While I had no inkling at her wedding that my luck with men was about to change, Liz did. I’d told her about the men I’d been dating—a lawyer and a Bank of America executive. She had a smile in her voice when she said, “I like the other one. The one you’re ‘just friends’ with.”
I’d mentioned to her a lanky, blue-eyed guy named Brad whom I’d met while volunteering on a political campaign. Liz sensed from the start that he was the one, and she was right. In the fall of 1992, a little more than a year after she’d married, I had a wedding of my own.
For a time after that, Liz and I seemed to be on the same path again. Like a sledder on a hill, she had always thrown her Flexible Flyer down first, gliding smoothly on her way. I’d been the one to follow, flopping on my belly, unsure of the terrain. Now it seemed we’d both gotten to that safe place we’d longed for since we first met in college—a life where we’d mended the mistakes of our parents, where we were loved and whole. Miraculously, my false start with Wes had not mattered. Olly olly oxen free, I wanted to cheer.
Yet even at my wedding, if I’d been paying attention, I would have noticed that Liz and I were actually on different sledding hills altogether. Despite the charming photo my wedding photographer took of Liz sitting in her husband’s lap at the reception, I’d found her later that night crying in the bathroom. She had the scared face of a child startled from a bad dream. “I’m okay. Don’t worry,” she kept saying, not wanting to spoil my day. Later I realized that my wedding had sparked in her the same mix of happiness for a friend and anxiety over her own fate that her wedding had once stirred in me.
A few weeks after that, she called to say she couldn’t stop thinking about a sexy writer she’d met. “Maybe I should just sleep with him and get it over with,” she said, as if her infidelity was inevitable.
I’d never judged her before, but this time I felt myself recoil. “There’s no going back from that,” I said.
Through the receiver, I heard her exhale. “You’re right,” she said, as if I’d kept her from plunging into the deep end just in time.
Shortly after Liz had her first child, I traveled to New York City for a conference. Rather than staying in a hotel, I slept on her couch. Imposing on a couple with a newborn probably wasn’t the best idea, but I was still operating the way we always had, taking any chance to be together.
I’d reserved the last day of my trip just for Liz and me—carving out the morning to replay our old single days of scouring vintage shops and hanging out at the Columbus Bakery. What I wanted for our morning was a glorious fall day—the kind only New York City can unfurl before you. What we got was gloom and gray. What I wanted was our old simpatico, each of us adding another building block to the conversation until it towered and toppled and we started a new one. Instead, we walked in silence, her son in a Baby Björn like a star on her chest, his tiny arms and legs dangling. When we’d embarked on our day together, we’d left behind dirty dishes piled high in her sink and hardwood floors in desperate need of a sweep. We’d also left behind her husband sitting on the couch, pretending to read the newspaper.
For days, I’d tried not to hear them arguing down the hall. I didn’t acknowledge how unnerved I’d been by her husband screaming at their crying baby, and Liz screaming back at him to stop it. Their fights had been a train wreck out in the open, cars mangled, casualties moaning. I doubt she would have let anyone but me see them like that.
As rain began to fall, we agreed to skip shopping and head straight to the bakery. Espresso machine hissing, muffins piled high in the case before us, Liz whispered, “I’ve got to nurse him again,” and took off to find a table.
Trying not to slosh our coffees, I spotted her in a corner, Baby Björn unsnapped, shirt lifted. She watched me make my way over to her. Did she feel the same rising panic I did? I tried not to meet her eyes, not wanting to say what I felt sure we were both thinking.
As if she’d read my mind, she said, “I feel like I married the wrong guy.” She dropped a sugar cube in her cup. “I feel like I married someone who should be on my list of former boyfriends, instead of waiting for the one the way you did.”
Admitting this out loud made it real. We knew this conversation could take her down a path we both dreaded: the unraveling of a marriage, separation, divorce, a woman raising children by herself—fears we’d shared with each other back in our college dorm rooms.
I imagined the life Liz and her baby might have on their own. She would be capable and stoic like my mother. But I couldn’t help thinking about the early days of my childhood: the way the lights used to go out when my mother couldn’t pay the electric bill, and how sometimes we’d need to search our pockets in hopes of finding grocery money. I remembered that first apartment in L.A., and the alley in back where I’d been molested after school. How hard my mother had worked to protect me, but sometimes she just couldn’t. How I’d always been aware that it was just we two, with no one else to help us. This was not the life I wanted for my friend and her son.
I tried to concentrate on the cheeriness of the café, not the bleakness of her situation. But Liz must have seen pity in my eyes. Is that what made her reach for my wrist to check my watch? I had plenty of time before my flight, but she said, “We’d better get back. You have to go and he’ll be wondering where I am.” As I followed her out of the café, I kept to myself the news I’d been waiting to share with her: My baby daughter was already growing inside me.
Out on the street, she stuck a hand in the air to hail a cab. A scrum of yellow taxis raced toward us, the victorious driver lurching to the curb. Liz cupped her baby’s feet as she slid along the black vinyl seat after me. She called out her address and the cabbie tsked as he pulled away. It was the kind of short, low-fare trip cab drivers hate.
We’d barely come to a stop at her apartment when she stuck a twenty-dollar bill through the plastic window, saying, “You got the food. I’ll pay for the cab.” It was a point of pride. Her marriage might be falling apart, but she could manage cab fare.
That’s when the driver said, “No.”
“Excuse me?” Liz said.
“Need small,” he grunted.
I reached into my purse. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”
“No,” she shushed me. “He can make change.”
I caught the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. I realized English wasn’t his native language. He must have understood just enough to get the drift of our conversation, but he’d misinterpreted, thinking we were making his life difficult just because we could. He turned around in his seat, one arm hugging the wheel. “You play with me?” He glared. “Get out.”
“Liz, I’ve got it,” I said, but she didn’t want my help. She shrugged at the driver as if to say, “Whatever, your loss.” She put the twenty back in her wallet and we scooted across the seat, Liz cradling her son.
I thought the driver would peel off in a rage—caring less about the low fare than having to shell out all his small bills for change—but he opened his door and climbed out. He was young and big. His short-sleeved shirt strained to contain his biceps and chest. “Stupid women,” he said, towering over us.
“Here,” I said, holding out money. Instead of taking it, he spit on the ground in disgust. Scared now and just wanting to get away from him, Liz and I hurried up the front steps of her apartment building.
He followed.
She began to pat her pockets, and I knew she’d forgotten her keys. The cabbie stood behind us, shifting on the balls of his feet like a boxer. He puffed up his chest, directing his anger first at Liz, then at me. “I know where you live,” he said.
Liz banged on the front door. We could see her building super through the glass. “Let us in,” she called to him, but he didn’t want to open the door because of the yelling driver. “Please,” she said. “I’ve got my baby.” Finally, the super opened the door. Liz with her little son slipped through.
Why I pressed my luck I’m not sure, but after catching the ope
n door I turned back to the cabbie and said, “We weren’t playing with you.” This time he drew back and spit directly in my face. “I know where you live,” he said again.
Wiping his spittle from my nose and cheeks with my sleeve, I hurried through the door, pushing it closed behind me. Liz stood by the elevator, her cheek pressed to the top of her son’s head, barely registering that I’d made it inside safely.
As we rode up in the elevator, I continued wiping my face on my sleeve. The driver’s words lingered: I know where you live. Yet he had no idea. Liz knew it and so did I. For years, we’d been fashioning ourselves into makeshift twins but this was her life, and I was going home.
When we’d first met, we were two daughters abandoned in different ways by our fathers and longing to be loved. We recognized in one another a determination not to repeat the mistakes of our mothers. Mistakes that had left Liz feeling the phantom limb of her missing father and me the slithering envy and insecurity of mine. I had always thought that of the two of us, Liz would be the one to reach safe harbor. Yet now I found myself on dry land, watching the undertow clutch at her. I was unable to pull her to safety the way she had done for me when she told me to leave Wes. Stay. Leave. I didn’t know what advice to give her. I only knew that once again, she was moving ahead of me in life experience. This time, I had no intention of following her.
For years after the taxi incident, after Liz had another baby and I had two, I still hoped our destiny was to be lifelong friends. Even though it now took her days to return my calls, and sometimes she never did. Still, when I was in New York City I made it a point to get together with her. During one of those trips she told me she was getting a divorce. She’d been dealing with it for over a year. It stunned me to learn I was the last to know.
I understood then that she had divorced me long ago, sitting across from each other in the Columbus Bakery on that gloomy gray day. Scared about her marriage, stroking her baby’s velvety head, she must have seen my relief. She must have seen how very glad I was, at last, to be me and not her. Perhaps she’d even heard my heart calling out, Olly olly oxen free.
The Proposal
OUR CHILDREN OFTEN ASK THEIR FATHER AND ME TO tell them stories about our life together before they were born. They like hearing how Brad confessed that he was “romantically inclined” toward me when we were supposed to be just friends. They’re intrigued by the way we made up our own wedding ceremony, including a question-and-answer session with our guests that mimicked the political events we attended during that phase in our lives. But the story of our marriage proposal is not one we often tell, especially to our kids. Within it lurks a clue it took me years to decipher. Some people might even read our proposal story as a warning that we should not have married at all.
We met while making get-out-the-vote calls for an aspiring California state assemblyman. At the candidate’s headquarters, Brad and I were designated leaders of a pod of volunteers heading to a nearby phone center. We all piled into my Volkswagen, and Brad rode shotgun. Strangers that first night, we were pressed close in the capsule of my tiny car. Our breath charged with the excitement of election night and political action, my skirt riding up my thigh as I worked the stick from first to fifth.
I learned that as a UC Berkeley student he’d had purple hair and frequented mosh pits. He’d only been out of school for a couple of years, trading in his punk lifestyle for suits and a fundraising job with the University of California in Los Angeles. Actually, only one suit—a single-breasted navy pinstripe that he wore every day. It showed off his height and broad shoulders.
At the time, I worked for a nonprofit called Town Hall in downtown Los Angeles—a forum that hosted dignitaries like Jimmy Carter, Benazir Bhutto, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Unbeknownst to me, my husband-to-be referred to me as “the Town Hall babe” to his colleagues. I’d never thought of myself as a babe, but had always hoped to inspire such admiration.
In the beginning, our love for the City of Angels and our burgeoning love for each other were entwined. He became part of a young Los Angeles leaders group I’d formed through my office. We worked at a food bank together and helped rebuild distressed neighborhoods after the Rodney King riots. We went door-to-door for political candidates and attended civic meetings on topics ranging from police reform to public transportation and homelessness. Even though we weren’t dating, we made excuses to meet up—free event tickets or a mutual friend’s birthday party, often at city landmarks like Griffith Park Observatory, the La Brea Tar Pits, and Venice Beach.
We finally went on an official date when the event we were supposed to attend was cancelled and he casually asked if I wanted to get together anyway. That was my first confirmation that he liked me as much as I secretly liked him. Our Friday-night dinner turned into breakfast the next morning. Saturday biking in the Santa Monica Mountains turned into slow dancing in his living room that night, which led to Sun-day brunch and the late show of Blade Runner at the Rialto. Sunday night led us to Monday morning carpooling to work. We moved in together shortly thereafter.
Unlike when I’d moved across the country to live with Wes, I never had any qualms about my decision to be with Brad. From the start everything was easy with him. I kept waiting for the moment of awkwardness I’d had at the beginning of every previous relationship—when we both would realize we’d had enough of the closeness for a while and needed our own space. With Brad that moment never came.
The night he proposed, we were having dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, a kitschy Italian place on Vermont where the waiters sang opera and served thin-crust pizza on tall table stands. We were sitting in a red leather booth when he turned to me and said the very words: “Will you marry me?”
It’s all happening, I thought. Those words I’d anticipated all my life. “Yes, yes,” I said. “Of course. I love you. Yes.” Afterward, we went to the Dresden Room—a lounge next door— to toast our future over Manhattans, clinking the rims of our glasses before we sipped.
But five months later, while talking with friends about our impending nuptials, he denied he’d been the one to say the words. He said I asked him. Our friends changed the subject. Like a needle scratching across a record, the evening came to an abrupt halt.
Perhaps because everything between us had been so easy up to that point, we were able to quickly put aside this disagreement over who asked whom. Perhaps because we were so in sync about everything else, it didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of our relationship. The proposal became like a spill of red wine on new carpet, gasp-worthy in the moment, then a fading stain you winced at only when you made yourself notice.
We planned to go to Paris for our honeymoon. We chose rings, a cake, and a wedding meal to serve to family and friends. Along with nine other couples, we went to a Making Marriage Work class that was like a version of The Newlywed Game. At one point, we were asked to switch partners and converse with the opposite-sex member of another couple. “Notice your increased heart rate with a stranger,” our teacher instructed us. “Your quickening pulse, the flirtation, the intrigue, the pressure to seduce. That’s how it was when you first met your partner, right? Remember what that felt like. Keep it alive between you throughout your marriage.”
Listening to the other couples in class, we counted ourselves lucky that we didn’t have the kind of meddling parents they described. Ours were happy to leave us to our own devices. They gave us money—an equal share from each—to do what we wanted for the wedding.
By then, my mother had walked out on Nick for the second time. His raging and violence had driven her to keep a “go bag” in her car. One night instead of checking into a hotel again, she sublet a new apartment. He finally agreed to divorce her on the condition that she continued supporting him. I didn’t even tell Nick about the wedding for fear he’d show up drunk.
Our class teacher, a marriage therapist, told us that sex, money, and disagreeing on big issues (such as having children) before the wedding were always the un
derlying causes of broken marriages. Brad and I thought we had our bases covered. Wanting kids was something we’d talked about early. As for money, we’d already opened a joint bank account and pooled our resources. And when the teacher read (anonymously) everyone’s answers to the question of how many times we wanted sex each week, I just knew that we were the two who’d given the highest numbers. We took satisfaction in knowing that if we’d been playing The Newlywed Game for real, we’d be winning.
On a sunny September morning, we married. Making our entrance to the ceremony at the same time, we descended opposite marble staircases in a historic building in the heart of downtown L.A. I wore a dress made of vintage French lace. The political candidate we’d volunteered for officiated the ceremony. We had a wedding lunch on the deck of a low-key but trendy restaurant off Vine Street in Hollywood. Instead of rice, our friends tossed environmentally-friendly birdseed, and they gave us a pair of new mountain bikes festooned with bows.
When we arrived at the Chateau Marmont—an L.A. icon where we planned to stay for our first night of marriage—it felt more like a grandmother’s dowdy guest room than the elegant suite we’d envisioned. The bellhop had just left. Champagne was on its way. Fully clothed, we lay back on the chenille bedspread. We turned to each other, our faces on the bed, and made our first important decision as a married couple.
“Let’s leave,” we said in unison. We practically skipped out the hotel door, checking into the Bel Age on Sunset instead. In plushy bathrobes the next morning, enjoying breakfast on the balcony overlooking the city, we congratulated ourselves for not settling. We were elated that we’d found each other and that we each knew the other’s heart and mind so well.
I'm the One Who Got Away Page 9
