A. Manette Ansay - Good Things I Wish You  

M Y FIRST DATE IN nineteen years was nearly an hour late. The hostess had brought me two messages, each one saying he was only minutes away, but he was coming from Lauderdale, and even without traffic, thats a long haul to West Palm, where we were meeting in an open-air restaurant. Small tables. Wicker chairs. Below, in a courtyard planted with coconut palms, colorful jets of water rose and fell like expectations. I took another roll from the bread basket, ordered a glass of wine. The dating service, one which demanded lots of money to keep everything off the Internet, had assured me that Hart was handsome, honest, and caring. Once a week, twice a week, a young woman named America called with yet another recommendation, and all of her recommendations were men who were handsome, honest, and caring.

Hes an entrepreneur, America had added this time.

That can mean anything.

Hes forty-seven years old. He has a ten-year-old daughter.

I could tell she was reading from her screen. In the background, other girls just like herfresh voiced, eagerencouraged other clients.

He lives too far away, Id said. And what kind of name is Heart?

H-a-r-t. He enjoys classical music and good conversation. Im looking at his picture, and hes cute.

But wed never see each other.

If you two kids hit it off, America said brightly, youll figure something out.

I was, at the time, forty-two years old; Id signed up for this service several months earlier, but Id yet to agree to a date. Too busy, Id kept telling myself, and this wasnt exactly a lie. There was my job at the university. There was the novel I was supposed to be writing about the nineteenth-century German pianist and composer Clara Schumann and her forty-odd-year relationship with Johannes Brahms. There was my four-year-old daughter, Heidi. There was also the fact that, since my divorce had been finalized, Id been finding it difficult to make decisions of any kind. Should I put the house on the market? Should I buy green apples or red? Should I find an outside piano teacher for Heidi or keep teaching her myself? The previous week, with the help of my new friend Ellen, Id finally boxed up the last of Cals things, odds and ends hed been promising to collect for months: a framed map of Massachusetts, a shoe box full of pens, an assortment of holiday giftscandles, boxed jellies, joking plaquesfrom various junior high students. A swan-necked lamp that had belonged to his mother. Period boots and belts and jackets. Faded T-shirts printed with the dates and locations of Revolutionary War reenactments. Ellen pulled a tomahawk from a dark leather pouch; she wore a mans powdered wig on her head.

What do you miss about this guy? shed said.

Everything, Id said. And nothing.

Now, as the waitress arrived with my wine, I considered what to do with the boxes. Should I mail them to Calvin? Leave them at the graffiti-spattered Goodwill trailer next to the I-95 overpass? Wait until he picked up Heidi for the weekend, insist he take everything along? Each of these options seemed fraught with consequences, all of them unpleasant and inevitable. The box would be lost. Id be carjacked at gunpoint. Calvin would be angry. The rational part of my brain, the part I recognized, reminded me that I was being ridiculous. But the other partits nervous newborn twinwas persistent, hungry for disaster. One wrong step, one bad choice, and the worst would happen, the earth would swallow me whole, and if that happened, when that happened, what would become of Heidi? Each night, I got up to check windows and doors, making certain that everything was locked. I stayed off the phone during storms. Id stopped taking vitamins, worried about choking, about Heidi finding me dead on the floor.

By the time Hart showed up, Id finished my wine as well as the contents of the bread basket. My first impression was that he was utterly exhausted: ashen-faced, pale-lipped, a quietly aging man. I was looking tired myself these days, the bags beneath my eyes worse than usual.

What was the true nature of their relationship?

Why did the two never marry, even after Robert Schumanns death?

This will never work, Hart announced, voicing my own thoughts as he sank into a chair. It is over an hour to get here.

He spoke with a light German accent. Maybe Czech. Too bad Id never know which. I told them the distance was a problem, I said, reaching for my purse.

He glanced at me without interest. You are leaving?

My sitter goes home at eight.

It is seven.

The traffic.

Ah.

German, I decided. My parents spoke it as children. Of course they stopped when they started school, and then there was the war. Growing up, Id begged for German words as if they were pieces of hard candy, delicious but unwholesome somehow, certain to rot my teeth.

I could eat something quick, I said, wavering. Perhaps he might be someone who could help me with translations. Maybe some soup.

You like soup?

Why not soup?

He touched the empty bread basket. You seem to like bread, too.

The waiter nearly tripped in his eagerness to get to our table, and I took a second look at my date: expensive watch, tailored shirt, full head of curly dark hair. This was a man who would always be led to the table marked Reserved . I made up my mind to dislike him. The waiter stood ready with his pen.

I must have more than just soup, Hart said. I am coming straight from work.

I also came from work. It seemed important to establish that I, too, had been put out.

From your university, he said. America is telling me this. But she wouldnt tell me where. In case I am the ax murderer, I suppose.

I glanced at him sharply. The waiter bobbed and smiled.

The se -ri-al kill-er. Hart landed on all the syllables, striking each one like a clear, hard note.