The last thing I remember is drinking wine and talking to Cameron. After that, it’s blank. I feel sick.
Did Cameron drink the beers?
I imagine bringing him home to our apartment. I picture us drinking beer and canoodling while Sage sleeps in the next room.
I pace around our apartment trying to think of all the things I should do today:
Work out.
Pay bills.
Pick up dry cleaning.
Figure out whether I’ve cheated on my fiancé.
And all of a sudden, I’m in a shame spiral. I can’t drive. My thighs are fat. I have a drinking problem. I am dishonest and self-serving. I am superficial and shallow. I am mean. I am a fake. I am a fake blond. I am a cheater. I am a disappointment. I am a bad fiancée. A bad sister. A bad daughter. I will no doubt make a horrible mother one day.
But then I have an idea. A great one.
Frantically, I throw open the kitchen cupboards and look for it. And there it is, still in the box. My heart-shaped waffle maker.
I pull it out and plug it in, squint to read the small print on the back of the box. I pour waffle mix in and press down.
And wait.
It seems I wait too long.
The smoke alarm sounds as Sage walks in carrying two brown grocery bags. He always chooses paper over plastic.
I don’t deserve him.
He looks at me, fanning smoke that pours from his Valentine’s gift, and laughs. He hops up on the kitchen island and pulls the smoke alarm from the ceiling and removes the batteries.
I look up at him. “I wanted to make you breakfast,” I say.
He hops down, pulls a package of bacon from a grocery bag, and kisses me on the forehead. “We both know that making breakfast is better left to the expert.”
The smell of smoke fades slowly and I stand in the kitchen watching our little flat-screen while Sage cooks. Bacon crackles. Wolf Blitzer pontificates.
We spend the morning fighting each other for space on our striped couch, that prudent love seat the perky chick from Pottery Barn insisted wouldn’t show spots, my head on one end, his on the other, our legs intertwined under our navy cashmere blanket, a big plate of crisp bacon and our cat balanced between us.
Sage lets me watch silly television, weekend gossip round-ups, and a Saturday Night Live rerun. As I begin to doze off, he turns the channel to some nature program.
“What time did you get home? I didn’t hear you come in.”
I don’t have an answer for him. I fight back tears. “Late,” I say, trying to be casual about it, awaiting further inquisition.
“My little party animal,” he says, and tickles my foot.
“I think I drink too much,” I say, crying, competing with a family of grizzlies for my fiancé’s attention.
He looks at me and pauses. “I think you might be right.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” I bark, sitting up straight. He’s been coached for these situations. “What about Yes, Bug, you drink a lot but you’re Irish?”
“What about honesty?” he says. “What about telling it like it is instead of following a self-serving script?”
I am silent.
“She lost one of her cubs,” he explains, pointing at the screen.
“Maybe she’s an alcoholic,” I say. “Ergo a delinquent mother.”
“You slept in a pair of damp nylons and have a hangover, Bug. It’s not the end of the world,” he says, choosing his words clumsily or, perhaps, all-too-honestly, rubbing my back, watching those grizzlies bound through the woods.
“I just wish I had more control over things,” I say. “I wish I could have done something.”
“Things happen that are out of our control and all we can do is react,” Sage says, sounding a little bit wise and a little like a fortune cookie.
“Thanks, Confucius,” I say, and force a smile.
Things happen.
Things happen that are out of our control and all we can do is react. I think of Cameron’s fumbling fingers. I think of Dad, his untimely last swallow of espresso. He loved espresso; the tiny cup, the no-nonsense unfluffy blackness. I look at the lost cub, a lone shaking blob of black amidst a sea of green.
Maybe Dad had it right all along. We’re animals. Am I really any different than that scared little cub?
We’re in the business of surviving and dying.
My phone rings. Sage hands it to me. “It’s Kayla,” he says.
Kayla. My brain does a U-turn.
“I’m not in the mood,” I say, and let the phone ring.
In the kitchen, I check my voice mail. Kayla’s message blares from my phone
“Quinn, my friend, um, just calling to see if my little bitch is alive and kicking this morning after last night. It seems like you were enjoying yourself with your new, um, friend. Call me. Need to know. Don’t leave me hanging or I’ll track you down. Love ya.”
Sage stands there, in the door of the kitchen, looking at me. I’m pretty sure he heard the message. “Everything okay?”
“Nothing a few strips of bacon won’t solve,” I say, and force a smile.
He looks at me for a minute and then gets up and walks toward the kitchen. Hula follows. He stops and turns. “Get dressed.”
I love being told what to do. Like a child. It’s easier that way. It’s not just men who crave instructions. We all do.
I don’t ask any questions. I escape to the bedroom and pull on a pair of his plaid pajama bottoms and my boots, grab my coat and hat.
Outside, it’s still snowing.
“We should shovel the sidewalk before someone sues us,” I say.
Sage ignores me, takes my hand, and drags me down the block. Children with pink cheeks are laughing and crying, dragging sleds, throwing snowballs.
We stop at the corner and wait for the light to change. An older woman stands next to us, her graying blond hair peeking out from a knit cap. She looks at me and then Sage and smiles. Maybe strangers do smile. Even here.
When we get to the park, he drags me to a virgin patch of snow—pure, white, untouched—and he pushes me down to the ground. The snow, a soft pillow, catches us. He kisses me, his lips cold, his whiskers rough.
“It’s a good day for angels,” he says.
And here we are, two adults acting like kids. Tummies full of bacon, heads free of worry, we flop our arms and legs about in freshly fallen snow.
Chapter 12
It’s Monday again. I can no longer deny there’s a world outside my door, a world that might house an answer or two I don’t want to hear. I must shower and dress like a normal person, a person who’s not suffering a cancerous breed of guilt.
This morning is business as usual. We juggle the carton of one-percent between our respective cereal bowls and coffee mugs, and trade newspapers after ten-minute intervals.
Out the window, across the street, schoolchildren wearing precariously low-riding pants wait for school to start. They gather in clusters, clutching greasy paper bags from the corner deli.
Sitting here with my mate, swimming in international news and stock quotes while drinking fancy coffee, I feel painfully adult. I long for the days when I would trek down the street to school, eager to show the girls my new pair of cowboy boots, nervous for my algebra quiz, eager for my afternoon soccer game versus our biggest rival.
We don’t speak much. But this can be very normal for us. This morning, though, our silence is loaded. I am taking it all in and trying to wake up, to soak in the new day, the new beginning.
“I hate Mondays,” I say.
“Everyone hates Mondays,” Sage says, and sips his coffee.
Sage’s phone rings, and it’s his mother. He answers, goes into the bedroom, and shuts the door.
The thought of going to work makes my stomach turn. Most Monday mornings, as dreadful as they are in their capitalistic yuppie monotony, at least I know what to expect: streets crowded with people in the mild throes of low-level mise
ry, people sleepwalking their way toward a corporate destination somewhere in the morass of midtown, loading themselves with enough caffeine to float them to Tuesday.
But today’s different. I imagine the worst: whispers in the hallway, gossipy e-mails bouncing around the office like an invisible and deadly boomerang.
Gossip is fun. Really fun, sometimes. Okay, most of the time. But gossip is not fun when it’s about you. It just isn’t. Sure, it’s a release from the plague of seriousness that has swept over us in the corporate, responsible world. Gossip is rooted in ancient forms of storytelling, Mom told me once when I caught her with Star magazine. I think it’s even fine to talk about Britney Spears, even sink as low as engaging in the breast implant debate. It’s all an innocuous breather from the stress of our wrinkling existences.
Before he leaves for work, Sage kisses me on the forehead. I’m still in my robe. “Have a good day, Bug. Say hello to Kayla and your new, um, friend.” He looks me in the eye, searching for something I won’t yet give him.
“I love you,” I say, as if these three words, like bacon and snow angels, can patch a shredding moment.
When I walk into my office, I see a single rose floating in a plastic cup. A purple Post-it is stuck to my desk next to the cup.
“I had fun.” That’s all it says. The three words are hardly cryptic, but intriguing in their English-as-a-second-language simplicity.
I feel a hand on my shoulder.
Cameron. He towers over me, managing to look masculine in his wrinkle-free lavender button-down. For a moment, I’m living in my own little purple nightmare.
“Quinn. How are you?” he says, looking past me.
“Fine, you?” I say, and wish he would go away and come back in ten minutes so I could prep a little. Come up with a few witty one-liners, a clever way to figure out what happened between us. But he’s not going anywhere.
Unfortunately, you cannot prepare for life like you can a deposition.
“Nice flower you’ve got there,” he says. And just as I think I hear his voice crack and conclude that he’s just as nervous as I am, he starts singing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” And not quietly either.
“Gotta love Poison,” I say.
“Gotta love red roses,” he says.
“Guess I have you to thank, cowboy?”
“Not me,” he says. “Guess you have more than one admirer. One smarter than me, what with the sub rosa Post-it. Genius. Did you know the Post-it was an accidental invention? And that guy is loaded. Beats this shit.”
I study the handwriting on the Post-it. Kayla. Why would she do this? This isn’t funny.
“Oh, I know who’s behind this. She’s perfectly insane,” I say.
“Kayla?”
“Yeah. How did you know?” I ask.
“She came by my office this morning and was joking around with me about how obliterated we all were and how I was being a bad boy. She said that you were pretty shaken up and that I should come talk to you.”
“So here you are.”
“Here I am,” he says.
Leave it to Kayla to meddle. Leave it to Kayla to orchestrate the postcoital “discussion,” where we make only intermittent eye contact, where we hurl meaningless sentence fragments back and forth at each other waiting for it all to end.
“Don’t worry. Nothing happened,” he says.
“Good. The end of my night was, well, kind of fuzzy. When Kayla said that we left the bar together, I guess you could say I panicked…”
“Yeah, we did leave together. You wanted to go to McDonald’s. So we went across the street from the bar. You gobbled up a Happy Meal and drank my milk shake. It was very sexy,” he says, chuckles, and runs his fingers through his blond hair. I’m pretty sure he blows it dry.
“Nuggets?” I ask.
He nods. He can’t be making this stuff up because it sounds just like me. For some reason when I drink I crave my childhood favorites. Mom used to take Michael and me to McDonald’s when Dad was on call.
Momentarily, I feel better about things. Nothing happened.
“So nothing happened?” I need for him to say it again.
“No. You went on and on about Sage, about how much you love him, how he is such a terrific guy, and how you think he will be a good dad someday. It was pretty inspiring, actually. Don’t tell the guys I said any of this. I will lose my manly edge if they find out that I spent the night having a heart-to-heart with you, acting like your sorority sister listening to you sap it up. It would be very emasculating. There I was thinking you were having naughty thoughts about me and you jabbered on and on about another guy,” Cameron says, smiling.
“I’ve never quite thought of my fiancé as another guy. Guess that’s a good thing,” I say. “I owe you a milk shake though.”
“I’ll hold you to that. And no regrets. There are worse things than spending a night in the company of a pretty girl,” he says, and smiles. Flirtation was probably taught at his high school.
Cameron turns to leave. “Well, I better get going and get some work done. I’m hoping to escape for poker night with the guys.”
“Better go then,” I say.
Just as he’s about to disappear, Cameron returns. “Oh, I forgot one thing that happened.”
“Oh?”
“At McDonald’s, you kept talking about some fishing boat and kept saying one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That you miss him,” Cameron says, and looks down. And no doubt assumes I was talking about Dad.
And maybe I was.
Chapter 13
Spring in Manhattan is like breasts in a sports bar; longed for and bound to arrive—at some point. You never know when, but if you wait long enough, it will come. And it might not hang out, but sure enough it makes its cameo.
Scarves hit storage. Smiles reappear. Bundled and sleepy New Yorkers begin to buzz again, to trade in deep glasses of cozy Merlot for oversweetened mojitos, puffy parkas for blazers of suede, hot coffee for iced.
Another Monday. I walk to the gym and sense someone behind me. I turn and see Avery. She sips water, smiles big, and skips over to me.
“Time to get serious,” she says and hugs me. “No one likes a bride with fat arms.”
“Good point,” I say. And wonder how a human being can be so damned chipper at this early hour, so infused with optimism about life and commitment and, well, everything, even toning up flabby arms (which she doesn’t even have).
We walk toward the gym. People are already sporting sandals.
“It’s a bit early for toenails, don’t you think?” I say. The toenails tell it all; who’s on her game. Are they yellow and gnarly? An inch too long? Or polished with the season’s most vibrant coral for their reveal?
Avery shrugs. “I don’t know about that. I’m all for embracing the new season.”
And she’s right. It’s a shiny new season. Restaurants set up outdoor dining, lining up rickety plastic tables and chairs and erecting precarious and soiled umbrellas. Ice cream trucks park on select street corners, ring with childhood bells, and remind us of warm weather delights we once had time to appreciate.
White snow disappears and yellow slush melts and cherry blossoms perk; a snapshot of nature amidst the ubiquitous man-made.
“I feel queasy,” I say. “I never knew you could be hungover for two days.”
And Avery, perfect and happy Avery, emits a string of judgment-free giggles.
Together, we walk into the gym, childhood friends, two brides on a mission.
The locker room is filled with new bodies. Everyone wants to be skinny by Memorial Day and they’ve pinned all their hopes on this place.
Avery affectionately squeezes my biceps, reminding me that my arms aren’t Madonna-buff yet either, and disappears to her corner treadmill.
I take a few large swigs of my coffee, burnt but drinkable, and scan the gym for Victor. I spot him by the Cybex machines and walk over. He loads weights onto the machine.
“Hi,” I say, gulping coffee, begging the caffeine to start flowing through my floppy limbs.
Victor looks me up and down and doesn’t do a very good job of concealing his disappointment. His glare speaks volumes; it’s spring already and I’ve only lost two pounds.
“What?” I ask, hoping he goes easy on the honesty. He hands me a forty-pound barbell.
“Dead lifts,” he says, ignoring my question.
“Why are they called dead lifts?” I say, lifting and lowering the weight to the ground.
“Because if you do them the wrong way, they’ll kill you. But if you do them the right way, they’ll kill you.”
“Lovely. Seriously, why are they called dead lifts?”
“Someone took a curiosity pill,” he says, resting his hand on my lower back. “If you really want to know, they’re called that because you’re squatting to pick something off the floor, a dead weight.”
“I liked your first explanation better,” I say, finishing my last rep.
“It’s a very functional, practical lift. They say it prepares you for ‘real life,’ for picking up groceries, a laundry basket, a child.”
“Screw practicality and real life, prepare me for my wedding day. I don’t want muscles to scoop up a toddler. I want to look good.”
“Do you really?” Victor asks.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. It just seems like you’re more a fan of the forklift these days.”
“Cheers,” I say. But he’s right.
The gym is packed. Bodies have emerged from hiding. Winter flab is no longer kosher.
“This year’s seventeen-minute members have arrived,” Victor says, looking around at all the new faces. These creatures think a short spin on the stationary bike will make the swimsuit look better come summer.
“Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I were delusional like that. Having a firm grip on reality is exhausting.”
Victor laughs. “You are plenty delusional.”
Life After Yes Page 12
