After Rome and Venice, the Kitteredge family rented an island just off the coast of Tahiti and when I told Charles that I really needed to get back to work, my dad said it again:
“I don’t think your future is in the mailroom, Alex, it’s with Charles Kitteredge. We all know you aren’t cut out to be responsible. Charles will take care of you.” My dad’s words hurt a little, but by now I was convinced, and, really, who turns down an island for a mailroom?
Charles was a perfectly nice guy and so was his family, even though they were extremely Waspy. I’m not stereotyping when I say that when the clock struck five you never saw a pack of people run off a Tahitian beach so fast to get their evening cocktails. These people were huge drinkers, and I’m sure his family could have raced the Indy 500 perfectly without crashing into any other cars at speeds exceeding 140 mph.
Now, I don’t really want to get into all the ins and outs of who Charles was, though the fact that he was referred to as Charles and not Charlie or Chuck should give you a clear picture. I cannot say that he was ever mean to me or, heaven forbid, struck me in any way. On the contrary, he was as nice as he could be. For as clean-cut as he was and as hardworking and Waspy as he was, I did wonder myself what he was doing with a spoiled Jewish princess who trashed a room at the Plaza Hotel. So I asked him.
“Well, you’re cute,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. “And we make a really great merger.”
What he meant by that, I didn’t ask. Did he mean that we as a couple actually merged well or did he mean that his family’s company and my dad’s merged well? To this second, if I were a betting girl, I would have to say that it was the latter, but the truth is, the whole thing was making my parents very, very happy and the trashed hotel room was now on its way to becoming history. Most importantly, as my dad put it, “At last you’re doing something with your life.”
That’s why I really don’t want to get into the ins and outs of Charles, and, besides, even though he was the catalyst for my sixth best day, he wasn’t the reason for it. I’ll get to the sixth best day, but you have to hear this part first.
Charles proposed to me at his parents’ house, in front of both of our parents. We had only been dating for about five months, and, to tell you the truth, I had no idea that this was even happening. I just thought the families were getting together for dinner.
It was just after the drinks and the pecan/goat cheese/arugula salad and the beef bourguignonne and flaming baked Alaska, but just before the after-dinner port, when Charles clinked his spoon against his wineglass and said, “Now, if everyone would quiet down for a second, I’d like to make an announcement.”
I still had no idea what was going on. Charles said “announcement, ” he didn’t say he needed to ask a question or anything like that.
“As both our parents know,” he started, “Alexandra and I have embarked on a wonderful relationship. I know it’s only been a short time, but, as most of you might know, I never make rash decisions. It’s just that when you know something is right, you can’t help but want to get on with the next step and that is why I’ve asked you all to meet here tonight.”
And that’s when I knew.
“Alexandra,” he said, bending down beside my chair and pulling out a small velvet box from his Zegna suit jacket, “you would make me the happiest man in the world if you would do me the honor of becoming my bride.”
All I could see were his initials, CGK, on his shirt sleeve peeking out from his jacket and this rock of an emerald-cut diamond ring extended toward me.
I wanted to say, “No, this is all too soon. I’m only twenty-three years old! I’ve got a million things I want to do with my life even if I don’t know what they are yet!”
But then I looked at my parents. You never saw a bigger smile on my father’s face. My mother was dabbing her eyes with her linen napkin. In that one moment, I’d never seen them more proud that I was their daughter. So I did what I thought was right.
“Yes, Charles, I will marry you,” I eked out.
You would have thought that Philadelphia was getting ready for its own royal wedding. Channel 6 even had it on the local news that we were getting married: “The heir to the Dorenfield dynasty” (what dynasty? I wanted to know) “and one of Philadelphia ’s oldest and most influential families has found romance.”
Charles’s firm got seventeen new clients the day after the Channel 6 announcement.
Philadelphia magazine had us on its cover: “Alexandra and Charles—Philadelphia’s New Social Elite,” it claimed beside our picture on the cover.
I couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized. “Alexandra! ” some old woman shouted as I was leaving Saks one day. She hobbled up to me. “Hearing about you and your intended is keeping me alive.”
At every restaurant we went to, people sent over champagne. “For the happy couple,” the waiter would say as he popped the cork and then pointed at some table of people who’d raise their glasses to us.
Gifts were sent from people we didn’t even know and some we didn’t even like.
“You are the luckiest guy to get Alex,” one card read. “We’ve known her since our days at the Friends School. Let’s have a little reunion to celebrate this wonderful merger. Tom and Seth Rosso.”
Pen was to be my matron of honor and Kerry Collins, Dana Stanbury, and Olivia Wilson were my bridesmaids. Even though we were scattered across the country, they all flew in for dress fittings. I tried to confide in them:
“What am I doing?” I asked in the dressing room at Vera Wang as Vera herself waited in the store for our fitting.
“Everyone gets scared when they’re about to get married,” Kerry replied. “You’ll get over it.”
“It’s a scary thing,” Olivia added, trying to soothe me, “but it’s not something nobody else has done before.”
“What is the worst that can happen?” Dana demanded. “So you’ll get a divorce if it doesn’t work out.”
“You’re sure you love him, right?” Pen asked. Good old reliable Pen.
Here is the sad truth. I wasn’t in love with Charles. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him. I didn’t want to just be a wife, and clearly that’s all he wanted me to be. I could have had every material thing I ever wanted and have lived in a big house with servants at my beck and call, but what would have been the cost? That’s all my father thought I could be, but I knew deep down that that’s not how I wanted my life to be. Still, there were dress fittings to be scheduled and gala benefits to attend. There were invitations to head up charities and even more invitations to raise money for said charities. There were appointments with decorators who wanted to make our Villanova home a calling card and phone calls from Town & Country and Architectural Digest to photograph us in it. I sometimes felt like all I had to do was sit in a chair and the world would present me with the plans it had for me. I even clocked it once. I sat in a chair for four straight hours as three decorators, one hairstylist, and four members of the Junior League came over to tell me what they were going to do for me. It was heady—all this attention and the illusion of power. But it was all getting to be too much. I knew if I didn’t nip this whole thing in the bud soon, I would be sitting in that chair for the rest of my life.
“You’re going to have to tell him,” Pen said when she saw my face and figured it out. “You’ve got to be strong with this or you’ll ruin your life.”
So one night when Charles came home to change for our evening’s activities, I finally told him:
“I’m sorry,” I confessed, “but this just isn’t me. This just isn’t how I saw my life going.”
“Don’t be foolish, Alexandra,” he replied as though it was nothing. “I’m the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to you.”
“I just can’t do it,” I told him as I took off the ring and set it in front of him.”
He stared at the ring as though seeing something completely foreign—a pigeon at the table or something. “Think about what a m
istake you’re making,” he said finally. “Think about how many people you’re going to hurt.”
That’s when I knew it was never meant to be.
“But do you love me?” I asked him.
“Yes I love you,” he shot back.
“No, do you really love me or do you love all the outside stuff that comes with this relationship?”
He paused.
“That’s why I need to end this now before someone really does get hurt,” I said to him.
“You’re making a huge mistake,” he said. “You think everyone marries just for love?”
"Well, maybe everyone doesn’t, but I will.”
I remember driving in my car, not knowing where to go or who to talk to. Penelope had left for Martinique with her husband, Melvin, that morning, and there was no way of getting in touch with her. I thought about calling information for a shrink, but that seemed crazy. I couldn’t check into any hotels because everyone knew me and I didn’t want the gossipmongers to start before I told my parents. That left just one place.
By the time I arrived at my parents’ house, my father was waiting for me.
“Alex,” he said, “don’t you even try to get into this house. You are not welcome here. I’m done with you.”
“Dad, let me explain!” I cried from the driveway.
“No, you’ve had enough explaining in your life. I’m through letting you explain.”
“Dad, how can you be like this? I don’t love Charles. How can you be angry with me for that?”
“Jesus, Alex, I’m not angry with you because you don’t love him. I’m angry with you for letting it get as far as it did. The night he asked you to marry him, why did you say yes?”
“Because . . . because everyone was staring at me.” I stumbled trying to come up with the right words. “I felt trapped with everyone sitting there staring at me. I couldn’t say no.”
“Alex,” he said, calming down a bit, “don’t you understand? I don’t know what I can do for you anymore. I can put up with a lot of stuff from you because along with your mother you are the most important person in my life, but I can’t have another sleepless night worrying about you. What are you going to do with your life now? I thought at least if you were married to Charles, then at least there would be someone to take care of you and I wouldn’t have to worry so much.”
“So stop worrying!” I screamed at him.
“Then tell me your plans, Alex!” he shouted back. “If you’re not going to marry Charles and you’re not going to work in my office, what are you going to do? I’m at my wits’ end already!”
“I’ll make something of my life. I know I will.”
“With what skills? What can you do? Alex, do you understand how painful it is for me to see how lost you are?”
And then the strangest thing happened.
“Bill, I’ve heard enough,” my mother said, standing at the door. “Let me speak to Alex alone. Go into your study and don’t come out until I tell you to.”
This shocked both my father and myself. In all my twenty-three years, I had never once heard my mother give my father a demand.
“Maxine, let me handle this,” he shouted to her.
“Bill!” she shouted. “Go into your study! Alex, get in the house!”
“Maxine, I know what I’m doing here,” he yelled at her.
“Bill! Go into your goddamned study and don’t come out until I tell you to!”
Now, I suppose you’re wondering at this point, I don’t get it. This is, like, the suckiest day. Wasn’t this essay supposed to be about your sixth best day?
Yes, it was and here is why this was a best day . . .
My mother walked me into the living room and shut the doors. I thought she was going to tell me to go back to Charles. I really thought she was going to make me understand that marrying Charles was the best thing for me. Instead she said:
“Alex,” she took my hands in hers, “your father is very upset with you right now. He loves you so much and he’s very frightened. You understand that, right?”
“Yes, but he won’t give me a second to think for myself.”
“He can’t help it, and maybe when you have children of your own you’ll understand his feelings, but I want you to know something. I want you to know that I do not think there has ever been a day that I have been more proud of you.”
After she said that, I went full-on into a major Niagara Falls crying jag.
“Now, listen to me because what I want to tell you is very important,” she said, handing me a tissue to dry my tears.
It took me a second, but I finally calmed down.
“You don’t think sometimes I regret the path I took in my life?” Mom started. “Sometimes I look at my life and I wonder if I did anything to benefit the world. I never had a job, I never lived on my own. When I was your age, you were a teacher or you got married. My generation had no choice, but you do. All my parents had to do in my day was to make sure I married a good man. Daddy doesn’t understand that things are different now. Alex, you are so lucky to be living in a time when you can be whatever you want to be. If you don’t want to get married, you have that choice. I didn’t have that choice. Alex, sweetheart, do something for me, go out there and conquer the world.”
I did not know what to say. And you know, now that I’ve met Alice Oppenheim, I’m even more struck by how lucky my generation is. My mom and Alice had a much different life.
I love my mother more than anything, but I didn’t want to be a carbon copy of her. I knew that I didn’t want to go through life being Charles Kitteredge’s wife. I wanted more out of my life, and when my mother sat me down and told me she completely understood, I knew that I was doing the right thing. It had nothing to do with whether I loved Charles. It had nothing to do with the fact that my mother had given up her dreams, whatever they might have been, for the man she truly loved. What mattered was that I wanted to see life on my terms. And suddenly her support gave me the confidence to do that.
“Show Daddy that he’s wrong. Show him that you can think for yourself. I have every confidence that you’ll be able to. If you had the strength to let this engagement go as far as it did before you ended it, then there must be more that you want to do for yourself. You will make something of yourself in this world and you’ll do it on your own terms. I’m not worried for you anymore.”
It was the first time I’d ever made someone truly proud of me, especially someone I loved. That’s why it was one of the best days of my life. I know that even if my dad wasn’t proud of me, even if he still thought I was lost, I would, I could, prove him wrong.
Three days later, all of Philadelphia knew the marriage would never happen. The Philadelphia gossip pages were hungry to find out why. Some said it was because I was cheating on Charles. Someone said they saw me scoring drugs in Chinatown. I never even went back to the home I shared with Charles. Mom and I just went out and bought new clothes and cosmetics.
It was becoming clear, though, that I couldn’t live in Philadelphia anymore. According to Tim from the mailroom, when I called to say hi, the people in Dad’s office went from thinking I was endearingly crazy to thinking I was just plain crazy.
I thought about moving to New York, but it seemed too close to Philadelphia. Penelope even told me that some of her friends heard I had been committed.
I stayed in my parents’ house for the next two weeks, watching movies and trying to decide what to do. I avoided seeing my dad as much as possible. My mom and I spent a lot of time talking, and I watched those three minutes of home movies more than once—the joy and certainty that life was okay.
Then one night I was watching The Grapes of Wrath with Henry Fonda, when it came to me. It was the last line of the movie, I’ll never forget it. It was like it was saying something to me I’d always known but never had the strength to do. Ma Joad says:
“Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out. But we keep a’com
in’. We’re the people that live. They can’t wipe us out; they can’t lick us. We’ll go on forever, Pa, ’cause we’re the people.”
To do anything in this world I was going to have to stop living off my parents.
I called Dana Stanbury, who by this time was living in Los Angeles, and she said I could stay with her until I got my feet firmly planted.
The next morning I told my parents I was moving to California.
“You’ll get nothing from me,” my father said.
“Good,” I told him. “That’s just the way I want it.”
(By the way, I can’t go on record saying that I didn’t take any money from them ever again. Mom slipped me some cash to help me get settled. After that, though, life was on my terms.)
A couple of years later, Charles was in Los Angeles on business and he called me up. We decided to have lunch. By that time Charles had fallen in love, gotten married, and had a baby on the way.
“I really want to thank you,” he told me. “I didn’t understand why you did what you did, but I do now.”
Like I said, he wasn’t a bad guy. He just wasn’t the guy for me. I don’t know, love complicates everything. It can make you sacrifice your own dreams, but when it’s right, even when doubts rear their ugly heads, you know that the choices you made were right. Like my mom’s love for my dad. When the love isn’t there, though, even the grandest house with all the clothes and all the attention that comes with it can only add up to one thing: a huge waste of a life.
Something Close to Heaven
"You were always the devilish one,” Grandmom laughed to Alice as she poured some salt on her potatoes. "I always said to Maxine when you two were little, ’That Alice is going to get you into trouble one of these days.’ ”
“Don’t think Maxine was so pure, Mrs. Firestein. She knew how to get away with anything.”
“My Maxine was never bad,” Grandmom countered. “She was always the best little girl.”
“She had her ways,” Alice laughed. “She could change the plans to what she wanted by just putting on a smile.”
The Ten Best Days of My Life Page 14
