Starting From Square Two

Before Marc died, she had been toying with some portfolio ideas that he’d encouraged. But after the accident she’d been uninspired to do anything that disturbed the stasis of other facets of her life, particularly work. Tragedy could certainly make you lose interest in the fast track.

“Oh my God!” Hallie sang into the phone to Gert that night. “You have to get over to Erika’s apartment. We’re reading Challa’s Web site!”

Gert was in bed, kicking her heels and watching a romantic movie that was making her feel more depressed than romantic. She had to be careful with forms of entertainment these days. Things that were romantic made her miss Marc. Things that were witty made her miss Marc. Things with action made her miss Marc. She was on a long main course of light and fluffy.

“I was watching a movie,” Gert told Hallie.

“What movie?”

“Before Sunrise,” Gert said.

“Oh my God, you never saw that?” Hallie asked. “That was ten years ago.”

Marc would never have seen an Ethan Hawke movie. Especially one about Ethan taking his brooding self on a train through Europe. Gert thought about all the movies she could catch up on now, and then hated herself for the thought. She often thought about the movies Marc would have wanted to see, the ones that were coming out that spring: Both the Matrix and X-Men sequels. Every single time she heard about them, she felt bad, thinking about how excited Marc would have been. If he were there, they’d be strategizing about how to get to see them both on their opening days.

“I guess I just never rented it,” Gert said of Before Sunrise.

“Well, I don’t want to take you away, but you have to see the Web site,” Hallie said. “We’re going to order dumplings for dinner and plot strategy.”

Gert was getting tired of the movie, anyway. Maybe watching other people’s evil machinations would take her mind off her pain. She was going to have to force herself to recover, even if it meant pushing herself into uncomfortable situations.

“That sounds good,” Gert said, pulling herself up.

On the N train, Gert remembered the corollary to Hallie’s Law of Maximum Exposure: If you’re single, being outside is always better than staying in, even if you have nowhere to go. You could meet someone getting on the bus, or standing in line buying your shriveled bagel.

Gert decided that Hallie should either forget these dating rules completely, or put them on a list and publish them. Even if they were myopic and pessimistic, at least someone would find them funny. Maybe Hallie could post them on a Web site for bitter wymyn.

Erika’s apartment was a studio in Harlem. It hadn’t always been hers alone. Erika had gotten it with a friend right after college. They had hung a blanket across the room to separate it. Eventually, the other girl got married and moved out, and Erika was earning enough money at the design firm to allow her to take the big step of living in the prewar hovel alone.

It was the coziest apartment Gert had seen in Manhattan. Two of the walls were exposed brick, and there was artwork everywhere. Some of it was stuff Erika had bought, and some was stuff she had designed. Gert knew that both Erika and Ben had been big fans of modern art. Ben had always wanted to be an architect, although from what Gert heard, he had never ended up going to graduate school.

Gert knocked on Erika’s front door. She heard cackling inside, then steps. When the door swung open, Erika was there, looking pretty and smiling at Gert. Her blond hair was streaked with a few dark lowlights, and it was back in a ribbon. Graphic designers always dressed well.

“Gertie!” Erika said, and she threw her arms around her and hugged her. Gert felt a surge of warmth. She realized why Hallie always wanted to please Erika. If Erika was in a happy mood, she could make you feel like the most accepted and wanted person in the world—like you were as glamorous as she was. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Erika said. “We need you.”

Maybe Erika wasn’t so bad.

Gert followed her to the far corner of the room. Hallie was already sitting in front of Erika’s enormous Macintosh. It had little color printouts taped to it. They were impressive designs.

“This is great!” Hallie said. “This is so great!”

“What?”

“Take a look.”

Gert peered closely at the screen.

TO WHOEVER KEEPS POSTING THE

OBNOXIOUS MESSAGES

I know your the same person because their all coming from the same server I checked it out. Even if you use diff. screen names you can’t fool me. Your unintelligent and unoriginal to. You obviously don’t like me and I’m not sure what I ever did to you, but tell me and maybe we can come to an understanding about it otherwise I’ll delete every one of your postis.—C.S.

“You have to help me,” Erika said to Gert. “We need to write some posts, but from different computers. You have a computer at home, right?”

“Yeah…” Gert said uneasily. She didn’t like where this was going.

“I need to create more screen names and send messages from different servers,” Erika said. “That way, it won’t be coming from just mine and the Internet café. It’ll really drive Challa nuts. I’m going to write that I’m some girl who had an affair with Ben on a business trip.”

Hallie’s mouth dropped open, and her gaze moved from the screen to Erika’s face. “You’ve mentioned that before,” she said. “But you said you’d never do it.”

Erika said, “This girl is living my life, and wasting Ben’s. She’s stupid and needs too much attention. She took my whole life. I should be having kids with him right now.”

Gert felt nervous. “What if you write that,” Gert said, “and she takes the site down?”

Erika was quiet for a second.

“Don’t you understand?” she said, her voice rising. “Don’t you get it? That would be the most wonderful thing in the world.”

Erika sounded ready to cry. Gert felt embarrassed for her, so she stared at the floor.

“If Challa took this stupid site down,” Erika said, “then I wouldn’t have to maniacally check it every day to see what Ben’s doing. I wouldn’t have to know everything that’s going on in his life. But I just have to. I have to figure out what he’s doing now, and whether I did the right thing. I just wish the site didn’t exist. But if it does, I have to check it.”

Gert considered suggesting that Erika pretend the site didn’t exist. But she knew people couldn’t trick themselves in matters of the heart. Hell, she’d certainly tried. She had dutifully repeated positive messages as her therapist had instructed. “If I get through today, I’ll have accomplished something.” “Marc would want me to be happy.” “There was nothing I could’ve done.” “Everything happens for a reason.” These were the lies she’d told herself.

“I know you guys think this is crazy,” Erika said. “But Ben and I honestly had something. I can’t just forget about it.”

As the three of them sat on the subway heading toward Gert’s condo, it occurred to Gert that she should have pretended her computer was broken. They would have believed her. There was a nasty computer virus going around called the “Kiss Virus.” It looked like an e-card that said, “KISS…” but when you clicked the link, it said, “…your hard drive goodbye!”

Gert told herself it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Erika would just blow off steam for a few minutes and be done with it. At least Erika and Hallie were helping Gert get out of her apartment. She had to cut them more slack. This was Erika’s strange method of getting closure.

Gert knew about closure. It was a favorite topic in the support group—those women who wished they’d said more to their husbands before they’d died. Gert had her own fantasies, in fact, about that day, all the ways she should have stopped the chain of events that led to Marc’s death.

“Did you tell Gert about your date?” Erika said to Hallie, pushing a newspaper away on the subway seat.

“Oh, it’s barely worth telling,” Hallie said. She turned to Gert. “This guy from work set me up with his friend the other night. He’s into seafood, so we went to a seafood place.”

“Sounds good…” Gert said.

“Well, it started off that way,” Hallie said, “but…two things. One, he wore a Tweety Bird shirt. It had an emblem of Tweety on the shirt where an alligator would be.”

“At least he’s different,” Gert offered.

“Yeah, but,” Hallie said, “he’s totally obsessed with Bugs Bunny and Warner Brothers cartoons.”

“That’s like a secondary male canon thing,” Gert said. “A lot of guys are into Bugs Bunny cartoons. Remember Marc’s best friend, Craig? He had all the tapes.”

“I do remember Craig, and I know some guys are into Bugs Bunny,” Hallie said. “But would they wear Tweety Bird on a first date?”

“I guess not,” Gert admitted.

“I think the more I go out, the more easily I get irritated by guys who don’t make an effort,” Hallie said. “I spend so much energy worrying about impressing them, but they don’t even do the basics to look half-decent.”

“What was the second bad thing about him?” Gert asked.

“Oh. He kept saying things about us being on a first date, or pointing out that things were awkward, even when I didn’t feel that way,” Hallie said. “Like, our meals came, and the minute I put food in my mouth, he said, ‘So, have you ever gone camping?’ And I said, ‘No, I guess I was never really into that.’ And he was quiet for a second, and then he said, ‘Wow, this is awkward.’”

“There should be a rule,” Erika said, putting her finger in the air, “that if you actually point out that something is awkward on a date, you immediately get ejected from your chair.”

Gert was glad that she had felt comfortable with Marc, and then with Todd, right away.

“I guess I’ll go on one more date with him,” Hallie said. “Everyone deserves a second date.”

“Not everyone,” Erika said.

“I’m perfecting a top-secret innovative method to meet men, anyway,” Hallie said. “No more of these horrible blind dates. Both of you will think I’m a genius when you hear my idea.”

“You said something about this last week,” Erika said. “Tell me already.”

“I’ll tell you soon,” Hallie said. “I promise. I’m working on it. You’ll both love it.”

Gert didn’t know whether to look forward to it or dread it.

Erika was tapping away at the keys of the computer in Marc’s trophy room.

“My new screen name is Baltimora,” she announced. “It’s in honor of the group that sang that ‘Jungle Love’ song in the eighties, which was on the radio when the alarm went off this morning, so now it’s stuck in my head. And boy, this’ll drive Challa crazy.”

“I want to write some,” Hallie said. “You said I could write some.”

Gert walked over to her window and pulled down the shade.

“The two of us can argue with each other!” Erika said, cracking up. “We’ll both say that we’re flight attendants who gave oral sex to Ben on his business trip to Texas, and that he was the best customer we’ve ever had.”

“That’s mean,” Gert said, wondering why she was trying to give Erika the benefit of the doubt. “What if you were married to him and living your life, and some girl kept writing this stuff to you?”

Hallie and Erika got silent.

“Gertie,” Hallie said.

“Gert,” Erika said, “if I had married him and was as happy as this girl seems to be, I would not need so much freaking attention that I’d write a Web site about myself every day. She needs to appreciate what she has instead of rubbing our noses in her syrupy slop.”

Hallie and Erika switched off writing messages, and they laughed hysterically. At the end, the exchange said:

THIS SITE IS STUPID AND P.S. LEARN TO SPELL. BEN IS A LITTLE “TO” SMART FOR YOU.—Baltimora

Hey, leave them alone. The two of them are happy. Ben told me so when we did it in the bathroom on Continental flight 221 to Houston.—XSGIRRRL

WAS THAT TO “BUSH” INTERCONTINENTAL AIR PORT? GET IT—BaLT.

We’re lucky Ben has so many business trips. He showed me this site to tell me how annoying his wife is. Don’t get me mad, honey, or hack hack hack!—XSGIRRRL

“They could file a harassment complaint on you,” Gert said.

“It’s a public forum,” Erika said. “There’s no law against calling someone annoying on their Web site. Besides, the worst that can happen is that Challa feels as bad today as I do every day.”

Gert suddenly understood. Erika wanted to jar Challa a little, make her less smug. Deep inside, Gert couldn’t help but know what Challa’s life was like. When she’d had Marc she never thought about being alone, about how hard it could be. Now Gert saw women walking with their husbands or complaining about their boyfriends, and she wanted to shake them and say, “Do you realize what you have?”

“I’m going to go back to using the Internet cafés to send these next time, anyway,” Erika said. “They’re less traceable.”

Gert was still pretty concerned about what Erika might do next.

Chapter

4

I am definitely too old for this, Gert thought.

I am too old to have get-togethers with friends who sit around and make “boy lists” like something out of a Judy Blume book, and rate every guy we ever dated on a scale of one to ten. I’m too old to wake up every Sunday morning and look out my window at all the couples getting into their cars to drive to the suburbs to visit their in-laws while I’m going to stay home in my pajamas reading the newspaper.

“Hey, I know what we can do,” Hallie said on her couch, flipping through Cosmo. “Let’s take the Purity Test.”

“You guys gave me the Purity Test last week,” Erika said. “I got an F.”

Gert was on the far end of the couch, looking at the photos in Entertainment Weekly. Hallie’s wicker basket of magazines was always a good distraction.

Hallie laughed. “Let’s play truth-or-dare, then,” she said.

“As if there’s something you haven’t done,” Erika said, stretching out on the rug.

“Speak for yourself,” Hallie said. “I guess you want to go first.”

“Maybe I want to do a dare instead,” Erika said, pulling a low-fat Pop-Tart off the table.

“Well, we’ll just play ‘truth,’” Hallie said.

“You always pulled this in high school,” Erika sighed. “Okay. Give me a ‘truth.’”

“How many naked male members have you seen in your life?” Hallie said. “Not counting relatives.”

Gert couldn’t help but think of her own answer. It was a pretty low number. But she’d never really minded….

“Come on,” Hallie said. “How many Johnsons have you seen au naturel?”

Erika said, “Less than…ten. No, wait. Less than eleven.”

“Gert?”

“It’s Erika’s turn,” Gert said. “We don’t all have to go.”

“Everyone has to answer in ‘truth,’” Hallie said.

“According to rules, which Hallie just made up,” Erika said wryly, polishing off half of the Pop-Tart.

Gert thought about adding on a few but decided to go with honesty. “Less than…three.”

“You guys are hedging,” Hallie said, exasperated. “How are we going to learn each other’s secrets if we can’t be honest?”

“Well, you answer it,” Erika said. She shot Gert a smile. It felt nice to be liked by her.

“I’ve seen nine and a half,” Hallie said simply.

“Nine and a half?”

“Yes.”

“But—”

“No follow-up questions allowed,” Hallie said. “I answered mine. We have to move on now. Rules are rules.”

Heading home on the subway, Gert heard cars honking and an ambulance in the distance.

She thought of some “truth” questions she’d really like to ask Hallie and Erika.

Did you resent me while I was married? Are you worried because there’s a possibility with Todd? And about Todd: Am I supposed to feel okay when I see him this weekend? How have you dealt with being alone? How can you be happy if you’re not with someone you love? Hanging out, eating your favorite foods and trading “truths”—is this what passes for happiness when you’re single? If neither of you ever fell in love again, would you find a way to compensate with other hobbies and activities—grow a new limb?

Gert had thought about asking them directly. But they seemed to only want to play games and joke around. Everything was a joke to them. She didn’t want it to always be this way. Maybe if she got Hallie alone again they could really talk. It wouldn’t happen with Erika around.

When Gert picked up her mail, she wasn’t surprised to see mostly junk mail. Her personal mail had slowed to a trickle since the advent of e-mail. She still got magazines, since she hadn’t had the heart to cancel Marc’s two-year subscriptions. But today, there was something in a fancy beige envelope. It was partially hidden inside the curled Macy’s circular.

Gert pulled it out. It was addressed to “Ms. Gert Healy.”

She stood in the foyer, on the ridged black mat, and tore it open. She first had to step aside to let Mr. Schroeder and his schnauzer get by. The two of them looked alike.

Mr. and Mrs. Donald Barnett

Request the honor of your presence

At the marriage of their daughter

Jennifer Ann Barnett

To Michael Howell Healy

And then a date.

Marc’s youngest brother, Michael, was getting married.