Instant Love: Fiction Read online

  In my apartment I turn on the computer, speed-dial my dating site. I survey the profiles and reflect on the reasons why I should get to know them better, why they are the one for me, if I am the one for them.

  “I am sick of neurotic New York women,” says one. “I know what I want. You should also.”

  Another swears he’s funny. He wants to make me laugh. He is all about the laughter.

  A third has the profile name “No_Strings_Attached” and he is young and his jaw is set like a rock. “Strings are for puppets,” he writes. “I am not a puppet. Are you?”

  No. I am not a puppet.

  Melanie moved to the island around the same time my marriage with Will was disintegrating into tiny pieces. I had first started noticing the pieces after an enormous fight, when he told me, “I can see now how someone could hate you.” Bam! It was like confetti shot out of a toy gun. The pieces started high in the air, spiraled around our eyes and lips and hands, and finally landed at our feet, covering the carpeting of our home. We would try so hard not to step on those pieces, but whenever I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen in the morning to make coffee and get myself out the door before he woke up, I’d step on something, like that time I got drunk in front of his mother at lunch and talked too loudly for a long time and ordered two desserts and ate half of each.

  “You’re a spoiled child,” the piece of our marriage would squawk.

  Will, too, would try to tread lightly, and he was better at it than I was, but sometimes the pieces got stuck on the bottom of his shoes and would make noise, like when he was driving and put his foot down on the gas when he thought it was safe for speeding, or hit the break hard, too hard, when he thought a cop might be coming up behind him.

  “You’re reckless,” the little piece would intone. “And you’re a little dumb, to be quite honest.”

  Eventually we were so afraid of stepping on our marriage, we began to tiptoe around all the time. It became perfectly silent in the house, which was good, but after a while the balls of my feet began to hurt, and then slowly every part of my body followed. It freaked me out at first, but then I remembered the nerve endings to your entire body end in your feet. The tiptoes were destroying me.

  Melanie’s marriage fell apart for no good reason except for personalities that didn’t mix when things got rough. She had married Doug straight out of college, just like I had married Will. I was maid of honor at her wedding, and she was matron of honor at mine. When things went bad Melanie and I stuck together, and all our other friends left us behind. It’s like there’s this stink associated with the both of us, because we were too lazy or crazy or fat to make our marriages work. We did get a little fat, the both of us, sure, but that’s not why the marriages didn’t work. Only Melanie and I can understand this, and everyone else could kiss our asses. So our friendship strengthened as everything else crumbled. It was all we had left in the wreckage.

  THE LAST TIME I saw Melanie before her divorce was when she packed the last of her possessions into Bitsy McSherman’s massive SUV. She was moving to Bitsy’s house on the island, a ferry ride away from her husband, her family, and me, her best friend. I came by to say good-bye, and to offer interference between her and Doug if necessary. When I pulled up, Bitsy was in the front seat of the SUV, her outline faint behind a tinted window. Melanie was shuffling boxes and suitcases around in the trunk, reconfiguring the layout a dozen times until everything fit, so she’d never have to return for anything left behind. Doug was standing in the living room, staring out the front window.

  I walked over to the window. I didn’t think I could make him feel better—I’m not good at that sort of thing; celebrating the good times is more my cup of tea—I just wanted to see his face, to see what he was feeling. He was dressed like he needed to do his laundry, in a tie-dyed T-shirt with a Ben & Jerry’s logo on it, and baggy jeans. His neck and back were slouched, and his hands were shoved firmly in his front pockets, as if that were the only thing keeping him standing. I noticed for the first time he was going bald.

  I waved at him through the window, and he waved back. A row of shrubs separated us, so we just stood there, on opposite sides of the window, and looked at each other. Melanie went back in for one more box, and then she said something to Doug. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I saw Doug’s mouth move in response, and I read his lips.

  “Don’t bother,” he said.

  Melanie came back outside, and I followed her down to the car. She opened the door to the backseat, and threw her last box in there. There was a small jade plant in the box, the baby stalk of which had just begun to burst with thumb-shaped leaves. I found this surprisingly optimistic. There were also some photo albums, a high school yearbook, and a tiny table lamp, the kind you get in college for late-night reading in bed, so you don’t wake up your roommate. Melanie slammed the door shut. Such vigor, I thought. She hadn’t had this much energy in a while. I guess she was fueled by desperation, though I hadn’t known it was that bad. Shows you what I know.

  Melanie opened her arms to me, and I realized I was supposed to hug her, so I did. She made me promise to come visit, and I made her promise to come back soon.

  “Don’t stay on the island too long,” I said. “We don’t want to lose you there.”

  She got in the car, and I pulled my keys out of my pocket and started toward my own car. I clenched and unclenched the keys in my fist.

  Melanie rolled down the windows.

  “Jemma, come here.”

  I walked back to the car and faced her.

  “This is Bitsy. Bitsy, this is Jemma. Jemma is my friend.”

  I waved, and so did she. I stared at her, trying to memorize everything about her, as if I might have to identify her in a lineup someday. She could have been a plain woman, with her long stern nose, the bridge of which was like a bullet, and her tight, pale purple lips, and small dark eyes like black pearls. She looked old, I thought, at least as old as Melanie’s mother. But the rest of her was extraordinary in a way, maybe because she was so different from everyone I knew. Her hair was a beautiful shade of bronze, a huge and styled and shiny mane, and her ears and neck and her wrists were dripping with gold and diamonds; diamond earrings, diamonds bigger than my engagement ring, and a thick braided gold necklace with a huge diamond teardrop hanging from it, and gold bracelets, so many of them, up and down her tanned, muscular arms. The car smelled of a rich perfume. I got a little high off it.

  “How delightful to meet one of my Melanie’s friends. At last.” Bitsy stretched her arm around the back of Melanie’s seat.

  “Well, any friend of Melanie’s…,” I said. I didn’t bother to finish it. I was certain Bitsy and I had nothing in common.

  “Yes,” said Bitsy. “And all that jazz.” She revved the engine softly and rhythmically, as if she were tapping her foot on it.

  “You take care of my girl,” I said.

  Bitsy smiled kindly, but then raised her eyebrows too high, and her face changed into something sinister, and I thought for a second that she was going to kidnap Melanie forever, and that I would never get her back.

  IN COLLEGE, I had clung to Melanie, night after night. We used to get together and drink until we saw double, and laugh so hard we could barely stand. Then we would walk home, arm in arm, from a party or from one of the bars in the U District, weaving up and down the empty, rainy streets, across campus, wherever we felt like walking, because we were young and drunk and it felt good to use our limbs. Me and Melanie, and then Will and Doug, too.

  There were other friends, other girls, but no one stuck like me. For a brief while Melanie had a fascination with this girl with a stutter, Sarah Lee, visiting from some East Coast city, Philadelphia or Boston. Some sort of town of urban blight. They worked together at this bakery near the expressway entrance. In the mornings commuters would come in for coffee and a muffin, and in the afternoon they’d get the stoner crowd, hungry for chocolate-chip cookies, or their pies, which they were known for, cherr
y and apple, fresh from the oven. I ate more than a few slices when I was in college. I know how sweet they tasted.

  I never fully understood Melanie’s interest in her. Yes, Sarah Lee was a pleasant girl, pretty enough, and when she laughed it was loud, and excited, with huge gasps of air at the end, and it made everyone—not me, of course—want to laugh, too. And I remember in particular we all enjoyed looking at her outfits—she was always tearing apart clothes she got at the Value Village and restructuring them into something cool and different and new. But she had these unfortunate, large ears, and of course, that stutter, and who was she anyway? Just another girl you work with at a part-time job. A little bit younger, a little too enthusiastic. Innocent, perhaps. At first anyway. A transplant trying to find herself, when Melanie and I already knew exactly who we were.

  But Melanie always took to eccentrics, so when I wasn’t around, there was Sarah, which was fine. I understand. It’s good to have a partner, a wingman of sorts. And then after a while Sarah was around even when I was there, and I didn’t like that one bit. I never got to know her that well because I never tried. I only knew that she was always there, as if she were a new next-door neighbor who keeps borrowing sugar, and then eggs, and then milk. Eventually you let her know you can’t spare anything else. Even if your cupboard is completely full. Because eventually enough is enough.

  MELANIE’S REPORTS from the island made her sound happy, and I liked to hear it. Contentment, I wondered what that felt like. Bitsy had offered her a residency program of sorts, she explained. Melanie had studied landscape design in college, and Bitsy had offered up part of her land as a canvas. Plus Bitsy was introducing her around to all the rich folks on the island, and Melanie was starting to get some work on other estates.

  “They’re awful competitive out here,” she told me. “You plant one row of tulips in someone’s front yard on a Monday, and by Tuesday you’ve got phone calls to do the same at four other homes. Only—twice, and bigger.”

  “The mysterious case of the multiplying tulips,” I said.

  Mostly Melanie talked about Bitsy, her benefactor. They had met outside the Asian Art Museum—Bitsy had noticed her sketching the sunset through Volunteer Park—and Melanie was obviously fascinated with her. It was always: Bitsy bought a new couch, Bitsy is decorating a diplomat’s house, Bitsy knows everyone on the island.

  She owned a lot of land, and had used her home there as a weekend getaway for years. Up and down the West Coast she was a famous interior designer, that’s what Melanie told me. But Bitsy said she liked how she was just island folk whenever she was there on the weekend. She liked walking around what passed for a downtown in her Wellies, and waving hello across the aisle in the grocery store, and reading the Sunday Seattle Times at the café near the ferry landing.

  “They call her ‘Ditsy Bitsy’ around the island,” Melanie said. Her voice didn’t change when she talked about Bitsy, so I could never tell how she actually felt about her. She was like a newscaster reporting the facts, not allowed to express an opinion. News about Bitsy at eleven. I guess she was afraid to feel anything. Bitsy had given her a home, after all.

  I wanted to believe she had a smile on her face, though.

  So I would get the weekly report from Melanie on Sunday mornings. She would call from the main house while Bitsy was at church. (“She’s not religious,” Melanie explained. “She’s just community-oriented.”) That’s when I would get the full breakdown of Bitsy-related activity, mostly revolving around her social life. Some of the time Melanie would talk about her work on the island, and that’s when her voice would be at its most animated.

  “They’re doing such cool things here, Jemma.” And she’d go on and on about solar power and public gardens and even the compost pile. Twenty minutes she’d spend talking about a compost pile, like she had never seen one before, like she hadn’t grown up with one in her backyard, like she hadn’t written a dozen papers on them in college, like she hadn’t volunteered at the composting center all of her senior year. But I suppose the air is a little fresher out on the island, away from the big buildings and all the cars. Melanie always wanted more from her environment.

  She never talked about Doug, and I didn’t bring him up. Between the two of us there was a silent agreement to talk only about things that moved us forward. We never could find any sense in holding on to the past. Melanie had jumped ship after just four years of marriage.

  “When it isn’t going to work, you just know it. And I’m not in the mood to get my hands dirty fixing it.” That’s what she told me when she called me the first time from Bitsy’s place, and I let it go after that. I was sure her family and his family were giving her enough grief. I didn’t want to add to the mix, and anyway I had my own problems. It made no sense to take her down with me.

  WHENEVER SARAH LEE stuttered, I talked over her. At first I was just finishing her sentences, and I don’t think I fully realized what I was doing. But then her increased presence in our lives required direct action. I started replying before she was finished with her sentence, not even knowing what the question was, or even if she was asking a question in the first place. Sometimes I would change the subject, or I would laugh even if it wasn’t funny. I just didn’t want anyone to hear what she had to say.

  I knew what I was doing. I knew what I was saying, how I was making her feel. I knew I was being cruel. I just didn’t care. She’d survive without Melanie, she’d move on to someone new. She’d find twenty new best friends in the next year. I was the one who had nowhere else to go. I had already found my home.

  AFTER A FEW months at Bitsy’s, right around when spring started to kick in and the land all around us turned to bloom and the sun started burning off the clouds early in the day, killing the fresh rain of the mornings, Melanie called me for our Sunday-morning chat with the latest news. I had really started to look forward to her calls, especially since Will and I had mostly checked out on each other. He had moved some stuff out—I guess to his folks’ place—but hadn’t bothered to tell me. Half of his closet was empty, a dozen dress shirts gone one morning, and he thought I wouldn’t notice? Or maybe he just didn’t care.

  “Bitsy’s at war!” Melanie said before I’d even finished “Hello.”

  “Ooh, with who?” I put my feet up on the kitchen table, leaned my head against the wall. I could see the neighbor’s dog sniffing in our backyard.

  “With Madame Vanessa.”

  “No! Why can’t she just leave that little old lady alone?” I said.

  Madame Vanessa lived next door to Bitsy and Melanie. She was old and French and rich. Her son had bought her the house for retirement and as a weekend spot for their family a decade ago, where she had lived peacefully until Bitsy moved in next door. Suddenly there were problems with the property lines (Bitsy claimed—and won—an extra half acre), and most recently Bitsy disapproved of their disparate landscape designs at the front of their plots (a problem solved by Madame Vanessa’s subsequent hiring of Melanie who duplicated the look of Bitsy’s land).

  And now, apparently, it was Madame Vanessa’s fence. It was chain link while Bitsy’s was white picket, and Bitsy couldn’t stand it.

  “She’s done everything under the sun to change this woman’s mind. First she sent her clippings from a catalogue of a fence she preferred. Then she invited her over for tea so she could look out the window and see how awful the fences look next to each other. But of course this woman is perfectly happy with her fence!”

  “Of course. Chain link is lovely,” I laughed.

  “She has dogs, and they’re massive. She says they would just scratch up a nicer fence. Anyway, Bitsy just sits around coming up with plots to get her way. I think she’s losing her mind.”

  “Are you all right there?”

  “Yes, of course. I just work all the time, and Bitsy’s here only on the weekends. But still…”

  “Lonely?”

  “Yes. Will you come visit?”

  I agreed to visit in
a few weeks. I wanted the chance to suck in a bit of the energy Melanie seemed to be bursting with. I’ll admit I was afraid that, when I returned, Will would have moved out completely. But if he was going to go, he should just do it already. I just didn’t want to be the one responsible for kicking him out the door.

  SARAH LEE CALLED me on it eventually. In a bathroom, in a bar, hands washed, bottles resting on the counter.

  “You don’t like me,” she said. She wore a tight yellow T-shirt with a tractor on it. She had drawn swirling birds all around the tractor.

  “Like” was said with a stutter.

  I picked up my bottle and sipped it. I stared at her like I hated her. “I like you just fine,” I said.

  “No you don’t,” she said. She was drunk. She could never say no to another, I had noticed, and someone was always offering to buy her one.

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “I don’t like you, either,” she said, but I knew she was lying.

  ON THE FERRY RIDE OVER, I sat in the truck, hands gripping and releasing the steering wheel. Most people get out and enjoy the view of the sound, the mountains to the west, and the tips of the other islands, or they wave good-bye to the city behind them. Not me, I just looked at the other cars. I was surrounded by them—two lines to the right, a line to the left, and cars in front and back, stretching the length of the boat. I simply sat there and waited in this frozen line. It was a pretty day, too, and the skies were clear. I held the steering wheel. Grip. Release. I hadn’t known how badly I had wanted to leave my house for the weekend until I had done just that.

  Ask me why I took the truck and not the Cavalier. Go ahead, ask me. I took the truck and left Will with the Cavalier so that it wouldn’t be as easy to move his stuff. I had left before him in the morning, and I hadn’t even told him I was going the night before. I stuck a note in the oversized glass ashtray near the front door, where we stored our keys and spare change. Let him see what it feels like to be the last to know.