Slightly Single

by Wendy Markham

  Maybe it isn’t.

  All I know is that Will falls asleep immediately afterward, curled up on his side of the bed.

  And I lie awake, listening to his even breathing and the hum of the air-conditioner and the faint sounds of the street below.

  Eight

  The alarm goes off at dawn.

  Will bolts out of bed.

  I roll over, pretending to drift back to sleep…as if I’ve actually been asleep.

  Pretending I’m not on the verge of falling apart, crying…or even worse, begging him to stay.

  Through narrow slits in my eyes, I watch him scurry around in the milky-gray light, listening to the rush of the water while he’s in the shower and his bustling in the kitchen as he pours a glass of orange juice and a bowl of cereal.

  He thinks I’m sleeping, so he tiptoes around, quietly opening and closing drawers, cupboards, the fridge.

  I hear him crunching his cereal, gulping his juice.

  Zipping his jeans, spritzing cologne.

  Running water in the bathroom, brushing his teeth for the second time.

  Lifting his bag, jingling his keys.

  He bends over me, his cologne wafting to my nostrils, his breath warm on my cheek. “I have to leave now, Trace.”

  “Hmm?” I pretend to come awake slowly.

  “I have to go. To catch my train. The spare key is on the kitchen counter.”

  Right.

  I’m supposed to give it to James the doorman.

  “Help yourself to whatever you want for breakfast. Just don’t leave dishes in the sink, okay?”

  I bristle at that.

  Does he really think I’d be that much of a clod, leaving dishes in the sink for Nerissa to do when she gets back?

  I open my mouth to snap at him when he bends over and kisses me.

  I quickly close my mouth against his lips, conscious of his minty-fresh breath and my dragon breath.

  “I’ll miss you, Trace,” he says, and then he’s on his way out the door, calling softly over his shoulder, “I’ll call you when I get settled.”

  Yeah.

  I cry into my pillow after he’s gone, until my eyes are boiling and sore and my hairline is wet and sticky and my nasal passages ache.

  Then I get up, make the soggy bed and take a long shower.

  After I’m dressed, I smoke a few cigarettes, flushing the butts down the toilet. But I don’t bother to spray the potpourri-scented air freshener that I know Will keeps under the sink. Why should I? He’s gone until September.

  And who cares if Nerissa comes back and smells stale smoke?

  In the kitchen, I make myself half a pot of coffee, then scramble a couple of eggs in butter while it brews, thinking the coffee might wake me up and that the eggs will settle my churning stomach.

  Nothing helps.

  After eating and sipping, I still feel exhausted and nauseous. So nauseous that I do a less than perfect job of cleaning up my dirty dishes. So let Nerissa sue me.

  After packing my clothes from the last two days into my shoulder bag—and purposely leaving my toothbrush in the holder above the sink where I always keep it, though Will’s is now gone—I walk out the door, locking it behind me.

  James is in the lobby, gorgeous and broad-shouldered in his navy uniform. “How are you today?” he asks. He doesn’t know my name. That’s never bothered me until now. Now I want more than anything to belong here, in Will’s building. In Will’s life.

  “I’ve been better,” I say as I hand him the key. “This is for Will’s roommate.”

  “Nerissa,” he says, nodding.

  Well, of course he knows her name. She lives here.

  And right now, I loathe her more than ever.

  Maybe that doesn’t make sense. She’s just his roommate, but I’m his girlfriend.

  Stepping out onto the sidewalk is like stepping into a dryer that’s just stopped spinning. A wall of hot air hits me head-on.

  There’s no sun, just an overcast gray sky beyond the towering buildings. But the heat is oppressive already, and it’s not even nine o’clock yet.

  It’s not even July yet.

  July is weeks away.

  And after the whole month of July, I have to get through all of August, too, before Will is home and my life is back to normal.

  I light a cigarette and take a deep drag.

  For some reason, despite my roiling gut and throbbing head, that makes me feel better.

  Being jostled and jolted on the downtown N train doesn’t.

  When I emerge onto Broadway in the East Village, I check my watch and realize that Will’s long been on his train. Right now, he’s probably already an hour or more north of New York City.

  I picture him sitting there, looking out the window at the passing scenery, and I wonder if he’s thinking about me.

  Somehow I sense that he isn’t.

  No, he’s undoubtedly thinking about what lies ahead.

  And so should I.

  With that, I remember that this was supposed to be the first day on the path toward a new me—a slimmer new me.

  Scrambled eggs in butter—what a way to kick off the diet.

  Then again…

  Isn’t that what you’re supposed to eat on those high-protein diets?

  That’s what I’ll do, I decide, quickening my pace when I spot the Food Emporium on the next corner. I’ll go stock up on protein, and I’ll be on a low-carb diet.

  In the supermarket, I grab a basket.

  Here is what I buy:

  Hot dogs.

  Eggs.

  Bacon.

  Beef jerky—teriyaki and hickory flavored.

  Cheese—Muenster and Monterey Jack, although the only difference, as far as I can tell, is the orange stuff. What is the orange stuff, anyway?

  In my protein-snatching frenzy I almost add a package of frozen fried chicken, until I realize that the breading makes it off-limits. Damn.

  Well, no diet is perfect.

  I charge the groceries on my Visa since I’ve got fifteen dollars to last me the three days till payday.

  My apartment, when I reach it, is stifling and has taken on an unfamiliar smell in my absence. Actually, it’s familiar in the sense that this is what the place smelled like the first time I entered it. A blend of Ajax cleanser and cat pee and a faint hint of curry. Now there’s also stale cigarette smoke in the mix.

  Ick.

  Needing fresh air, I open the one window, which overlooks the street. Now I can breathe, but my ears are assaulted by the sounds of a teenaged girl arguing with her boyfriend four stories below. She keeps shouting rapid-fire accusations at him, interrupted by his unintelligible protests, mostly punctuated by frequent Yo’s. Sometimes there are double Yo’s, as in “Yo, Yo, I never said that!” and “Yo, Yo, back off, dude.”

  I assume she’s the one he’s calling Dude, but at that point, I look down to make sure nobody else is involved. All I need is for a brawl to erupt under my window.

  Finally, all is silent below. Well, not silent. There’s still the usual city commotion, but the argument seems to have come to an end.

  I look down and see the happy couple entwined in each other’s arms, more or less having sex on somebody’s stoop. Lovely.

  Now what?

  The apartment is cluttered with books and magazines and last weekend’s newspaper, and I realize that it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to read anything.

  Recalling my vow to read the classics this summer, I make a stack of all the paperbacks lying around waiting to be read. Then I shove the Mary Higgins Clark and the James Patterson under the futon, and I put the latest Joyce Carol Oates on my pillow. It might not be a classic, but it’s the most literary thing in my current library.

  Then I unpack my purchases in the tiny kitchen area, realizing that I’m hungry already. So I throw a couple—okay, four—hot dogs in a frying pan with a small amount of butter.

  While they cook, I check my answering machine.
r />   There are three messages.

  Maybe Will called from the train, I think, as I press the button and hear the tape rewind.

  A beep, and then the first message:

  “Hi, Tracey, it’s me,” Raphael’s voice announces. “Kate and I want to take you to lunch on Sunday. We know Will’s leaving. Call me to make plans.”

  Another beep, and then the second message:

  “Hey, Trace, Raphael and I want to take you to lunch on Sunday so you won’t be too depressed about Will leaving. Call me.”

  Another beep. Message number three:

  “Tracey, are you all right? Mom says you haven’t called her in more than a week. She’s worried. Call me or her and let us know you’re okay. Love you.”

  I sigh.

  You’d think my mother would pick up the phone and call me herself, instead of expecting Mary Beth to do it. But—and this is the God’s honest truth—she has this thing about calling long distance. The expense might be a part of it, but I tend to think she’s trying to make a point, in her usual stubborn way, about my moving so far away. It’s almost like she thinks that if she doesn’t call me, I’ll realize how much I miss her and move back home again.

  I usually call home a few times a week just to check in, but this past week I was busy at work, and I spent every spare moment with Will.

  I pick up the phone and dial my sister’s number instead of my parents’. They’re at mass right now anyway.

  Mary Beth answers on the second ring. “You’re alive!” she says.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Caller ID. I just got it, so I can tell when it’s Vinnie and avoid his calls.”

  “Good for you.” I’m surprised. I thought she was still pining away for her ex-husband, jumping for the phone every time it rings, hoping he’ll call to reconcile.

  “My therapist is making me do this. He says I have to stop talking to Vinnie, unless it’s about the kids, because it’s only hurting me and making me think there’s hope when there isn’t.”

  “What, Vinnie’s been calling you and telling you there’s hope?” Now there’s a startling turn of events.

  “He’s been calling me, yeah,” Mary Beth says heavily. “But he talks about these women he’s dating, and about stuff he’s buying for his new place, and it pisses me off because he’s being such a Scrooge about the divorce settlement. I think he’s just trying to get to me, rub it all in my face. And George says—”

  “Who’s George?”

  “My therapist. He says I have to stop listening to him and talking to him—”

  “To Vinnie?”

  “Who else?”

  “I don’t know—George.”

  “No,” she says, frustrated, “George says I have to stop talking to Vinnie because it makes me think there’s hope.”

  Why she’d get hope for their relationship out of that situation is beyond me. But the thing about Mary Beth is, she’ll probably always be in love with Vinnie, and grateful for any connection between them. That’s how it’s been from the moment they started dating back in middle school.

  “Hey, Mary Beth, do you still belong to that fitness club?” I ask, pacing restlessly across my tiny apartment. I fill a glass of water at the sink, realizing I’m basically dehydrated from all the wine and soy sauce last night and coffee this morning.

  “Yeah, I still belong. But I haven’t had much time to go lately. Why?”

  “Have you lost weight?” I take a sip of water. Ugh, it’s warm. I turn on the faucet again to let it run and cool off, then dump what’s left in the glass into my philodendron, wondering when I last watered it.

  “I’ve lost some weight,” Mary Beth is saying. “But muscles weigh more than fat, you know.”

  Which is a dead giveaway that she’s making excuses for why she hasn’t lost weight.

  Who knows? Maybe we’re both doomed by our family gene pool.

  No.

  I can’t accept that I’ll look this way forever, I decide, filling the glass again at the sink and walking across the room with it.

  I come to a halt in front of my mirrored bathroom door.

  Yikes!

  My full-length reflection is hideous. I’m wearing the same black denim shorts from yesterday, with a sloppy-looking white T-shirt that hangs down to the tops of my thighs. Even though the shorts cover the most wobbly, dimply cellulite zone, the fabric can’t conceal the fact that they’re thick and lumpy.

  I picture Nerissa’s lean dancer’s body.

  I feel renewed enthusiasm for my diet plan.

  I’ll exercise, too. Every day.

  And I’ll drink eight glasses of water.

  I sip from the glass I’m holding. Okay, good start.

  “So what’s new with you?” my sister is asking.

  I’m tempted to tell her about my self-improvement plan, but before I can decide whether to bring it up, she says, as though she’s just remembered, “Oh, Will is leaving soon, isn’t he?”

  “He left this morning.”

  “You must be devastated.”

  That’s the thing about my sister. She’s like my mother—i.e., pessimistic. I constantly have to fight my own tendencies to be the same way.

  See, with Mom and Mary Beth, the glass is always half-empty.

  Not that there’s anything half-full about this particular glass—meaning, Will’s leaving me.

  But there are plenty of instances where my sister has reacted negatively to something in my life instead of trying to be encouraging.

  Like, when I found this apartment and told Mary Beth about it, her reaction wasn’t that it was cool that I’d found my own affordable place, it was that I had agreed to pay a ridiculous amount of rent for a place that doesn’t even have a separate bedroom.

  You’d think I’d be used to her by now, but she’s getting on my nerves. “You know what? I have to go now. I’m meeting my friends for lunch.”

  “Which friends?”

  “Kate and Raphael.” As if it makes a difference. She’s never met any of my New York friends.

  “Raphael…isn’t he the homosexual?”

  It’s all I can do not to burst out laughing, not just at the word, but at the painstaking, Brookside way she says it, and the way she puts a “you” in the final two syllables. As in “ho-mo-sex-you-al,” instead of “ho-mo-sek-shoe-al.”

  Or “gay.”

  “Yep,” I tell Mary Beth, “he’s the one.”

  I can tell she’s struggling to be open-minded. “Well, have fun, Tracey. Oh, and maybe you should think about coming home for Mom and Dad’s anniversary next month. We’re thinking of having a party for them. It’s their thirty-fifth.”

  “I don’t know…it’s hard for me to get time off from work.” I haven’t earned any vacation days yet—I won’t be able to take one until after I’ve been there for six months, but Latisha says sometimes you can squeak through with one day, depending on your boss.

  Hopefully Jake will let me take a long weekend at some point—which I intend to use to visit Will, not to go back home to Brookside.

  “See what you can do, Tracey. Even if you just come for a weekend. You haven’t been home since Easter. The boys miss you.”

  “I’ll try,” I say, caught off guard by a wave of homesickness. It’s because she mentioned the boys, my nephews. Her son Vince—Vincent Carmine Rizzo, Junior, but thank God nobody ever calls him that—is four. Nino is almost three. They both have curly black hair and big dark flashing eyes and chubby little bodies, and I adore them. They’re always jumping all over me, wanting me to carry them around, smothering me with kisses and hugs.

  If they were around today, I wouldn’t be feeling so bereft about Will’s leaving.

  “See what you can do about getting here. We all miss you,” my sister says.

  “I’ll try,” I say again.

  But this time I actually mean it.

  We hang up. I take another sip of water…still lukewarm…and make a face.

&nb
sp; Then I call Raphael.

  He and Kate have already made plans. He informs me that we’re all going to brunch at a new place at Fourteenth Street and Avenue A, not far from my apartment. He’ll see me there at twelve-thirty.

  Just as we hang up, I hear a male voice in the background. Apparently, Raphael didn’t spend the night alone. As I replace the receiver and go over to the stove to check my hot dogs, I wonder if he’ll bring his new man to brunch.

  Thinking of Raphael’s love life brings to mind an image of Buckley O’Hanlon.

  Along with it comes the crazy notion that if Will dumps me over the summer, I can always go out with Buckley.

  I stop short, my hand poised in midair over the frying pan handle.

  What am I thinking?

  Will isn’t going to dump me!

  My God, that’s not even an option.

  Besides, if Will ever did dump me, I wouldn’t replace him. I couldn’t. He and I have this whole history….

  This whole future, if all goes the way I assume it will.

  Yes, Buckley O’Hanlon is a cute, available guy who happens to have kissed me.

  Yes, I could be attracted to someone like that if it weren’t for Will.

  But Will is in my life, and he’s going to stay in my life.

  My heart hurts just thinking of the alternative.

  I grab the handle and jiggle the frying pan a little, tossing the hot dogs around to make sure they’re evenly browned in the butter. Then I dump them on a plate, smother them with ketchup and mustard and gobble them down.

  It doesn’t occur to me until I’m washing the plate and pan ten minutes later that condiments might be off-limits on this diet. That I probably should have checked into it before I indulged.

  And that I probably shouldn’t have eaten so soon after breakfast and so close to the time I’m meeting Raphael and Kate for lunch.

  But, I argue with my disapproving self, I was already heating the hot dogs, and they wouldn’t be good later.

  Besides, I was hungry. As usual.

  I promise myself that I’ll just have coffee while Kate and Raphael eat.

  But as I round the corner from Avenue B onto East Fourteenth Street a little over an hour later, I realize I’m hungry again. Okay, what’s up with that? I thought eating a lot of protein was supposed to keep you fuller longer, but apparently that’s not the case.