Nits, cheese, Valentine’s card.
11 Reason Not the Need
IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN how my relationship with Jack began. I really wasn’t looking for anyone. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t unhappy either; I was in the gray survival zone where I imagine most of us live most of the time. When a badly injured patient gets admitted to Casualty, the hospital staff do what they call triage. Triage is the assignment of degrees of urgency to decide the order of treatment of wounds. I first heard the term one night when I was watching ER on Channel 4—it was that riveting period when we were all wondering how things would work out between Hathaway and Doug — and I thought how much triage sounded like my life. Daily existence was a constant assessment of who needed my attention most: the children, the office or my husband. You’ll notice I leave myself out of that list and that’s not because I’m a good and selfless person. Far from it. Selfishness just wasn’t an option: no time. Most weekends, on the drive home from the supermarket, I would look through the steamed-up windows of a café and see a couple, fingertips touching over cappuccino, or a lone man reading a newspaper, and I would long to go in there and order a drink and just sit and sit. But it was impossible. When I wasn’t at work, I had to be a mother; when I wasn’t being a mother, I owed it to work to be at work. Time off for myself felt like stealing. The fact that no man I knew ever felt that way didn’t help. This was just another area in which we were unequaclass="underline" mothers got the lioness’s share of the guilt. So the last thing, the very last thing I needed was someone else to love — and then the e-mails started.
In the weeks that followed our first dinner in New York, Jack e-mailed me, first daily and then hourly. Sometimes we would reply to each other within seconds and it felt like one of those rallies in a tennis match where a great return spurs the other player to an inspired lob. I was cool at first, but he was so playful and persistent that natural competitiveness took over and I was soon running to the back of the court to retrieve the ball and return it with some topspin. So, no, I didn’t need him, but he created a Jack-shaped need in me, a need that only he could satisfy. Does the woman in the desert know how thirsty she is till they press the bottle to her lips? I started to look forward to the name Abelhammer dropping into my Inbox more than I have looked forward to anything in my life.
To: Kate Reddy, EMF
From: Jack Abelhammer
Nasdaq hit like Pearl Harbor. heavy casualties. Client seeks considered professional opinion of respected British fund manager: should I shoot myself now or wait till after lunch?
Jack
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
Rest assured respected fund manager has you constantly in mind. Awaiting interest-rate pronouncement from Al Mighty Greenspan.
Professional opinion: long-term recovery inevitable. Don’t shoot.
Unprofessional opinion: hide under desk till shelling stops, go out and see if any stock left standing. Eat turkey club sandwich. Then shoot.
Katharine xxxxx
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Did you know Alan Greenspan’s wife said he was so oblique that when he asked her to marry him she didn’t even notice? That guy’s harder to read than Thomas Pynchon.
Hey, shouldn’t you be in bed? Middle of the night there, right?
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
I like the night. More time in it than the day. Why waste it in bed?
K xxxx
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Bed not invariably a waste of time. Do you know that speech where the guy tells his lover he wishes that seven years were rolled into one night? Must be Shakespeare, right?
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
Seven years in one night sounds just about enough hours to pay off my sleep debt. Not Shakespeare. Marlowe, I think. That’s the unfair thing about Shakespeare, though — everything beautiful belongs to him whether he wrote it or not. He’s the Bill Gates of emotional software.
How come you read Marlowe anyway? Did the Wall St J predict a resurgence in Renaissance playwrights?
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Unfair, milady, unfair. Don’t judge a man by his portfolio. Was once a poor struggling English major but had to find a way of financing my first-editions habit. Some men buy boats, I buy a first edition of Ulysses. What’s your excuse?
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
Was once a poor struggling English minor. Poverty, when it’s not being boring, is really quite scary. I didn’t want to be scared all my life. In Britain, there are plenty of people who will tell you money doesn’t matter; these are the people we call the middle classes.
Owning first editions such a boy’s own thing. Respectfully suggest, sir, you should spend your money on something really important, like SHOES.
K xxxxxxxxxxx
To: Kate Reddy
From: Jack Abelhammer
Do you realize you have now sent me exactly 147 kisses and I have not sent you a single one?
To: Jack Abelhammer
From: Kate Reddy
It had crossed my mind.
To: Kate ReddyFrom: Jack Abelhammer
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