Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things Read online

  Then he asked me if I had heard about his divorce, and I pulled back into focus. I had not.

  The warmed-over coffee grew cold (again) while I listened to Bruno describe what his life had been like over the past several years. He was raising three of his four daughters at his house four miles away in Dryden (his oldest, Clare, like Emily, had just started college). Suddenly, he jumped up. The flimsy furniture he’d been sitting on clattered on the plywood floor. He said he had to pick up his youngest daughter from school. Before I could say, “Don’t leave me. Ever,” he was gone. So was I. I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, but I thought something had definitely happened. At least something had happened to me.

  A couple of days went by. On Wednesday morning I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the Queen Diner, waiting to have breakfast with my mother, aunts, and sister. I looked at the diner’s drab brick façade. I knew what we would do that morning. We would talk about curtains, and joint replacement, and movies, and who was bringing what to Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin Nancy’s house on Main Street. The previous Wednesday we had diagrammed sentences. We might do that again.

  I dialed Bruno’s cell. He answered on the first ring. “Well, you turned down my renovation, so I feel like the least you can do is buy me a cup of coffee,” I said. He asked me to meet him in downtown Ithaca in twenty minutes. I ran into the Queen and faced my Greek diner chorus. “I think I have a date!” I said. It was nine-thirty on a Wednesday morning. They laughed, and I left.

  Bruno and I met in Ithaca. We drank a gallon of coffee apiece. He talked and talked. He asked me if I had any hobbies, and I couldn’t think of any. He asked me if I liked to travel and I said, um… not really. Mainly I wanted to ride bicycles down Main Street with him. I wanted to go ice-skating. I forgot to be my show-offy self and retreated to the quotidian. My mind had become a soft blank. Two hours went by. His cell phone had been ringing continuously, and he finally stood up to go back to work.

  It was a beautiful and rare sunny late-November day. I asked Bruno if he wanted to go for a walk with me around the small downtown park. “No,” he said. “I mean, I can walk—I just don’t want to.”

  Oh, Mr. Darcy, how you do toy with my affections.

  The abruptness of Bruno’s response took me aback. It seemed that my magical ability to repel someone I was interested in had kicked in, yet again.

  I drove home, hopped up on coffee, and went back to work. I couldn’t wait for the day to end. That night I went upstairs, pushed my books and papers aside, and climbed into bed, still wearing my clothes. I lay awake, looking out my bedside window onto the dark silence of my hometown. When the dawn broke, I got up, changed my clothes, and tried to reframe my renovation plans. I drove to Dunkin’ Donuts and then past the farm where Bruno grew up and where his mother and brother Jacques still lived. I drove over to the pretty little lake just beyond their farm. When I was in high school, this was where people gathered for beer-drinking parties, tailgating out of pickup trucks. It was a park now, a gathering place for kayakers and ice fishing.

  I sat sipping my milky coffee, watching the slate-colored November sky. The last of the geese were fleeing south. I could hear their faint honking overhead. Throughout my adult life, my romantic efforts had been tinged by rejection, but this felt different. My plucky youth had disappeared. My hopes themselves were migrating south. There would be no more of this for me. It was all too exhausting. My diaphragm would sit in its pink plastic case forevermore. After my death, Emily would find it, tossed under the sink with the curlers I also never used. She would say to someone, “What the hell is this thing?” And she would be told, “That is an artifact of your mother’s empty hopes.”

  There was no room large enough in my little house to contain my longing. I didn’t even seem to have the language for what I really wanted, which was everything I would never have. This felt like the end, and I knew I needed to find a way to adjust. I might never find a life partner, or even a swing-dancing partner. But adjusting to disappointment… now, that was something I’d had a lot of practice with.

  Thanksgiving morning, a week after meeting with Bruno, I was still smarting from his rejection(s). I got up early and went with Rachel’s husband, Tim, to take his falcon out to hunt ducks for dinner. Tim’s kestrel lived in a hutch in their attic. They fed it microwaved frozen mice, and Tim took it out hunting during duck season. Tim worked at Cornell’s famed Lab of Ornithology. He hunted with other falconers all over the world—with British barons and Arab sheikhs. And sometimes with his heart-sore sister-in-law.

  It had snowed the night before, and the landscape was in Wyeth tones of white, brown, and gray.

  Tim and I drove to an open field near a pond. He brought out the hooded bird, perched atop his big leather glove, and unleashed his bird dog, Skeeter. Tim removed the hood and set the bird free. It shot up, soared and circled far overhead. Skeeter flushed some ducks from the pond, and we watched the kestrel stop, change direction, and dive toward them like a sleek, duck-seeking bomb. The kestrel slammed into a duck midair with the sound of a crack of a baseball bat, and we watched the duck flutter to the ground. Skeeter charged off to retrieve it. Tim held some rabbit meat for the kestrel and called it back to his glove.

  Watching this ancient dance, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels to my own hunting style. I was the heat-seeking kestrel, forever soaring and then dive-bombing. That was my problem. But now I was done. I felt a calm that accompanies the end of nonsense. I awaited the sweet relief from sexual longing I was sure menopause would bring. In a decade or so more, this would be done.

  My family and I ate the duck along with our store-bought turkey for Thanksgiving dinner that day. Marinated and grilled, and it was delicious.

  The day after Thanksgiving, Bruno’s brother called me. Jacques and I had become closer along with other friends from high school during my visits home over the years. I would sometimes take my coffee over to his pottery studio on the edge of their farm’s cornfield to talk while he put pieces into the kiln. Jacques said that his many brothers and sisters had gathered at the farm for Thanksgiving, and he wanted to invite me over for dinner. Jacques was unaware of my recent encounter with his brother, but Bruno’s recent renovation rejection was still smarting. That night I planned to go to a movie alone, but I promised to stop by beforehand.

  I was swinging a bottle of wine by my side as I picked my way through the many cars parked in their farm’s wide driveway that night. I checked my watch; I hate to miss previews and figured I could pop in for a half hour and then make it to the film. I noticed Bruno’s red truck parked and idling. The cab light was on, and he was sitting inside. I ducked under a pine tree to avoid him and got a few yards from the kitchen door, when he lowered the driver’s window and called out to me. He waved me over.

  “That’s okay. I… I’ll just head in,” I stammered.

  He got out. “No, come here for a minute. Please?”

  I did. He opened the door for me and I climbed into the passenger side. It was warm inside the truck’s cab. It smelled like pine, Carhartts, and dusty Muck boots. My self-consciousness was acute. Bruno said he was driving over to his house to pick up his nephew. Would I come with? I glanced toward the crowded house but felt a magnetic pull toward the truck. You can take me anywhere, I thought.

  Bruno took the two-lane road away from town. The moon was full, white, and hanging directly through the windshield like a giant romantic beacon. I had to stifle a laugh at the brutal irony of it. I was trapped in a moving vehicle with my crush, and the moon itself was mocking me.

  We drove along quietly. Bruno seemed utterly at ease. I was quaking. I felt the truth emerging like a full moon rising.

  “You know I have a crush on you, Bruno, right?” I said, staring straight ahead at the road.

  He was quiet for a moment. “Well, Amy, I’m very flattered…,” he said.

  I didn’t hear the rest. I knew that when someone was flattered by your attentio
n, you were done.

  Gamely I tried to recover. We drove through the snow, up a quiet lane with trees on both sides meeting overhead. We pulled into the long driveway of his beautiful farmhouse, surrounded by fields and hedgerows, illuminated by the giant white moon. Pemberley. I walked inside with him, and we retrieved his teenage nephew Ben and drove back to his mother’s farm. I told Bruno I was going to leave to catch my movie. “My mother will be very sad if she doesn’t get to see you. Just come in to say hi to her,” he told me, and because he’d played the mother card, I entered his family’s party.

  The house was crowded with adults and their children. I greeted his many siblings, most of whom I hadn’t seen in decades. I saw Bruno talking to his mother, and then he led her to me. Like my own mother, Marnie was white-haired, stooped, and frail.

  She said, “My son says you are a proper young lady and that you won’t stay without a personal invitation from me, Amy. I hope you’ll stay to eat with us.”

  I made sure to sit with a group as far away from Bruno as I could manage, but I noticed him watching me from the periphery. All night long, he was just at the edge of my field of vision. At one point during the crowded and noisy meal, I could see only his elbow, and I knew I was in love with it.

  Chapter Seven

  The Antidote for Longing

  Female companionship is the only treatment I know to remedy a case of terminal longing. Women who have experienced this tender state will assist by sharing their own stories of romance and heartbreak before telling you what to do. Right after my rejection by Bruno, my sister Rachel and my cousin Jan took me out for drinks. We sat at the deserted bar of a beautiful lakeside hotel with a view of Cayuga Lake, which on this day was the color of iron and whipped into whitecaps by late-November winds. I told Rachel and Jan about what had happened with Bruno. We broke it down into components and storyboarded it on the bar. Who said what, when? What were you wearing? What was he wearing?

  Both women countered by telling the stories of their adult courtships with their (second) husbands. While my mother and my aunts had all stayed single after their divorces, it seemed all of the women in my generation of the family were making successful second marriages—Jan with Roger, my sister Anne with Brian, and Rachel with Tim.

  Basically, their advice boiled down to this: Grab him and kiss him, move in with him, marry him.

  Boldness was certainly not my problem, and yet it was my problem. Since high school, I had always behaved as if a prospective relationship were an audition for a Busby Berkeley musical. This time felt entirely different. True, I had thrown down the gauntlet by telling Bruno that I had a crush on him (I had done that before with other people). But I said that only so he would know something important about me. I had no specific expectations, although his claim to be flattered by my attention seemed the worst possible response.

  It would be disrespectful to throw myself at someone I thought I’d fallen in love with, versus someone I was merely showing off for. With Bruno, I moved beyond my own impulses. I didn’t want him to feel bad or uncomfortable. I would not grab Bruno and kiss him. I would leave Bruno alone, because I was in love with him. “Fly, Bruno, fly away!” I declared at the bar, cupping my hands and releasing them skyward. My tiny imaginary Bruno fluttered ceilingward. He was wearing his satin high school basketball uniform.

  We were laughing so loudly I almost didn’t hear my phone ringing. I looked down and saw his number. I showed my phone to my companions: “Excuse me, it’s my husband calling.” More peals of laughter.

  I went into the other room to take his call. He said he wanted to talk. He said he was confused by what was happening. He sputtered, saying that he didn’t feel ready for a romance.

  I interrupted: “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ve moved back home and I’m going to stay put. I’m not going anywhere. You can drive over to my house when I’m seventy years old, and I’ll still come out onto the porch, leaning on my cane. We can be friends. I’m good with that.” Even though I meant what I’d said, I still felt my sinuses start to sting—back there where the tears come from.

  Bruno was quiet. I was thinking about his elbow and how much I loved it.

  “Really. I mean it,” I said.

  “Um… that’s not going to be good enough for me,” he said. “That’s not what I want.”

  I was heading to Chicago the next day to visit my office at the Tribune and tape an episode of Wait Wait. I told Bruno that we could talk when I got back. I snapped my phone shut and returned to my drinking companions. “I think we’ll have the wedding reception right out there on the lawn,” I said, sweeping my arm toward the hotel’s lakeside property.

  The laughter from my sister and cousin indicated that they thought I was joking—and I was. But I wasn’t.

  Few dating books are bold enough to state it out loud: Courtship works. I’d never really tried it before. The few relationships I’d ever had commenced with the fireworks of physical attraction, followed by anxiety, missed connections, recrimination, and an eventual parting of ways.

  During that week’s taping, I was onstage with Roy Blount Jr.—another comic genius who miraculously combines the qualities of being both hilarious and kindhearted. I told Roy about the hometown contractor I had gone to high school with who was, I thought, interested in courting me. Bruno had called and left a message, but now I was trying to play it cool. Should I call him back? Roy had heard about the night of the chipmunk hands. He had been to the rodeo a few times himself. Roy told me not to play games and to get on with it.

  Encouraged by Roy’s enthusiasm (and because it was what I wanted), I embarked on a courtship with Bruno that felt both timeless and surprisingly well adjusted. During my week away from home, we started talking on the phone. We talked for hours each night and several times during the day. We talked about our work, our children, our mothers, our schedules, politics, current events, religion, music, and vacations. We wracked our brains for memories from our shared childhoods that might link us together. We reviewed our failed marriages and tried to be honest about the parts we’d played in what had gone wrong.

  Bruno said, “I have an idea, Amy. Let’s do everything differently this time.” This commonsense concept was something I had never considered. I’d always built upon my own relationship failures by simply trying harder and hoping to get lucky. I promised Bruno (and myself) that I would embrace doing everything differently.

  Emily called me from college. I told her, “I think I have a boyfriend!” When I told her who it was, she said, “Hubba, hubba. Good job, Mom.”

  I returned to Freeville on a Friday. Bruno asked if he could come and see me. He said he would bring lunch.

  Bruno walked onto my porch bearing takeout meals and a huge bunch of lilies with fat pink buds, just on the cusp of bloom. We embraced. He said, “I can feel your heart beating,” and then he placed his hand over my sweater, and I could feel both my heart and his hand, pulsing together. We sat down and held hands. “You know what I like about you?” Bruno asked me.

  Hmmm, probably my minky hair. Wait. Maybe my sense of humor. Or no—my goodness. My overall goodness. Or maybe he likes my boots. But what if he says I “look good for my age”?

  “You’re reliable,” he said.

  Reliable? This is what he comes up with when he’s trying to win me over? Bruno explained how much my reliability meant to him: that when I said something, I meant it, and when I said I’d do something, I did it. I had never pondered the impact of being reliable on other people, perhaps because I was raised and surrounded by people who could be counted on. Hearing this strange compliment made me think differently about Bruno. He was not like other people.

  Bruno and I knew we were in love early on. We said as much to each other after two or three weeks of seeing one another. We were sitting on my rickety couch in front of the fire, holding hands. He said, “Amy, I have something to tell you.” I had already learned that whenever Bruno said, “I have something to tell you” or “
I have an idea,” what came next would be very good for me. I was in love with his thoughts, many of which seemed to be about me. I had simply never had that much—or that quality—of attention poured onto me. That was when we told each other that we were in love.

  Every evening, after I had eaten dinner with my mother and he with his daughters, Bruno drove over to my house in his red pickup truck. I stood by the front window, scanning Main Street for the familiar headlights. I threw on my coat, ran outside, and scrambled over Main Street’s eternal snowbank to jump into the overheated cab with him. I scooched over on the leather panel seat to sit right next to him, just like a girl in a Garth Brooks video. I flung my arms around him and sang along with the radio into his ear.

  He asked me to sing his favorite—a pop hit by Ingrid Michaelson, which he dubbed “the Rogaine Song.”

  The song’s lyrics, about a woman who promises a man that she will do lots of everyday things for him (including buying him Rogaine when he starts losing his hair) held so much meaning for two old people like us who had found each other. I whispered it to him like a promise.

  Bruno and I toured the countryside of our childhood together, driving over moonlit roads in the snow, pulling over to gaze at the starry winter sky and the rolling snowfields, hedgerows, and formerly cultivated farmland turned to forest. Bruno seemed to want to show me everything—all of the houses he had built, the vet hospital going up near the mall, and the community of adorable candy-colored rental cottages he had designed and built outside Ithaca. We celebrated the next full moon by wishing each other a happy mooniversary.

  Emily came home for Christmas vacation, and Bruno gingerly tried to get to know her. I could tell she was wary, but she also behaved as I would have hoped. She was open to my romance and didn’t seem to take my absences personally. Still, middle-aged women in love are by definition schoolgirlishly annoying.