Man Camp (10 page)

“I’m not much of a morning person, myself,” Martha tells him, admitting that she’s never changed the default setting on her alarm clock from noon. “Of course, usually I’m awake before that. Usually.”

This is unfathomable to Cooper—a farmer’s day is half over by noon—and he steers the conversation toward the safe topic of food. “Do you like to cook?” he asks. “I’m a sucker for all-American comfort foods: pancakes with maple syrup, mac and cheese, steak and potatoes.”

Martha tries to conceal her horror. Alcohol notwithstanding, she hasn’t knowingly touched a carbohydrate in months. Her refrigerator is packed with prepared foods: tiny six-packs of nonfat yogurts, hermetically sealed sprout salads, lean entrées ordered from nearby restaurants.

“What’s your specialty?” he asks.

“The tuna-and-yellowtail sashimi combo at 212-GOJAPAN,” Martha deadpans. “I give it my own flair by ordering extra ginger and wasabi.”

During the course of their herky-jerky conversation, they wander down two full loops of the museum’s spiral, passing an array of abstract paintings by Pollock, Kandinsky, and Rauschenberg, art that Martha doesn’t particularly like. The museum is warm and she starts to feel queasy. Why aren’t they goofing around at Wollman Rink or eating dim sum in Chinatown?

When they come upon a series of canvases painted solid white, she wants to joke,
I think someone hung those upside down,
but instead says, “What do you think the artist is trying to convey?” Appalled to hear her mother’s hostess-speak come out of her mouth, Martha wonders if she’s sounding like a Stepford date, and smells anxiety rising from her sweater.

Her mother’s voice reminds her not to slouch.

I’m fucked,
Martha thinks and hears her mother
tsk-tsk
ing. She straightens up and looks around, certain she’s headed toward a full-blown panic attack, and only dimly aware of the drone of Cooper’s voice, dutifully answering her question—
blah, blah,
minimalism, blah, derivative, blah, vitality.
She concentrates on her breathing.

“You okay?” Cooper asks. “Martha?”

Martha shakes her head. “Sorry, I’m a little spaced out.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “What do you think of this one?”

Standing in front of an ugly painting with spatters of red over black-and-brown streaks, Martha tips her head to one side as if a compelling thought might slide out more easily that way. She stares hard at the painting. Her mother’s voice advises her to tell Cooper she finds it interesting, but Martha reminds herself of the thousands of dollars she spent on therapy precisely to get away from her mother’s brand of man-pleasing femininity. “The truth is I don’t like abstract art. I know, I’m an actress, I live in New York, therefore I’m supposed to love all things cultural. What can I tell you? I like representational stuff: portraits, still lifes, that kind of thing.” She looks at Cooper, hoping not to see disappointment looking back at her.

Cooper laughs his big, loud laugh, which sounds even louder in the library-quiet museum. “In that case, let’s go to the permanent collection,” he says, taking her hand and steering them toward the Thannhauser room, full of Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings. “One of the things I love about you, Martha, is how you always say exactly what’s on your mind.”

Martha might have told Cooper exactly what was on her mind had she not focused on his use of the word
love. One of the
things he loves about me.
She wonders what the other things might be and looks down at her feet, studying the uneven white rings of salt on her boots, remnants of winter.

Her last boyfriend, Elliot, had been stingy with love, doling it out in microscopic portions and taking it back in a hundred small ways. He admitted to loving Martha only once in their two-year relationship and it felt like an admission, as if loving her was a character flaw he could fight by the sheer strength of his will. The boyfriend before Elliot had the opposite problem: He’d rendered the word meaningless through overuse, making his love of her indistinguishable from his love of, say, Milk Duds. He loved his favorite sneakers,
The Daily Show,
steak with grilled onions, dirt-bike riding, Martha, and sisal rugs.

Slightly giddy at the day’s developments, Martha tries to center herself by focusing on the painting in front of her, a Cézanne still life with pears so succulent and ripe that she feels a pang of hunger akin to lust and almost tastes the sweetness of the fruit on her tongue. All at once she understands what Hemingway meant about appreciating these pears more on an empty stomach.

FIRST THING MONDAY MORNING, Martha decides to practice her persuasive skills on her brother. She figures having one camper in the bag—even if it’s only Jesse—will not only boost her confidence but might help sway subsequent prospects.

“Jesse McKenna’s office,” a chirpy voice answers.

“Hi, Kathy,” she says to his assistant. “It’s Martha.”

There is a click, a pause, some music, and then Jesse’s voice. “Isn’t ten-thirty a little early for you, Martha?”

“Perhaps a tad,” she says, propping herself on some pillows. She takes a gulp of coffee. Until that moment, she didn’t know which tack to take, enticement or fear, but Jesse’s remark has given her an idea. “I’m only awake this early because I had a terrible nightmare about you,” she says. “I’m calling to see if you’re okay.”

Jesse’s voice softens. “I’m totally fine, really.”

“It all seemed so real,” Martha says, becoming Meryl Streep in
Silkwood
as she conjures up the nightmare. “Some sicko writer was sending anthrax to all the editors who’d turned down his manuscript, and you were next on his list. The only way to save you was to get you out of the city, but I couldn’t reach you.”

Jesse happens to be in the process of assessing manuscripts, something he does every day by skimming the query letter and reading the first five pages or so before deciding its fate, as well as the fate of its author. A potentially
unstable
author. Jesse clears his throat.

You’re going to hell,
Martha thinks, wondering if her brother’s buying it. “I know it was just a dream, Jesse, but the problem with living in New York City is that anything can happen.”
That
should get his attention,
she thinks, pulling the blankets up to her chin. “I’m sure glad to be headed out of town.”

“Where’re you off to?” Jesse asks nervously.

Got him!
thinks Martha. “To a beautiful dairy farm in rural West Virginia,” she says. “Remember Lucy’s friend Cooper? I’m going down to his dairy farm to check out country living for a week and I’m taking some of my FirstDate clients along as a continuing-education program of sorts.”

“Really? When are you leaving?”

“Whenever I can get things lined up with the guys, but probably not before the first or second week of May.” She pauses for a moment to bait her trap. “I have an idea: Why don’t you come, too? You could use a vacation.”

LUCY IS CATCHING UP with Eva when Martha pushes through La Luna’s red doors, cell phone attached to her ear. “Coffee tomorrow would be great,” she says into the receiver, mouthing,
Kurt Becker,
to Lucy. “Okay. Three P.M. Café Blasé.” She snaps the phone shut. “Another one-month follow-up scheduled. I’m all over Man Camp!” she announces, kissing Lucy on the cheek and immediately wiping off the lipstick mark. “I’ve called about a dozen FirstDate clients and already have one confirmed yes, three maybes, and lots of coffees scheduled.”

“No noes?” Lucy asks, surprised.

“Oh, I’ve had noes,” Martha says, “plenty of noes. My beer-spilling chef is studying for his pastry finals in May. My Zen vegetarian can’t stomach animal husbandry. My wall climber is back with his girlfriend.” She sits on the stool next to Lucy and waves hello to Eva, who is busy with another customer. “What can I say? Getting someone to give up a week of hard-earned vacation isn’t easy, but we’ll get there. How about you? Have you talked to Adam yet?”

Lucy shakes her head. She hasn’t even broached the topic with him. “I’ve never lied to Adam before,” she says solemnly.

“Oh, please!” Martha unbuttons her jacket. “There’s a world of difference between a lie of omission and one of deception.”

“You think?”

“Sure. If I didn’t believe that, how could I sleep after concocting an anthrax nightmare to scare Jesse into coming?”

“So Jesse is our one-and-only yes?”

Martha nods.

“I missed you guys last week,” Eva says, pouring Martha a Chardonnay. “How was your date with Fred?”

It takes Martha a moment to place the name. “Oh, Fred. He was nice.”

Eva lifts one of her delicate eyebrows. “What didn’t you like about him?”

“I guess maybe we didn’t really click is all.”

“Well,
you
might not have clicked,” Eva tells her, leaning over the bar, “but I hung out with Fred after pottery class and let me tell you, he clicked. He
really
clicked.”

How’s that possible?
Martha wonders, suddenly filled with dread. Could there be karmic implications for her not clicking with Fred? Might it mean that her click with Cooper was one-way, too?

Lucy sees Martha’s panic. “Don’t worry. Cooper likes you. Believe me, I could tell. He’s a flirt, of course, and so polite you’d never know if he didn’t like someone, but he lit up around you in a way I’ve never seen before.”

Do I have a thought bubble over my head?
Martha wonders.

“Want to let me in on what’s going on?” Eva asks.

“Martha’s got a crush on my oldest friend.”

Eva says a singsongy “Uh-oh.”

“No uh-ohs. I’m happy about it. I think maybe there’s always been a little spark there,” Lucy says, but Eva’s pursed lips let Lucy know she’s not buying it, and Lucy changes the subject. “Our other big news is that we’ve decided to hold a real Man Camp on Cooper’s farm.”

“That’s it,” Eva says, slapping her rag down on the counter. “If you two ever skip another Monday, you’re cut off.” She walks to the other end of the bar.

“Are you worried about how to approach Adam about Man Camp?” Martha asks.

“Right now, I’m more worried that I’m going to kill him if he doesn’t finish his dissertation. His writer’s block is completely consuming him. He has no time for fun, no time for me, and especially no time to help out around the apartment.”

“Well, he
is
a guy, after all.”

“Why does that make it okay?”

“It doesn’t, it’s just a fact.”

“When Adam moved in, he billed himself as a liberal, equality-minded boyfriend, willing to share all domestic responsibilities. That’s what I signed on for.”

“Darling, when in the history of men and women have you ever heard of a truly equitable distribution of domestic duties?” Martha asks.

Lucy shrugs.

Martha touches her friend’s wrist. “We all think it’s going to be different for us, but men just aren’t hardwired the way we are.”

Lucy can’t wait until Cooper gets a cold and needs to be taken care of like a child, then maybe Martha won’t be so calm in the face of male helplessness. “Has it ever struck you as odd that women are never the ones with spare time to watch football or play in some lame band? Every woman I know is like a lioness. When she’s not taking care of cubs, she’s out stalking and hunting gazelles for some loudmouth lion who sits on his haunches and roars for dinner.”

“Luce, you have to pick your battles,” Martha says. “Masculinity or domesticity? I suggest you stay focused on masculinity, because the chances are slim that Adam will ever do his share of household chores. But if you send him to Man Camp, he at least might learn to kill things for you.”

Lucy laughs. “And you don’t think it’s wrong to not let him know the truth?”

“Of course it’s wrong, it’s just not wrong-wrong. We Catholics are good at gradations of sins and this would hardly count as a freckle on the back of a venial sin,” Martha says, swirling the wine in her glass. Then she says, “Are you sure you don’t mind that I like Cooper?”

“I’m getting used to the idea,” Lucy says. “What happened after I left you two at the museum?”

“Cooper didn’t tell you?”

“Of course he did. I just want to hear your version.”

It’s all the encouragement Martha needs. Her eyes light up as she thinks about their afternoon at the Guggenheim. “We mooned around each other like love-struck teenagers all day, but would you believe he never even suggested going back to my place?”

Of course he didn’t,
Lucy thinks. Cooper would want Martha to see Tuckington Farm first. “You’ve found your weaverbird in that man.”

I’ve found my weaverbird,
Martha thinks, and pictures Cooper standing in front of Tuckington Farm with all its barns and silos and cows and pastures in the background, waving to her from inside the fence, beckoning her toward him.

LUCY SPENDS MOST OF the night skimming along the surface of sleep, alighting on the isthmus between consciousness and unconsciousness. She has a strange dream about the midair mating ritual of the honeybee, who mutilates himself by breaking off his genitalia inside the queen bee, leaving behind a chastity belt of sorts. Despite the soothing sounds of Adam’s soft snores, she can’t find the path back to sleep. Agitated, her brain flits from problem to problem, real and imaginary: She solves a dilemma in her research paper, argues with her mother, worries about a dinner party, plans a lecture, and rationalizes why it’s okay not to tell Adam he’s being drafted to go to Man Camp.

Finally, finally, finally, morning comes.

It’s almost noon by the time Lucy gets off the train at 116th Street and walks purposefully toward the biology building. Somewhere in the midst of last night’s nonsleep, she concluded that it was okay to let Adam believe he’d be more counselor than camper at Tuckington Farm. Martha was right; it didn’t amount to a serious breach of trust. Besides, Lucy plans to make sure that Adam has the vacation of a lifetime: romantic walks, horseback rides, lovemaking under the stars.