The Break-Up Artist

by Philip Siegel

  “All of it. It wasn’t love,” I say, like it wasn’t already obvious.

  “Rebecca, are you seriously comparing true love to a spare room in your house?” Huxley asks. She raises her eyebrow at me, like I’m a stray hair in her food. “Didn’t you read the play? The language, the sonnets, the monologue Romeo recites to Juliet. You don’t think any of that was genuine?”

  “As far as pickup lines go, it was all right. But just because it sounds pretty doesn’t mean it’s true. And honestly, it’s a little pathetic that Juliet fell for it so quickly.”

  “Why would Shakespeare have them say it if they didn’t mean it?”

  “Because he knew the public would eat it up. Obviously, people still do.” I grip the edges of my desk, steadying myself. Adrenaline soars through me. My brain and mouth are in sync for once. “I mean, when we watched Titanic in fifth grade, you cried for like two days after. You couldn’t listen to that Celine Dion song without breaking down.”

  The class laughs at that. Direct hit! Huxley clenches her jaw for a split second before turning her smile back on. I just broke her number-one rule.

  “You know, Titanic is pretty much Romeo and Juliet on a sinking ship,” Ms. Hardwick says. “West Side Story is also a modern interpretation of the play. Has anyone here watched West Side Story?”

  Huxley ignores her. “They died for each other, for love.”

  “For mutual infatuation.”

  “Now, ladies—” Ms. Hardwick begins. Huxley holds her hand up.

  Huxley maintains her friendly tone, but her eyes narrow slightly. Only I can make it out. It’s a look I remember from those times when I would steal a fry off her plate or beat her at jacks. She stands up. Her long legs propel her above the class.

  “Ms. Hardwick, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to address the class. Plead my case, if you will. Becca can do the same.”

  “The best way to understand literature is to get involved in it!” Ms. Hardwick says. “After you both talk, we’ll put it to a class vote.”

  I stand up, too, right back at her. She has a good four inches on me. I’m the munchkin to her Dorothy.

  “You girls don’t have to stand, though. This isn’t a debate.” Huxley and I flash glares at each other. Oh, it so is.

  Neither of us sit down.

  Huxley clasps her hands together, keeps her back straight. She is in her element. I never thought that people could change so absolutely. I used to believe that if you looked closely enough, you could see their true selves hiding behind the facade. But Huxley proved me wrong.

  “Romeo and Juliet may not have had the ideal relationship. No couple is perfect. Even Steve and I have disagreements from time to time. Yes, it’s true,” Huxley says, though I doubt anyone believes her. I’m sure girls steal her old pen caps and gum wrappers to create homemade shrines where they pray to the relationship gods for a union as perfect as Huxley and Steve’s.

  She runs her fingers through her hair. It falls right back into place. “But there was love at the core. There was something spiritual, some subconscious connection that was pulling them together. It wasn’t logic. You don’t go through all of this for someone you think is so-so.” She puts her hand over her heart and gives me a look of concern. “Now, I know you have never been in love, been pursued or had a significant other in any way, shape or form. Not even a kiss, unless you count rolling around on your bed with that poster of Leonardo DiCaprio.”

  The class howls over this, and I join in with them to pretend that I don’t care, even though I feel like I’m about to crumble.

  “Whoa, Becca. Sex animal!” Shana calls out.

  “But despite your extremely limited experience,” Huxley says, “you can’t say their relationship was all a total sham, Rebecca. Can you?”

  Huxley receives a smattering of applause as she takes her seat. Shana holds out her hand for a low five that never comes.

  I’m sure Calista used to believe this, as did Lily, Kim and my other former clients. I remember my sister used to sound like this, right up until her heart got stomped on and beaten with a baseball bat.

  “You’re up,” Huxley says to me.

  I can’t move. All my words and coherent thoughts slip away. My face has turned shades that don’t exist on the color wheel.

  “Becca?” Ms. Hardwick asks. The room goes silent, waiting for my rebuttal.

  “They were nuts,” I say, with an apathetic shoulder shrug.

  “Becca and Huxley, you both make valid points.” Ms. Hardwick hops off her desk, happy to have control of her classroom again. “Let’s put it to a class vote. Who thinks Romeo and Juliet were not in love?”

  None of them raise their hands.

  Huxley flashes me an ear-to-ear grin, that smile that cuts like a knife. You don’t mess with a future senator’s wife, she’s telling me. Ms. Hardwick waits an extra moment to see if any students change their minds.

  None do.

  5

  After school, Huxley’s words still rattle around in my brain. Most kids at Ashland believe the crap that she spews. It’s mass mind control, and I’m the one person who didn’t drink the Kool-Aid the second my hormones began raging. It’s incredible how revered she is, considering four years ago nobody would’ve listened to a word she uttered.

  When Steve Overland moved to town in eighth grade, he instantly shot to conversation topic number one like a natural disaster on the news. Guys who played in his peewee football league were eagerly anticipating his arrival. Not because he was cool, but because he had an amazing arm, which I guess was cool to them. He walked into class the first day, friends with the most popular guys in school. And with his mat of brown hair and aw-shucks smile stamped on his face, he became the crush of every girl at school.

  Especially Huxley.

  Huxley and I didn’t experience the huge explosion in social activity that happens to most girls during middle school. In sixth grade, seemingly overnight, our deck of classmates got reshuffled into tiers of popularity, and we were near the bottom. I knew we weren’t popular, but we weren’t losers. We got invited to a few bar mitzvahs and summer pool parties, but our social calendar wasn’t exactly blowing up.

  Huxley’s family live in a huge house atop a hill, and she used to tell me she felt like Rapunzel up in her tower alone. Still, we made our own fun. Huxley came up with the activities for us, and I followed along for the ride. That was our dynamic, and it worked. We did our own thing, and middle school was fun for us, but a dud compared to the popular crowd. I guess I never noticed how much it frustrated Huxley.

  Even though Steve was a grade ahead of us, his old school had a different curriculum, and he was forced to take seventh-grade science. Since there were no kids with an N last name in our grade, Steve and Huxley wound up sitting next to each other and became lab partners. Huxley seized on the opportunity. On the second Monday of school, she burst through the double doors looking like a model. No more ponytails and cardigans for her. She maneuvered her way into Steve’s lunch table, then his social circle, then his heart. There was no warning. I observed this like the rest of my classmates. Huxley went from some girl to That Girl. Dating Steve catapulted her to the top of the social stratosphere.

  I thought she would bring me along, but as she got invited to more parties, more outings, there wasn’t a place for me in her new circle of friends.

  People forgot where she came from, or who she was before Steve.

  She didn’t want to remind them.

  * * *

  I arrive home, and I can already hear the screaming as I open the garage door. After doing the stay-at-home, avidly-watching-soap-operas thing when we were young, my mom turned the spare bedroom into an alterations room. She’s become known about town for her mastery with hemming, with one future client even approaching her at a funeral. In
a cracked-out twist of fate, most of my mom’s clientele are brides and bridal parties. I don’t know how she can work in that alteration room poring over wedding dresses after what happened with her own daughter. Maybe helping others can wash away the memory for her. Whatever the reason, it’s a lucrative business. Brides will spend gobs of money to ensure their special day is more perfect than everyone else’s.

  The shrill complaints of another bride-to-be take over the house. I pop into the alterations room to say hello and offer my mom moral support. She’s working on a flowing, Disney princess–like wedding dress while the svelte, short bride yells into her cell.

  “Mommy, no! We are not going with carnations. I want at least two dozen white roses in my centerpieces...they’re cheaper? You want me to go with some cheap flower for my wedding? We aren’t gutter trash.”

  I crouch down and kiss my mom on the forehead.

  “Hi, honey,” she says, unaffected by the shouting. She’s learned to tune it out.

  “How’s it going?” I peer up at the bride, who’s now yelling through tears.

  My mom senses my sarcasm. “Planning a wedding is very stressful. But it’s all worth it in the end.”

  If you make it to the end, I think. Or else it’s just a waste of money. Wouldn’t these funds be better spent helping the homeless?

  “What?!” The bride shrieks into her phone. “I am not making Leah a bridesmaid. She’ll look so ugly and fat in the dress. And her hair is a frizzy mess. She is going to ruin my wedding pictures...I don’t care that she’s my sister!”

  “She sounds very much in love,” I say.

  I’m halfway out the door when I spot a thick blue binder weighing down the sewing machine. Courtney & Matthew * May 25 is scrawled in ivory cursive across the front. Inside are dozens of tabs covering every possible detail of this bride’s wedding, along with pictures and magazine cutouts and logistical facts and figures for each. You’d think she was running a multinational corporation.

  “Please don’t touch that,” the bride says to me, the “please” just tacked on. “That’s my Dream Day Scenario binder. I worked really hard on it.”

  For a moment, I thought she’d said Doomsday Scenario. Not that far off from the truth. “Sorry.”

  She squeezes together a fake smile and returns to the phone call. “No, Mommy. We aren’t doing folded napkins for the table. Napkin rings...because they’re freaking classy, that’s why!”

  It’s times like these that I forget there’s actually a groom involved. She probably does, too.

  * * *

  I lie back on Diane’s bed and stare at the heartthrob posters pinned to her ceiling. It must be weird to wake up in the same room you had in high school and find nothing has moved.

  “Man, these are some ugly bridesmaids dresses. Sweetie, that color is not champagne. That is crusted-over vomit.” Diane clicks through pictures online from her friend Marian’s wedding. Her friends dance up a storm—though at this point, I guess Diane’s downgraded them to acquaintances.

  I lean in and size up the dresses. They’re poofed out on tulle steroids, but the soft beige color does complement their bridesmaid bouquets nicely.

  “Wow. The whole gang’s there,” Diane continues. “Aimee and her creepy husband. And poor Erin, you will never lose that baby weight, will you?”

  “Why didn’t you go?” I ask.

  “I would’ve been gawked at more than the bride. ‘Oh, there’s Diane...at the singles table. Whomp whomp.’”

  “They wouldn’t do that. They’re your friends.”

  “They ditched me.” Diane spins away from her desk and shoots me a half smile. “You know what that’s like.”

  She sticks her thick brown hair behind her ears. It matches her eyes perfectly. Combine those with her round face and slightly bulbous nose, and she’s the epitome of cute and endearing.

  “I think Ted’s a flamer. I give it a year, tops.”

  Until she opens her mouth.

  “But back to Bari and Derek,” I say, or else we would talk about her friends all night. I motion to get on the keyboard. My gossip dossier sits open next to her monitor. “May I?”

  “Of course.” Diane wheels away and stretches her feet on her bed. I consider Diane my break-up consultant. She’s the only person who knows what I do, the only person who would be supportive. Sometimes I need her advice, or a second opinion, or just someone to laugh at how ridiculous my classmates are.

  “So I think Derek should be the dumper,” I say. I can’t imagine what this will do to Bari, but it’s for the best. I’m not in the business of ruining lives. People need the most help when they think everything is fine, right before their worlds get flipped upside down.

  “Should? He so is, B. He’s done it twice before, so let history repeat itself. He obviously can’t stand girls who are smarter than him, so do Bari’s homework for a week and watch him drop her like a hot potato. You know men and their pride.”

  Diane scrapes some food crumbs off the u in her Rutgers sweatshirt. That and her flannel bottoms became her uniform as soon as she took off her wedding dress. I guess when you plan to marry a doctor, you don’t prep a plan B. But watching daytime talk shows is not a viable career. Diane dabs water on the stain, and smiles with pride when it’s gone.

  Each morning when I wake up, a part of me hopes that I’ll come downstairs and find Diane in a business suit, sipping coffee and checking her phone before racing to catch the train into Manhattan. She’d have some awesome job in a skyscraper in Midtown, followed regularly by happy-hour cocktails with coworkers. She would be someone I could look up to again.

  I kick aside a heap of dirty clothes and plop back on the bed. “That doesn’t seem entirely right, though. He and Bethann were together for over a year, and they seemed happy.”

  “Key word—seemed.”

  “It’s not like she suddenly became smart overnight. Why now?”

  “Maybe he wanted to clear his slate for Princeton?”

  “Then why two more girlfriends? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Diane brings up Marian’s wedding pictures again. “Is Ted wearing a top hat? Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s not like any of it matters,” I say with a huge exhale. “You break up one couple, three more grow back in their place. They’re like gray hairs.”

  “Be positive, B!” Diane says, which is odd coming from her. “And think of it like this—most of these couples won’t survive anyway. And those that do will end up overweight alcoholics who fantasize about bedding their spouse’s best friend. It’s win-win no matter how you look at it.”

  Blunt, but sincere. That’s what I love about Diane. Despite the circumstances, I’m glad that she moved back home last year. We’ve become incredibly close, something that our eight-year age difference had always prevented.

  “Come here,” she says, opening her arms for a hug. I go over to her. She grabs my sleeve and wipes her nose on it.

  “Gross!”

  My mom knocks at the door as she opens it. The knocking was just a formality. “Hey, girls. Whatcha doing?”

  Diane nudges my dossier closed with her elbow. “Just talking,” Diane says. “How was Emily Post down there?”

  “She’s under a lot of stress. Her wedding’s right around the corner,” my mom says, always choosing to see the good in paying customers.

  “I remember the feeling,” Diane says, and my mom and I don’t say anything for a second, until she laughs and it’s like a Time In!

  My mom smoothes out the bed where I’d lain. She’s about to sit when she notices the wedding pictures. “Oh. Is this from Marian’s wedding? She looks beautiful. Oh, and I just love those bridesmaids dresses!”

  Diane and I trade looks. Everything my mom says makes us want to laugh. We don’t know why.

 
“And Erin looks great, too. Diane, have you sent her a card yet?” my mom asks. I move my legs as she takes back her place on the bed.

  “For what?”

  “Congratulating her for having the baby.”

  Diane rolls her eyes. Leave it to my mom to turn a bonding moment into a nag session. “Why am I congratulating her for giving birth? She probably had an epidural.”

  “He’s about to turn one, and you haven’t even acknowledged him.”

  “I don’t think it’s right to congratulate someone for having an ugly baby. It will only encourage her to have another one.”

  “Owen is so cute. He’s got the chunkiest thighs.”

  “He looks like Benjamin Button.”

  I stifle a laugh. My hand presses against my mouth. My mom chuckles, too, and immediately covers her head in shame.

  “See! You think he’s ugly, too! Maybe in a few years, I’ll see him walking with a cane around the playground,” Diane says.

  My mom shakes her head. “You were so close to those girls in college. What happened?”

  “They became a cliché, and I became a laughingstock.”

  “This again? Diane, it’s all in your head.”

  “Yeah? So where are they now?” Diane sulks lower into her chair, her back hunched over like a tortoise shell, all her energy dissipating. It’s a battle she can’t win, so why even try. “You want me to send the card. I’ll send the card,” she says quietly.

  “You know what, you’re twenty-four years old. Do what you want.” My mom looks at me for backup. I give her a halfhearted smile. I’m staying out of this, which for her means I’m taking Diane’s side. But someone has to. How can she forget what happened?

  My mom clicks the door shut, shaking her head at another failed breakthrough.

  “She’ll never understand.” Diane turns off her computer.

  * * *

  Before bed, I pour myself a glass of milk. I don’t know if it really helps put me to sleep, but I’ve been doing this since fifth grade, so now it’s just part of my routine. The door to the alteration room hangs open, and the bride’s binder reflects the outdoor lights. It latches on to my morbid curiosity and lassoes me inside. I flip through pages of immaculate wedding design. The bride’s taste isn’t some lacy, field-of-flowers monstrosity. It’s warm colors, sleek bridesmaids dresses, and I do agree with her on napkin rings. Maybe this bride has it right. She isn’t factoring love into the equation. This wedding is a realization of her dream design. This marriage is an investment in her future. Plain and simple. I gain a whole new appreciation for the binder, for her honesty. I’m sure she’s been planning her special day since she was my age, years before she even met the man who would be her husband.