Slightly Settled

by Wendy Markham

  I’m certain it must be Kate, who promised to call me from Alabama the second she gets engaged, if she gets engaged.

  But it isn’t Kate.

  “Merry Christmas,” a familiar male voice greets me.

  My still-burning heart flops around excitedly. “Jack! Merry Christmas.”

  I can hear clattering pans and running water in the background. For a second, I think it’s coming from Jack’s end of the line.

  Then I distinctly hear my mother say, “I don’t know if it’s him. I just said it was a man. She’s not a teenager anymore. I feel funny asking his name.”

  Oh, crap.

  “Hang on a second,” I tell Jack sweetly. I hold the receiver against my robe and holler, “Ma! Hang up the phone! I got it!”

  I put it back to my ear just in time to hear a clatter, and then silence.

  “That’s better,” I say.

  “Your mother sounded suspicious when I asked for you,” Jack informs me.

  “That’s because she thinks you’re a smooth operator.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. How’s Aspen?”

  “Snowy. How’s Brookside?”

  “Snowier, I bet,” I say, glancing out the window to see a Christmas morning wonderland.

  “I miss you,” Jack says.

  “I miss you, too.”

  “I was thinking I wished I had bought you a Christmas present.”

  Wow.

  Smooth operator or not, too good to be true or not, I’m in love.

  “You gave me that jam,” I point out.

  “Not jam,” he says. “I mean a good present.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I know, but I wish that I had.”

  I smile.

  “Yeah, me, too. I mean, I got all those presents for Myron…I could’ve picked up a little something for you. A football lollypop or something.”

  He laughs. “For the record, I’m a Giants fan.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  We chat for a few minutes more and make plans to see each other as soon as we’re both back in New York.

  I hang up, smiling, thinking that he did give me a Christmas present—and it was the best one I’ve ever received.

  17

  Back in Manhattan, the next few weeks pass in a happy blur.

  Kate is planning her June wedding to Billy, who didn’t give her a ring for Christmas but gave her one at midnight on New Year’s Eve. She called me at my parents’ house first thing the next morning to share the news. I was miserably hungover from too much cheap white Zinfandel at the annual Most Precious Mother church hall bash, but I think I managed to sound thrilled when Kate asked me to be her maid of honor.

  Buckley and Sonja are giving it another go-round. She took back her living-together ultimatum, and he actually told me, over a game of pool last week, that he might consider living with her now that he doesn’t feel so cornered.

  Mike seems to have gotten over the whole Secret Snowflake thing. He even teases me about it now.

  Merry doesn’t, though. Whenever I see her in the elevator or cafeteria, she turns the other way. I doubt she’ll ever speak to me again.

  Raphael, as usual, has a new hairstyle, a new wardrobe and a new boyfriend. This time, it’s Terence, who broke up with Bentley, who refused to laser before the first of the year. I guess he likes his hideous oozing growth better than he likes Terence, which works out well for everyone, particularly Raphael.

  Yvonne is back from her honeymoon, and I have to say marriage agrees with our blushing bride. Okay, granted, the only thing that’s truly blushing about her is her hair, but she’s definitely softened a bit.

  Brenda and Paulie are trying to get pregnant; Latisha and Derek are, too. I asked Latisha if she’d consider getting married first—or ever—and she shrugged and said she doubts it. I’d give anything to be as self-sufficient as she is.

  Speaking of self-sufficiency—rather, my lack of it—Will keeps calling. He’s left me at least five messages about the clothes he’s holding hostage in his apartment.

  I don’t want to see—or even speak to—him until I’ve run it by Dr. Schwartzenbaum, who won’t be available for at least another week. I guess I’m worried that seeing Will after all this time might undo all the progress I’ve made in getting over him.

  And I really am getting over him.

  Mostly because Raphael isn’t the only one who has a new boyfriend.

  Yup, Jack and I are a couple.

  We’ve spent almost every night together since the beginning of January, mostly at his place.

  The problem with my place is that I forgot to pay my bills before I went away, and they shut off the cable. I spent so much on Christmas presents at Wal-Mart that when I got back, I was only able to pay the necessary ones like Con Ed and the telephone. It’ll take me at least until the end of the month to be able to afford cable again.

  So, since Jack and I both like to hang out and watch television at night, we’ve been spending most of our time in Brooklyn. Which is fine, even if Mike’s around—unless Dianne is, too.

  I can see now why she gets on Jack’s nerves. When she’s not being fake-nice, or talking to Mike in this annoying little-girl baby talk, she makes these nasty little digs. Mostly at Mike, but often at Jack and sometimes at me, too.

  Like, she’ll tell me how lucky I am that I can “dress down” for the office when I’m standing there in my best outfit.

  Or she’ll tell me I remind her of someone and she can never remember who, and then Mike will suggest flattering would-be doppelgängers like Sandra Bullock or Parker Posey, and Dianne will say “No!” in an Are you high? tone and I’m left paranoid that she thinks I look like Carnie Wilson pre–stomach-stapling surgery, even though I know that I don’t.

  I’m getting kind of sick of her.

  Jack’s been trying to cook that dinner for me for the past two weekends, and both times Dianne put a wrench in our plans.

  The first time, she accidentally broke the oven dial off the stove and it took almost a week for the landlord to get it fixed.

  Then Jack brought all the groceries once again and we were all set for our romantic dinner, but Dianne got some horrible stomach bug and instead of going skiing with Mike or going home to her mother, spent the weekend lying on the couch while he waited on her.

  Naturally, Mike, Jack and I all caught the bug, too. I spent twenty-four hours in the bathroom, half the time not sure if I should sit or kneel, cursing Dianne all the while.

  “Why don’t you just move?” I ask Jack one night when we’ve barricaded ourselves in his room so we don’t have to play Trivial Pursuit with Mike and Dianne, the self-pro-claimed champion of all board games.

  “I’d love to, but if I move, I’m moving into Manhattan, and I can’t afford to live alone,” he says.

  By now he’s told me all about his parents’ money, and how his father refuses to help support him. It’s pretty much the way Mike said it is, but Jack doesn’t seem to mind. He figures his dad just wants him to make it on his own, the way he did.

  “Well, then, why don’t you get a different roommate?”

  He shrugs. “Most guys I know aren’t interested in a roommate unless it’s a girlfriend.”

  “You could answer one of those roommate-finder ads.”

  “Nah. I don’t want to live with a stranger.”

  “You’d rather live with Dianne? Did you know she called you an asshole behind your back before I even knew you existed?”

  He laughs. “She’s called me one plenty of times to my face, too. I just keep thinking maybe Mike’ll come to his senses and dump her.” He pulls me close and kisses me, then says, “Why don’t you and I move in together?”

  My stomach flip-flops.

  He’s kidding, right?

  I open my eyes.

  It’s hard to tell.

  But he must be. We’ve only known each other six weeks.

  “You’re kidding, right?�
�� I say.

  He hesitates, then says, “Yeah, just kidding.”

  I’d be lying if I said I’m not disappointed.

  But that’s ridiculous.

  I mean, people don’t move in together after a few weeks.

  Well, Billy and Kate did.

  And now they’re getting married.

  But Buckley and Sonja broke up over moving in together after six months.

  And Will wouldn’t live with me after three years.

  So, yeah, of course Jack is kidding.

  Except that he’s not.

  I know this because he suddenly says, “I was lying, Tracey. I wasn’t kidding.”

  I stare at him.

  I have to feign ignorance in case I’m wrong about what he wasn’t kidding about. I say, “Huh?”

  But my heart is pounding.

  “About living together. I wasn’t kidding. My lease is up in April.”

  “But…it’s January.”

  “It’s almost February.”

  “So April is…it’s two months away. Who knows what could happen in two months?”

  “You mean, what if we’re not together?”

  I nod. The thought of us together is still so new that I actually tingle when I hear him acknowledge that we’re a couple.

  “We will be,” he says, oozing confidence.

  “How do you know?”

  He kisses me. More tingles.

  “Tracey, I’ve never felt this way about anybody else.”

  Tingles and goose bumps.

  And my mother’s voice, ominous.

  Smooth operator. Beware.

  “And you told me you’ve never felt this way, either,” he goes on.

  Did I say that?

  Oh, yeah. I guess I did. In a moment of unbridled passion. I assumed he wasn’t paying much attention. Geez, talk about multitasking.

  “I don’t want to scare you off,” he goes on, “but I’m just thinking that if we’re still together in a few months, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t try living together. You’re here or I’m at your apartment every night as it is. Plus, we’re both broke. It would be cheaper to live together and split everything.”

  He does have a point.

  Still…scare me off?

  I’m usually the one who’s scaring people off. I’m usually the one who’s craving a commitment from somebody who’s frantically scrambling toward the Exit sign.

  Suddenly, it’s like I just don’t know how to be in this kind of relationship. I don’t know what to do, and I’m afraid of how I feel.

  Because how I feel is…reckless. I feel like I want to say, “What the hell? Let’s do it.”

  But I can’t throw caution to the wind.

  I can’t, because Inner Tracey won’t let me.

  She keeps screaming at me to be careful. She keeps telling me that I’m so desperate to not be alone that I’m latching on to the first guy to come along since Will.

  “Just think about it, okay?” Jack says over Inner Tracey’s shrill admonishment.

  I am thinking about it.

  I’m thinking I should tell him he’s crazy, and I’d be crazy, too, if I said yes.

  “Will you, Tracey?”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You’d look great in the teal one, too,” Kate says, grabbing a dress off the rack and adding it to the armload of pastel gowns she’s holding.

  We’re in Kleinfeld, a vast bridal salon in Brooklyn. I hear it’s a loony bin on weekends and during their famous annual sales, but the place is pleasantly empty on this slushy Monday morning in late January. Kate convinced me to call in sick, and Jack promised he won’t tell Mike that I’m not.

  He left for a business trip to Seattle early this morning. Jack, not Mike. I miss him already. He won’t be back until Friday night.

  “I look washed-out in teal,” I tell Kate. “I think the red would be best on me. Or black.”

  “My maid of honor can’t wear black,” Kate informs me.

  “People do it all the time.”

  “Yeah, in New York. We’re getting married down South, remember? In June. And there are eight other bridesmaids, who are expecting pink dresses. Or lavender. I can’t put them in black.”

  “Then what about red?”

  Kate makes a face. “Try the teal, Tracey. Please? For me?”

  “Okay.”

  We head toward the dressing rooms. Naturally, Kate the Control-Freak Bride is coming in with me.

  Which I suppose is only fair, since she’s buying my dress for me, since she’s rich and she knows that I’m not and that I have to somehow scrape together plane fare to Alabama for the wedding in June.

  She already bought her dress from a salon in Mobile. She’s flying down every month between now and June for fittings.

  “I’m so stressed out, Trace,” she says, as we step into the dressing room and the saleswoman closes the door behind us. “Don’t ever let anybody tell you six months is enough time to plan a long-distance wedding. It might as well be six weeks.”

  “Speaking of six weeks,” I say, stepping out of my jeans, “Jack wants to move in together.”

  “Here, try this one first.” Kate passes me the hanger holding the teal dress. Then, “What did you say?”

  “I said, Jack wants to move in together.”

  “Is he crazy?”

  “Of course he’s not crazy,” I say, even though I’ve secretly been wondering the same thing.

  “Yes, he is, and so are you if you do it.” Kate’s twang is more pronounced, the way it always is when she’s telling me what I should do.

  And even though I’ve basically told myself exactly what she just said, I retort, “That’s not fair, Kate. I didn’t say you were crazy when you moved in with Billy.”

  “That was different. Billy and I moved in together for different reasons than you would be, Tracey.”

  “How do you know that? What are my reasons?” I pull the dress over my head. The full skirt swishes down over my bare, white, goose-bumpy legs.

  “There’s just one big reason, and it’s that you don’t want to be alone,” she says, zipping the dress up the back for me.

  Ouch. That’s true, and it’s almost as painful as my reflection in the teal dress.

  I may have lost a ton of weight, but every ounce that still clings to my belly, hips and thighs is highlighted by slippery teal satin.

  I grimace at myself in the mirror, and I ask, “Well, who does want to be alone?”

  “I shouldn’t have put it that way. I meant, you think you can’t be alone. You haven’t even given it a try.”

  “So, like, what? I’m just supposed to spend a year hibernating in my apartment before I’m allowed to date?”

  “Of course not. You should date. I’m the one who told you to go out with Jack in the first place, when you didn’t want to. Remember?”

  “Yeah. So why are you changing your tune now, Kate?”

  “Because it’s too soon for you to jump into a permanent relationship, Tracey.” She stands beside me, looking serene and beautiful in her creamy white sweater and trim khaki pants, her pale blond hair pulled back in a simple ponytail.

  Next to her, I look like the jolly teal giant.

  Our eyes meet in the mirror.

  “I can’t wear this, Kate,” I say.

  “No,” she agrees. “You can’t. It looks awful.”

  So do all the others, when I try them on. The pastels are bad; the metallics are worse.

  The saleslady returns to see how we’re doing.

  “None of these are my color,” I tell her.

  “No, they aren’t,” she agrees. “How about red? With your dark hair and those big brown eyes, you’d be gorgeous in a red dress.”

  I don’t dare look at Kate.

  “No red,” she says firmly.

  Yes, but I’d be gorgeous in a red dress.

  I was wearing one the night I met Jack.

  He came over to me
for all the wrong reasons.

  But maybe—just maybe, no matter what anybody says—he stuck around for all the right ones.

  After what happened with Kate, I wasn’t going to tell Brenda, Yvonne or Latisha about Jack wanting us to move in together.

  They might be over the Sexual Steve thing, but they’re not over thinking that I rushed into the relationship with my boss’s roommate. Lately, I tend to downplay to them the fact that I’m still seeing Jack.

  Still, a few days after Kate tells me I’m crazy to consider moving in with him, I find myself spilling the whole story over a margarita lunch with the girls from work. I can’t help it. I need advice, and if you can’t turn to Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum…who can you turn to?

  Your friends, that’s who. They might not tell you what you want to hear, but at this point, I’m not sure what I want to hear.

  “Don’t do it, Tracey,” Yvonne says promptly, in her raspy voice.

  Okay, maybe that’s what I don’t want to hear, because disappointment crashes through me at her words.

  “Why not, Yvonne?”

  “Why tie yourself down at your age? You have plenty of time for that. Stay single as long as you can.”

  Coming from somebody who didn’t get married until years after she got her AARP card, this doesn’t strike me as particularly sound advice.

  “But I really love being with him,” I say, just for the sake of argument.

  And okay, just because it’s true.

  “You can be with him and still have your own place,” Latisha points out.

  “But we’re together all the time anyway. Would you believe that my cable got turned off weeks ago and I haven’t even missed it?”

  They don’t look convinced. Of anything.

  “Plus, I can tell that he really cares about me,” I add.

  “Well, if he cares that much,” Brenda says dubiously, “why doesn’t he just propose?”

  Easy for her to say. The only thing that kept Paulie from proposing right after they met was that he was too young for a driver’s license so he could go to the mall to buy the ring. They were a couple in junior high and engaged not long after high school. In her world, like in Brookside, that’s the norm.

  “It’s too soon for us to even think about getting married, Bren,” I tell her. “It’s only been six weeks.”