Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  What I didn’t remember was what I love about my readers: they hold me accountable for my thoughts, they challenge me to see myself in a different way. They are truthful with me, and I owe it to be truthful with them.

  I bring up a blank blog post and start typing. I don’t stop, editing and rewording and erasing and rethinking until I have something that is as close as I can get to the truth, and I hit publish before I can doubt the sanity of what I’m doing, of how much I have to lose.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ———

  I’ve messed up. Big time. In more ways than I can probably document in a single blog post, and I’m not sure that more words can undo the damage that my original words—or sometimes lack of words—caused, but the only way I can make sense of the mess is to write it all down, put each moment neatly into place, and apologize as I explain.

  First and foremost, I need to acknowledge the elephant in the room that has been sitting on my chest for the last few months. I am getting married in March to Adam. Yes, Adam, my ex-husband. I know I’ve made it sound as if we’re just casually dating, but the reality is that we’ve been engaged for months, planning our wedding, rebuilding the life that we scrapped with our divorce. I know that your heart may have plummeted as you read those words. That you maybe feel deceived or confused or hurt. I am only asking that you read to the end of this post before you cement your judgment. I know you don’t owe me that, but I’m asking it for it anyway.

  I don’t have a good reason for why I didn’t tell you except that it stems from a fear that with this engagement, my identity as a divorced woman would no longer be valid, even though mentally and emotionally, I am still back there, still thinking about how one rebuilds their life from scratch. Only now I am doing it with Adam rather than without Adam. I am still a work in progress, my heart still very much tied to that identity of rebuilder, and I didn’t want to lose it.

  Of course, I can’t lose it. Just because you may perceive me differently doesn’t mean that I need to perceive myself differently. I am a general diarist who writes about cooking and divorce and life in the general, and none of that is going to change even if people decide to stop reading. The title of my blog is not going to change, the subject matter of my blog is not going to change, and my personal goals in life are not going to change. Maybe I haven’t given you enough credit; maybe you already figured that out. But I needed to get to that understanding too, to figure it out myself.

  Which brings me to the second elephant that is sitting on the first elephant, adding even more weight to my chest until my ribs feel as if they’re cracking. (I know in this analogy that I would actually be dead if any elephant sits on me, and cracked ribs would be the least of my worries, but work with me here.) I have been meddling, meddling in other people’s relationships instead of focusing on my own. Maybe I couldn’t focus on my own because . . . well . . . things are good.

  When things are messed up, as they were when Adam and I divorced, you can understand them. You can sum up the problems neatly and point out all of the issues, the mistakes, the hurt feelings. When things are good, it gets more confusing. You start asking yourself, “Are things really good? Do I just think they’re good, or are they really good?” It’s easy to rally yourself for a fight; it is much harder to sit quietly with peace. But that is what I have on my hands: peace. I love Adam, we’re on the same page with working out our relationship, we’re communicating.

  And maybe it was my disbelief that all could be well that made me wiggle my fingers in everyone else’s life. I tried to repair relationships that I perceived to be broken. I passed judgment and used my own relationship as a measuring stick for relationships that didn’t even involve me beyond the fact that each one was constructed out of two people I love.

  The reality is that every single one of us only knows the surface of what we see around us. What I’ve learned these past few weeks is that we don’t need to sink like the Titanic if we’re mindful that what we’re seeing isn’t the whole story. It’s when we stop remembering that and plow into the ice caps that we have the rude awakening as the ship goes down.

  And now, to contradict everything I have just said, my advice—despite how much damage I’ve done to my relationships with people I love—consists of one word: meddle. Yes, wiggle your fingers around in someone else’s life, but do it for the right reasons. I still think meddling is the way we show love, I just wasn’t doing it for the good of the other person but instead to confirm some misplaced assumption in my own life.

  We should never sit idly by and say nothing. That isn’t how we act with people we love; that’s how we act with people we’re indifferent about. For people we love, we hold them accountable, we push them to be their best selves. I wouldn’t want someone to sit idly by if they thought I was doing something damaging to my relationship with Adam. Tell me. Make me think about it. Push me to look at my actions. But more important than that—believe me when I explain myself. That is the one thing I didn’t do until now: believe that other people were telling me the whole truth.

  I meddled because I was following my heart—I followed it back to Adam, so it didn’t make sense to listen to it there but ignore it everywhere else. Did I see that my heart messed things up in retrospect—yes. But even having the benefit of retrospect, I would meddle all over again, just in a better, more open-minded, for-the-right-reasons way. Everything I did, I did out of love. Because I care. Because people who care get involved.

  And I guess that is the final thought I want to unpack. I care about all of you, and by you, I mean my readers and friends and family. I am sure that I could survive without you in the keeping alive sense, but I wouldn’t be me, I wouldn’t be whole, I wouldn’t be in something more than grease-stained sweatpants and balled up on the sofa if not for you. You not only got me through the divorce and all that came after, but without some of you even knowing it, you got me through this period of time of coming back together with Adam.

  You are my mirror, the surface through which I see myself when you reflect my words back at me. And I hope that you will care, that you will hold me accountable even to the ones I’ve just shared. You make me see myself as I really am, by challenging me, by pushing me, and by loving me.

  And for that, I love you and I thank you. By which I mean, I hope that you will still be here when I come to write my next post.

  I’M WATCHING the Food Network judge inform the unfortunate contestant on the cooking game show that she’s been chopped when Jared calls my cell phone and tells me he has a place he wants me to see. He asks me if I can meet him at our old cooking school, and I walk over, filled with more than a little bit of dread over where he’s going to take me. If there will be a polite way to decline after he’s done all this work to find a wedding space. Letting the news sink in has gotten me accustomed to the idea that the wedding will now be in March.

  Jared is lingering in the front vestibule of the building, a tiny cramped passageway between the front door and the larger front room, and it’s clear that he has come straight from work. “Thank you so much for helping me with this.”

  “You’re going to love the place I found,” Jared promises. “It has everything—big room, great lighting, view of the city.”

  I inwardly cringe, waiting for him to tell me the place: a deserted warehouse, Rikers Island, IKEA’s self-help storage room. He’s grinning at me, but he’s not moving. “Where is it?”

  “We’re there. It’s this place.”

  My hand drops from the knob as I stare at him. “Are you kidding? Jared, it’s a cooking school. I’m not getting married in a cooking school.” I meant to sound grateful, but I’m well aware that I don’t.

  “I want you to see it not as it is, but what it could be.” Jared takes my hand and starts leading me into the front room where we have cooked countless dishes since mid-summer. We pause by the hand washing station, and he hol
ds up his hands as if he’s a director, framing a scene. “Picture this room with a lot of screens blocking the kitchens. You leave the front windows untouched because they’re fantastic and huge, and they’ll let in not only the light but the city itself. Alex actually has two enormous rooms here. Step right through here, and you’ll see the space for the ceremony.”

  I follow him through a set of double doors that have always been closed during class and find myself in a gorgeous albeit empty room with blond wooden floors and enormous windows like the other room. It suddenly dawns on me what this space was supposed to be. “A restaurant,” I tell Jared. “Was this supposed to be a restaurant? With the kitchen back in there and all of this space the dining floor?”

  “Bingo. Alex told me about it months ago when I got to class early. It was right after things ended with Michael, and I was moping. He pointed out how the cooking school is actually his Plan B. He inherited the real estate. He tried to get a restaurant off the ground in here, but it didn’t work out. In his frustration, he was going to sell the building. And then it came to him one night: start a cooking school. Better hours than a restaurant, more rewarding than a restaurant. And that’s what he’s been doing ever since. He put up this wall a while back, but there’s really nothing he can do with this space except use it as spill over for the school since there’s no door to the outside.”

  The walls are crisply white, and I can suddenly imagine two sections of chairs in rows, creating an aisle with Adam waiting at the end. The other room will be set up for hors d’oeuvres, and it would be easy enough to convert this to the dining room after the ceremony by bringing in a few tables.

  I spin around, my mouth open, and Jared laughs at me. “See, no LGBT community center.”

  “Jared, this is perfect. I could kiss you!”

  “Better not. You have such strict rules about what constitutes cheating. Anyway, I’m happy to help, though you need to now make my invitation plus one, because I have a guy I want to bring.”

  I am so happy for him, so happy for myself, that I promise him that he can bring an entire gang for all I care. I am getting married in less than three weeks, I keep thinking to myself. Jared brings me back to earth with the logistics.

  “Alex is obviously catering, and you need to meet with him tomorrow to get everything cemented because he had to leave for the night. He put a pastry chef friend on standby, and you have to meet with her too about the cake. Not sure what else you arranged with the farm, but you need to move all those plans here.”

  “Jared, I’m getting married in less than three weeks,” I say aloud.

  “Looks like you are,” he agrees, and holds my hand so I can complete an impromptu pirouette in the empty room.

  THE NEXT COUPLE of weeks pass in a blur, and there are so many tiny details to take care of that it only occurs to me that I don’t have my wedding dress in hand when Tabitha calls to let me know that it’s pressed, and someone is picking it up from the dry cleaners that afternoon. I promise her that I’ll stop by, though my heart constricts when she tells me that she’d send it home with Arianna, but she’s out of town.

  Out of town a few days before my wedding. Maybe she made the trip just to avoid being in Manhattan while the ceremony is happening. My heart feels hollowed out, like a cantaloupe whose flesh has been balled in long strips, leaving behind only the unusable rough skin. I’ve spoken to my brother a handful of times since our fight, but he hasn’t mentioned Arianna or this trip.

  I run over to the cooking school after lunch and help Alex unload the screens and drape yards of cream-colored satin over the dining room table to serve as a makeshift bar. In a back storage area, he’s holding several round tables folded against the wall that he called in as a favor from a catering company that he’s done work for in the past. They gave us all the linens as well as place settings and cutlery. Alex has hired waiters that were also willing to help with the set up that morning and a bartender, all reasonably priced, not that it mattered much to Anita when we passed on word about the new set of bills.

  “The cake will be finished and delivered the day before the wedding, and I have people coming the next few days to help me prep the dinner,” Alex informs me, leaning against one of the kitchen counters, which are no longer visible from the other side of the screens where all the guests will mingle. He opens the refrigerator and takes out an already opened bottle of white wine and pours me a glass even though it’s the middle of the day.

  “To your wedding,” he toasts.

  “Plan Bs,” I add.

  I know I have to get the dress afterward, but I drag myself toward the loft as if I’m slogging through mud. I knock on the door to the loft, and Carey answers again, apparently leaving at the same time I’m coming because he steps aside so I can slip past him while he tangos into the hallway.

  “Here to see Arianna?” he asks, checking his cell phone.

  “Getting my dress from Tabitha,” I admit, but I don’t even think my words register with him because he dances down the hall without responding. Inside the loft, the room is buzzing, both due to the dance music sounding from the CD player on the table as well as all the simultaneous conversations happening at the same time. I find Tabitha at one of the tables speaking with another seamstress, their hands on two bolts of fabric.

  “The dress is in the smaller sample room,” Tabitha tells me while inclining her head toward the small, doorless room they built with temporary walls off of the main room as opposed to the larger sample room through the closet.

  I cross into the well-lit space, expecting to see my dress hanging in a bag from a hook, but instead, it is spread out over the table, its hem being reinforced by Arianna who looks up at me as I enter. She is carefully smoothing the material as she works, trying not to make a wrinkle in the body before I wear it.

  “The cleaners made a small tear when they were zipping shut the bag,” Arianna explains softly, keeping her eyes on the material. “I’m just repairing it.”

  “Thank you,” I say hesitantly. “I thought you were on a trip.”

  “I was,” Arianna tells me, looking up from her needle. “I got back this morning. I went to Minnesota with Beckett to clear my head.”

  Her parent’s home. Arianna is such a New Yorker by this point that it is sometimes hard for me to imagine her walking around her Minneapolis suburb, ski cap over her blond hair, borrowing her mother’s puffy parka. I am wondering if my brother picked her up from the airport when Arianna reads my mind. “Ethan took off from school and met us at the airport.”

  Arianna works with quick, even stitches, bringing her needle carefully through the delicate material. It is as if she is holding our friendship in her hands, sewing it back together with bits of matched thread, sharp metal, trying to create an invisible seam. The fact that she is fixing my dress, hasn’t left it to Tabitha or someone else, is not lost on me. I press my hands onto the top of the table and take a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her, keeping it as simple as possible in order to cover a whole host of transgressions from second-guessing her repeatedly to overstepping into her relationship with my brother.

  “I know,” she says, her words so soft that I can barely hear them over the noise from the other room, which feels discordant with our quiet moment. “I read your blog post yesterday.”

  She pulls the thread through a final time and then ties it off with an inverted stitch. Her movements make me feel as if my apology may be coming too late, like a missed train. I don’t know how to get to my destination.

  Tabitha sticks her head through the open doorway and asks Arianna about a shipment of tulle, and I sense that time is running out. That in a few moments, Arianna will move on to the next task, and I’m going to be minus one best friend for the rest of my life. “I shouldn’t have inserted myself into your relationship. It’s only because I was so anxious about my o
wn, and I actually think that if it didn’t mean so much to Adam, I’d be happier not getting married for the rest of my life, and you should do what you need to do to be happy, and I know that my brother really really loves you and Beckett,” I blurt out. Both women look at me, and Tabitha makes a little embarrassed, cringe-like face before excusing herself to the other side of the makeshift wall.

  Arianna stares down at the dress without answering me. I wait so long that it suddenly dawns on me that she’s probably going to sit there without speaking until I go. She sets down her needle and skates her fingers lightly over the hem just as she says in her most earnest voice, “I’m sorry that I threw you the shittiest bachelorette party I could think of on purpose.”

  I snort, one of those painful laughs that shoot out your nose like inhaled swimming pool water. Which makes Arianna start laughing, until we’re both inadvertently scrunching up the organza and tulle that I just paid to have pressed. I wipe my eyes, and Arianna gets up and slips her arms around me, hugging me fiercely to her tiny frame.

  “So where does all of this leave you and my brother?” I finally ask, feeling too raw to ask about the relationship that matters the most to me.

  “Living unmarried happily ever after,” Arianna tells me. “He has agreed to be my unwedded partner in sickness and in health and all that stuff.”

  She slips the dress into the garment bag and zips it up carefully, tucking down the material so it doesn’t catch. If she gives my brother even one-tenth of the care she has given this dress, they’re going to be okay.

  “Your original Shoshana—pressed and ready to go. I can do any last minute adjustments when you put it on before the ceremony.”

  Before the ceremony. I get my answer that she’s going to be there after all. And I know that we’re going to be okay. We’re going to be better than okay.