Matchmaking for Beginners
Page 37

“Complicated, yes,” I say, and she says, “Hey, what’s your policy about waiting on line for a table? There’s this excellent place I love, but it takes monumental patience because it’s so awesome, and also it’s got hundreds of reviews on Yelp.”
“I’m fine with waiting,” I say, even though my stomach is growling. I’m surprised she can’t hear it.
“Great. Because it is the place for eggs in Park Slope! You like eggs, I hope? And it’s Southern food, which I know you’ll like. Goes with your accent. Oh, here we are! See how cute? It’s called Yolk!”
Sure enough, we’ve arrived at a tiny little place that has about thirty people milling around outside, sipping mugs of coffee and chatting. Inside, I can see that there are approximately five tables we’ll be competing for. But we put our name on the list and then she suggests we walk around, look in the shops. I try to resign myself to the fact that I won’t get breakfast until sometime in the middle of next week.
“I know it must be so much worse for you, but I still can’t believe Blix isn’t here any longer,” she says. “I miss her so much, it’s like my own grandmother died or something. I saw her every single day! Sammy couldn’t leave the house without stopping by her place. She was everything.”
“Did you know her for a long time?” I say.
“Since Andrew left. I met her that same week. So, yeah, three years? But it seems so much longer because she was always the person I could talk to about anything. She was like my guru and my grandmother and my therapist and my Reiki master and my best friend, all rolled into one. Even while she was sick, she kept up with everybody.”
“I-I didn’t even know she was sick. I met her last Christmas and then she came to my wedding . . . but that’s it.”
“Oh my goodness, she loved you a lot. She told everybody about you! The whole borough of Brooklyn probably knew that you were coming. And then Noah showed up right before she died, so I thought that might mean you weren’t coming after all. But I couldn’t ever get her alone to ask her, you know? I hope you don’t mind that I know all this. That’s the way it is when you’re one of Blix’s people. We all seem connected somehow.”
“I have to admit that I didn’t know I was one of Blix’s people.”
“No? There are a bunch of us. I met most of them at the wake slash good-bye party she gave for herself. Did you know about that?”
“Sadly I am way out of the loop on everything.”
“I’ll fill you in, then,” she says. “There’s Patrick downstairs. He’s an amazing person, an artist and sculptor, but he doesn’t come upstairs anymore since she died. Have you seen his sculpture in Blix’s living room—the woman holding her hands up near her face? Incredibly beautiful. Too bad he doesn’t do that anymore.”
“Did he stop because she died?”
“Oh, no. Even before she died he had stopped.” She looks at me and laughs. “I am talking way too much. Sorry. So! But Blix left you the house—am I right? She left you the building?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
She stops walking so abruptly that two people nearly run into her. “How’s Noah doing with that?”
“It’s kind of a mess,” I say. “Noah and his mom believe that she should have been the one who got the house, and I kind of agree, if you want to know the truth. And no offense, but I don’t really want to live here, so I guess I’ll just sell it.”
“Oh, no!” Her face changes. “You’re just going to sell it and go?”
“Well . . . yeah, I mean this isn’t really home, you know. I have a life elsewhere. In Florida.”
She is searching my face. “I hadn’t even thought about that. Of course you have a life! Oh, man! This would be like somebody in—oh, I don’t know—Oklahoma or somewhere leaving me a house and expecting me to pick up and go there.”
“It does feel kind of random.”
She shifts her bag over to her other shoulder and purses her lips. “I have got to tell you that this is so Blix-like. Doing something like this. No warning, no explanation. We all call this ‘getting Blixed.’ Although mostly it works out for the best once the dust settles.”
“Ha! So I’ve been . . . Blixed?” I say.
“You, my dear, have been sooo Blixed. And you probably haven’t even finished processing your breakup with Noah. That takes forever to get through, and you’re going to have to start the whole thing all over again, now that he’s all up in your face again and reminding you of the past. Is he being—weird? He is, isn’t he? He’s being weird. I can tell. Just from the way he was last night.”
“He is being a little weird,” I say. “But I get it. He’s in shock.”
She frowns. “Can I tell you something, even though I probably should just keep my big mouth closed and keep out of it?”
“Okay.”
“She didn’t want him or his family to have the building. She left it to you on purpose.”
“Really.”
“Yeah, she wasn’t all that happy when he showed up.” She comes to a full stop in front of a shop like she’s slammed on the brakes. “Hey, this is one of my favorite stores,” she says in the same chirpy tone of voice she’s been using all along. “Want to go in and look at the coats? You might need one.”
“Okay,” I say, “although Florida doesn’t really call for a lot of coats.”
“Well,” she says in a singsong, “but you never know what’s going to happen when Blix is involved! You just might find she wants you to stay here.”
“Since she’s dead, though, she doesn’t have much of a way of getting that to happen,” I say.
“So you’d think,” she says.
We go inside and she goes over to the coats, starts flipping through all the shades of gray, black, and brown. And then suddenly, without warning, she stops moving and looks straight ahead, stiffening.
I follow her gaze and see that a man is staring at her and making his way over to us, and behind him is Sammy. If Jessica were a cat, her back would be arched, and she’d be hissing.
“Andrew!” she says, and her face has turned angry. “What in the world are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be on the way to Cooperstown?” She looks around. “And where’s your girlfriend, huh?” She reaches over and puts her hand on Sammy’s arm, protectively. Sammy has a stricken expression on his face; I see him mouthing to her, “It’s fine, Mom, it’s fine.”
The man looks abashed, as though he’s been caught at something, which is exactly how she sounds. Sammy, pushing his mop of too-long hair out of his eyes, scoots out of her range and says, “Easy, Mom. It’s okay. We just wanted to get some food first, and now we’re looking at gloves.”
She turns to her ex. “If I had known, Andrew, that your girlfriend wasn’t going to cook for you, I could have fed him breakfast.”
“It’s fine. We had a nice breakfast down the street. I always like eating in this neighborhood.” Andrew puts his hand on Sammy’s head, which I see Jessica register as some possible violation, and Sammy looks down miserably and kicks at something on the floor.
“So where is she?”
Andrew mumbles something, and then the two of them glare at each other, and then he dips his head, smiles, and steers Sammy over to where they were before, the glove section.
“Good-bye!” she says. “And don’t come home later than you said, okay? We’ve got to stick to the schedule we agreed on, Andrew.” She turns to me. “Let’s get out of here. Do you mind?”
Sammy is giving me an imploring look. Me! Like I could help.
“Of course I don’t mind,” I say. And I smile at her son.
“Sorry that was awkward,” she says. “That man is constitutionally unable to stick to a plan, even if he’s the one who made it.”
“So I’m not the only one processing about an ex,” I say lightly, and am glad when she laughs.