On Turpentine Lane(8)

“Then what?”

“I told her I was just making a little Virginia Colony joke. John Smith was an actual person, and supposedly Pocahontas saved his life. I could tell she was embarrassed so I said, ‘Well, I could’ve been another total stranger named John Smith. No harm done.’ I sat down, ordered a martini.”

“Then?”

“She asked what I did. I said I have my own business. ‘Such as?’ I said, ‘Plowing and towing.’ That did it. She had to go to her Halloween party about ninety seconds after that.”

“And you think that was it—your job?”

“I know it was. She actually said, ‘I’m a teacher with a master’s degree. I hope you understand, but I don’t see myself with a truck driver.’?”

“Then I hate her,” I said.

“Thank you. I will, too.”

“But don’t give up. Keep answering those winks, or smiles, or whatever they’re called.”

“I will if you will,” he said.

I asked him what that meant.

“Test the waters. See what’s out there. What’s the harm, with Stuart out of the picture?”

Maybe I didn’t correct that as fast as I should have; maybe I’d had the same thought myself but in a distinctly hypothetical way. “He’s only out of town. We’re engaged—”

First I heard an impatient huff, followed by a killjoy “Sometimes I wonder.”

I asked him how long he’d been having doubts about Stuart and me ending up together.

“You don’t want to know,” he answered. “The real question is are you having doubts?”

I could hardly admit that I’d suggested phone sex and had been spurned, so I told him that he was catching me when I was a little sick of seeing my fiancé with his arm around a different woman every day.

“Have you told him to cut that out?”

“He knows.”

“But he posts that shit anyway?” Before I could answer, Joel asked, “What would happen if you cooled it? I mean would Stuart say no way? Or would he say, ‘Babe, I didn’t want to be the one, but . . .’?”

“How do you know he calls me babe?”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Do you think he’d be glad if I broke it off?”

“Jesus! Don’t ask me that.”

“I suppose, even if I was having doubts, there’s plenty of time to make a decision. He’s only in Indiana.”

“Which may say it all . . .”

“Like what?”

“Like he’s in no big rush to get to the Pacific Ocean, i.e., to reverse direction, get on a plane, and fly back to his fiancée.”

Had I not entertained the same thought? But who can judge how long it should take to hike from Massachusetts to Indiana? I said, “Everyone has doubts, right? In every relationship?”

“Did you send him photos of the house?”

“Not exactly.”

“Does he know you bought a house?”

I told him I was waiting to see if I was approved for the mortgage. No point in getting Stuart all excited and then having to break the news—

“Is he a child? You have to protect him from news like ‘I got turned down for the mortgage. How’d you like to throw some money into the pot?’?”

That’s when I admitted I didn’t want Stuart throwing money into the pot.

“Because he has no money? Or because you don’t want to own a house with him?”

“I can swing it myself” was the nonanswer I mumbled.

“Good. Dad would probably cosign if that helped. If he ever called anyone back. All the banks in town know him.”

I tried Stuart’s phone and got his long annoying voice-mail message that provided his website address and philosophy of life. “It’s Faith Frankel,” I said after the beep. “Would you mind calling me back someday?”





8





Excellent Friends


I DIDN’T KNOW BEFOREHAND why we’d all been summoned to the long mahogany conference table at eight a.m.—not just my officemate, Nick, but the school’s CFO; its headmaster, Philip “Dick” Dickinson; the school attorney, Amanda somebody, dressed in exceedingly corporate, asexual pant-suited fashion; and Reginald “Reggie” O’Sullivan, the undeserving head of Development.

In a nutshell: an alum I’d been sending thank-you notes to for as long as I’d been head of Stewardship, had, right before his death, reminded his not-totally-with-it/about-to-be-widowed wife that he wished to grant the gift we’d been discussing.

Great! Except the widow dug out my business card and lovely thank-yous, all of which she’d saved, and wrote a check for $100,000 made out to the very nice woman who’d been dancing attention on them: me. Pay to the order of Faith Frankel, without a mention of Everton Country Day except for the accompanying note that said, Payne wanted to fund those things we talked about.

And here was the evidence, the damning check. Did they really have to encase Exhibit A in plastic and handle it with latex gloves?

When it registered finally that I was suspected of steering donations into my own pocket, I said, “I never saw this check! Mrs. Hepworth—she’s like ninety years old—obviously just made the check out to her contact person.”