A Happy Catastrophe

She stopped talking then because Fritzie had gotten mad.

“He should know about me! Why didn’t you tell him? He might want to know me! Did you ever think of that?”

No. Actually, Tessa hadn’t ever thought of that. But when Helaine said she wouldn’t keep Fritzie, the idea of sending her to her father seemed like a plausible plan. Why not? He’d been a nice guy. She’d been friends—or acquaintances, really—with his sister. Elizabeth. They were good people. Maybe he would like to know his kid. Just for a while. Not forever or anything.

She just wants a bit of time off. That’s all she’s asking for. One little tiny academic year away from responsibility. Richard wants her to come, but the place he has is small, he says. Too cramped. It’s no place for a child. Tessa knows that what he means is that he isn’t interested in being a father figure to Fritzie. And she doesn’t blame him. She can’t imagine him becoming a proper stepfather, and, even worse, she can’t imagine herself worrying about Fritzie in some Italian pensione.

Still, it’s a crazy plan. One of her craziest. She’d been so sure Helaine would want to keep Fritzie that she’d gone ahead and taken a sabbatical at work and arranged for one of her grad students to live in their flat.

And then . . . no. Just no.

Fritzie is standing up, tracing the ring from the water glass around and around on the table, sliding packets of Truvia into the wetness and soaking them.

“So what are we going to do now?” she says, her voice pitched perfectly into a whine that shreds Tessa’s nerve endings. “Are we going back to that place to see if the matchmaker is there yet?”

“No, I don’t think so.” They’d come from a little shop, a florist. Where his girlfriend worked apparently. Elizabeth had told her that. Elizabeth, whom she’d reached—amazingly enough—from her mum’s house after the row. She’d made it sound all casual . . . Is he still in Brooklyn? Still doing art? She didn’t mention the kid.

And as soon as she’d gotten off the call, she’d booked the plane tickets to New York. She had to pay the highest possible fare for such late notice, of course. But it was worth it, to sweep out of Helaine’s house with no further explanation. And now here they were, on their way to finding him. She had his cell phone number, but she should do it in person. And maybe it would be best, she’d decided, to see the matchmaker girlfriend first. Pave the way, you know.

But then the matchmaker hadn’t been in. It was too early, the person there said. And now Tessa is feeling too dispirited to go back. She needs to take some time and think things through—not simply careen from one possible solution to another. Take a few deep breaths, try to get a grip.

“What is a matchmaker, anyway?” Fritzie asks.

“She’s somebody who helps people who want to fall in love.”

The waitress, gliding by with the check, smiles. “Oh! Wait! Are you going to see the matchmaker? You don’t mean Marnie, by any chance?”

Tessa nods.

“She is totally amazing,” the waitress says. She has eyes that look like Bing cherries, so dark and shiny, and a charmingly messy bun on the top of her head. “Omigod. You’ll totally love her. She got me together with Barney here. One day she came in here to eat breakfast with a friend, and I was working, and Barney was just this guy passing by in the street, and all of a sudden she jumped up and ran outside and chased him down. It was insane! Brought him back here, too. She said she saw sparkles that meant we were supposed to be together. And now here we are. When she’s on her game, there’s nothing she can’t do.” She looks over at the cook. “Isn’t that right, honey? We owe her big-time.”

Fritzie is looking from the waitress to the cook and back to Tessa. Her eyes are wide. The cook, handsome with a face that looks so perfectly stubbled it’s as though he might have painted on his whiskers, is snapping his towel and grinning self-consciously.

The waitress says, “So tell me, are you looking to get matched up with somebody? Because Marnie is the absolute best. I literally don’t know how she does it, but she’s super good.”

“No, no,” says Tessa, flustered now, like she’s been caught hoping for love. “It’s not that. I’m not looking to meet anybody.”

“She’s not looking to meet anybody, because she’s already got a Richard,” says Fritzie. And for once, she says his name in a nice way. She puts one hand on her hip, thrusting out the other hip like an adult would do. “My mum’s in love with Richard, you see, but he’s moved to Italy for the year and she wants to go and be with him, but the trouble is, he doesn’t have room for a kid. So we’re not really sure what we’re going to do with me. We have a lot to figure out.”

Tessa feels a pulse of shock.

“Wow,” says the waitress. She blinks in surprise. “Well, good luck with everything. I’m sure Marnie will help if she can.” She looks at Tessa and smiles.

Tessa busies herself with getting cash out of her purse. Bills are stuffed every which way into her bag, a function of traveling and buying airport snacks. She grabs a wad of cash and gives it over, and the waitress takes it and moves away. Tessa feels a buzzing in her ears.

“Wait,” says Fritzie. “We came all this way to see a matchmaker?”

It’s time, she knows. Time to tell Fritzie the real reason they’ve come to Brooklyn.

But she just can’t seem to bring herself to do it. Not yet. She doesn’t want to blow it. Instead, she says, “It’s a surprise. You’ll just have to wait and see. No more questions.”

CHAPTER FIVE

PATRICK

Two days later, Patrick is out walking Bedford—the third walk of the day, if you please—and he is dedicating this walk to wishing he could be a different sort of man. The kind of man who could simply go into his perfectly nice studio and start creating something that could pass for art.

Also the kind of man who didn’t spend twenty-three hours of the day wishing that the properties of latex were more reliable.

And . . . the kind of man who could bring himself to smile during conversations with his girlfriend about life-changing events like pregnancy and childbirth and fatherhood and how they might turn his life around into something unexpectedly marvelous.

It’s one of those leaden, oppressive August days when the air smells like exhaust fumes and is so thick and heavy it’s like something you’re wearing rather than breathing. The Weather Channel is predicting thunderstorms tonight, and Patrick thinks they can’t come soon enough for him. Across the street from the house, the morning regulars are at Paco’s bodega, grizzled older guys lounging against the building, mopping their foreheads and drinking bottled water and soda. They salute him, holding up their plastic bottles—“Howya doin’, Patrick?”—and Patrick salutes them right back, waving Bedford’s leash at them.

He clomps along, stopping as Bedford lifts his leg at all the usual spots. He takes time out from thinking about condom breakage to ponder the usual question he has during dog walks, which is how any one physical beast could possibly hold so much liquid.

He remarked on that once, and Marnie said, “Oh, he’s not really letting much out. Basically he’s just leaving text messages for the other dogs,” as if this was something everybody knew but Patrick.