The Dating Game. Sandra Field

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      * * *

      On Saturday Julie turned down a date with the gym teacher, was extremely short with Wayne when he phoned, and went out for dinner with Morse MacLeod, one of the anaesthetists on staff. His wife had left him five months ago, a situation which could only fill Julie with sympathy. But Morse was so immersed in misery that he had no interest in hearing her own rather similar story; all he wanted was large doses of commiseration along with complete agreement that his wife’s behavior had been unfair, inhuman and castrating. By the time he took her home Julie’s store of sympathy was long gone. She was a dinner-date, not a therapist, she thought, closing the door behind Morse with a sigh of relief. But at least he hadn’t jumped on her.

      School ended. Danny and Scott added a new room to the tree house and Julie had to increase the hours of her sitter. The surgeon who had invited her to go sailing on his yacht at Mahone Bay, an expedition she had looked forward to, turned out to be married; his protestations about his open marriage and about her old-fashioned values did not impress her.

      Her next date was with a male nurse from Oncology, a single parent like herself. His idea of a night out was to take her home to meet his three young children, involve her in preparing supper and getting them to bed, and, once they were asleep, regale her with pitiful stories of how badly they needed a mother. Then as Julie sat on the couch innocently drinking lukewarm coffee he suddenly threw himself on her to demonstrate how badly he needed a wife. Julie fled.

      Driving home, her blouse pulled out of her waistband, her lipstick smeared, she made herself a promise. She was on night duty the following Saturday. But if that film she’d yet to see was still playing the week after that, she was going to see it all by herself. No more dates. No more men who saw her as a potential mother or an instant mistress. One bed partner, made to order, she thought vengefully. Just add water and stir. Did men honestly think women were flattered to be mauled on the very first date?

      A traffic light turned red and she pulled to a halt. Not one of the men she had dated since she had moved to Halifax had been at all interested in her as a person, she realized with painful truth. They never got beyond her face and her body. Was the fault hers? Was she giving off the wrong signals? Picking the wrong men? Or was she, as the surgeon had implied, simply hopelessly old-fashioned?

      The light turned green. She shifted gears, suddenly aching to be in her own house, Danny asleep upstairs, Einstein curled up on the chesterfield. She knew who she was there. Liked who she was. And if she was retreating from reality, so be it. She was thoroughly disenchanted with the dating game.

      * * *

      The Saturday after the rat episode Teal had dinner with Janine. He had met her at a cocktail party at the law school, and had then made the mistake of inviting her to the annual dinner and dance given by his firm of solicitors. It was considered bad form to go to the dinner without a partner, and he had rather liked her. Unfortunately she had fallen head over heels in love with him.

      He was not the slightest bit in love with her, had never made a move to take her to bed, and once he had realized how she felt had actively discouraged her. All to no avail. Bad enough that she was phoning him at home with distressing frequency. She had now taken to bothering him at work. So tonight he was going to end it, once and for all. It was the kindest thing to do.

      Great way to spend a Saturday night, he thought, knotting his tie in the mirror. But she was young. She’d get over it. She’d come to realize, as everyone did sooner or later, that love wasn’t always what it cracked up to be.

      Would he ever forget—or forgive himself—that on the very day Elizabeth had died they’d had an argument? Something to do with Scott, something silly and trivial. But the hasty words he’d thrown at her could never be retracted.

      Irritably he shrugged into his summerweight jacket. He should pin a button to his lapel: ‘Not Available’. ‘Once Burned, Twice Shy’. Would that discourage all these women who seemed to think he was fair game?

      This evening Janine had offered to cook dinner for him. He kept the conversation firmly on impersonal matters throughout the meal, told her as gently as he could that he didn’t want to hear from her again, and patiently dealt with her tears and arguments. He was home by ten. Thoroughly out of sorts, he paid the sitter and poured himself a glass of brandy.

      Swishing it around the glass, absently watching the seventh inning of a baseball game on television, he found himself remembering Julie Ferris. Her fear of rats had reduced her to tears. But she had hated crying in front of him, and would be, he was almost sure, totally averse to using tears as a weapon. Unlike Janine. But then, unlike Janine, Julie Ferris wasn’t in love with him. She didn’t even like him.

      He hadn’t been strictly truthful when he had said he didn’t like her. He did like her honesty.

      His hands clenched around the glass as he remembered other things: the sunlight glinting in the shining weight of her hair; the way she had trembled at the sight of the rat; her incredibly long legs and the fullness of her breasts under the mud-stained T-shirt that said ‘Handel with Care’.

      His body stirred to life. With an exclamation of disgust he changed the channel to a rerun of Platoon and immersed himself in its claustrophobic tale of war and death.

      He was going to stay away from Julie Ferris.

      And for two weeks he did just that. But he wasn’t always as successful at keeping her out of his thoughts. At a barbecue in Mike’s back yard a young woman called Carole attached herself to him, agreeing with everything he said, laughing sycophantically at all his jokes; Julie’s level gaze and caustic tongue were never far from Teal’s mind. Then Marylee and Bruce, two of his oldest and most cherished friends, invited him to spend the day at their summer cottage on the Northumberland Strait.

      ‘Can I ask Danny?’ Scott said immediately. ‘We could go swimming and play tennis, hey, Dad?’

      ‘No,’ Teal said, the reply out of his mouth before he even had time to think about it.

      ‘Why not?’ Scott wailed.

      Teal didn’t know why. Because he didn’t want to explain to Bruce and Marylee who Danny was? Because he didn’t want to phone Julie and tell her about the outing? Because he didn’t want to feel that he should ask her as well?

      Knowing he was prevaricating and not liking himself very much for doing it, Teal said, ‘We can’t go everywhere with Danny, son. And his mother might not like us driving all that distance and being late home. Maybe another time.’

      Scott stuck his lower lip out and ran up the stairs, slamming the door to his room. Teal raked his fingers through his hair. He should discipline Scott for his behavior. But somehow he didn’t have the heart to do so.

      Logically, Julie Ferris was exactly the woman he should be taking with him to the cottage. She wasn’t interested in him. She wouldn’t be phoning him all the time or trying to give him presents he didn’t want. She wouldn’t be doing her best to entice him into her bed.

      Restlessly he prowled around the room, picking up the scattered pages of the newspaper and a dirty coffee-mug. So why wasn’t he phoning her and suggesting that she and Danny accompany them? It would be a foursome. Quite safe.

      Like a family, he thought, standing stock-still on the carpet. A husband and a wife and their two children.

      No wonder he wasn’t picking up the telephone—the picture he had conjured up hit much СКАЧАТЬ