braunhead
book
chapter 2

START YOUR ENGINES — SEARCH ENGINES THAT IS

Babyblues4you

About Me:

My personality is best described as: artistic, earthy, friendly/kind, low maintenance, sensitive/nurturing/loving, outgoing, unconventional/free-spirited. And, I love dogs.

Ellen stared at the keys on the computer. The tiny space between her toes began to sweat and a knot in her chest crawled its way up to the back of her throat, the same sweat and knot that she always felt right before she had to decide which foot to put first on a moving escalator. Going down was the worst and this felt like going down.

Dena, her daughter, sat beside her with her tapered fingers working the keyboard. Click tap click tap tap. Ellen stared at Dena’s nimble fingers with awe. Typing, she thought, where did she learn to type like that? And with all ten fingers going and no peeking either.

“Mom , everyone does it. We’re signing you up today!”

“But I…”

“No buts, it’s easy. Watch, I’ll show you.”

Ellen's mind fixed on Dena’s fingers and pictured her daughter playing the flute as she had in grade school. She smiled as she remembered their mother/daughter tussles. Dena had been a tomboy and preferred torn jeans, paddock boots and ponytails. Ellen had wanted her to wear pretty dresses and show off her smooth dirty-blond hair that hung down her back in soft waves. Ellen’s hair, in contrast was a coppery red with thick unruly curls, hair that only grew out, not down, the longer it got. Hair that had spent long nights laboriously rolled onto soup cans or taped with in sections with masking tape, glued to the bottom of her chin in a desperate attempt to keep it smooth and straight.

Ellen thought Dena should always wear her hair down. In fact, once she even insisted. Instead, Dena whacked the hair off all of her Barbie Dolls – unknowingly forecasting the grunge look – and tied them to Breyer horses in revenge. Today her hair was tied back in a brown scrunchie.

“Mom, hello, hello. Are you paying attention?”

“You don’t have to yell,” Ellen said, “I am sitting right next to you. You know I’m slow on these computer things.” Ellen had a look of I am going to bolt out that door and keep on running. Dena was just as strong-willed now, Ellen realized, as her daughter gave her another instruction on the computer dating project. She sighed and resigned herself to sit quietly as her daughter pulled up the site, tapped away at the keys and scrolled through the categories expertly. “Here, it says, ‘What Are You Looking For?’”

Ellen’s dull, vapid stare was returned by her daughter’s sharp, don’t mess with me glare.

Mother and daughter sat glaring at each other, Ellen had to turn away first. Dena’s eyes seemed to flash a nasty and impatient message. Ellen was always the one who backed down first. Then, Dena softened. She leaned in and put a hand on Ellen’s. “Come on Mom,” Dena said, “it says Describe Your Perfect First Date. This is supposed to be fun not root canal.”

Perfect First Date? Looking For? Ellen’s heart sank. She hadn’t been with a man other than her husband in over thirty years. How could she possibly describe in two hundred words what she wanted, when all she prayed for these days was for mental stability and a new reason to live?

“I’m not like you,” Ellen said. “I’m not good on the computer. I’d rather talk to someone on the phone or on a walk or anywhere. In the 8th grade I swore I would never learn to type — no sir re — I was not secretary material. I was the worst one in typing class, on purpose. And look at me now.”

Since Ellen’s knowledge of the computer was self-taught, her talents on the Internet were minimal at best. Several years earlier, at the beginning of the end of her marriage, she had struggled, waking up at 4:30 each morning to read the phone records she had managed to find online. How odd it was, she thought, that you could find out something so private and concrete about a person’s life in the seemingly unreal, yet vast world of cyberspace.

She had sat in front of the computer for hours, pouring over those records, watching patterns develop over a period of months. He’d been in the car, on the cell phone, out of the car, God knows where, back in the car, back on the cell phone. Then the other calls, early in the morning, calls from the house – when? While she was in the shower? On the toilet? Driving to buy him breakfast?

Her mind drifted further. Her divorce was now a month old and she recalled how in the first days she had walked in a trance, her arms and legs moving as body parts do, but no longer attached to her body. Somehow those unattached body parts had managed to drive the car, open the refrigerator, flush the toilet, feed the dog, and, as she fell asleep at night, wipe dry her tears.

Ellen’s mind snapped back to the moment. “Dena, this is hopeless. I have no clue.”

“C’mon, Mom, you’re fabulous – everyone loves you! Besides, it’s a new world. Dating online is the way for people to meet. Now focus and stick with me,” she said.

Ellen gazed at Dena with gratitude for her compliment. She made a mental note to thank her daughter for reminding her of the woman she was – before. Hadn’t she been Ellen the artist, Ellen the interior designer, Ellen, the mature, well-dressed Hamptonite who wintered in Florida… Ellen, the Mrs. of a marriage, enviable only to those who looked on as outside observers?

“Mom, pay attention.”

“OK! OK, let’s see, I’m looking for A Friend, A Date, An Activity Partner. How about I start with, I love dogs?”
“You’ve always said there’s nothing like the truth. And what about a name? You have to have a cyber-name. Come on, something clever, think, this is fun, you’re sharper than anyone I know.”

“Clever? I feel as sharp as a matzah ball. Okay, how about Babyblues4you? That’s kind of cute, catchy.

“That’s what I mean, Mom, it’s perfect. It’s so you.”

Ellen pulled her chair closer and leaned against her daughter’s smooth arm and sighed as she inhaled her slightly sweet but sharp scent – reminiscent of freshly peeled grapefruit.

Dena jumped up. “Turn around, Mom,” she commanded, whipping out her cell phone and snapping a picture of Ellen. In a deft move, Dena posted it on the site. A matter of moments later, there was Ellen for the entirety of cyberspace to see, looking over her shoulder in a little white tee shirt, hair falling over one eye, with an unintentional come-and-get-me look.

Ellen groaned. “Oy, Dena, there’s a roll of paper towels in the background, how embarrassing. This is too painful. How do I know what I want? All I want is someone to work my remote, change the light bulbs, start my barbeque and take out the garbage.”

Her daughter frowned at her. “Well, Mom, you had that.”

Dena was right. They shared a grim moment of silence in which Ellen realized she was just overwrought. A low-tech type, this foray into today’s world of online dating was made all the more remarkable by the fact that she applauded herself every time she actually managed to change a light bulb. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, had become her motto since she’d started her solo journey.

She was free. Who gave a flying crap about light bulbs? She was free.

“You know, Dena said, I love Dad.” Her comment seemed to come out of nowhere and poof, at least one of the pink elephants in the room, was gone.

“Of course you do.” Ellen said. “I’m the one with the pink slip. Once a daughter always a daughter.” Ellen leaned over with both arms and gave her a big squeeze.

It had been unearthly quiet in the weeks after David left. Dena’s visit and the three days of shopping on Newtown Lane in East Hampton had given Ellen the swift kick in the butt she had needed.

“I have to go home, you know,” Dena blurted. She never minced words. Dena had a brand new husband and a brand new life in Chicago, complete with in-laws and responsibilities.

“I know.” Ellen said. “Well, let’s look on the bright side, now I have four new outfits and can watch the cooking channel. Maybe you can set the remote for me so all I have to do is press the on /off button?”

Cooking, for who? Watching TV, with who? A new thought dawned on Ellen. Be careful what you wish for, it might be a long time before you get IT again.

The house Ellen had moved into was sweet and tiny, at least by Ellen’s standards. It had a teeny weeny kitchen that was compact but cheerful, with painted cabinets and bright cornflower blue Formica countertops. Ellen had used all her decorating talents to arrange her furniture in the living and dining room area, hang paintings, and scatter her beloved accessories on tabletops in pleasing groupings. The fireplace mantle was narrow, but Ellen had placed two ceramic pitchers filled with Philodendron that spilled out and trailed down to the floor, along with candles and pewter candlesticks. There were three little bedrooms upstairs, one set with a queen and the other two, with full size beds. Ellen thought it was the perfect house for one.

After Ellen moved into her new little rental, she’d had the cable company prepare the bedroom but hadn’t put in a TV. That was her first act of defiance – no TV in the mistress’s bedroom. In anticipation of Dena’s arrival, she raced to PC Richards to replace the TV in the living room that had been broken for a month, and on impulse, bought another for the bedroom.

One minor problem: There were countless electrical switches, each of them meant to attach to various electronics, but because each switch was attached to more than just one, Ellen couldn’t figure out which one was attached to which. The TV was somehow connected to the lights; the clock on the TV only worked when the TV was on and she only used the TV for the clock. Somewhere along the way, the little alarm clock had started telling the wrong time and she’d neglected to reset it.

So much for watching TV in the bedroom, now that Dena had gone.

Her habit of rising in the dark hours of the morning required no alarm, however. She and Divina stumbled down the stairs, turned on some lights, fixed the coffee and Ellen would smoke the first of the day’s many cigarettes. When she’d glance at the clock it read 5 a.m., rain or shine. Ellen was a different type of nine-to-fiver, asleep at nine and up at five.

Ellen’s morning was now only slightly different from her “before life.” After she took Divina out, she ran through her computer routine rather than running to the Golden Pear for the Un Husband’s breakfast. The Golden Pear was a local coffee shop with huge cinnamon sticky buns and chunky health muffins that Ellen understood were 700 calories of good things. Too bad they didn’t deliver. Ellen remained true even when Starbucks rolled into town.

Now, instead, she checked her daily horoscope on a few favorite sites, ones that gave her watchwords for the day, warning of pitfalls, offering advice, encouragement, and occasionally uncanny comments about how her life was – or was not – going.

Then she’d log onto JDate. Ellen was getting used to the keyboard and clicked on the category: Who’s viewed you?

“Wow, Melbourne, Australia. Talk about geographically undesirable, think about it Divina, Melbourne, maybe we can find a guy with an Australian Shepard just for you?”

Divina had been trained by Ellen’s friend Harry. His motto: A valued companion and a welcome guest. Divina was both, Divina was everything. When Ellen talked to her, she would put a paw on Ellen’s leg. If Ellen sat at the computer too long, she would paw her until she forced Ellen to look into her white blue Aussie eyes and break her concentration.

Location was a huge topic. Though Ellen, by choice, lived in one of the most desirable places on earth, she soon found out that it made her geographically undesirable to the most desirable. While the wealthiest helicoptered in and out of the area, access to everyone else was limited to the one-lane highway that eventually wound its way through the small towns.

One of the very first guys she’d found on the site was a hunk from the South Shore. “Hell, I live on the South Shore,” Ellen mused. It was the first week of her online experience, and she fell hard. She fell for the look – he was tall and fit, with salt and pepper hair and a boyish smile, and she fell for the bio – he yearned for cozy nights curled up with someone special. She just fell for all of it and, mustering all the guts she could, she started to pursue him.

She was determined.

Her first e-mail was a simple one-liner: Interested? After no response, she stepped up her advances: Hi, we share a love of the beach, care to walk on mine? Again, nothing. What to do? She sent a few more Hellos. She waited and watched.

Finally, after a few weeks a blinking icon appeared in a corner of her computer screen: Communication Alert. There it was, his response. Body Alert, she warned herself.

She read his words with dismay. Although he found her attractive, appealing and cute, she lived too far away. Red Flag Alert, Ellen told herself: anyone who calls a fifty-something woman “cute” never follows through.

But, too far?

Ellen thought about the fact that she’d been going to the same post office for years and hadn’t met the man of her dreams yet – did she really think she would? It was a fantasy. So what did Mr. South Shore think? That he would get online and find the woman of his dreams, undiscovered until now, in his own fucking town? Maybe someone’s wife, who just happened to live one block over, was more like it.

E-mails from other places on the globe started to trickle in. Moshe wrote, You burn my screen as u so this hot. I hed to rite you. He was from Israel and though the time difference was compatible with her sleep patterns, she was no sucker. She swore she would not get involved with someone’s need for immigration.

RULE NUMBER 2: Think global. Put in your zip code but don’t be afraid to widen your search.