Hello Stranger, page 22
“So speak,” I said.
Lucinda looked Joe up and down. “Privately.”
“Let’s get this clear,” I said, gesturing at Joe. “He is my guest. You are an interloper.”
“You can’t ignore me forever.”
“Yes, I can. I absolutely can. Why would I do anything else?”
But now Lucinda had decided to start looking pitiful. I didn’t even have to see it to know the choreography: the trembling bottom lip, the moistening of the eyes, the drooping of the brows. A signature technique for getting her way. Which worked on a surprising number of people. But not me.
Unfortunately, Joe hadn’t built up an immunity to it.
He could watch for only so long before he caved. “You know what?” Joe said. “I’ve actually got some stuff to do.”
Ugh! Damn human compassion!
“No, you don’t,” I said.
“Yes,” he nodded at me, like, This has to happen. “I do.”
But I was shaking my head. I could not, not, not be trading Joe for Lucinda. “Don’t go.” I followed him to the door. “It’s not a real emergency. She just wants attention!”
But Joe shrugged, like he didn’t know how to stay.
I couldn’t blame him. Developing emotional armor for someone like Lucinda takes years. You needed, like, a graduate degree in emotional manipulation.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Joe said as he slipped out the door.
Tomorrow? That was an eternity.
As soon as he was gone, I rounded on Lucinda. “What,” I demanded, “is this ‘emergency’?”
Lucinda took a deep breath and crossed her arms. “Your father,” she said, “has had an accident.”
Okay. I admit. She got me. “What?”
She nodded, like my panic was legit. “And I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“What happened? Where is he?”
And here, leaning in and just owning it, she said, “He slammed his hand in the garage door.”
I paused. “He what?”
“It’s very swollen and bruised. He fractured his small metacarpal.”
“His pinkie?” I said. “You came all the way over here like the buzzkill of all buzzkills to tell me that Dad fractured his pinkie?”
“That’s a very big deal to a surgeon.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “But it’s not”—and I hit the T pretty hard on not—“an emergency.”
“It was very frightening at the time.”
“Lucinda,” I said, “why are you really here?”
Lucinda sighed. “The point is,” she said, “because of his hand, your father won’t be making his trip to Vienna next week. So I invited him to your art show.”
I shook my head. “Why?”
“Because! We’re family.”
“Have you ever seen a family?” I demanded. “We’re nothing even close.”
What was this new determination to bond?
More important: Was the art show next week?
Wow, the time really flew after brain surgery.
After a second, I said, “He’s not coming, is he?”
“Of course he’s coming,” Lucinda said proudly. “We’re all coming. Me, your dad, and Parker.”
“No,” I said.
Lucinda’s shoulders dropped, and her disappointment almost felt genuine.
“You’re not coming,” I said. “Not him. Not you. And sure as shit not Parker.”
“But he had his secretary add it to his calendar.”
“Make her un-add it.”
“But I’ve already bought an outfit.”
“I feel like you’re not listening. You’re not invited. If you show up, I will call security and have you forcibly removed.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Lucinda said
And then before I had a chance to say Watch me, she lifted up a shopping bag I hadn’t noticed in her hand and held it out to me.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
I looked between Lucinda and the bag. Finally, curiosity beat out hesitation. I walked to my art table and set the bag there so I could reach inside.
And what I pulled out made me gasp.
It was pink fabric with appliquéd flowers.
I held my breath for a few minutes, was afraid to even hope …
“Is this…” I said, just holding it and staring.
Lucinda waited for me to finish the question.
But I just started over. “Is this…?”
I loosened my grip so the fabric could unfurl, and then I had my answer.
It was.
“It’s the dress!” I said. It was so impossible, I turned to Lucinda. “Is it the dress? From the hospital that night?”
“It is,” Lucinda said.
“But how?” I said, still staring at it in disbelief. “I thought it was destroyed.”
“After I left your room, I went looking for it.” She paused, then said, “What’s the expression? I went ‘full Karen’ on that hospital. I even demanded to see the manager.”
“I don’t think going full Karen is a good thing,” I said.
“It worked, though. Didn’t it?”
I marveled at the dress. “I thought it had been incinerated.”
“Five more minutes, and it would’ve been.”
I walked over to the mirror on the closet door to hold it up in front of myself.
“It’s not the same,” Lucinda said next. “There are a few dark spots where the wine stains wouldn’t come out. We were able to reweave some of the shredded fabric, but not all of it—so the fit may be more snug.”
I felt like I’d never been so astonished. “You did this?”
“Lord, no. I took it to a tailor.”
“But…” I didn’t fully understand what was happening. “You saved it.”
“Yes,” Lucinda said, her voice softer.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it was your mother’s.”
My eyes filled with tears at those words. “I never told you that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She let the softness linger for a second, and then she snapped back to business. “Anyway, that’s the emergency. We need to make sure this version fits you. Now. Tonight. Otherwise, we’ll never get the alterations back in time.”
“In time for what?”
But Lucinda’s answer was almost as incredulous as my question. “For you to wear it to the art show.”
And as I tried the dress on so she could check the fit, and as she fussed and clucked over me like real mothers sometimes do over their real daughters, one thing was pretty clear.
Lucinda would be coming to the art show.
And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Twenty-Three
IT’S FAIR TO say that this was a time in my life when almost nothing made any sense.
But after that night, one thing in my life was more than clear.
I’d have to call off my engagement to Dr. Addison.
That was it. Joe was the one.
The one I would choose. The one I wanted to date. The one I could talk to and joke around with. The one I couldn’t stop thinking about. The one I longed to put my hands all over. Again. And again. The one I wished were still in my bed right this very minute.
It wasn’t even a contest.
Dr. Addison had only ever been a romantic daydream—and of course I’d known that from the minute I first fixated on him. He was the notion of a love match. He was the suggestion of future happiness. He was pure fantasy.
Joe, in contrast, was reality. He was scars and collarbones and the smell of juniper. He’d seen me have a panic attack, and he’d rescued me when I was locked out, and he’d brought me tissues when I was crying.
Now that the whole bulldog situation was cleared up, there was nothing left to do but give up and give in, and like him like crazy.
I liked him. This wasn’t a shocking revelation. But it felt good to put it in writing in my head. He wasn’t some illusion of a boyfriend I was summoning to help me through a hard time. He was a real person with an empty apartment and a wounded heart.
I didn’t want to mess this up.
I didn’t want there to be any confusion.
I wanted to honor my incredible luck in finding somebody like Joe by ending things cleanly and neatly with Dr. Addison.
Even though, of course, it seemed crazy to end something that had never started. We hadn’t ever even had one date yet. But I just wanted to clarify with him in a nuts-and-bolts conversation. We hadn’t started anything, and we were never going to.
Was it copacetic to do that at Peanut’s checkup during Dr. Addison’s working hours?
Probably not.
But we happened to have an appointment that day. And it felt like the sooner, the better. I couldn’t imagine Dr. Addison would care too much, anyway, given the whole standing-me-up-and-then-never-calling-again situation.
I could settle things while he was palpating my dog.
How much could he possibly care?
* * *
IT WAS STRANGE to see Dr. Addison again at the appointment. I’d almost forgotten about him. It hadn’t even been that long, but I guess getting infatuated with someone else made it seem longer.
As Dr. Addison strode toward me in the waiting room in his crisp white coat and tie, his hair back in that Ivy League style, I couldn’t help but notice how that GQ look didn’t do it for me anymore. How utterly eroticized floppy hair and hipster glasses had become for me now.
Validating.
Dr. Addison, my once-fantasy-fiancé obsession, had become just another random guy.
Peanut’s checkup was good. The playlist that day was nonstop Louis Armstrong, and I noted that the vet tech had been right. Peanut really did like him.
Dr. Addison was being shadowed by a vet student that day, and he let her do most of the exam. By the end of the appointment, the student and Dr. Addison agreed: Peanut was just about the healthiest elderly dog either of them had ever seen.
“Must be all that pad Thai,” Dr. Addison said, with a little flirty undertone that the vet student didn’t notice.
“Thank you,” I said, grabbing the doc’s hand platonically and pumping it up and down. “You really saved him.”
“It was a group effort,” Dr. Addison said.
A memory of a shirtless Joe flopping me down on my bed and kissing my neck flashed through my head. Somehow I just couldn’t imagine this guy—with his tight posture and his tie and his clicker pen in his Oxford cloth pocket—positively melting a woman in that way.
Case closed. I’d chosen well.
Time to end it.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to him then. “Do you have a minute to talk privately?”
Dr. Addison checked the clock. “I have seven,” he said.
Then, at my frown: “Minutes,” he clarified. “Before my next appointment.”
“Ah,” I said. “Great.”
He walked us out back to a little grassy yard for the animals.
I let Peanut off his leash, and he trotted off to sniff things. And then it was down to business.
I felt oddly nervous. I’d never dumped anyone before. I was generally the dumpee.
Although—can you dump someone you’re not even dating?
“I so appreciate the time we’ve spent together,” I began, busting out the monologue I’d practiced in front of the mirror, but then going off script before the end of the first sentence. “And I just wanted to clarify a little bit with you that whatever’s going on or might go on between us…”
Wow. I was terrible at this.
Dr. Addison took a step closer.
Then he reached forward and took one of my hands—quietly, but with encouragement.
I pushed ahead. “I know we’ve been moving toward spending more time together lately…” My heart surprised me by pounding against the inside of my breastbone. “But I just want to say, in the future, from this point on … I think it’s probably best for us to keep our relationship professional.”
That surprised him.
Dr. Addison let go of my hand and took a step back.
I couldn’t see his face fall, but I could definitely feel it.
“Professional?” he asked then, after a pause, sounding, really, like he had not seen that coming.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep things light. “You know. For us to just kind of stay in the vet and client category.”
Another pause. Dr. Addison reached back and palmed the back of his head. “You’re saying that you just want us to have a vet-client relationship?”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Nothing more?”
I nodded again.
A long pause. Then a tense question: “Can I ask why?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to keep things super friendly. “Well, it’s been a bit of a crazy time for me, lately. And I actually, um, you know, not on purpose of course, but just kind of by accident … I guess you could say I developed a thing for somebody else.”
Dr. Addison stood there a second. Then he said, “A thing? You developed ‘a thing’ for somebody else?”
Wasn’t that what I just said? “Yeah. You know. So…”
“When?” he asked.
“Um,” I said, my voice sliding unnaturally high. “Recently?”
“Who is it?” he asked next, sounding brittle.
“Oh, just a guy. Ya know. A guy I’ve had to spend some time with lately.”
Dr. Addison started pacing around.
That much, I could see.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It just kind of happened. I wasn’t even really sure that you were interested, anyway.”
“You weren’t sure I was interested?”
“I mean—were you?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice sour. “I was interested.”
Wow. This was not the reaction I’d been expecting from a guy who stood me up and then never called.
Dr. Addison adjusted his tie. “So … you’re going to date this other person?”
“I think so,” I said.
“And,” he went on, studying the ground like he was trying to solve a problem, “if I told you that I really like you a lot, would that make a difference?”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“If I told you,” he went on, “that I can’t remember the last time I met someone who woke me up like you do … That there’s something about you that I can’t get out of my head … That I keep thinking about you and wondering if we might be … really right for each other…” He looked up. “What would you say?”
I’d say, “Don’t stand me up next time?” I thought to myself.
But to Dr. Addison, I just said, “I’m so sorry. I just think it’s too late.”
And then—maybe out of politeness, or maybe just because it’s not every day that someone saw something so valuable in me—I added, “Thank you, though. For feeling those things.”
Next, the door to the clinic slammed open and a vet tech said, “I’m sorry, Dr. A. We’ve got a Great Dane with torsion.”
Dr. Addison gave a curt got it nod. Then after the tech was gone, he let out a deep sigh, and said, “Do I have any chance at all of changing your mind?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said, figuring that being honest was probably better for both of us in the long run. “I think I just … accidentally … fell madly in love.”
He took that in. “Can’t argue with that. I guess.”
He looked up at the sky then, took a deep sigh, and walked to the clinic door.
But next, before going through, he stopped and turned back. “I wish you well, Sadie,” he said. “I really do.” Then, like he absolutely meant it, he added, “Be happy, okay? And take good care of yourself.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
Then he and his tie and his white lab coat were gone.
I looked down at Peanut, who was scooting around now, scratching his bum enthusiastically on the grass.
Peanut paused to look up at my face, and I paused to look down at his, and the two of us silently agreed: I would definitely need to find a new vet.
Twenty-Four
I WENT HOME that afternoon and painted like crazy.
I had two days before the portrait had to be delivered to the gallery before the show.
I had never tried to complete a painting in such a short time frame before. My old method could take weeks. But I didn’t have weeks. I had two days.
I’d do what I could do and let the rest go.
I’ll be honest and say: I liked this painting. I couldn’t entirely vouch for the face, but everything else was strong, compelling work. The curve of his shoulder. The slant of his collarbone. The shadow around his Adam’s apple. Plus, the colors, which were just the right combination of bright and muted—happy and sad. The whole thing had an energy about it—a frisson of emotions—that was just … appealing.
It wouldn’t win, of course. A faceless portrait was the last thing these judges were looking for.
But it would be something true. Something I could be proud of.
When I texted a snapshot of it to Sue—now a married woman in Edmonton, Alberta—she texted back. Wow!
Do you like it? I asked.
It’s phenomenal!!! she texted back. That torso!! Then after a pause, This might be the best thing you’ve ever done.
That made me kiss the phone. Think it’ll win? I texted back.
Not a chance, Sue replied. Then she added, But if anybody can win while losing, it’s you.
* * *
I FINISHED THE painting a day early, emerging from a blissful state of flow and texting Joe: Your portrait’s done.
When I didn’t hear back, I decided to get more explicit. Want to come see it?
Still no response.
Maybe he was busy? Was this the busy season for pet sitters? Could some of Dr. Michaux’s snakes have escaped the den? Was everything okay with Joe’s hundred-year-old grandmother?
I told myself not to text Joe all these questions, but then I texted them all, anyway.
Plus a few more.
Where the heck was he?
I demanded that Sue call me from Canada, and then I said, “I think I just dumped my fantasy fiancé for a guy in my building who’s now ghosting me.”
