“As much as I’d really love to, you know . . . sit here and make out with you, with the door wide open and all . . .”
He sighed as he pulled away from her and stood from the desk, and she followed suit and hopped down. As she pulled the chair out and sat down again, Will said, “So, all in all, Kevin actually seems pretty wise.”
“For saying he made the right call by marrying someone who’s smarter than he is?” He shrugged and she laughed. “I suppose. I don’t know. At the very least, it’s more poetic than the marriage advice my parents gave me.”
“Which was?”
She moved her mouse on the mousepad to awaken the computer that had fallen asleep while they’d flirted. “The guy has to be a Christian, my parents should love him, and he has to have money.”
Will laughed. Cadie did not.
“Well, that’s a bit passé,” he said as he continued laughing.
“Which part?”
He thought for a moment and smiled. “Everything except the Christian part, I guess.”
“I don’t know,” she said—still without laughing. “It’s always made pretty good sense to me. I know it’s sort of old-fashioned to want my parents’ ‘blessing,’ or whatever you would call it, but I’ve never really thought that would be a big deal. I guess I’ve just always known they would love the guy I love.”
She looked up at him with big, loving eyes—so tender and guileless—and he knew he would willingly go along with any archaic tradition her heart desired. That was a small price to pay for being the guy Cadie McCaffrey loved. Besides, he was pretty sure her parents already loved him, so he had nothing to worry about there.
He leaned down and kissed the top of her head before crossing to the other side of her desk. “And what about the third piece of advice? How much money are we talking?”
“To satisfy my parents? A diversified stock portfolio and a small yacht should do the trick. They’re simple people, really.” Finally a smile appeared on her face, but after taking in his expression it quickly faded. “I was a teenager when they said that.”
“But it makes sense to you?”
“Well, not the yacht. The insurance premiums on those things are ridiculous.” The corner of her mouth turned up again. “All I meant is it makes sense to me to try and marry someone with some source of decent income and maybe some aspirations in life. I mean, they expect that of me. I expect that of me. Why shouldn’t I also expect that of the person I spend my life with?”
He chuckled and nodded his head. “You’re right. That makes sense. And you think that’s all your parents meant?”
She laughed. “Well, if you pressed them on it, I think they’d say that’s what they meant. He should just make a decent living. But in their heart of hearts, I’m pretty sure they meant the yacht.”
All the wind was gone from his sails, and he didn’t even know why. He felt as if he had gotten to know Oliver and Nessa McCaffrey pretty well over the course of the thirteen months he’d been dating Cadie, and they were wealthy, ultra-conservative, and literally famous for being Christians. They lived in a huge, beautiful home on two acres in Syosset, and they no doubt wanted the same or better for their only child. Their requirements for their daughter’s husband were just what should be expected.
But Cadie had never seemed to care about money. Sure, it’s easy not to care about money when you have money, but apart from her brownstone in Greenwich Village, she had worked for everything she had. She never looked down on Will’s tiny, modest Morningside Heights apartment, which he shared with a revolving cast of roommates.
“Well, I should let you get back to work,” he finally said, in a voice he hoped sounded normal.
“And you have to call the Air Jordan shoes guy!” She trilled with excitement for him, and his deflated enthusiasm was bolstered by her.
“Actually,” he said with a grin, “you can just call him Air Jordan. That was his nickname.”
“After the shoes?”
“The shoes were named after him.”
She looked up from her computer and shrugged. “Ah. I was close.”
“I just like that you try.”
Three years later, Will sat in the same cubicle at ASN he had occupied since the beginning, spinning mindlessly in the same chair.
Sometimes loving your job can be a curse. Sometimes being satisfied can be a curse.
But suddenly, he wasn’t satisfied. The workspace, where the framed photo of him smiling beside Michael Jordan sat buried on his desk because there was no wall on which to hang it, represented unfulfilled dreams and unacceptable complacency. He’d made a promise to himself to work harder. To speed things along. But here he was, in the exact same spot.
Well, no more.
He bounded from his chair and hurried to The Bench as quickly as he could. Every few feet he was greeted with congratulations and attaboys by co-workers he knew meant well, but he didn’t have time to soak in the praise. He rounded the corner and opened the door to the accounting suite.
“Hey, Darb,” Will called out as he entered. “Have you seen the overnights? From the Magician special on Friday?”
She turned the rest of her body to face him. “Of course I’ve seen them. You do know I compile all of the ratings, don’t you?”
“Were they good?”
“You haven’t seen them?”
He shook his head and repeated, “Were they good?”
“Will, they were off the charts. And each replay since has gotten better.”
“Can I get a copy?”
“Sure,” Darby replied with a shrug, seemingly baffled that he didn’t already have one. She walked to her desk computer and began typing.
As she pulled up the reports, Will cleared his throat and asked, “Is she here? Could I see her for a minute?”
“I think she’s on a call . . .”
“I can wait.”
Darby looked around at the bustling office and then leaned in closer and softly said, “Don’t wait. Don’t do this here. Okay?”
“At least tell me if she’s okay,” he whispered as he diverted his eyes.
“I don’t know what to say. I really don’t. Just give her some time. I could be wrong, but I really think that by this time next week, or the week after, we’ll be looking at a different situation.”
“Next week?” he asked incredulously. After she texted and asked him to give her the weekend, he’d replied by telling her to take all the time she needed. He’d been hoping she’d be ready to talk by lunchtime.
“Or the week after. You know how she is, Will. She has to—”
“Process,” he said with a sigh. “I know.”
“So give her some time,” she repeated, and then she clicked her mouse a final time. An instant later she was handing Will a paper from the printer behind her.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
She resumed whatever she had been doing, leaving him to stare at the numbers in his hands. She hadn’t been exaggerating. In the modern age of social media and online video clips, no one had really expected to ever see those sorts of ratings again.
Will chuckled and muttered to himself, “We may not be talking Syosset money, but I think we’re on the right track.”
“What’s that, Will?” Anna, the new girl in accounting, asked him.
“Nothing. Sorry.”
Overnight ratings clasped firmly in his hand, he walked out of the accounting suite, left The Bench, and marched back to The Field, determined to make Darby’s prediction come true.
By this time next week, or at least by the week after, they could be looking at a completely different situation.
9
(Roughly) This Time the Week After Next
I think I’m going to get a dog,” I said aloud to . . . no one. I was alone in my living room, sitting on my couch. The TV wasn’t even on.
That was the moment, I think. The moment when I realized that something had to change.
I groan
ed as I stood from my couch—not the groan of someone who was frustrated, but the groan of a woman who was suddenly, undeniably old at the age of thirty-four. I brushed the Milano cookie crumbs off my chest and realized that the evidence was indisputable.
I had, apparently, given up.
I wasn’t exactly sure when it had happened. Maybe it was just a result of the exhaustion that stemmed from avoiding Will all day every day at a time when it had never been more difficult to go even a few minutes without hearing his name around the ASN offices. It probably didn’t help that Darby had been on two dates with the same guy over the course of three days, and that my thoughts had been alternating between the realistically depressing “She’s going to fall in love and I’m going to be single for the rest of my life, and she won’t have time for me,” and the more absurd but equally depressing “I wonder if only one of us can be happy in a relationship at the same time, and if I’m no longer with Will, Darby can finally find love.”
The most likely culprit, however, was the phone call from my mother, five days prior. It had been strange, even by Nessa McCaffrey’s remarkable standard, and I hadn’t been able to shake it.
“Cadie, my love. I have a question.” She’d begun the conversation the moment I picked up the phone.
I’d been avoiding her calls since the night I was with Will, certain that she would masterfully combine her motherly intuition with her spiritual gift of discernment and say something to the effect of, “Are you eating enough? Do you need some money? Hang on . . . you’re not a virgin anymore, are you?” The upside of getting the topic out of the way so quickly, I suppose, would be that I’d immediately be disowned and could finally stop shuddering in fear each time my phone rang.
I hadn’t been counting on the sneak attack call at work. She didn’t even call my direct office line where caller ID could have saved the day. Instead, she took full advantage of a new employee answering the general accounting department line, and the call got transferred straight to me.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice as normal as I could possibly make it considering the fiery wrath that I knew was only moments away.
“Does Will make you happy?”
It was even worse than I had anticipated. She wasn’t going to confront me outright but rather guilt me into submission!
“What do you mean? Why do you ask? That’s kind of a weird, random question.”
“Honey, I can’t explain right now,” she whispered. Whispered? Why was she whispering? “I just need to know if he makes you happy. Can you see yourself living a long, happy life with Will by your side?”
How could I possibly answer that? If I said no, I figured she’d come back with, “Well then, I guess you should have thought of that before you engaged in premarital intercourse with him.” And if I said yes, I expected, “Then it’s really too bad you didn’t marry him a while ago, rather than engaging in premarital intercourse.” No matter what I said, I just knew she was going to say something about engaging in premarital intercourse, and I didn’t know if I would survive it.
It was a hopeless situation either way, so I decided to go with the honest answer.
“No, Mom. I . . .” I took a deep breath and braced myself. “I don’t really see myself spending my life with Will. He, um . . . no . . . he doesn’t really make me happy anymore.”
I heard her sigh on the other end of the line, and then she said, “Okay, baby. We’ll talk soon, all right? I love you.” And then she was gone, without a single mention of premarital intercourse.
After that call, I’d given in to the misery. The guilt, the regret, the sense of failure, the feeling that I’d spent my entire life believing in something only to throw it all away because propose loosely rhymes with Poconos, and Will looks good in a suit. Most of all, the misery that came from knowing my heart and Will’s hadn’t ever been quite in sync—despite my best efforts to convince myself otherwise. I just gave in to it all and let my emotions carry me away. I used a few of my copious accrued vacation days and stayed home the rest of the week, waiting for my mother to call again.
But she didn’t call. I never would have imagined that not having that awkward, horrifying conversation with my mother could be worse than having it, but the longer I sat there, waiting for the phone to ring, the more certain I was that this was how she had decided to punish me.
My mother is a wonderful woman. Truly. She loves God, loves her family, and loves America. And an ever-growing but very specific niche of America loves her back. As the host of Love God, Love YOU! on the HTT (Holy Trinity Television) network, she is invited by hundreds of thousands of people into their living rooms each weekday morning. To her viewers, she comes across as the mother they probably all wish they had.
Of course it was the one person who’d actually had her as their mother who fully understood how terrifying she could be. I watched her show every day during my vacation, though I hadn’t watched a moment of it in years. I was so afraid that she was going to covertly lecture me, with show topics like “When Your Child Brings Shame Upon Your Family” or “Rahab and Mary Magdalene: Finding the Harlot in You!”
In one way or another, my parents had been using my mistakes as applicable life lessons for everyone else throughout my entire life. In the books my mom had been writing since before I was born, at the megachurch where my dad had been the senior pastor since I was sixteen, and on the Christian Living program she had been hosting and he had been producing since I was twenty-two.
But that week, she talked about bullying, she spent time in the kitchen with Candace Cameron-Bure, and she began promoting her new women’s Bible study book. What she did not do was address her daughter’s immorality.
So there I sat, making higgledy-piggledy plans to get a dog, wondering if there was possibly a chance that my mother hadn’t supernaturally discovered that I’d slept with Will after all, and trying to figure out why in the world she’d asked me if I was happy with him if it hadn’t been part of her shame entrapment plan.
Something had to change. I had to snap out of it. I had to move on with my life.
I have to break up with Will.
In my mind, we were broken up already. It was as plain as day that we were done. But I wasn’t sure our demise as a couple was quite as obvious in Will’s mind.
I walked to the kitchen counter, where my phone sat charging in silent mode. Two texts awaited from Darby.
Is it a bad sign when you cancel your third date with a guy because you’re cramping so bad you’re willing to trade in Omakase at Sushi Nakazawa for a bottle of Motrin and a heating pad?
Seriously. When is menopause? Do you think there’s an early fertility retirement package we can sign up for? Think we can get a 2-for-1 special?
I looked at the date of the texts, certain that my phone company was once again holding my messages hostage in the cloud until they chose to disperse them at the random time of their choosing. Of course the date didn’t help at all, since they listed the date received rather than the date sent. I quickly decided it didn’t really matter. I could simply look at my own menstrual calendar and know exactly when she had messaged me, since we had been on identical schedules as long as we had known each other.
Except Darby hadn’t had a third date with a guy in months. Many, many months.
I clicked on “Call Back” underneath the most recent text and quickly did some math in my head as I waited for her to pick up. There was no moment of “What does this mean?” or even “No . . . that can’t be right.” I knew it was right. And I knew exactly what it meant.
“Did you find a 2-for-1? If not, I am definitely willing to pay full price.”
“Darby,” I whimpered. “I’m late.”
“For what?”
“My period.”
I heard a slight gasp, but she covered pretty well.
“Well . . . you . . . I mean . . . didn’t you use anything?”
“You mean like protection?”
“Of course I mean protectio
n, Cadie!” she exclaimed, revealing a crack in the calm we were both trying to pretend existed. “Tell me you used something.”
“No, we didn’t use anything!” I shouted back, panic rising in my chest. “What makes you think that either of us would have had anything to use?”
She sighed and muttered, “Good point. But it’s only been . . . what? Two weeks? Two-and-a-half? You couldn’t be, right? I mean, you wouldn’t already be missing your per—”
“I don’t know! I’m the girl whose parents held her out of sex ed and said that everything I needed to know about sex was found in the Bible. But I don’t remember anything in Song of Solomon about ovarian cycles, Darby. I don’t know anything!”
“But you took health class, right?”
“So did you, I assume. How sure are you that I couldn’t possibly be pregnant?”
The pause on the other end of the call assured me that she saw my point.
“Okay . . . here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to head over right now. I’ll swing by CVS on the way and pick up a test.”
“No, I can’t wait that long.”
“I just live in Chelsea, Cadie. It won’t take long.”
But I was already slipping on my shoes and grabbing my jacket and door keys. I lived three blocks away from CVS, and I just couldn’t imagine sitting there, doing nothing, waiting for Darby to show up.
“Thanks, but I’m just going to go.”
“All right. Do you want me to come over anyway? I can probably be there by the time you get back . . .”
I closed my door and locked it behind me and then went down the stairwell and exited onto Bleecker Street. I looked around. My surroundings were so familiar—I’d walked this street nearly every day for almost a decade—but I was still disoriented.
“No. Don’t come, Darb. Not yet. I’ll call you when I know something.”
I stuffed my phone in my pocket and began walking the three blocks. I passed people I saw every day—working, walking, living. I tried to focus on their names, and their dogs’ names. Names I would have known if I’d tried to remember them an hour before. Names I couldn’t quite put my finger on as I did my best to smile and acknowledge them all.
Wooing Cadie McCaffrey Page 9
