An Available Man (32 page)

“You’re in love!” Amanda shrieked. Even the baby must have taken that in.

“Yes,” he admitted gladly, “I’m in love.”

“Is she the one who sent her picture?” He looked at her blankly and she said, “
You
know. That pharmacist’s widow in Hoboken, the perfumed letter?”

Dating after death
. “Oh, no,” he said. “No. She’s not one of the women I met through the ad.”

Amanda sank back a little against the sofa cushions.

“But the ad got me out there again, back into the social whirl,” Edward told her, remembering how it had almost turned him into a hermit, but she seemed appeased.

“Well, this is
thrilling
,” she said. “Tell us all about her. How did you meet? What does she look like? What does she do? What’s her name?”

“Manda, you sound like the police,” Nick said. “Give him a chance to answer.”

“Her name is Ollie, Olga, actually. Olga Nemerov. I met her …”

Here Edward faltered. Did their first meeting at the Morgansterns’ count? It was so long ago, preceding the ad by months, and such a disaster. “We met at the Cloisters,” he said, picturing
The Unicorn in Captivity
, prancing and so lightly tethered. And he remembered Ollie feeding crumbs from her sandwich to the birds, taking off her glasses to look at the garden. It sounded like the absolute truth.

“God, that’s such a romantic place. We should go there,” Amanda said to Nick, who put one arm around her, his other hand splayed across her belly, as if he were about to dribble it across the court and shoot for a basket.

Edward described Ollie to them—her reddish spiked hair, her small frame and articulate, unadorned hands—what he’d come to think of as her accidental beauty. He talked about her ironic charm, and tried to explain her work and how honored she felt to have those precious relics in her care. Edward thought of all that he’d left out. Laurel, especially. But he hadn’t intended to tell them the whole complicated story, just to announce his new status as part of a couple. He’d come alone to do it, just as he’d come alone to tell them about Bee’s illness, the beginning of his uncoupling.

Back then, he’d given them the bad news and tried to deflect and absorb some of their grief. This time he sought their approval, their acceptance of his newfound happiness. And how easily that was obtained. Maybe it was because their own happiness
was so fulfilling and preoccupying: their love for each other and for their baby, with its developing brain and limbs and personality; the house they were avidly decorating; their life together stretched out before them like a gloriously lush field.

If Nick had any sense of disloyalty to his mother, he kept it to himself. But Edward felt bound to bring Bee up. How could he not? He had been her husband and these were her children. “This doesn’t undo my love for Mom,” he said. “I’m not replacing her. She’s irreplaceable. I’m just starting out again.” And he thought of that novel,
Starting Out in the Evening
, that Bee had kept reading to him.

“We know that,” Nick said. Tears stood in his eyes. He jumped up from his seat beside Amanda and threw his arms around Edward. “This is such great news, man,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “We wish you the best.”

“The best,” Amanda echoed. “And I’ll hug you, too, Dad, as soon as somebody gives me a hand up.”

Julie would be even easier. Edward had already told her something about Laurel, after being forced into it by her phone call to Julie, which Julie had blown up into some grand, reality-show-based fairy tale. Later, when he said that he’d been seeing Laurel more frequently, she’d seemed pleased, and eager to meet her. She had even suggested they double-date! Maybe she’d be disappointed to discover his new love was someone else entirely, but it was the matter of his loneliness that had mostly concerned her. What had she said, so dolefully, after Bingo died?
Poppy
,
now you’re all alone
.

And he believed that she would like Ollie, that she would find her as witty and smart as he did. And, in due course, as dear, too. It was Gladys he didn’t want to think about. He shrank from sharing his news with her almost as much as he’d resisted telling
her about her only child’s fatal illness. Maybe Julie, who was so close to her grandmother, would advise him on how to approach her.

But he was going to take it one step at a time. After he left Nick and Amanda’s, he drove into the city to meet Julie for supper. This was the first Saturday in more than a month that he hadn’t spent with Olga, but he would see her later, stay over at her apartment that night. He had told her that he was informing his stepchildren that he’d fallen in love. “That sounds a little tricky,” she said.

“Not really,” he’d assured her. “They tried to fix me up way before I was ready. They’re really great kids.”

“Yes,” she said, “but they still might think of me as an interloper. You’ve been a family for such a long time.”

“You’ll fit right in, trust me,” he said, thinking:
You are my family now
,
too
.

“Maybe they’ll worry about their inheritance. Can you assure them that I’m not a gold digger?”

Edward laughed. “There’s not a hell of a lot of gold to dig,” he said.

“That’s not the point. Just let them know I’m not after you for your money.”

“What other reason could you possibly have?”

“Stop fishing,” she said. “And tell them they never have to meet me if they don’t want to.”

“They’ll have to and they’ll want to,” he said. “I’ll make you sound irresistible, which won’t be very hard.”

“Poor Edward. You are so easy.”

Julie was a little late. Edward had finished a glass of water and one of the rolls in the basket before she came in. He kept clearing his throat, as if he were about to go onstage with none of his
lines memorized. Then she was there, making her way between the tables, mouthing, “Sorry, sorry,” to him. She held one hand near her ear to indicate she’d been stuck on the phone.

He kissed her and pulled out her chair. “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “The important thing is that you’re here. Are you hungry? I am.”

They ordered and he waited until their food came before he said, “Jules, dear, I have an announcement to make.” That was more formal than he’d meant to be. She had just speared some lettuce leaves with her fork, which she lowered to her plate.

“What?” she said. She looked primed for bad news, and he wished for her sake that her feelings weren’t so close to the surface, that her face didn’t always give her away. Punks like Todd probably used her transparency to their own advantage.

He smiled at her. “It’s something good.” He had an uneasy sense of déjà vu. This was similar to the conversation he’d had with Julie about Laurel. Would she think he’d become an over-the-hill playboy?

“Did you win the lottery?” she asked. She picked up her fork again.

“No, but this is even better. I’ve met someone special.”

“Oh? You mean what’s-her-face, that person you used to date a long time ago?”

“No, that didn’t pan out,” he said.

“Bummer,” she said, munching her salad.

“Yes, in some ways. But then I met Olga.”

“
Olga!
Is she foreign?”

“No. But her parents were into Russian literature.” He’d just made that up. She’d been named for a beloved aunt.

“So, do you see her often?” Julie said.

Why was she being so dense, and why had she turned so ashen? “As often as I can. Jules, I’m very much in love with her.”

The fork clanked to her plate. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve fallen in love with a woman named Olga Nemerov—Ollie—and, well, she seems to love me back.”

“I see,” Julie said. “So, are you getting married?”

“We haven’t talked about that. We haven’t even moved in together yet.” That was only a half-truth, because, except for work, they were hardly ever apart or out of each other’s thoughts. “Right now, we’re just enjoying being together.”

“How long have you known her?” Julie said.

“Not very long. A few months. It was sort of like a lightning strike.”

“That seems pretty fast, the sort of thing you always advised
me
against.”

She was referring to the way Edward and Bee tried to protect her from sudden crushes in high school on boys who were unlikely to even notice her. “I’m older than you, I’m an old guy,” he said. “At my age, you can’t afford to waste time.” He sounded like George Burns in his nineties, explaining why he didn’t buy green bananas anymore. “And this is the real thing,” he added. “I know you’re going to like her.”

Tears welled in Julie’s eyes, just as they had in Nick’s. But these weren’t tears of joy. “What about Mom?” she cried. “I thought
she
was the love of your life.”

“She was, you know that. But I’ve been on my own for a long while now. My happiness with your mother is what made me want to be with someone again.”

“Don’t blame her!” Julie said. She was trembling with rage and sorrow.

Edward looked at her in dismay. His poor girl; she had genuinely wanted him to be happy, but not
completely
happy, because that might erase Bee forever. He longed to comfort her, to touch her arm or her head, but he didn’t dare. “I’m not,” he said. “I’m
grateful to her, for so many reasons, including you.” He touched his chest. “She’s still in here, Jules. I’ll never, ever forget her.”

Julie appeared unconvinced. “Do you intend to tell Gladdy about this, about … 
Olga
?”

“I’m not looking forward to it, but I think she’d want me to be honest with her. In fact, I was hoping you would—”

“You’ll kill her,” Julie said.

The Future

G
ladys went to bed early—“Like a little child again,” she’d told Edward—so he arrived at her place just after six o’clock, his stomach growling with hunger and nerves. Mildred let him in, wearing an apron, and then went back to the kitchen, where she’d been doing the dishes from the supper she’d cooked and the two women had shared. Gladys was in the living room, moving her magnifying glass over a newly started jigsaw puzzle.

“Long time no see,” she said, like a B-movie femme fatale, when Edward came into the room, and he felt himself flush. With his ardent concentration on Ollie, he had neglected almost everyone else in his life. But he had deliberately avoided visiting Gladys, putting off the delivery of what he considered a terrible, yet inevitable, blow. She looked even more fragile than
he remembered, but maybe his own guilty fear affected his view of her.

“Come sit next to me, honey,” she said after he’d kissed her shirred cheek. “I need help.”

So do I
, Edward thought, but he sat down beside her and picked up a straight-edged puzzle piece from a pile of similar pieces she had set aside.

“Here’s the picture,” she said, holding up the cover of the puzzle box. “Julie bought it for me.” Edward had a further failure of heart at the mention of Julie’s name; the last thing she’d said to him and her look of betrayal were still in his head. At least he was certain she hadn’t mentioned anything to her grandmother about Ollie. He was the designated hit man.

The puzzle was a pastoral scene, black-and-white cows grazing in a vast meadow. The green parts would be the trickiest. “Why are there always meadows or jungles or snow in these things?” he said. He sounded like a whiny kid, like Julie when she couldn’t force a puzzle piece into the wrong space.

“To keep us on our toes, honey. Here,” Gladys said, taking the straight-edged piece from his hand and fitting it into its proper place on the frame. She seemed to be the calm center of the room, the only person Edward could turn to for advice on what he was about to say to her. Maybe he should have enlisted Mildred’s help. He probably still could, under the pretext of going into the kitchen for a glass of water. He could hear her puttering around in there, the clink and clank of dishes and pots such stabilizing domestic sounds. And didn’t they always send two cops, at least on TV, to break bad news to someone, usually a woman? One to tell her and one to catch her. He remembered Gladys collapsing against him when he’d told her about Bee.

But it would be cowardly to involve Mildred in what he’d
now begun to think of as his crime. Could love be a crime? Well, maybe Julie and Laurel and Mia Farrow would think so, but he’d never intended to hurt anyone. What all criminals probably said.

Gladys turned to him, holding the magnifying glass to her eye, which in its enlargement seemed inescapable and all-seeing. “You look pale,” she declared. “Are you hungry? There’s plenty of chicken left.”

The hunger he had felt when he’d gotten there was gone, although his stomach still bubbled and murmured. He hoped Gladys couldn’t hear it, or read his mind. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m just a little tired.”

“You work too hard. Maybe it’s time to think about retiring.”

He and Ollie had talked about that very thing the night before, making plans for the future the way he’d done with Bee.
Man plans
,
God laughs
.

“I am,” he said. “I’m thinking about it.”