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Playing Rings Around Love
Men liked to date Mercedes. They would say, "Now I can tell everyone I have a Mercedes," and they never seemed
to understand that there were big differences between saying it and making it so, because, truth be told, there
were men Mercedes wanted to be possessed by-men who sent her flowers unexpectedly, men who always turned the car
radio up for romantic Top 40 songs they said were for her, men who thought she was witty and smart and pretty.
One by one, though, they left her to date and marry other women. Their voices on the phone or across a restaurant
table or from the seat in the car next to her, these men's voices were, at the moments they told her, always the same,
the words very nearly identical: "Mercedes, I really care for you. You're funny and bright and I'm attracted to you,
but I need to see other people." And she always told them, "Okay," because she kept discovering she couldn't hide
some mysterious truth from them, a truth they saw that she was blind to, a truth about herself she didn't even know.
She began to wonder if something was wrong with her. She stared at herself in the mirror, her long dark hair
and pale face showing maybe too much of who she was, so she covered it with Moisture Whip Beige by Mabelline,
inked around her eyes and cut her hair, tried to change who she was this way. She got better and better at
predicting when it was coming, when the men-the carpenter, the tree man, the truck driver, even the man who
yanked raccoons from chimneys and coaxed squirrels from walls for a living-were going to give her the speech.
But even then they left her wordless because as much as she wanted to, she couldn't bring herself to ask,
"If I'm so funny and bright and attractive, what am I missing?"
Staring into her mirror another day it occurred to her that she wasn't missing anything. She was, in fact,
gifted with something-powers, maybe. Special matchmaking powers, that had to be it. "After men start dating me,
" she said to her reflection, watching her mouth form the words, "they find their ideal women, their Venuses,
their Aphrodites. I'm some sort of a lucky charm is what I am. A fairy godmother, maybe."
At first she didn't know what to do with this title she had given herself, Fairy Godmother of Single Men, but
it did seem as though it embodied responsibility. It seemed more and more she ought to do something about it,
so she made a list of the men she'd dated who married. She took the list with her to a local jewelry store
and had fitted for four of her fingers four cubic zirconia rings. She charged them all on her Citibank Visa
(in case they were lost or stolen, the magic maybe not protective against that) and she wore them out
of the store, two to a hand, her left ring finger conspicuously naked.
People noticed the rings, big and flashy on her small hands, and at first she told the story of them but being
the Fairy Godmother of Single Men seemed only to encourage the wrong men to ask her out, and she added two more
cubic zirconias to her right hand before she got better at spotting the sorts of men she thought she might bring
magic to. In this way it was as if the rings gave her better insight into these men, causing her to be more cautious
in accepting dates, to stop dating them even before they could give her the speech. The rings, maybe, were bringing
her magic, for once.
Of course the day came when she met a man she knew right away was her ideal man. He was an insurance adjuster
who specialized in car accidents and of course he liked her name when he heard it but it was because he already
owned a Mercedes-midnight blue. He asked her out and she said yes, but later, getting ready for her date,
imagining herself plush in the suede leather seats of his car, she stood before her bathroom mirror scrubbing
makeup off her face for the third time. She had no idea how she should look for this man.
Finally she called to cancel the date, but he needed to know why. Mercedes told him, "You're witty and funny
and I'm attracted to you, no doubt about that, but I don't want to lose you if we go out and I start to like you
even more."
"I don't get it," he said, so she explained for the first time in a long time about the rings, about how he was sure
to meet the right one-someone even better than he thought she was-if they dated. "I'm blessed with this cursed gift,
" she said. "It's just the way it is."
He didn't say anything for a bit and she was wondering if she should just spare herself by hanging up when he asked,
"How many fingers are waiting for rings?"
She nearly forgot. She looked at her hands. "Two," she said.
"Call me after those rings are on," he said, and she smiled because it wouldn't have to be very long before then,
what with the bartender and carpet layer who asked her out last week, and she knew nobody wore rings on their thumbs
anymore.
Ellen Behrens' life has followed a tourist route, taking her through several states and careers,
including stints in amusement parks and apartment communities which she discovered were pretty much
the same thing. With her husband, Robert Craig, she's rafted the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon,
climbed mountains, and plans to do a lot more of the same. Her first novel, None but the Dead and Dying,
was published in 1996 by Baskerville Publishers.
Email: Ellen Behrens
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