“Is this the first thing you’d have to say about yourself, Jennifer?!” Chad laughed and showed her the letter. “Look, right here she writes, ‘Hey there. My name is Wendy and I make the perfect martini.’ That’s it. Straight to the chase,
this
is the most important thing you need to know about me.”
Sophie sided with Jennifer. “She was probably trying to be a little different, and put some fun things up front. Everyone else started with their jobs, looks and where they were born. Boring. Maybe she knew we’d be tired after looking at these letters and wanted to let us know, hey, I could mix us up some cocktails right about now. Fuck this, what’s her number?”
“Whatever,” Chad said with an exaggerated drama. “All I’m saying is that if some guy came up to me and said, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, I make acid in my garage,’ I’d take it as a hint and a half to run the other way.”
“Look, why don’t we just settle this right now and call her, bring her over and have her make some of these so-called perfect martinis?” Sophie said, only half kidding. “Come on, it’ll be a howl. We’ll tell her if she really wants to meet Reilly we need to be good and sure her martinis are all they’re cracked up to be. If she says no, we’ll ask her what she’s afraid of.”
“You guys,” Jennifer playfully whined. “
I
can make a perfect martini. I took the class too.”
Sophie threw a couch pillow at her. “Come on, let’s see if we can get her over here.”
“Let’s see if we can get her to some sort of twelve-step group,” Chad maintained.
“
Looking for a woman to spend quality time with? Fed up with the bar scene? Want to meet someone really special?”
Jennifer read. “Look at the way she draws you in with questions where the only answer is yes. She’s good. She knows her stuff. Work it, baby!” Then she stopped to read further. “Shit, this is an ad for a dating service. They answer personal ads?!”
And on and on our wife mining went until we made it through all 361 letters to Reilly. Who knew he was such a catch?
“This one sent reference letters,” Sophie said as if she couldn’t decide whether she was impressed or disgusted.
“Book the reception hall,” Chad demanded after reading one letter.
We fell in love with a grad student from NYU who fed homeless people in Washington Square Park and organized the Red Cross Blood Drive on campus. “That’s so like her, isn’t it?” Jennifer joked, wiping a fake tear from her eye.
“
Cum laude
from Princeton. You go girl,” I exclaimed at another prospect’s letter.
“This one’s a photographer,” Chad said, though no one knew why this excited him.
“Look at lovely Lisa,” Jennifer said, doing a Groucho with her eyebrows.
I couldn’t wait to start dating them!
* * *
Chad and I shared a cab back to SoHo at one in the morning after we tossed hundreds of letters and a pizza box into Sophie’s incinerator. On the ride home, my cell phone rang. “Hey, it’s me,” he said. “What you been up to tonight, Malone?” I would have loved to give him a blow-by-blow of our night, but this was one area of my life that would have to remain in the closet. So instead I told him we went to see a performance art piece about single life in the city. Close enough.
Chapter 10
As I put on my lipstick, I realized I was actually nervous about my first date with Reilly’s prospective second wife. I looked in the mirror, ran my fingers through my hair and checked my teeth for loose spinach salad that might be lingering from lunch. I reminded myself that these women were not dating me, but rather meeting Reilly’s pre-screening sister. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit jittery. I hoped they’d like me. For Reilly’s sake, I needed to make a good impression.
I hadn’t experienced such pre-date butterflies since my first official date with Reilly back when we were at Wharton. We had been out together socially a few times with other friends, but our first time alone together was when Reilly asked me to attend his brother’s wedding at their family home in Moon Township near Pittsburgh. The following day, he promised to take me to the Carnegie Museum of Art, which I had once expressed an interest in seeing.
I was amazed at his depth of knowledge of the museum collection. When we entered the Hall of Sculpture, he told me that the design was modeled after the Parthenon in Athens.
“Notice the double tier of columns,” Reilly began. “The inner sanctuary of the Parthenon had to accommodate a forty-foot statue of Athena. The white marble used in this hall is from the same quarries in Greece that provided the stone for the Parthenon.”
Unbelievable,
I thought.
Here’s a man who appreciates art as much as I do.
Reilly had a commentary about every exhibit. He knew all about the artists, their inspiration and style. He was amazingly well-versed. I remember thinking that he must have spent every weekend of his childhood lost in the Carnegie.
Then he was busted.
A tour group passed by, and the guide recited Reilly’s dissertation verbatim. Every single word Reilly uttered during our afternoon at the Carnegie was written by the museum curator or guest relations department. There was no room for backpedaling so he confessed.
“I knew you were into art so I drove here last weekend and took the tour so I could impress you,” he said. It’s a long drive from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, so I recognized what a tremendous effort Reilly had made. “I guess you’re pretty pissed at me.”
“Why would I be angry?” I asked.
“Because this is fraud. I really don’t know anything about art,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s fraud. Did you memorize the entire museum tour?”
“Every word of it,” he said sheepishly, playfully backing away for an anticipated swat from me.
I’ve never had a private museum tour before. I’ve had a few since, but only ones where the goal was to solicit or maintain funding.
Reilly and I slept in separate rooms at his parents’ house, and I wasn’t too surprised that he didn’t pay me a visit in the middle of the night. We were in town for his brother’s wedding, after all. I’d wondered where I went wrong when Reilly offered a mere peck on the cheek when we returned to Philadelphia.
I was convinced I would never hear from him again, despite his promise to call the next day. Reilly said he had a good time with me, but also seemed eager to end the date. The words and actions seemed out of synch.
The next day he called.
“You sound surprised to hear from me,” Reilly said.
“Actually, I am.”
“I said I’d call you today, Prudence.”
“Yes, but you also left rather quickly. I thought you were just being polite.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just really tired after so much driving. It was after eleven and today started early for me.”
Reilly continued to take things slowly in our relationship, which was the first time a man had tried this approach with me. At first I thought it was some new reverse-seduction routine they were pushing through the locker room network, until I realized he honest to goodness wasn’t in a mad rush to have sex with me. Both flattering and insulting. Ever since I was fourteen, guys I’d dated had a single mission. Getting home early for a restful night’s sleep was not it.
On my very first date, Willie Fitzgerald told me if I didn’t have sex with him, he would explode. On our second date, he continued a short but zealous campaign.
“Come on, Prudence. You are so special, I want to show you how much you mean to me,” he pleaded. He tried a few more lines over the course of October and November before hitting the jackpot. “Prudence, don’t you see how much I love you.”
From there on, our dates consisted of having sex in his family room after school, before his parents got home from work. Willie and I had an unspoken agreement. He would tell me he loved me and I would give him all the sex he needed in order not to explode. He didn’t break up with me as much as we mutually tired of one another. That was life in the fast lane in ninth grade. Willie didn’t gossip about me maliciously, but he could not resist telling his friends that he had, in fact, done it. Not surprisingly, this made me extremely popular with the boys at school. A year earlier, I had earned the highest score of anyone in our grade on the statewide math Regents exam. One hundred percent, actually. This did not earn me half the collateral that my blow jobs did.
I was certainly not the loosest girl in my school. The reality was that we lived in the suburbs and my friends weren’t old enough to drive. So, sex was our after-school activity. When I think about it now, I wish I’d joined the field hockey team instead.
I didn’t even physically enjoy sex, but the power I wielded with it was addictive. When I said yes to boys — actually, I never really ever said yes as much as I did not say no — I loved watching their grateful little faces contort with pleasure. If my body was not seduced by sex, my soul most definitely was.
Father taught me all about statistics when I was eight years old, but I was never particularly lucky at playing the odds. A few months after my seventeenth birthday, I got pregnant. For three days after my pregnancy was confirmed at Planned Parenthood, I entertained romantic fantasies about having a baby and thought about asking my mother to help me raise a child while I attended state college. Ultimately, I decided to have an abortion and go to the University of Michigan, which I had dreamed of attending since eighth grade.
My mother took me to the clinic on a Saturday morning and waited in the lobby while I had the procedure.
“You’re going to feel a little pinch,” a nurse said to me as the doctor numbed my cervix with a long needle. She held my hand and brushed my long hair away from my face. “Try to relax. It will all be over soon.”
The nurse told me I was brave and I remember thinking how wrong she was. If I had any courage at all I would have insisted on using birth control instead of weakly conceding after my boyfriend assured me he could pull himself out in time. If I were really brave I would have forfeited the comforts of popularity and dated boys who didn’t reward sex with varsity jackets.
I heard the soft buzzing of a small vacuum after a cold metal instrument entered me. “You’re going to feel some cramping like you’re having your period,” explained the nurse. The nurse was my mother’s age, which I found to be the greatest comfort of the entire episode. An adult told me I was okay, rather than silently condemning the teenage slut who knew she could get pregnant and still did nothing to prevent it.
When the procedure was over, my mother hugged me and took me to Denny’s for breakfast. I remember feeling such relief that every face in the restaurant did not immediately turn to me and start whispering. My secret was safe. I was relieved, and intensely alone at the same time.
Reilly was the first man I dated who seemed perfectly content waiting to consummate our relationship. At the time, I was ready to slow down and enjoy a man who listened to what I was saying instead of mapping out his strategy to get my pants off.
“I’m sorry if I gave you the impression I wasn’t interested in you, Prudence,” Reilly explained after our trip to Pittsburgh. “I really like you very much. I was hoping we could go out this weekend.” I was nervous for that date too.
* * *
Prospective wife of Reilly number one was waiting for me at the restaurant at our appointed time. Her name was Anna Weiss. She wore a short red dress and had long, curly brown hair and a round, innocent face. Anna was already sipping a glass of white wine and immediately launched into telling me what an insane day she had at her job. She taught kindergarten though she didn’t have any children of her own yet. She’d never married, she told me. During her five-minute life summary, my cell phone rang.
What time is it in California now?
I wondered. Anna seemed like the type who wouldn’t appreciate my answering the call during our meeting, so I let it roll into voice mail. My energy was boosted by the thought that at that very moment, I was in Matt’s thoughts. I wondered if he had any news about his film. Anything exciting to share. Or had he just called to say hello and blow a few hours talking to the sexiest woman he’s ever known?
“Thank you for meeting me, Anna,” I said. “As I explained on the phone, my brother has asked me to meet his dates first because he travels quite a bit for his job and will be out of town for the next few weeks. But your letter was very intriguing to him and he’s looking forward to getting to know you.”
She nodded and smiled as she dipped her chips into mild salsa.
“Why don’t I show you a photo of Reilly and tell you a little about him?” I suggested. Anna liked that plan. I showed her a photo of Reilly and me on our Alaskan cruise, and hoped our arms thrown over each other’s shoulder would pass as a sibling pose.
Reilly’s looks hadn’t changed much from when we first met. He wore his brown hair in the standard professional men’s cut, had green eyes and a prominent chin. It was slightly out of proportion with the rest of his face, but not so much so that it was distracting. His body was like a rugby player’s, broad around the shoulders with muscular legs and a stocky middle. I always went for athletic men. I remember in college, Evie always liked these skinny blond guys from the drama department who looked like they wrote angry poetry and sketched in charcoal. These waifs looked like one strong breeze would blow them away. I liked a man who looked like he could stand outside in a hurricane and still have his feet firmly planted on the ground by the storm’s end.
“Your brother is cute,” said Anna. I told her about Reilly’s job, his limited hobbies and his values. “Sounds like a real sweetheart,” Anna approved.
“He is,” I said with a twinge of guilt.
Anna rattled on about how she moved from Ohio after college and got her master’s degree in education a few years ago. “My real passion is writing,” she said.
“Really?”
“Oh yes, I have dozens of ideas for novels swimming around in my head,” she said.
“Wow, that’s quite a few. Any swimming on paper?”
“Well, I started writing my memoir last year, but I lost interest.”