Crazy People: The Crazy for You Stories Read online

  “No,” I said.

  We Metzger women just aren’t talkers.

  I think the difference between Meggy in this story and Meggy in Crazy For You is that the CFY Meggy is seen through Quinn’s eyes. The perception of a character changes depending on who’s looking at her, so Meggy is going to see herself as a Metzger (and miss the iron will she passes to Quinn and Zoë), and Quinn is going to see her as a lovable but exasperating parent. The real Meggy is much more than either of those, and I think the seeds of that are in this story.

  Meeting Harold’s Father

  And then there’s Quinn’s sister Zoë, the afore-mentioned hedonist. She was a fun character to write, but since she’d always been so sure of herself, there wasn’t a lot to say about her. Then in an early draft of the novel, I wrote a paragraph about how she’d met her second husband, Ben, the husband that lasted, after her first marriage to Nick had come unglued. The paragraph didn’t feel right, so I expanded it into a short story, and then used the short story to rewrite the paragraph. Hey, novel-writing is not for people in a hurry. The story is very short, and it’s also the only true romance short story I’ve ever written (generally you need the long form to convince readers it’s True Love Forever), but it did what it was supposed to do: it showed me Zoë and Ben so I could write the few brief lines they had in Crazy For You.

  Zoë was standing in the fountain when she met him.

  She’d hiked her suit skirt to mid-thigh to splash in the green water, kicking waves of it onto the big statue in the center, a marble mess of some woman wearing lot of drapery. Probably Justice or Mercy or the Goddess of Fountains, stuck alone in Columbus, Ohio, just like Zoë. No, not stuck, that wasn’t right. She’d done the right thing by divorcing Nick five years before. If she hadn’t, she’d have ended up really stuck, trapped in Tibbett, Ohio, with a lot of dark-haired children who knew how jumpstart cars and tip cows. So she’d made the right decision and instead ended up with a great career in Columbus, Ohio, a career that was going so well that she had a meeting that afternoon with her boss and her opposite number from a sister company, a great meeting about a new project that was going to mean big things for her career. That was much better than being stuck in a nowhere marriage.

  Zoë kicked the water.

  The water kicked back, and Zoë looked down to see what had caused the splash. A tiny girl was plunking herself down in the foot-deep water.

  “Hey,” Zoë said.

  The little girl turned her head and smiled up at her, her moon face glowing in the sunlight as she sat in the pennies and patted the green water, and Zoë’s biological clock rolled over and betrayed her.

  I want a baby.

  Zoë straightened. No, she didn’t. That was the last thing she wanted.

  The little girl smiled, her skin petal smooth and her mouth puckered like a rosebud.

  I want a baby.

  No, she did not.

  Zoë frowned down at the kid. “You’re not supposed to be in here.” She held out her hand. “Come on, cutie, let’s go find your mom.”

  “You’re not s’posed to be in here,” the little girl chanted back and stuck out her tongue.

  Zoë looked around. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Where’s your mother?” The kid pursed her mouth and splashed water on Zoë’s skirt.

  “Look, kid,” Zoë said. “This suit is silk. Knock it off.”

  “Look, kid,” the little girl said and splashed again.

  “Significantly less cute after speaking,” somebody said, and Zoë and the little girl both looked around the statue in the middle of the fountain.

  A guy sat there, with his feet in the water, his tie loosened, his suit jacket off, and his pants rolled up over his long muscled legs. His fair hair flopped over his forehead, and Zoë stopped and blinked at the warmth in his blue, blue eyes.

  “Cute?” the little girl said.

  “Not so much,” the guy said and stuck out his tongue.

  The little girl giggled at him, sunny and beautiful again, and biology made a comeback. This was why Nature made kids darling, so women who were perfectly happy with their lives and their careers would suddenly throw everything over for weight gain and stretch marks and diapers and car pools and college tuition. The little girl transferred her smile to Zoë, and Zoë smiled back and looked over to see the guy starting to smile, too. Like a family, she thought. If I’d stayed married, this could be—

  No, it couldn’t. For one thing, she wouldn’t have had blond children, not with Nick. For another thing, she’d still be stuck in Tibbett.

  “Is she yours?” Zoë said to the guy, and he shook his head, just as a voice from behind them shrieked, “Clarissa!”

  The little girl scowled as a woman in a watermelon print shift came running to the edge of the fountain.

  “You get right out of there,” the woman scolded, her perfectly-plucked brows meeting in the middle of her slightly porcine face. She transferred her scold to Zoë: “What were you thinking, putting her in here?”

  “She crawled in on her own,” Zoë said. “We were talking her out.”

  “We?” The woman looked past Zoë to the tow-headed guy, now making faces at Clarissa. She sucked in her breath. “Clarissa, you are not allowed to talk to strange men. You come out of that water immediately.”

  Clarissa ignored her to splash Zoë again.

  “Okay, that’s it, kid.” Zoë scooped her up, holding Clarissa’s dripping little body away from her as she waded over to the edge. “Here,” she said, transferring the sodden weight to Clarissa’s mother, feeling nothing but satisfaction as the watermelons got wet.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” Clarissa’s mother scolded, ignoring Zoë completely, and Clarissa stuck out her tongue at Zoë one final time and then began to kick and scream as her mother carried her away.

  See, that was why she didn’t want a baby. What if she had one like Clarissa?

  She watched the watermelons recede into the distance along with Clarissa’s screams. Of course, it would have been different if she’d been Clarissa’s mother. For one thing she wouldn’t have named her Clarissa. Bianca, that was a good name for a little girl. The basic Clarissa had probably been just fine, before the name and the awful mothering—

  I want a baby.

  This wasn’t the first time her mind and her body had parted company. There had been that day when she’d been jogging up a hill, and her mind had been chanting keep running keep running keep running keep running, and then she’d noticed that her body was walking. At some point, if your mind refused to pay attention to your body, your body just overruled your mind. Think whatever you want, it said. I’m going over here.

  This was clearly one of those times.

  She sat down on the edge of the fountain to think.

  “You all right?” the guy across the way said. He wasn’t wearing a suit coat, but otherwise he was pretty much one of the standard business males who populated Zoë’s life. His eyes dropped to her skirt, hiked up to mid-hip. “You have good legs.”

  “Thank you.” Zoë tugged her skirt down. “My husband Nick thinks so, too.”

  “That wasn’t a pass,” he said, patiently. “It was a comment. Like, ‘nice day, isn’t it?’”

  “Oh.” Zoë peered at him and realized he looked a little melancholy. “Are you all right?”

  “Me? Of course, I’m all right. I’ve got a boring meeting in half an hour, but otherwise I’m good.” She must have looked skeptical because he added, “I’m not thinking of ending it all in this fountain, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “It’s possible. You can drown in two inches of water.”

  “How?” The man shook his head. “You must be somebody’s mother. I should have known from the ruthless way you handed that kid over. Now tell me to put the stick down before I poke my eye out.”

  Zoë glared at him. “I think somebody needs a nap.”

  He laughed suddenly, a real full laugh, and