Joyce Maynard - Where Love Goes

JOYCE MAYNARD
WHERE LOVE GOES

For eight years, Joyce Maynard was the author of the nationally syndicated column Domestic Affairs . Currently a contributing editor for Parenting , she is a commentator on National Public Radios All Things Considered , and writes frequently for The New York Times and other periodicals. A native of New Hampshire, she now lives in Marin County, California, with her three children.

Copyright 1995 by Joyce Maynard

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States in hardcover by Crown Publishers, Inc., a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1995.

Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following: Passionate Kisses, Lucinda Williams. 1988 WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP., NOMAD-NOMAN MUSIC, LUCY JONES MUSIC. All rights administered by WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission. If I Needed You, Townes Van Zandt. COLUMBINE MUSIC, INC.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Crown edition as follows:
Maynard, Joyce
Where love goes / by Joyce Maynard.
p. cm.
I. Title.
PS3563.A9638W48 1995
813.54dc20 95-7337
eISBN: 978-0-307-78762-0

Random House Web address: www.randomhouse.com/

v3.1

For Chris. Aurora borealis .

Contents

SPRING

T heres this game Claire plays now and then when she goes to the supermarket. Wheeling her cart through the aisles, lifting the one-percent milk down off the shelf in the dairy case, she entertains herself with the idea that one of these days a man might wheel his cart up alongside hers and kiss her so passionately she would toss her coupons into the middle of the frozen foods. Come away with me, he says, snatching her up like the most wonderful delicacy in the gourmet section .

Her too-full cart could be discouraging to these men, so when she plays the game, Claire takes care to include among her family-size packages of English muffins and ground beef a few items that say other things about her besides that shes a mother. Things that are also true: That she is a lover of garlic and goat cheese for instance. That while she doesnt need expensive wine, she doesnt get the cheapest stuff either. That the color she favors is red .

She always checks their ring finger first. And she is always careful to keep her own ringless fingers plainly visible. If theres a man who really interests her at the seafood counter she may buy calamari, She always buys herself flowers and kiwi fruit, or a mango. Smoked trout. Jalapeos. Never Little Debbie cakes. Never Vaseline or toilet bowl cleaner. If an old Beatles or Dylan song comes on the Muzak, as they do so often these days, she sometimes finds herself singing a few bars under her breath. She might stand there picking through the strawberries while he chooses a melon. She may hold a bunch of rosemary to her face and breathe deep. Nothing more than that .

Only three times in all the years since her divorce has Claire actually struck up a conversation with one of these bachelor shoppers. Of those three, one invited her to share the steak he was buying at his backyard hibachi later that evening. She could tell the minute he opened his mouth that it wasnt a good idea. One man asked her what you did with Jerusalem artichokes, then explained that his mother had asked him to pick some up. One of these men pointed to the mussels and said, I hear theyre an aphrodisiac.

Still, Claire plays the game. Its just one of the ways she gets through her days, allowing herself the hope that a man who would love her wildly might be just one more aisle away .

The funny thing is that today just such a person has come to this same supermarket with a shopping list of his own. His list does, in fact, include Little Debbie cakes, because he has an eight-year-old daughter who likes them in her school lunches. A daughter but no wife. And sometimes, as he picks out the groceries for another long week of caring for her alone, he plays the same game Claire does. Only in his game the person who comes along somewhere between Produce and Frozen Foods is a woman. A woman who looks, in his fantasies, like Claire .

He walks in the electric-eye doors at just the moment she is pushing her cart out to the parking lot, in fact. Maybe he sees her in passing, but her cart is full of bags, so even if he does, hed probably assume shes married. They just miss each other .

A rms full of groceries, Claire kicks open the back door of her house to find her ex-husband, Sam, in his painters pants and sleeveless T-shirt sitting at the kitchen counter sucking a Popsicle. Their daughter Sally has her leg up against the sink doing one of her ballet stretches. Travis, Sallys boyfriend, is braiding her hair. Theres an unfamiliar-looking girl perched on the counteralso eating a Popsicle. The Beastie Boys are turned up loud. Somebody must have said something funny right before Claire came in; they are all laughing. Nobody makes a move to take one of the grocery bags, although when a container of yogurt falls out the bottom of the bag that has been giving way, Sally picks it up, opens it, and reaches for a spoon. Thank God you finally got a little decent stuff to eat, Mom, she says. I was starting to think we were living in Rwanda or someplace.

Claire drops the bags on the floor, unable to make it one more step to the pantry. She wishes shed taken the time to put on her eyeliner before she left for the store this afternoon. Claire has been working at the childrens museum even longer hours than usual this week, in the final stages of getting the Pioneer Room ready for next Saturdays opening. Her hairs a mess.

Even nowfive years since she and Sam partedshe still likes to look her best when he sees her. He had predicted when she left that shed eventually realize how lucky she had been to have him, and come back on her knees. I mean, no offense, but youre not exactly Cindy Crawford, he told her.

I know that, she said. Hadnt he commented once that her breasts had started to look like udders?

Thats what breast-feeding does to a person, she told him. Breastfeeding and gravity .

Why should it be that having children should cause such wreckage to a womans body while a man can father those same children and still possess the body of a twenty-year-old? Still, it didnt seem like too much to ask that the man with you shared your bed might look up now and then when you pulled your dress over your head. Even if you had been married twelve years .

One of these days after youve finally left youre going to wake up and realize you had a good thing going, he used to tell her. Nice house. Great kids. A husband who doesnt drink or smoke or hang around in bars.