Matchmaking for Beginners
Page 10

And by the look of things, Cassandra is thriving. So you know what that means? It means it’s the way things are supposed to be.
So I am going to die. Most natural thing in the world to have happen. Life ends.
And I’m okay with that. It’s just a change of address, really. It doesn’t have to be awful.
I sigh, kick off the sheets because I’m suddenly hot, and then I close my eyes and tune in to the conversation the pigeons are having on the windowsill. They always sound like they’re on the verge of figuring everything out.
Later, I get up and go to what Houndy calls my crazy-ass kitchen to make tea. Funny, these old Brooklyn brownstones. This one has a parquet floor that once was probably grand but which now slopes down to the outside wall. It’s a floor with personality, all pocked and scarred from a century of footsteps and bootheels and water leaks and even worse grievances than those. And a high tin ceiling with a glaring fluorescent ring of light in its yellowed center—a light I never turn on because it’s harsh. It promotes ugliness, that light. Instead, I’ve put lamps all around. Warm, yellowish light to give softness.
Houndy says we could get the floor made level and maybe have the stairs replaced in the front of the house, get the roof fixed. He’s a do-something kind of guy, not one to sit around and watch the metal rust. Finally I had to say to him that I am all about slowing down all that striving. I just want to enjoy the sun coming through the cracks near the windows. I am tired of making so much effort.
He doesn’t take much convincing to see the point of things I say, and that’s why I let him come and live here and sleep in my bed next to me. We never got married because I’ve finally learned that if you have to bring the law into your personal relationships, then you’re doing it wrong. And both Houndy and I have done it wrong plenty of times before. So we’ve just been skating along together for twenty-plus years.
We met right after his son died, when Houndy was in such a bad way, in such grief he couldn’t even catch himself any lobsters anymore. Lobsters just walked on by his traps and got in other people’s traps, and Houndy was so battered by life he didn’t even care all that much except he was going to starve to death. So somebody told him to come see me, and I chanted some words of power summoning the forces of plenty, and put my hands on his heart—and after that lobsters started standing in line to get in his traps.
He brought me some one night to show me my spell had worked, and we stayed up late and ate lobsters and drank some homemade wine I had, and then—I don’t know how it got started—we found ourselves dancing, and of course, dancing is the gateway drug to kissing, and somehow that night Houndy brought the laughter back into my eyes. And maybe I did us a little love spell that has always stood me in good stead when I’ve needed it. So here we are, two decades later: me doing my words of power and finding love for people when I can and him bringing me his old craggy Brooklyn self and his scratchy chin and his happy snoring. And lobsters.
And in the mornings I fix him poached eggs and salmon and make him smoothies that have plenty of antioxidants, and bread that I’ve baked, filled with seeds and sprouts. And then we sit outside in the sun on the roof and listen to the city moving beneath us and feel the energy of life. Well, I do. Houndy sits next to me and smiles like he’s the Buddha or something, even though I don’t think he has a spiritual cell in his body. Maybe that’s why the universe sent him to me: we’re counterbalanced. The universe always likes things to have a balance to them.
A door slams upstairs, and the building’s day begins.
Voices on the stairs: “Did you get your lunch from the countertop . . . and did you get a pencil? And since it’s the last day of school, you won’t have aftercare, so you’ll come home on the bus, and then . . . well, you and I will call each other. Right?”
“I’ll call you every week.”
“No, every day. Sammy, promise me. Every day!”
And then, there are two sets of footsteps clomping downstairs—Jessica’s sandals carefully slapping on the wood and Sammy’s exuberant sneakers—and Sammy knocks his scooter against my door as he passes just like he always does. It’s supposedly an accident, and Jessica says she tries to get him not to do it, but I always tell her I don’t mind. It’s our ritual. Sammy is leaving for the day, and he wants me to see him out.
I jump up and go to the back door and throw it open, and there he is in the hall, the sweetest boy, ten years old with his yellow hair sticking up, and his pale, fair skin practically see-through in the light from my kitchen windows, peering at the world through those adorable giant round glasses he loves. And he’s grinning at me.
“SamMEE!” I say, and we do a fist bump, which is hard because of the scooter he’s carrying and the outsized New York Mets backpack he’s wearing. Jessica’s next to him with her harried morning face, and as usual she’s juggling her cup of coffee, her bag, the car keys, and her one thousand worries, and at any moment she could drop any of it except the worries.
But today she also looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Not only is it Sammy’s last day of school—but for the very first time, his dad, whom Jessica hates in the way you can only hate somebody you once loved beyond reason, is going to take Sammy upstate to stay with him and his mysterious new girlfriend—whom Jessica had never even seen—for a whole month. The court said this had to happen, and Jessica fought it for as long as humanly possible, but now today is the day. When she got the news, she asked me if there was any way Houndy and I could hand Sammy over to the ex, since she didn’t think she could do it without falling apart. So we’re going to.
Sammy says, “Blix! Blix! Guess what! Did you know that when I come back from my dad’s I’m gonna know how to play the drums?”
“What? You’re going to be even more amazing than you already are?” I say, high-fiving him three more times. “You’re going to play the drums?”
He rocks back on his heels and grins at me and nods. “I’m going to drummer camp.”
Jessica rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, we’ll see. Andrew makes a lot of promises he can’t keep.”
“Moooommmm,” says Sammy. “He’s gonna do it!”
“Let’s hope so,” says Jessica grimly. Poor thing, she is a woman who has been given more than she thought she could handle, including a cheating husband and a boy who is sort of quirky. She’s always twisting her rings around and around on her hands and looking worried. I’m always beaming love toward her, and watching as she gets bombarded with all the little love particles, but so far none of them seem to have landed in a permanent way. I think she’s kind of enjoying being furious with her ex for now, if you want to know the truth. It’s hard to make room for love when anger still feels so good.
“So, Sammy my boy,” I say, “Houndy and I will meet you at the bus stop outside and then we’ll all hang out here to wait for your dad.”
“Wait. Mama’s not going to stay with me?”
“No, babycakes. Today you get me and Houndy and some chocolate chip cookies.”
He turns to Jessica with his tiny, serious eyes. “Is it because you’re too sad to say good-bye to me?”
She has one of those faces that shows every single one of her thoughts marching across, and now she has about fifty-seven thoughts at once, most of them tragic. “I-I have to work late today, so I thought Blix could meet up with your daddy instead.” She fiddles with her keys, wipes at her eyes, gets busy shuffling her bag over to her other shoulder.
“It’s okay,” says Sammy. He tucks his hand into hers. “I know. You’re too sad to see my daddy take me. But it’s going to be okay, Mama.”
You see? This is when I want to rush in, slather them with love.
“I just—I want you to go off and be happy,” she says. “But—”
No, I think. I send her a STOP message. Don’t say the next part, that you don’t want him to love his daddy and the new girlfriend more than he loves you.
She clears her throat, and our eyes meet. She’s about to cry. So I go over and hug her and him both, mostly so I can block her from saying that she’s terrified that Sammy’s not going to want to come back to her. That the drum lessons and the novelty of attention from his father and his dad’s girlfriend are going to make him want to stay away forever. That she’s afraid her world with him, the world of homework and sadness and the grind of school, can never measure up to a month in the Berkshires. With a lake and a drum camp.