Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend

by Lynda Curnyn

  “You lost weight,” she insisted once more, and just as her gaze began to wander over my left shoulder in search of Derrick, I gave her a quick kiss to the forehead, muttered something about needing a drink myself and headed off to the relative safety of the picnic table.

  As I sat down and pulled the pitcher of piña coladas toward me to fill a glass, Tiffany was talking about the new job she had just landed.

  “They practically doubled my salary,” she was saying now, “how could I not take it?”

  Tiffany was a financial analyst who received bimonthly phone calls from competing firms, attempting to woo her over to the other side with promises of huge cash bonuses and extra vacation time. I suddenly felt ridiculous, pining away for a raise of a few thousand dollars and a semi-major title adjustment at Bridal Best. But I swallowed the thought, along with a mouthful of piña colada, which, I noted with satisfaction, had enough rum to keep me warm and friendly.

  “Well, it sounds wonderful,” my mother replied, smiling at my brother as if he had just doubled his salary.

  “I know I’ve been switching around a lot, but this seems like a company I might be able to stick with for a while,” Tiffany continued. “At least while Shaun and I work on getting our family started.” With this announcement, a flush covered her normally composed features, and she turned to smile at Shaun.

  Looking at them together, I couldn’t help but picture how outrageously adorable their children would be, dressed in designer duds and sporting her honey-brown hair and creamy coloring, with his green eyes.

  Clearly this was also the direction my mother’s thoughts had taken, as her eyes had misted over with a mixture of joy and, I suspected, grandmotherly greed. “Oh, you don’t know how those words make me feel. Grandkids!” She turned to Clark, as if she were unable to contain her happiness and needed him to shoulder some of it. He, of course, leaned forward and plopped a kiss on her mouth as we all stared into our piña coladas with new interest.

  “Not for at least a year,” Tiffany warned, but she was smiling off into the distance, probably mentally highlighting a block of space in her day planner for childbearing. It seemed to me that everything Tiffany had was the result of careful planning—the kind of purposeful strategizing I had yet to contemplate until Derrick up and left me with no game pieces.

  As if sensing my unrest, Tiffany turned to me. “So how’s everything going with you?”

  “Fine. Great, in fact,” I replied, plastering what I hoped was a convincing smile on my face.

  Tiffany’s neat little eyebrows raised over her wide blue eyes and pert nose.

  “We heard about Derrick. That must kinda suck,” Shaun said, with his usual aplomb.

  “Yeah, well, you win some you lose some,” I said, ignoring the sight of my mother’s concerned frown. “Besides, it’s not like I could have gone with him to L.A. Especially now that I’m up for a promotion to senior features editor.”

  “Oh, Emma, why didn’t you tell me?” my mother chimed in.

  “Well, nothing’s been decid—”

  “Big salary jump?” Tiffany asked, leaning in close.

  “Not bad, not bad.” Not great. But I wasn’t about to tell that to Ms. Meet Me for Lunch at the Plaza.

  “Cool,” Shaun said now, picking up the pitcher of piña coladas and topping us all off.

  Taking a sip from her glass, my mother licked her lips with a satisfied grin. “I think this is just what you need, Emma. There’s nothing like a salary increase to make you feel human again. Maybe now you can start paying down some of those student loans, think about saving some money. I was just reading a book, The Ten Steps to True Wealth—”

  As my mother rambled on about my apparently horrific financial outlook and how this meager yet somehow miraculous salary increase was going to change all that, I wanted to burrow into the patio floor. From the way Tiffany and Shaun kept throwing glances at me while she spoke, I got the feeling they had suddenly discovered my future prospects were even less cheery than they had realized. I mean, there was no room for a house, much less a BMW, in my future, while theirs was unthinkable without both these items. And though I never really craved material things, other than the season’s offerings at Banana Republic, I suddenly felt the hole in my single life grow wider and wider.

  Oddly enough, it was Clark who seemed to notice my sudden state of despair. Cutting my mother off just as she leaped into the seventh step to true wealth—which was something about recognizing your own true worth—he said, “You know what, my love? I think we should toast all that Emma is now. Because oftentimes we forget to acknowledge all our existing triumphs in our race to new accomplishments.”

  “Oh, Clark!” my mother said, her eyes glowing with pride and happiness as she leaned in close to give him the kind of kiss that probably curled the toes of everyone at the table. When she sat back in her chair once more, she asked, with apparent amazement, “What have I done to deserve such a man?” Then, remembering herself, she lifted her glass. “To Emma. For all you are, my darling daughter.”

  Everyone clinked glasses and drank, some of us—like me—more than others. And maybe it was the alcohol coursing through my system, but suddenly I did feel a sense of well-being breaking through my despair. Overwhelmed by the sudden rush of emotion, I quickly got up. “I’m gonna see if Grandma Zizi needs anything.”

  “Give her this,” my mother said, handing me a plate with an assortment of pretzels and chips.

  Grandma Zizi looked up as I approached, a smile of surprise spreading over her features. “Emma!” she said, pursing her lips to kiss me, as if I had just arrived.

  Out of the frying pan, into the fire, I thought, going through the motions of the kiss.

  Then she stared at me, hard, as if something ate at her feeble memory. “Still seeing Derrick?” she asked hopefully.

  I sighed, realizing that I would be in for it today. Whenever Grandma Zizi sensed something was not quite right, she fell into the unfortunate habit of asking a question repeatedly, as if she feared the answer she might receive would be disturbing. And I was quite sure it was greatly disturbing to Grandma Zizi that her thirty-one-year-old granddaughter had just lost the man she had hoped to see her marching down the aisle with.

  “Of course, Grandma,” I lied, giving her what we both needed to keep our sanity. “Derrick couldn’t make it today, but he sends his love.” Then, distracting her with the plate of goodies, which she eyed greedily once I placed it on the folding table beside her, I kissed her forehead and hurried away once more.

  Sitting down with the others again, I topped off my glass with piña colada just as my mother joyfully announced that she and Clark had finally settled on a cruise line for their wedding.

  “Which one?” Tiffany asked.

  “Carried Away Cruise Lines. It came highly recommended by one of the source books Emma gave me.” She beamed at me.

  “Oh, I’ve heard of that line,” Tiffany said, nodding her head approvingly. “It’s supposed to be excellent.”

  And she would know, I thought.

  “So where will we be cruising to?” Shaun asked.

  “Well, it looks like St. Thomas. What do you guys think?”

  “Wonderful,” Tiffany and Shaun answered in unison as I nodded my head meekly.

  Clark smiled, and we all knew that just about anything my mother decided would be fine with him.

  “Emma, we just need to figure out a venue on the island—I was thinking a gazebo on the beach, but I don’t know if that’s possible. Fortunately, I can draw on your expertise in these matters.”

  “Gosh, Emma,” Tiffany said now, “I wish I’d had you around when I got married.”

  Well, maybe she would have, I thought uncharitably, if she hadn’t married my brother when she was like, twelve. Tiffany hadn’t even hit the big 3-0 yet, and she’d been married for five whole years.

  What had I done so wrong to wind up thirtysomething and single?

  “I was about to book r
ooms for all of us this week,” my mother continued, “when I had the most fabulous idea.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Emma, since you won’t be sharing a room with anyone, I thought maybe you and Grandma Z could bunk together! Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  I looked over at Grandma Zizi, who had fallen asleep sitting up, her glass of ginger ale still firmly in her grip as her head lolled over to the side and her mouth fell open on a soft snort.

  Barrels.

  Confession: All I have to look forward to now is support hose and short-term memory loss.

  Later that night, after a barbecued feast that left me fuller, fatter and even more unsatisfied, I was nominated to drive Grandma Zizi back to the nursing home, just a few short miles from my mother’s house, mostly because no one else was available to do it. Shaun had fallen asleep on the sofa after an afternoon of slaving over a hot barbecue pit, and poor Tiffany had a headache—probably from hunger, as she’d barely even touched the rack of ribs my mother had put on her plate despite her protests. Mom was in the midst of kitchen cleanup duty, and Clark—well, someone had to gaze upon my mother with rapture while she scrubbed pots.

  “Just make sure they don’t leave her in the hall too long before they put her to bed,” my mother said, stopping scrub duty momentarily to press her car keys in my hand and hug and kiss Grandma Zizi, who was starting to kick up a protest about the fact that my mother was letting Clark stay over. Apparently Grandma Zizi hadn’t grasped the fact that Clark had moved in six months earlier. “They’ll never buy the cow when they can get the milk for free,” she muttered as I led her down the driveway to the car and folded her into the passenger seat. It didn’t seem to matter to Grandma Zizi that my mother was married two times over and a grown woman. She still saw Mom as a young girl in serious danger of losing her unalienable right to new cookware by letting “that man,” as she referred to Clark, “keep company” with her while their wedding vows were still unspoken.

  As I started the car and backed down the driveway, I was secretly relieved Grandma Zizi had turned her thoughts to my mother’s alleged disgraceful lifestyle. Over the course of the afternoon, Grandma Zizi had inquired about the status of Derrick and my relationship no less than six times, and I was finally forced to hit her with the truth: that her last remaining single granddaughter would probably remain so for quite some time.

  By the time we arrived at the Happy Hills Nursing Home and I had maneuvered Grandma Zizi out of the car and into the wheelchair that waited just inside the doors to escort her, she had dropped into what I might term a pensive silence if I thought Grandma Zizi still capable of holding a thought in her head long enough to reflect on it. After rolling her down to the lonely little room she shared with a cranky old woman with a penchant for shrieking in the middle of the night, I alerted a nurse that she was back and needed to be put to bed. Then I leaned in to touch my lips to first one cheek, then the other, all the while staring beyond her shoulders into the dark and lonely room that awaited her, wondering if, after all the struggle to marry, have children and get those children married, this was all there was. But before I could finish with a parting pat on her lips, she grabbed my face between her two bony hands and stared at me as if truly seeing me for the first time all day.

  “You’re too good, Emmy,” she said fiercely, her grip tightening. “Too good for any of ’em. That’s the problem.” Kissing my lips, she released her grip with a wise smile. “Besides, that fella was no good for you anyway.”

  “Derrick?” I said in disbelief.

  “That’s right, Derrick. No good at all.”

  “What was wrong with—”

  “Well, for one thing,” she said, “he was too short for you. You need someone tall.” Then she dropped her hands in her lap, winking slyly at me. “And rich.”

  With that the nurse arrived to wheel a smiling Grandma Zizi into her darkened room, as an image of some tall, rich man lingered in my mind’s eye for just a moment, filling me with vague hope before doubt drove the vision away.

  Six

  “A woman’s got to use it or she will surely lose it.”

  —Betty, salesclerk, Dream Bride Boutique

  Confession: I convince myself that marriage is nothing more than the opportunity to wear a great dress.

  Bright and early the next morning, I found myself embarking with my mother on the shopping trip from hell. For Mom was determined to find a dress that would not make her look fat, old or virginal, or too much like she was trying not to look fat, old or virginal. Though I had tried to convince her that she might have more success with some of the New York bridal salons, like Kleinfeld’s—I half hoped to put off this quest for as long as possible—she wouldn’t hear it. She would have her dress that day and she would get it at a deep discount. According to her logic, she had spent enough money on designer dresses. This time, she was going for off the rack. “No one will even be the wiser,” she said, revving the engine on her sporty compact and taking off down the driveway with me hostage in the passenger seat.

  My mother had invited Tiffany, but she’d graciously begged off, explaining that she and Shaun had to get home early to clear the kitchen for the cabinet men who were coming on Tuesday. Not a bad ploy, since we all knew that my mother would never stand between Tiffany and a renovation project. I think Mom secretly admired her daughter-in-law’s ability to find new reasons to tear out cabinets and pull up floors at the drop of a hat. Now I wished Tiffany were with us, as her cheerful chatter might have eased some of the tension I felt over this particular shopping spree. A tension that only worsened when we entered the first shop and an over-zealous salesclerk tried to entwine me in measuring tape the moment my mother announced we were shopping for a wedding gown. Imagine her surprise—and my humiliation—when she discovered the bride was my mother, not me.

  Things only got worse from there. After eight unsuccessful stops at various warehouse-style bridal bonanzas, my patience was wearing thin. I was just mentally putting together a convincing argument as to why it would be okay for my mother to recycle the dress from her last wedding when we pulled up in front of a tiny shop strategically sandwiched between an accessory boutique and a shoe store on a small strip mall. Dream Bride the sign declared in flowing script against a neon pink background. Dream on, I thought. Reluctantly sliding out of the car, I studied the window, where a mannequin with a pinched expression stood dressed in a frothy taffeta concoction that seemed to overwhelm the small storefront and was beginning to look slightly yellow with sun damage. Still, my mother couldn’t be stopped. Grasping my hand, she made the same declaration she had made before the eight previous shops: “I have a good feeling about this one.”

  I felt a shiver roll through me as we entered a door beneath a sign which read, Where Wedded Bliss Begins! and found ourselves standing in a long narrow room lined with rows and rows of dresses in every shape and size. For my mother’s sake, I tried to stifle the sigh that escaped. After a day of battling bulging garment racks and curt salesclerks, I realized there were other reasons to drop a load of cash on a designer gown; reasons that had nothing at all to do with the wedding day and everything to do with personal sanity.

  At the back of the small shop, half-hidden by a long, beaded number that I could imagine Ivana Trump wearing if she decided to go bargain basement on her next wedding, a tiny woman was seated behind a counter, a bored expression on her tired features. As we approached, she slowly dragged her eyes up from the crossword puzzle she was working on, and seemed to be sizing us up, probably trying to determine if we were worth any sales effort she might expend on us.

  “Good afternoon!” my mother greeted her.

  The woman looked at her watch, as if surprised to discover it was close to three o’clock. “Afternoon,” she said, with a crack of her gum. Her face was fleshy and her lips had bled whatever color she had dabbed on them hours earlier into the tiny wrinkles around her mouth. Beneath her oversprayed, overblond hair, which looked long overdue for a to
uch-up, her eyes were a faded blue.

  “I’m looking for a dress for myself,” my mother began. Then, hesitating, she finished, “for a third marriage.”

  The saleswoman seemed to perk up at this, her eyebrows raising in what looked like interest. “Well, that narrows things down considerably,” she said, waving a hand dismissively toward the miles of gleaming white on the left side of the room. Hopping off the stool where she sat, she began walking toward the back of the shop with an air of confidence that could almost be called graceful, despite the garish, oversize top and stretchy black pants she wore.

  I could tell my mother had regained her spirit when she started babbling to the woman about how we’d been searching all day, how many dresses she’d tried on, how helpful I had been.

  “My daughter is an editor at one of the biggest bridal magazines—Bridal Best? I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  The woman stopped and turned to look at me. Then, glancing at my mother with an expression that said she wasn’t the least bit impressed by this information, she asked, “When you getting married?”

  “Uh, the third weekend in September,” Mom replied, off balance. “In St. Thomas,” she finished with a brave smile. The woman digested this information and continued toward a rack of dresses in various shades of off-white.

  I liked her already. Maybe it was the lack of response my illustrious career invoked, or maybe it was the no-nonsense way she shoved through the rack as if she knew exactly what she was looking for, but something about her said she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t get caught up in the madness that getting married entailed, yet would somehow get the details just right. After fishing decisively through the rack, she yanked out a dress that looked closer to white than to ivory, and had a long, flowing skirt topped by what looked like an ultrapadded sweetheart neckline and illusion sleeves.