Linda remembered that day at the lake when she and Karen had been teenagers, both in high school. She would never forget it.
How could she? It was burned onto her brain.
Karen was one of the popular girls, with her dark hair and small features and delicate hands. “Cute as a button,” everyone called her. Linda was just small and blunt. Nobody called her anything.
“Oh, come now, Linda, don’t be a spoilsport,” Karen insisted.
But Linda didn’t want to go out with Karen and her friends to the lake. She knew what it would be like—Karen and the girls giggling over boys, Linda lagging behind, no one paying her even the slightest notice.
“Mary Ann and Jessica asked for you especially,” Karen pleaded.
“Right,” Linda said. “So I could lug the cooler.”
“They enjoy your company,” Karen said.
Her mother piped in, scolding Linda for being a “stick in the mud.” So Linda relented, heading upstairs to change into her bathing suit.
“You’re not wearing that, are you?” Karen asked.
Linda had slipped into a striped red-and-blue one-piece. “Why not?”
“Never wear horizontal stripes,” her sister told her. “Especially not across your butt. They make you look fat.”
Linda crossed her arms across her chest. “I am not changing.”
“Have it your way.”
Of course, at the lake, she did feel like a fat troll. She sat with her towel wrapped around her waist, a big floppy hat on her head, her eyes hidden behind large sunglasses. Karen and the girls laughed and chatted, practically ignoring her. When Jake Gandolfini—the hottest boy in the senior class, dark hair and cleft chin and muscles—stopped by their blanket, he kept his back to Linda the whole time, flirting with Karen and her friends.
“I don’t want you girls to burn out here in the hot sun,” he teased.
Silly little Mary Ann dissolved into giggles. Behind her sunglasses, Linda rolled her eyes.
Jake was grinning now with a devilish idea. “Maybe I ought to put some more lotion on all of you,” he said.
The girls squealed. Linda knew “all of you” didn’t include her. To Jake, she was just some maiden aunt. Worse: she didn’t even exist.
So, one by one, the three of them—Mary Ann, Jessica, and finally Karen—peeled down their shoulder straps so that Jake could slather their backs and shoulders and arms with Number 15 sunblock. Just before it was her turn, Karen looked over at Linda and seethed, “Not a word of this to Mom.”
Linda watched from behind her dark glasses, and the image has never left her. It summed up, perfectly symbolized, completely illustrated her life before meeting Geoff: the one outside, watching as the pretty girls exposed their skin, lined up for the handsome jock to touch them, each worthy in a way Linda would never be.
Until now.
“Congratulations, Linda,” Lucy Oleson tells her, clasping her hand in greeting.
“Thank you so much.”
“I thought ol’ Geoff here would never again take that matrimonial plunge, but you must have worked your charm,” Jim says, laughing.
Geoff kisses her warmly. How good it feels to be in his arms. He smells great, as usual: that heady scent of aftershave and man sweat.
“Hello, darling,” he says to her.
“Sorry I’m late. Traffic—”
“No problem,” he says, holding out her chair for her as she sits down. “We were just talking a little shop.”
“I just don’t see Ronnie Simms getting the position,” Lucy says, continuing whatever conversation they had been having before Linda’s arrival. “Not with his views of historical revisionism.”
“Well, he doesn’t view the construct in that way, Lucy,” her husband tells her. “He’s a revisionist with a proclivity for obduracy. Really, I would think that…”
Linda feels Geoff reach under the table and take her hand. They exchange small smiles. Is it any wonder she fell in love with him?
They met cute, as they say in the movies. She was getting into a taxi from one side, he was getting in from the other.
“Uh, I was here first,” she insisted.
“I flagged him down,” Geoff replied.
“No, you didn’t. I flagged him.” She leaned in toward the driver. “Who did you stop for?”
“Me, I don’ know, I just pull over.” The Pakistani cabdriver just shrugged his shoulders.
“Look, miss, I distinctly held up my hand and—”
She hated being called “miss.” She folded her arms across her chest. Linda guesses now she was showing, in that moment, a “proclivity for obduracy.” She wasn’t going to budge.
“I have a flight to catch,” she told him in no uncertain terms.
A broad smile spread across Geoff’s face, revealing dimples that made her melt. “Well, as it happens, so do I,” he said. “Since we’re both going to the airport, maybe we can share the ride?”
Funny how fate works. They learned, sitting in traffic outside Logan, that they were both going to Chicago, Linda to rent a car to drive to her hometown of Dowagiac, Michigan, to attend Karen’s wedding, Geoff to deliver a talk on ancient religious practices at some seminar. Though Geoff was in first class and Linda was in coach, they managed to find an empty row somewhere over central Connecticut and sat together, finishing their conversation. They agreed to meet for a drink in Chicago on their way back.
But when Linda showed up at his hotel, eager to get away from Karen’s reception and all her aunts asking her when she—Linda—was going to tie the knot, Geoff was no where to be found. What an idiot I’ve been, Linda told herself. To think a smart, successful college professor is going to be interested in me. What a fool.
“I’m sorry, but is this seat taken?”
She looked up. It was Geoff.
“Did you think I was standing you up?” he asked. “I apologize for being late. Some dreary academic types insisted on challenging my analysis of Zoroastrianism.”
“Well,” she said, laughing, “I hope you told them.”
He ordered a scotch and water. Linda was drinking white wine. She learned he was married—of course, she thought at first—but then found out his wife had left him over two years ago and he hadn’t heard from her since.
“I can’t say I was surprised,” Geoff admitted. “Gabrielle was ill. I think she has some kind of mental illness.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Linda said.
“Well, she began acting strangely….” He seemed unwilling to talk about that time. Linda suspected it had been very painful for him. Her heart melted for this handsome, gallant stranger.
“So of course, I’ve been concerned for her safety. I’ve hired private detectives to try to find her, and the police have combed dozens of states for some clue to her whereabouts. But no luck.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said again.
“Well, things hadn’t been good between us.” Geoff smiled wanly at her over his glass. “Of course, that made the police suspect foul play. When