-bye, then claim the need to pee before leaving, and sneak off to the bathroom to text Shawn.
Just gearing up to leave my mom’s house, should be home in about 10 minutes.
By the time I’m washing my hands my phone pings.
On my way! See you in 20.
Suddenly the butterflies, which had been somewhat distracted by good food and good wine and conversation, are back with a vengeance. I look in the mirror. I think about what Lynne would say if she knew what I was about to do. I can hear her voice in my head.
“You’ve got this. You are a badass. He is a nice man. He is a good person. He is goddamned fine as hell. Go get him and change the color of his sky.”
And she’s right, of course.
Lynne always is, just ask her.
So let’s do this.
? ? ?
Good girl,” Shawn says to Simca, unhooking her leash. We’ve had a great long walk, exploring the neighborhood and talking about Thanksgiving and family and memories and food. The evening is actually beautiful, crisp but not horribly cold and with minimal wind.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I ask, pulling off my coat and hanging it on the rack by the door.
“Sure, what are you thinking?”
“I was thinking maybe calvados. It’s good for settling the stomach.”