Authors: Deborah Schwartz
He was pacing around the small alcove of the restaurant when I walked through the door. I timed myself to be five minutes late—I just didn’t know that Len did not expect to be kept waiting. Ever. His movements were abrupt, his impatience directing his steps. His back faced me as I walked over to introduce myself.
He turned around and under the dim lights of the old restaurant we sized each other up. I don’t remember what I expected him to look like, as the photo he had sent had left me anything but optimistic. A face-to-face inspection showed that the photo had been kind. I looked at him with dismay.
Blondish hair covered what seemed to me to be an unusually large head. Long lips and a large nose rested beneath eyes that were set far apart. If Robert Redford was not available for the next screenplay offered to him, Len should not have waited by the phone.
It took me a second to realize the worst of it. A closer inspection led me to the discovery that I was looking down at this man who seemed to be sporting a decent sized belly. Granted, I stood only at five-feet-five-inches, but I had chosen a pair of two-inch heels. It would be a long night twisting my ankles to appear shorter.
“Kate?”
“Len, hi,” I answered back, half wondering what he thought of my appearance and how to inconspicuously walk on my ankles without tripping.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. “Let’s go in.”
Following Len in, I wondered if I would ever be able to sleep with him.
One look around the restaurant revealed what physically at least looked to be a hidden gem of southern Connecticut. Old wooden walls lit up by the glow of candlelight, skylights glistening with the images of lustrous stars above us, and simple white linen created a romantic setting. We were seated in a quiet corner of the restaurant.
Len seemed agitated as he fidgeted with his glasses in his hand. He wore a suit that would generously be described as not-quite navy and sheen. Not quite the outfit I envisioned for a partner at a major New York investment bank.
We sat in the wooden spindle chairs and looked at each other. After our phone conversation the past week, I felt that I knew a modest amount of information about this man, and yet I knew nothing. We were so far along in our lives that our histories could be conveniently revised. If I told him at that moment that I once played violin for The New York Philharmonic, he would have no choice but to believe me.
“How was your ride here? Any traffic out of New York?” I said.
“No, no traffic.”
Len put on his dark brown glasses and picked up his menu. He wore the glasses low on his long nose and peered at me over the top of the menu.
“Do you know what you want?” he asked.
Quick with the waiter, Len took off the glasses and looked at me.
“Where are your kids tonight?”
“I’m really lucky. The town I live in is very close knit. My kids spend a lot of time at their friends’ houses and their friends camp out at ours. And I have au pair from Germany, Myra. She’s just wonderful. Young enough to be playful but extremely responsible with them,” I said.
“My wife Judy stayed home with my children. I could work as much as I wanted.”
Len looked unconcerned how I might react to his words.
“Guess I don’t have that luxury. But having grown up in New York, I now get what a gift living in a small town has been to my kids and to me.”
I sat there counting my blessings to not be on a date with another bitter divorced man. But I intended to be serious, and ask him lots of questions. After having gone on so many dates, I became determined to unearth as much as I could the first night and sniff out the defects quickly.
“Do you like your work?” I asked.
“Absolutely. Everything about it including my company, Duke Heller, and a very large corner office on Wall Street.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
And then he blurted out, “I’m the safest partner in the company.”
Were all the other partners stealing the clients’ money?
“One of our partners has had affairs with some secretaries and junior women,” he continued, “Not me. No one could ever accuse me of that. I’m the safest partner.”
“You’re the safest partner? What an interesting way to look at your colleagues.”
Len now sat stiffly in his chair. He appeared in complete control as if anything short of this would be evidence to me of some inherent weakness.
“You wouldn’t believe the things I do because of the people I meet through work. Opening night at the theatre, dinners with movie stars at the next table, travel around the world. I went to the Grammys last year,” he said.
I imagined being swept out of the restaurant, out of the awkwardness of blind dates and Connecticut suburbia and launched directly onto the red carpet in between the shadows of Mariah Carey and Kenny G. My life as I knew it would be far, far away.
Interrupted by the arrival of our dinner. Len went back to his stories and I pushed the food around my plate. The meal tasted mediocre at best but neither of us seemed to care. We both knew our way around the world class restaurants in New York. The night was not about being dazzled by the cuisine, but by the company.
The conversation was flowing easily but neither of us flirted and for the moment I felt hardly any chemistry for Len. One friend had advised me to put on my game face when out to dinner with a man but I had no intention of playing with this man - yet.
All too soon, the waiter arrived with the check. Len put on his glasses again, peered at the bill and calculated the tip.
“Let’s go,” he said.
We walked out to my car, a white Volvo sedan, and stood next to it in the cold night air, under a sky filled with glimmering stars and black landscape.
“I’ll call you, if you don’t mind?” he asked.
The night seemed a pleasant success. He wasn’t quite what I had pictured after reading his letter but for the first time in many dates I didn’t think being alone felt less painful than being with a man. There were possibilities here. The very good-looking men I’d encountered since Jake hadn’t looked so good when I got to know their character. So for once, a man’s looks were going on the back burner in my priorities.
“I’d like that.”
I stood still, bending awkwardly downward, hoping that a good night kiss was on its way. No luck. As he walked away toward his Mercedes, I wondered what Len thought of our evening. I would have to wait and see if he would call.
Len drove away and I sat motionless in my car. The stalemate between the punishing details of the past and the possibilities of my future constantly filled my head. The familiarity of the past often won after an evening with another new man provoked new fears. As the memories settled into the car, I surrendered to reliving them once again.
The first time I noticed Jake, in my freshman year of college, he was walking across the college green. One look at his handsome face, six foot five, two hundred twenty-five pound body and unassuming walk and it was love at first sight. But the thought didn’t last long when I noticed his girlfriend, a beautiful tall Swedish blonde, by his side.
“Forget it,” I thought and kept going.
Four years later Jake happened into the bar in Harvard Square where I was waitressing for the summer and strode right over to me.
“You went to Brown, didn’t you? I remember seeing you on campus,” he said.
He stuck to me like glue that night as I worked.
“Here’s my phone number, give me a call,” he said as he headed to the door around midnight.
I looked at the slip of paper and knew it wasn’t in me to phone a guy.
Ten minutes later Jake reappeared in the bar.
“I walked around the block and realized you wouldn’t call. Please give me your number,” he said.
Our first date was on a Friday night in August of 1975. I had just graduated from college. Jake, now a fourth year medical student, picked me up in his decrepit 1965 Buick. We sat in a local restaurant, and then my apartment, talking until four in the morning. By Sunday night, our second date, we had decided to live together.
It felt so easy to fall in love with Jake. His gentle, soft-spoken manner was disarmingly at odds with his large body, a big teddy bear of a man, and rugged good looks. Having grown up with very little money, he loved to tell stories about his dogged transition from a blue-collar future to what he called the halls of the Mecca of medicine.
During the three months after Jake died, I went to his grave at least once a day and begged him to come back. For six months I cried myself to sleep. Sometimes as I shut my eyes, I thought of Jake trying not to close his for the last time. I opened my eyes and shut them, over and over again.
Each night at eight I crawled into bed, as soon as my children, seven-year-old Chloe and four-year-old Ben, were asleep. Not able to face evenings without Jake, sleep was my escape. But it was nightmarish that they might feel they had lost both parents.
Bedtime was often hell for Chloe and Ben. After we finished our nightly ritual of reading before trying to sleep, Jake’s absence took hold.
“How could there be a God? How could He take Daddy away?” Chloe screamed one night. “Daddy was so good. I want him back. What if you die and I have no parents?”
I hugged her tightly and after she calmed down a bit, I repeated to her the words that Rabbi Shapiro had said to me shortly after Jake died.
“You will never know if there is a God, you will never know why Daddy died. But tomorrow morning you will get out of bed and have a wonderful day because that is what Daddy would want you to do.”
Chloe seemed to find consolation in these words. She put her head down on the colorful Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase and fell asleep quickly. Then alone in my room, I cried wondering how long I’d have the strength to comfort my children.
Ben was full of fear. He cried for his Daddy but also for himself.
“I’m scared of dying. What if there is no after-life?” my precocious four-year-old son asked one evening.
Ben became hysterical one night missing his Daddy. For the first time I consoled him with a new message.
“One day I will remarry and you will have a father again.”
“When? How soon?”
“Well, first I’ll have to find someone to love, and he’ll have to love me too.”
Chloe, sitting on her brother’s bed listening, rolled her eyes up as if that could never happen.
“Do it while I’m still young,” Ben said.
After school one afternoon, while emptying Chloe’s backpack, I found a paper on which the teacher asked her students to make a list of wishes. Chloe had two: I wish I had a father, I wish I won’t die young. My children lost their innocence so early in their lives. Only time would put enough distance between Jake’s death and a life for Chloe and Ben and me. I had to pay my dues in time, to serve time in a grief cell.
As the months went on, I stopped going to the cemetery so often. The grave was covered with snow and I wondered if Jake felt cold. But he was buried near the main street of my small town and I drove past there several times a day. His arms seemed to reach out to me as I drove past begging me to visit. I began to resist.
I found a therapist and lived for that one hour a week appointment. And then I tried a widow’s support group for a while. It was easy to identify with these women and the experience felt beneficial for a short time. But it appeared most useful in showing me what I didn’t want to be - a professional widow.
At Christmas time an invitation arrived for a party for many of the doctors from the hospital where Jake had worked. Walking into a large room where couples stood laughing, holding hands, and sharing stories of their latest vacation or purchases, I floated around, trying to fit in but regretted accepting the invitation.
There were days when I even expected Jake to show up, to ring the doorbell or call on the phone. Maybe God would give him a special dispensation to make one call or Jake would just sneak one in. I felt desperate for that one contact. Jake’s eyes gazing at me. Just one more long embrace in his arms. But I knew if I found myself one day thinking Jake was back, alive, I’d have lost my sanity. The price tag was too high. Chloe and Ben needed me.
We began to travel. To pay for our trip to St. Lucia, I sold Jake’s car. Terrified of going on this trip, I dreaded feeling alone once we were there, but when we arrived, I was lulled at first by the beauty of the island and the Caribbean. It felt wonderful to be thousands of miles away from my nightmare, but how foolish of me to think my suitcase of memories had not traveled with us.
This trip meant a break with the past and, Lord knows, I might even have fun, but I felt so jealous of the couples there. They couldn’t possibly have a past like mine, not with the abandon with which they seemed to enjoy themselves. Each evening at dinner I watched as the couples around me appeared to relish each other while I sank into my chair with envy.
Chloe, Ben and I also learned to cope with the fact that one adult and two children on vacation are a family.
“I asked your son where his father was, and he told me your husband is in Africa hunting wild animals,” one woman informed me.
Ben was in the room.