A Girl Like You Read online

  Jack had not chosen me. There would be no real date. Worse still, he hadn’t friend requested me on Facebook, so I had no way to find him ever again.

  There must be some mistake. I had to call Laney, and unfortunately, I had to make the call from the bathroom at work.

  “Hello, potential lovebird!” she answered cheerfully. “How can I help you today?”

  “Hi, Laney? It’s Jessica Gabriel.”

  “Jess!” she squealed on the other end of the phone. “How are you, my single lady?”

  “Good,” I said, trying not to sound whiney. “I was just calling to ask, well, if there might have been a mistake in the matches…?”

  “Mistake? What kind of mistake?” Laney trilled.

  “Well, I was wondering, well, if someone was left off my match list by any chance?”

  “Hmmm. I don’t see how that could possibly have happened, but let me pull up your profile. One sec.”

  I heard her clicking on a keyboard.

  “Well, aren’t you the popular single lady! Nearly every one of our single men said they’d like to talk more with you! Lucky girl!”

  Nearly every one. Except the one I wanted.

  “I was wondering about, um, Jack?”

  “Jack? Well, no, I’m sorry, Jack didn’t check the ‘talk more’ box. He checked off ‘no thanks.’”

  I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers to my temples, exhaling.

  “OK, well—thanks, Laney.” I couldn’t wait to get off the phone.

  “Happy dating! Let us know if anything works out with any of our single men!! We like to keep in touch with our lovebirds!”

  For the rest of the work day, my headache battled with my heartache over which felt worse.

  When I got home, I put my purse down and then slumped at the kitchen table feeling sorry for myself. After a minor pity party, I got up and poured a glass of wine.

  Penny was staring at me from the floor. I bent down to scratch behind her ear, and she yawned, then got up and padded off toward the living room.

  “Hey, don’t you know you’re supposed to love me regardless of my dating life?” I said to her little rump as she walked away.

  Clearly, speed dating was as random as online searches. I’d tried it, so I could check it off my list. Next.

  I hadn’t yet pinpointed exactly what I was looking for, and it looked like the universe wasn’t going to send it my way anytime soon. But I was OK, I was good, and that missing part of me was shrinking, filled up with what I already had—a really great life, even without “The One.”

  46

  “I’ve had it,” Ian announced one Saturday in November as he came downstairs from his room. “I’m going off the grid.”

  “You’re what?” I looked up from my book, Excel For Dummies, which I was studying to understand the monstrously daunting spreadsheets I faced every day at the office.

  “I’m going off Tinder and Facebook. I haven’t met anyone since the catfish, and I’m sick of Facebook.”

  “Yeah, Facebook sucks,” I agreed, closing the manual, which hadn’t taught me shit about Excel.

  “It’s all about how great people’s lives are, how many beautiful people they have around them, how many promotions they’ve gotten. I am so sick of the photos of cute babies and dogs.”

  “We have a cute dog,” I said, smiling at Penny as she wagged her tail at me.

  “Yeah, but do you post pictures of her?”

  “I did when she wore that snowman sweater for Christmas,” I admitted, stroking her little rump with my toe.

  “Don’t even get me started on the selfies.”

  “You know it’s all fake—right, Ian?”

  “Yeah, Mom, but that doesn’t make it any less aggravating.”

  I followed Ian, and Penny trotted after me to the living room, where he flopped on the couch.

  “Truth is, I’m not going to meet women at school, because my classes are just guys.” Penny jumped up onto the ottoman, then settled down next to Ian.

  “Not a lot of women studying STEM? That’s a shame.” I shook my head. “There should be more women in math and science.”

  “Can we please stay focused here?” Ian said.

  “What about the library?”

  Ian rolled over and started scratching Penny on the head. “They’re all with friends, and it’s just stalkerish to keep staring.”

  “What about the gym?”

  “They all wear headphones,” Ian said. “What am I supposed to do, gesture for them to take them off?”

  I’d run out of cheerful, motherly suggestions.

  “How’s the Excel going?” Ian said, changing the subject.

  “Not good.”

  “Get the book out; I’ll help you.”

  “You’re the best, Ian.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, sitting up and putting Penny down on the carpet. “No offense, but I wish someone else would think that.”

  47

  Every few years, the town had a “household debris” clean-up day, which meant people could drag items out of their basements, garages, sheds, and God knows where else and leave them at the curb for the Department of Public Works guys to haul away.

  The phones at work went crazy the week before clean-up day. I must have said a hundred times the town wouldn’t take away major appliances like washers and dryers, computers, or large-screen TVs. Scarily, everything else was fair game.

  A few days ahead of the pick-up, people started making piles at their curbs with paving bricks, mattresses, doors taken off their hinges, rolled-up carpets, artificial Christmas trees, and curtain rods. There were scuffed suitcases, broken umbrellas, rusty bikes, bent basketball hoops, and scratched-up cat towers.

  But some of the curbside items were hidden treasures: wall clocks shaped like anchors, sets of dishes, coffee tables just waiting for a shabby-chic makeover, wicker chairs, pool toys, gardening tools, desk fans. Meredia became one big garage sale without any price stickers.

  As good-quality items began to appear at curbs, a strange phenomenon began: people started shopping through their neighbors’ piles and carting things away in their back seats or trunks. Most of the shopping happened at night when people could skulk away unseen. Some called it “junk-picking,” others called it recycling.

  There was an element of sneakiness to it, going stealthily into the night, and I didn’t want to miss any of the fun.

  Step one: put out my own toss-out pile. I still had Ian’s baby clothes in storage bins in the basement. It was way beyond time to part with them; that third child had never come along. Friday after work, the night before clean-up day, I first dragged our old kitchen table, still smeared with red crayon, to the curb. Then I brought out two table lamps, an old orange vase, a set of coffee mugs I’d bought on Amazon and never used, a pair of skis Madd had used twice, and a bunch of hardcover books with dog-eared pages.

  “Got anything good?” Lily rode up the sidewalk on her scooter to watch.

  “I may find some doll clothes, if you’re interested.”

  “Cool.”

  “You guys put anything out at the curb?” I asked.

  I lined the lamps up on the coffee table and propped up the hard covers with a set of elephant bookends I’d dug out.

  “My mom put out three octopus pillows, but someone already took them.”

  “You mean pillows for an octopus to use?”

  “No, silly. Pillows shaped like an octopus,” Lily said, furrowing her eyebrows.

  “Thanks for the clarification. I would have nabbed them myself if I’d gotten there first,” I laughed.

  “Grandpa walked me around to look at stuff, but he said I could only get two things, and they had to be washable.”

  “Your grandpa’s a smart guy.”

  “You said that already,” she reminded me.

  Lily helped me arrange some fabric daisies in the orange vase. We set out some old beaded necklaces and a few tarnished silver bracelets. By the time w
e were finished, it looked like a small curbside boutique.

  “Yours is one of the best junk piles out there,” Lily said admiringly.

  After she scootered away, I texted Eddie to meet me at 9:00 that night, and to wear dark clothes. We were going junk-picking.

  Eddie’s CRV was black, so he drove. I fortified us with bags of cheddar popcorn and Gatorade so we could make a night of it. We went immediately to the neighborhood with the biggest houses, the ones that gave the kids full-sized candy bars on Halloween. Eddie drove slowly so I could look out the window.

  “Remind me again why we’re sneaking around at night to do this?” Eddie said.

  “Because it’s a little embarrassing to pick through people’s throw-aways in broad daylight,” I said, craning my neck to peer into the dark and kicking myself for not bringing a flashlight. “Anyway, all the good stuff will be gone by morning.”

  The first house had a heaped pile of clothes and a washing machine. I sighed heavily. Hadn’t the flyer explicitly stated no large household appliances? Did people not know how to read?

  At the next house, several well-organized bins were set out, just ripe for the picking. I got out and closed the car door soundlessly. One bin had old vinyl records and Disney videos. Another had sheets and towels. But in the third, a shiny blue marbled bowling ball!

  “What is it?” Eddie whispered over my shoulder.

  “Holy shit, you scared the crap out of me. Don’t do that!” I scolded.

  “You said we had to be stealthy,” he reminded me.

  “Not with each other! If I scream, people will hear me and come out and catch us.”

  “So what?” Eddie said reasonably. “It’s not like we’re stealing.”

  We rolled the bowling ball onto his back seat and drove on.

  I found a doll dress for Lily that looked like new and was 100% washable, a retro watch with an elastic band for Ian, and an antique school chair I knew I could easily refinish.

  “Can you believe someone put out crutches?” Eddie asked me as we poked through one pile.

  “Oh yeah? Well, check this out,” I said, holding up a blonde flapper wig.

  “Could be a Halloween costume,” Eddie mused.

  I considered for a moment, then the reality of putting a used wig on my own head hit me. I put it back down quickly.

  We passed on 1980s clothing, plastic tableware, a broken picnic basket, a charred frying pan, a tattered green plaid ottoman. Eddie found a patriotic wooden birdhouse with a tiny American flag, and a set of Pilgrim salt and pepper shakers.

  It was almost as good as Amazon shopping.

  Another family had set out a dresser and placed smaller items inside. One of the drawers was stuck, so I tugged it hard, only to have it fall out and clatter to the driveway. A porch light went on and I heard someone opening the front door.

  The back door of Eddie’s car was halfway open and I literally dove, head first, into the car floor. “Go, go go!” I hollered.

  Eddie gunned it, then slowed down several houses later.

  “Again…not stealing,” he said.

  “Did you see me fly through that window? I can’t believe it. I haven’t moved like that since tenth-grade gymnastics.”

  “Impressive,” Eddie agreed.

  We wove through neighborhoods, munching popcorn and slowing down to take a look at curbside piles, bypassing anything in plastic bags or that looked as if it had already been pawed through.

  When the kids were small, we went through the larger developments at Halloween for trick-or-treating. Adam would reluctantly join us, even though Halloween was never his thing. Maddy was always a Disney heroine, Snow White or Cinderella, and Ian was a policeman or vampire. I remember them running from lawn to lawn, Ian’s black cape billowing out behind him, Madd’s magic wand sparkling in the shadows, believing they would be young forever, knowing even then they were the best of times.

  Every year, one of them would trip, spill their plastic pumpkin full of candy, and cry. The kids and I would get on our hands and knees to retrieve the Kit-Kats, bags of rainbow Skittles and mini Snickers from the damp grass.

  We took baby Ian out in a stroller his first Halloween, dressed like a baseball player. For a few years, we pulled Madd and Ian in a wheelbarrow, which worked great until Ian stepped on the hem of her Belle dress and tore the lace.

  Back then, families would leave their lights on past 9:00 and children traipsed the streets until they couldn’t go any further and begged their parents to carry them home. Our kids always got a second wind when they got home to dump their candy on the living room floor. They traded chocolate bars like baseball cards, threw away the lollipops, and gave me my favorite: Three Musketeers.

  Every night after dinner they were allowed to dig through their candy and pick out two things for dessert (me included, but Adam didn’t like chocolate). After a week or so of this, all of us had enough sweets and I worried about their next dental exams.

  “I miss the kids being little,” I told Eddie as we wove through streets to look at curbside collections.

  It wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation.

  “I know, sweet pea, but like I’ve always said, you can’t keep them little forever.”

  “Meh.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said ‘meh.’” I slumped down in the passenger seat.

  Eddie sighed. “Look, it’s not like it’s all over. You guys will have a chance to do it all again in the next life.”

  I sat up straight. “Really? You think so?”

  “I do.”

  Eddie’s reasoning was an enormous comfort to me. It made sense that I’d be with the kids in whatever came next. I couldn’t imagine a life without them.

  “Now quit being sappy and let’s get on with the fun,” Eddie said.

  Junk-picking with Eddie under the half moon was exactly that: lots of fun.

  I pointed excitedly down the street to an unmistakable glow of a Jack-o’-lantern. Without a word, Eddie drove up and pulled over. It was a plastic, battery-operated pumpkin with a toothy grin. I immediately put it into the back seat on top of the gingham tablecloth I’d picked up an hour before. I felt the feverish thrill of the hunt as I opened the cardboard box under the pumpkin.

  “Anything good?” Eddie called from the front seat.

  “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your voice down?” I scolded.

  “WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Eddie bellowed out the open car window.

  I shook my head, rifling through the boxes, using my cell as a flashlight to peer into them. I found a pair of red and yellow oversized clown shoes, a witch’s hat, and a peacock-feather fan. Clearly, this family shared my good taste.

  “If you find Halloween leggings, for god’s sake, leave them behind,” Eddie said. “You have more than enough already.”

  “Ha ha ha,” I said.

  At the bottom of the box, I hit the jackpot. It was an inflatable pirate skeleton on a Harley, still in its original packaging. It had to be four feet tall and six feet long. Triumphantly, I carried the box over to Eddie’s window to show him.

  “Well, let’s go home and set it up,” he said.

  Eddie knew me inside and out.

  When we got back to my house, every item from my curb was gone: the daisies in the vase, the elephant book ends, the baby clothes. All that was left was a bent Hula Hoop.

  “Geez, thought someone would take this,” I said.

  “No one’s in shape anymore; they can’t Hula Hoop,” Eddie said, trying to bend it back into a circle.

  “Oh, there are people out there who’ve regained their fitness, believe me.”

  “Yeah, how’s that gym thing going?”

  “It’s going. Just not great,” I said, wrestling with the fabric skeleton.

  “You’ll get there, babe.”

  It took a while for the Harley skeleton to inflate, but once it did, it was a sight to behold, lit from within, flickering orange flam
es coming out the back, bony fingers poised on the handlebars, menacing grin on its face.

  Even though it was nowhere near October, everything seemed deliciously Halloween.

  We left the motorcycle guy up all night, then I packed it away for autumn.

  By the time the DPW crews did their sweep of curbs to pick-up household items. All that was left was broken furniture, the ugly mattresses, some tires, and the goddamn washers and dryers.

  48

  I made it a goal to go online only during “rush hour,” which was after dinner to 11:00 p.m., because I didn’t want to appear bored and needy, even though I was both. I tried to pace myself, but it was tough. I felt a strange sense of urgency getting back to the men who sent messages, winks, smiles, or the coveted emoji—the red heart.

  I did rack up some winks: from the skinny man in a tree, to the profile pic of cows standing in a field (no man in view), the guy whose face was cut out of the picture (“Married,” Madd said with conviction), and a man smashing a beer can against his forehead.

  “I’ve actually seen two profile pictures of a man standing next to a casket,” I told Eddie.

  “No shit…who was in the casket, I wonder?”

  “That’s not the point. It’s macabre.”

  “Could be a funeral director,” Eddie said thoughtfully.

  “Either way, it’s a no-go for me.”

  “Aw, kid, thought you were a big fan of Halloween.”

  “Not that big.”

  One of the first questions guys asked was, “What are you looking for?”

  How could that possibly be answered? I’m looking for someone to help pick out lettuce at the market? To go to the movies? To wake up with? To wash my dog?

  “They want to know if you’re looking for a LTR or if you’re DTF,” Madd explained patiently to her struggling mother.

  “What if I’m somewhere in between?”

  “Well, that means you’re open to possibilities.”

  “And that’s a good thing, right?”