Love Walked In (3 page)

“Listen, Clarey,” her mother said suddenly, “this Christmas, we leave all the god-awful American yuletide tedium behind and go to Spain. Madrid”—her mother took a deep sip of wine, then shook her head—“no, no, no. Barcelona! Gaudi! You won’t believe your eyes. It’s like fairyland! What do you think?”

And Clare felt so honored, being asked what she thought, so she said, “I think definitely yes!” even though she loved their Christmases in Philadelphia. It was always just the two of them. Clare’s parents were both only children and both orphans, even though they didn’t acquire full-fledged orphanhood until they were already grown up, and Clare never saw her father at Christmas. They had a tradition of eating dinner together on New Year’s Day, but it hardly counted as a tradition because it usually didn’t happen. Clare’s father was away or busy most years, which was all right with Clare.

So every year, Clare and her mother would take the train in and watch every tree lighting in town, then sit on the floor together at Lord & Taylor to watch the light show over and over, shop, and hear as much carol singing as they could. They both loved carols, and Clare’s mother had taught her verses to “Silent Night” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” that almost no one else knew. On Christmas Eve, they would eat dinner at a country inn, where a married couple named Juno and Lars would serve a Christmas-carol dinner that included goose, pears, chestnuts, and real figgy pudding. Clare would feel safe and peaceful, at a table with her mother in a room filled with noisy, laughing, dressed-up strangers, the country sky arching over the roof, and Christmas arriving around them little by little like snow.

But her mother was so uplifted, describing candy-colored spires decorated with knobs and swirls, shaping them in the air with her hands, and planning lessons in Catalan for them to take together, that Clare didn’t mind giving up one holiday season to Spain. If her mother’s voice sounded higher than usual, contained a hectic note, Clare thought, it was just excitement and probably a burst of energy from all the food.

Then, Clare’s mother suddenly stopped this vivid, bubbling chatter, looked around at the pink walls, and said, “My husband used to bring me to this place,” in a new, hard voice that stopped Clare cold. Clare’s parents had divorced when she was two years old. While Clare saw her father occasionally, Clare’s mother never talked about his leaving, never talked about him much at all, and had certainly never called him “my husband.” What shook Clare more than this, though, was the way her mother’s voice and face changed so fast, as though she were a different person interrupting herself.

When the waiter walked up a second later, Clare’s mother’s eyes softened as she turned her attention to him and the corners of her mouth curled. To Clare’s amazement, her mother took the man’s hand between the two of hers, turned it over, examined his palm, turned it back, then lifted his cuff with her fingers to look at his watch.

“I see you have the time,” she said in the same low voice she’d used before. The waiter glanced at Clare, then smiled at her mother.

“Would you like your check?” he said. His hand still rested lightly in hers, and as she nodded, she opened her fingers, releasing it like a bird.

Just after he walked away, Clare’s mother stood, folding her napkin carefully and placing it on the table. Her expression was full of affection for Clare, “Ladies’ room. Wait here, darling,” she said, and now the “darling” sounded all wrong, like she wasn’t talking to Clare at all. Abruptly, she sat back down in her chair and leaned toward Clare. In a loud whisper, almost a hiss, she said, “Never let anyone tell you men want sex more than women. Your father was nothing in bed, but with the right man, sex is exquisite. Exquisite! Listen to your body, Clare.” Then she stood up and walked away.

Clare felt punched, gasping and sick. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, holding on to her own shoulders to stop herself from shaking. What could be happening? She wanted her mother to be drunk, but she knew she wasn’t; her glass of wine was almost full. The mother she knew would never have spoken those words, would never have taken her out of school to go to lunch, wouldn’t have given her wine, wouldn’t have touched a waiter. Should she tell someone? Who? Would her mother get in trouble if she did?

Clare knew what you did when someone you loved died. You pulled yourself tall and straight like a princess, received condolences graciously, dry-eyed, and then later sobbed stormily and cleansingly into your pillow. But all the books she’d read had taught her nothing about what you do when your mother doesn’t die but turns into someone you don’t know, someone who doesn’t take care of you anymore.

If
you’re not a big believer in signs, then, trust me, we have that in common. If your impatience with people who are forever telling stories containing a fairly ordinary coincidence that they interpret (after a pregnant pause) as
a sign
borders on nausea, I’m right there with you. And if you’ve noticed that such people almost invariably opt to take as signs only those things that point them in precisely the direction they wanted to go anyway, while ignoring plenty of other seemingly valid sign options, well, my friend, we’re three for three.

For example, this arrogant, slick-haired guy Luka from the café showed up one day fairly gyrating with excitement about a woman he’d just met in New York, whom he called his “soul mate,” letting the phrase hang in the air for a moment as though it were freshly minted rather than so shopworn as to be entirely without meaning to any thinking person. Then he recounted their meeting, unsubtle-innuendo-laden interaction, and subsequent minimal-but-promising sexual contact. And the big finish, the shiny tack that was meant to pin his little story to our brains forever, was the fact that they were both wearing entirely brown ensembles. Brown shirts, brown pants, brown socks, brown shoes. Brown
belts
! Brown
watch bands
! (It was the small leather goods that really seemed to get him.) After a pause, Luka breathed reverently. “It was a sign we belong together.”

The sad part is that at least five people heard this story, and not one called him an idiot, but instead sat wordlessly smiling and slow-nodding at him. No one liked Luka because he was wholly unlikable, but people were a bit in awe of him, as he was the richest person any of us knew personally. Though Luka was a dog-walker by trade, his grandfather set up the entire family for countless generations by inventing a grommet or wing nut or gasket or some other of those tiny Dr. Seuss–sounding gizmos. Because it had to be done, I fought through the money fog that surrounded Luka and said, “What about the fact that she’s married with two small children? What was that a sign of?”

So, you can imagine my embarrassment in telling you how the day after meeting Martin, I set about compiling my own collection of signs. It wasn’t a large collection, I’m happy to report. It contained three items; I’d say three
measly
items, but while the first two were definitely measly, the third was really quite spectacular—downright cinematic.

The first sign didn’t even strike me as a sign until I was stepping through the door of Fringer’s Antiques on the heels of my friend Linny at about ten the next morning, which was roughly twenty-four hours after the sign dropped into my life. Actually, it didn’t drop into my life as much as fall out of my mouth. I’m talking about the reference to my mother, the one I made when Martin asked me to go to London with him.

I almost never talk about my parents to anyone. They’re fine people. I love them. Don’t sit there waiting for me to disclose some dark childhood secrets—and I hope and pray I’m not one of those tiresome underachieving, unabused offspring who blames her parents for her limping career, designer-knockoff shoes, and broken toaster oven (my shoes are generally quite good, just so you know). Let’s just say that, from a fairly early age, my home life felt like a movie set I’d stumbled onto by accident. If you’ve seen Katharine Hepburn as a Chinese revolutionary in
Dragon Seed
, you know what I’m talking about. Good intentions, talented players, everyone trying hard. Just bad casting.

In any case, my bringing up a topic to Martin that I only ever broach with my most intimate of intimates was remarkable. I took it as a sign.

“I take it as a sign,” I said to Linny.

“A sign that you’re deranged,” belted Linny into the cool silence of the shop. She tapped her finger on the side of her head, a head that was wrapped in a scarf. It was an awful scarf, a horror of polyester silk printed with Monet’s waterlillies.

“Shhh!” I hissed as Mr. Fringer inclined his head to shoot a look over the tops of his glasses at us. His shop was not one of the truly elegant ones on Pine Street, no mint-condition eighteenth-century writing table posing tiptoe like a ballerina in his window. No mint-condition anything. But a good shop—my favorite. The garbage, the not-bad, the godforsaken, sat cheek-by-jowl with the stunning-but-for-a-ripped hem, -missing knob, -water stain, -torn cover—the only unifying principle being that at one time or another, old Mr. Fringer had taken a shine to each and all.

Mr. Fringer was severe, but I liked him for two reasons. First, he was unabashedly gaga over his wife, had photos of her in gilt frames hanging behind his desk, and would work the fact of her beauty into almost any conversation. She
was
beautiful, too, in a broad-shouldered, duchessy, Ingrid Bergman–type way. What was so great about Mr. Fringer’s love for his wife was that she wasn’t dead, as one might have expected. I’d even met her a couple of times. I found it quite moving that a man could be so awe-filled and celebratory about the woman he came home to every night.

The second reason I liked Mr. Fringer was that he was a reasonable man, a man who could be bargained with. I’d once talked him down from five hundred dollars to two hundred for a great big, Depression-era chandelier—a wreck, but a salvageable wreck, or so I’d thought upon seeing it, even though I know squat about antiques. And I was right. Not to boast, but it’s the kind of thing I have a knack for being right about. I polished up the brass, hunted down crystals that matched it, and talked my landlord into hanging it from my apartment’s high ceiling. Every day, I could look up and watch it sparkle like my own personal galaxy. So if Mr. Fringer wanted his store, his precious merchandise, swaddled in reverential hush, I was happy to oblige.

“But you were right to turn him down. He could be a homicidal maniac,” stage-whispered Linny.

I picked up a black, asymmetrical, upside-down tornado made of felt.

“Could be. But wasn’t. You don’t know; you didn’t see his eyes. They were brown,” I whispered.

“Well, why didn’t you say so before?” snorted Linny. “Did you give him your number? And what the hell is that?”

“A hat. I did. I wrote it in my very best penmanship.” I set the hat down. Very Ninotchka, but like every other human being besides one who’s ever lived, I’m no Garbo. Besides, some things just can’t make the leap from past to present, and that hat was not a leaper.

A young man in what can only be called a blouse—paisley gauze and piratelike with poufed sleeves cinching at the wrists—entered the shop with what can only be called a saunter. He carried an overloaded backpack over one shoulder that he probably called a rucksack because he was just the type. I saw Mr. Fringer sharpen his gaze and aim it toward the backpack, watching its proximity to breakables; he leaned his head and shoulders back, a cobra ready to strike.

The young man’s glance settled on Linny. His face darkened with recognition, and he approached, sleeves gently burgeoning.

“Your poetry selection is for the birds,” he declared, his eyebrows arched. Linny had deferred her acceptance to law school a few years back and worked in a bookstore.

“Tweet,” tweeted Linny loudly, after a pause of just the right length. Linny is a master of the pause. The man stared, blinked twice, then wafted out of the store. Mr. Fringer gave Linny an approving smile. She smiled back, with a modest, one-shouldered shrug, before turning to me, wide-eyed.

“His shirt,” said Linny.

I shut my eyes to block out the memory.

“I loved it,” said Linny. I opened my eyes and looked at Linny in her scarf, striped engineer’s overalls, and embroidered Chinese slippers. A wave of love splashed over me. Linny is truly the only person I know who wears whatever the hell she likes. If ever she hauled off and went to law school, they’d probably send her home to change clothes. Maybe not, though. She’d apparently rolled out of bed one morning, stretched, taken the LSAT practically on a whim, and gotten a score that had the whole Ivy League drooling like a basset hound.

“I love
this,
” I said. Divine, perfect, made for me. Made maybe seventy-five years ago, but definitely for me. Black, sleeveless, narrow, dropped waist, a touch of black beading, possibly real jet. Light as a feather and no bleaching under the arms, thank you, God. A first-date dress to die for; a first-date dress Louise Brooks would die for. I knew it would fit.

“That wouldn’t fit a Chihuahua,” said Linny.

Like a glove. Sign number two.

What
surprisingly few people know is that before Joan Crawford was terrifying with eyebrows like two shrieking crows, she was adorable and sylphlike and funny. At the end of
Forsaking All Others,
a film that will charm you but will not alter the warp and woof of your life’s fabric, Joan finds out it was old pal Clark Gable not, as she had supposed, lifelong love Robert Montgomery who, on what was supposed to be her wedding day, filled her room with cornflowers, her favorite of all flowers. When a friend informs her of this, her pretty face fills with light, the scales fall from her eyes. The flowers are a sign! She is transfigured! Clark is her man! Put aside the fact that, despite Robert Montgomery’s goofy cuddliness and nice posture, a choice between him and Clark Gable is no choice at all; put aside the fact that RM got drunk and married a floozy with an appallingly artificial speaking voice the night before he was supposed to marry Joan. It’s the flowers that send Joan out the door, stranding RM on their would-be second wedding day, and onto the ship that’s about to carry Clark away forever.

It was my day off, but after Linny reminded me one more time that Martin Grace did not step off some movie screen into my life and after I’d rolled my eyes at her and shoved her through the doorway of her bookstore, I popped my head into Café Dora.

And there they were: two dozen, in full bloom. Sent by a man to whom, in our whole half-hour conversation, I had never breathed a word about flowers. A cloud, a flock, an aria, a
glory
of peonies, as lush as hope, as white as a promise. I nodded at them, and twenty-four snowy heads nodded back.

Sign number three.