by Suzan Colon
“Hey, it’s the birthday girl!” says my brother-in-law when he answers the phone. When he hears nothing but sniffling and sobbing on the other end of the line, Ray utters a clumsy, “Uh-oh. Katy, are those tears of joy, possibly, hopefully?”
“N-no,” I choke out.
“Oh jeez, Katy, you didn’t do that birthday deadline thing to Daniel, did you?” In the background, I hear my sister hiss, “Let me talk to her!”
In the two seconds between Ray surrendering the phone to Bethany and her taking it, I realize that everyone who signed off on the Thirtieth Birthday Ultimatum—sister, mother, friends—was a woman. I never asked a man. Is my brother-in-law, a fair and stand-up guy, siding with Daniel in male solidarity, or was this a really bad idea, and I’ve just screwed up my entire life?
“Talk,” my sister orders, sensing we’re in relationship DefCon 4. “Everything. Go.”
“Oh, Bethy,” I whimper, using my childhood nickname for her.
“OMG,” she says. “Not on your birthday. Oh no, he didn’t.”
“No,” I croak, “he didn’t.”
Bethany knows enough about my history with Daniel to be able to fill in the blanks between my fish-gaspy sobs and the annoying hiccups that have come on. “Oh, Katy,” she sighs, “I’m so sorry. No wonder you had to say ‘Check please.’ He’s such a child.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s like he took a vow of puberty or something.”
My sister laughs uproariously, which makes me start to laugh, too. And then cry again. When Bethy realizes this, she makes soothing noises at me over the phone. She’s such an excellent mom, which is odd considering how un-mommy-like our own mother was when we were growing up. “Oh, Katy. I wish you lived here so you could come over and we could gorge on Fluffernutters until we went into sugar comas,” Bethy says.
“M-me too,” I sniffle.
“Are you coming to LA any time soon, maybe for work?” she asks.
“I don’t have any work,” I say, wiping my eyes and seeing slashes of black mascara on my hands. Oh, what I must look like. But what does it matter? There’s no one here to see me, not even a cat. I’ve been wanting to adopt one but held off because I thought I’d be moving in with Daniel and his rescued pit bull, Finster. Well, I can go ahead and get a kitty now. I can get twelve. Hell, I can be the Crazy Cat Lady of Jersey City because no one will know or care. I can do anything I want.
Wait a minute . . .
“I’m coming out,” I tell my sister.
“Really?” she says. “Do you have a freelance assignment? Can you afford it?”
“No and no, and I don’t care. I can’t stay in this apartment and wait for Daniel to call. I want to see you and Celia and Ray. I want out of here.”
3.
THERE ARE ONLY a few things keeping me from visiting my sister. Actually, a few hundred things.
My eyes are still puffy from crying last night until I didn’t have a drop left in me, but with all my bills spread out on the floor, I can see my financial situation clearly, and it’s as red as my eyes. I just paid the rent, gas, cable, and electric, so I have enough money left to eat. But I have exactly zero work on the horizon, my phone bill is due, and now I want to buy a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles. And the fares aren’t cheap, especially when the desired departure date is now.
With a sigh of exasperation, I lie back on the yoga mat I unfurled to do some exercise and get out of this depression. So far, the only pose I’ve done is Curling In a Ball and Weeping Pose. Yoga has always been my go-to for getting calm, but even that can’t help me now. It’s Sunday afternoon, when Daniel and I would normally be cuddling on the couch, me reading the Styles section of the Times, him listening to music, both of us starting a lazy discussion about what to have for dinner. Instead, I’m on my floor, still in my pajamas and my tear-fogged eyeglasses, broke and lonely and trying to keep from checking my phone every three minutes. But Daniel still hasn’t called since he left without saying goodbye last night.
Not wanting to believe the simplest explanation, that he just isn’t speaking to me, I’ve been concocting fantasies that something bad happened to him on the way home. He left in the middle of the night and had to take two trains back to Brooklyn. I have to keep myself from calling him to make sure he got home okay. I know this is just an excuse for me to talk to him, even though there’s nothing more to say. I’ve considered his compromise, of us moving in together, but it doesn’t seem like that would do anything to get Daniel over his fears of being a bad husband and father. As if. He’s such a kind person he can’t even eat animals, which makes eating out a real pain as he quizzes waiters and asks for vegan substitutions. Looks like I won’t have to deal with that again, I think as the tears start anew.
The too-loud ring of my phone makes me jump, but the caller ID tells me I can relax—sort of. “Hi, Mom,” I sigh.
“Katy.” Her voice is typically matter-of-fact. “Your sister told me your birthday didn’t go well. What happened?”
My mother has never been much on easing into difficult discussions. The first time I realized this was her shtick was when she sat Bethy and me down and said, “Your father and I are getting divorced.” That’s it, no warm up. Dad was a poet, so he liked to come up with stories, a way of working up to And that’s just like the situation we’re in now, kiddo, and then explaining things gently. Sometimes he was so gentle, I wasn’t even sure what he was talking about. Dad was too evasive, Mom too direct. I’ve tried both their ways and experienced failure. However, I might as well cut to the chase since my mother prefers to take her facts black and white, no sugar. “Daniel doesn’t want to get married or have kids, so I said we were through.”
“Hmmm,” my mother murmurs, and I detect the dreaded tone of I knew it. She branded Daniel as trouble from the first time she saw the tattoo of a cartoon superhero mouse on his forearm, telling me he was too young and wild to ever settle down. Wild? Try born to be mild. One of the biggest bonds Daniel and I have is living cautiously.
“Please, Mom, don’t say ‘I told you so’,” I beg.
Thankfully, Rebecca McNamara, aka the Almighty Mom, is in a merciful mood. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” she says. “You’re in enough pain as it is.”
I say a silent prayer of thanks. My mother may be somewhat hard, having been raised by a distant mother herself, but she’s not unloving.
“I’m sorry this had to happen, Katy,” she says. “But maybe it’s for the best.”
Yeah, that’s what she told us about Dad when he said he needed to go find himself, and she told him to go use another F word. I don’t remind her about that now, though. Besides, in both cases, it’s a debatable point.
My mother and I switch to catch-up talk, though on my end there’s not much to say. As for her, she’s still teaching at a school in a tough area of Harlem. She tells me how some of the kids have no money for lunch, so she’ll make a big pan of lasagna, and they’ll all eat together and study. She made Bethy and me study over meals when were kids, too, but it just felt like more school at home, not fun.
“Hey, did you see a doctor about that tight feeling in your chest?” I ask her.
“I did,” she reports. “Everything’s fine.” Before I can ask more, she changes the subject, telling me that her boyfriend, Vic, another teacher at the school, wants her to move in with him.
My throat catches. My mother is in her late fifties, was married, had two kids, got divorced, has been solo for years, and now, she’s thinking about moving in with her boyfriend. I just turned thirty and have yet to experience any of these things, and, judging from the events of the past twenty-four hours, I won’t any time soon.
So, in addition to the agony of breaking up with my boyfriend because he doesn’t want to start a family, which means I’m even less likely to start a family because I’m alone, and all of this happening on my thirtieth birthday, now I get to experience the icky feeling of being jealous of my own mother. I fall back again on my yoga mat and a
ssume the corpse pose. Just kill me now.
I spend the rest of the afternoon hoping Daniel will call, say he’s sorry, and tell me that I’m right, we should absolutely get married. Then, I debate whether to move in with him, convince him that we should try to get pregnant, and worry about the ring later. By sunset, I’m ready to settle for just talking about moving in together. And by the time I climb into bed, having checked my cell phone hourly to make sure it’s still working and that I haven’t missed any calls, I realize I probably don’t have to think about this anymore, because none of it is going to happen.
4.
BY EARLY MONDAY morning, I’m getting used to my eyes being puffed up to twice their size from crying all night, and I’ve made up my mind. Money or no money, I need to get out of this tiny, lonely apartment and go visit my sister and her family and be distracted from the sound of my silent cell phone before I go crazy-ass crazy. Or even crazier.
A spark of excitement brings me back to life as I turn on my laptop. I’m not a big traveler by nature, but this is what I need—to get away. I can’t wait to get to the airline website page I bookmarked and buy that plane ticket. I have my credit card ready, though it may scream when I use it. I’ll figure out how I’m going to make the payment later. I click on the link—and then watch in horror as the page updates to a new, much higher fare.
No, no, no! Why did I wait? Why didn’t I just buy the ticket last night? Why did Daniel give me a watch instead of a ring and ruin my life forever?! Just then, my phone rings. My heart goes wibbly, thinking It’s him! But when I pick up my cell, there’s a number on the screen that I don’t recognize. “Hello?”
“Katy? It’s Dina Bradley. Remember me? We worked together at Flash Magazine?”
“Dina! Of course I remember you!” I have a sudden memory of sitting with Dina Bradley in a windowless room at Flash, a fashion magazine. We had to write captions for hundreds of runway photos, and she almost made me spit up my latte with her impersonations of model walks, especially the one we called The Hungry Angry Pony.
“Katy, I tried calling you over at Wakefield Media, but they said you weren’t there anymore,” Dina says. “Did you tell those shady bastards to shove that proofreading job and decide to give your own writing a shot?”
“Not by choice,” I admit. “I got laid off about a year ago, and I’ve been freelancing ever since. How about you? You’re not still at Flash, are you?”
“Ugh, no,” Dina snorts. “It was no fun after you left, and when you see camouflage Capri pants come back for the third time as a trend, you’ve been in the fashion business too long. I’m at Bon Voyage, the travel website.”
“Ooh, I love that site. It’s the best armchair travel ever. The photos are amazing, and the stories always sound like they’re written by real people.”
“Actually, that’s why I’m calling you,” Dina says. “Are you free for lunch?”
DINA AND I make “Squee!” noises and give each other a huge, girly hug when I get to the company cafeteria at the Bon Voyage offices. We pick up two Diet Cokes and two Greek salads, even though I catch myself drooling at the sight of the Sloppy Joe with fries. Having worked at women’s magazines since I graduated from college, I can attest to the fact that nobody eats, and all anybody talks about is what they’re not eating. I guess it’s not that different at websites.
“So, here’s what I’m working on,” Dina says, stabbing at her lettuce with a plastic fork. “Emerald Cove, a surfing and yoga camp on a black sand beach in Costa Rica.” My mouth is full, so I just widen my eyes, nod, and wait for her to continue. “Do you know Brigitte Kirke, the photographer?” Dina asks.
“Yeah, I met her a couple of times at the women’s magazine. She’s awesome. I always wanted to hang out with her, but she’s married and lives in the ‘burbs.”
“Plus she had the baby,” Dina adds between quick sips of her soda. “Well, he’s about two now, I think.” Another person my age, hitched and having kids. I wonder if it would be unprofessional to weep in my salad. “Anyway,” Dina continues, “the story’s totally easy. Fly to Costa Rica, learn to surf, do a little yoga. What do you think?”
“It sounds amazing,” I say, getting slightly bitter that Dina’s bragging about her assignment, which sounds like a dream vacation. Well, not the surfing part, but whatever.
“I know, it’s really cool,” she says, smiling. “I’m glad you’re up for it.”
A tomato falls off my fork, as if it’s as shocked as I am. “Wait. You want me to do the story?”
Dina peers at me from behind her nerd-chic glasses. “Uh, yah, Katy, that’s why I’m telling you all of this.”
While that makes total sense, I’m still blinking stupidly over all of it. A top-rated website wants me to surf and do yoga for a week in Costa Rica and write about it, and they’ll pay me? The check would take care of my bills and a plane ticket to see my sister.
And yet, I don’t hear myself saying yes.
“Dina, this sounds amazeballs, but I have to be honest, I don’t know if I’m your girl. I have no idea how to surf. My idea of athleticism is reading a book while sitting up. And I’m not very outdoorsy. Isn’t Costa Rica, like, all jungle, all the time?”
Dina laughs. “Well, most of Costa Rica is still pretty rugged. There are jungles and rain forests, volcanoes, and some of the most beautiful beaches you’ll ever see. Unfortunately, there are also a ton of developers building huge hotels and condos there. We want to get a story about this place before Costa Rica becomes a big touristic theme park. Besides,” she continues, “you’re not supposed to know how to surf. That’s the point of writing an article about going to a surf camp. And I remember you like yoga.”
“I love yoga,” I say. “It’s good for people like us who sit all day, and it really calms me down.” I could use some yoga right now, actually, as I feel like this conversation is going ninety miles an hour.
“Well, what is a surfboard but a hard, floating yoga mat?” Dina reasons.
“That’s moving at high speed,” I say.
Dina shrugs. “If you don’t want to do it . . .”
“No! I totally want to do it,” I insist. “I just don’t want to promise something I can’t deliver.”
“Katy, you can handle this. I called you because you write well, not because you’re the Sportswoman of the Year.” Dina puts down her soda and says, “There are just two things.”
There’s more than the jungle and surfing? “Okay, tell me.”
“First, you have to go incognito,” Dina begins. “The reason Bon Voyage stories work is because our reporters pose as regular people. They don’t tell the hotels and resorts that they’re writing for a travel website, so they don’t get extra-special treatment in exchange for a good review. You’ll have to come up with a cover story. You can be anything but a writer.”
“That kind of sounds like fun,” I say. “What’s the other thing?”
Dina winces. “You have to leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Like, tomorrow tomorrow?”
She nods. “Right after we spoke a big story fell through, and we need this one to take its place. I was going to call and tell you to stay home and start packing, but you’d already left. Katy, it’s good money for a fun assignment, and you’d really be helping us out. Please tell me you don’t have any work or vacations or weddings on your calendar this week.”
This morning, all I wanted to do was go visit my sister and glue my broken heart back together with Fluffernutter sandwiches. Now, I’m heading to the wilds of Costa Rica tomorrow (tomorrow!) to learn how to surf, something I’ve never wanted to do before.
I tell Dina I’ll clear my schedule completely for this great assignment, which sounds better than saying I have absolutely nothing going on. Especially not a wedding.
5.
WIDE-EYED AND slack-jawed, I wander out of the Bon Voyage offices and into the crisp, early fall weather. My breakup sadness has been replaced with a new feeling, a mashup of daze
d panic. Two days ago, I had a boyfriend and a possibly too-quiet life, but I liked it that way. Now I’m single, and apparently I’m about to go on an adventure, one where I have to leap from my calm yoga mat onto a speeding surfboard.
It’s after lunchtime in midtown, so hundreds of people are scurrying back to their offices or cubicles, just like the one I used to sit in, where I read dreamily about women who went on adventures. They all sounded so exciting, but I’ll bet those women had more than twenty-four hours to prepare for their trips. My priority right now should really be packing, but I need a little walk to try to get a grip on where fate is taking me.
I’m a big believer in fate. I like to think everything happens for a reason, that there’s a grand plan and that life isn’t frighteningly random. I think this way even when the results aren’t apparently in my favor, like when I was let go from my job, but my belief in fate is especially strong when the outcome is good.
The way I met Daniel was totally fate at work. When I was at the fashion magazine, there was an upcoming cover story on the Wailing Walls, a stylish band whose singer was launching a clothing line. At the last minute, the writer got sick, and they gave me the assignment. My first official writing job!
The interview was at a recording studio. A tall, very cute guy was heading out just as I was coming in, but after he held the door for me, he turned right around and walked back inside. He held the elevator door for me, too (good manners = sexy), and as we rode up to the same floor, I sneaked a long peek at him. He was adorable, with straight black hair long enough in the front to fall into his dark, bedroomy eyes. His beard-scruff didn’t hide the dimple on his chin. He was wearing cool sneakers, black jeans, and a striped dress shirt with a loose tie. His rolled up shirtsleeves showed a tattoo of a cartoon superhero mouse, grinning at me. The guy was like the boy next door trying to be bad.
