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that Irma values tidiness and discipline, but the loose curls bobbing above the nape of her neck imply that fun will be allowed. The gathered hair is too informally hung to be termed a bun. You see a little fluff and dangle. Something to shake loose. The carefully combed part speaks of a tight ship, a neat sock drawer and folded underwear, but the curls are there to be let down when the work is done. I am also thrilled with the wash of gray above her left brow. It courses backward in easy waves, and it speaks to me of experience. Whither your sulking supermodels in the face of this bright, strong, touch-of-gray woman! She holds her head erect on a graceful neck, she is wearing nicely turned button earrings, and she has a dimple just below one strong cheekbone.
    But above all, I am taken by those eyes. Irma Harding is my Mona Lisa. You will hear Mona Lisa described as enigmatic. Irma looks more energetic than enigmatic. I look at Mona Lisa and I think, there’s a girl who would run up your credit card and pout. I look at Irma, and I think, there’s a woman who keeps her checkbook balanced. I think, there’s a woman who would be pleased to ride in a truck. Shoot, she could drive the truck, and I bet she can double-clutch like a full-on gear jammer. You look at Irma’s eyes and you think, there’s a woman who wouldn’t mind a little wind in her hair, a little muss. I imagine Irma riding beside me in the truck, I’d look over there and that part would be holding but those curls would be blown, and she’d be grinning. If those boys at International had kept Irma on board to sell trucks instead of refrigerators, they’d still be in the thick of things. Frankly, I’m not sure she would have put up with their guff. I look at the picture again, reconsider the lines of her jaw and the steadiness of that gaze, and I get the feeling that if a guy messed around with Irma, he’d wind up doing long stretches listening to Otis Redding albums in the dark.
    Back in the real world, I am long past conjuring a woman who would even have me, never mind suit me. I simply have no idea who she might be. I went on my first date at sixteen. Lisa Kettering. I kissed her in the moonlight shadow of a pine tree, and she cut me loose inside of two weeks. Now, at thirty-eight, I have a relationship track record thatcan be summarized in a single overwhelming understatement: the art of going steady eludes me . And after two decades of having the mirror to myself, I have cultivated an accumulation of tics and idiosyncracies bound to unhinge the most long-suffering angel. Lately I’ve been in monk mode. No dates for nearly a year. When I met my last girlfriend, I fell headlong. Without sense or reservation. She drove a beautifully beat-up blue pickup, rolled her own cigarettes, and painted her motorcycle John Deere green. You should have seen her in a pair of work boots, backhanding the sweat from her brow. I goobered along behind her like a ridiculous balding teenager. But then came an all-too-familiar time when our conversations went dead between the lines and I got the old gut-sink. For a while I lived in hope—an eggshell kind of hope—and then one day I heard a country music song with a first line that went, “ I won’t make you tell me / what I’ve come to understand…” and I just thought, a-yep .
    We plunge into love with a naïveté that ignores all prior humiliations. Thank goodness, I guess. Because we never learn, we reach for love again and again.

C HAPTER 2
JANUARY
    T HE YEAR BEGINS barren and brown. There should be snow, but the land lies stripped in subzero wind. Among the remains of last year’s garden the tan stalk of a dead tomato plant ticks against the spare wooden frame that propped it through the fat green days of summer. The stalk wavers along a brief arc, dipping herky-jerky like the wand of a failing metronome. The plant yielded some good tomatoes. I