The only one who seemed not to have something major in her life to complain about was Zoë. Although, her more minor complaints were valid in their own right: kids, husband, job. It was only fair the rest of us let her participate fully in our bitch session.
“I can’t believe Seth told Vicky’s brother before he told you,” Kendra spat over the cosmopolitan I had forced into her hand. My plan was this: if I could get Kendra drunk before we even left Jen’s apartment, I would have to be designated driver. And why the hell shouldn’t she cut loose? She wasn’t pregnant, after all.
I would just keep myself busy enough that I wouldn’t have a chance to drink before Kendra began to slur; an event that usually occurred circa drink number three.
Jen scowled. “He hasn’t told me yet, either. I’m not going to make this easy for him.”
“What are you going to do?” Zoë asked, sucking on her lemon wedge.
“I’m going to dodge his calls as long as I can. Why should I make it easy? He’s such an asshole.” She slugged back the last of her drink, automatically handing me her glass. “I’m so ready to go out tonight.” She smiled up at me. “Thanks, Vic. Hey, where’s your drink? You should be celebrating.”
“Celebrating?” Kendra perked up. “Are you getting back with Dave?”
Zoë groaned. “Kendra, don’t be in idiot. Vicky bought a house.”
“Oh yeah.” Kendra blushed. “Sorry.” She busied herself with another pull at her cosmo.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, reaching out for her to hand me her suddenly empty glass.
“Tell me about your new house,” Jen asked.
“I’m getting refills. Zoë will tell you about it.”
I retreated into the kitchen and made drinks for everyone except myself. I went easy on Jen’s and heavy on Kendra’s, feeling only slightly guilty for my manipulation since it was all for the greater good. What I felt guiltier for was the fact that I wasn’t telling my friends about the pregnancy, especially Zoë. I had always told her everything and holding out on her about such a huge thing was just about killing me. But I wasn’t ready yet. I had to get it straight in my head exactly what I was going to do, although time was ticking: my appointment with Dr. Foster was on Tuesday.
“Can I help?” Zoë asked from behind me, scaring the shit out of me and making me spill cranberry juice all over the counter. “Whoops, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I reached for the paper towel, unraveling several sheets to mop up the red puddle. “It’s okay, I was just zoning out.”
“Something the matter?” Zoë’s voice was low, but I could hear her concern.
I looked into her eyes. “Just a lot going on right now, you know?” I guess I wasn’t really lying to her, but I still felt that by omission, I was.
“Anything specific you want to talk about?”
And there it was: the million dollar question. Did I dare tell her? What would she say? Would she think I was an idiot and that I had completely fucked up my life? Like the coward I was, I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Liar. Come on, spill it.”
“Where the fuck is my drink?” Jen hollered from the living room.
I finished pouring the cosmos, giving me a chance to avoid eye contact with my increasingly suspicious friend. “Everything’s fine, Zoë.” I placed the three drinks onto a platter and lifted it with both hands to take back to the living room.
“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
I stopped dead in my tracks, my whole body motionless except for the sudden uncontrollable shaking of my hands. The three martini glasses began to spill over until Zoë took the tray from me.
“Okay, so there’s my answer,” she said. “Come back here.” She retreated into the kitchen.
Clueless Jen was not about to accept a slowdown of drinks, no matter what the cause. “Come on, we’re thirsty in here!”
“Oh for fuck sakes!” Zoë picked up two of the cosmos and took them into the living room amid Jen’s relieved thank yous and Kendra’s tipsy twittering, but was back before I could say first trimester.
“Want some juice or something?” Zoë offered suddenly, pointing at the cranberry juice bottle.
All I could do was shake my head; I was too busy trying not to cry.
Zoë put her hand on my forearm and searched my eyes with her own. “You are, aren’t you?”
Looking down at the linoleum floor, I nodded. The tears were coming. I wiped at the corners of my eyes with my thumb.
“Listen, I’m not going to tell them,” she nodded towards the living room. “But you need to tell me what’s going on. Are you going to have it? Have you told Dave?”
I shook my head.
“Are you going to tell Dave?”
I shook my head again.
She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you think he has a right to know?”
I looked up at Zoë and swallowed hard before I confessed. “It’s not his.”
The whites of her eyes seemed to double as the gravity of my situation hit her. “You mean…”
“Yeah. It’s bad, huh?”
“Oh my God, Vicky…”
“What’s going on in there?” Jen belted out from her perch on the sofa. “Get in here, I want to bitch about Seth more and Kendra’s losing focus.”
Zoë rolled her eyes. “Be right out, Vicky’s showing me how to make a zombie.” She lowered her tone to barely above a whisper. “What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“So when? With who? You didn’t tell me about being with anyone.”
Jen was the only one who knew about my secret men’s room tryst.
“Remember that young guy from the last time we went to the bar?”
“He called?”
I shook my head, looking down at the counter. Would the shame ever fade? “It was that night. In the men’s bathroom.”
“Oh my God, Vicky. You didn’t.”
I nodded. “I did.”
Shame hung on the silence between us.
Finally, Zoë spoke. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged again. I wasn’t okay, but I would have to be. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now, if that’s okay with you.”
Zoë put her arms around me and gave me a cursory hug before she grabbed her drink. “We’re going to talk about this later,” she said before turning and heading towards the living room.
I had no doubt we would.
* * *
“Do you see him?” Zoë asked as we danced from our great vantage point on a dais above most of the crowd.
“I’m not even sure what I’m looking for. I barely remember what he looks like.” It was embarrassing to admit, but I was way past that now.
I glanced over to where Kendra and Jen were doing tequila poppers at our table and sighed. I was going to have to put a quick stop to that. If I didn’t, there was a chance there would be two in our little group who had become impregnated by strangers in the bathroom. Well, maybe Kendra would be happy about that, but nonetheless, she wasn’t getting knocked up on my watch.
“He was cute, that I remember. And really young,” Zoë said, smiling as I cringed. “I think I would know him if I saw him,” she added. Leave it to Zoë, ever the helpful friend.
As soon as the song was over, I meandered back to our table to babysit Drunk and Drunker.
“Have a drink!” Jen suggested, yelling a bit too loudly over the pumping music.
I had to admit I was feeling a bit parched, but I didn’t trust any of these girls not to try to pour alcohol down my throat. “I think I will. Will you stay here?”
Kendra nodded, an act that looked like it took all of her coordination and energy. Jen smiled “If you get me something I will.” She turned and squinted at the dance floor. “I’m trying to decide whether to go for the one in the khakis or the one in the jeans, he’s got a really hot little ass.”
“Okay, whatever, but stay here. Zoë? You want s
omething?”
Zoë nodded. “Yeah, another one of these.”
I looked down at her almost empty glass, longing for a drink of my own. I could use a little liquid distraction, although look where it got me last time.
Ambling through the crowd over to the bar, I scanned the faces of the men I passed, not so much to see if I recognized them, but hoping that one of them would recognize me and remember me from that night. A few smiled, but not in the way that told me they already knew me. I didn’t smile back: I couldn’t have been farther from trying to hook up if I was wearing a habit.
“Hi, can I get two cosmos and a straight cranberry juice?” I yelled at the bartender over the suddenly very loud extended mix of Madonna’s Vogue.
“Which one of those is for you?” a man said over my shoulder, making every hair on my body stand on end. Could it be him?
I turned and found myself face to face with my brother.
I exhaled. “My God, Steve, what are you doing here?”
“What, there’s a law against a bachelor going out on a Saturday night? Must be new since I passed the bar.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes.
“What do you have against me?” Steve asked, his frown telling me that for probably the first time in a decade, my brother was being serious.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re always down on me and you wouldn’t set me up with your friend.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of my table, making me conclude he’d been scoping us out.
“I don’t have anything against you, Steve. I just think it’s time you grew up. How did you know we were here, anyway?”
“I called Alf to see if he wanted to go out for a beer. He told me where you were going,” he said, mischief blazing in his eyes.
God, did he have to talk to everyone? Thanks to a fairly small and tight-knit Jewish community, most of my friends, cousins and siblings grew up together. “Pretty sneaky, Steve. What are you, turning into some kind of desperate stalker? God.”
The smile dissipated from his face replaced by something in his eyes I had never seen before. Something I never knew he was capable of: sadness.
Suddenly feeling guilty, I turned and paid for the drinks lined up on the bar in front of me. “C’mon, you freak. You can help me carry these back to the table.” I handed him one of the cosmos and looked him in the eye. “This one’s Jen’s.”
It was as much of an apology as he was going to get, but he was a smart guy and caught on right away. “Thanks, Vic. You’re a good kid,” he winked.
I glanced over to the table where my friends were. Zoë was nowhere to be seen, but Kendra looked like she was about to pass out (glad I didn’t spend money on a drink for her) and Jen was glaring at me, obviously losing her patience. “Shut up and start moving. If I don’t get these drinks over there asap, there’s going to be a riot.”
* * *
Three hours, countless drinks and zero sightings of previous illicit fling later, I pulled my SUV into the ‘visitors only’ parking spot behind Jen’s building. I was beyond exhausted, having worked earlier in the day, and was more than ready for bed. The hard part was convincing Jen to do the same.
“I want to stay up and party!” she said from the back seat. I was glad she hadn’t decided to come up to the front after I’d dropped Zoë off; it was hard enough driving while exhausted without the distraction of her yelling and flailing her arms in the front seat. And if it wasn’t for the kid safety locks (already engaged when I bought the car, which I’d never bothered to switch off), I’m sure I would have lost her to the hard pavement when it occurred to her that there was a better party anywhere other than inside my vehicle.
“Well if you’re going to be a big party pooper, at least take me over to your brother’s place.”
“Ugh,” I groaned, wishing I’d never brought Steve over to our table. Jen had pounced on him the second she saw him, drilling him for every detail of what Seth had told him about their impending breakup. I think he was pretty sorry he’d come over and was probably questioning his interest in her until Jen got past the interrogation phase and into her ‘drunk and horny’ phase. He seemed pretty into her again after that, but I made him cool his jets: there was no way she was taking him back to the apartment to have sex when I would be in the next room. Ew. And beyond the yuck factor, I wasn’t going to let my brother take advantage of my friend. Sure they were consenting adults, but all Jen could be trusted to consent to was more booze, and that didn’t make for good judgment. Who’s to say she’d even want to date my brother?
“What do you mean, ‘ugh’?” Jen scowled when I glanced into the rearview mirror. “He’s fuckable!”
“Oh my God, Jen. He’s my BROTHER!”
My point was lost on her. “So? Doesn’t mean I can’t fuck him, does it?” she snorted for emphasis, obviously thinking I was the unreasonable one.
I grabbed my purse from the passenger side seat. “Come on, let’s get upstairs. I’m zonked.”
Jen stuck her lower lip out as she clambered out of the SUV. “I don’t want to go upstairs.”
“Too bad,” I sighed.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Jen said, grabbing my arm and squinting up at me. “I’ll go upstairs if you tell me all about how you’re pregnant.”
Fuck. I had made a fatal mistake. I had let Zoë, my confidante, the keeper of my big juicy secret, get stupidly and indiscriminately drunk.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said to my roommate. “You go upstairs and we’ll discuss whatever it is that you think Zoë told you in the morning.”
“What’s in it for me?” Jen was sulking but thankfully continued walking with me.
“You don’t die of hypothermia out here.”
Always reasonable when need be, Jen acquiesced “Fine. Deal. But your brother really is fuckable. I’m going to call him tomorrow.”
Thankful that drunk Jen was so easily distracted away from my taboo subject, I grabbed the front door of the building and led her through it, stifling a yawn. “I’m sure he’d like that very much.”
Chapter 20
Supermom Zoë, apparently up at the crack of dawn, thanks to her kids, called my cell phone early Sunday morning, waking me from a fitful if uncomfortable sleep. Cursing the old couch, and Jen’s cat who insisted on sleeping on my head, I groaned and twisted to grab my phone off of Jen’s coffee table.
“I’m picking you up and we’re going for breakfast. Don’t bother waking Jen, I want this to be just us.”
My brain struggled in its fuzzy morning semi-dream state to keep up. “What?” was all I was capable of pushing out of my mouth.
“Get the fuck up, come on, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I thought that as the designated driver, one earned the right to sleep in. God knows I put in my time babysitting and chauffeuring the night before.
“Goodbye, you’d better be ready,” Zoë barked into the phone before hanging up.
A half hour later, we were sitting in the red vinyl booths of our favorite diner, each with a coffee in front of us.
Once the waitress was out of earshot, on her way to the kitchen to hand in our order, I began to give Zoë what she was so impatiently waiting for: the story of my pregnancy, the exciting subject du jour.
“Yeah, um…so I don’t think I can have this baby.” I blurted into the depths of my steaming cup of coffee (not bothering with decaf this time). I slouched down in the booth, not even cracking a grin when the fake leather seat gave off a loud wrrrp; I was in no mood for laughs.
Neither, it seemed was Zoë. “So what are you going to do?” she asked.
I looked up at my friend who peered back at me through her super-dark Chanel knockoffs. “Take those fucking sunglasses off. You look ridiculous. It’s winter and you’re in a diner for Christ’s sakes.”
Zoë scowled but pulled the glasses from her face. “Listen, you didn’t drink. Have some sympathy for those who did. You know, you were in the
same way just a few weeks ago.”
I scowled back. “Yes, I have a little embryonic reminder of my own drunken stupidity, thank you.”
“I don’t know what crawled up your ass today. I’m just trying to help. Quite frankly, I can get abuse at home, I don’t need it from you, too.”
“You invited me, remember? You were so desperate to hear about my big scandal that you had to call me at an obscene time on a fucking Sunday morning and drag me here to spill my guts.”
Zoë stared at me for a long moment and then rolled her eyes, “Yeah, meow, we’re both on edge, okay? Let’s retract the claws, shall we?”
That was her attempt at peacemaking.
Still, it worked. A cathartic sigh escaped me. “I’m sorry, Zoë. I don’t mean to be a bitch. This is just a bit more than I can handle. I thought I was at my drama threshold with all the divorce and job bullshit and now this, you know?”
Zoë nodded. “So what are you gonna do?”
I sighed. “I have a doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. I think I’m going to get her to give me a referral to a clinic.”
“You’re going to have an abortion?” Zoë was whispering.
I nodded, unable to look my friend in the eye. I couldn’t bring myself to say the A word, even silently in my head. It’s not that I’d ever been against it, but I never thought I’d ever be faced with having to get one. Girls in their teens get abortions, crack whores and hookers get abortions. Yuppies in their mid-thirties don’t get abortions.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” I conceded, “Wow.”
“You’re really sure? What about if you went back to Dave? He’d probably want you to have it.”
I couldn’t believe what Zoë was proposing. “Are you kidding me?”
She apparently didn’t think it was such a radical idea. “What? It would solve all your problems. Well except for the fact that you and him would now own two homes, but Christ, it’s not like you can’t afford it.”
Life, Sideways Page 11
