Shy Town Girls (8 page)

We chatted a little bit about the weather, which had
been wonderful—bracing and cool. Barbara told me about some of her
and Meryl’s ideas for fixing up the old house: paint colors,
refinishing the floors in the entry hall. Ordinarily I love to talk
decorating, but tonight I failed to add much to the exchange of
creative ideas.

“
You’re playing with your food,
Bobbie,” she said finally. “You look lost in thought. Or completely
exhausted. What’s bothering you, dolly? Is it the pie?” She smiled
endearingly as she sat across from me at the kitchen table. Due
rested on his own little footstool, following the conversation
intently. Or was it the pie he was so avidly focused on? He was a
curious animal, his eyes with a human-like personality behind
them.

“
This pie happens to be some of the
best I’ve had,” I said honestly. “Ever.”

“
From scratch too,” she said. “I
make it from seasonal Wisconsin Honeycrisp apples.”

“
No,” I assured her, “the pie is
fantastic. Thank you. It’s just that. . .” I rested my head on my
hand. I found it hard to open up.

“
It’s good to put your thoughts into
words, honey bee,” she said.

“
I don’t know where to start. I
don’t really know how I got to where I am right now.”

“
Where is that?” she asked
encouragingly.

“
I feel so unsatisfied. I also feel
ungrateful for being so unhappy. I truly have nothing to be
complaining about. I really do like my job--even if I complain
about it often. I also have a crazy but great family, friends, good
health, and a roof over my head. An amazing roof at that! I love it
here. Yet, I am so unhappy sometimes,” I confessed. “I just don’t
know why. . . well actually, yes, I do know. I feel so pathetic
saying this, but I think I realized that I’ve been going about this
whole ‘love’ situation all wrong. . .”

Barbara laughed to herself. “I’ll tell you one thing
honey, love is not a situation.”

“
What do you mean?” I
asked.

“
Love, love, love, one of the most
wonderful mysteries of the world—isn’t it?” She smiled and stirred
honey into her tea.

“
Mystery is right. I don’t think I
even know what love is. I thought I did. But I have learned that I
don’t.”

She looked at me thoughtfully, sipping her tea.

“
Did you love your husband,
Barbara?” I noticed I didn’t see any photos around her apartment of
the two of them together.

“
Oh yes, very much so,” she
said.

“
How did you know it was
real?”

“
Real?” She frowned at the word.
“Love is not a choice, Bobbie baby. Love takes no work to maintain
or to gain. The real choice, the real work lies in the friendship
and in sustaining the integrity. . . the purity of it.” She stood
and crossed the room to an antique cabinet and opened a drawer. She
pulled out an envelope and handed me a photo.

“
This is my dear Donald. Isn’t he
such a handsome man?” she asked.

I nodded. “He is.” And he was, with his chiseled
jawline, prominent nose, and clear eyes fixed upon something just
beyond the photographer. Perhaps it was Barbara herself he’d been
looking at. He looked like a man you could count on, someone you
could trust to be there when you needed him. Like Olly is for me, I
thought.

“
He was my best friend,” she
said.

“
He’s stunning, Barbara,” I
confirmed.

“
Oh yes, didn’t I get lucky? My best
friend happened to be the most handsome man I knew. Well, I guess
you could say I had many handsome beaux, but Donald. . . he was
neither rich, nor poor, but his mind was pure. The way he looked at
me. . .” she paused, reliving a moment long past. “You’ll recognize
the man you’re meant to be with one day by the way he looks at you,
Bobbie baby.”

Listening to her talk about her late husband with
such pride and confidence raised conflicting feelings in me: envy,
hopefulness, worry, that it would never happen for me. But also
faith—there was a conviction deep down inside me that I hung onto,
believed in. I, too, would find what I was yearning for.

“
Bobbie, do you know anything about
Eros, Philia,
and
Agape?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I mean, yeah, I know the words,
I’ve heard of . . . well, Eros. He’s like the god of love,
right?”

“
The Greeks were genius people,
Bobbie. They faced the mysteries of life head-on, asking questions
and doubting the norms. And all this reflecting uncovered the same
treasures we still seek today. I wouldn’t expect you, or most
anyone else for that matter, to know how to identify love—because
you’re right, you don’t know what it is. But you, with your
knowledge of other languages, have a head start. Because the
English language deprives us, doesn’t it? It leaves us very
confused about what this ambiguous term ’love’ means.”

“True,” I said. “Very confused!”

“The Greeks broke it down into three categories. The
first stage of love they called Eros. Eros is the passions and
intense desire you feel for someone, or even something. Plato said
it’s the deeply embedded desire to seek the beauty of another
individual. When you find something that captures you, it reminds
you that true beauty exists in the world. That’s a very powerful
thing. It’s no wonder it consumes us.”

I thought of Charlie’s beauty, how seductive it was,
even when I could see right through it to the vain shallow
core.

‘He who loves the beautiful is called a lover
because he partakes of it,’” she quoted. “Falling in love is loving
the space in between you and whatever it is you find beautiful.
It’s not the individual himself you fall in love with, it is what
he provokes from you. Do you understand, Bobbie baby?”

I nodded, but I questioned myself. Did I understand?
It seemed to me Barbara was talking in riddles, or maybe she was
drinking something stronger than just tea.

She picked up a glass cup that was sitting on her
kitchen table. “Now take this glass, for instance. How beautiful is
this? Italian-made, excellent design, hand-blown. It probably took
hours of passionate work. Do you think it’s beautiful, Bobbie?” she
asked.

“
Yes, it’s very
beautiful.”

Barbara held it above her head and with great might,
threw the glass to the floor, causing it to shatter into a dozen
pieces. I was shocked. How crazy was this lady?

She looked at me and smirked. “Do you still think
the glass I was holding a second ago is beautiful?”

Shocked and confused I uttered, “Uh—I guess. Yes, I
did believe it was beautiful.”

“
Exactly my point, Bobbie, it
wasn’t the glass that you loved. It was the feelings it evoked from
you. Good news. There are many glasses in the world, of all shapes,
sizes, and colors. That is Eros.”

I felt more confused than ever.

She slapped her hands on the top of her thighs.
“Next time you come visit me, we’ll talk about the second stage of
love, Philia.”

“Great,” I said. I wondered what she’d destroy to
illustrate that!

We said good-night, and I walked down the stairs. I
kept thinking about Charlie’s face and Barbara throwing that glass,
breaking it into pieces. I could not figure out what she was trying
to say to me, but I had to admit I sometimes had the urge to smash
that incredible beauty that was Charlie, see him shatter into a
million irreparable parts.

But what if it wasn’t Charlie at all? What if it
wasn’t really Charlie who aroused the thrill of passion within me?
What if it was all in me, like Barbara said? He was just the
beautiful container of those passions for me. It seemed cold and
callous to reduce a person to a mere vessel for my own inner life.
And yet, that’s what I’d been doing with Charlie since day one.
Back in the beginning I had expected him to hold all my cherished
desires and dreams. Now he was the repository of all my deepest
disappointment and anger.

I reminded myself that, according to Barbara, my
lesson in love was by no means finished. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to
have it all figured out just yet.

Chapter
9

Ella and Ivy had just gotten home. “There she is!”
Ella called when I walked in the door.

“
Bobbie, do you want to join us for
a nightcap?” Ivy asked, waving a bottle of red wine.

“
Sure, why not?” I chuckled and went
to sit down on the couch.

“
No, not here, up, up!” Ella
exclaimed. “To the rooooof!”

Ivy pointed towards the door, doing a little dance.
She handed the bottle to Ella and then presented me with her back.
“Unzip me, will you? I’m going to change real quick. I’ve been
dreaming about putting on my sweatpants all day.”

As I unzipped the back of her dress, the price tag
popped out.

“
Ivy, you still have the price tag
on this,” I informed her.

“
I know. I left it on in case I
wanted to return it. Turns out I like it. I was complimented nine
times tonight. I kept count. So I’m keeping it—thanks!” She
fluttered into her bedroom to change, and I decided to follow her
example.

After we’d all changed into warmer clothing, we made
our way up the stairwell. Ella jiggled the handle on the big door
at the top of the stairs, and it creaked open. A rush of cold air
flooded through the crack of the door.

“
Brrr,” I said.

“
Ivy, you’ve got the blankets,
right?” Ella asked.

“
And the wine!” she yelped. “Should
be drinking brandy in this weather.”

“
Shhhhhhh, be quiet. We don’t want
to wake up Barbara and Meryl!”

For a moment it was dark, with only the city lights
twinkling in the distance. Then Ella flipped the light switch, and
with a dazzle on came rows of hanging white lights, round bulbs
larger than Christmas lights, instantly warming the surroundings.
My mouth fell open at the luminous beauty. I had never before seen
the roof by night.

“
This is amazing!” I looked around
at the garden of vines and dried flowers that twinkled like a
fairyland.

“
It’s our little slice of heaven,”
Ella said. I felt honored, as if they were letting me into their
private world.

“
More like our little cup of vino,”
Ivy said, handing me a glass. “It gets better. Check this out.” She
turned a knob near the railing and flames came shooting out of a
large cylinder bowl surrounded by chairs.

“
What? An electric bonfire? Where am
I?” I laughed in shock.

“
Well, our trust fund baby, Meryl,
decided to upgrade this place when she moved in, with Barbara’s
permission, of course,” Ella said.

“
Meryl takes pride in fixing
things,” I said, “on so many levels.” I knew this well; she had
helped me out a number of times in college when I was a freshman
and she was finishing her thesis. Meryl got me through that first
year.

Ella poured a glass of wine, and I admired her grace,
her slender limbs and athletic movement showing her dancer’s
training.

“
How was your day?” I asked them
both, as I heated my feet by the warmth of the fire.

“
Just another day in a cubicle in
corporate America,” Ella said.

“
Same,” Ivy said flatly. “Except the
cubicle. I’ve been running around like a headless chicken. We have
this huge event coming up and my boss is freaking. How about
you?”

“
I just had an interesting
conversation with Barbara before I came downstairs. She’s so
insightful.”

“
Barbara, of course!” Ivy
said.

“
She’s like a modern day Athena
meets Ghandi meets Grace Kelly.” Ella sipped her wine.

“
Her husband was a philosophy
professor at Northwestern,” Ivy said. “I guess he was a
genius.”

“
I think she might be a genius as
well,” I said. “She just defined ‘love’ to me according to the
ancient Greeks!”

“
Ah--Eros, Philia,
and
Agape?” Ella sang
out.

“
Yeah!” I laughed. “How did you
know?”

“
She’s constantly preaching that
love philosophy to us,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes. “As if we don’t
know what love is. Ha!”

“
I mean, it’s cool,” said Ella.
“She’s really got some great insight. But. . .” She gave a
shrug.

Was I the only one of the three of us who found this
intellectual approach to love intriguing? For the first time, I was
thinking of love beyond desire, lust, and falling into that giant
web of problems that plagues you when you are unable to escape in a
crippling relationship. . .

“
What’s your love situation these
days, Bobbie?” Ella asked. “Meryl told us about the history between
you and model boy, but I’m guessing that’s over?”

Over? The word hit me hard. Suddenly I missed Charlie
terribly. I missed his warm body in bed at night. I missed the way
he listened to me so intently when I vented about work. There was
an understanding between us. And more often than not, he would take
my side whenever I complained. Whereas Oliver, who also worked in
the industry and knew exactly what I was going through,would
usually tell me to suck it up, stop complaining, and be grateful
for what I had, just as I would do for him the days he was ready to
turn his back on Fordham. At least we were in it together.