Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  And yet my mind automatically pendulums back to the wedding plans as if my brain senses that this conversation isn’t going to happen at all based on my past track record. I’m going to chicken out the moment I see Adam’s hopeful face. I start drawing circles as I mentally walk through the seating chart I haven’t started. Do I place all the Katzs at their own tables, or do I mix them amongst the Goldmans? Should I group people by age, by relationships? I eat one more Tums and then throw the bottle in my desk drawer so I don’t have to see it anymore.

  My phone rings, and I half hope that it is Erika calling to say that she’s reconsidered, and that reframing me as a relationship expert makes perfect sense considering the fact that I am getting married in a few weeks. But it’s Amy Appelstein’s publicist, Katie, who starts telling me about an event she would like me to participate in, a blog-to-book panel at a hip unconference being held in a Tribeca bar by an agent, publisher, and bookstore owner triumvirate.

  She speaks quickly, barely allowing me time to interject more than a monosyllabic affirmation and promises that she will be dropping off a huge stack of my advance reader copies, and that this is the sort of prepublication event that builds buzz. She holds out the final sound in buzz so she resembles a timer going off. All I need to do is show up, read a few pages from the book, answer any questions they have during the hour-long author portion of the evening, and then go home and let the word-of-mouth spread across the industry. I agree once again and then find out that the event is in a few hours. I am the replacement, she explains, since a bigger name author dropped out this afternoon, and they need to fill the slot.

  Before I can explain that I absolutely can’t attend a publicity event tonight because I am about to destroy my relationship by having the discussion I’ve been avoiding for months, Katie rattles off all the necessary information and then apologizes that she needs to get off the phone, thanking me profusely for being so professional. Whatever that means.

  My professionalism finds me later in the evening on the subway heading toward Tribeca with Adam sitting beside me, squeezing my hand. I wanted Arianna to come along, hoping that she’d deflect all the anxiety clearly written on my face, but she doesn’t answer her cell phone beforehand, and we finally leave, just the two of us. Between nervousness for the event and anxiety over starting the conversation with Adam, I feel as if I am holding onto a doorframe while internal earthquakes decimate the floor.

  “Your first book reading,” Adam tells me, bringing my hand up to his lips while the subway car rattles toward my destiny. “I am so proud of you.”

  “Did you know that I used to always dream that the first time we’d see each other post-divorce would be at a book reading?” I ask him.

  “Sorry that we jumped the gun.”

  “Though I imagined that I would be behind a desk, signing books, and you’d walk into the bookstore to get some sort of self-help guide, and you’d see me sitting there, looking fantastic. And you’d be in soup-stained sweatpants. With a hole on the ass seam.”

  “You’re such a romantic, Rachel.”

  I smooth out my hair as we climb up the steps of the subway stop, my heart thumping so violently that it feels as if it is seeping into my throat. I swallow hard and plaster an enormous smile on my face as we push our way into the cavernous and poorly-lit bar that they’ve rented out for their unconference. A college-aged woman tottering in thin heels smiles brightly at me as we enter.

  “Are you here for the unconference?” she asks us.

  “I’m speaking at it,” I explain. “My name is Rachel Goldman. And this is my . . . fiancé, Adam Goldman.”

  “That’s so cute that you two have the same last name!” she exclaims as she sorts through a box for my name tag, which hangs from a lanyard emblazoned with the publishing company’s name. She directs Adam toward the main bar area, giving him my free drink coupon, and points me toward a side room that they’re using as a waiting area.

  He brushes his lips against mine and whispers, “You are going to be great.”

  I cling to his hand a bit longer, but he untangles himself and moves into the bar, and I have no choice but to go to the waiting area where our publishers have left small stacks of our books. The man standing by the window holding an amber-colored drink ignores me as I enter, but the woman—a dead ringer for the cartoon character, Daria—raises her eyebrows at me and goes back to tapping on her cell phone. I self-consciously take a seat near her and grab a copy of my book from the stack.

  “They left a few bottles for us if you want anything,” the Daria look-alike tells me between thumb stabs. “On the back table.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I say.

  “First event?” the man calls out.

  When I nod, he smugly informs me that this is his third book, fourth if you count a non-fiction one that he co-authored right out of graduate school. He tells us that he does these sorts of things all the time, and he hopes they start on time because he has a date lined up after this. I don’t really believe him, but I nod as if it’s common knowledge that he’s going to get laid tonight if this event doesn’t run over time.

  The Daria look-alike introduces herself as Allison, a weight loss blogger whose memoir chronicles how she lost over one hundred pounds. I try to imagine her one hundred pounds heavier, but it’s difficult to visualize. I wonder what happened to all the extra skin, if she had to have it surgically removed.

  “What’s your name and blog?” Allison asks in her flat, bored voice.

  “Rachel Goldman. I write Life from Scratch, but my book is . . .”

  “Yeah,” Allison interrupts. “I read you.”

  My phone buzzes and I’m startled to see that it’s a Facebook friend request from Allison. Her bored face stares back at me in icon form from the screen. Allison-in-the-flesh doesn’t say anything; she just taps her phone silently. I start to close mine without accepting the request and then realize that might be construed as rude since I clearly just read it, so I accept it grudgingly, wondering why the hell she is communicating via social media rather than talking to me while we’re in the same room. Maybe this is her nervous habit before an event.

  “Are you here alone?” the man calls out from his perch by the window.

  “My fiancé is here,” I respond without thinking. Allison’s head jerks up from her phone, and she stares at me, open mouthed.

  “I didn’t know you were getting married!” she exclaims. Even her excitement looks like everyone else’s ennui. She starts typing frantically into her phone, and I can see the familiar glint of a spoon from the header of my website.

  “I haven’t written about it yet,” I say uncomfortably. “I’m sort of not ready to talk about it, so I’d appreciate it if . . .”

  “My husband is here too,” Allison interrupts me.

  “Um, have you been married a long time?” I ask to be polite, nervously watching her fingers as she taps on the phone.

  I startle when she tells me fifteen years, wondering if she’s counting some mock ceremony they held on the playground in kindergarten. Her legs are bare despite the cool weather, and she’s wearing a vintage green tea dress with a shaggy cardigan. Clunky black shoes. Clunky thick-rimmed cat-eye glasses. Her legs are perfectly smooth, perfectly shaped as if she has been running non-stop for the last year, writing her book on a laptop that she pushes ahead of her on a rolling table as she jogs through Central Park.

  “Who is the guy?” Allison asks me, going back to scrolling through my site. “Is he here tonight? Am I going to meet him after the talk? Is it that photographer guy from Spain?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve actually been dating my ex-husband. It’s him. He’s my fiancé.”

  The man at the window glances over at us after I drop that bit of news and then returns to watching women walking past the window. “Wow,” Allison dr
ones. “Ex-husband for a second time. What’s making you two get married again?”

  I deeply regret saying anything, but I was going with the mentality that we’re engaged until we’re not engaged. Innocent until proven guilty. Having a wedding until it’s postponed.

  “I guess it just feels right. Feels like the next logical step. In a long line of logical steps,” I lie. “Actually, I haven’t written about it on the blog yet, so I’d sort of appreciate it if you’d keep it between us right now.”

  “Oh,” Allison says. She ominously closes her phone.

  Before I can ask her a second time not to blog about it, feeling like some things are worth repeating to drive the point home, the man by the window—whose name I figure out must be David since his book is stacked up next to mine—interrupts the silence by rapping his knuckles against the table in front of him. “Did you guys blog about this event tonight?”

  “Of course,” Allison tells him as I nod. “I blog about everything that happens to me. Did you?”

  “Yeah, I threw up a post. I think I’m going through blogging burnout. Do you guys self-host your blogs? Maybe I need to move my space and get re-energized. I have a free WordPress site,” he admits.

  “And you’ve been blogging for years?” Allison asks disgustedly. Even her disgust comes out sounding like ennui.

  “Five years,” David answers, wrapping his arms around his chest defensively. “PostSecret still uses a free site with a redirected custom URL.”

  “Who the hell cares what PostSecret does?” Allison says. “You should move to self-hosting.”

  “Up until this point, I didn’t really see a reason,” David says.

  “I think PostSecret actually moved to a self-hosted site a while ago,” I interject. “But I don’t know if there’s that big a difference between self-hosting or using free software.”

  “Of course there is,” Allison snaps.

  We both look at her for a moment, expecting her to continue, but she looks down at her phone, tapping out another message with her thumbs. My phone buzzes again. I assume to let me know that she’s now following me on Twitter or Pinterest or one of the dozens of social media sites dotting the Web.

  “I think the fact that we can’t even tell which sites are self-hosted sort of speaks volumes as to how little difference it makes.”

  “Self-hosting isn’t for the reader,” Allison says, implying the word “idiot” after everything she drones out. “It’s for the writer, the blog owner. It’s the difference between renting and owning your apartment. Anyone visiting your place has no idea if it’s yours, but you do. And how you treat the space or feel about the space changes once you own it. Once it becomes yours, and it can’t become someone else’s. Home owners feel differently about their space than renters, and blog owners who self-host feel differently about their site than writers who use free software that could technically be taken away from them at any time.”

  “But isn’t it more important to have someplace to live, more than worrying about renting or owning?” David tries again.

  “I guess it depends on how much you care about your site. There’s a crap lot more you can do with a self-hosted blog than with one of those free sites. It’s about controlling your destiny and permanence versus impermanence.” Allison sounds downright offended to be speaking with bloggers not appropriately passionate about self-hosting.

  The conference helper teeters into the room and tells us that we’ll be on in three minutes. Three minutes is barely enough time to pee once again or grab a bottle of water. On the way to the bathroom, I check my phone and see an email waiting for me from one of my favorite readers, a fellow food blogger and author of several cookbooks. I feel a wave of relief to get some support from afar, to feel as if my online friends are virtually with me tonight.

  But as I read it, my heart feels as if it just received a jolt from electrical paddles. I lean against the sink, trying to catch my breath. Just saw on Twitter that you’re engaged? To your ex-husband? This has to be a mistake, right? You seriously wouldn’t get engaged and not tell us. I slip my phone into my pocket and go into one of the stalls, locking the door behind me, and then just stand, half-facing the toilet, with my hand against the cold metal divider wall as I stare at the toilet paper dispenser. I take the phone back out of my pocket and reread the message again. Somewhere in the hallway, I hear the conference helper call my name, and I shout back an “I’m coming!” to her on autopilot, my eyes scanning the words again even though they aren’t really absorbing anything new from the brief message.

  I flush the toilet without peeing and go to the sink to wash my hands. Something acidic slides into my throat, like snake venom slithering forward from a bite. There isn’t enough time to go onto Twitter and search for my name, so I turn off the phone, childishly believing that if no one can reach me, then they can’t be frustrated with me. Like hiding by standing in the middle of an empty field and closing your eyes during a game of hide-and-go-seek.

  We’re led into the bar area, which has filled up during the time we were in the waiting area. The tables are arranged in small clusters, and each seat is clearly marked with a triangular paper stating the person’s occupation rather than name. I scan the crowd of agents and publishers and editors and booksellers and authors, my eyes finally finding Adam—otherwise known as guest—smiling encouragingly at me from a back table. The stomach acid which was churning around like tidal waves moments earlier calms into nervous laps at the sight of him. Adam will help me fix this.

  I present my book first, relieved that I get it over with quickly. Everyone listens politely, and as long as I direct the majority of my thoughts toward Adam’s corner of the room, I can even relax enough to joke around about divorce in general, my own specifically. Allison is just as dour in her presentation as she was back in the room, and I half expect her to deliver her thoughts while tapping at her cell phone. David’s book turns out to be a mystery with a blogger as the main sleuth.

  We field questions about how we moved from blog post writing to book writing, how we’re using our blogs as a platform to sell our books, and whether we think blogging is more important than maintaining other social media accounts such as Facebook or Twitter. I can’t say that I’m enjoying myself—it’s most definitely work—but I don’t hate it either, especially afterwards when the conference goers take a break and tell me as they walk by how excited they are to read my book.

  Adam holds back until the congratulations have died off, and the conference helper tells me that I can leave now or stick around for the second part of the evening, which is a discussion on working with difficult authors. I decide it’s the right time to bow out, and I look around for Allison to talk about whatever she posted on Twitter but she’s already gone, like a tornado that tears through a town and disappears, as if she is, after all, only wind.

  “Adam,” I murmur, my phone buzzing furiously as I turn it back on while we make our way back down to the subway, letting me know just how many messages I missed while I played my game of hide-and-go-seek. I peek at my inbox and scroll past the dozens of emails, all from familiar names, long time readers and fellow bloggers and Amy Appelstein. “Something terrible just happened.”

  Adam looks at me with such terror that I immediately hate myself for making his brain go toward worst-case scenarios involving our parents or siblings. I backtrack to reassure him. “I told that blogger, Allison, that we’re engaged, and she wrote about it on Twitter.”

  “I don’t understand how that’s a terrible thing,” he says.

  “Because I never wrote about it on my blog. Now all these people are writing me. They’re probably furious that I’m getting remarried and never told them. Oh my God, I can’t even read them. Amy Appelstein wrote, Adam.”

  His mouth is a long, thin line as he stares down the subway shaft, as if he can conjure the train with his eyes. I e
xpect him to hug me, to take my phone and scan through the messages for me, reassuring me that if I just write everyone back with the truth that all will be forgiven, but he doesn’t say anything to me. He just stands next to me, staring at an advertisement on the opposite side of the tracks.

  “Say something,” I admonish. “I just told you that everything is messed up.”

  “What do you want me to say, Rach? You just described a bunch of strangers finding out that we’re getting married in four weeks as ‘something terrible.’ Forgive me if I’m having trouble digesting that right now.”

  The train pulls up, and I try to take his hand as we enter the car, but he slips it into his pocket and sits down on one of the hard plastic seats. I sink down next to him, staring at a woman’s shoes across the aisle to keep myself from crying. “Those people aren’t strangers to me. Some of them are friends. I know you’re angry with me,” I whisper, “but will you please touch me?”

  Adam doesn’t answer, but he also doesn’t jerk his shoulder away as I lean my head down on it, trying to find an opening back to him. I forgot about this, how well our bodies fit together. I can’t remember the last time we rode the subway together with my head against his shoulder.

  I would still love him even if he was shorter than me or had knobby shoulders or was missing an arm. I have a feeling that we would find a different way to make our bodies mesh. But the fact that we don’t have to figure out a different way to lean or cuddle, the fact that it comes so naturally—or that we’ve figured it out by this point in our relationship—makes me love him a little bit more. Makes this realization hurt a lot more.