So I would call on my resources. What resources? Who did I know?
For more than one night, I tossed this question around until I fell asleep and it followed me into my dreams. Then in the middle of one of those nights, I sat up in bed.
I did know someone.
Ross Bell taught at UW–Madison. He was in a PhD program in Psychology, and, conveniently for me, one of the things he was obsessed with was personality and how it either was or was not an outward expression of an individual’s actual character. I was sure that the news about Felicity had gone off like a bomb at the big U. I was also sure he’d talk to me, and indeed, by the next day, he’d agreed, although a bit anxiously.
He agreed to meet me for a late dinner the following night at Fair Alice, the girliest restaurant in Sheboygan, which tended to drift between fried perch and prime rib. That was Ross’s idea. Too many university types might be in earshot at the small restaurants in Madison, so he would come to me. I was relieved.Between driving to theFuchsiaoffices in Chicago, up to Sheboygan, where we’d grown up, and to Madison, I was going to put thousands of miles on my geriatric Toyota. Maybe instead of the magazine paying for mileage and inevitable car repairs, I could get someone to sublet my place for a few months and take some modest lodgings in Madison. I heard my interior voice, talking like Miss Marple. Get over yourself, I thought, I was not a real investigative reporter. But then, Miss Marple was not really a detective either. She was just some nosy lady following her instincts.
The next night, Ross and I exchanged hugs and rueful headshakes. “I still can’t believe any of this is happening,” he said.
“And yet, here we are,” I said, remembering Sally Zankow’s words of philosophy.
Ross looked good, trim and gentle and appealing, an elfin guy with a big nose and ears and the kindest blue eyes. He was evidence of how personality and appearance did indeed line up. My dad (him with an aphorism for every occasion) used to say that by the time a man is forty, he has the face he deserves. Ross was barely into his thirties, true, but there wasn’t a trace of guile or unkindness on his sweet facade: his face was the outward expression of his equally sweet heart. Why had I never fallen in love with Ross? Was he simply too nice a guy for a woman like me, who seemed to gravitate toward trouble?
Ross had once seemed very grown-up to Felicity and me; when we were twelve, he was an “older guy.” And he was a few years older, but time had filled up the spaces between us so he was now not “an older guy” but a contemporary. His parents and mine were close, and there were even photos of me and Ross and his younger brother Warren grinning on the beach in Florida during one of the winter vacations our families took together. Not long before, my folks and his put on a neighborhood “progressive” Thanksgiving dinner. My mom describedthis about five times as a “Friendsgiving,” until Nell deadpanned, “Did you just make that up?”
That November evening was cold, sidewalks sheer with black ice, as we all trooped along, two dozen people having cocktails at one house, then salad at the next house. It was an odd thing to do, probably more impressive in the days when people traveled by horse and buggy. This being Wisconsin, people were getting tipsy by two houses in, people staggering inebriatedly over black-ice-slicked sidewalks carrying covered trays of shrimp toasts and squash rolls, house to house like overgrown trick-or-treaters.
Nell had fantasies of ten houses filled with dirty dishes that drunk people would return to later that night. “This is one of the many, many reasons I don’t cook,” she said.
“Mom is the best reason,” I said. Our mother’s culinary efforts were legendary and not in a good way.
After we ordered our drinks and mains, Ross said, “Reenie, I’m not a real man.”
Putting on my best faux-psychologist manner and the nice open posture I’d learned from all those counseling visits I’d had the summer after senior year of high school, I said, “How do you feel about that, Ross?”
He grinned and took a sip of his rum punch.
“That kind of drink isn’t going to do much to show that you have hair on your chest, Ross,” I told him. “All it needs is a little paper umbrella. I’m teasing, I’m teasing!” And then I wondered why I couldn’t resist the temptation to needle an old friend who I was trying to convince to spill the beans on his colleagues. “So how did you figure out that you were coming up short in the masculinity sweepstakes?”
Ross said, “I don’t know. I thought I was okay with the nerdy academic who wore good clothes and played right field...”
“But... ?”
“But all these guys my age I knew were hiking to base camp on Mount Everest and biking the Black Mountain Trail in Canada. And my girlfriend can beat me at tennis.” He added, “I want to be the kind of guy who can fly fish but also be the kind of guy who doesn’t have to bring a bag of taco chips to the Friendsgiving...”
“Remember when we had that Friendsgiving that time when there was a blizzard on Thanksgiving and people brought all the things they were going to bring to their family?” I said. “And that one woman brought a chocolate chip cheese ball... and we all just stared at it like it was going to catch fire or something?”
“That was Gail Valenti,” Ross said. “The woman who worked at the public TV station and would only go out with guys she thought looked like old-time mobsters?”
“Right. What ever happened to her? What kind of person would even think of a chocolate chip cheese ball? It’s like mushroom ice cream.”
He said again, “Gail Valenti.”
For some reason then, my mind wandered back to Felicity and how we’d once organized a Christmas brunch with a couple people our age and their mothers. I pictured us all drinking mimosas and stuffing our faces with quiche, and I wondered if Felicity had already left college behind by that point, which cast a sort of eerie blue glow, like streetlights on an urban corner, across that innocent scene. I tried to recall anything that I’d observed different about her that day, and no, there was nothing I could recall. She was just as she always was: friendly, cordial if a little remote, well-dressed, her manners excellent, her most genuine smile only for me. To my confusion, I felt tears gathering.
Ross was saying something and I quickly switched back to him.
“What would you compare that to for a woman?” he asked me.
“A life crisis?”
“Maybe like an epic passage in a woman’s life. I guess having a baby, huh?” This was one of the moments, not particularly unusual, when I had to wonder if Ross, while a very nice guy, was about as thick as the ice in February on Lake Monona.
“I don’t know. It could be any number of things. Success. Love. Doing something that matters.”
“Do you think what you do for work matters?”
