by Emily Giffin
My mom shakes her head. "Everybody is married with babies in the suburbs. She can't do that."
"She can if she wants to," my dad says with a mouthful of cracker.
"Well, she doesn't want to," my mom says. "Do you, Rachel?"
"No," I say apologetically. "I like New York for now."
My dad frowns as if to say, well, then there is no solution.
Silence fills the kitchen. My parents exchange a doleful glance.
"Well. There is sort of someone…" I blurt out, just to cheer them up a bit.
They brighten, stand up straighter.
"Really? I knew it!" My mom claps giddily.
"Yeah, he's a very nice guy. Very smart."
"And I'm sure he's handsome too," she says.
"What does he do?" my dad interrupts. "The boy's looks are beside the point."
"He's in marketing. Finance," I say. I'm not sure if I am telling them about Marcus or Dex. "But..
"But what?" my mom asks.
"But he just got out of a relationship, so the timing may be… imperfect."
"Nothing is ever perfect," my mom says. "It is what you make of it."
I nod earnestly, thinking that she should cross-stitch that nugget of wisdom and hang it over my twin bed upstairs.
"On a scale of one to ten, how much do you dread this baby shower?" Darcy asks me the next day as we drive to Annalise's shower in my mom's '86 Camry, the car I learned to drive in. "Ten is total, total doomsday kind of dread. One is I can't wait, this thing will be really fun."
"Six," I say.
Darcy makes an acknowledging sound and then flips open her compact to check her lipstick. "Actually," she says, "I thought it'd be higher."
"Why? How much do you dread it?"
She closes her compact, examines her two-point-three-carat ring, and says, "Mmmm… I don't know… Four and a half."
Ohhh, I get it, I think. I have more reason to dread it. I am the one going into a room full of married and pregnant women-many of whom are fellow high school classmates-without so much as a boyfriend. Only one of us is thirty and totally alone, a tragic combination in any suburb. That is what Darcy is thinking. But I make her say it, ask her why she supposes that I dread the shower by a full point and a half more.
Shamelessly and without hesitation to consider a tactful wording, she answers me. "Be-cause. You're single."
I keep my eyes on the road, but can feel her stare.
"Are you mad? Did I say something wrong?"
I shake my head, turn on the radio. Lionel Richie is wailing away on one of my mother's preselected radio stations.
Darcy turns the volume down. "I didn't mean that that was a bad thing. I mean, you know that I totally value being single. I never wanted to marry before thirty-three. I mean, I'm talking about them. They are so narrow, you know what I mean?"
She has just made it worse by telling me that she didn't even want this whole crazy engagement. She would have preferred another three-plus years of bachelorettehood. And lo and behold, it all just fell in her lap. What's a girl to do?
"They're so narrow that they don't even know they're narrow," she continues.
Of course she is right about this. This group of girls, of which Annalise has been a member since the day she left college, lives like women in the fifties. They picked out china patterns before their twenty-second birthdays, married their first boyfriend, bought three-bedroom homes within miles, if not blocks, of their parents, and went about the business of starting a family.
"Right," I mumble.
"So that's all I meant," she says innocently. "And deep down inside, they are so jealous of you. You're a big-time lawyer at a big-city firm."
I tell her that is crazy-not one of those girls longs for a career like mine. Most don't work at all, in fact.
"Well, it's not only the career. You are free and single. I mean, they watch Sex and the City. They know what your life's all about. It's glamorous, full of fun, hot guys, cosmopolitans, excitement! But they won't let you see their insecure side. Because it would make their own lives that much more pathetic, you know?" She smiles, pleased with her pep talk. "Yeah. Your life is totally Sex and the City, "
"Yes. I am a lot like Carrie Bradshaw," I say flatly.
Minus the fabulous shoes, incredible figure, and empathetic best friend.
"Exactly!" she says. "Now you're talking."
"Look. I don't really care what they're thinking," I say, knowing it is only half true. 1 only care to the extent that I agree. And part of me believes that being thirty and alone is sad. Even with a good job. Even in Manhattan.
"Good," she says, slapping her thighs with encouragement. "Good. That's the spirit."
We arrive at Jessica Pell's-a fringe friend of ours from high school-exactly on time. Darcy consults her watch and insists on driving around for a few minutes, to be fashionably late.
I tell her it's not necessary to be fashionably late to a baby shower, but I oblige, and at her request, I take her through the McDonald's drive-through. She leans over me and yells into the speaker that she "would love a small diet Pepsi." Now, I know that she knows that McDonald's has Coke, not Pepsi. She has told me before that she likes to test them, see if they'll ask. That the Pepsi people always ask if you order the Coke, but the Coke people don't always ask.
But it is an opportunity to make a stir, create an exchange. Pimply Suburbanite meets Big-City Supermodel.
"Is diet Coke awright?" the boy mumbles into his microphone.
"Guess it'll have to do," she says with a good-natured chuckle.
She finishes her diet Coke as we pull up to Jessica's house. "Well. Here goes nothing," she says, fluffing her hair, as if this shower were all about her instead of Annalise and her unborn child.
The other guests have already assembled in Jessica's well-coordinated blue-and-yellow living room when we arrive. Annalise screams, waddles over to us, and gathers us in a group hug. Despite the uncommon ground, we are still her best friends. And it is clear that we are the honored invitees, a role that makes me somewhat uncomfortable and Darcy bask.
"It's so good to see you guys! Thank you so much for coming in!" Annalise says. "You both look amazing. Amazing. You get more stylish every time you come home!"
"You look great too,' I say. "Pregnancy agrees with you. You have that glow."
Like my parents' house, Annalise resists change. She still has the same hairstyle-shoulder-length with curled-under bangs-that was great in the eighties, horrible in the mid-nineties, and through sheer luck, slightly less awful now. It passes as a nice motherly cut. And her face, always round as a persimmon, no longer looks chubby, but simply part of the cute, pregnant package. She is the sort of pregnant woman that people gladly relinquish their seats to on the subway.
Darcy rubs Annalise's stomach with her jeweled left hand. The diamond catches the light and flashes in my face. "Oh my," Darcy coos. "There is a little naked person in there!"
Annalise laughs and says, "Well yes, that is one way of looking at it!" She introduces us to some of the guests, fellow teachers and guidance counselors from the school where she teaches, and other neighborhood friends. "And of course, you know everybody else!"
We exchange hugs with Jess and our other high school classmates. There is Brit Miller (who shamelessly worshiped and copied Darcy in high school). Tricia Salerno. Jennifer McGowan. Kim Frisby. With the possible exception of Kim, who was a bubbly cheerleader and, miraculously, also in the advanced science and math classes, none of the girls were particularly smart, interesting, or popular in high school. But as wives and mothers, their mediocrity matters no longer.
Kim slides down on the sofa and offers me a spot next to her. I ask her how Jeff (who also graduated in our class and played baseball with Brandon and Blaine) and her boys are doing. She says they are all doing great, that Jeff just got promoted, which was exciting, that they are buying a new house, that the boys are just perfect.
"What does Jeff do again?" I as
k.
She says sales.
"And you have twins, right?"
Yes, boys. Stanley and Brick.
Now, I know Brick is her mother's maiden name, but I wonder again how she could have done that to a child. And Stanley? Who calls a baby Stanley, or even Stan? Stanley and Stan are man names. Nobody should have that name under the age of thirty-five. And even if the names were tolerable in their own right, they do not go together, my pet peeve in name selection. Not that you should choose rhyming names for twins, or even names beginning with the same letter, like Brick and Brock or Brick and Brack. Go with Stanley and Frederick-both old-man names. Or Brick and Tyler-both pretentious surnames. But Stanley and Brick? Please.
"Did you bring photos of the boys?" I ask the obligatory question.
"As a matter of fact I did," Kim says, whipping out a small album with "Brag Book" written on the cover in big, purple bubble letters. I smile, flipping through the pages, pausing for the requisite time before I go to the next. Brick in the tub. Stanley with a Wiffle ball. Brick with Grandma and Grandpa Brick.
"They're precious," I say, closing the album and handing it back to her.
"We think so," Kim says, nodding, smiling. "I think we'll keep them."
As she returns the album to her purse, I overhear Darcy telling her engagement story to Jennifer and Tricia.
Brit is egging her on. "Tell her about the roses," she prompts.
I had forgotten about the roses-perhaps blocked them out since the arrival of my own.
"Yes, a dozen red roses," Darcy is saying. "He had them waiting in the apartment for me after he proposed."
Not two dozen.
"Where did he ask you?" Tricia wants to know.
"Well, we went out for a really nice lunch, and afterward he suggested that we take a walk in Central Park…"
"Did you suspect it?" two girls ask at once.
"Not at all…"
This is a lie. I remember her telling me two days before Dex asked that she knew it was coming. But to admit this would detract from the drama of her tale, as well as diminish her image as the one pursued.
"Then what did he say?" Brit asks.
"You already know the story!" Darcy laughs. She and Brit still keep in touch occasionally due to Brit's diligence; her fascination for her teen idol has never eroded.
"Tell it again!" Brit says. "My engagement story is so lame-I picked out the ring myself at the mall! I have to live vicariously through you."
Darcy puts on her pretend-modest face. "He said, 'Darcy, I can't think of anything that would make me happier than having you as my wife.'"
Except being with your best friend.
"Then he said, 'Please share your life with me.' "
And share your best friend with me.
A chorus of oohs and ahhs follow. I tell myself that she is embellishing the tale, that he really just uttered the standard "Will you marry me?"
"Take off your ring," Brit clamors. "I want to try it on."
Kim says that it is bad luck to remove your ring during the engagement.
Take it off!
Darcy shrugs to demonstrate that her free spirit is still very much intact. Or perhaps to point out that when you are Darcy Rhone, you don't need luck. She slips off her ring and passes it around the circle of eager women. It ends up in my hands.
"Try it on, Rach," Brit says.
It is a married girl's fun trick. Make the single girl try on the diamond ring so she can, if only for a moment, get one step closer to the unknown euphoria of betrothal. I shake my head politely as though I'm declining a second helping of casserole. "That's okay," I say.
"Rachel, any prospects?" Tricia asks tentatively, as you would inquire about someone's CAT scan results.
I am ready to report a firm no, when Darcy answers for me. "Tons," she says. "But no one special guy. Rachel is very picky."
She is trying to help. But somehow it has the reverse effect, and I feel even more like an emerging old maid. Besides, I can't help but think that she is only being charitable because I so clearly look like the odd woman out, the loser in the group. If I were engaged to, say, Brad Pitt, there'd be no way that Darcy would brag on my behalf. She'd be sulking in the corner, her competitive juices flowing in full force, telling Brit in the bathroom that yes, Brad is Brad, but Dex is so much cuter-just a little less pretty. Of course, with that, I would actually agree.
"I wouldn't say I'm that picky," I say matter-of-factly.
Just hopelessly alone and having an affair with Darcy's husband-to-be. But you all do realize that I graduated from a top-ten law school and make six figures? And that I don't need a man, dammit! But when I do find one and have a baby, I will sure as hell pick a better name than Brick!
"Yeah, you are picky," Darcy says to me, but for her audience. She takes a sip of punch. "Take Marcus, for example."
"Who is Marcus?" Kim asks.
"Marcus is this guy that Dex went to Georgetown with. Nice, smart, funny," Darcy says, waving her hand in the air, "but Rachel won't give him the time of day."
If she keeps it up, they are going to start wondering if I'm a lesbian. Which would make me a true freak show in their eyes. Their idea of diversity is someone who attended an out-of-state school and didn't rush a sorority.
"What, no sparks?" Kim asks me sympathetically. "You need sparks. Jeff and I had sparks in the eleventh grade and they never stopped."
"Right," I say. "You need sparks."
"Absolutely," Brit murmurs.
Their collective advice: don't settle. Keep looking. Find Mr. Right.
That is what they all did. And by God, I think they believe it. Because nobody who marries at the ripe age of twenty-three can be settling. Naturally. That is a phenomenon that only happens to women in their thirties.
"So, have you made a final decision on your baby names?" I ask Annalise, desperate to change the subject. I know she is considering Hannah and Grace if she has a girl, Michael or David for a boy. Wholesome, classic, solid names. Not trying too hard.
"Yes," Annalise says. "But we're not telling." She winks at me. I know that she'll tell me the final decision later, just as she has with the runner-up selections. I am safe. The friend who will never, can never, swipe your baby names.
My specialty is fiance-stealing.
After we play a few silly shower games, Annalise opens her presents. There is a lot of yellow clothing because Annalise does not know whether she's having a boy or a girl. So no pink gifts except for a pink bunny bank from Tiffany, courtesy of Darcy, who says she knows for sure that Annalise is going to have a girl, that she has a very good sense about these things. I can tell that Annalise hopes she is right.
"Besides," Darcy says, "even if I'm wrong-and I'm not-did you know that at the turn of the century, pink was for boys and blue was for girls?"
We all say that we did not. I wonder if she is making it up.
Annalise comes to my gift. She opens my card, murmuring to herself. Her eyes fill with tears as she reads my words-that she is going to be the most wonderful mother and that I can't wait to watch it all. She waves me over to her, as she did with the other girls, and gives me a big hug. "Thank you, honey," she whispers. "That was so nice."
Then she opens my present, an off-white cashmere blanket with a teddy bear border. I spent a fortune on it, but I am glad that I splurged as I watch Annalise's expression. She gasps as she unfolds it, presses it to her cheek, and tells me it is perfect, that she will use it to bring the baby home from the hospital.
"I want to fly back when she's born!" Darcy says. "I better not be on my honeymoon!"
Whether she does it on purpose or it is simply the way she is wired, something she can't help, Darcy inserts herself into every moment. Usually I don't mind, but after spending ages finding the perfect gift for my second-oldest friend, I wish she would pipe down and stop overshadowing Annalise and me for a nanosecond.
Always the diplomat, Annalise smiles quickly at Darcy before returning her
focus to me and the blanket. She passes it around as everyone agrees that it is the ideal receiving blanket, so adorable, so soft. That's what they're saying, anyway. But something tells me that they are all thinking, Not a bad choice from a litigator with questionable maternal instincts.
Chapter 13
When I return home from the shower, my mother follows me into the family room and bombards me with questions. I give her the highlights, but she is insatiable. She wants to know every detail about every guest, gift, conversation. I have a flashback to high school, when I'd come home, exhausted from a day of academic and social pressure, and she would inquire about Ethan's debate-team performance or Darcy's cheerleading tryout or what we talked about in English class. If I wasn't forthcoming enough, she would fill in the gaps, rambling about her part-time job at the orthodontist's office or what rude thing Bryant Gumble said on the Today show or how she ran into my third-grade teacher in the grocery store. My mother is an open-book chatterbox and she expects everyone to be just like her, particularly her only child.
She finishes her inquisition on the shower and moves on to-what else?-the wedding.
"So has Darcy decided on a veil?" She straightens a pile of Newsweeks on our coffee table, waiting for an in-depth answer.
"Yes."
She moves closer on our couch. "Long?"
"Fingertip."
She claps excitedly. "Oh. That will be beautiful on her."
My mother is, and has always been, a big Darcy fan. It didn't make sense back in high school given the fact that Darcy never put a premium on studying and promoted a certain unwholesome boy craziness. Yet my mother just plain old loved Darcy, perhaps because Darcy supplied her with the details of our life that she so craved. Even past the perfunctory parental pleasantries, Darcy would talk to my mother as a peer. She would come over to my house after school, lean against our kitchen counter, eating the Oreos my mother had set out for us while she talked and talked. Darcy would tell my mom about the boys she liked and the pros and cons of each. She'd say things like, "His lips are too thin; I bet he can't kiss," and my mom would become delighted and elicit more, and Darcy would give it, and I would end up leaving the room to start my geometry homework. Now what's wrong with that picture?
