I'm So Happy for You

by Lucinda Rosenfeld

  “Ohmygod, I’m so glad I reached you.”

  “Daphne?” said Wendy. It sounded like Daphne’s voice, albeit dumped in a vat of honey.

  “You’re still furious at me, aren’t you?” said Daphne.

  “Forget about it—really,” Wendy told her.

  “Really?” said Daphne.

  “Really,” said Wendy.

  “I’m so beyond relieved you’re saying that. So, how are you?”

  “Since you asked, terrible,” said Wendy. “I got my period again this morning. I feel like I’m never going to get pregnant. Plus, I feel like I can’t talk about it with Adam anymore. He just gets mad at me for not being happy with what we have.” Admitting her frustration to Daphne made Wendy feel as if a huge load had been lifted off her back.

  “SWEEEEEETIE!” cried Daphne. “First of all, you’re totally going to get pregnant. It just takes a while at our age. And then you’re going to completely forget about this whole period of your life. In the meantime, OF COURSE you must be dying of frustration. Anybody would be—except maybe a Zen Buddhist. I mean, we’re goal oriented. That’s just who we are. Forget about Adam. Just talk to me. Men never understand this stuff anyway.”

  But Daphne understood. Or seemed to understand.

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Wendy, feeling better by the second. “I mean, I hope you’re right.”

  “Believe me, I’m completely and utterly right.”

  “Anyway. How are you?”

  Daphne let out a mellifluous sigh before she announced in a singsongy voice an octave higher than normal, “Well, I’m in love. And no, not with Mitch. I met someone. I’m actually at his apartment right now.”

  In love—since Monday? “You’re kidding!” said Wendy, as startled as she was suspicious. “That’s amazing.”

  “No, he’s amazing,” said Daphne, lowering her voice to connote the seriousness of the situation. “I mean, he’s possibly the greatest person ever—like maybe in the history of mankind.”

  Was Daphne dating Jesus? Gandhi? Hugo Chávez? “My god,” said Wendy. “Who is he?”

  Daphne’s voice returned to the soprano range. “Well, his name is Jonathan. He’s a lawyer. He’s thirty-seven. Never married. Jewish—you know me!” She laughed. “Most importantly? He’s literally the sweetest man I’ve ever met. I mean, he’s beyond sweet.”

  “And you met him where?”

  “Mortifyingly enough, at the gym. I mean, we’d seen each other there before, but we’d never spoken or anything. At least, I don’t remember speaking to him. Though he swears he told me I left my water bottle on the Lifecycle or something a few months ago and I thanked him. But whatever. Tuesday morning, we were on adjacent treadmills, and we started talking. And we’ve basically spent every waking hour together since then.”

  “That’s insane!” said Wendy, still struggling to believe. Daphne had the worst taste in men of anyone Wendy knew. Rich, married, arrogant, obnoxious, and over forty-five was her usual formula. She’d also seen Daphne rush into “serious” relationships before, only to find that they were flings at best, and cruel jokes at worst. Wendy didn’t know if she had the energy to see her through another disappointment, another punch line that wasn’t all that funny. “So you think it’s for real?” Wendy knew as soon as she’d said it that it had been an unsupportive thing to say.

  Daphne’s voice sharpened. “What do you mean, do I think it’s for real? I know it’s for real!”

  “Well, it’s very exciting,” said Wendy, anxious to make amends.

  “Thanks, Wen,” said Daphne, sounding wary if marginally less defensive.

  “Of course—”

  “So anyway, listen to this. Yesterday, Jonathan gave me this silver tennis bracelet from Tiffany’s, engraved with both of our initials and the date we met. How insane is that?”

  “Insane.”

  “I mean, it was literally the corniest present anyone’s ever given me. But at the same time—honestly?—I was practically crying when he gave it to me.”

  “My god, he must be incredibly in love with you already,” declared Wendy, suddenly feeling defensive on her own account. It had been years since Adam had given her any jewelry. Now that she thought about it, he’d never given her any jewelry, other than her wedding band, which—now that she thought about that—they’d ordered together (Adam had gotten a matching one) and paid for jointly. Actually, Wendy had paid, and Adam, who had no savings at the time, had promised to pay her back for at least half the cost—a promise that had become moot after they got married and merged bank accounts. Not that he’d accumulated any savings since then.

  “Well, I don’t know how in love with me he is,” said Daphne. “But, at the risk of jinxing things, I honestly think this might be it. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about anyone.”

  “Well, it’s great news,” said Wendy. And it was. Wasn’t it? If Daphne was to be believed, she’d finally broken free of Mitch’s grip. What’s more, from how Daphne had described him, Jonathan Sonnenberg was precisely the kind of man who Wendy and her friends had been exhorting Daphne to date. He was available, he was age appropriate, and with any luck, he was not dependent on antipsychotic medication that he occasionally forgot to take.

  Yet there was an unreality to Daphne’s voice and words that Wendy felt somehow irked by. Only seven days earlier, after all, Daphne had been threatening suicide. From the way she was acting now, it was as if Mitchell Kroker had never existed—and that, by association, Wendy hadn’t spent hundreds of hours of her life listening to Daphne prattle on about the guy.

  Or was Wendy being ungenerous, petty, even? No doubt Daphne was in the myopic first throes of, if not love, then at least infatuation, when the world receded from view leaving nothing in its place but the two of you. Wendy recalled having briefly inhabited this particular desert island with Adam, although she could no longer remember what the sand had felt like beneath her feet.

  “Well, I can’t wait for you to meet him,” Daphne was saying.

  “Well, I can’t wait to meet him!” said Wendy.

  “Maybe the four of us could meet for dinner next week? We could even come out to Brooklyn—”

  “That would be great,” lied Wendy, who reserved a special dread of group restaurant expeditions, if only because someone always ordered three appetizers and four times as much alcohol as everyone else and then, when the check came, suggested they split the bill evenly.

  “Terrific,” said Daphne. “Why don’t you talk to Adam and I’ll talk to Snugs and then we’ll talk again in a day or two.”

  “Snugs?” said Wendy, knowing full well to whom Daphne was referring. It just seemed unfair that Daphne should have an “adorable” inside-joke nickname for the guy after six days.

  “Oh, sorry!” Daphne giggled. “That’s my little pet name for Jonathan. He’s so into cuddling that I started calling him Snuggle Bunny. Then it got shortened to Snuggle, then Snugs.”

  “It’s very cute,” said Wendy, reminding herself that she had an affectionate nickname for Adam, too: Mr. Potato Head. Though hers was critical as well as affectionate, insofar as its origin lay in what she deemed to be the beginning of jowls on her husband’s face.

  Adam had a new nickname for Wendy, as well: Pope Wendy, because, according to him, just like the pope, she was “only interested in sex for procreation.” With every new menstrual cycle that failed to produce an embryo, Wendy found the joke a little less funny.

  After Wendy hung up the phone, she went into the living room, where Adam sat on their pilling Ikea sofa, Polly panting at his feet, and said, “Hey.” She was excited to tell him Daphne’s news. She thought he’d be excited, too. Some insecure part of her thought he’d be less likely to leave her if she kept the stories coming. She was mad at him also—for never buying her a bracelet. She was mad at herself, as well, for caring about something as superficial as jewelry.

  “Huh,” Adam grunted without looking up.

  Wendy s
at down next to him and folded her arms across her chest, a signal of irritation she knew he’d fail to notice. There were crumbs everywhere, which annoyed her further. Why couldn’t he keep the chips in his mouth? She figured she’d let that complaint go, too. What was the use? Adam was a slob; that was just who he was.

  He was watching The Twilight Zone. It was that famous episode where a guy on an airplane looks out the window and sees a boogey man balanced on the wing. All the flight attendants think he’s crazy because every time they look, the boogey man disappears. Then the station switched to a low-budget commercial for a nearby Hyundai dealership. Bunting filled the screen. Rebates were promised. “So, Daphne met someone,” Wendy began. “Some lawyer guy who’s madly in love with her and already got her an engraved bracelet from Tiffany’s.”

  “Let me guess,” said Adam. “This one isn’t quite as married as the last one, though, technically, he’s still married.”

  “You’re so hilarious,” Wendy replied as she frequently did—only with more aggression. As if he wasn’t actually that hilarious.

  But if Adam detected anger in her voice, he ignored it. “Any chance you want to make us eggs?” he said, his nose suddenly burrowed in her neck.

  “Make your own damn eggs!” she said, pushing him away.

  “Purty please. I’ll have sex with you every day next month—”

  The tears came on suddenly, collected in the corners of her eyes, where they shimmied like disco dancers. “I got my period this morning,” she choked out.

  “That was pretty obvious,” said Adam.

  “How did you know?!” asked Wendy, an octave higher than normal. Just like Daphne. (She was still shocked by how well her husband could tell what she was thinking, even when he didn’t appear to know she was alive.)

  “Because you’ve been moping around the house ever since you woke up,” he answered. “And now you’re upset that Daphne found another married guy to buy her some heinous ankle bracelet from Tiffany’s.”

  “It was a regular bracelet, not an ankle bracelet!”

  “Same thing.”

  “You’re such a Mr. Potato Head,” declared Wendy. But now she was laughing, too—laughing and dabbing at her eyes with the backs of her hands and nestling into the crook of Adam’s arm, and thinking that things weren’t so bad after all. Daphne Uberoff wasn’t such a bad friend. Adam Schwartz wasn’t such a bad husband, either. (She loved their private, nonsensical language, too.) And if there wasn’t much romance left to their romance—and he didn’t currently earn a living wage—he had a special talent for making upsetting things seem amusing. And that was something—really, more than something.

  And when she woke before dawn, as she frequently did, her mind agitating preemptively with the dread of being unable to fall back asleep—moreover, of feeling that she’d never make up the hours, never catch up—she’d press her chest and belly into the back of his T-shirt, letting his body warm hers and his heartbeat reset her own.

  “And you’re my special Pope Wen,” said Adam with a quick squeeze. “But can we talk about it in a few minutes?” (The show was back on.)

  The news of Daphne’s burgeoning romance spread rapidly through the social circle that she and Wendy shared, with reactions ranging from cautious optimism to outright euphoria. The general feeling was that Jonathan, whoever he turned out to be, couldn’t be any worse than Mitch. Wendy took no small measure of pride in knowing that she’d be the first to meet him. The four of them (Wendy, Daphne, Adam, and Jonathan) had made plans to meet for dinner the following Thursday, at a bistro in Fort Greene.

  The restaurant had been Wendy’s idea. She and Maura had eaten there several times over the summer—or at least Wendy had eaten and Maura had watched her do so. The food was casual French. The decor was funky. The lighting was dim but not too dim. Most significantly to Wendy, the prices were reasonable. It was also loud enough in there to fill any gaps that arose in the conversation. (Wendy expected there might be a few.) She was further hoping that Adam would get a kick out of the waitstaff, which was composed of extremely attractive Quebecois lesbians. Adam preferred diners to restaurants, and eating at home on the sofa while watching TV to both. He’d also expressed “zero interest” in meeting Jonathan. And Wendy was always feeling guilty about dragging him places, even though it seemed to her that they never went anywhere. “I really owe you one for this,” she told him as they took their seats on what appeared to be a church pew, beneath a vintage poster for Courvoisier depicting a cancan girl in a fur stole and nothing else.

  “You can pay me back in sexual favors,” said Adam.

  “There’s something in your hair,” said Wendy, ignoring the provocation.

  “What?” He ran a hand through his curly mop. Several seconds later, it emerged with the crumbling remnants of a maple leaf.

  “Did you and Poll go to the park today?” she asked.

  “The park?” He wrinkled his brow. “No. Why?”

  “I was just wondering how the leaf got there,” Wendy said, shrugging.

  Adam shrugged, too, as he ground the remains of the leaf into his hand. “Must have fallen from the sky,” he said. He took a sip from his water glass. He looked around. Then he said, “Damn, the waitresses are really hot here. Are you sure they’re lesbians?”

  “You’re turning into a dirty old man,” said Wendy.

  “Turning?” he said.

  Wendy flashed back to their first date, if you could call it that. The two of them had met at his favorite coffee shop, a hole in the wall on Thompson Street in Manhattan, where they’d sat on a bench out front, smoking cigarettes that Adam had rolled for them in tissue-thin Drum papers and talking about their jobs (Wendy was an editorial assistant at The Village Voice; Adam was a production assistant at i.Guide.com) and their childhoods (from what Wendy could gather, Adam’s had been happier than hers). After their first kiss—later in the hour, on that same bench—he’d turned to her and said, “It’s cool hanging out with you.” Maybe it wasn’t the most romantic line ever uttered.

  Somehow, Wendy had been touched. Somehow, she still was.

  Maybe it was the distinctive way Daphne walked or, really, slinked, her hips forward, her back straight, her shoulders slightly rounded—the lower half of her body seemed to move without the assistance of the top—but as soon as she entered any room, Wendy had always been able to spot her. That evening was no exception. “Here they are,” she said, as the brown velvet curtain that separated the dining room from the door billowed behind two slim figures.

  Upon closer inspection, Daphne was wearing a low-cut beige tunic sweater and a pair of off-white jeans that hugged her thighs. Her hair was dark, her skin was pale to the point of translucent, her eyes were the same color as Windex. After all these years, her beauty still startled.

  Jonathan Sonnenberg turned out to be an equally handsome specimen of Homo sapiens. He had bright brown eyes, a sculpted chin, the same glossy black hair as Daphne, and the smooth, tan complexion of someone who’d been well taken care of in life. He was wearing an expensive-looking navy blue suit jacket over a crisp white oxford shirt with French cuffs. His hair was parted on the side and formed a swoosh over his forehead. As he approached the table, his mouth was raised in a smile that suggested amusement at some larger irony to which the rest of them were unlikely ever to be privy.

  “I’m so, so sorry we’re late,” Daphne began breathlessly. “We literally couldn’t find a cab anywhere!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Wendy. She stood up to hug Daphne hello. Then she turned to Jonathan. “Hi, I’m Wendy,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you.”

  “Jonathan Sonnenberg,” he replied while making slippery contact with her right hand. “And a pleasure it is.”

  “And this is my husband, Adam Schwartz.” Wendy motioned to her right.

  “Hello, and I like the T-shirt,” said Jonathan in a mocking tone.

  “Thank you,” said Adam with an exaggerated smile that clearly be
lied offense.

  Wendy felt embarrassed and vindicated in equal parts. Before dinner, she and Adam had argued over his choice of garb. Wendy had suggested he wear a collared shirt; Adam had insisted on donning his favorite faded blue T-shirt that read “Women Love Me, Fish Fear Me,” a memento from the summer he’d spent in Alaska after college, working on a salmon boat. The previous year, Wendy had hid the shirt in the linen closet between two towels—with any luck, a first stop on the road to Goodwill. But Adam had ransacked the apartment until he’d found it.

  “Well, I am so happy we’re all here!” Daphne announced with her usual effusiveness. “And Wen—you look so great. I swear you get younger looking every year.”

  “Oh, please,” said Wendy, waving away the compliment even as she basked in its aura.

  “I understand you’re turning twenty-eight this month,” said Jonathan.

  Wendy couldn’t tell if he was flattering her or making fun of her. “Twenty-seven—please,” she answered gamely, willing to give him the benefit of her doubt.

  In time, a small woman with long bangs appeared with menus. “To drink?” she asked brusquely before they’d even had a chance to open them.

  “I’ll have a glass of the sauvignon,” said Wendy, after confirming that it was the cheapest selection on the white-wines-by-the-glass list.

  “That sounds perfect! One of those for me, too,” said Daphne—to Wendy’s relief. (Wendy had expected Daphne to order the eleven-dollar glass of Sancerre, oblivious as she’d always been to the cost of living.)

  “And I’ll have a Heineken,” said Adam.

  It was Jonathan’s turn. His lips pressed together as if he were about to whistle, he reviewed the menu while Bangs lowered her lids over her eyes—or at least what was visible of them—as if she were about to fall asleep from boredom. Finally, he looked up and asked, “Do you have any American beer?”

  “This is a French restaurant,” the waitress answered tartly. “We have no American beer.”

  “But you have German beer,” Jonathan pointed out.