down. But then, what did the comb-over say about his judgment if he thought he looked coffee-date ready with that thing on his head? What did it say about his self-confidence? After the whole Awful Craig crisis, Phyllis didn’t need another project.
At three-fifteen, Guy Kroner, despite having checked on his Getadate profile “one or two glasses of wine a week” for alcohol and “never” for tobacco, reeked of alcohol and cigarettes. After he left, the girl behind the counter rolled her eyes. “Worst one yet,” she sympathized.
By four o’clock, Jane was beginning to feel bad about having nothing positive to report to Phyllis. She’d had three cups of decaf and three trips to the restroom. The afternoon was turning into a bust.
And then, there he was. Harry Welch.
He was the only one who stood at the table, introduced himself properly, and shook Jane’s hand. Jane was a sucker for that sort of thing, though in fairness, neither Calvin nor Guy could have probably stood for that long for any reason. When Harry took her hand, he shook it firmly and looked straight into her eyes with his own warm brown ones, which were framed by impressively bushy eyebrows. Although he had less hair now than he undoubtedly did at twenty, all he had appeared to be his own and it was worn on his head in the places nature intended.
Harry and Jane had both listed travel as an interest in their Getadate profiles, and he dove right into the topic. Where had she been on her last trip? He had covered the same territory and had been some places Jane never had—India, Australia, New Zealand. They discovered they were both happy to travel alone but also enjoyed company. “Sometimes when my wife and I were traveling, we would split up during the day if we had different interests. It gives you even more to talk about at dinner.”
Harry had been a widower for five years. With his sixty-sixth birthday approaching, he was “getting back out there” at the urging of his two grown sons, who both mercifully had homes of their own. Harry was a genial man, direct and curious, but the loss of his wife explained the sadness around his eyes. For the first time in decades, Jane felt something stirring. She had an impulse to make that sadness go away.
As the coffee date ended, Harry reached across the table and took Jane’s hand. “I’ve enjoyed this a great deal. Can we perhaps consider dinner and a movie?”
Jane gave him her number. Then, her knees having turned to Jell-O like an adolescent’s, she slid back down into her chair and watched him go. Behind the counter, the young barista raised her hands in the air and did a little victory dance.
* * *
“You want him for yourself,” Helen said.
Jane had gone straight to Helen’s house after she left Peet’s. Helen’s husband, Hugh, had been home reading the newspaper, but as soon as he’d seen the look on Jane’s face, he’d hustled out. “Council of War,” he said. “I’ll leave you two.”
Helen had poured two glasses of white wine. Jane had walked her through the afternoon, allegedly to validate the elimination of Calvin, Mark, and Guy as contenders. She wasn’t sure what she intended to say about Harry. It turned out she didn’t need to say much. As soon as Jane described him, Helen guessed.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jane responded. “I haven’t been interested in a man in thirty years. Thirty-two, if you count the last two years with Francis.”
“It’s like riding a bicycle. You never forget.”
“I haven’t ridden a bicycle in thirty-two years, either, and I guarantee you are not going to see me zipping past your house anytime soon.” When Helen said nothing, Jane continued. “You wouldn’t be so eager, either, if the last time you were on a bike, riding along, happy and oblivious, a tractor trailer careened out of a side street, hit you, rolled over you, then backed up and rolled over you again.” Jane stretched the metaphor beyond its breaking point.
“That’s not quite the way it happened,” Helen said. “Remember, I was there.”
“Then I shouldn’t have to tell you about it,” Jane responded, a little testily.
Her former husband, Francis Darrowfield, had convinced her to renovate their kitchen to celebrate his getting tenure as an economics professor at Harvard. They had gutted it to the studs and sold all their old appliances. They had applied for, and Jane had cosigned, an enormous home equity loan.
Then Francis left.
After transferring the cash from the loan into a bank account only in his name.
And moved in with his department secretary.
Jane was left, humiliated, alone, in a home she couldn’t afford, which had no kitchen. A judge eventually sorted it out, but it took forever, and more than once Jane thought she and Jonathan would be out on the streets.
Their friends chose sides. Jane got the bridge club. Francis got Harvard, and with Jane’s marriage went her identity as a faculty wife. The only identity she’d had back then.
“I don’t think the tractor trailer analogy is overstating,” she said to Helen.
“That’s not the part I object to. It was the part where you said you were riding along happy and oblivious. You were neither. You knew Francis didn’t love you. You knew he would leave you someday. You were a nervous wreck, at least the last two years. You were willing to do anything to try to make him happy, including gutting a kitchen you loved. Including signing that loan. I’ve never been angry with Francis for leaving you, although the way he left was horrible. I’ve always been furious about what he did to you before he left. The way he made you feel about yourself.”
Jane was silent for a moment. They’d never really talked about it quite this way. “I don’t see what this has to do with my dilemma about Harry Welch,” she finally said.
Helen drank the last of her wine. “I say go for it. If, and only if, you are ready to leave the past in the past.”
“And you won’t say anything to Phyllis?”
Helen held up three fingers on her right hand. “Scouts honor. It’s between the two of you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Jane answered.
“Good,” Helen said. “How was your visit to Walden Spring?”
“Interesting. I got a tour of the buildings and then there was a food fight. Paul Peavey wants to me to move in.”
“There was a what?”
“A food fight. That’s the sort of community problem he wants me to help him address.”
“Why would you need to move in to do that?”
“He wants me to experience the community in order to diagnose the problem.”
Helen sat up even straighter. “The problem, I would think, is senior citizens flinging food around their dining room.”
“That’s the symptom, not the cause.”
“I suppose. Will you do it?”
“Yes.” Jane had not been certain until that moment, but now she was. “Yes, I will. I’ll move in tomorrow.”
