Matchmaking for Beginners
Page 46

I straighten myself up. “You miss her. I’m sorry. It must feel like a huge loss.”
He turns away a bit, looks toward the living room. “I do. Very much. And although it’s been great to meet you, I’m afraid I really do have to get back to alarming the population about rheumatoid arthritis.”
“Oh! Of course,” I say. “And, Patrick, thank you. It—it really is so nice to meet you.” I want to say to him that he is far from hideous, that the light that shines out from his eyes knocks me right out—but how do you say those things? So I stick out my hand, and after only a flicker of hesitation, he takes it. His hand is leathery and I can feel the rough ridge where new tissues were probably grafted on. I feel an involuntary shiver go through me, and Patrick looks right into my eyes.
“You see?” he says. “I warn people, but it gets them every time just the same.”
And then the very worst thing happens, which is that as I’m backing out of the room, I turn too quickly toward the front door and trip on a piece of carpet and bonk myself into a sculpture that’s sitting on the bookshelf, and it goes toppling over into the bank of computers, bouncing once and then smashing on the floor.
“Oh, no! Oh my God! Oh, I’m so sorry!” I say, but even as he’s shrugging his shoulders and telling me I shouldn’t worry about it, I notice he’s heading for the kitchen, probably looking for paper towels or a broom. I say that I’ll sweep things up, but he keeps saying, “I shouldn’t have left that piece there, it could have happened to anyone.”
“No, it’s me, I’m far too clumsy!” I tell him. “I’m so, so very sorry!”
I feel like I’m about to cry. I am over-the-top sad and crazy, and finally there is nothing to do but leave. The quota of sorries has been said for the whole day, and I have to leave this sad, funny man sweeping up shards of a sculpture that he probably made with his whole heart and soul and that I have now broken forever.
TWENTY-EIGHT
MARNIE
The next week, Jessica takes me out for Brooklyn Lessons. Apparently I have not been doing well at Brooklynizing myself.
It’s all because I referred to the subway as the metro. I mean, I knew it was the subway, but I figured the words metro and subway were interchangeable. Same thing, right? Wrong! Then I said that Lola was sweeping the steps, not the stoop. Then later I called Paco’s store down the street “a convenience store.”
That brought Jessica charging right down the stairs, banging on the door, and holding up her phone and laughing. “Has no one ever said the word bodega to you?” she said.
“I thought a bodega was kind of a bar and possible whorehouse,” I said, and that made her come over and hug me, she was laughing so hard.
“Okay. What’s the cheese they put on pies? And by pie, I mean pizza.”
“Pies are pizza?”
“No. Pizzas are pies. Come on. What’s the cheese?”
“Mozzarella.”
“No! Oh my God. It’s muzzarell. You can call it moots if you want. Do not say moz-za-rella in a restaurant around here. Promise me. And do not ever let anyone see you eating pizza with a fork, no matter how hot it is or how hungry you are. The ridicule and shame will be everlasting.”
So today, her day off, we ride on the subway—where you use a MetroCard but God forbid you call the whole enterprise the metro.
“I still like driving a car the best,” I tell her. “Except here, where I’d probably go insane and start driving on the sidewalk.”
“You’re such a Californian and Floridian. Subways are much better for people- watching, although it’s very important that you do not make direct eye contact. The best part is that you get to learn gymnastics routines on the subway when the school kids get on.”
The gold shimmers so much I am nearly blinded.
I know what that means. It means that Jessica is going to start talking about Andrew again. She thinks she’s complaining about him, but as I watch her speak, all I can see is the pink aura around her, and the way her face lights up when she talks about him. Oh, but there is such a wounded heart underneath that light.
It’s okay. She’ll be okay.
Later I give money to a homeless man, who tells me he has a secret for me. He was once president of the United States, he whispers, but they made him sleep outside the White House in the park, so he resigned. He says that there are some things people should not have to put up with, especially when they’re too hungry, and so I go into Brooklyn Muffin and buy him a sandwich, and when I come out and give it to him, Jessica shakes her head and says I am just like Blix.
Walking home, we’re on Bedford Avenue when I see an adorable little flower shop, with pots of chrysanthemums and other greenery outside on the sidewalk. The name, scrawled on the door, in white script, is BEST BUDS. And I know I have to go in there.
“You know what? You can head home if you want, but I need to get Patrick some flowers.”
Jessica’s eyebrows go up in little peaks. “You have to get Patrick some flowers?”
“Yes. I took him some cookies the other day, and—”
“Wait. You took him some cookies?”
“Will you stop it? Yes, I took him some chocolate chip cookies because I wanted to meet him, and we were having a conversation, and things got a little animated, and I knocked one of his sculptures off the table and smashed it.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. It was kind of horrible actually. So I’ve been trying to think of how to make it up to him. And maybe flowers would be nice. It’s kind of drab in his apartment.”
“Is it? He’s never invited me in.”
“Besides the smashing of his artwork, I think I made at least five hundred other mistakes with him.”
“He’s tough. Only Blix had the magic touch with him. I’ve never been able to get so much as a conversation going.” She shifts her bag to her other shoulder. “Listen,” she says. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to head straight home. Sammy’s going to be getting off the school bus soon, and I should meet him. Good luck with your Patrick project, though.” She wrinkles her nose. “You’re kind of sweet, you know that?” She starts down the street and then turns and points at me. “The cheese on the pizza! Go!”
“Moots!”
“And how do we eat pizza?”
“With our hands!”
It’s glorious inside Best Buds—all tropically fragrant and moist, with greenery in every corner, along with spikes of flowers: roses, tulips, gerbera daisies, mums. The perfect place for a Floridian. Orchids tower in one corner of the softly illuminated cooler, looking like birds preparing for takeoff. I take deep breaths and try to think what would be the best flower for Patrick: the gerbera daisy or the mum plant? An orchid he’d have to take care of, or a bouquet of roses?
I finally take a bouquet of red and yellow roses up to the front counter and wait in line to be rung up by the slightly harried cashier. Two women are standing at the counter, looking unhappy, and the dark-haired one says to the other, “Come on! We’re getting a baby because of him, and I want to thank him. I’ll write him the letter if you won’t.”
The other woman, who is wearing a ponytail and an emerald-green pashmina that I am coveting, folds her arms over her chest and says, “No! The flowers are enough. More than enough. If you write to him, believe me, he’ll be over all the time. I know this guy. He’ll be all up in our business.”
“Some daisies and a nice short letter then. He doesn’t even know yet that the pregnancy test was positive. I think he deserves to know that.”
The ponytailed woman scowls and looks away. Our eyes meet and she suddenly laughs. “Can you believe this conversation?” she says to me. “How to thank your sperm donor and make sure he knows he’s only a sperm donor.”
“Well,” I say. “What about this? What if you sent him the flowers and a card that says, ‘Thanks for the strong swimmers! We got a hit!’”
They look at each other and grin. And then the first woman grabs the pen and writes my message on the card, and they both give me a high five.