“Sandy called me at home a couple days ago.” I clenched my teeth as Bob started. “She left a message on my machine that said, ‘this is Sandy. Yes, that Sandy. The evil Sandy. The one you haven’t talked to since 1990. And I don’t blame you.’ She asked me to have you call her. I didn’t call you because if she really wanted to speak with you, your number hasn’t changed.”
“She did call me. The office. The apartment. She also called Eric, Mark, and everybody else we knew back then.” Our drinks arrived but neither of us picked them up. “I can’t do this again, Bob. She walked out on me twice.” Bob lifted an eyebrow with a look that said “twice?”
The first time Sandy walked out on me was five years prior. She came back from the University of Chicago with a newly minted MBA, and the announcement that she met someone else. I never saw it coming. We had been dating for five years after meeting in a Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton class, and I thought we were doing a good job keeping our long-distance romance alive.
We agreed to meet at the Seaport for her homecoming. It was where we had our first date. I figured it would be the most romantic place to get down on one knee and present her with the little blue box I had picked up at Tiffany. But I never got that far. She introduced me to a guy named Roger that she met in Chicago, and swore she didn’t mean for it to happen. I walked all the way back from the Seaport to my apartment.
Five years later, I was sitting on a park bench enjoying a beautiful Spring morning when I heard from behind me, “‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,’” I didn’t need to look. I recognized the voice that I hadn’t heard for five years.
I turned around with tears in my eyes and said, “‘The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.’”
“I made a mistake.” Sandy was standing with her feet apart and her palms turned toward me. She looked like she had been crying for three days.
I explained to Bob that Sandy and I went to a diner on Sixth and she told me through sobs that Roger was cheating on her. She suspected for a long time because all the signs were there: working late; lack of interest in sex; excessive drinking. She hired an investigator who confirmed it, and then confronted Roger. He had always cheated on her from the time they were dating, through engagement, and marriage.
“Why was she telling you this? Why were you even listening?”
I took a slug of my drink before responding to Bob. “There’s nothing else I could do. You know that.”
She was living in a hotel because she couldn’t bear the shame of moving back in with her parents. I tried to stay away, but I couldn’t. Maybe I thought that I could just be supportive. But a couple days later, I was opening a taxi’s door for her and our hands touched. It was like the last five years had never happened.
For six weeks we were college kids again. God, it was good. She helped me with the contractors installing the seats in the theater. We re-read Chaucer together. We both played hooky from work and caught a matinee of Love! Valour! Compassion! starring Nathan Lane. Of course, we did. He was an unknown in the first show we ever saw together ten years before.
I broke it off with a talented singer named Gail. Gail deserved much better. I felt bad about it, but I knew it was the right thing. Sandy and I watched the Oklahoma City bombing aftermath in silence. But I never once mentioned the small Tiffany box that was still sitting in my junk drawer for the last five years.
“God, I never imagined.” Then it dawned on him. “You still have the ring? For five years? For what?”
“Tiffany doesn’t take returns on engagement rings, Bob.” He thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t. I checked. “We spent nearly every minute in April and May together. Then one day, after making sure we were in a public place, she announced that she and Roger had reconciled. A gut wound from a forty-five would have been less painful. Sandy said she was so sorry—just like she did in 1990. She said she didn’t plan it—just like before. And for the second time, the woman I gave my heart to, destroyed it. She reached into my chest, tore it out and stomped on it. Right in the middle of Union Square. I didn’t say anything. I just walked away.”
“So, what do you think she wants now?”
— | —
On September 15, I found out what she wanted. Sandy was in the waiting room of my office when I came back from a meeting uptown. Seeing her, and with people around, I really didn’t have any choice but to show her in. I remained standing and didn’t offer her a seat.
“You can tell, right?” she said while waving her hand over her belly. “I’m 18 weeks.”
“You and Roger must be very happy. Why are you telling me this?”
“Eighteen weeks is four and a half months. It’s September.” She raised her fingers as she began counting off the months. “August is one. July is two. June is three. May is four. April is – get it? Roger did the math himself. We’re not together. Again.”
“I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t go through this a third time.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just informing you, and you can do what you want.” She took my long silence as her cue to leave. Then she walked out my office door and headed for the elevator. I followed behind to make sure she was indeed leaving, and almost said something as she stepped into the elevator.
“I really do love you, you know.”
“No. You don’t,” I mumbled after the elevator doors closed.
— | —
A dozen years later I was half-looking at the paper and having a sandwich alone at a self-service place in Chelsea. Across the room was a table with two moms and their sons. One mother/son couple were facing me, and the other had their backs to me. Somehow, one of the boys caught my eye.
The kid facing me leaned across the table and whispered something to the other boy seated with his back to me and pointed. The kid he whispered to slowly turned around. His jaw dropped when he saw me. He had a shock of untamed dark hair, deep-set eyes, and in another fifteen years he’d have a perpetual five o’clock shadow just like the guy staring back at him.
His mother turned around to see what was going on. We both stared at each other for about five seconds. She gave me a little wave, and winked.