Love and Other Natural Disasters (28 page)

Charlie arched an eyebrow.

"Yeah, it's going to be pretty
erotically charged. Somehow, we just might be able to resist each other."
The idea that attraction between Jon and me had become laughable filled me with
sudden sadness.

Charlie reached out and patted my
shoulder awkwardly. "I'll go get him, okay?"

Waiting for Jon, I tried to smooth
my hair. He caught sight of me from the doorway, and I felt foolish for
engaging in such useless vanity.

"Come on in," I said.

He stepped into the room. "Is
it okay to shut the door? I don't want—"

"Jacob to hear," I
finished for him. "I know. Neither do I."

"Not that I'm expecting to
yell or anything," he assured me quickly. "Or break any
glasses."

"That's good to hear."

"I'm sorry about that, by the
way. I just kind of lost it that night. No matter how angry I get, I don't want
to do things like that."

"I understand. It was a pretty
intense night, to put it mildly."

He nodded, a grateful look in his
eyes. "Well, III just get to what I wanted to tell you. I know you used to
say I was sleepwalking through my therapy—"

"That wasn't what I
said."

"It's what you meant."

"Well, yeah."

"You were right. I was
sleepwalking. Now that I'm really doing it, what I'm finding out is that I was
sleepwalking through a lot of stuff in my life." He ran his hand through
his hair and fixed his eyes on the book on my nightstand. "Somewhere along
the line, I guess I started to think of you as a force of nature. I thought
nothing I did made a difference, that it would just end up being your way so I
might as well give in right from the start. I never should have left this
house, Eve. I should have fought." He blinked so suddenly that it looked
like a tic. His eyes briefly met mine. "And now, I don't even know that I
want back in, I'm so mad at you, but I think I might just be mad at me. It's
all pretty jumbled at the moment." His laugh was more like a hiccup.
"Louise is calling this progress."

"Why are you telling me this,
Jon?" I asked gently.

"Because I don't think I was
entirely fair to you in our therapy session. I'm not ready to be fair to you
yet, but I hope to be someday. Does that make sense?"

"In Louise-speak, you hope to
hear me someday?"

He smiled for just a second.
"I've been depressed, and I've been angry about a whole lot more than just
the e-mails, much as those piss me off. I think I wanted to hurt you like I've
been hurting, but there's got to be some other way to deal with it, something
other than us shooting each other full of holes."

"I hope there is," I
said.

"We're going to be in each
other's lives no matter what. Louise says we should think of it as a work in
progress."

"I guess you could say that
about pretty much anything. Or anyone."

"She does. She uses that
phrase three times a session. To be honest, sometimes it drives me fucking
bonkers."

We both laughed.

"I should go," he said.
"Jacob's waiting. I just wanted to see you face-to-face. You said you were
reading my e-mails to figure out who I am; well, I'm trying to figure that out,
too."

I was proud of him, and envious,
too. He was doing what Dyan had told me to do. He wasn't just figuring things
out relative to me, he was figuring them out relative to him. I was running
over the same old ground; he was in unfamiliar terrain. Until Laney, I'd
assumed that whenever I broke new ground, it would be with him. Maybe no
marriage can sustain that.

"You're really doing
something, Jon. It takes guts," I said.

A look passed between us of such
true understanding that I realized this was the closest I'd felt to him since
that day at the aquarium. No, since before Thanksgiving.

"Well, I should go," he
said. "Take care of yourself."

"You too, Jon."

My mother and Phil
Tibbs
were coming that weekend. Charlie and I couldn't
resist using his full name every time we referred to him once we found out he
was the owner of Phil
Tibbs
Motors, and we referred
to him often. "Do you think Phil
Tibbs
likes
pickles?" Charlie would ask, and I'd start giggling. "Do you think
Phil
Tibbs
will walk around the house wearing an
undershirt, boxers, and black socks?" I'd ask, to his amusement. Jacob
started getting in on it, too. "Do you think Phil
Tibbs
likes math?" he said to me as I was tucking him in. "I don't know,
sweetie," I answered, kissing his nose. "Do you want him to?"
Jacob nodded. "I want him to do all my math."

Phil
Tibbs
Motors sold only American cars. Charlie and I made bets on what kind of car
he'd drive: Charlie said a Cadillac Escalade (just like all the rappers), and I
went with an Oldsmobile, though I wasn't sure they still existed. The car that
pulled into the driveway on Friday night was actually a silver Chevy pickup
truck, its engine growling loudly enough that Jacob ran excitedly to the
window.

"Time to meet Phil
Tibbs
," I whispered to Charlie. "Will Phil
Tibbs
like us?"

"Will we like Phil
Tibbs
, that's the real question," Charlie whispered
back.

Jacob had flung open the door and
was shouting, "Mom-Mom!"

My mother looked over at Phil, who
nodded—in permission?—and then she ran to Jacob and hugged him tight against
her. "My baby boy!" she said.

"I'm not a baby!" Jacob
protested, but he was still smiling inside her embrace. "Mom-Mom's
blond!"

It was true. Mom-Mom was now blond
and wearing a colorful scarf like a headband, like she was Annette
Funicello
from those beach movies. Phil
Tibbs's
doing?

Phil
Tibbs
went to grab their bags from the back of the truck; then he strode forward. He
was of average height, barrel-chested, with blond-gray hair that had thinned
enough to see his liver-spotted scalp through. His face looked equally
weathered, though his teeth were straight, and I'd seen worse features.

Putting the bags down on the front
stoop, he thrust a hand out toward me. "Phil
Tibbs
,"
he said. "Pleased to meet you."

I avoided looking at Charlie,
because I knew we'd both crack up. "It's good to meet you," I said.
"Come on in."

He entered behind my mother, who
was now clutching Charlie. "Do you know how I've missed you?" she
told him.

Phil said, affably enough,
"Good thing she's got me for company these days." He waited until my
mother released Charlie, then shook Charlie's hand, repeating, "Phil
Tibbs
. Pleased to meet you."

Charlie did laugh then, but somehow
he got away with it. He just seemed good-humored. "How was your drive,
guys?"

But Jacob couldn't contain himself
to wait for the answer. "You have to see Olivia," he said.
"You've never even seen her!"

"I've seen pictures," my
mother said. "But I would love to see the real thing."

Charlie glanced at the clock.
"She gets up from her nap around now. She'll probably have a big old
stinky diaper." Jacob laughed. Charlie looked at me. "Maybe Mom-Mom
should change it. That's how you greet family, right?"

My mother said to me uncertainly,
"I could change her diaper, if you want."

"No, no. That's just how we
greet uncles." I gestured toward the couch. "Why don't you sit down
and relax. I'll go take care of that and then bring Liv out."

"We've been on our asses for
hours now," Phil said. "It'd be good to stand. Why don't we come with
you?"

Before I could decide how to
answer, Charlie said, "Olivia can get a little freaked if there are too
many people in the room with her. Why don't you follow me into the kitchen,
where we can all remain standing just as long as you want. I can get you
drinks, some food if you're hungry..."

To my relief, Phil, my mother, and
Jacob all followed Charlie into the kitchen. By the time I walked in, holding a
freshly diapered Olivia, they were all sitting at the table, except for Jacob,
who was jumping around.

"Why so hyper, buddy?"
Charlie asked him.

"Mom-Mom and Phil
Tibbs
are here!" Jacob said.

Charlie openly smirked, but my
mother and Phil were smiling at each other and didn't seem to notice.

"She's just beautiful,"
my mother said, turning toward me. "Can I hold her?"

"Of course," I answered,
placing her carefully in my mother's arms. "Here's a cloth. She's a
drooler
."

"They all are at that
age," my mother said.

Jacob came and huddled close to my
mother. "I can make her smile."

"I'm sure you can," she
said.

Olivia wasn't smiling, though. I
wished she would, but at least she wasn't crying. Jacob tried singing little
songs, dancing around, but Olivia wasn't in the mood just then.

Phil had shifted his chair closer
to my mother and was joining Jacob in moving around and making faces.
"Hey, Jake," he said. "Do you know the one about the wheels on
the bus?"

"Everyone knows that
one," Jacob said.

"You want to sing it with
me?"

"Okay." But it was clear
he didn't much want to.

"I'll sing it with you,
man," Charlie said. "I love that one."

Phil looked at Charlie a bit
sharply, as if he thought he was being made fun of. Then he seemed to decide
Charlie had good intentions and his face relaxed. "Can I hold her,
Eve?" Phil asked.

"Sure."

My mother passed Liv over to Phil,
and she made a noise like she was about to bawl, but then, somehow, she went
the other way. As Phil
Tibbs
minced around for her
amusement, she actually started to smile, and then to laugh.

"I got the touch," he
said.

"You do." My mother gazed
at him with such frank adoration that I had to look away.

"Hey, keep it clean, you
two," Charlie said.

Phil
Tibbs
spit when he talked. And he talked pretty much all the time. He was loud, he
was abrasive, he couldn't stop saying "ass" in front of my kids, he
laughed too loudly at his own jokes. He was sixty, which reminded me that my
mother was nearly sixty, which reminded me that she didn't have that many Phil
Tibbses
beating down her door, and she'd have fewer all the
time.

That's why I tried to cast a kind,
forgiving eye toward Phil
Tibbs
. He did seem
genuinely taken with my mother. He laughed too loudly at her jokes, too. He
patted her arm with a pride of ownership that—while reminiscent of the way he
might, say, pat a Buick with low miles—was nonetheless pride; I'd never seen
that in her other boyfriends. The night they arrived, I caught sight of her
going into the bathroom as he was coming out, and he took her hand and kissed
it, slow and sweet, right there in the doorway. I knew, in that second, that if
they weren't in love already, they were well on their way.

Not to mention, he was sparing no
expense for this trip. They'd stayed in some five-star hotel right on the water
in Santa Barbara and drank champagne on the beach. When they left, they were
going to continue up the coast to Mendocino, to a lodge with a fireplace and a
Jacuzzi. No one had ever treated her like that, not in her entire sixty years.

We were going on the first triple
date of my life, and what a motley crew we were: Lil and Charlie, my mother and
Phil, Ray and me. Jon had already picked up the kids. While I was in my bedroom
getting ready, a note was slipped under my door. In an uneven scrawl, it said:

Eve,

Do me a favor? Meet me in the
backyard as soon as
posible
.

Phil

I decided to pretend that he really
did know how to spell "possible" but was just writing fast. I
hurriedly applied my lipstick and opened my door. I looked left and right
before entering the hallway, like I was in a spy movie. Then undetected, I
slipped through the house and out the sliding glass doors into the yard.

Phil
Tibbs
was sitting on Jacob's swing set, his feet hidden in six inches of grass. Since
our yard was barely bigger than the swing set itself, you would have thought I
could have kept it up.

"Hi, Phil," I said.
"What's up?" I perched on the swing next to him.

"Maybe we ought to wait until
Charlie's here," he said. "Is it okay if I smoke a cigar?"

"Well..." I hesitated.
"I don't want my hair and my clothes to smell like it. Maybe you could go
over to the fence and then point it away from me?"

"Maybe I shouldn't. Your mom
doesn't like the smell much, either." He smiled faintly. "I tried to
take up pipes for a while. You like pipes?"