“So, my divorce is moving along quickly,” Vanessa says as we walk over to the earring display case.
“Oh, my God, Van,” I say, “is this too hard for you? Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this today.”
“Of course not!” she says, pointing to a pair of delicate ruby studs. “I can be happy for you even though my world is falling apart.”
“Your world is not falling apart,” I say, motioning for Moishe’s son to come open the display case for us.
“Yes, it is,” Vanessa says, looking at me, “but I’m okay with it.”
“No, it’s not,” I say, as Moishe’s son rubs the ruby earrings with alcohol so that Vanessa can try them on, “you have your friends, your family, your apartment.”
“Friends?” she says as Moishe’s son hands her the earrings to try on, “I don’t have any friends. My so-called best friend hasn’t even asked me to be in her wedding party.”
“I wanted to!” I say, “but it never seemed like the right time. Of course I want you to be in my wedding party! You are my wedding party! Vanessa, will you be my matron of honor?”
“No,” she says, looking at her reflection in the mirror with the earrings on.
“Was I supposed to get down on one knee for that or something?” I ask. “Maybe that’s why I got such a chilly reception when I asked Jack’s sisters. Is there some bridesmaid protocol that I’m not aware of?”
“You asked them before me?” Vanessa says, eyes widening in disbelief.
“Is that why you said no?” I ask.
“No,” she says, looking at me, “it’s because by your wedding I’ll be a maid. Not a matron anymore.”
I grab Vanessa and give her a hug. Vanessa’s not really a hugger, but as I hold her to me, I feel her hug me back.
“Let’s just leave,” I whisper into Vanessa’s ear, “I’ll come back later.”
“No way,” Vanessa says, pulling back. “This is your day to look at wedding bands. It’s all about you.”
“No, it’s not,” I say, “it’s all about the lunch after the wedding ring shopping. I think we’ve done enough for one day and there’s a Burger Heaven right around the corner. Let’s go get burgers and fries and talk all afternoon. We can always come back later if we want.”
“Okay,” Vanessa says and we make a beeline to the door.
“Ladies!” Moishe says as he huffs and puffs on his way back up from the basement.
“Don’t worry, Moishe,” I say, walking back to his counter, “I’ll come back this week and we can finish up then.”
“No—” he says, but I cut him off. These guys on 47th Street can be so pushy! I guess he doesn’t realize that after the deal he made with my father, it’s a foregone conclusion that I’ll be getting Jack’s and my wedding bands from him.
“Moishe,” I say, putting my hand on top of his, “you don’t have to worry. We’re not going to go to someone else. It’s just that we’ve had enough jewelry shopping for one day.”
“Brooke—” he says.
“I promise you! We’re not going to anyone else!” I say with a laugh, looking back at Vanessa, who is nodding as if to say, “After all of the time and expertise you’ve expended with us, would we go to someone else?” Moishe is finally able to get a word in edgewise.
“The earrings,” he says, as his son puts his hand out.
Vanessa’s hand flies to her ears upon realizing that she is, in fact, still wearing the ruby studs, and she begins to quickly take them out of her ears.
“I knew that,” she says.
I ask you, is there any greater pleasure in life than a burger and fries with a Vanilla Coke? There’s nothing that such a combo cannot fix. It’s comfort food at its best—the perfect mix of salty and sweet. For God’s sake, it is the American Way. Vanessa and I sit at a booth at Burger Heaven where I’ve thankfully got her mind off her divorce. Instead, we’re discussing the fact that her mother has been setting her up on a multitude of dates—almost five a week for the past four weeks. This before her divorce is even final. We can’t decide if it’s because Millie thinks that dating other men will send Vanessa flying back to her own estranged husband, or if she’s just trying to get her daughter married off again as quickly as humanly possible. The smart money’s on the former.
“And so he says, ‘I really feel like I should see you home in a taxi.’ Even though we were only two blocks from his apartment and mine was twenty blocks uptown.”
“That’s so sweet!” I say, sipping my Vanilla Coke. Dating in Manhattan can be funny like that—most people don’t have cars, so the most chivalry a girl can hope for is for her date to hail her a taxi at the end of the evening. Taking you home in a taxi makes a man total marriage material, as far as I’m concerned.
“No, it’s not,” she says, dipping a French fry in ketchup, “he picked a place that was two blocks away from his apartment. That’s totally rude.”
You see, Vanessa has never dated in the city before, so she has no idea how hard it is and how often you have to drop your standards and expectations. She met her husband on her first day at Howard University and by senior year, they were engaged. She’s never had to be an adult in the world without her husband standing beside her. She’s never had to go through endless amounts of bad first dates, hopeless blind dates and awkward bar hook-ups. She never wondered, night after night, if she’d ever find the right person. If she was destined to end up alone.
Until now.
So now, at age thirty, she’s doing—for the very first time—what the rest of us did in our twenties. And it makes me wonder: is it better to have struggled for all those years only to finally find love now, like me, or to have found love all those years ago, and then lose it and have to start all over again, like Vanessa? It’s sort of like when you play that morbid game with yourself, wondering whether you’d rather die quickly in an accident without even knowing it was coming, or if you’d rather be ill for a long time first, and get to say goodbye to your loved ones and make peace with your universe.
Is it bad that I’m getting married and I just equated relationships with death?
Anyway, the point is that Vanessa is entering the New York City dating scene for the first time and it’s been a bit of culture shock for her. You see, she was with Marcus, a handsome, charming surgeon, who was always the perfect gentleman. Except, of course, for that one tiny incident where he kissed another woman while married to Vanessa, thus precipitating their divorce, but you know the general point I was trying to make.
“I still think it’s very gentlemanly for him to see you home in a taxi,” I say, taking a bite of my pickle. “And rather out of the ordinary. Usually a guy gets brownie points just for hailing you a cab. Actually getting into one with you and taking the trip to your apartment with you? Call The New York Times because it’s front-page news. Oh, wait, were you annoyed because you thought it meant that he assumed he was coming upstairs?”
“No, you’re missing the point. He didn’t see me home at all,” she says, dipping another fry into the ketchup.
“You just said that he said that he felt like he should see you home.”
“That’s right,” she says, “that is exactly what I said.”
“What am I missing here?”
“He said that he felt like he should see me home,” she says, taking a bite of her burger and then a sip of her Vanilla Coke. “So I said, ‘Oh, that’s so sweet!’”
“It was sweet,” I say, swiping a fry off of her plate.
“And then he said, ‘Oh, but I’m not going to.’”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes,” she says, “You heard that correctly. Then he said, ‘Oh, but I’m not going to.’”
“He did not,” I say, swiping another fry off of her plate and sticking it into my mouth. In my shock over what she was telling me, I even forget to even dip it into the ketchup first.
“Yes,” she says, “he said, ‘I feel like I should see you home…. But I’m not going to.’”
“Charming,” I say, “was he trying to get brownie points under the guise of it being the thought that counted?”
“At least it’s not as bad as the guy who wrote me an e-mail the day after our blind date and said: ‘I know you’ve been out of the dating world for a while, so here are a few pointers….’”
“I thought we agreed never to speak of that again,” I say, taking a sip of my Vanilla Coke, “Anyway, I still think you made that e-mail up.”
“The one thing I learned from all of your years of dating and countless bad date stories,” she said, “is that you just can’t make this stuff up.”
“No,” I say, “you cannot. So what did you do?”
“I said goodnight and hopped into the nearest taxi,” she says. “Isn’t that what you would have done?”
“Yes,” I say, “but then I would have also called my mom to yell at her for setting me up with such a jerk, cried about how depressing my life is, and then had a pint of Häagen Dazs while sitting on the couch watching Blind Date.”
“Oh,” Vanessa says, “I did all of that, too.”
This is why I’m so glad to have Jack, I think, but don’t say out loud.
Or rather, don’t mean to say out loud, but say out loud since I’m on a sugar high from the two Vanilla Cokes I’ve had. When I was single, I used to hate women who said stuff like that out loud to me. How could I have just said that to Vanessa! “Not like he’s that great or anything.”
“You don’t have to say that to make me feel better,” she says, “didn’t we cover this? I can still be happy for you even while going through my divorce.”
“Well, he served me with massive discovery,” I say.
“That makes sense,” she says, “since you’re litigating against him. You totally should have blown it off, though, for wedding dress shopping. I’ve been stuck with your mother alone for three nights in a row.”
“Sorry about that,” I say.
“Strangely,” she says, “I’ve been having a lot of fun with Mimi. She’s had some really great advice.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re having fun with my mom,” I say. “I guess.”
“It would have been more fun with you,” Vanessa says. “Stop working so hard, would you?”
“I will,” I say, “and, anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that I got him back.”
“Are you going to tell me some sort of kinky sex story now?” she asks, slurping the remains of her Vanilla Coke. Our waiter swoops in and grabs her glass for a refill. “Because I may be happy enough for you to hear about wedding stuff, but for a kinky sex story, I just do not have the strength.”
“Here’s your Vanilla Coke,” the waiter says, setting down Vanessa’s Vanilla Coke with a strange look. He lingers for a brief instant, waiting to hear, no doubt, my kinky sex story.
“No,” I say, “I served him with discovery requests.”
“Why the hell did you do that?” Vanessa asks, “are you trying to create work for yourself?”
“No,” I say, “I’m just doing what I would do against any adversary.”
Vanessa puts down her burger in righteous indignation and glares at me. Okay, okay, so I wouldn’t normally do that. I would normally just be trying to settle and make as few billable hours for the client as humanly possible. And when I say “as few billable hours for the client,” I really mean: as little work for myself as humanly possible.
Oh, please. As if you wouldn’t do the exact same thing.
“You do realize,” Vanessa says, “that now Jack will have to work more hours with Miranda Foxley, man stealer extraordinaire. You do realize that, don’t you?”
Clearly, I had not thought about that. But now that Vanessa’s brought it up, it’s the only thing that I can think about. I stir my Vanilla Coke slowly as I formulate a plan.
“There’s only one thing I can do now,” I say, looking Vanessa straight in the eye.
“Why do I have a feeling that I’m going to be involved in this in some way?” she says, stirring her own Vanilla Coke. “Please don’t make me do anything that would get me disbarred.”
“You need to start spying on Jack and Miranda,” I say, “just to make sure that there isn’t any hanky-panky going on.”
“Hanky-panky?”
“You know what I mean,” I say. “Just make sure that everything’s on the up and up. But don’t let them know you’re spying.”
Why is it that we nice girls must constantly be on the lookout for man stealers? That’s what destroyed my last serious relationship, and you can be sure that I’m not going to let that happen again. Maybe if Jennifer Aniston had asked Courtney Cox to spy on Brad, they’d still be happily married right now.
“That doesn’t sound very ethical,” she says, narrowing her eyes as she takes a sip of her Vanilla Coke.
“Do you want to maintain your post as matron of honor or not?” I ask.
“Maid,” she says, as the waiter dumps our bill on our table.
“Whatever,” I say. “Do you?”
“I’ve been in a lot of weddings before, Brooke,” she says, “and no bridesmaid detail ever included spying on the groom.”
“Thank you so much for agreeing to do this for me,” I say.
“But, I haven’t agreed to anything yet,” she says.
“Close enough,” I say, as I pick up the check.
Column Five
Sightings…
CONFIRMED. Halle Berry will be the next celebrity bride to walk down the aisle in one of Monique deVouvray’s creations. Insiders spotted Berry shopping for wedding bands with an unidentified brunette on 47th Street, talking about wedding plans, kinky sex and, of course, Monique’s dress.
Berry’s publicists deny the couple’s even engaged, but insiders say that she shopped at Moishe’s Jewelry Emporium before ducking into Burger Heaven for a late lunch.
15
“That sort of thing really wouldn’t come under the umbrella of what a wedding photographer does,” Melissa says to me, putting her hand to her forehead as she sits back in her chair.
Melissa Kraut is the wedding photographer Vanessa recommended to me and we’re in her fabulous studio in Chelsea. Vanessa met Melissa when she represented her, pro bono, through Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, back when Melissa was just starting out with a camera her parents gave her and Central Park as her backyard studio. Back then, she was a starving artist who needed Vanessa’s help in protecting the intellectual property rights in her work. Now that she’s doing wedding photography, she’s hardly starving any more and she’s got her own studio and her own legal team at her beck and call. Even though Vanessa no longer represents her, they’ve stayed friends. In fact, Melissa even set Vanessa up on a date the other night. It didn’t really work out, since to hear Vanessa tell it, “he was so short he only came up to my boobs,” but I thought it was nice of Melissa to think of Vanessa nonetheless.
I have this vision of Melissa covering my wedding for me, and then being so inspired by the photos of me that I become her muse and she takes even more and more photos of me, and then eventually exhibits them in Vanessa’s mom’s art gallery and I become a big international supermodel. The first supermodel ever to be only five foot four and a half.
What? It could happen. They have short models on all the time on America’s Next Top Model.
“Think of them as action photos,” I explain, “action photos of the groom.”
“Still, it’s a little out of the bounds from what a wedding photographer would normally do. Surely you understand that.” I’m suddenly very aware that I’m leaning forward, practically hanging over Melissa’s desk, and she’s leaning so far back on her chair that she’s in considerable danger of actually falling out of the window.
“Getting acquainted with your subject?” I ask, leaning back in my chair with my hand demurely on my chest so as to feign innocence. “Is getting acquainted with your subject what you consider out of bounds?”
“You want me to spy on the
groom for you.”
“Spy sounds so harsh,” I whisper, sotto voce, “don’t you think?”
“I think I’d like for you to leave.”
“That sort of thing really wouldn’t come under the umbrella of what a wedding videographer really does,” Jay says to me.
Jay is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my father who’s based out of Queens, and he’s promised to give me a “real deal” on my wedding video. We’re meeting at a pastry shop on Lefferts Boulevard and instead of the non-fat decaf cappuccino I promised myself on the way over, I’m halfway into a regular cappuccino with a chocolate chip cannoli on the side. To be fair, though, it’s not really my fault. This meeting with Jay has been the tiniest bit stressful. And not just because the wedding photographer I met with kicked me out of her office. My father told me that there was a very slight chance that Jay has connections to the Mafia, so I should be careful not to say anything negative about the Mafia when I’m with him.
Now if that isn’t an elephant in the room…. Don’t say Mafia. Don’t say Mafia.
And, at any rate, my father told me, I shouldn’t really be concerned, because Jay wasn’t high-ranking in the mob—at the very most, my father surmised, he was a soldier.
Note to self: must rent first season of The Sopranos to find out what a “soldier” is.
“Think of it as background footage for the wedding video,” I say, making an effort not to sound desperate, “it would be great fun!”
Oh, God. I just said “great fun” to a man who may or may not be connected.
“Great fun?” he says, taking a swig of his espresso. Busted.
“Well,” I quickly say, “you know. Fun. Sort of fun. We can all get to know each other before the wedding!”
“I’ve never really taken footage before of a groom at his office,” Jay says, “but I’ve done some surveillance in my day, so if that’s what you’re looking for—”
“Surveillance?” I say, almost choking on my cannoli, “I don’t need surveillance! Who said anything about surveillance? No, it’s just that my fiancé, Jack, just loves to work and so you’ll just be getting background footage of him in his natural habitat!”
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