A New Lu (8 page)

My stomach gurgles. I'm hungry.

I turn into the doorway of the appropriately named sandwich shop, the Paradise, and bump into a crowd of toned and tanned weekenders just leaving. Good, I think. I'm in no mood for reminders of home, and obligations at Rodrigo's. No yogurt today. I need real eggs and cream and sugar consolation.

Sometimes the rain just keeps falling. There at the back table is Dr. Templeton in earnest conversation with a beautiful younger woman. Not cute. Beautiful. She's leaning across the table toward him, a ribbon of shiny black hair flows down her back to touch the seat behind her. She's slim and exotically dark, and she's gripping his outstretched hand for all she's worth. They wear identical intense expressions. This is love, if I've ever seen it.

Bloody hell.

10

Slipping into a chair near the front, I am annoyed with myself for being annoyed. Why should I expect Dr. Templeton to be different from any other free, good-looking, disposable-income male? She's quite lovely, really. Even if she does appear to be Dallas's age.

It's a slow moment in the afternoon. The waiter comes right over. Rather, he makes his way in a leisurely I'm-just-doing-this-until-my-real-life-comes-along pace.

“Chocolate malt, heavy on the syrup.” Sleeping doesn't seem to be a problem these days, caffeine or no. Besides, I'm still reeling from my appointment with Dr. Feelbad. Doctors are springing up in my life like weeds, irritating and uninvited.

No, I won't even glance at them again. This is the Hamptons. Young things and older males are so commonplace it's boring. It's the beginning of a warm spring weekend. Sure, that's it. She's just out from the city. That's why the Marvelous Matrons didn't know about her. She
was under their radar, not likely to walk through his office door, except to bring in Grandma.

I'm still obsessing when the waiter returns with what passes in my world these days for a stiff drink. At least the straw stands up in it.

But then the words of Dr. Reynolds come back to me. “You know the odds against a women of your age delivering a normal child?” Yes, I do.

“Excuse me!” I lift a hand to bring back the slim young man who'd begun to drift away. He pivots, heel and toe. A model, I don't even have to ask. I hold out the malt. “This really isn't what I want.”

He doesn't touch it. “You ordered it.”

“I'll pay for it. Just bring me a banana split. Pineapple, strawberry and caramel toppings.” I'm giving up—alas!—chocolate.

He takes the malt between two fingers, as if it's contaminated.

I pull out the scanned picture of my little stranger. It's still the photo of a shrimp, but my heart swells three times in size. “We're in this together,” I say to the grainy rendering. “You better get used to regular food, though. Okay?”

“Well, hello.”

Sometimes the heart pounds for other reasons. Standing over me are Dr. Templeton and his sweet young thing. He smiles easily. “I thought that was you.”

No need to lie. “Hi. I didn't want to disturb you.”

My gaze moves casually to the young woman. Could be I'm supersensitive, but I spot in a second what could not be noticed while she was seated. This chick is pregnant. Four months at least.
Ooo-kay.
No wonder he had sympathy for me.

He puts an arm protectively around her shoulders, for the second thing I notice is that she has been crying. “I'd like you to meet someone special to me.”

I smile, but my eyes say, you old dog!

“This is Jolie Katz, my daughter.”

The shoe has dropped, squarely on my dumb-ditty-dumb-dumb head. I rise as if I've been introduced to royalty. “I'm Lu Nichols. So glad to meet you.”

Her hand is cool, her touch gentle but not unfriendly. “Hi. Dad says you are a friend of his.”

Does he? The look I cast him causes the most amazing thing. A blush! Or something like it. His naturally tanned skin deepens a shade.

“Jolie's not feeling so well today,” he says. “She's expecting.”

“Oh, may I?” She's noticed my sonogram picture lying on the tabletop.

“Yes, sure.” I hand it to her.

“This is yours?” The question carries no pejorative sting.

“As a matter of fact, yes. Remarkable, huh?”

“Oh, no. My aunt just had her seventh, and she's probably older. She's forty five.”

I like this girl. “Wow. Seven. But this is your first.”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations. I hope it all goes well.”

She pales and bites her lip. I've struck a nerve I didn't know was exposed.

Realizing we've hit an impasse, Dr. Templeton says, “I'll call you later, Jolie. You've got a key. Just make yourself at home. We'll sort it out when I come by.”

She smiles and nods, says goodbye to me and adds, “I hope things go well for you, too. It's a darling picture.”

Instead of following her out, Dr. Templeton indicates the chair next to mine. “Mind if I…?”

“Please.” Yes, as a matter of fact I am.
Very pleased.

“What brings you back to town?” He frowns. “Mrs. Harrington is well, I hope?”

“Doing Broadway with her friends this weekend.”

He smiles and nods as the waiter sets my banana split down in front of me. “That sounds like fun.”

I grin and dig in. I'd be lying if I said it didn't cross my mind that I might run into him. Lying if I said I wasn't hoping to. But now that he's here, big as life in a black windbreaker and khakis, I don't know what to say.

He orders bottled water with lime, which means he's planning to stay awhile. Then he reaches for my sonogram shot and looks at it, smiling. “Just when a parent thinks all his problems are over, reality sets in. Jolie's four and a half months pregnant.”

“That was my guess.”

“Problem is, she's just walked out on her husband.” His sighs are like everything else about him, big and deep. “She found out he was fooling around. Packed a bag and here she is, without warning.”

“You going to kill him for her?” I'm only mildly joking, but the look on Jolie's father's face is dangerously serious.

“I'd like to bust his head wide open,” he answers, then shrugs. “But she loves him.”

I nod and continue consuming ice cream.

“Ever since my wife died, I've been at a loss with Jolie. This business of being both parents to a child, even a married one, is hard. She needs a mother's touch, a woman's point of view on this one. I tend to want to throw things and curse.”

“Do you?” This could be useful information.

He laughs. “I take it to the gym.”

“So what did you say to her?”

“I told her she's pregnant. She's got to think of the baby. A baby needs a father. Jon's an ass but I think her reaction, packing up and driving out here, is a bit extreme. She says it's never happened before.”

“Hmm.”

“I'm trying to be supportive, but I think she's overreacting to a one-time transgression.”

“So says a man.”

He looks up from the lime he's been squeezing into his water. “You think she's right?”

“It's none of my business, okay?” I grin as his face goes blank. “You still want my opinion?”

He relaxes and nods.

“I think if your daughter's unhappy now, it will probably get worse. Men tend to exhibit their true natures early. She's pregnant, a very vulnerable time for a young woman. And hubby's catting around. I can't imagine a worse time for that to happen. She may be doing the right thing, leaving now instead of later, after more damage has been done to her sense of self-worth.”

He's staring at me, listening with that big-head intensity of his. Embarrassed, I shrug. “But what do I know? I can't even give my own daughter advice that she will listen to. She's so wrapped up in her wedding. I don't think she's thinking one minute past the honeymoon. That worries me. Stephen's a nice guy. But from what I've seen, he's a simple person. Dallas is about as complicated as women get. He won't ever want her to change, and she hasn't even finished growing up yet. She needs to think about how to cope with the future, not how many forks to use at the reception.”

“Like Jon and Jolie!” He wags his head. “Always did sound more like a road movie than a marriage. Jon's a local kid. I don't mind that, believe me. But Jolie's mother reared her to expect the best of everything. They met a couple of summers ago, when Jolie was home from college. Linda never approved of Jon, who was struggling to make a go of his computer service business in Sayreville. When Linda didn't approve of something or someone, she had a way of undermining things so that doubt would creep in, even when you were sure you were right.”

The man is talking to me, really talking. And he hasn't
asked me a thing about myself or my situation. I'm flattered, and relieved.

“Maybe, in this instance, she saw something you didn't. About Jon, I mean. They say a woman goes into marriage with the idea of improving her spouse.” He groans at this. “And a man marries what he wants, and doesn't want that to change.” This time he grunts. “I suspect that the bigger problem in a marriage is the second one. Not changing is much harder than changing. It's impossible.”

He reaches for the photo again, then looks up at me. “Is that what happened to you?”

He means Jacob, no doubt. “A version of that.”

He nods. “So, everything all right?” He taps the picture with a finger.

“Depends on who you ask.” I tell him briefly of my doctor visit. I'm very circumspect because I expect him to vouch for a colleague's expertise, especially a local one. Birds of a feather, it happens in every profession.

“Crap!” he says at the end of my recitation. “You have just as good a chance of carrying this pregnancy to term as a woman in her thirties. Better than a first-time mother in her late thirties. That's because you've had two successful pregnancies. And this was a natural conception, no drugs or procedures involved. You've nearly completed the first trimester, usually the most dangerous time. Of course, you'll need to be screened for a few things. That's standard these days.”

My eyes fill. I can't believe how grateful I am to hear these words from him. But I'm not going to make rain on him again. I sniff so long and hard I can feel air entering my tear ducts. “That's only part of my concern. My child will have a grandparent for a mother, if I live that long.”

“I predict you'll live to see this child marry. But what if you don't?” He folds his arms on the table and leans forward. “My father died when I was ten. Jolie's mother
is gone. Hell, how many children survive divorce, desertion or single parenthood? At least you are willing to be there as long as possible. That's all the probability anyone gets.”

“That's just it. If something should happen to me in the next eighteen years, my child won't have anyone.”

“Your husband?”

I know what he's asking, but I also know how I feel. “I don't have a husband.”

He stares at me a long time. Just stares. I can't tell what he's thinking or what he's not saying. Then he says, “You won't be alone for long.”

It's the kind of trite statement everyone says to someone who's divorced or widowed, after a decent interval. It's meant to be a pat on the back. Somehow, in his deliberate tone, it doesn't have that hearty quality to it. It sounds like an oracle's pronouncement. The hairs on my arms actually stirred when he spoke.
You won't be alone for long…unless you choose to be.

I shouldn't let him know how he gets to me. I smile. “I guess that's true, since I'm subletting even as we speak.”

His bark of laughter is bright and sharp, like a woodpecker's cry, and higher in register than his speaking voice. His amusement quickly descends into deep chuckles in his chest. I like this man!

“You want something else?” The waiter has returned.

I glance at my dish. Where did all that ice cream go?

“You can't want more?” Dr. Templeton is looking at me with a mixture of humor and astonishment. “Tell you what, I'll pay for that one if you'll take a walk with me.”

We start out at the harbor. While it's only May the yachts have begun to arrive. Sleek numbers, some with sails, that one can imagine owning if only in a dream life. A few remind me of the saying about “having more dollars than sense.” On the water it's mild even in the sun,
yet the decks of the yachts are dotted with the requisite babes in thongs. From rap artists to movie moguls, the world of the latest-model filthy rich has changed the vacation face of eastern Long Island. I can't decide if it's poetic justice for the shunning of everything not Anglo-Saxon for so long, or just a dirty damn shame that the harbors are polluted, the dunes eroding and that vast stretches of sea grasses are mowed into suburban lawns sprouting steroidal houses. If you demand access to everything you have in the city, what's the point of leaving it?

Mostly this is just fodder for the chat between us. He checks his beeper a couple of times. Once he even apologizes for having to make a call. Even on his day off, the doctor is always in.

I'm calling him William by the time we decide to slip off our shoes to walk up the beach, away from the noise of town. Near the water's edge there's more of life, and less of lives. I have to explain the origin of Lu to him, but it doesn't feel like a drag this time. Maybe because he asks, what few ever do, how I felt about the name. How, if at all, it's shaped my life. Not even Jacob thought of that question.

“I tried to call you.” William interjects this into the short silence of our stroll.

He keeps surprising me. “I didn't get any messages.”

“That's because I didn't leave any.”

“I see.” I suppose, since I was such a wreck in his office, he wondered if I'd made it back home in one piece. His call was probably an extension of his bedside manner. But the thought that he called appeals, I must admit.

He bumps my shoulder with his and, when he has my attention, says sheepishly, “I didn't know what I was going to say until I heard your voice.”

That's a compliment, I tell myself. He was unsure of himself. And now, not afraid to reveal that.

“So, here I am.” The laughter in my voice betrays my giddy pulse rate.

“Yes. Here you are.” He takes my hand. I'm thinking
how romantic is this guy?
until he pulls me to a halt with “Watch out for the jellyfish. That kind stings.”

There on the sand one stride ahead of my bare feet are the gelatinous remains of whatever earlier washed up on shore. I gingerly step around it.