Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single

by Heather McElhatton

  “These two spend so much time together,” Mrs. Keller sighs, looking dreamily at her son. “Young love!”

  “That’s true.” My mother nods. “We haven’t seen much of Jennifer since she met your Bradford, have we, sweetie pie?”

  I shake my head no and watch Hailey pushing her eggs around her plate. Then Brad tells them all I’m moving into his house a week before the wedding and that pretty much stops the conversation cold.

  “Before the wedding?” Mrs. Keller says, her forkful of blood sausage frozen in midair. “How odd.”

  “Lenny and me moved in together way before the wedding,” Hailey says.

  “Leonard and I, dear,” Mrs. Keller corrects.

  “Yes,” my mother says, “Leonard and I.”

  “Yeah, but we was doin’ it before we got married,” Lenny says. “I don’t think Ma Keller here would like that either.”

  I’m smiling so hard at Lenny right now I think the veins in my temple might pop and shoot the table with arterial spray.

  “That’s right, Leonard,” Mrs. Keller says, “you are absolutely correct.”

  Leonard laughs and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “My ma thought she was loose, too!” Hailey smacks him. “What?” he says, rubbing his arm. “She did!”

  Ed clears his throat. “So you’re in the insurance business,” he asks my dad.

  My dad finishes chewing and takes a sip of black coffee before he says, “You bet.”

  “Local group then?” Mr. Keller asks.

  My dad nods. “Yep. State Farm. Thirty years and no retirement in sight.”

  We all laugh awkwardly.

  “Well, we ought to get you into the office,” Ed says. “We need a good insurance man.”

  “Really?” my mother says. “That would be wonderful!”

  My dad frowns. “We don’t handle—” but Ed puts his hand up.

  “We’ll figure all that out. You’re family now!”

  “Well, that’s very generous,” my mother says, “isn’t it, dear? Dear? You have a little gravy on your chin. There.” My dad grumbles something about next week being tight and saws into his creamed beef. I don’t think he likes the Kellers.

  “Lenny lost his job,” Hailey pipes up.

  “Is that so?” Mr. Keller says, and the two of them talk shop until Ed decides Lenny would make a perfect loading-dock supervisor and tells him to come in on Monday. “Family has to stick together!” Ed says, and I know it’s terribly nice of him, but for some reason I feel like ripping the tablecloth from the table and breaking all the china on the floor.

  After we eat, there’s coffee in the living room and my mother and Mrs. Keller tidy up in the kitchen. I clear plates, and so only catch bits of their conversation. “I just think she’s an amazing girl,” I hear Mrs. Keller tell my mother. “We’re so lucky to have her join the family.” She sounds so sincere, so real, that I almost think maybe her stern thing is all an act. Maybe she actually really likes me, and this is like prewedding hazing. I mean, certainly a lot of women must have wanted to marry Brad. I bet she has to weed them out and make sure they’re good enough for him. I’d do the same thing.

  “We’re going to see the wedding planner next week,” Mrs. Keller says. “Isn’t that right, Jennifer?”

  “I can’t wait, Mrs. Keller,” I say.

  She smiles at me. “Oh, call me Mother Keller now or just Mother. That is, if your mother doesn’t mind!” The two of them laugh lightly.

  I grimace. “All right, Mother…Keller,” I say. “Thank you for the delicious brunch.”

  “You’re welcome, dear! I’m so glad you liked it. I was afraid your stomach was upset. You didn’t touch your scrapple.”

  I’ve never had so many new things at one time. New clothes, new shoes, new everything. I’ve never held onto someone’s credit card for them or carried their country-club membership card in my purse. I’ve never dated anyone who changed the way other people look at me, at least not in a good way. My family and friends and even co-workers. People at work who never made eye contact with me before suddenly know my name.

  Not to mention HOW amazing and good it felt to finally pay off my Mr. Jennings bill.

  “Mr. Jennings!” I say when he tracks me down. “How good of you to call.”

  “Miss Johnson?” he says, doubtfully.

  “I’ve been looking forward to talking to you again!”

  “I left a few messages,” he says. “I already extended your account twice and I’m afraid it’s going to collection today.”

  “No need for that, Mr. Jennings.” I take out Brad’s platinum card. “Let’s just pay this account in full, shall we?”

  “This is Jennifer Johnson, right?”

  “Soon to be Jennifer Keller,” I say. “I got engaged.”

  “That’s great, Miss Johnson,” he says.

  I give him Brad’s account number and listen to tinny Muzak while he processes my bill.

  “Okay, you’re all set, Miss Johnson.”

  “It’s been really nice getting to know you, Mr. Jennings,” I say. “I wish you well.”

  “Good luck, Miss Johnson. I’m glad you didn’t end up with that guy who made you wait around in a bar. I’m glad everything worked out.”

  “Well…thank you,” I say and hang up. No reason to tell him the guy who made me wait around in a bar is now my fiancé. It’s the last time we’ll ever speak so why bother explaining that a man who pays off your credit cards can make you wait as long as he wants to?

  Brad didn’t actually pay off my credit cards, the Kellers did, but Brad asked them to. I’d feel weird about it if I didn’t hate the credit-card companies so much. I did the math once and if I paid the minimum monthly balance on a five-thousand-dollar debt until it was totally gone, I would end up paying them something like thirty thousand dollars. So did I feel bad knowing the Kellers paid my credit cards off?

  Hell no.

  Not that everything’s perfect between Brad and me. We fight. Everyone fights, but it seems like anything can get us going. I tried to bring some things over from my apartment to brighten up his house, but he was like, “What the hell is this?” He was holding a vintage starburst clock. It’s actually one of the most expensive things I own and I thought it might work with his décor, but he made it immediately clear that his mother doesn’t like clutter.

  “She doesn’t like your weird crap,” he says and we had a huge fight. I told him he couldn’t change who I was and his mother shouldn’t have anything to do with how we decorate the house, but in the end, even after he relented and admitted I was right, I brought the starburst clock back to my apartment. He didn’t ask me to, I did it on my own and I can’t say exactly why. It just didn’t look right in his house.

  Plus, what’s wrong with trying something new? Maybe I’d be happier in a cleaner, calmer environment. Maybe all these toys represented a part of my life that was ending and maybe that was a good thing.

  I get jealous. I’m always wondering who’s calling him and who he’s texting. I’m never sure if he’s sure about me. I read this Vogue article about a fashion designer who got cancer and her husband, who was also a fashion designer, made a whole collection of cancer-inspired clothes for her. All these headscarves and gauzy red chiffon. It got me wondering if Brad would do that for me.

  “Would you still love me if I had cancer?” I ask him at the breakfast table.

  “If you had what?”

  “Cancer.”

  “Do you?” he asks, putting his spoon down. “Are you telling me you have cancer?”

  “No,” I say, irritated. “Hypothetical cancer.”

  “Hypothetical?”

  “Just answer! Would you still love me if I had cancer?”

  “What kind?”

  “What do you mean, what kind?”

  He thinks about it for a minute.

  “Why are you thinking about it?”

  “I’d still love you,” he says.

  “Oh well, than
ks. Be sure to put that on the card.”

  “Jesus, Jen.”

  “Would you love me if I had my legs cut off?”

  “What?”

  “My legs, zip! Gone.”

  “How would your legs get cut off?”

  “I don’t know, a car accident, a hot air balloon disaster, who knows?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Picture it. I’m in a wheelchair, still getting used to my titanium legs and you have to help me to the toilet and into the bathtub and you’d probably have to help me put the fake legs onto my stumps every morning…”

  “Will you stop it?”

  “I want to know what you’d do. I have a right to know.”

  “Why? Why do you think up all this crap?”

  “Because if something horrible happens to me, you have to be prepared to take care of me.” He just looks at me and shakes his head. I can’t believe how he’s acting. He should kiss me on the forehead right now and tell me of course he’d take care of me. If I was talking to Christopher and I asked him if he’d take care of me he’d say, “Oh, sweetie! Of course! I’d buy you windup toys and tie a ribbon around your head!” He’d give me a big hug. He wouldn’t sit there like an unplugged appliance and pause and wonder and think about it. He wouldn’t care if my legs were cut off or my vagina didn’t work; he would be there for me no matter what.

  “What if my vagina just permanently closed?”

  He makes a face.

  “You don’t love me,” I say, “not really.”

  Silence.

  “You don’t! What if I had surgery, and they accidentally permanently sewed up my vagina. Would you stay with me then?”

  “Does that mean we could do anal?”

  “No, we can’t do anal! I just had a traumatic surgery and am lying there processing my new life as a vaginaless woman, and you want to do anal? How many times have I told you I don’t want to do anal, ever? I mean ever, Brad. Get it through your head. And that is not going to change because I have a run-in with a tractor. Boy howdy, you can bet that rule will be as intact as ever.”

  “But if you use the right lube and the guy goes slow…”

  “No! God! I told you it feels disgusting and plus now I know you wouldn’t stay with me if I had my vagina sewed up.” I can feel hot tears welling in my eyes. I do not want to cry, so I blink several times and tilt my head back, trying not to.

  “Oh, come on,” he says, “don’t do that.”

  “You don’t love me.” I cover my face with my hands and burst into tears. I expect him to comfort me, or put his arms around me, but he doesn’t. He just sits there and stares. I keep crying. After a while I start sniffling and can only manage a few small crocodile tears. Still he doesn’t move to help me. I can’t believe this. How can a guy just sit there and do nothing when I’m weeping in front of him? Is he some sort of psychopathic monster? One of those narcissists who had an emotionally manipulative mother?

  What am I saying? Of course he did.

  I turn and look at him with my red eyes and mascara-streaked face. Can’t he see I’m in pain? Can’t he see I need tenderness right now? But no, he’s happy as a lark. In fact he tells me he has to go into work tomorrow, which is a Saturday. So not only is this fat bastard going to leave me if I have cancer; he’s going to ditch me on a Saturday and I’m not even sick yet.

  I throw myself into work. I show up early and I stay late. I volunteer for shit jobs nobody wants just to buy a few more hours at the office every day. My motives are to maintain mental health and keep out of Mrs. Keller’s hair and off Brad’s bad side, just until the wedding’s over, but other people in the office think otherwise.

  Ashley is really starting to fray at the edges.

  “Are you trying to make me look bad?” she says, holding up the sheet of brainstorming ideas I gave her. “Because I know a thing or two about making people look bad, and I don’t think you want to go there with me.”

  I tell her I was just goofing around and jotted down some ideas. “It’s no big deal,” I say. “Throw them out if you want to. I was just trying to help.”

  She stares at me as if trying to decipher my maniacal strategy and storms off. This won’t be the end of it. Ted tries to cheer me up, and it’s too bad I can’t open up to him because Ted probably has it the worst. He has to put up with me the most. When you do the actual math, I spend more waking hours with him than anyone else. At least he’s joking around with me again. A little. We just stay away from certain topics.

  We have to put the finishing touches on our print ad for the HOUSEBOUND sale, Keller’s annual housewares sale, where we try to unload out-of-date vacuum cleaners, microwaves, electric hair removal systems, and daiquiri blenders. Keller’s doesn’t have that big of a housewares section; the whole department takes up just half the basement, so we don’t have that many sales and we pretty much suck at marketing them. Plus, we’re two weeks behind on ad copy, mostly because my phone won’t stop ringing. I can’t get any real work done while people are calling me to double-check toothpick counts.

  Ted sits next to me at my desk with the HOUSEBOUND files open and my phone rings.

  “Jen? It’s Sarah. Listen. I got Trevor fitted for his pantaloons, but he’s so busy down there always pulling on his thing, I’m thinking we should go one size bigger. Then I can stuff something in there so he can’t get at it and he won’t walk down the aisle like a monkey tugging on his thing. I don’t know what I’ll stuff down there, maybe like a baseball glove or stuffed animals or something. Trevor! Leave that dog alone! Trevor!”

  I shut my eyes. “Pantaloons?”

  “I gotta go,” she says. “Now he’s tugging on the dog’s thing.”

  “Sarah, what pantaloons?”

  “Nana made him ring bearer,” she says. “Trevor! Get off of him! Good cripes. I gotta go. Bye.”

  I hang up and cover my face.

  “You really don’t have to work on the copy,” Ted says. “You know, if you’re busy or whatever.”

  “No,” I say, “I want to. It’s like we’re in the home stretch here.”

  “Then you’re free,” he says.

  “Yeah, then I’m free. Really, really super-freaking free.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  Ted hands me the Keller’s ads set to run in Saturday’s paper. The first ad is promoting our TYKE-TASTIC! section, furniture and room accents for toddlers. Little race-car beds and canopied princess chaise lounges, that kind of thing. This particular ad features a little blond girl in overalls sitting with her teddy bear on a miniature leopard-skin couch.

  “Why would we sell a miniature leopard-skin couch?”

  “Dunno,” he says.

  “I mean, why would a little kid need a leopard-skin anything? What kind of copy are we supposed to write? Looks like it’s time for baby’s first porn shoot? Tricks really are for kids?” I bat the paper away so he hands me the next one, which has a picture of a comely woman whose ethnicity is completely up for grabs. She has cinnamon-colored skin and light hazel eyes. Her hair is neither blond nor brown, but a silky butterscotch that shines as she laughs and holds the handle of a Devex five-series vacuum cleaner. The copy beneath her airbrushed smile is in bold white quotes. It says: “I need a vacuum cleaner that’s as strong as I am!” I look at Ted and hand it back. “That’s what we’re going with?”

  “Ashley wrote it.”

  “But what does that even mean? A woman should compare herself to an appliance? Her vacuum cleaner has to take as much shit as she does? I don’t believe it. That’s like saying this woman wants a vacuum cleaner that will suck up all the crap in the world and hold on to it just like she does! Like consuming other people’s garbage is her job!”

  Tears begin to brim. Shit. I hate crying in the office

  “Okay.” Ted frowns. “Are we still talking about the copy?”

  “Yes, we’re talking about the copy! I want to know why all men assume women are s
upposed to take their shit and their mother’s shit!”

  “Um, okay,” Ted says, “I think I’ll mosey along now. I’d love to stay for the ‘I hate men’ speech, but I need to catch this online seminar on keeping your bitch in line.”

  “I don’t hate men! Not real men.”

  “No,” Ted says, backing away, his eyes wide open, “no, please, not the ‘real man’ speech.”

  “I will not be denied my real man speech,” I tell him, “because real men aren’t afraid to say ‘I love you.’ They respect women and they go down on their girlfriends after they get blowjobs.”

  “Hey,” Ted says, “I always go down on girls. That’s just like company policy with me.”

  “A real man is emotionally generous.”

  “And financially generous,” Ted adds.

  “Yes. And they do dishes and they like their mother and they have raw pirate sex with you.”

  “Have you actually met one of these freaks?” he asks. “Because I think maybe—maybe you had a seizure while you were watching the Lifetime channel again.”

  Normally I’d be joking right along with him, but today I can’t. I don’t know why I’m acting like this. Why everything is sounding alarms in my head and I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel hot tears ready to escape. So I burst into the bathroom, where I try to sob silently into a wad of toilet paper, which disintegrates into bits in my hands. I guess what I really need is to find a toilet paper that’s as strong as I am.

  Mrs. Keller sets up my first appointment with the wedding planner. “You’ll have no interference from me!” she says, smiling tightly. “I trust Mrs. Straubel completely. I know you’ll be fine. You tell her what you want, and we’ll tweak it all later. I gave Brad my solemn oath I wouldn’t monopolize your big day!”

  Notice she didn’t say she trusted me completely.

  I go to the wedding planner’s shop, which is in a depressing strip mall in Rosedale. As I push open the glass door a little brass bell rings, and the smell of spiced oranges hangs thick against a wall of framed photographs showing happily married couples. So many happy couples, it seems impossible anyone would ever be alone. Some are kissing, some are gazing intently at each other, and some are waving as they sprint down the chapel steps while being pelted with rice.