Fools Rush In

I put the encounter with Joe in the back of my mind…another trick I’d mastered over the decades. Later I would examine every detail with excruciating fervor, rating myself, considering what I could do better, psyching myself up for next time. But for now, I put the incident aside. After all, I was used to pretending Joe was just an ordinary guy.

Joe and What’s-Her-Name were occupied playing pool when Sam and I left a little while later. We strolled down to where we’d parked.

“So, Sam, you’re not going to go home, listen to a Norah Jones CD, get drunk and cry, are you?” I asked as we got into the car.

“Well, I think I’ll probably pass on that one,” he said amiably. “Another time, maybe.”

“You’re a good boy. An excellent role model for my dog.”

“Don’t you dare name your dog after me,” he laughed.

When we got back home, I felt warm and fuzzy, like a good sister-in-law, though officially, I wasn’t one anymore. Sam kissed my cheek, thanked me and walked inside his big house, looking, I believed, not nearly so wicked sad as he had earlier. “Hang in there, buddy,” I murmured, putting my car in reverse. “Life is about to get better.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING, I GOT OUT of bed and collapsed to my knees. My God! What had happened to me? Every muscle south of my scalp had seized like a bad engine. Scrabbling with my quilt, I hauled myself up and lurched stiff-legged into the bathroom, swinging my pelvis like John Wayne to minimize any leg extension. Knives of pain shot up my Achilles tendons into my calves. I’d been hobbled. Whimpering, I bent to the faucet for a mouthful of water and gulped down four Motrin.

My pain turned to joy as I mounted the bathroom scale. I had lost not one but two, two whole pounds! Of course, I knew this was just fluid loss from my excessive perspiring yesterday, and that I couldn’t really have lost two pounds of fat in one day, that the complex workings of the human body just won’t allow that, but long before I was a doctor, I was an overweight American woman, and guess what? I lost two pounds, that’s what!

Katie and her sons arrived a little while later. Corey was six years old, Mikey three. Like her sons, Katie had creamy blond hair and sky-blue eyes, making her my polar opposite. Her beauty attracted dozens of admiring men, but Katie…well, since her divorce, Katie had become a bit hardened. Maybe even before that, but since Elliott left her, she just didn’t, as she put it, have a lot of time for crap.

And when exactly had Elliott chosen to leave her, you ask? Why, just after she’d given birth to Michael, after thirty-six hours of labor and three hours of pushing her nine-pound, six-ounce son into the world. Good thing I was there for the birth, because Elliott the Idiot was not. In one of those unbelievable, made-for-Lifetime-television scenes, he arrived a few hours later and told Katie that he wanted a divorce, that he “just wasn’t happy anymore.” And so, as Katie bled from her impressive episiotomy, as her breasts took on the texture of granite, as her newborn son mewled in her arms, her husband had dumped her for a younger woman.

Katie had become, unsurprisingly, suspicious of men. In addition, she had to work hard to support the boys. She lived in an apartment above her parents’ garage and worked as a waitress at the Barnacle, and while she made ends meet, I wanted more for her. Though she swore the last thing she wanted was a relationship…well, I just happened to know a wonderful man who was recently divorced himself, a man who loved children, especially boys, had a fine son of his own, a man I was very fond of, who would make a perfect husband for my best friend. I had to tread gently here, because Katie would hate the thought of being set up. And Officer Nickerson was still smarting from my own sister’s betrayal. Gently, gently, subtly, subtly…

“I saw Sam last night,” I blurted as Katie and I sat at the kitchen table. The boys were in the dining room, engrossed in the Bob the Builder and Spider-Man coloring books I had bought for them.

“How’s he doing?” Katie asked.

“Sad, for some reason. He’s so much better off without her,” I said, deliberately insensitive, though I did indeed think it was true.

“Oh, come on,” Katie said. “They were together a long time. He must feel pretty crappy, poor guy.” She sipped her coffee with an appreciative murmur.

“Maybe we could take him out some time,” I craftily suggested. “Cheer him up a bit.”

“Sure.” Mission accomplished! “When do you start work?” Katie asked.

“April Fool’s Day. A coincidence, I hope, and not an omen.”

Though I wanted to go into private practice, the costs were prohibitive for someone just out of residency. I had approached Dr. Whitaker, our Norman Rockwell–style physician and my own doctor since birth, to take me on as a partner. He wanted me to get a little more experience first and suggested the Cape Cod Walk-In Clinic, which was a satellite of Cape Cod Hospital. Dr. Whitaker would then reevaluate the situation in the fall.

“Are you excited?” Katie asked.

“I sure am. Can’t wait.”

“And how’s the Joe-hunt going?” Katie inquired, looking into the dining room at her boys, their fair heads nearly touching as they colored. A maternal smile of happiness warmed her face.

“Joe, Joe…” I crooned. I told her about how yummy he’d looked the night before, how sweet he’d been, how funny it was when he’d called Summer the wrong season. Katie listened as my voice took on the tone of a zealot. I could hear myself babbling inanely about Joe’s virtues and charms, but like any good zealot, I found it hard to stop. Finally I reined myself in.

“So, anyway…that’s Joe for you,” I finished.

Katie chuckled and patted my hand. “You’re a nut, you know that?” She put aside her cup with a regretful sigh. “But you make the best coffee. Come on, boys. We have to go to the market. You can have a muffin if you behave.”

Corey and Mike cheerfully ripped out their masterpieces, proudly presenting the blurry, messy pictures to me for my refrigerator door, where they would hang for months. I received my kisses and hugs and helped buckle the boys into the back seat of the Corolla, waving as they trundled down my driveway.

Turning back to my little cottage, a small, familiar wave of loneliness mingled with my new sense of house pride. I knew Katie would have given her kidneys (well, one, at least) for the pleasure of a day alone, but it was different for me. When solitude was unrelenting, it tended to lose its shine. And so, onto the next step in my plan. Adopt a dog.

Oh, yes, a dog. Not a cat! No, having a cat says, “Hi. I’m single. For a reason. Because I love my cat. My cat and I have something special here.” But a dog! A dog is a statement of humor, energy, fun. A gal who can get down on the floor and wrestle with her dog is wicked cool!

We’d always had dogs when I was a kid, but when I was a teenager, our last dog went to that great beach in the sky, and my parents hadn’t gotten another one. Now, with a home of my own, I was all set to become a proud new dog owner. This dog of mine, my new best friend, my companion while I ran oh-so-gracefully, this dog who would adorably wake me with a cheerful nuzzle, who would collapse in paroxysms of joy upon my arrival home, who would protect me, no, die for me, who would undoubtedly love Joe and Joe’s three-legged dog, was just hours away.

To the Cape Cod Animal Shelter in Hyannis I went. I first stopped at one of those mega-stores for pets, where I purchased an adjustable-length collar with day-glow reflecting colors to save my pup from an accident. Along with this went a leash, a comfy cedar pillow bed that had Sweet Doggy Dreams printed all over it, and a two-sided ceramic doggy dish with blue-painted paw prints in it. Throw in a bottle of shampoo, some tick repellent, heartworm tablets and a book on dog training, and I had spent $167 before even laying eyes on my new pal.

The animal shelter was surprisingly benign. When you picture the pound, death row usually comes to mind. Poor, abandoned animals in too-small cages, making their last confessions to the priest…but this pound was not bad at all. While I waited in the sunny foyer, I talked to the adoption counselor and explained what I was looking for. She told me to go ahead and look around, and so I went to where the dogs were kept.

A cacophony of barking, from savage snarling to high-pitched yipping, greeted me. The vast echoing room housed dozens of doomed doggies, each in its own cage. Tears welled in my eyes as I passed the inmates. It was death row. Doggy death row. Poor darlings. A huge black-and-brown beast snarled at me, and my sympathy faded as I leaped away from his cage. There were quite a few of this type of dog: huge, muscled creatures with terrifying, feral mouths excellent for killing the addict who tried to get to my stash. Of course, as I was not a drug dealer, I didn’t really need such a creature. Now, there was a nice-looking pooch, a little mop kind of thing of indeterminate parentage. Whoops, large scaly patches on back. Not a Joe-magnet type of dog. In the next cage a Chihuahua mix, looking like a wingless bat, trembled and urinated in terror. Sorry, kid.

And then…there he was. My dog. As if waiting for me, he wagged his tail as he stood on his hind legs, front paws against the chain-link door. Mostly white with splotches of black, floppy ears, sweet, hopeful eyes…he looked like some combination of Border Collie and Lab. I put my hand up to his eagerly sniffing nose.

“Hi there, buddy,” I said. He licked my hand. Sold.

Of course, we had to spend some time in the Bonding Room before I could leave with my new best friend, but it was just a formality. We were in love. I filled out the paperwork and coughed up some more cash. An hour after meeting, Digger and I were walking to my car. He was two years old, which meant he was fully grown, friendly, good with kids, and he was adorable. Wagging, wriggling, licking, Digger was my very own.

He loved the car. He was so excited that he peed on the passenger seat as we drove out of the parking lot.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT STEP IN THE Plan to Get Joe was the all-important makeover. This would serve two purposes: one, obviously, to make me more attractive to Joe; and two, to make me look more professional at the clinic. In Boston, I hadn’t cared too much about how I’d looked, buying bland, comfortable clothes, favoring my ponytail for its ease and speed. But my attitude was different now. Some of the people I’d treat would become my clients, and I wanted to project a confident, professional demeanor. And of course, I wanted to be a babe. Dr. Babe.

Turning to the best possible source of a woman’s beauty—a gay man—I called my dear old friend, Curtis.

“I’m ready,” I told him.

“Thank God,” he replied.

Curtis and I had been pals since freshman year of college. He was from Nebraska, of all places, and I’d taken him home for Thanksgiving so he could see the ocean for the first time. He’d stood there, stunned and lovestruck, and hadn’t been back to the Cornhusker State for more than forty-eight hours since. At any rate, Curtis and his long-time partner, Mitch, had joyfully agreed to become my style consultants. These guys made the Fab Five seem like Neanderthals: Curtis’s fair-haired, blue-eyed-angel looks set off his wicked sense of humor, while Mitch’s dark, Byronesque beauty and uppercrust accent suggested generations of robber barons and too many Cary Grant movies. They looked perfect together, and, as far as I could see, they were. Their relationship was so blissful and solid and charming that everyone who saw them together felt happy inside, except for the zipperheads who beat them up periodically if they ventured too far from home.

Since college, Curtis and Mitch had lived in Provincetown, that mecca of homosexual freedom, beautiful gardens, charming shops and fabulous food. The boys owned and operated the Pink Peacock, a beautiful bed-and-breakfast that showcased their genius for interior design. And, true to stereotype, Curtis and Mitch adored women and absolutely reeked of good taste in all matters related to the female form. I had no compunction about placing myself in their well-manicured hands.

So it was that on a cold, blustery Wednesday, I drove up to P-town in my rapidly aging Honda. The drive was glorious, a straight shot up Route 6, the highway that runs down the middle of the Cape. I passed groves of stunted pitch pines and postcard views of salt marshes, zooming along in fourth—my overdrive had never worked—joyfully singing at the top of my lungs to “Rosalita” by my other boyfriend, Bruce Springsteen.

I turned off Route 6, passed the rows of cheerful beachside cottages and navigated down Commercial Street, where galleries and cafés hugged the narrow road. Parking was no problem this early in the season, and I easily found the salon recommended by Curtis and Mitch. The boys themselves frequented this place, and they had gorgeous, lustrous hair, robust cuticles and no visible pores.

Inside, the walls glowed a gentle apricot, and the soothing tones of classical piano music drifted out of discreet speakers. The guys were waiting for me. Their friend Lucien was the owner of the salon and had agreed to “do” me personally, an offer that Curtis and Mitch viewed as quite miraculous. As soon as I walked in, the three gay men descended upon me, clucking as if I had just arisen from my deathbed. I couldn’t blame them. A Boston University sweatshirt and jeans so old they were nearly white did not exemplify the height of gay male fashion.

Extremely tall and buff, Lucien had the ebony skin and dangerous cheekbones of Grace Jones. He also sported a fabulous British accent, which I suspected might be fake. “Fantastic to meet you,” he said stonily. He grimaced as he pulled the elastic out of my ponytail, running an elegant hand through my heavy hair. “Better change, duckie. We’ll be here all day.”

Well, that’s what I was here for, after all. Cut and color, makeup and manicure. I had turned down the pedicure, embarrassed at the thought of someone else cutting my toenails. As I pulled on the chic black robe, I could hear my pals discussing my situation with Lucien.

“She’s set her cap for a man,” Mitchell said in his trademark 1940s lingo.

“Who hasn’t?” sighed Lucien. “Save the two of you, of course.”

“She’s going for a whole new look,” Curtis volunteered. “Professional but interesting and youthful. She’s a doctor.” Here I smiled at the pride in my pal’s voice. No friend like an old friend.

“Right, Cinderella!” barked Lucien. “Why don’t we start with the facial? I’ll need to work from the bottom up on this one. Let’s see if we can do something about that wretched winter skin.”

THREE HOURS LATER, I had been highlighted, brushed, teased, shorn, pumiced, waxed, detoxified, moisturized, astringentized and practically spanked. My cuticles throbbed from the orange stick abuse. My face still stung from the punishing, acidic toner. Scalp tingled, burned and itched from the hair color. Eyebrows screamed from waxing. Could they be bleeding? People really did this willingly? The boys wouldn’t let me see how I looked…. They’d draped a sheet over the mirror so we could do the “reveal.” I tried to remind myself that this was all for a greater good, but even picturing Joe’s perfect face didn’t make me feel better.

As the foiled highlights set in my hair, Lucien escorted me to the makeup area. “Time to fix that face!” he announced. Sitting me down, he began to apply cotton ball after cotton ball of paste-like foundation over my still-suffering skin.

“That color seems a little light,” I commented as he opened another bottle.

“Just sit back, love, and we’ll choose for you.” Clearly, my opinion mattered not one bit. I let Lucien scrub my face with a rough sponge, coughing as he poofed powder onto my cheeks. “There’s simply no cheekbone visible, is there?” he sighed. “Well, we’ll have to fake it.”

“I’ve always tried…” I began.

“Darling, don’t speak. Just sit back and let me work. Mitch, precious, tilt that light just a tad? Brilliant. Now, Millie, is it? You’re going to love me for this.”

As Lucien applied every makeup item known to mankind, Curtis and Mitch began to look a little…concerned.

“Do I look okay?” I asked, trying not to move my lips as Lucien dabbed Product Number Four upon them.

“Ah…” began Mitch. Lucien shot them a heated glance.

“It’s very…dramatic,” Curtis attempted.

“Well, what did you want? Boring?” demanded Lucien. “I thought we’d done boring.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” I soothed. “And you’re right. I’ve done boring. Time for a little flair.”

“See?” hissed Lucien. “Right-o, we’re done here. Back to the sink.” He began removing the foil wraps from my hair and rinsed my head. I yelped as the hot water hit my tormented scalp.

“Sorry!” Lucien sang out cheerfully. He adjusted the faucet so that the water turned ice-cold. Back at the cutting area, though, he settled in, brushing and drying my hair with a dexterity I knew I could never achieve.

“Ready?” he finally purred. Curtis and Mitch exchanged worried glances. With a quick, smooth move, Lucien tore the sheet from the mirror.

The first thing I saw was my eyebrows, or rather, the lack thereof. Granted, they were a bit unruly before, but now they were no longer recognizable as human eyebrows, so thin they looked like they were one hair thick or drawn on with a very, very sharp pencil. The skin around them was puffy from the waxing, and even the grotesque amount of makeup Lucien had applied couldn’t quite mask the redness.

And speaking of makeup…my skin was now pasty-white except for angry slashes of brown (“cheekbones”). I looked like I had just drunk deeply and satisfyingly from the neck of a wayward virgin, thanks to the arterial red on my lips. My eyes, tightened by the minimizer/astringent therapy, looked tiny, ringed in thick black. I glanced in alarm to Curtis, who had the honesty to look away, ashamed for his part in this fiasco.

“What do you think?” cooed Lucien the Nazi.

“I…I…” I had no answer. My brain reeled.

“Your hair is lovely,” Mitch said kindly, apologetically.

I forced my gaze north of those eyebrows, and…oh. My hair—thick, heavy, somewhat schizophrenic—looked fabulous! Now, layered, chic, at least eight inches shorter, it was lighter, too, a vibrant, glowing mahogany. Shiny waves floated about my face, sophisticated but casual. I loved it, thank God.

“Wonderful,” I said to Lucien. Curtis smiled in relief, knowing he had been granted reprieve from certain execution. The makeup, after all, could be washed off. The eyebrows…well, eyebrow pencils had been invented for a reason, right? But hair was critical to good looks. You couldn’t be adorable if you had bad hair, and I now had great hair.

A short time later, I walked down the street, having parted with an ungodly sum to pay for my degradation, wondering how to grow my eyebrows back while avoiding unsightly stubble. Once in my car, I checked myself out in the rearview mirror. Eyebrows still bald. Skin still shockingly white, lips still blood-drenched. My previously wonderful hair had been ravished by the salty Provincetown wind. The carelessly sophisticated look was gone, never to be completely reproduced, soundly replaced with the fourth-grader-asleep-on-the-bus look.

There was no singing along with the radio on the way home.

CHAPTER FIVE

FEELING THE NEED TO SHIELD myself from the stares I knew my naked eyebrows would evoke, I stayed home as much as possible for the next week, working diligently on sanding my deck. My sweet (though not very bright) dog followed me everywhere with energetic wags of his whip-like tail. He took to my house and yard immediately and had yet to stray, bounding immediately when called. His only flaw seemed to be a nervous stomach. He pooped at least five times a day, sometimes in the house. Luckily, I was well-armed with multiple cleaning products.

I enjoyed myself in my new home with kooky little Digger. Sure I did. The problem was, there was no one to admire my adorable, sparkling house, no one to ask “Do you like this chair here?” or “What do you feel like for dinner?” There was no one to care about how my day had been, no one to put me first. I wanted to be adored. I wanted to snuggle. I wanted to get laid.

I had dated a little, here and there. In college, dating wasn’t really dating. It was more like go to a party, flirt with someone, go back to his/your room and make out. There were no dinners in restaurants, no phone calls, no gifties. Maybe an e-mail. Maybe you’d walk back from the dining hall together. Catch the movie on Saturday night, him, you and ten or twelve other pals. I might have had a boyfriend in college, but it was hard to tell.

The time I’d felt most desirable was the semester I’d spent in Scotland, the latter half of my junior year. I went to a remote school in the Highlands, took four easy classes and developed muscular calves from the startling hills. For some reason, the Scots found my American-ness very hot, and I was loath to disappoint. They weren’t so hung up on skinny, perfect-toothed, androgynous Calvin Klein beauty, and I found myself making out in the back of pubs with Ians and Ewans and even an Angus, happily not understanding a rolling word out of their manly mouths, but who cared! I was popular! Of course, the lads all expected me to put out in the great American tradition of casual sex, and I had to send the majority of them back to the sheep meadow, their big burly hearts a wee bit broken. Once word spread that I wasn’t easy, it was almost time for me to go back to the States, anyway. My brief popularity in the Highlands had been pretty damn wonderful. I missed those brawny Scots.

Back at home, there was the romance of medical school. What romance of medical school, you ask? Excellent question. We were all so busy learning so much in so short a time that it was impossible to have a date. Once, in panicky desperation born of fatigue, terror and caffeine, I ended up in bed with a classmate, only to pretend the next day that it had never happened. And we were so stressed and tired, it practically didn’t happen.

On to the exotic sexiness of internship. If any resident I knew had time to burn flirting, kissing or shagging, he or she would have vastly preferred to spend it weeping in a closet somewhere or maniacally studying the question they’d botched during rounds. We hung in there grimly, learning, watching, assisting, guessing, chanting to ourselves, “Someday this will all be worth it.”

By my third year of residency, I had a little more time to date. I even had a six-week relationship with a very nice neurologist. But then he accepted a position with a Cleveland practice, and that was it. I didn’t really mind, to tell you the truth. We’d liked each other, and he was funny and cute enough, but it was nothing like what I felt for Joe.

But now I was ready to start life with the man who epitomized my every romantic dream. Thanks to my years of research, I was convinced that Joe would find what he’d wanted all of his life, too…the love of a good woman. Me. Joe’s looks could distract a person, to say the least. It would be like dating Brad Pitt. But thanks to my years of stalking, I knew the true, secret heart of Joe Carpenter.

I knew about the time Joe, quietly and anonymously, had fixed old Mrs. Garrison’s railing after she’d fallen and broken her hip. Thanks to an eavesdropped conversation at the post office a few years ago, I knew that he gave money to his sister on a regular basis to help make ends meet. I knew about his three-legged dog who hopped after him everywhere, adoration written all over his doggy face. How many times had I revisited The Time, replaying in slow motion that act of innate kindness on the school bus so many years ago? Of course I loved him!

And soon he would love me back.

As part of my Dalai Lama/Richard Gere relationship with Dr. Whitaker, I would be seeing his nursing-home patients once a week. The Outer Cape Senior Center, or OCSC, was located just a mile down the road from my house. Every Thursday, I was to visit Dr. Whitaker’s patients and treat them as necessary. And the joy was that, in addition to the obvious benefit of gaining medical experience, I would also see Joe Carpenter, who had been hired to put on a new wing.