It’s not like she was beautiful in an overt way. She wasn’t.
She was plain looking, as much as I hate that description. I mean, what is a “plain
looking” person, anyway? I guess it was the fact
that there was no one, definable thing that made her stand out to me. I still don’t
know what it was about her to this day. All I know is that I needed, of all
things, some stuff from a craft store to make a gift for my daughter who is the
only real love of my life. I keep it that way. Her name is Hilary; she’s
the one that deserves all my attention since I messed everything up with our family five years ago. I write short stories for her. It’s about all
I can do right in my life; make this little girl know I love her by writing
little ditties about fairies or princesses or unicorns for her. And she loves
them. Her mom, who doesn’t hate me as much as she used to now that she’s
remarried, usually reads them to her before she goes to bed. I’m glad she does
it. It makes me feel like a million bucks when I hand my little girl one of
these little creations, just to see the look on her face. Once she stunned me
by saying that the stories are like code for me saying “I love you” to her.
Where does she come up with this stuff? At any rate, I was just there at this
little craft store to get some supplies so I could bind a little book for her.
So I walk into this store for the first time on the advice
of a friend of mine that worked with me. I'd never bound one of my books before, I just stapled them. But it was her birthday coming up and I wanted
to do something extra so I asked my friend who is the secretary that works at
my company and she told me about the place, pretty close to the office so I
could get there and back on my lunch break, easy. So I head
over there. I walk into the store and I stop when I see her. She was…I don’t know. She looked like a girl I knew when I was a
kid, literally like a girl next door. But it wasn’t just that. I wasn't sure what it was about her that got my attention. Her hair was
about shoulder-length, not really done or anything. She didn’t wear makeup and
her clothes seemed baggy, too. I could tell she was probably what we used to
call a “sleeper” chick, meaning she’d be way better looking - in a traditional way - if
she dressed so as to show off a little bit. The kind of girl that probably hid
a great body, but I didn’t think about that at the time. She just chose not to
flaunt – never has, as long as I’ve known of her. And there is something in
that that is more appealing than anything I can name, in some ways.
I walked around a little dazed at first, peering around
corners at her, trying to get a bead on what was so attractive about her. I saw
someone I took to be the store owner ask her about changing her schedule for
the upcoming week, and she agreed. After a while I accidentally found my
supplies, but then I waited until there wasn’t going to be a line and walked up
to the counter and made the purchase. She looked directly into my eyes. She
smiled, and her teeth were white. Not perfectly straight, but white. Her eyes
were brown, but when she looked at me they seemed almost backlit, making them almost a light green. There was nothing
behind them – no come-on, nothing but friendliness and happiness. Well, maybe
there was a little something behind them, but nothing much. Certainly there was
no real flirting, just the eyes of a girl that was somehow happy with herself,
happy to be working in a little store making $10 an hour in Portland, Oregon.
Her questions had double meanings:
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Is that all today then?”
I replied yes to both and left in a daze without a returning
her wish for a good day to me.
A week later, my boss made an announcement. The company had
won an award and we were all invited to some kind of presentation. The mayor
was going to be there, and even a state senator. I don’t make much money, so I
don’t date much. Women like a guy to have money to flash around, but with my
daughter in my life I usually don’t have the desire - or the extra cash to
flash for that matter. But my boss said spouses were welcome, and it didn’t
cost anything to get in. And my secretary friend, well, we’re good friends so I’d
already told her about the girl at the store. When my boss said spouses were
invited, she looked at me and smiled. I know where she is in her personal life
and that she was only recently divorced and still really hurting, so I figured
she wasn’t smiling at me for any other reason than that she had a plan cookin’.
I have to admit I was two steps ahead of her.
The presentation was to be on a Thursday. It occurred to me that would it would be perfect to ask the girl at the store to go with me. The secretary, well, she’s just sitting there grinning at me. She knows I’m alone.
She knows just enough about me, thanks to a long and slightly alcohol infused
conversation at last year’s Christmas party to know that someday I hope to, you
know, find a wife again, someone to grow old with. At the time of the party she
was just starting her divorce so we were kind of commiserating like people do
sometimes when they’ve had a drink or two. It’s funny; we’d worked at the same
company for two years but never really spoke until that night and we’ve been
good friends ever since. I know a lot about her and she knows a lot about me,
but not everything. At the time, what she didn’t know was that I pick my
daughter up from school every Thursday early afternoon, before I should be
knocking off for the day, and that it’s her favorite day of the week. Sometimes
her mother and I though, we make adjustments for life stuff. The man she
married, he’s a good man. They got a family. I honor that, for my
little girl’s sake if nothing else. The night of the presentation, my ex had already told me they had a
thing to do that involved our little girl and asked me if we could switch nights. I said ok. So when the boss made the announcement I figured, yeah, I got a couple days here
to make this go since I don’t have Hilary that night now. I mean, we were finding
out on a Monday, about ten days before. That’s important because most women think it’s ok to be spontaneous, but not ok to be a
shoddy planner. Women see that and they immediately see a guy that does not
have his stuff together. So I start planning. I figure, maybe this week I take
another trip to the store. This is kinda sly because I really don’t need
anything there. I mean, the book for Hilary is already made up. It went well so
maybe I’ll do another one someday, but I don’t need one now and I am not making
enough money to be storing a bunch of goods I don’t need immediately. But a girl
like that…a girl that looks clean and good, like someone easy to just be with
like an old friend, well she’s worth $16 in supplies for the next book I
make for my daughter, even if I have to pay it in advance.
So I had it pretty dialed in, what I was going to say, what
I was going to buy. This was on a Wednesday night, eight days before the award
night, so I was all set to go the next day. I mean, I was about to hit the
lights when my ex calls.
“Johnnie, it’s Amber. Hey, I know we were supposed to take
Hillary next Thursday, but can we switch back?”
My heart actually sunk. I hadn’t realized I had been looking
forward to asking this girl out as much as I was, I guess. But what was I going
to say? I had a mean cop that lived inside me at the time that never let me
forget my guilt about what I'd put my wife through. I said yes, automatically. It was probably the right thing to
do anyway, but it made me feel just vindictive enough to ask what happened to their
plans. It was an innate, subconscious knowledge that asking would put her in a
compromising situation; either she’d feel she had to divulge information that
was private or come across as withholding information asked in a purely
conversational way by someone who had just granted a favor.
“It’s just, Jack…work…never mind. It’s just frustrating. His
plane was late three days ago and it’s thrown his whole week into disarray, so
now I’m changing all these plans. One stupid plane flight. I just wish we
weren’t so dependent on his work. But that’s not your problem.”
Well, it was now, but I wasn’t going to tell her about it.
Somewhere inside me the cop scowled, but I kind of smiled anyway.
I was satisfied. “No problem,” I said. “I’ll just get her
like always, then.”
So I guess I had a date after all, but with Hilary instead. I mean, it's no good to take a
stranger on a first date with your daughter. Even a guy that doesn’t date much
knows that. That’s hard on the date and the daughter, both.
The night was a success. The mayor
spoke, my boss gloated, my daughter and I ate better food than we usually do, and
people fawned over her. They always do. I really enjoyed myself, and seeing her
do so well in a social situation like that, it really made me proud. She’s
really growing up. Still, a small part of me, I have to admit, would have liked
to have spent the evening talking to that girl, the girl from the store, just
to see if she was really as honest and straight forward and good as she seemed.
I kind of felt bad about feeling that way since I love my daughter so much, but
I’ve been working on being ok with my feelings so I let it slide.
Three months later it was summer and my daughter and I
were walking on the same street where the little craft store is. It was a
street art fair, and it was warm and perfect with a sweet breeze that came
through at just the right times. My daughter’s hair blew around like a halo and
she laughed as she watched some street performers.
“Daddy, can we get an ice cream cone?”
I’m a victim to this girl, you know? If I had only $5 to my
name I’d give it to her so she could have that cone. As it turned out, things
were going pretty well at work – I’m in sales - so I actually had a little
change on me for once. Better yet, I’d heard a new and very
interesting ice cream shop was on the same block. It happened to be on the same
side of the street, just two doors down from the shop where the girl worked. We
walked towards both stores, ice cream and craft.
Sitting outside the ice cream store eating a cranberry ice
cream cone in a summer Thanksgiving match to my daughter’s sweet potato and
chocolate chip one she said to me, “Daddy, why do you keep looking at that
store over there? What’s in there?”
I hadn’t realized I had been looking at it. I’m sure I
blushed. And then, in a spirit of bravado I'm not generally in possession of I
smiled back at her. “Well, why don’t we go in and find out?”
A few minutes later we were walking up to the store, just
finishing our cones. I was about to open the door when I saw a sign that
read, “No food inside, please”.
“Oops,” I said to my daughter as I pointed to the sign.
“Guess we need to finish first.”
The door swung open suddenly. “No you don’t,” a woman's voice said out of nowhere.
And there she was. She smiled at us both as she emptied a
dustpan of next to nothing into the dirt by the storefront. I have to say I
kind of caught my breath. She sparkled just like she had last time; same white,
imperfect teeth, same disheveled hair, same self-possession and happiness that
I apparently find so disarmingly attractive in women. At least in her.
I just stood there, stammering, “Oh, I, uh…”
She sensed my discomfort and diffused my masculine confusion
by putting her hands on her thighs and looking into my daughter’s eyes with a
big, warm smile. “You two coming in here? Don’t worry about the ice cream. No
one pays attention to that sign anyway,” she said, laughing as she stood and
pushed the door open wider. I walked in, but not before I caught a whiff of her
hair which smelled too much like a tropical salad to be a real high quality
brand of shampoo. I should know- the ones I buy are always the cheap ones, too.
They use fragrance to cover up the fact that they're not very good, I think. I
don’t care. Apparently she doesn’t either. More importantly, I was certain that
I caught a flash of something personally welcome to me in her eyes. That’s it.
Nothing more than she’d project to a woman in her nineties, I was sure at the
time. Now I’m not so sure, but it’s what I chose to think then.
We shopped around a bit. When my daughter discovered the
pieces in the store like the ones I had used to construct her book, she looked
at me with a suspicious smile and a raised eyebrow. Then she shook her head and
disappeared to look at fancy paper around the corner.
“She’s adorable,” the girl behind the counter said. “And she
sure loves her daddy.” And then she added, “She is your daughter, isn’t she? I
was assuming…”
“Yeah, that’s my little girl…love of my life.”
“A good daddy; that means more than you could
ever know.”
Looking at her, I could tell she was sincere. A near
stranger had just said the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a month. I’m no Don
Juan, so I didn’t know what to say back. I just smiled back at her, but she
wasn’t smiling.
“Daddy! Can we get some of this?” My daughter actually startled
me, bringing me back from some planet I had forgotten even existed. She was holding up some red paper.
“No, sweetie,” I smiled at her. “Let’s
go, angel.”
“You two have fun out there,” she said to Hilary, who smiled
widely back. “OK!”
“Thanks,” I said to her over my
shoulder, but she was already off on her next project in the store.
I spent the next two weeks
trying to figure out the best way to go ask her out, but I just never did it. I
really have no explanation, other than Life. Work was really busy, starting to
pick up, and school was going to be in session again for my daughter so we were
cramming in as much fun as we could before all that started. Before I knew
it, as strong an impression as the girl at the store had made on me, I just
found it more convenient to not pursue her for the time being.
Life’s weird. I don’t even really watch movies any more because I
don’t need the drama. But I have to say, sometimes things happen that surprise
me. You remember my secretary friend? Her name is Alaina. Well, after her
divorce had been final for a while we went to lunch a few times and we began to
see each other as very good friends. Not really romantic, but more than
friends, too. We hadn’t gone out yet on a real date, but after a few months of
spending time with her, well, I kind of wanted to. It’s complicated work,
dating secretaries. Not the best choice, usually. But I’d rather err,
conservatively, on the side of finding someone special than preserving a job.
Jobs can be replaced. There aren’t that many good women out there – not for me,
anyways - especially because of Hilary. I won’t allow a bad person around her, ever. So while I wouldn’t recommend it, if a guy thinks someone at his
work could be someone special, he should carefully look at that. Life is weird,
but it’s also short.
Anyway, I saw on the company calendar that Alaina’s birthday
was coming up and it had crossed my mind to get her something special, but since
I had only just really gotten to know her I had put it out of my mind. However,
Hilary had met Alaina at the big shindig a few months ago and had seen her at a
company picnic earlier in the month as well. Hilary really liked Alaina and one
Thursday she asked me about her.
“Dad,” she said in a tone of voice that she only uses when
she is serious, “what about Alaina?”
Sometimes kids just know, you know?
We talked as we drove about why it’s not usually a good idea
to date people you work with, but that didn’t really satisfy her. “You should just
ask her out anyway,” she said matter-of-factly with a frown.
My daughter had never spoken to me before about my so-called
love life and here she was, acting like she did it all the time. Eleven year
old girls are a trip.
“Well, she has a birthday coming up,” I unwisely said.
She snapped her head around and beamed. “I knew it!” she
said, pointing at me for emphasis.
I should never play poker. I tried to play it off by telling
her that the only reason I knew that was because it was on the company calendar
but I don’t think she bought it. I know she didn’t, even though I was
technically telling her the truth. Thankfully she didn’t press the issue by
asking me to name one other name on the calendar because, of course, I wouldn't have been able to.
“You should write her a story like you did for me on my
birthday, and then put it in a book. That way you could tell her in code how
much you like her, too!”
The girl's perceptive, I'll give her that. At any rate she made me promise, so
I put some old poems into a little manuscript and went down to the store with
the supplies the day before Alaina’s birthday.
There were a couple reasons that I was looking forward to
seeing the girl at the store. One was to get the supplies. I am pretty proud of
some of my poetry and this was the first time I'd attempted to put any of
them in a collection of sorts. The second was to answer a question: how would I
feel when I saw the girl at the store? Did she even work there? Would she still
be attractive to me, now that I was kind of interested in Alaina? Maybe she’d have a
ring on her finger. I swear I have less and less faith in men when I see women
like her walking around without one. But, sure as hell, she was there. Still
shiny, still plain, still so attractive in her understated way.
And no ring. Men are idiots.
“Another book?” she asked me when I came to the counter,
eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, for a friend this time,” I said.
“Your daughter’s beautiful and so charming. You’re a lucky
man…for a few more years,” she said with a sly smile.
I laughed. “I guess you’re right. Good thing I’m a good
shot.”She chuckled. “Have a good day, Mr…” as she looked at my bank card, handing it back, “Maxwell.”
“You too,” I said, without asking her name. I mean, why
wouldn’t I ask her name? Because she flusters me, that’s why. I’m a salesman.
It’s my job to ask names. It’s what I do. But not this time.
As I walked toward my car, I almost abandoned the idea of
giving the book to Alaina. I mean, if this nameless counter clerk shakes me
that bad, do I have any business treating Alaina like she is extra-special to
me? What was I doing? I should just march right back in there, ask her name and
then give the book of poetry to her instead, after it’s finished. I actually
considered it. But I didn’t do it. It was something about Hilary’s perception about
Alaina that swayed me in the end, I guess. I mean, something inside me knows the
girl behind the counter would treat my daughter well, too, just like Alaina.
But in the end…I just stuck with the plan and the promise I’d made to Hilary. _____________________________________________________________________________________That
That was two years ago. Alaina and I have been going out steadily for about fourteen
months now. Talk of marriage has even come up a few times. So the other day I
went into the craft store to put together a book of compositions that I wrote
for Alaina alone. There are poems about love and short vignettes about the
coincidences that bring people together. The coincidences that bring people
together are always interesting, but what about the ones that keep people
apart?
As I walked into the store I saw her again, from a distance,
as she spoke with two women who appeared to be looking at rubber craft stamps. Their
conversation was animated and punctuated with laughter as if they were old
friends, but I knew the women were only welcome customers. As I watched her,
part of me wanted to share her with the woman I was now sure I loved, with Alaina,
but I didn’t know how. What could be said? And what did the desire to
communicate this, or the inability to do so, say about me as a man, or even as a
partner in a relationship? Would there be other secrets between us as well? Was
I really ready for Alaina? I thought of the possibilities that had forever passed
by this woman and I, and of the magnitude of the questions that had arisen in my mind alone, depriving her and I both from her perspective on them. All this from a
relationship that she didn’t even know she was in. I wondered if she had any
idea at all. How could she?
A split second later I made a decision: I would find another
place to get book supplies. That felt like the right thing to do, except it
provided no lasting answers. I was just tired of those questions and had
nothing to reply to them. I hadn’t found the supplies - hadn’t even looked for
them - but it was still time to leave. I turned to go. As I walked toward the
door, sun broke through the clouds outside and I could see dust particles
floating in the early autumn morning sunbeams, orbiting one another but never really
touching.
“Mr. Maxwell!” A lilting voice called behind me. “Can I help
you with anything?”
I turned. “No, that’s ok,” I said, smiling. “Thank you.” I
walked out with her looking silently after me.
I’ve never returned.
--Eric Marley
March 2013
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