Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  I pause at my computer, glancing at the clock, and decide that I don’t really have time to pick at the blog post I’m writing about the engagement. The book event post is still at the top of my blog, and the comments that I’ve glanced at have become more confused, questioning. Was the rumor false? Is something wrong? Why aren’t I updating my blog anymore? Part of me wants to throw up something quick, a single paragraph explaining everything in basic terms. But the other part of me knows that this deserves something thoughtful. Not for the readers, but for Adam to see.

  As I head out of the building, I swing by our mailbox and grab out what at first glance looks like a pile of junk mailings and credit card offers. But there, tucked inside the pages of a circular promoting an electronics store sale, I find one of our wedding response cards. Which immediately makes me fear how many we’ve accidentally thrown away as we toss daily junk mail flyers in the recycling bin. We’re still missing over half of our response cards, and the wedding is creeping ever closer. The chef at Pâturage needs a final head count, and I’ve been avoiding his phone calls for the last two weeks while I wait for additional cards to come in.

  I slip the response card into my purse after I shake out the rest of the circular two more times for good measure. I step outside, determined to walk to my television interview, even though I am scared to sweat through my make-up or feel the lining ridge against my toe. I am going for a healthy, happy glow when I step into the studio, not the dinginess that comes from a cab ride or—even worse—stepping onto the bus to go crosstown. Plus, I have left a lot of time to spare as I make my way to Chelsea Piers. I am going to look wind-swept and outdoorsy when I step in front of the camera.

  My cell phone buzzes, and I check the screen to see Arianna’s number. We haven’t spoken at all since the bachelorette party except for a few brief emails, and I can feel my entire body stiffen as I debate whether or not to answer. If I don’t answer, I’ll need to call her back later, and I’ll spend the entire time in front of the camera thinking about my estranged friend rather than estranged husbands. On the other hand, that tension may add a layer of believability to my talking points about the book. Failed relationships are failed relationships, after all.

  I decide to answer the phone, despite the fact that it is practically already into voicemail by the time I pick up.

  “Ari?” I call out, closing off my other ear with the palm of my hand.

  “Hey, Rach,” she says in a voice that sounds as if it has rehearsed this opening several times. “Your dress is ready for a final fitting. Do you think you could swing by this morning?”

  “Thank you so much for doing this.” My gratitude sounds forced and tinny. “I’m actually on the way to a television studio to talk about the book.”

  “Wow, isn’t that a 180 . . . wedding dress fitting to divorce book.” It’s not just her words. Even her voice sounds like a needle, despite her forced laugh.

  “I can’t tell which bothers you more—the wedding or the book,” I snap, her lie from the bachelorette party shooting from my subconscious to the front of my brain like a bullet. Something inside of me breaks; whatever was rushing around, trying to smooth over the tension between us, tuck it under the rug or throw it into a drawer so neither of us would notice it, and I feel all the times when I wanted to scream at her what the hell are you doing throwing away our friendship come bubbling up in my throat. The ridge in the shoe makes my toe echo that sentiment; it feels rubbed raw.

  Arianna’s voice comes over the line as remote and controlled. “Neither of them bothers me. I was just commenting on the dichotomy. On one hand, you’re planning your too-romantic-for-words wedding and on the other, you’re flitting about town, hawking a book about divorce. Some of us just don’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand? I got a divorce. I wrote a book about it. I did what most of us want to do—I found someone to love and marry. I’m not sure I see the dichotomy.”

  “I’m commenting more on what details you’re choosing to tell people and what you’re leaving out of the story. Unless I misunderstood, and you’re going on television to tell the world how much you don’t need your own book right now.”

  “My book is about standing up for yourself, about finding your voice and using it. I think I quite clearly need that. And I’m working on a post right now about the wedding and Adam.”

  “You have gotten so oversensitive since you’ve gotten engaged.”

  “And you’ve gotten so insensitive since you started cheating on my brother with Noah.”

  My words serve as a magnet, drawing every set of eyes around me on the sidewalk toward my cell phone as I shout this at her. I know I promised myself that I wouldn’t get involved, that I’d be open-minded and let go of judgment. But she picked the fight. I pause next to a bodega to allow the crowd to walk on without me. The grocer arranges the fruit in the bins while pretending to ignore me, even though I can see her eyes darting from the apples to my face every few seconds.

  “I’m not cheating on your brother. I told you, I haven’t even spoken to Noah in weeks.”

  Her lie infuriates me, and I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it for a moment as if I’m contemplating dumping it in the nearby trash can. Maybe that would be better; dump the phone, dump the friend, move on and spend my energy on people who really support me. But it’s as if the strings of our friendship have wound themselves around my wrists and throat, both choking me and anchoring me. I want to walk away, and I can’t. I just can’t.

  “I don’t understand why you’re acting this way.” My voice is softer, maybe too soft for New York, but she doesn’t ask me to repeat them. “My getting married doesn’t even affect you.”

  “What do you mean it doesn’t affect me? I’m doing your dress alterations. I’ve listened to you agonize about your wedding for months. I threw you a bachelorette party and organized your bridesmaid dresses and went with you on a failed trip to Kate’s Paperie. I am knee deep in your wedding planning.”

  “You have to make my wedding all about you? I’m so sorry that I included you. I didn’t expect you to get bitter seeing me happy.”

  “Bitter would be if I wanted a wedding myself. I don’t want to get married.”

  “You are bitter. You’re bitter that you even need to be around a wedding. You loved it when we were back to being two single girls in Manhattan, and you hate that I’m going back to being married. You liked it when I was a wreck of a person, crying on the living room floor about my divorce, so you could swoop in and save the day. Single Arianna to the rescue with some Ben and Jerry’s.”

  This is exactly what I feared from my readers: that everyone would stop reading my blog the moment I admitted that I’m getting married again. That they’d leave comments of congratulations and then promptly hit unsubscribe. But it’s not my readers who can’t seem to roll with the news, it’s my best friend. I don’t know how to make her believe that nothing will change. Even after the wedding, I will still be the same Rachel I have always been. It’s something I expect her to know, to remember from the many years that I was married. And the fact that she doesn’t remember this feels like one thousand paper cuts across my throat.

  “Apparently you know what I like and what I don’t like better than I do. It makes sense, seeing that you’re not me.”

  I hate Arianna’s sarcasm. My entire body starts to shake as I try to control my breathing, watching a taxicab narrowly miss a businessman as he crosses the street, obliviously reading his BlackBerry. The driver leans on his horn while he shouts out the open window, and I take the momentary noise as an opportunity to count backwards from ten.

  “I thought as my best friend you’d want to know everything going on with the wedding. I thought you were going to be happy for me. You know, it is entirely possible to be sad for yourself while being happy for me.”

  “That’s wh
at you don’t seem to get, Rachel. I’m not sad. I’m not bitter. I don’t want you unmarried. I’m not back in the trenches because I never entered the battle to begin with. I’m not drawn to marriage like you are. I don’t need it. I have been honest with everyone—with you, with your brother, with every man I’ve ever dated—and it is your choice if you choose not to actually listen to my words.”

  “You’re honest?” I snarl.

  “Yes, I am honest.”

  “So you’ve told my brother about how you kissed Noah the other day? In Union Square? Outside? You argued with him, and then you kissed him. Do you want to tell Ethan or should I?”

  A stillness falls over the phone line, like two people watching a parachutist jump from an airplane in those moments before he pulls the ripcord, and you don’t know if his chute will bloom up behind him, taking him safely toward the ground, or if he will continue to plummet.

  “You know,” Arianna finally says, “I think I’ll have Tabitha at the loft do the final fitting. You can stop by there tomorrow at two because I’ll be out by that point. No need to come by today.”

  I slam the phone shut, ending the call from my end so I can at least have the last sound even if I don’t get the last word. I instantly miss her. I miss her with an intensity of homesickness I haven’t felt since I was in college and leaving for Italy for winter break. I said goodbye to my parents and left to board the plane. I remember walking down the narrow passageway connecting the gate to the plane, overcome with this terrible mixture of regret and excitement—the worst possible combination, because it was literally stretching me apart as half my body wanted to run backwards toward my parents, and half my body wanted to skip onto the plane and toward Italy.

  I want to change routes and go straight to her apartment, and I simultaneously want to be on the other side of the world from her. That is the feeling that overcomes me as I start walking again toward the studio, now worried that I’m going to be late.

  I love her despite the fact that I hate her. And I hate her only because I love her so much, and she won’t let us go back to our old relationship. Like a smart, capable student who suddenly begins failing her classes, it is frustrating that I know our potential, how we can interact with one another when Ethan and Noah and Adam are taken out of the equation.

  I push my way into the building, contemplating taking off my shoes for a minute and sparing my toe, which is now throbbing. Ducking into the bathroom off the lobby gives me a moment to collect myself before I head to the security desk. My face is both blotchy and pale—like barely stirred strawberry yogurt—hardly the windswept, healthy look I was aiming for with the walk. “Screw you, Arianna,” I say softly to myself, which I know does nothing to get my mind off the situation and back onto the task at hand, but it makes me feel better to curse her, even if it’s only quietly in a random New York bathroom.

  The studio itself is freezing cold, a cavernous room where they have set up a few cheap sofas off-camera, and the stage itself looks as if it was built by a seventh-grade theater class. On television, I always thought that the set of Tom and Laurie looked like the sort of cozy living room where you’d want to throw yourself across the sofa and eat ice cream bites while you watch the Food Network. In actuality, the Tom and Laurie set looks like it will fall apart if a strong wind sweeps through the studio. Even their plush sofa, the one that looks as if the elbow is literally the world’s most perfect reading spot, appears a little lumpy and stained this close up.

  I wait with the other guests off-camera in the holding pen. There’s the Cookie Queen, who makes edible animals for kids’ birthday parties out of chocolate-covered Oreos on sticks, and Dr. Leonard Pasternak, who is there to talk about childhood obesity in America. The Cookie Queen and Dr. Pasternak try their best to make polite small talk while eying each other’s cookies and book suspiciously.

  A makeup person comes by and checks our faces, asks us to bare our teeth to check for lipstick stains, and reaches into his tool box to clean up smudged eye makeup and apply some additional powder. He tells me that my shirt is going to look fabulous on camera, and I think in my head, I don’t care. My best friend may be in Manhattan, but she’s 2000 miles away.

  I’m the first one up, and I settle onto the very scratchy, definitely lumpy sofa with Tom and Laurie, whose face looks frozen in surprise. Tom barely looks at me while I settle myself, and Laurie calls me by the wrong name, is corrected by her director, and then drops her salutation as if she didn’t really care about it in the first place. This wasn’t exactly what I imagined television would be like. I thought Laurie would hug me warmly, ask me for some cooking tips. Tom would be like talking to your favorite uncle. Instead, it feels like being dropped into Thanksgiving at a stranger’s house.

  Once the cameras start rolling, Laurie and Tom spring to life as if fed a coin, and we chat about my website and the upcoming book. It is clear that they’ve done only a cursory amount of investigating, and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that they had never been on my website at all. I do everything Katie the publicist coached me over the phone not to do. I look at a teleprompter off-camera instead of focusing on Laurie’s face. I speak too quickly. I crack my knuckles. I expect the director to ask for a do-over, but an assistant unclips my microphone and leads me off the stage, making room for the Cookie Queen and her fattening creations.

  I’m more than a little lost as I leave the building, not even certain when the interview will be on the air. I thought that being on television was going to be a little more glamorous, a little more impressive. Instead, it felt like we were all middle school students playing a game of television production. They didn’t even offer me Perrier or have a devoted green room, two things I suspect all higher-budget shows have in excess. Which makes me feel sorry for myself, that I only get to be on Tom and Laurie and don’t warrant placement on a show like the Nightly.

  Not that I want to be on the Nightly right now.

  I walk back to my east side neighborhood so I can head uptown via subway to the florist near Lisbeth’s apartment. She has offered to pick up our bouquets the morning of the wedding so we don’t have to pay for a flower delivery out in Tarrytown. I bought some wonderful used books—American literature and old cookbooks—and wrapped them in fabric and ribbon to create the centerpieces, negating the need for bowls of rose clippings. I plan to carry something simple and give each of the bridesmaids a single flower to match.

  I am almost back to Gramercy, mere feet from the nearest subway stop that will get me uptown, when my phone buzzes. Arianna’s number lights up the caller ID box, and I take a deep breath before answering. “I’m sorry,” I say, by way of a greeting, the words coming out of my mouth before I can contemplate if they’re what I really want to say.

  “I thought you’d be happy right now since you finally got your way, and she told me.”

  Instead of Arianna, it’s my brother’s voice. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it would be Ethan on the other end of the line. That he would be home on a weekday. I pause by the railing, my stomach knotting up by the quiet evenness of his words. He sounds so angry, like an ocean that is dark grey and barely moving, belying the storm that’s about to come.

  “Not happy. Obviously,” I say, unsure of what Arianna has told him. “Why are you home? Is she there right now?”

  Ethan lets off a bitter laugh. “No, Rachel. She took Beckett on a walk and told me that she has to think.”

  What the hell does she have to think about? Does she need time to reflect on how much she has messed up with a self-imposed time-out? She can’t accomplish that from inside the apartment? The only person who should need time to think right now is my brother. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “Rachel, you are literally the last person I want to see right now,” Ethan snarls. I am fairly certain that this is a case of shooting the messenger, or, at the very least, the person who presse
d to have the message delivered. But that bubble is popped once he takes a deep breath and continues talking. “I seriously don’t understand why you felt the need to insert yourself into our relationship. Did you really think it would help things if she told me that Noah has feelings for her? Did you think that it would fix all of our problems if she just unloaded that on me, said it in plain English? Made it so I couldn’t give her the space she needed to process our situation because now we need to deal with the mess you just forced her to dump out in front of us.”

  “Hey, wait a second. I’m not the one who did something wrong. She’s the one who cheated on you. And it was affecting your relationship whether or not you talked about it.”

  “She didn’t cheat on me,” Ethan explodes. “Cheating by its very definition means that I didn’t know what was going on. And I knew very well exactly what was going on with Noah. Their friendship was actually making our relationship better. It gave her an outlet, a person who would listen to all of her feelings about marriage. And once Noah stepped over the line and expressed interest in Ari, she broke it off immediately and told me about it. It was the little wake-up call she needed to have to return to talking about marriage with me. And now you’ve pushed everything to a head on your own timetable rather than leaving us to work out things at our own pace. And I don’t know, Rachel. I don’t know if this relationship is now fixable. We were in a really good space, and you broke something with all of your pushing.”

  I look around for a bench, a cement barrier, anything I can sink down onto because my legs have started to shake. This is not how I thought my brother would react to the news. I expected him to be furious, but not at me, and certainly not for these reasons. “I’m sorry,” I repeat.

  “And in losing Arianna, I also lose Beckett. I also lose Beckett, Rachel.”

  I have never heard my brother sound so sad, so completely broken. So completely and utterly defeated. His voice trails off like a car running out of gas, and we both stand in silence for at least a minute, the street traffic blaring around me while my body is lightly jostled by people pushing past for the subway.