Remember Mia (3 page)

O
ne day after I finished college, I told myself,
Take one year and figure out what you want to do with your life
. I was waiting for a sign, some sort of higher intervention one might refer to as palm-reader stuff. I’d walk down 57th Street and tell myself the next billboard that catches my eye, the next car graphic, tote bag, or flyer blowing my way was going to be the answer.

At the time, I worked at a health insurance call center, where I met a woman who at first glance seemed out of place. Delilah, middle-aged, short, and heavyset, was covered in tattoos she hid amazingly well under white oversized blouses and cardigans. She was far removed from the twenty-somethings filling up the cubicles around us. Every time she pushed back her cardigan sleeves, a gesture signaling a difficult customer, a tattoo on her forearm emerged:
Dead Men Tell No Tales
.

“You keep looking at my tattoo,” she said one day from the cubicle next to mine, and muted her headset.

“Quite a message,” I replied.

“Kind of a funny story,” she said.

“Dead men tell no tales? How funny can that story be?” I asked.

Delilah told me she’d been a prison guard for twenty-five years. With every passing year her people skills and faith in humanity took a turn for the worse. Her husband left her and she had no relationship with her five children—they weren’t even speaking to her. As a matter of self-preservation, she decided to spend the rest of her working career in customer service. “Forces me to work on myself every day,” she said and switched to a noncommittal voice accepting the next call in the queue.

The concept intrigued me and I wondered about my own character shortcomings. I’d never sought lasting friendships, never seemed to truly connect to anyone else, and I had basically remained a loner all my life. I wondered if I just needed to meet new people or maybe the right people, or just put myself out there so I’d fit in somewhere. I quit my job at the call center that very day.

Two days later I found a job as a hostess at La Luna, a bar and grill in Manhattan, mostly frequented by judges, DAs, defense lawyers, prosecutors, and armies of executives working in the surrounding buildings. La Luna’s neighborhood on Lexington and 50th was a hodgepodge of restaurants and bars, office buildings, law offices, and an occasional Starbucks to break up the monotony.

Weeks later, I saw a man standing in line, waiting to be seated. He wasn’t stunningly attractive and there wasn’t anything unusual about him that caught my eye, but still I couldn’t wait for him to get to the front of the line.

“Jack Connor,” he said and straightened his tie. He was expecting a party of two to join him and wanted me to give him the best table in the house. I liked the way he looked into my eyes and weighed his words before he spoke.

He followed me to a table at the far end of the restaurant, looked
around, and pointed at a table by the front window. “I think I’d prefer that one.”

That’s how I met Jack. Me challenging myself, him telling me what I offered him wasn’t good enough. Later Jack read my name off the tag on my blouse, his voice a soft baritone.

“Estelle Paradise.”

Over the years, I had heard many jokes regarding my name and I was prepared for one then but none came. Jack was lanky and wholesome, but the dark circles under his eyes spoke of long hours and work beyond his physical capacity. I realized that his left eyebrow was noticeably raised and had a much more pronounced curve, as if the world was under his constant scrutiny.

“You keep looking at my eye,” he said.

“I don’t mean to, I’m sorry.” I blushed and turned away. There was something slightly off about his face and his facial expression seemed to be in a constant state of disapproval.

“Hypertropia,” he said and wiggled his brows. “It’s a muscle imbalance, the visual axis of one eye is higher than the other. It’s hereditary. I wore glasses when I was younger but short of surgery one eye will always be slightly higher than the other.”

The very next day he dropped by for a drink. He sat at the bar and watched me as I walked the floor.

“You know what you should do?” Jack asked that day.

“What’s that?” I held a stack of menus like a shield between us.

“Check to see the progression of the tables instead of just marking the occupied tables at your station.”

“And why would I do that?”

He looked at me, puzzled. “To see if the tables are on dessert or if they’ve paid their checks. It expedites the operation.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said and laughed, trying not to focus on his eye again.

“Would you go out on a date with me?” Jack’s voice shook slightly, enough to be noticeable if you paid close attention.

“We’re not allowed to go on dates with patrons,” I lied and brushed invisible crumbs off my blouse. No one cared whom we dated; the waitress and hostess turnaround was staggering.

His eyes remained on my chest, and then he got up and downed his drink. “If I stop coming here, will you go out with me then?”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I said.

A month later, we went on our first date. I wore my best dress, black, sleeveless, while he wore khakis and a blue unbuttoned shirt. A movie and then dinner, during which we both had too much to drink. In my tipsy stupor I must have told him about my rent being late because he offered to pay for the next month. “Come on,” he said, “let me do something for you.”

That line got to me. Any other night the comment wouldn’t have. After all, I was used to getting by and had always been able to muddle through, but money was tight, and I was struggling to keep up with my student loan payments. Jack’s comment later was “Liberal arts? No degree at all is better than a liberal arts degree,” and so I was stuck in a hostess position while all the waitress slots, popular for their high tips, were filled. I had yet to gain any additional insight into what I wanted to do with my life and I wondered if Delilah had told me a story altogether.

That night, Jack’s shirt smelled of starch and I wondered how his lips would feel on mine. My mouth on his mouth. A taste of what life could be if I let him do something for me.

On our second date, during which I expected reality to set in and expose how different we really were, Jack put his coat around my shoulders as the temperature dropped on our walk to the restaurant. The itchy wool and the smooth lining was every cliché of every romantic movie I had ever seen. The guy who put his coat around the girl’s shoulders is the good guy, good guys give you their coat, and bad guys take your clothes off. During dinner, I told him about my dating rules.

“Thirty days, no making out, no sex.” It was more or less my
way of evoking a response regarding his intentions, but Jack, unshakable, undeterred Jack, didn’t flinch.

“I’ve got my own rule. It’s more like one hundred and eighty days, but okay. I accept,” he said and added, “So, we’re officially dating?”

“Whose side are you on?” I asked while we passed the MetLife Building. “Careerwise,” I added and moved my body closer to his as we walked hand in hand. “I’ve always wondered how lawyers figure out if they prefer being a defense lawyer or a prosecutor. Seems like two very different sides of the law to me.”

“You just pick a side,” he said and furrowed his brow as if my question made no sense at all.

When I asked him what he wanted to do years from now, he said, “I’m looking to become assistant DA. From there, district DA, then judge.”

“And then you’ll run for public office, like mayor or something?” I joked.

“Mayor?” He paused. “Probably not. I don’t do well with crowds and public speaking. Supreme Court maybe. They submit their rulings in writing. Seems like the perfect fit.”

Jack was arrogant, but at the same time his overconfidence was harmless and refreshing and made me want to know more about him.

“Defenders probably see the good in everyone,” I said. “Prosecutors expect everyone to be a criminal. Don’t you have to take a stand in your heart?”

“My heart? That’s a very emotional way of looking at the world.”

“Tell me about growing up,” I said, wanting to change the subject.

Jack named his childhood experiences like he was reading a grocery list. “New Jersey, public schools, wrestling team, single mom.” He paused slightly, then continued. “An only child, sort of. My mother was an employee at the New York Public Library. We struggled, to say the least. My mother was a saint, she never even raised her voice at me.”

“You were
sort of
an only child?”

Jack then told me how his father, Earl, had left his mother when he was still in diapers. Earl, a big-rig driver who spent a majority of the year on the road, met another woman, a beauty salon owner named Elsa. He gave up his trucker job, something he had refused Jack’s mom for years, and started driving a city bus instead. He didn’t disappear from Jack’s life. No, he did something much worse.

“I ran into my father in school, in front of the principal’s office. I hadn’t seen him in years, couldn’t even remember the last time he’d spoken to me. For some odd reason that only a ten-year-old can comprehend, I felt he had come for me. Just when I was about to run into his arms, I heard the principal’s voice over the PA system.
George Connor, please come to the front office.
That was the day I learned of my half brother, George. And that we lived close enough to go to school together. Five blocks, to be exact.”

I didn’t know what to say so I asked him about his mom. He let out a breath that sounded like a groan. “In a way, she killed herself,” he said, and I could tell it was an emotional subject for him. “She started working three jobs, trying to send me to private school after the whole incident with my brother. She wasn’t feeling well for a long time, and when she finally went to the doctor, it was too late. She had ignored all the signs for too long and was diagnosed with colon cancer. Eventually she had surgery but they just stitched her back up, there was nothing they could do. The cancer had spread to her brain and her liver.”

I thought about my own family and how my mother didn’t seem to feel any guilt pursuing her photography career. I remembered all the nights without dinner on the table and the door to the darkroom locked. Many years after my parents had passed, I still couldn’t make up my mind if I should feel cheated out of her attention or happy she had a career of her own.

That night, we broke the thirty-days-no-sex rule and made
love for the first time. It was a chaotic mess: him fidgeting with the condom wrapper and me not knowing where to put my legs. When I woke up the next morning, Jack was sitting in bed, furiously writing in a notebook.

“Are you writing me a poem?” I asked jokingly.

“A speech,” he said. Jack had been selected to deliver the keynote speech for an annual function sponsored by the New York City Bar Association for over eight hundred law students. For the next two weeks he outlined the speech, then revised it just to start all over again. The night of the event I watched him deliver the speech and didn’t see a hint of anxiety. He spoke with confidence, made eye contact, and told anecdotes and jokes. Something wasn’t right, there wasn’t even a hint of anxiety in his voice or his demeanor. Later I found out that speaking in front of crowds wasn’t his only problem.

On our way to the reception room, Jack excused himself, his forehead covered in sweat. People were asking for him, wanting to meet the bright young attorney who had delivered such an inspiring and confident speech. I waited in front of the restroom, then checked the coatroom and behind the stage, but Jack had all but disappeared. His cell went to voice mail and I finally decided to hail a cab and go home. I found him vomiting behind a porta-potty in a construction zone in the parking lot.

Jack mumbled something about an upset stomach. “Go in and let my boss know I have a stomach virus,” he said in one uninterrupted breath and then continued to dry heave. It wasn’t just a fear of speaking in front of crowds but having to mingle with people that did him in.

“A slight bout of anxiety. Not a big deal, I’m working on it,” he confessed later. “I prefer a courtroom to a cocktail party. So what?”

—

A few months later, I told Jack I might be pregnant. There was a long silence followed by an unsure smile.

“Let’s get married,” he said while we waited for the test results.

“Don’t do this because of what your father did, Jack,” I said and wished I hadn’t said it out loud. Jack’s face seemed to melt, his eyes turned big, wounded almost. He recovered quickly and smiled at me again, this time with his lawyerly confidence in place.

“What my father did is irrelevant. I don’t allow other people’s shortcomings to affect my life decisions. And most of all”—his voice became gentle and he held my face and kissed me—“it feels right. It just does.”

By the time the faint pink line appeared in the result window, we were engaged. Neither one of us was sure if it was the right decision but I trusted Jack to make the decision right. I pushed my doubts away and, like shells on a beach, I collected my feelings; there was excitement and joy and an immediate attempt to make a switch from pregnancy to baby, from
I’m pregnant
to
I’m going to be a mother
, and everything about that seemed to leave me raw, like sunburned skin. The fact that I felt inadequate, even at that moment, would emerge again and again in the months that followed.

We went to the courthouse and married in front of the justice of the peace. There was no stretch limousine, no heaving the bridal bouquet into a group of shrieking bridesmaids, no festivities, no honeymoon, no father-in-law telling Jack to take good care of his daughter, no family to toast the bride and groom. Jack wasn’t big on celebrations and it was all the same to me. I decided to keep my maiden name and Jack didn’t put up a fight.

The courthouse clerk took a photo of us, the only one we have of our wedding day. Jack wore a black suit and a dark blue tie. I was in a cotton dress, white, versatile, appropriate for many occasions. In the picture Jack’s got his arm around my shoulder, allowing me to lean into him. Behind us on the wall, a blueprint of the original courthouse layout, the light-colored lines on the blue
background reminiscent of prints on my father’s study wall. In the left corner of the photo, even though I tried to crop it out later, on the hallway courthouse bench, Jack’s briefcase photobombing us from the edge of the picture.