“But wait, Grandpa. You said if I want to live a long and happy life, there were three things I would need to do. The last one you said is to be happy. But you didn’t say how I’d get there.”
“Ah, very good, my wise girl. I didn’t say how you’d get there because only you will know the answer to that. Life is not always sunshine and roses. Happiness is something we decide for ourselves. How we get there is our choice and our choice alone. The same way no one can take a breath for you, no one can determine your happiness. Once you master that, then being happy will be like breathing. You won’t even have to think about it. It will just be.”
In December, my grandparents came to New Jersey to celebrate Christmas with the family. Even though they split their time between New Jersey and Florida, he always said New Jersey was his home. Born and bred a Yankee fan, he could never find a good bagel or slice of pizza in Florida. I think Grandpa planned the trip to New Jersey so that he’d have a good crowd at his funeral, like he had come home to die.
A few days later, Papa had a brain aneurysm and passed away in his sleep. My grandma said that when she found him in the morning, she’d thought he was just sleeping soundly because he looked so peaceful. She said he was smiling. I know he died happy. He chose to be happy in life; I had no doubt he chose to be happy in death too.
Like the heavens were paying their tribute, the day my grandpa died it really was all sunshine and roses. It was unseasonably warm for December in New Jersey. Not a cloud in the sky. And roses, well, they were everywhere. They were Grandma’s favorite flower, and everyone knew it. Her friends from the gardening club made beautiful bouquets of roses. There were dozens of arrangements in their house, at the church, at the funeral home, even on Grandpa’s coffin.
Grandma kept busy the day of the wake, tidying up and baking cookies for the guests. When Martha, a friend from her gardening club, stopped over with a huge bouquet I heard Grandma ask with surprise in her voice, “Martha! Where did you ever get such beautiful roses? They’re not even in season right now.”
Martha half smiled and said cheerfully, “Sure they are. You just have to know where to look.”
Thinking of Grandpa always made me smile.
❧
I watched Walter drink his bourbon on the rocks slowly, with purpose. His hair was disappearing fast, but what was there was salt and pepper. His eyes told a thousand stories every time he laughed. I liked him immediately.
He caught me staring and motioned with his hand to come over. “Hey, doll. Ever play roulette before?”
“No, but you look like you’re having so much fun I decided to watch you, see if I can pick up some pointers.”
“Ah, a rookie. Just what we need at our table for good luck! Rookies always bring good luck.” He dragged a chair from the other side of the table next to him. He proceeded to tell me how the game worked. “Each chip is worth a dollar. Minimum bet is five dollars. If you put a chip directly on a number and you win, payout is thirty-five dollars. Corners are worth eight dollars, and black and red payout is one to one.”
I had a hundred dollars to start with. I was too nervous to put my chips straight on the numbers, so I did some splits and corner bets. All my favorites: my anniversary, birthdays of loved ones. I was up and then I was down, but I was definitely getting the hang of it.
Walter summoned the scantily clad cocktail waitress. “Hey doll, I’ll have another Jack on the rocks, and my young friend here will have a Lucky Lady drink. Thanks, love.”
“What’s in a Lucky Lady?” I asked.
“Coconut rum, pineapple juice, cranberry juice. Don’t worry, you’ll love it.”
“Sounds great, but how did you know I’d like that?”
“Old age, wisdom. How old are you, twenty-five?”
“Yes, sir! Wow, that’s three for three. You’re good!”
“Yeah, that’s what she said.”
The whole table was cracking up. Walter was smart, kind, and witty. After drinking three Lucky Ladies, my luck was on fire. I was up to two hundred dollars and having a blast.
“Okay, doll, you’ve doubled your money; it’s time to get a little brazen. Pick your five favorite numbers and put your chips directly on the number.”
I gasped. “Really? It seems so risky, and the odds are against it. Why can’t I just keep playing like I have been? I’m ahead, see?”
“Averse to risk, are we? Hmm…you are still young, my dear. But when you’re older, you’ll see the greater the risk, the greater the reward. You can keep playing it safe, and you’ll probably always do moderately well. Or you can take some risks, and if you win, you will see the reward was well worth the risk.”
“But wait, that’s assuming that I win. What if I take a risk and I lose? Won’t I wish I had played it safe and still left ahead?”
“Is that how you like to live? So young, so naïve.” Walter was shaking his head from side to side.
This guy was pissing me off. “Hey, I’m only twenty-five years old. I can’t afford to throw away two hundred dollars.”
“On the contrary, my dear. It’s when you are young that you can take a risk. If you lose, one day you’ll look back on this day and laugh. You’ll rue the day you met crazy Walter at the casino. But you won’t forget the free lesson that came with it. Put away the hundred dollars you started with. Worst case scenario, you played for free and will have gained a life lesson here. Best case, you walk away with some cash in your pocket and a night you will never forget.”
I hung on to his every word the same way I did whenever my Grandpa doled out life lessons.
“Do you think really happy people stay home and think about ways to be safe? Successful doctors, business people, or free-spirited skydivers—they take risks. How about having a baby? Do you know how many women used to die in childbirth? They didn’t think about the risk involved. Their desire to have a baby was greater than any fear. That’s when you will find true happiness: when you want something so badly that you’re willing to give up everything to get it.”
“But what if I just like having my small wins and the security that goes with them?” I thought I got him good.
Walter raised one eyebrow at me and took a swig of his bourbon. “Shop for security over happiness, and you buy it at that price.”
There was a beautiful older woman at our table who seemed to be watching us. Her silver hair was pulled back in a loose bun. She had blue eyes like Elizabeth Taylor’s, subtly lined with smoky black eyeliner; her lips were the color of ginger spice. Her diamond earrings dangled and danced every time she laughed. Her nails were French manicured, and her wedding ring and huge diamond told everyone she was loaded.
“Put a sock in it, Walter,” she scoffed at him. She motioned for me to come sit next to her and took my hand softly in hers. “Listen, dear, pay no attention to the man behind the smoke and mirrors. My husband is full of it.”
“Walter is your husband?” I was stunned.
She smirked. “I don’t sit near him when we are gambling. We play by a very different set of rules.”
I noticed she had a few stacks of red chips next to her wine glass. Not as many as Walter, but still very respectable. “Walter likes to play by his own rules: risk this, hedge that. See, the game, the drama is part of the fun for him. He doesn’t care if he loses because he only risks as much as he can afford to lose. Not to mention that he’s an old geezer.”
“Hey, Betty.” She casually looked in his direction when he called. “Blow me.”
The crowd was hysterical. It’s not often you meet two seventy-year-olds who speak like that, not in public anyway.
Betty seemed unimpressed and looked back at me.
“So as I was saying. Walter likes to play roulette like he plays life, but don’t let him fool you. At the end of the day, he has me. I’m the rational one, the one who discouraged him from buying a beach house right before the housing market crashed. I’m also the one who took money out of my trust when he had a great idea for
a software invention. That was a gamble that felt right, a gamble that paid off. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but we all have some insight into the future. It’s called our intuition. You listen to your gut, and it will pay off.”
Betty’s words sounded so logical, I was anxious to hear more.
“That’s my advice for life. Here is how you play roulette. Don’t ever bet more than you can afford to lose. Have fun. If you’re feeling lucky, you can try a few numbers. But you want to know how I play? How I always made and make sure that I win in life? Always put love first. It’s the only thing that matters at the end of the day… at the end of our lives. These ten-thousand-dollar earrings you’ve been admiring all evening, they don’t keep me warm at night.”
I stared at her earrings. They were the most beautiful diamonds I had ever seen.
“They may look beautiful and sparkle, but the joy I got from them was only in the beginning. Like a new fling, so bright and blingy, they make you think the outer sparkle will fire you up from the outside in. But it’s not true. While it might at the beginning, that sparkle, well… it won’t last. You have to polish them, take care of them.”
“So when I play roulette, I bet on love. I bet on red. Red, my favorite color. How could it not be? The color of my husband’s lips, the color of the blood that pumped through my womb while pregnant with my four children. Red: the color of love. So my dear Elizabeth, you want to know my secret to winning? Always bet on red.”
I took Betty’s advice and put one hundred chips on the red. I had a fifty percent chance of winning. Of course, that also meant I had a fifty percent chance of losing, but not tonight. For all the free advice I was given, I was going to be that Lucky Lady.
The croupier took the little silver ball and spun it on the roulette wheel. Spinning around and around, I felt like it was never going to stop. I was holding my breath. And then it stopped, there on that wheel that suddenly had become symbolic of my entire future.
“Red twenty-seven.” I let go of the air that I had sucked in and felt tears come to my eyes.
“Oh my God, twenty-seven! Red twenty-seven.”
“You won, my dear. You won!” Betty was giggling. Even Walter gave me a smile of approval.
I wanted to tell them that twenty-seven had been my Grandpa’s birthday and my parents’ anniversary. Number twenty-seven is and has always been my lucky number. Red twenty-seven. I had goose bumps all over my body.
If ever God or the Universe was trying to tell me something, it was that night.
I wanted to quit while I was ahead, so I cashed in my chips. I turned to hug Betty goodbye and to thank her for a memorable night and a very memorable lesson. She hugged me tight and then took my hands in hers.
She placed the diamond earrings in my palm. “Here, dear. You’ll enjoy them much more than I do.”
“Oh my God, I can’t take these!” My voice cracked from the impending tears.
“Yes, you can, my dear. I want you to have them. You will look gorgeous in them. Just remember: they sparkle and shine and make you look like a million bucks. But only true love can make you feel like a million bucks, the kind of love that comes from the inside out—never, ever, the other way around.
“You remind me so much of myself fifty years ago. So sweet and innocent with your whole life before you. Enjoy every moment, okay?” She hugged me again, and Walter came over and hugged me too.
Tears were streaming down my face. I wasn’t sure if they were happy tears or sad tears, but I felt incredibly grateful that I got to meet Walter and Betty and for that night. I won two hundred dollars, a pair of ten-thousand-dollar diamond earrings, and a priceless life lesson.
MARIA
Every Friday night for weeks, I got lyrics of another Maria song on my windshield. I didn’t even know there were so many songs with my name in them.
“Maria” by Blondie, “Maria” by Michael Jackson, “Maria, Maria” by Santana.
It’d gotten to the point where I looked forward to Fridays after work so I could see what song was next. It was so sweet of him. I liked this Blake kid.
At first, my affair with Blake was amazing. Here was this young, hot guy who wanted to be with me. It was a huge ego boost and distracted me from my longing for Enrique, but we lived in such different worlds.
He asked me if I wanted to go surfing and to lunch with him next weekend.
“Darling, I’d love to, but you know we can’t actually be seen in public. We can’t date, Blake.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot.” He looked defeated.
I thought the affair would distract me from Zack, from my boring life, from my heart that was still bleeding for Enrique.
Admittedly, it worked for a while. I felt so devious sneaking off to Blake’s apartment in the middle of the day for a quickie. I’d pass him in the office and just say, “Hi, Blake,” my voice steady and professional.
I liked having secrets from Zack. He got to make all the decisions in our house. He chose everything, from the food we ate to when he could go golfing. Well, he didn’t have a say in this, and I liked having this freedom, something he could not dictate. Zack did not get to pick.
Blake and I even came up with a secret code. If I passed his cubicle and didn’t say “hi,” then it meant we were to meet at his apartment in twenty minutes. He had given me a key so I could let myself in if I got there before him.
Sometimes I’d get all naked and wait in his bed. I’d touch myself so I’d be wet by the time he got there. Blake was hot and hung and a very generous lover. I loved having sex with him, but after a couple months I realized I wanted more. I needed more, more than Blake could ever give me.
I wanted a lover who could also be my partner, someone who was my friend. Someone I could have lunch with in public and hold hands as we walked down the beach. Someone who I could give myself to completely, someone I loved and who loved me back. I knew that wasn’t Blake, and it wasn’t fair to keep him from finding someone who could give him what he needed too. I knew I could look and look and never find what I was looking for because all I really wanted was Enrique.
For a week after I broke it off with Blake, I was seriously depressed. I barely ate; I couldn’t sleep. The days bled into nights. I thought about calling him, telling him that I was sorry and that I still wanted to see him. But I knew that would only be prolonging the inevitability of being right back where I was: sad, alone, and lonely. How could my life be so full and leave me feeling so unfulfilled?
JULIA
Talking and chatting with Tyrone had become something I looked forward to each day. It was hard to believe there had been a time when he wasn’t in my life. He made me so happy. I felt more alive than I ever had.
I had just put Arielle down for a nap when my phone rang. It was Tyrone.
“Hey, baby.” His voice always sent a tingle down my arms.
“Hey, Tyrone. I was just thinking about you.”
“You were? What were you thinking?”
“About how awesome you are and how much I love talking to you, how much I love getting your texts and emails. I missed you yesterday. It’s crazy how much I look forward to chatting with you,” I confessed.
“Julia, you are the amazing one. I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but it’s like I’m under some kind of magical spell.”
When he said my name, I could not help myself. I sighed. I was dying to see him again.
“Is your husband home tonight?”
“No, he’s away and I’m all alone.”
“Oh, Julia, I would love if I was there with you right now. After we fucked a few times, I’d love to hold you all night long.”
“That sounds heavenly.” I couldn’t believe a man who was so sexual could also just love holding me. I craved that as much as I needed the passion. I heard Ty sigh heavily. “What are you thinking about, Ty?”
“How incredible it was to be with you, a woman who could completely give herself to me. That’s an
amazing gift, Julia.”
“Who wouldn’t want to do that?” I was genuinely surprised. “Ty, you make me feel wanted. I love that you have such a high sex drive. I love that you make me feel so desired.”
“Believe me, you are desired. You’re all I can think about, even in my dreams, Julia. I want you. I need you, baby.” Tyrone’s voice and words were always so full of passion. His words were not just affecting my body; they spoke to my heart too.
“Ty, tell me why you’re settling for someone who doesn’t give you what you deserve? The more I get to know you, the more I can’t believe that you’re not with someone who is as wonderful as you are.”
“You’re adorable,” he said, but his voice sounded a little sad.
“Ty, I want you to be happy.”
“You make me happy, Julia.”
I couldn’t say anything for a second. I couldn’t remember if Aaron had ever uttered those words. It had been a long time since a man had taken my breath away, but Ty had just done it. I had to break the intensity of the moment.
“You make me happy too, Ty.” In that moment I felt such a divide in my heart. Tyrone brought so much joy to my life, but not being with him all the time also made me feel sad. Why couldn’t I just enjoy the precious moments we had together?
I should have known that getting involved with him would complicate my life. And as much as I missed him while we were apart, he was filling a void in my life, and I started to feel whole and happy. I didn’t realize what I was missing until I actually had it.
Tyrone and I talked every day, but we were having a hard time meeting up. He was traveling a lot and Aaron wasn’t, which meant we hadn’t had sex in weeks. I was aching to see him.
Then, there was fabulous news. Aaron was up early, drinking his coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal at the kitchen table.
“Good morning.” I tried to sound chipper.
“I just found out I have to go to Tokyo. I leave Friday.” His voice was very matter of fact.
“Oh, okay. How long will you be gone?”
Sex and the Social Network Page 18
