They May Not Mean To, But They Do(59)
Joy pushed the cart to the fish counter and waited for Molly to catch up. She missed her apartment, her lonely apartment in which she could roam and mourn at will. She missed the doormen. She missed her friends. She missed the park and Karl.
“I’m homesick, Molly. I keep trying to tell you nicely. I want to go home.”
“I understand that you’re not completely adjusted—”
“Adjusted? No, I’m not adjusted. I don’t want to be adjusted.” Joy realized she was speaking loudly and the mothers of unvaccinated children were glancing at her suspiciously. Careful, Joy. Don’t rile up the natives, don’t rile up Molly, especially. “Sweetheart, you and Freddie have been absolutely wonderful, but put yourself in my position.”
“That’s just what I was talking to Daniel about, and we decided that even more than the change in scenery, even more than the warm weather, that what you need is to be useful.”
“Yes,” said Joy, suddenly jubilant. At last her son and daughter understood.
“Everyone needs to be useful.”
“That is so true.” She would go back to work and insist on getting her projects back. She would call Norman, that fellow on the board, the one who Aaron used to play poker with, why hadn’t she thought of it before …
“We thought you could do something at the Getty, maybe.”
“The Getty?”
“Yeah, you know, like volunteer. Or the Skirball. The training for docents is pretty rigorous, but still…”
Molly prattled away about Los Angeles museums and their volunteer programs as they loaded the cart with healthful food that Joy could not digest. Joy searched the shelves for Cream of Wheat and said, now and then in hopeless punctuation of Molly’s recitation, “Such good ideas! If only I did not already have a museum. In New York.”
One evening when Molly was at a meeting and not coming home until late, Joy and Freddie went out to dinner, just the two of them. It was the first time they had done anything like that, and they were both a little nervous, Joy’s discomfort manifesting itself in silence, Freddie’s in chatter.
“Molly doesn’t like this place, she thinks it’s boring, but I love it and I think you might like it, too. The traffic will be impossible on the 10, even in this direction, so I think I’ll take Venice, oh my god, look at them trying to get to the 405…”
Joy opened the window and let the cool air in. It smelled like flowers even on this busy street. She braced herself for yet another restaurant with painfully loud music, painfully hard benches, women in painfully high heels and men comfortable in sneakers, all of them eating spicy, fishy fragments of raw things on little saucers. It was the same in New York, she supposed, but she never went to restaurants like that in New York. She was in the mood for spaghetti and meatballs.
It seemed like a long time before they finally pulled into a parking structure, then spiraled down several levels until they found a space. Disoriented, Joy squeezed out of the car and followed Freddie to an elevator that took them back to street level. Freddie was still talking. Something about her department at the university trying to screw someone over in a fourth-year review and a committee that never met. Joy thought of the museum, of Miss Georgia, of all the orphaned artifacts she could no longer tend to. She was grateful to Freddie for talking, for trying. Freddie was a good sport. Joy remembered being a good sport. It required energy and optimism and faith, and it had been quite rewarding. Really, she had spent her entire life being a good sport. But to what end? She had grown old and uncomfortable, just like a bad sport. And now she was a bad sport. There was no protection in good behavior. She felt suddenly compassionate toward Freddie, struggling on in a unilateral conversation that would not protect her from the disappointments of old age.
“You’re a good sport, Freddie,” she said.
Freddie’s face lit up, that tan, weathered face, into an almost goofy smile. How charming, that large unconscious grin. Freddie’s was not a beautiful, womanly face by any stretch of the imagination, more a wary, taut look to her, but when she smiled, the contrast was overwhelmingly pleasant. It made Joy grin back at her. It was like a happy slap on the back, that smile, an arm thrown joyfully around your shoulder. It was as friendly a smile as Joy could remember seeing. It was irresistible. No wonder Molly fell in love with this person. Joy marveled that she had never noticed the warmth of that smile, of everything about Freddie, really. Then she realized she had never really looked at Freddie’s face before. It had been an indistinct oval, an unwelcome blur from the dreaded California.
“This is very nice of you,” Joy said.
They walked a quarter of a block, then turned into a small strip mall. There was a sushi restaurant, a Korean barbecue, a nail salon, and an Italian restaurant. Freddie opened the door of the Italian restaurant.
“It’s so quiet,” Joy said.
“It’s so comfortable,” she added, sliding into a padded booth.
“Spaghetti and meatballs,” she told the waiter happily. “Just what I wanted.”
“This place has been here forever,” Freddie said. “My father used to take us when I was a kid. I bring him back once in a while, but he doesn’t remember it, so it’s kind of sad.”
Joy reached across the table for Freddie’s hand. “It’s awful when they don’t remember what you remember, even when you’re right there with them. It’s like nothing exists anymore.”