Ex and the Single Girl Page 15

  I walked over to the fridge, pulled out a fresh bottle of chardonnay, and set it on the counter. I stared at it for a while and wondered. What if Peter had changed? What if the Mizzes were right? Or, more likely, what if resistance to all their machinations was futile?

  I grabbed the bottle of wine and my keys. Only one way to find out.

  “Hello?” I said, poking my head inside the front door. “Anybody home?”

  They were sitting at the kitchen table, playing Scrabble. I held up the bottle of wine and smiled, as if nothing was wrong. Two can play at that game.

  Peter stood up, walked over to me, and kissed me on the cheek.

  “I’m glad to see you,” he said.

  I smiled up at him. “Yeah. I brought wine.”

  Peter smiled. “Perfect.”

  Vera and Mags grinned up at me and waved me over to the table. Bev didn’t glare, which was a step up from the usual. Peter came out from the kitchen with a chair for me and they all cashed in their letters and mixed them up in the center, ready for a new game.

  “So,” Bev said, “to what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  I smiled brightly. I could be a Miz Fallon with the best of ’em. “Oh, I heard that Carl Raimi dropped the charges, and I thought I’d come over to celebrate.”

  Mags gasped. “He dropped the charges? Who told you that?”

  “Ian told me.” I piled up my letter tiles and avoided Peter’s eye as he poured my wine.

  “I see,” Bev said. “Well, that’s certainly good news.”

  “Yes,” Vera said, smiling at me and grabbing my hand. “It’s so good to have you home, baby.”

  “Good to be home,” I said with a smile, lifting my glass. “Now let’s get drunk and play us some Scrabble.”

  I was standing on the back porch smoking a cigarette when I heard the screen door open behind me. As a group, we’d finished off three games of Scrabble and four bottles of wine, and I was feeling good and lovely.

  It was Bev. She walked up behind me and took my cigarette from me, taking a long drag and handing it back.

  “Bev,” I said. “I thought Doctor Bobby told you—”

  “Of course Doctor Bobby told me not to smoke. He tells everybody not to smoke. I’m seventy-six, damnit, I’ll have a goddamn cigarette if I want one.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I shook my pack and offered her one. She looked over her shoulder to see if Mags and Vera were watching, then took it and lit up. We smoked in silence for a moment, and then she spoke.

  “Peter’s a nice young man.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He is.”

  “He’s doing very well at the store. He’s built us a nice window display. He’s good.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure he is.”

  “You should start coming in during the days again,” she said. “It’s not right for a young girl to be shiftless.”

  I was going to argue that I was working on my dissertation, but I wasn’t sure if opening the file and staring at the last sentence really qualified as “working,” so I let it go.

  “He’s a good man,” she said. I looked at her, and for the first time that summer, I saw Bev soften a bit toward me. “You could do worse.”

  “I know,” I said softly. The screen door opened and Bev shot her cigarette to the ground. I stepped on it inconspicuously as Peter stepped outside.

  “We’ve decided as a group that you’re too drunk to drive, Portia. So, I’ve volunteered to walk you home.”

  I smiled, took a final drag off my cigarette, and stepped forward. “I’ll get my jacket.”

  “Portia?” Peter asked. We’d gone halfway to the Page in silence. I knew he was working up to something.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “I was hoping that you might let me take you out to dinner. Sometime. Maybe Friday?”

  I thought about the dinner with Beauji’s parents. “How about Thursday?”

  “Okay.” We walked a few more steps.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Where are you taking me to dinner?”

  “Does it matter?”

  I shrugged. “Yes.”

  “I hear there’s a nice Italian place in Ringgold, Villa Pastoli.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Vera been helping you do more research?”

  “No. Why?”

  “That’s my favorite restaurant,” I said warily. “You didn’t find out from her?”

  He shook his head and looked down at his feet. “No, actually. I just remembered that Italian was always your favorite.” He met my eye. “I did pay attention to some things, you know.”

  “I know,” I said, too quickly.

  He paused for a minute. I wrapped my arms around my stomach as my chardonnay high started to wane.

  “We don’t have to go,” he said. “It’s not a big deal. I understand.”

  “No,” I said. “No. I’d like to go. Really.”

  He gave me a small smile. “Really? It’s okay? I don’t want to pressure you.”

  I smiled back. “No pressure. Should I meet you at the Mizzes’?”

  “No,” he said, giving me a wink. “Let me come pick you up.” The last time I’d let a man do that, it had turned into something of a disaster. But since Peter and I were pretty much steeped in disaster anyway, it seemed a reasonable gamble. “Okay.”

  He grinned. “Great. Thursday it is, then. Seven okay?”

  “Great.” I stepped up onto the steps below the apartment. “Thanks for walking me home.”

  He smiled. “No problem.”

  He paused for a second. “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  He turned around, took a few steps, then turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. A woman named Rhonda called for you. I guess she’s subletting your apartment?”

  “Rhonda. Yes,” I said, a vision of Rhonda floating to my mind. Blond. Mid-fifties. Secretary for the head of the English Department at Syracuse. Will go to embarrassing lengths not to end a sentence in a preposition. Recently left her husband, thus the sublet. “What did she want?”

  “I don’t know. Just said for you to call her.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Peter stood there for a minute, watching me, then said, “Okay, then. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  I smiled. “See you.”

  I watched him walk away, then leaned against the wall by the stairs, trying to focus my eyes on the stars over my head. He was a good-looking man, Peter. I had to give him that. And what harm could an innocent little dinner do? Nothing terribly significant could happen; I was coated in Penis Teflon, after all. Peter, Ian, and my father were all proof of that. As a matter of fact, I would have hardly been surprised if Peter was taking me out specifically for the purpose of retracting his proposal.

  I walked up the stairs and entered the house, horrified at the mess that was my living room. I picked up the trash can and headed for the coffee table where the overflowing ashtray and empty chardonnay bottles surrounding my untouched laptop told the story of how I’d spent the last few days. I picked up the ashtray and dumped it into the trash.

  “I’ll bet that’s exactly why he’s taking me out,” I said out loud, relief washing through me as I considered the idea of Peter taking it all back, saying he didn’t mean it, that he intended to run off to Boston and I should just forget he ever showed up here at all.

  I stood up straight, trash still in my hand, remembering how quickly he’d made his escape after our interlude the other night.

  Oh, my god.

  It was classic Peter; once things started going his way, he backed off. He’d done it with our relationship, he’d done it with the writing.

  And he was doing it again now. It made perfect sense. He was going to retract the proposal. I could feel it in my bones.

  “Bastard.” I swiped an empty bottle of chardonnay off the coffee table and into the trash can, trying to work up some anger. It didn’t come. I put the
trash by the door and wandered into my bedroom, falling asleep to thoughts of old flames and British Flyers.

  “How’s that eggplant?” Peter asked. I looked down at my plate. I’d had one small bite and was still chewing.

  “Mmmmm,” I said, swallowing. “And your lasagna?”

  Peter looked down at his plate. The lasagna was untouched. He sighed and looked up at me.

  “Portia, we need to talk.”

  I touched both sides of my mouth with my napkin and placed it to the side of my plate. Here we go.

  “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

  And there it was. Penis Teflon. Like magic. I should set up a sideshow act. Have a Web site with a live Web cam so people could watch it happen. For a small fee, of course. Turn Penis Teflon from a curse into the source of my livelihood. When life gives you lemons...

  “I rushed down here with this idea in my head that you’d be happy to have me back, and I see that isn’t the case.” He held his hands up to silence me before I could respond. “And that’s all right. It was unrealistic.” He sighed. “I’d just like to know that I haven’t messed everything up to the point where we can’t...be friends.”

  “It’s okay, Peter,” I said. “I understand. The ring is back at my apartment. You can pick it up tonight.” I picked up my fork and poked at my eggplant.

  He deflated and sat back. “So...that’s your decision?”

  I looked up from my plate. “What? No. That’s your decision.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

  “I’m sorry?

  He leaned forward. “I think you’ve misunderstood. I still want to marry you, if you’ll have me. My mistake was in the way I’ve gone about everything.”

  I felt the eggplant stick in my throat and I grabbed my water. “You mean, you didn’t take me out to dinner to retract your proposal?”

  Peter’s face fell. “Is that what you thought?”

  “Well...yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Well...” I stammered. “You disappeared pretty quick the other night. You know, after...”

  He blinked. “You asked me to leave. I gave you your space.”

  “By moving in with my family? By taking over the family business?”

  “Oh, man,” he said, reaching forward and taking my hand. “I’m sorry, Portia. I really am. I wasn’t trying to crowd you. I was trying to show you...” He trailed off and rubbed his hand over his face. “I’ve screwed this all up.”

  “No, it’s not that. I guess I just don’t understand.”

  I didn’t. He wasn’t dumping me. He was moving from Boston to be in Truly, Georgia, where he would be running a bookstore. None of it made any sense.

  “What about your writing?” I asked.

  He took a drink of his wine. “Well, obviously, I’m not the kind of writer who can live without a day job. And then your mother called, offering one—”

  “Offering me” I said, stabbing at my meal.

  He sighed. “It’s not like that, Portia.”

  I put my fork down. “What is it like, then? You tell me.” He put his fork down as well, and looked at me. “It’s like a life. It’s stable. A reliable income, a home. I couldn’t just live off you forever, writing and making you miserable.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Oh, come on, Portia. I knew I was making you unhappy. I was so absorbed in my writing. It was all about me and I didn’t...think about you enough, I guess. You were miserable. Did you think I couldn’t see that?”

  “See what?”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “I was a failure. You knew it. I knew it.”

  I felt my breath rush out of me. I knew that Peter had thought of himself as a failure. It never occurred to me that he thought I agreed.

  But he did.

  Peter put his fork down without taking a bite, then looked up on my silence. “Portia?”

  “Did I make you feel like a failure, Peter?”

  Peter shook his head. “No. No.”

  “Don’t be polite,” I said. “This is important. Did I make you feel like a failure?”

  Peter sat back. “You can’t make anyone feel anything, Portia. They have to choose to—”

  “Peter. Please.”

  Peter leaned forward and took my hand. His eyes were sad, and as I looked at them, it was like I’d never really seen them before.

  Maybe I hadn’t.

  “I know you didn’t mean to,” he said, his voice soft and conciliatory. “But you were right. I was a failure.”

  I pulled my hand away. “I never said you were a failure.” Peter shook his head. “No, of course not.” He paused, started speaking to his salad. “It’s just that...well, the fact that the book didn’t sell always seemed to bother you so much.”

  “Well, of course,” I jumped in. “It was a great book.”

  “Was it?” He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  I felt ice go down my back. “It was.”

  He sighed.

  “What?” I asked.

  He locked his eyes on my face. “When I got a great review, you never said a word. But whenever the sales numbers came in…”

  I blinked. I remembered going to the school computers, looking up his sales on Amazon.com, coming home incensed. I remembered reading the rave he got in Publishers Weekly and, instead of hailing his success, I ranted about the average reader’s inability to differentiate good writing from the crap scribbled on the bathroom wall at a college bar.

  I had thought I was being supportive.

  Peter rubbed his fingers against his forehead. “I just didn’t feel like I could do anything right. I felt myself pulling away. I felt you pulling away. And I loved you, but I didn’t know how to...”

  I swallowed, trying to get rid of the tightness in my throat. “How to what?”

  Peter looked up at me. His eyes were misty. “How to be with you, I guess. I didn’t know what you needed from me, and I was sure whatever it was I wouldn’t be able to give it to you.” He cleared his throat and blinked. “But I think I can now. And that’s why I’m here. I’m going to run your family’s bookstore here in Truly. And I hope you’ll be here with me.”

  Forever. That was the subtext. I swallowed and said nothing. Peter stared at his plate.

  “I don’t know if that’s what you want, Portia,” he said after a long silence. “But since it’s the only thing I haven’t tried, I’m going for it.”

  I managed to get through the rest of the dinner and a short, lips-only kiss at the front door before I freaked out. As soon as I had the door shut behind me, I grabbed a cigarette, lit up, and began to pace the floor of my apartment.

  I had made him feel like a failure.

  I had pushed him away.

  I had pushed him away.

  Yes, granted, he should have told me this before he left. And I’ll admit, scribbling a breakup into the front page of a book—especially his own—is seriously questionable behavior. But that stuff didn’t matter as much to me anymore. What mattered was the fact that I had been so full of my own helpless victimization that it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d contributed as much—if not more—to our breakup than he had.

  I wasn’t coated in Penis Teflon. I was Penis Teflon. Memories flooded in as I lit my next cigarette with the burning embers of my last one. Peter being so excited about getting published. Peter opening his box of advance copies and holding one out as if it were the Holy Grail. Peter saying that he didn’t care if it sold. Afterward, when he’d retreated into silent sulks and severe avoidance, I figured he had lied about not caring.

  But that wasn’t it.

  He cared that I cared.

  I’d made him feel like a failure.

  And I hadn’t even known I’d done it.

  I thought about Vera and Bridge. Mags and Jack. Bev and my grandfather, who had been mentioned so infrequently in my presence that I wasn’t even sure his name was Henry. What if Penis Teflon wasn’t a curse, or a chemical
thing, but rather a learned behavior? Something the Miz Fallons passed down from one generation to the next, without even realizing it?

  Without even realizing it. I hadn’t realized it. Maybe Vera hadn’t, either. Or Mags. Or Bev. Maybe we’d all learned it from each other, each of us reinforcing the behavior in each other. Invasion of the Common Sense Snatchers.

  “If that’s the case,” I said, pointing my cigarette out between my fingers and jabbing it in the air at no one, “then we can unlearn it.”

  I giggled as I pressed the cigarette down in the ashtray. My heart was jerking around in my rib cage, fueled by adrenaline and fear and not a little nicotine, but mostly by hope.

  I stood up and took in a deep breath.

  Hope. It was like a bright shaft of light illuminating dusty corners of my mind I’d never bothered to look for.

  Hope. There was hope.

  I grabbed my jacket and slammed the door behind me, rushing down the stairs to get into the Page, where I planned to call the Mizzes for an emergency family meeting.

  Chapter Ten

  “Thanks for coming over so quickly,” I said, picking up two mugs of coffee to hand to the Mizzes, who sat in the easy chairs circling the coffee bar at the Page. The shop was closed and lit only by the streetlights outside the front window, but none of us made a move to turn on the indoor lights.

  Bev frowned and kept her hands in her lap, refusing the coffee I offered. Vera clasped her hands around her mug as her elbows rested on her knees, an expression of deep concentration on her face as she watched me. Mags smiled her typical enthusiastic smile, accepting the coffee I offered even though I knew she had no intention of actually drinking it.

  Okay. I inhaled deeply and dove in.

  “Look, I have something I need to talk to you guys about. Something important.”

  I leaned my backside against the coffee bar, my fingers grasping the edge of the counter behind me. “I think I’ve figured out the Penis Teflon.”

  Bev’s eyes narrowed at me. “The what}”

  “Penis Teflon,” Mags said.

  “You know, how men don’t stick to Miz Fallons,” Vera said. “Portia calls it Penis Teflon.”

  “It’s not important what it’s called,” I said, keeping my eyes on Bev, who was hands down my toughest customer. “What’s important is that I think I’ve figured it out. But I need your help.” The Mizzes stared at me, saying nothing. I pulled a bar stool closer to them and sat, leaning forward, talking with my hands, hoping my enthusiasm would spark some in them.