Matchmaking for Beginners(78)

I look at her blankly. “And . . . ?”

“And, Marnie, this is never going to work because I can’t be romantically involved with William! He was like a brother to my husband! Walter and I used to go on family picnics with him and his kids and his wife!”

“He has a wife?”

“Had. He’s a widower. Patricia, her name was. Perfectly lovely woman. And I am not going to kiss her husband.”

“Does he want kissing? Maybe he wants a nice friendship, too.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes we’ll be sitting in his car, and at a certain point I can feel his hand start to crawl along the back of the seat—in a very suggestive way.”

“Wait. It crawls?” I am fascinated with everything about this story, and also intrigued with Lola’s animated face, turning pinker and pinker, and then the spirals of sparkles distracting me by going off behind her head.

“You know how they do,” she says. “How a man will just snake his hand along the back of the seat, thinking he’s being so innocent, but clearly he’s intending to put his arm around you. To pull you in! And he gets this shy, sort of sly look on his face. It’s awful. Just awful. I’m embarrassed for him really.”

I burst out laughing. “Lola, really? Snakes? And his crawling hand? Do you hear yourself? It sounds to me like it might be lovely, talking to somebody who knew you from before. He’s safe. He knows you. He likes you.” She is glaring at me, so I say, “But if you don’t want him, then why are we spending so much time talking about him?”

“Because I saw you looking the other day when he came to pick me up, and I know you’re like Blix, and I want you to stop thinking everything you’re thinking about William and me. Just stop it. Blix thinks everybody should be like her and Houndy. If you’ve lost your partner, get another one. As if everybody’s replaceable.”

“Huh,” I say.

She looks at me. “I was happily married for forty-two years and that chapter of my life is over. Who needs it? Who needs the bother of it? I’ve got my television programs and my bridge club ladies and the neighbors who come by, and the people at church—and do I really need to take a chance on some other man? Right now I’ve got everything just the way I like it. I told Blix I don’t need another man. Somebody with opinions I’d have to pay attention to.”

“Soooo . . . I take it this didn’t sit too well with her?”

She shakes her finger at me, and there’s an explosion of sparks all around her. “Let me tell you something about Blix. Blix the adventurer! I’m quite sure she still thinks that someday she and Houndy and this man, William Sullivan, and I are going to be frolicking around together in the afterlife—and we are so not, because when I’m in the afterlife, I’m going to be over in Walter’s corner, sipping tea with him and not having to explain to him that I have a second husband who happens to be his old friend.”

For a moment my mind is boggled with this view of the afterlife, in which we’re all traipsing around between little bistro tables where our old friends and lovers are drinking their tea and noticing who we’re talking to more than them. It sounds so much like eighth grade.

“That can’t be what it’s like!” I say. “And don’t you really think that if it is, both Walter and William Sullivan will be evolved enough to want to know that you can sit with both of them at the same table in the afterlife—you and everybody else they ever loved? I think that’s what the afterlife is going to be all about—that’s when we’re finally going to understand all the love stuff that confuses us now. It’s going to be magnificent, all the Walters and Williams and Lolas and Blixes and Houndys all together!”

I look over at her: all the color has left her face, and in a low, panicky voice, she says, “Marnie. Oh, no! I can’t breathe so well, and my heart is . . .”

And then, almost in slow motion, she falls right over.

Patrick takes one look at her and says she has to go to the hospital.

By the time he gets upstairs, of course, she’s come to, and is even arguing about things. She wants to go home and get in bed.

But he’s not having it.

She needs to go to the hospital, he says. Find out what’s going on.

“What could it be?” she says in a wavery voice. She looks so nervous, it’s like she’s a little child dressed in a grandma costume, perhaps to be in a play.

“Well,” he says, “it could be nothing, or it could be you drank too much coffee, or it could be . . . something they’ll want to help you with.” He’s already calling 911.

Our eyes meet, and he smiles at me. She makes little murmuring sounds of distress.

“Marnie, are you going with her to the hospital, do you think?”

“Of course,” I say. I know that Patrick can’t go. He’d have a meltdown in a medical place, among strangers. He mouths the words “Thank you” and then he’s talking to the dispatcher.

While he’s on the phone, she gives me specific directions for what items she needs, and I go next door and get her pocketbook and her warm jacket, both of which just happen to be in her bedroom. No clothing because she won’t be staying—she’s positive of that.

I love how her house is dark and cool and filled with large pieces of old-people upholstered furniture, grandparent furniture. It’s like a cave in here, with the shades all pulled down. There are tons of pictures of her and Walter and their two boys set out on every surface and hanging on the walls—Lola with red, fluffy hair cut in layers like petals, and Walter a slim, handsome man with laughing eyes. The boys look just like boys of any era: crew-cutted and freckled, wearing striped Tshirts, grinning at the camera, and then turning into handsome teenagers and finally bridegrooms—and then there are snapshots of them with their families. Far away.