“No,” I said.
We Metzger women just aren’t talkers.
I think the difference between Meggy in this story and Meggy in Crazy For You is that the CFY Meggy is seen through Quinn’s eyes. The perception of a character changes depending on who’s looking at her, so Meggy is going to see herself as a Metzger (and miss the iron will she passes to Quinn and Zoë), and Quinn is going to see her as a lovable but exasperating parent. The real Meggy is much more than either of those, and I think the seeds of that are in this story.
Meeting Harold’s Father
And then there’s Quinn’s sister Zoë, the afore-mentioned hedonist. She was a fun character to write, but since she’d always been so sure of herself, there wasn’t a lot to say about her. Then in an early draft of the novel, I wrote a paragraph about how she’d met her second husband, Ben, the husband that lasted, after her first marriage to Nick had come unglued. The paragraph didn’t feel right, so I expanded it into a short story, and then used the short story to rewrite the paragraph. Hey, novel-writing is not for people in a hurry. The story is very short, and it’s also the only true romance short story I’ve ever written (generally you need the long form to convince readers it’s True Love Forever), but it did what it was supposed to do: it showed me Zoë and Ben so I could write the few brief lines they had in Crazy For You.
Zoë was standing in the fountain when she met him.
She’d hiked her suit skirt to mid-thigh to splash in the green water, kicking waves of it onto the big statue in the center, a marble mess of some woman wearing lot of drapery. Probably Justice or Mercy or the Goddess of Fountains, stuck alone in Columbus, Ohio, just like Zoë. No, not stuck, that wasn’t right. She’d done the right thing by divorcing Nick five years before. If she hadn’t, she’d have ended up really stuck, trapped in Tibbett, Ohio, with a lot of dark-haired children who knew how jumpstart cars and tip cows. So she’d made the right decision and instead ended up with a great career in Columbus, Ohio, a career that was going so well that she had a meeting that afternoon with her boss and her opposite number from a sister company, a great meeting about a new project that was going to mean big things for her career. That was much better than being stuck in a nowhere marriage.
Zoë kicked the water.
The water kicked back, and Zoë looked down to see what had caused the splash. A tiny girl was plunking herself down in the foot-deep water.
“Hey,” Zoë said.
The little girl turned her head and smiled up at her, her moon face glowing in the sunlight as she sat in the pennies and patted the green water, and Zoë’s biological clock rolled over and betrayed her.
I want a baby.
Zoë straightened. No, she didn’t. That was the last thing she wanted.
The little girl smiled, her skin petal smooth and her mouth puckered like a rosebud.
I want a baby.
No, she did not.
Zoë frowned down at the kid. “You’re not supposed to be in here.” She held out her hand. “Come on, cutie, let’s go find your mom.”
“You’re not s’posed to be in here,” the little girl chanted back and stuck out her tongue.
Zoë looked around. “Where’s your mother?”
“Where’s your mother?” The kid pursed her mouth and splashed water on Zoë’s skirt.
“Look, kid,” Zoë said. “This suit is silk. Knock it off.”
“Look, kid,” the little girl said and splashed again.
“Significantly less cute after speaking,” somebody said, and Zoë and the little girl both looked around the statue in the middle of the fountain.
A guy sat there, with his feet in the water, his tie loosened, his suit jacket off, and his pants rolled up over his long muscled legs. His fair hair flopped over his forehead, and Zoë stopped and blinked at the warmth in his blue, blue eyes.
“Cute?” the little girl said.
“Not so much,” the guy said and stuck out his tongue.
The little girl giggled at him, sunny and beautiful again, and biology made a comeback. This was why Nature made kids darling, so women who were perfectly happy with their lives and their careers would suddenly throw everything over for weight gain and stretch marks and diapers and car pools and college tuition. The little girl transferred her smile to Zoë, and Zoë smiled back and looked over to see the guy starting to smile, too. Like a family, she thought. If I’d stayed married, this could be—
No, it couldn’t. For one thing, she wouldn’t have had blond children, not with Nick. For another thing, she’d still be stuck in Tibbett.
“Is she yours?” Zoë said to the guy, and he shook his head, just as a voice from behind them shrieked, “Clarissa!”
The little girl scowled as a woman in a watermelon print shift came running to the edge of the fountain.
“You get right out of there,” the woman scolded, her perfectly-plucked brows meeting in the middle of her slightly porcine face. She transferred her scold to Zoë: “What were you thinking, putting her in here?”
“She crawled in on her own,” Zoë said. “We were talking her out.”
“We?” The woman looked past Zoë to the tow-headed guy, now making faces at Clarissa. She sucked in her breath. “Clarissa, you are not allowed to talk to strange men. You come out of that water immediately.”
Clarissa ignored her to splash Zoë again.
“Okay, that’s it, kid.” Zoë scooped her up, holding Clarissa’s dripping little body away from her as she waded over to the edge. “Here,” she said, transferring the sodden weight to Clarissa’s mother, feeling nothing but satisfaction as the watermelons got wet.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” Clarissa’s mother scolded, ignoring Zoë completely, and Clarissa stuck out her tongue at Zoë one final time and then began to kick and scream as her mother carried her away.
See, that was why she didn’t want a baby. What if she had one like Clarissa?
She watched the watermelons recede into the distance along with Clarissa’s screams. Of course, it would have been different if she’d been Clarissa’s mother. For one thing she wouldn’t have named her Clarissa. Bianca, that was a good name for a little girl. The basic Clarissa had probably been just fine, before the name and the awful mothering—
I want a baby.
This wasn’t the first time her mind and her body had parted company. There had been that day when she’d been jogging up a hill, and her mind had been chanting keep running keep running keep running keep running, and then she’d noticed that her body was walking. At some point, if your mind refused to pay attention to your body, your body just overruled your mind. Think whatever you want, it said. I’m going over here.
This was clearly one of those times.
She sat down on the edge of the fountain to think.
“You all right?” the guy across the way said. He wasn’t wearing a suit coat, but otherwise he was pretty much one of the standard business males who populated Zoë’s life. His eyes dropped to her skirt, hiked up to mid-hip. “You have good legs.”
“Thank you.” Zoë tugged her skirt down. “My husband Nick thinks so, too.”
“That wasn’t a pass,” he said, patiently. “It was a comment. Like, ‘nice day, isn’t it?’”
“Oh.” Zoë peered at him and realized he looked a little melancholy. “Are you all right?”
“Me? Of course, I’m all right. I’ve got a boring meeting in half an hour, but otherwise I’m good.” She must have looked skeptical because he added, “I’m not thinking of ending it all in this fountain, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s possible. You can drown in two inches of water.”
“How?” The man shook his head. “You must be somebody’s mother. I should have known from the ruthless way you handed that kid over. Now tell me to put the stick down before I poke my eye out.”
Zoë glared at him. “I think somebody needs a nap.”
He laughed suddenly, a real full laugh, and
said, “You are somebody’s mother. I knew it. Got any pictures?”
“No,” Zoë snarled.
“What are their names?” he asked and without thinking, Zoë said, “Bianca. Bianca and … Toby.”
“Bianca?” The man scowled at her. “You named a helpless baby Bianca?”
“It’s a lovely name,” Zoë flared. “What did you name yours, Dick and Jane?”
“Harold,” the man said. “Harold and Annabelle.”
“Harold.” Zoë splashed her foot in the water, disgusted. “You named your son Harold. How often does he get beaten up on the playground? Daily?”
“Harold happens to be the star of the Little League.” Harold’s father stopped, distracted for a moment. “If I can just get him to stop choking on his swing, I think we’re talking big league potential.”
“I bet you yell at him from the stands,” Zoë said. “Poor Harold.”
“I do not yell at Harold from the stands.” He shook his head at her obtuseness. “I coach. I yell at him from the bench. Which he understands because he is All Boy. You wouldn’t understand this stuff, because you’re a girl.” He grinned at her. “How do you do, Bianca’s mother. I’m Ben.”
His smile was a real killer, lighting his long face with intelligence. Zoë felt a moment of regret that he was Harold’s father and not someone unattached that she might start a Bianca with even though she did not want a baby. “I’m Zoë. Nice to meet you.”
“Hello, Zoë. Now look, you’ve got to get Toby into Little League—“
“Why Toby?” Zoë asked. “Why not Bianca? What does Annabelle do? Stand on the sidelines and watch?”
“Annabelle is in the six-year-old league, of course. My wife Juliet—who also has excellent legs—coaches. And when Annabelle plays, Harold and I stand on the sidelines and cheer a lung out for her.”
Zoë smiled at him and he smiled back at her, and the air around the fountain grew warmer. “Then what?” she said, torn between envy and longing. “After the game, what happens?”
“What?” He blinked as if he’d lost his place in the conversation. “Oh. Well, then, uh … we all go home and I grill hamburgers. And my wife mows the back yard and when it gets dark, we watch videos.”
“Oh.” Zoë felt a stab that went to the bone. Lucky Juliet to have Ben who liked being a dad. Although she did have to mow the yard. He lost points for that. “That’s nice.”
“Yep,” Ben said. “That’s what we do. I suppose you and Ned have Toby in the ballet. That’s no good. You’ve got to—“
“Nick,” Zoë said. “And no, we do not have Toby in the ballet. Toby is into kung fu.” As she spoke, she could see Toby, blond and serious in his little black pajama kung-fu outfit. It probably had a special outfit name, and he’d keep reminding her, exasperated, but he’d love her anyway, he’d come running out to the car after his lesson—
“Violent kid,” Ben said. “Little League is a friendly sport.”
“And Bianca plays tennis,” Zoë said imagining her little blonde daughter. “She has a match tonight and then we’re going out for pizza and home to watch videos.” She stopped, conscious that she’d co-opted Ben’s life.
“The kids always fall asleep halfway through the movie,” Ben said, staring into space. “So it always ends up just me and Jeannette, stretched out on the couch, watching the puppies come home.”
Zoë felt annoyed at the thought of Ben stretched out with Jeannette. Jeannette? “Who’s Jeannette?”
“My wife,” Ben said. “Who did you think it was, the babysitter?”
“I thought her name was Julie something,” Zoë said. “What puppies?”
“The kids like 101 Dalmatians—“ Ben began.
“I love that movie.” Zoë kicked her foot in the water again as she remembered, envy sweeping over her. “The cartoon one. That’s a wonderful movie.”
“Well, it’s not Citizen Kane,” Ben said. “But I do admit to feeling a real bond with Lucky. Now there’s a dog—“
“Not Lucky,” Zoë said. “Roly. Roly is the best.”
“Women.” Ben shook his head. “Lucky is obviously—“
“Why weren’t there any little girl puppies?” Zoë said. “I never thought of that.”
“Roly was a girl,” Ben said. “Whence the term, puppy fat.”
“Sexist,” Zoë said.
“Jeannette is not a feminist,” Ben said. “She has nothing to prove.” He considered the distance for a moment and then added, “She also has no puppy fat.”
“Sylphlike, is she? How nice for her,” Zoë said, and then relented. “Ignore me. I’m having a bad day. You’re a lucky man.”
“Yeah, that’s me.” He seemed depressed suddenly. “Tell me about you and Nick.”
“Oh, we’re like you and Jeannette,” Zoë said. “Sometimes we put the kids to bed and lie in the hammock together and look up at the stars.” She pictured it all, and it was lovely except her rogue imagination put Ben in the hammock and that depressed her. He was married. He had no business in her hammock.
“A hammock?” Ben looked annoyed. “The two of you in one hammock? Nick must be a real lightweight.”
“Nick played fullback in high school,” Zoë said, telling the complete truth for the first time that afternoon. “He’s an ex-Marine.”
“Better reinforce that hammock,” Ben said. “Those guys run to lard in later years.”
“Thank you,” Zoë said. “You may want to feed Jeanette up a little now; those skinny women look like hell when they age.”
“I’ll pass that on.” Ben cocked an eyebrow at her. “Why are we fighting?”
“I don’t know,” Zoë said, and then she looked at him and thought, because I don’t want you to be married and watching videos with Jeannette, I want you in a hammock with me. The thought was ridiculous, born of biology, which was, God knew, nothing to base a decision on.
“I have to go,” she said, standing up.
“Why?” Ben said.
“I have a meeting.”
He stood up and looked across the fountain to her. “Tell Bianca I said good luck.”
“Same to Harold.” Zoë took a step forward and held out her hand, and he met her half-way, his hand warm in hers, and they stood for a moment, calf-deep in green fountain water, while the sounds of the traffic came muffled through the buildings across from them. Zoë thought, I don’t know a damn thing about him, and he’s married, and I’ll never see him again, but her hand refused to let go of his.
“We could forget the meetings and get a cup of coffee,” Ben said, and Zoë dropped his hand.
“Can’t,” she said and backed away from him, disappointed that he was the kind of married guy who would ask strange women to coffee and even more disappointed that she wasn’t going to go. She turned and waded to the edge of the fountain to climb self-consciously over the edge, and when she turned back, he was gone.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Zoë sat down at the conference table, turned to the man at her right, and froze. It was Harold’s father.
“Zoë, this is your client contact, Ben O’Donnell,” her boss said, introducing them. “Ben, Zoë McKenzie.”
“Hi,” Zoë said faintly and turned away to listen to her boss’s description of their project, only to leap a foot off her seat when Ben nudged her arm.
She looked down to see a folded paper in front of her. She slid it into her lap and opened it. It said, Is Bianca really playing tennis tonight?
Zoë sighed. No, she wrote underneath it. Bianca is a figment of my imagination. I lost my grip on reality. Sorry.
She slid it back to him and then moments later, the paper flipped back over her shoulder into her lap again.
Make me a happy man and tell me Nick is a figment, too.
She scowled at the paper and wrote, Nick is alive and well and divorced from me, thank God, but I do not do married men, so just go hit the couch with Jeanette and her great legs.
She tossed the paper over h
er shoulder into the vicinity of his lap and tried to concentrate on her boss, who was still talking but now looking at her oddly.
After a moment, the paper landed back in her lap again, and she briefly thought of turning around and stuffing it between his teeth, but she unfolded it and read it instead.
I can’t even remember this woman’s name, and you still think I’m married to her? The only thing about her that’s real is her legs, and they’re yours. So here’s the deal. You are invited back to my room at the Great Southern for pizza and videos. I’ll send the concierge out for a hammock. What do you say?
Zoë thought about it for approximately ten seconds, her career and those blond children running laps in her brain. Don’t be stupid, she thought and then realized she didn’t know which answer was stupid.
“Is there a problem, Zoë?” her boss said.
She turned and looked at Ben. He smiled at her and there was warmth and light in his face, and she thought of how he’d talked about Harold and Annabelle, especially Annabelle, and she thought about the hammock, and suddenly Little League didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Maybe she could coach, she’d been great at softball …
“Zoë?” her boss said.
“Yes, there’s a problem,” Zoë said, not taking her eyes off Ben. “Harold is absolutely out of the question.”
“As long as he plays Little League, I don’t care what his name is,” Ben said.
“We’ll discuss it.” Zoë turned back to her boss. “No. There are no problems. In fact, I think Ben and I can take it from here.”
Then she wrote, Yes, on the paper and tossed it back over her shoulder to the father of her future children.
I’ve never been sure about this story as a story. It’s a little too predictable, a little too neat. So I tell myself there were some fights and breakups along the way, that Zoë and Ben had to really work to get to commitment, but the truth is, for some people, it’s like this. So I’m standing by this version: They all lived happily ever after. Even later when their daughter Jeannie gets head lice at school.