by Jill Kargman
“So—” I said, resolved. “Let’s go to the Seaport thing. I want to.”
“No WAY,” said Kiki, shaking her head of perfectly blown-out shiny locks, chandelier earrings (or as she called them, “chande-learrings”) clinking. “You have been through the ringer tonight, and we are zoning here on the couch.”
I told her I wanted to go to the party, no popcorn-and-eighties-flicks healing process needed. We’d dance up a storm to “I Will Survive” or some grrrrl-power anthem, and I’d feel better.
Why feel sorry for yourself when you can shimmy your ills away?
I began raiding her incredible, packed closet full of way-too-short-for-me hemlines that would make Paris Hilton blush, and we blared some vintage Duran Duran as I dried my hair and put on makeup. For a moment there during “Rio,” I actually felt okay, worlds away from where my night began. Kiki had made me feel safe again.
We cabbed it down to the Seaport and walked down the rickety wood slats to get to what I could already tell was a raging success. Lyle was standing just inside with Elliot.
“Hey, Holly! What are you doing here? I thought you had some romantic weekend.” Lyle asked, while kissing Kiki hello on the cheek and wrapping his arms around her tiny waist. I noticed their fingers were intertwined, which was very lovey-dovey for Kiki. She was very much the PDA type, but I’d usually spied hands way up thighs, not tender hand-holding.
“Long story,” said Kiki, “but we’re going to have a blast.”
“Nightmare afternoon,” I confessed to Elliot as Kiki and Lyle walked ahead, arm in arm. “But nothing a large beverage can’t eclipse!”
“What can I get you then? A vat of absinthe perhaps?” he asked, smiling. He looked very Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast.
“Hmmm. You know what I’d love?” I think he was expecting some fancy bubble-gum-colored chick drink with an umbrella. “A Coca-Cola.”
“Two Cokes, please!”
We clinked fizzy brown glasses and Kiki waved us through the VIP checkpoint and into the cavernous tented outdoor space on the waterfront, which was filled with heat lamps, Christmas trees, glass bars, and a DJ booth twenty feet up. People were dancing on every surface, the bar, tables, chairs, even the ottomans.
Kiki and Lyle came up with two green drinks that looked like antifreeze.
“Wow, Keeks, congrats, this is huge!” I marveled.
“Holly, take this—”
“What is this concoction?”
“It’s a green apple martini. So yummy.” She slammed back a gulp, then offered me a sip, which I tried with trepidation for fear of poison taste, but it was more like Sour Patch Kids liquefied in the Cuisinart. No, gracias. “OH! Holly! This is my friend Randy, from Celestial Records!”
I turned to see a smiling woman with thick black glasses. “Hey there!” she said, shaking my hand firmly. We gabbed about my years in magazines and even a summer at Arista in college and she handed me her card, telling me to e-mail her some clips of my work. I was embarrassed to explain that I hadn’t exactly been in the workforce for some time.
“I’ve kind of been in Mommyland for the last few years,” I said, hoping she’d still think of me as hip versus culturally put-out-to-pasture. Which I had been. But now that Miles was in elementary school, I’d felt myself starting to reenter the world of pop culture. I was finally more attuned to new bands, trendy writers, and hot films.
“I’ll tell you what,” she yelled over blaring Joy Division. “I’ll get your address from Kiki and messenger you the CD and bio for our new band, Candygram, that Noah just signed. See if you can write a kick-ass release for them and e-mail it to me.”
“Done!” I said confidently, hoping I remembered how to do that. It had been five years. She seemed like she’d be a chill boss, even if she had a tough-cookie vibe; my gut was that she was a straight shooter.
“Looking forward to it,” she said, and saluted me, army-style.
As Randy walked away, I looked around for Kiki, who was on the dance floor with Lyle, dancing-slash-making out. She twirled effortlessly in her Louboutins, looking like the Dancing with the Stars people, but not B-listy. The next thing I knew, I felt a hand take my wrist. Elliot spun me around, then led me next to Kiki and Lyle, who at this point were practically entangled in a Lambada-esque coil of limbs that would make Patrick Swayze and a pre-nose-job Jennifer Grey blush. Elliot rolled his eyes at them, and we both shrugged, laughed off their PDL (public display of lust), and danced nonstop for an hour. To hit after 1980s hit we laughed and sang along. As Elliot recited every lyric perfectly, I knew that while those older-man Al Pacino fantasies would always be alive and well, I loved being with someone my own age—a common thread, a childhood of the eighties, and a shared knowledge of that time in music. “Come On, Eileen,” “Karma Chameleon,” “Too Shy, Shy,” all played in a row as we danced. When “Hungry Like the Wolf” came on, Kiki grabbed me and whispered, “This is John’s song!” I died laughing and was thrilled to be in such a radically different environment than a few hours before.
Elliot excused himself to go to the bathroom, so I third-wheel danced with Kiki and Lyle to Blondie. I was sweaty and vibrant, thighs shaking from the rare workout, now two hours of solid jumping. My throat hurt from belting the tunes and I knew I’d wake up with a sore throat, though making your voice box raw by singing your heart out was worth it. I looked around at Kiki, who waved to me as Lyle kissed her neck, his arms around her waist.
Then Kiki’s face suddenly dropped, her eyes widening. I knew something was wrong when she inhaled sharply.
“What?” I looked at her, then looked at what she was looking at behind me.
It was Tim.
Sucking face with his slag. Kiki grabbed my arm in support, but it was too late. I couldn’t believe he was a) back in the city and b) so PDA-ish with his relationship. I was a deer in the headlights. Specifically, Avery’s massive, tanned, protruding headlights. She was a blond stick with boobs in a dress so tight, it looked as if it had been sprayed on. He was my teddy bear, kissing her with his eyes closed. I stared at them in a grief-induced trance, until finally, she broke the suction-cup kiss and he opened his eyes and saw me.
He gave me a meek “Hi there,” with a tight grin, and I turned and ran. Kiki ran after me out the door and down the board-walk, where my heel caught in a gap between the planks and I bit it. Splat! I lay in a big X like mowed roadkill on the walkway, my knee bleeding. I peeled myself up, sobbing, and limped up to a cab area.
“Holly, wait—” she called.
“I’m going home, I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I grabbed a cab, dove in, and we screeched off. I looked out the back window and saw Kiki, with Lyle running up behind her, looking nervously at me. As we pulled off toward the FDR, I felt myself fall into an abyss of jealousy, regret, and panic, trapped in an elevator, the coffin of a life I’d chosen, and I wanted to get off.
I saw visions of my happy times with Tim projected on the screen of my brain, like hazy flickers of black-and-white old home movies: long walks holding hands, cheers at football games in the cold, dancing at parties, and New Year’s embraces. I saw sunlit afternoons and breakfasts in bed, the exchanged smiles when Miles was a baby. But it all vanished, all those perfect memories evaporating into thin winter air. Caught off guard by seeing him, the sobs choked me so much that I felt a stabbing pain in my neck. I wanted him back. More than I had ever wanted anything before in my life, I wanted a time machine to go back. Maybe I could pay more attention to his needs. Or look the other way. Or confront it but say we had to try and make it work. Couples counseling. Anything. Where had we gone wrong? I sighed, wiping a tear. Too late. He was gone, kissing a slut-rag in Lycra.
Drunk on black anguish, I got in bed and wept into the pillow, hoping this was rock bottom and that it was only up from here. The pit was so deep now, and the worst part of it was that in all my fantasies of running back to him and begging for him back, now it was truly too late. Too much had happene
d in our now three seasons apart—we probably didn’t even know each other anymore. There’s so much healing and rebuilding after a catastrophic breakup that you grow back new parts where the wounds were, and they are stronger and more impenetrable. And that’s what scared me. I had a bulletproof vest around my heart. Maybe I could never fall in love again. I was too jaded, too tired, and too sick at the thought of teaching the long course of Holly 101 all over again. It was so exhausting. Friends, hobbies, favorite foods, movies, stories of childhood. There was too much to teach. I wanted someone to just download my history and know me, implant their brain with Matrix-style file on my life so I wouldn’t have to always start over. How exhausting.
I wanted to shake the Etch A Sketch of my life and erase the messy mistakes I’d made. I wanted a clean slate, to turn the white knobs in different directions this time.
I couldn’t sleep. I watched the outside light fade into midnight blue and black, tinted with the orange glow of Manhattan’s electric veil. I thought of ex-boyfriends I could call for a dose of nostalgia, for someone to say I was special in their eyes. That was all I wanted: to be wanted again, and also to want them just as much, to feel like we fit together, like I wasn’t alone in the world. I remembered a line from Our Town: “People are meant to live two by two.” It sounded very Noah’s ark, as if we were hippos or geese or something, but it felt true that night. I was desperate in my pain to find that other half—not just to have one, because I’d had that before, and two cobbled-together halves don’t make a whole. Deep down, I knew that anyone at that moment would feel stapled on as an artificial half; I needed to be whole on my own first.
I did what I always did in moments like this: popped in my shrink, Woody Allen, for a post-midnight screening. This time, I chose my all-time number-one fave, Hannah and Her Sisters. It was the perfect spoonful of sugar to my heinous medicine of the present. I laughed my ass off, sat in therapy with Michael Caine, got the autumn chill right alongside a confused Barbara Hershey, and realized, in the last moments of the movie, the ultimate truth to Woody Allen’s final line. His brilliant character goes from near death to vibrantly alive to suicidally depressed and finally back to blissfully happy. He marvels, kissing his new wife’s neck after a year of despair, that “the heart is a very resilient little muscle.” I sure hoped he was right.
35
A man tells his wife of fifteen years that it feels like they’ve only been married five minutes. “That’s so sweet,” the wife says. The husband replies, “Five minutes underwater.”
The next day, Tim came to drop off Miles, who ran into my arms for the best hug ever, momentarily drawing my attention away from the previous evening’s liplock betwixt ex-husband and urchin in a seemingly sprayed-on dress.
“I thought you all were in Locust Valley for the whole weekend. I didn’t expect to see you in the city last night,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, we were, and then Avery’s friend was involved with that charity. . . .”
“Mm-hmm.” I knelt down and unzipped Miles’s bag.
“Mommy, can we make Rice Krispie Treats? Pleeease?”
“Sure, lovie.”
“Okay, well, bye, then—” I said curtly. Shoot. I shouldn’t have let him see that it got to me. But it did.
“Holly, for what it’s worth . . . ,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”
I could tell that he really felt bad. Good. Asswipe. But while all along I thought that was what I wanted, pure regret and atonement on his part, it didn’t help.
I shrugged, smiled, and quietly said good-bye as Miles skipped into the kitchen.
“Yay, there’s a prize in this one!” Miles ripped open the box top and tore open the airtight bag, sending Snap, Crackle, and Pop flying onto the floor. He started digging through the cereal, in desperation, as if the SpongeBob pencil topper was the lost ark. “Got it!” The collateral damage was the Krispies all over the place, but his smile made scooping it all up worth it.
“You’re too much, sweetie.” I laughed, hugging him so hard. “I love how you treasure complete junk.”
“Mom, can I tell you something?” he said, smiling. “I love you. More than Avery. Don’t worry.”
I giggled. “Well, I should hope so! Seeing as how you’re my little nugget I carried around for nine months!” I teased, giving him a squeeze.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Milesie.”
“You’re a good person.”
I laughed out loud but almost wanted to cry. Maybe I would put a pin in my dating life for now. How could I want another man in my life, when I was raising this one?
“Thanks, honey,” I said, kissing his forehead. “You are, too.”
That night, after a feast of our chewy squares, an hour of stories, and tuck-in, I closed Miles’s door and went to scope the TiVo. As I reached for the remote, the doorman’s buzzer rang.
“Yes, Tony?”
“Hi, Ms. Talbott. Delivery from Zabar’s.”
“Huh? Oh, I wasn’t expecting anything. I didn’t shop there—are you sure it’s for me?”
“Let me double-check,” he replied, putting down the receiver momentarily. “Yup, it’s for you.”
“Oh, weird. Okay, then.”
Maybe it was from my dad, who had called to check in on me? Or maybe Kiki. A few minutes later, I opened the back door and a man walked in with a huge bag loaded up with loot. There were pink peonies sticking out, tied with brown ribbon, and the bag was packed with soups—butternut squash apple, wild mushroom bisque, cream of broccoli, and chicken noodle, which Kiki called Jewish penicillin.
Then I saw the card, which I opened.
I was flabbergasted. It wasn’t from Dad or Kiki.
Dear Holland,
I’m so sorry your night headed even further south than the Seaport—Kiki said you weren’t feeling well and I wanted to send over some things to make you feel a bit better. Let me know if you ever want to meet up for some Coke. A Cola, that is.
Elliot
What a mensch. He seemed close to Lyle, but I couldn’t get a read on him. I knew his divorce had been recent like mine, so he was probably gun-shy about any relationship, but as a friend he was clearly in the Kiki stratosphere of thoughtfulness.
Later that night I called Kiki to download the details of the delivery.
“Wow, Zabar’s, he’s my kind of guy,” Kiki said. “That’s pretty amazing. Guys never do shit like that.”
“Should I call him to thank him? Can you get his number?”
Kiki rolled over and nudged Lyle to get the digits and I didn’t miss a beat dialing them; that’s what you do when someone does something nice. But then as I heard the ringing, I suddenly got inexplicably nervous. Why? We were friends! There was no sign of romantic tension . . . what was my problem?
“Elliot, hi! It’s Holland. Holly Talbott.”
“I don’t know any other Hollands,” he said with a little laugh.
“I can’t even begin to thank you enough—this is the sweetest thing ever—the soups—I’m just so touched; that was so thoughtful.”
“Yeah, well I had gone to the bathroom and when I got back, you were gone and Kiki said you went home sick—”
“I wasn’t, actually. Well, sick to my stomach, yes. Bumped into the ex at the party. I saw him across the dance floor with a girl half my age and kind of flipped out.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s rough—”
“Yeah. Good times.”
He recounted how his ex had stunned him by appearing at a party a few months ago, immersed in a massive kiss and wearing a massive rock.
“So that’s how I found out she was engaged: I just saw this ring in my face. It was kind of crazy.”
“Oh, my gosh.” I felt lucky that at least Tim wasn’t getting remarried. Maybe he would marry Avery at some point, but I had a feeling from those CDs about cavemen kicking the cave-woman out of the cave that he wouldn’t be tethering himself to anyone anytime soon.
“So I have to go to
Milwaukee for two days this week, but maybe when I get back we can hang out?”
“Milwaukee? Random. What’s there, a client?”
“Uh . . . yeah,” he said. “A collector. I don’t visit the red states that often, not since my cross-country drive in college.”
“You know, I always wished I had done that and really gotten to know America,” I mused. “I have a very Beavis and Butt-head vision of what lies between the coasts.”
“It’s amazing,” Elliot marveled. “I felt this John Cougar Mellencamp heartland happiness the whole drive.”
“That sounds so cool. I’ve always wanted to do a Thelma & Louise-type road warrior blitz like that. Minus going off the cliff. Though some days I don’t blame them,” I joked.
“No, you wouldn’t want to do that,” he chided. “It would be quite a loss.”
“Well, honestly, Elliot, the last few months have brought me pretty close to ‘pedal to the metal’ at the mouth of a canyon. . . .”
“I’m sorry—”
“Divorce is no picnic, as you know.” I sighed. “It’s been . . . an unpleasant time.”
“I know. Even though you can have so many problems in a marriage, after a split you get this gnawing regret whenever you’re lonely.”
“EXACTLY!” I exclaimed. He got it.
“You kind of have to remind yourself that there were real reasons that compelled you to question things,” he said.
“Oh, my God, verbatim my thoughts, verbatim,” I responded.
He fully understood my plight and the schizo nature of a divorce, where you may have anger but still replay the film stills of the good times.
We ended up talking relationship shop for almost two hours. I unloaded the entire Tim saga, including every hideous detail and describing a sobfest during which Kiki had suggested I buy stock in Kleenex.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or hunt down my ex-mother-in-law when I regaled him with tales of her insanity, including her boarding her four standard poodles in obedience school in rural Lichtenstein for two months the summer before.
