Anne Tyler - The Amateur Marriage

“Well, maybe he’s just looking for companionship. That’s all right! I don’t mind that! We could get on a comfortable footing and then, you know, on down the line…”

“You have the most amazing luck finding men, Poll,” Katie said. “Here I am, scraping the bottom of the barrel — went six years without a serious feller, last time, till I met Gary — and you’ve been seeing men by the dozens!”

“Well, hardly dozens,” Pauline said. “And a lot of them were disasters, believe me.”

“Still. What’s your secret? Remember the day she met Michael?” Katie said to Wanda. “She walked in the door and — wham! He never looked at us that way.”

“Pauline had cut her forehead,” Wanda told Marilyn, “and we took her to Michael’s mom’s grocery store for a Band-Aid.”

Marilyn, who had surely heard this story any number of times, peered obligingly at the threadlike white scar Pauline revealed on her temple.

“She was bleeding like a stuck pig! I mean, she didn’t look very romantic right then. But Michael went into this, you’d have to say, trance. Insisted on bandaging her himself, walked her out of the store, and stayed with her forever after.”

“Not quite forever,” Pauline said drily.

“We all thought she’d slipped him a potion! We studied her clothes, her hairdo, her laugh — remember, Katie? For a while we painted little perky points on our upper lips; we thought maybe that was her secret. Except hers were real and stayed and ours kept rubbing off. And then Richard; remember Richard?”

“Richard was the dentist,” Marilyn said.

“No, Norm was the dentist. See what I mean? We can’t keep count of them all! Norm was the dentist she saw while she was still just separated, and Richard came afterward. He was the ophthalmologist.”

“Optician, actually,” Pauline said.

“He was the longest-lasting; he wanted to get married. Or sounded like it, at one point, the way he started talking.”

“He was too critical and judgmental,” Pauline said.

“Listen to you!” Katie cried. “Do you know how many women your age would jump at the chance to marry a man like Richard?”

“They’re welcome to him, is all I can say.”

Katie flung out both hands and rolled her eyes at the others in a way that made Pauline feel reckless and dashing.

Driving home, though, she was grim-faced, and when “April in Paris” began drifting from her car radio she switched it off. Things were never the way they seemed from outside. All those men supposedly thronging around her; well, yes, there had been a few. But Norm the dentist wore gold neck chains and his fingernails were buffed — two things Pauline couldn’t stand. And the one who came after him (Bruce, who’d had real potential) had stopped calling; she wasn’t sure why. She suspected it might have had to do with an argument they’d had one evening when he arrived late for dinner. Some men just wanted people to keep all their feelings bottled up and festering.

As for Richard: he hadn’t started out judgmental. At first he had been so admiring; he had complimented traits in her that everyone else took for granted. She had such a green thumb! She was the most creative cook! He loved her laugh and her enthusiasm. Of course she’d realized that such a state of affairs couldn’t continue forever. Eventually the newness would wear off. Still: he had asked one day if she would switch from vinegar to lemon juice on her salads so they wouldn’t keep clashing with the wines he brought, and although she knew he meant no harm she had felt slightly offended. Vinegar clashed with wine? He’d disapproved of her salads all this time but bitten his tongue? Suddenly she’d felt less desirable, less certain of her powers.

Then his daughter in Ohio invited him for Christmas. He told Pauline he would decline because he wanted to celebrate with her instead. “Although,” he said, “it’s true my daughter’s marriage is in trouble and I know she’s probably hoping for support at a difficult time…”

So of course Pauline said oh, he should go then; children came first; she understood. And then he let slip that he had already bought his plane ticket. He had been counting all along on her pressing him into going!

Pauline had not been able to hide her sense of injury. “I see,” she had said. “Is that how it is. Okay! I get the picture!”

And he’d said, “Now, now, you’re making too much of this.”

Which had had the ring of one of Michael’s pet phrases. “Making too much of this.” “Overly emotional.” “Get ahold of yourself, Pauline.”

She dropped Richard cold. She was unavailable when he returned from Ohio; she wouldn’t answer the phone and she blandly, breezily brushed him off when he showed up at her door. He thought it was because he’d gone ahead and made the trip, but it wasn’t that. It was his, “Now, now…”

She refused to let history repeat itself, even if it meant living out the rest of her life alone, dealing with water heaters alone, driving her car alone over roads that mysteriously ended up where she least expected or turned into other roads, wrong roads, completely unfamiliar roads… Oh, Lord, it was like swimming through fog! This was such a big planet and she was drifting about on it, entirely unprotected!

She saw a traffic light up ahead and she took a left and then, thank goodness, all at once she knew where she was. A few blocks more and there was Stewart’s, dear old dowdy Stewart’s. She was so relieved that she turned into the lot and parked and went inside.

At the cosmetics counter they were still doing makeovers. A young girl examined the results in a mirror: black-lashed eyes, glowing cheeks, a mouth like strawberry jam. Pauline slowed to look too and the woman behind the counter said, “How about you? Would you care to try our products?”

Pauline owned drawersful of products — blushes, glosses, powders, and potions, many of which she’d used only once. Even so, she found herself saying, “Oh, well, why not?” She did have a date that evening. It wouldn’t hurt to doll up a bit.

And there was something so soothing about the pat-pat of the saleslady’s fingertips, dabbing cream onto the tired, hot skin beneath Pauline’s eyes. The cream smelled like rose petals. The saleslady’s fingers were cool and smooth, and while she worked she hummed to herself in a cozy, unself-conscious way, her sweatered pillow of a bosom inches from Pauline’s face. Now and then she offered a compliment. “Don’t you have a nice browline!” And “I think I’ll just accent these lovely blue eyes with blue shadow.” The final outcome was not exactly miraculous — same old Pauline, only shinier — but it did lift her spirits, and the three or four other customers who had paused to watch murmured appreciatively. She ended up buying an entire skin-care regimen, along with a set of “her” customized colors cleverly packaged in what looked like an artist’s paintbox. The saleslady threw in a free travel kit with the company logo on the side. Pauline needed two shopping bags to carry everything home.

George said it was the pilot light, just as he had thought. He’d relit it and she ought to have hot water in half an hour. He closed the basement door behind him, looking fat-cheeked with satisfaction, and tucked a matchbook into his shirt pocket with two fingers. “You could have done that,” he told her.

“I know, dear heart, I’m very silly,” she said. “I shouldn’t be so dependent.” She waited a beat, in case he cared to contradict her. Then she said, “But why was it the pilot light?”

“Why?”

“I mean, what caused it to go out? How can we be sure it won’t go out again the minute you leave?”