inside out, and knots it twice. He crosses the path to toss it in a trash can and comes back. ‘Is that why you’re here? Is that why you were all flirty at the restaurant with me?’
‘Flirty? With you? With the grumpy dad who can’t make eye contact?’
He smirks very slightly.
‘I liked your boys, not you. I wouldn’t say I was flirting with them, but their concern for you touched me. John was trying so hard to make it a special day.’
He nods. An off-leash dalmatian runs up to Bob’s bum and sniffs and prances off. Oscar wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘You know then, about their mom.’
‘I was trying to make a rough day easier.’
‘And that’s why you said yes to mini golf, because of them?’
‘Them, and your note. With all the cross outs.’
‘That guy was standing over my shoulder, reading every word. I couldn’t think.’ He wipes his nose again.
‘You’re a bit rusty.’
‘I know.’ He tries to reach out to me with both arms but Bob resists. He lets go of the leash and the dog stops and sits on his haunches, watching us. Oscar rests his forearms on my shoulders as if he’s done it many times before. ‘You heard the part about not making my skin crawl, right?’
‘I’ve only dated other writers.’ I hook my fingers around his upper arms. He’s strong, compact. Our hips are aligned. ‘It’s never worked out.’
‘So I’m just the next in line.’
‘A long line.’
Some kind of hawk drops from the top of a tree toward us and Oscar flinches. The hawk glides up to another high branch.
‘You are twitchy around trees.’
‘Can I please kiss you before they all attack?’
I nod.
He kisses me, pulls back, and kisses me again. No tongue. ‘I’ve never asked a waitress out before.’ Another chaste kiss. ‘That’s not how I operate.’ His lips are softer than they look.
‘How do you operate?’
‘I was married for eleven years. All my skills are obsolete.’
He picks up Bob’s leash, and we start walking again. We turn up the Conifer Path, a narrow, empty lane. I ask how she died. He says cancer and tells me that afterward he was angry for three years. He says there was nothing else. No love, no sadness. Just the anger like a big red alarm going off all day for three years. I tell him my mother died in February. I try to think of how to describe it to him, but nothing comes out. He apologizes for not knowing how that feels, to lose a mother. He says that one of the hardest things has been his boys at ages two and five having to go through something he hasn’t. ‘When my mother dies, they’ll be comforting me,’ he says.
We go up a hill and down another path and loop back around to the lilacs.
Oscar stops. ‘Here is where we had our first fight.’ He marks an X with his shoe. He backs up several yards. ‘And here’—he marks another X—‘is where we made up.’ He walks back to me and takes my hand. ‘In the spring when all these lilacs bloom it is magnificent. We’ll come back then.’
On my machine:
‘Hey, Casey. How are you? I just got back into town. Just a few minutes ago. Uh. I didn’t really plan out a message. I was just hoping to talk to you. And see you. Go on that date. I’m at the same place, 867-8021. I hope things are good with you. I, well. Catch you later.’
I play it again. The rumbling and the little laugh like a hiccough in the middle of saying he didn’t plan out the message. I play it once more and hit Erase.
I go in the next week for the cauterization. The doctor and nurse show me a drawing of a cervix on a poster on the wall. It looks like a pink cigarette. The lower end is the opening where a baby would come out. They’re planning to light that part on fire.
You have no nerve endings on your cervix, they explain, so you don’t need to use a local anesthetic. But there is an awful snapping sound, and soon the room is filled with a smell you want to unsmell immediately and can’t. This is their job, I think, smelling burnt cervix.
I meet Muriel at Bartley’s after.
‘It sounded like a bug zapper. And it stank. Like they were burning hair and leather shoes and salmon roe all together.’
Muriel looks down at her burger.