The Sleeping Beauty Proposal

by Sarah Strohmeyer

  My hand shoots out to avert a crisis. “You are not calling Hugh’s parents.”

  “Of course we called them. That’s what one does when one’s daughter gets engaged. The parents of the bride immediately call the parents of the groom to congratulate them.” She shakes off my hand. “Don’t be so dense, Eugenia.”

  I calculate the grammar in my head.There’s a past tense there. “You mean you already called?”

  “Last night. Though we totally forgot about the time difference, didn’t we, Don? They must have been in bed because they didn’t pick up.”

  Suddenly, I’m overcome by a violent urge to jump out of my own skin.

  “So, we’ll try again now. It’s better you’re here, anyway, Genie.” Mom takes the portable from Lucy, who’s thoughtfully fetched it from the family room. (Thanks, Lucy.) “And if Hugh’s there, we’ll talk to him, too. I can’t wait to tell him how happy we are that he finally asked you to marry him, and in such a dramatic way, too.”

  No, no, no. They cannot call Trevor and Susanna Spencer. They cannot call Hugh. That would ruin everything.

  I reach for the phone. “You can’t. It’s too late.”

  “It is not. It’s only ten there.”

  “You forget about their daylight saving time,” I argue, winging it. “They’re seven hours ahead of us in the summer.”

  Mom holds the phone out of my reach. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re only five. Now do I have to dial a one first, Donald, or a zero?”

  In desperation, I turn to Lucy, who is smiling from ear to ear. Of course. Why wouldn’t she be? She thinks I’m really getting married. She has no idea that we are about to call two near strangers in another country, on another continent, and welcome them to our family for no reason other than I am pretending to be engaged to their son.

  “Put it on speakerphone, Nance,” Dad says.

  “Right.” Mom presses a button and props the phone on the glass table, while we gather around listening to the foreign farting ring of Trevor and Susanna Spencer’s London phone. My heart is pounding so hard everyone must hear it. I have got to get out of here. I cannot stand here while my whole family listens to Susanna proclaim me insane.

  Dad slaps an arm around my shoulder and holds me tight.“We are so proud of you, do you know that,Toodles?”

  Not Toodles. Anything but Toodles.

  “Hellooo?” The woman answering is ultimately British. Upper crust. Refined. I cringe, anticipating what will come next.

  “Well, HELLO!” Mom shouts, completely forgetting that satellites and digital technology mean you no longer have to holler at the foreigners. “This is Nancy Michaels calling from America.”

  There is a pause, an awful, dreadful pause. "Who?”

  “NANCY MICHAELS,” my mother shouts. "GENIE’S MOTHER.”

  Oh, God. I can’t take this. Any minute now and my cover will be blown.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about? Have you rung up the wrong number?”

  Mom gives Dad a questioning look. “Is she daft? Genie, has Hugh’s mother gone dotty?”

  “Just forget it, Mom,” I urge.“Call back later. I told you it was late.”

  “Nonsense. Donald, you talk to her.”

  Dad lets go of me and in an even louder voice bellows,“THIS IS DONALD MICHAELS, FATHER OF GENIE MICHAELS. HUGH’S FIANCÉE.”

  Oh, crap. He told her. Hugh’s fiancée.

  “I had no idea,” the woman says, clearly confused. “Let me go find Hugh.” With a clunk, she puts down the phone and goes off.

  That’s it. I need to escape so that I’m not here when Hugh returns and the hail of shame rains down.

  And then I see my savior. Jason, touchstone of all that is right and proper, is carrying out a salad and regarding my mother’s empty martini glass with dismay.

  Jason doesn’t look like your run-of-the mill super Christian. His brownish hair’s not short. In fact, it’s kind of long and shaggy. He doesn’t wear Dockers or a cross or anything. Right now he’s in a white button-down shirt and wearing his customary hemp necklace. If they’d made born-again Christians like him when I was in my twenties, I might have gone to a few revivals.

  “Congratulations, Genie,” he says, giving me a quick, brotherly hug.

  “We’re talking to Hugh’s parents now,” Mom says excitedly. “Having a bit of a communication problem, though. They can’t seem to find Hugh. They’re taking forever.”

  Praise the Lord for small miracles. "Mom. Don’t you need another drink?”

  Mom looks doubtful, all part of her act. “Maybe just one more martini. No, a pitcher for all of us. It is, after all, a special occasion.”

  A pitcher of martinis? Gag. She really is going overboard.

  "I’ll make it,” I say, trying to move past her.

  “But you can’t.You have to be here when Hugh gets on.”

  “Let Jason make them,” Dad says.

  “Yes,” Mom agrees, “let the Christian boy make them.”

  “Those who don’t drink, mix, you know,” adds my father heartily, handing Jason his own empty glass. “Make ’em in the spirit of FDR, son.”

  Jason exchanges wordless signals with Lucy, whose plan, I’m guessing, is to have him mix them weak. I’m not sure it is possible to mix a weak martini, but I’m willing to help. Anything to flee the prospect of hearing Hugh’s shocked and angry reaction.

  “I’ll go with him,” I say, “to make sure he can find the vodka.

  Call me when Hugh gets back on. I’ve got to go to the bathroom anyway.”

  Mom waves me off. “Very well. Make yourself one, too.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not drinking.”

  She shoots a stricken look at Dad. “Not drinking?”

  "Nope. I’ll just have a 7UP.”

  I turn my back and follow Jason to the kitchen as Mom, Dad, and Lucy clump into a huddle. In any other family not drinking would be barely noticed, totally accepted, or even applauded. In mine, it’s cause for immediate discussion.

  Chapter Six

  Jason is examining a shelf of my mother’s cookbooks when I enter the kitchen. Poor kid. He has no idea that martinis are not food.

  “Let me help. I think the vodka’s in the freezer.”

  “I know what a martini is. I just need to know the proportions. ” He picks out a slim red book of drink recipes circa 1955 and begins flipping through it. “What was that about FDR?”

  The huge bottle of vodka’s lying on top of the frozen vegetables and ice-cream sandwiches like the bully of a frozen underworld. I pull it out, one ear cocked toward the patio for the inevitable cry of disbelief when Hugh tells them the truth.

  “It means to make them dirty. FDR liked his martinis dirty.”

  "Dirty?”

  "Lots of olive brine.”

  “Oh.” He goes back to studying the book as if he’s cramming for a chemistry exam.

  “I’m sorry my parents do this to you. I mean, you shouldn’t have to ... ’cause of your”—oh, God—“beliefs and all.”

  “That’s what you get, being a Christian,” he quips, flattening out the pages. “First, we’re thrown to the lions, and then we’re forced to mix martinis for Episcopalians.”

  My mother would argue that as Episcopalians we are Christians, too, but I’m not in the mood for religious debate. Instead, I search the refrigerator for olives while Jason tries to find the vermouth.

  “So, you and Hugh are going to buck the trend and get married, ” he says, pouring vodka into a measuring cup.

  I pull out a tray of ice. My parents’ automated ice maker broke one week after they bought the new refrigerator and they never bothered to fix it. “Yup.”

  “Excited?”

  “Kind of.”

  “You, um, don’t seem thrilled.” He pauses. “Is it Hugh?”

  Crack! The ice cubes pop out of their plastic tray. "You might say that.”

  “Because he’s not here?”

  “More like
because he doesn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “Doesn’t know we’re engaged.” I cannot believe I just said that. “Hugh never asked me to marry him. I made it up.”

  There is silence. My back is to Jason and I don’t dare turn around, though I hear him pour in something else and then the clank of a spoon against glass. All I can think is Don’t stir, you idiot!

  The stirring stops and Jason asks, “You’re kidding me, right?” “Nope.” Grasping a handful of ice, I dump it into the glass pitcher. “You’re not supposed to stir the martini. It bruises the vodka.”

  “You can’t bruise vodka. It’s diluted ethyl alcohol. I don’t know how you people can drink it.” He removes the spoon and carefully lays it on a dishcloth.Then he reaches out, takes my hand, and says, “Why?”

  “Because it loosens all your joints and makes you feel relaxed.”

  A minute passes while he processes this. “I’m not asking why you drink. I’m asking why you’re lying about getting married to Hugh.”

  The only reply I can think of is,“It’s a long, complicated story. The bottom line is that Hugh apparently has been having an affair and she’s the woman he proposed to on television, not me.”

  “Ahh.”

  “You’ve got to take out that ice or it’ll be watery. My father hates that.”

  Jason holds up the spoon. “With this?”

  “I dunno.”

  “It’ll get stirred.”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  I watch as Jason carefully lifts out each ice cube and am reminded of The Gods Must Be Crazy, when the bushman studies the Coke bottle.What an odd ritual this must be to him, the act of preparing and ingesting poison.

  “Do you think I’m going to hell?”

  Jason gives me a look. “Why do you ask me questions like that?”

  “Because you’re an authority on what’s in and what’s out as far as hell is concerned.”

  Lifting out the last ice cube, he chucks it into the sink and says, “You ever want to sit down and talk about God’s eternal plans for each of us, I’m here for you, Genie, but right now I think you’ve got other stuff to worry about.”

  “Like the fact that my parents are talking to Hugh’s parents, who have no idea that their son is fake engaged to me?”

  “For starters,” he says. “It’d be better if you were honest with them now so they wouldn’t have to find out from other people, don’t you think?”

  I open the olive jar and dump in its brine, holding my fingers against the glass so the olives don’t fall in.

  “Might be too late. I may have passed that point.” Still no whooping or crying from the patio. My mother is not flinging back the screen door, demanding to know if I took her for a fool. What’s going on?

  Jason is washing glasses and setting them on a tray very neatly. I think about how tidy and uncomplicated his life with Lucy is, how they entered adulthood taking all the appropriate steps—a suitable courtship period, a proper engagement, and a religious wedding. They didn’t move in together before they married.They bought a brand-new house and decorated it in coordinating colors so that it was ready and waiting for them, new sheets and all, when they stepped off the plane from their Jamaican honeymoon.

  “Is it true Mom and Dad gave you guys two hundred thousand to buy your house?” Yes, it was rude to ask. It just slipped out.

  “Three hundred.” Jason looks up. “Is that why you’re faking your engagement?”

  For some reason I feel busted, even though I didn’t fake my engagement to get money. "No. I didn’t find out Mom and Dad gave you that much until Todd told me today. I thought it was more like twenty or something.”

  Jason reddens slightly. “It was way too generous of them. I wouldn’t have taken it if Lucy hadn’t had her heart set on the house. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I was really relieved and grateful. Just that sometimes I feel guilty.”

  Welcome to the club.

  Still no sound from the patio and I’m not about to go outside and find out, either.

  I pop a green olive into my mouth and suck out the pimiento. It tastes like salty tears as I do a mental tour of Jason and Lucy’s brand-new house with its downstairs master suite, its media room with the plasma TV over the fireplace, and its upstairs “children’s playroom” with four dormers and interconnecting bedrooms and bathrooms.

  Three hundred thousand dollars.Whew. If I’d had one-third of that, I could have bought the Somerville house already.

  “You know, Lucy wasn’t the only one,” Jason adds, after thinking about it.“Your parents also gave Todd a chunk of change when he started his business.”

  I nearly swallow my olive whole. “Todd got money? How much?”

  Again, Jason reddens. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want you to get all mad at Lucy.”

  “Was it three hundred thousand?”

  “Shhh. We shouldn’t be discussing this.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “It’s none of our business.”

  It is too my business. Each sibling gets cash for neatly fitting into their assigned, gender-specific roles, whereas I’m left to ride the subway every morning, punch a clock, clip coupons, and live in a cramped apartment. I mean, I don’t want to come off as a pig, but fair is fair.

  “What if I never marry?” I ask.

  Jason cocks his head thoughtfully. “I don’t know. The way Nancy and Don put it, they were happy to pay for the house for Lucy and me so we could start off on the right foot.”

  “Are you telling me life doesn’t start until you get married?”

  “That’s the way your parents think. Me, too, I suppose. I mean, isn’t that why two people get married? It’s a foundation on which you build your family. People our age, the ones who are living together and hooking up and claiming marriage is dead, they’re missing out on the best gift God ever gave to man, aside from life. Check out Genesis 2:24.”

  Genesis, ha! Don’t start throwing the Old Testament at me, buddy, I want to say. Trying to hide my hurt, I reach for my purse. “I need to call Todd.”

  “Don’t be mad at him. Darn. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

  "Nonsense. I have a right to know.” Opening my cell, I quickly press 3,Todd’s speed dial, while Jason makes a fast escape with the tray of martinis.

  “Don’t make me talk to Mom,” Todd says, knowing full well I’m at our parents’ weekly Sunday dinner. “Not after the day I’ve had with Cecily Blake.”

  “How come you didn’t tell me Mom and Dad gave you money, too?”

  Todd thinks about this before saying, “First of all, Greedy Gilda, there’s nothing in the universe that says Mom and Dad have to treat us equally.”

  I hate it when he calls me Greedy Gilda.

  “But if you have to know, when I wanted to start up this home remodeling business—a brainstorm I see now was a totally cracked idea—Mom and Dad got right behind me. Dad even arranged for a no-interest loan so I could get all the equipment, hire Nick, that kind of thing. It was wonderful of him.”

  I am dumbfounded.

  “Is that a man thing?” I ask. “Because Mom and Dad have never indicated that they’d finance any of my pet projects.”

  There is an uncomfortable silence. I may have pushed it here.

  “Listen, don’t go off half-cocked at this,” Todd says carefully,

  “but I’m gonna come straight out and tell you that you don’t take any risks, Genie. You get up and go to work and hang out with Patty on the weekends.You have since college. At least I traveled the world and started a business. At least Lucy got married. What have you done with your life except the bare minimum? What was there to finance?”

  I have read the expression “to see red.” But until that moment in my parents’ kitchen listening to Todd tell me that my life has been worthless, I have never actually experienced the act of seeing red. I am not only seeing red, I am feeling red. Every nerve in m
y body is on fire. I am hot. I am angry. I am, oddly, humbled.

  If only he knew the risk I was taking right now.

  I do not say anything to Todd. I don’t say good-bye or scream that I hate all the Michaelses and I wish an earthquake would swallow them whole. I simply end the call, freshen my lipstick, and head outside.

  Lucy and Mom are huddled in a gossip clutch. Mom seems to have been crying.

  Obviously, they’ve found out.

  "Hugh told you,” I say. "I’m so sorry ...”

  “Not Hugh.” Mom dabs at her eyes with a tissue. “He wasn’t there.And that wasn’t Susanna Spencer, either.The Spencers are in Italy for the summer. It was their house sitter, Pippa, who answered the phone.That’s why she didn’t know your name.”

  Relief cascades over me in a great blue refreshing wave. Can this be true?

  "Then what’s wrong?” I ask.

  Mom says, “Don’t play dumb, Genie. No wonder you didn’t want us talking to Hugh. You were afraid he’d tell us, weren’t you?”

  I turn to Jason, who is helping my father at the grill, but he just purses his lips in disapproval. I can’t believe Jason spilled my secret so fast.That fink!

  “Jason told you?”

  “No,” Mom says. “Lucy and I figured it out. Your paleness. Your utter panic at us calling Hugh’s parents.”

  “Your not drinking,” Lucy adds.

  "What?” I shrug, clueless. "What are you talking about?”

  “That you’re pregnant.” Lucy throws up her hands. “There. I said it.”

  For one brilliant moment I feel a breeze of bliss. An out-of-body snapshot of how ridiculous we all are.

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “You’re not?” Mom blinks and reaches for my hand. “Then what were you talking about in the kitchen with Jason for so long? We were sure there was some crisis.”

  Jason gives me a thumbs-up of encouragement.

  “No crisis. I was just hashing over the wedding.” I smile at Lucy. "After much thought and consideration, I’ve decided not to go with a wedding planner. I’ll make all the arrangements myself, though Mom, I’m going to let you do most of the planning since you’re so good at it. Also, I think we should move the wedding up to August. After all, what’s the point of waiting? Seems to me I’ve waited long enough for what I should have done long, long ago.”