The Solomon Sisters Wise Up

by Melissa Senate

  “As I recall, Ally,” my father said, pointing at her with his fork for emphasis, “the next day, you and Andrew arrived in Greece for a two-week honeymoon. Ah, Greece. What a beautiful country.”

  Ally speared a piece of asparagus with a little too much force.

  “Um, Dad,” I said, “where are you and Giselle planning to go for your honeymoon?”

  “We’re thinking an African safari,” he replied. “We’re going to ride elephants through the jungle.” He then told a five-minute story about a trained elephant in an upcoming romantic comedy he was producing. “You’d love the film, Zoe.” He looked at her, then around the table. “Zoe’s a romantic comedy freak.”

  Zoe’s only response was a tight smile. She then went back to slicing her steak to bits and playing with her vegetables.

  “Speaking of comedies,” my father continued, “I was thinking about a movie theme for the wedding. Maybe the wedding party putting on minifilms at various points during the reception. Doesn’t that sound hip?”

  We all stared him, including his future wife. He continued on about how the bridesmaids and ushers would get to be stars for the day too.

  “Since the three of you are all here together,” Giselle said when her fiancé took a breath, “this seems like a great time to ask if you’d all be bridesmaids. It would mean the world to us.” She eyed Zoe, who stared at her plate, then looked at Ally and me.

  “Do you even have a wedding date?” Zoe asked. It was the first thing she’d said in forty minutes.

  “We’re thinking of June,” Giselle replied. “I’d love to add Central Park or the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to the list of venues, but your dad isn’t too keen on an outdoor wedding, in case it rains.”

  “Gissy baby,” my father said, “if your heart is set on it, let’s add the park and the garden to our list.”

  Giselle smiled. “Thanks, honey. So can I count on you three as bridesmaids?”

  If I can fit into my dress, I thought. “Sure,” I said.

  Ally nodded.

  All eyes swung to Zoe.

  “June?” Zoe repeated. “I might be out of the country. I’m not sure yet. Can I let you know?” she added, looking at the platter of asparagus instead of Giselle.

  “Sure,” Giselle said. “I just hope that you can, Zoe.”

  Can you spell TENSION?

  I wondered if the Zoe-Giselle ex-friendship was all that was bothering Zoe. If it were, she probably wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have survived a day, let alone a week.

  And there was definitely a reason Ally was here. I had never seen her so distracted. She usually loved to try to embarrass my father with how self-absorbed he was, and I fully expected her to say something like, Don’t you love the boots I got Sarah for her birthday? And then my dad would look at me quizzically and say, Oh, gosh, that’s right! I had it marked on my calendar, but then yesterday was such a wild day. And then Ally would say, Her birthday was a weekago, Dad. And without missing a beat, he’d smile and say, Everyone, raise a glass to Sarah!

  But Ally wasn’t doing anything to antagonize our father. Like Zoe, she too was pushing her food around on her plate, staring at her watch, staring at her food. Perhaps the reason had something to do with Smarmdrew, her husband. During cocktails earlier, which had turned into another cummerbund session, I’d asked her privately why she was staying here, and, clutching her little dog for dear life against her chest, she’d said something about Andrew being in Tokyo on business and the kitchen being renovated. But maybe she was lying.

  “How’s Andy’s business these days, Al?” my father asked, filling his wineglass. “The market’s tough right now.”

  Ally stiffened. It was for just a moment, but she stiffened.

  “Business is great,” Ally responded. “He’s in Switzerland right now, hammering out a new deal.”

  An hour ago it was Japan. Now it was Switzerland.

  “Well, I’d better turn in,” Ally said. “I have to walk Mary Jane, and then I’ve got to prepare for a killer meeting first thing in the morning.” She stood up. “Good night, everyone.”

  We said our good-nights, and Ally practically fled.

  “You know, I think I’d better hit the sheets myself,” Zoe said.

  No way was I being stuck at the table alone. My sisters and I might not have spoken five words to each other, but there was still solidarity in sisterhood.

  “Me too,” I chimed in. “Dinner was just great,” I said to Giselle before I realized she had nothing to do with it. “Well, good night.”

  “Amazing,” my father said. “A two-year-old can stay up longer than my daughters!” He laughed and rushed over to Madeline, lifting her out of her high chair. “And what do you think of that, Maddy-Waddy? Huh? What?” He tickled her, and the toddler started a giggle-fest.

  I watched him from the doorway. I remembered him being like that with Zoe when she was very little, when Ally and I would fly out to California to stay with him for a couple of weeks during the summer. If he was like that with me or Ally, I didn’t remember it. Maybe we were too old by then. Then again, I’d never lived in the same house with my father.

  “Let the baby digest,” Giselle’s mother complained. “It’s me she’s going to spit up all over later, not you.”

  “You won’t spit up all over Grandy, will you, pumpkin pie?” my father singsonged to Madeline. “You’re way too sweet for that!” And he continued the tickle and giggle-fest, then began swooping her high in the air, much to Grandy’s frown and Giselle’s delight.

  “Oh, Sarah?” Giselle called just as I turned to go.

  I turned back.

  “Will you let Ally and Zoe know that I’ll be tacking wedding gown photographs to the bulletin board later and that I’d love their opinions any time before our bridal boutique appointments next month?”

  “I’ll tell them,” I said.

  She smiled and joined her fiancé and daughter in the fun.

  Weird. I thought I was long over feeling funny about watching my father interact with a new family. But apparently, that funny feeling never went away.

  8

  Ally

  The moment your marriage ended, you had a tendency to notice the world was full of couples, baby strollers and love songs. The young couple in front of me in line at Au Bon Pain were making out. Kissing with tongue at eight in the morning on a Monday, when most people were half-awake and in a bad mood and on their way to work.

  “What are you getting, snookums?” the guy kisser asked, his tongue darting in the woman’s ear. The slacker probably didn’t have a job. The eyebrow ring was a dead giveaway.

  “Whatever you’re getting,” she breathed back at him. “I want to experience what you’re experiencing.”

  Could I throw up all over them?

  They began making out again, their hands in each other’s hair.

  “Hel-lo,” I snapped. “Could you get your tongues out of each other’s mouths long enough to move forward? You’re holding up the entire line.”

  They whipped around and stared at me. Someone behind me giggled.

  “Next,” called the clerk behind the counter, and the slackers finally moved.

  The woman kisser turned around and shot me a nasty smile. “We’re always cranky about what we don’t have, aren’t we, ma’am?”

  I held up my left hand and waved my wedding ring at her. “Nice try, sweetie.”

  “Like married people get any,” she countered, and she and her boyfriend laughed.

  “Just forget it,” the male kisser said, playing with her hair. “Unhappy people hate it when other people are happy.”

  “I happen to be very happy,” I announced.

  “Whatever, lady,” the male kisser said.

  “Could this line move any slower?” I snapped around him at the clerk.

  I hated being called “lady.” It reminded me that I wasn’t twenty-two anymore and that I looked like a ma’am to twentysomethings. It reminded me that I wasn’t “g
etting any” because I was married.

  Ha. That was a joke. I glanced at the wedding ring I’d just waved around. Talk about an empty gesture.

  I was unhappy. Plenty unhappy.

  I’d walked out of my house with a suitcase one week and two days ago, and Andrew hadn’t called once. Not that I’d talk to him.

  And I was living in hell. Between the pregnancy books Sarah had under her pillow, and the wedding bulletin board in the living room, I was surrounded by babies and marriage.

  I’d surprised myself by ending up at my father’s apartment. A week ago last Saturday, I’d left my house with a suitcase in one hand and Mary Jane in the other and had no idea where to go. I’d thought about staying in a hotel, but the two-hundred-dollar bill I’d received for breaking that cheap, ugly lamp, plus the loneliness of waking up in a hotel room when you weren’t away on business, was too much to bear. At least at my father’s, there were people I knew walking around, but the plus was that my father tended to mind his own business because he didn’t care about anyone but himself. What I hadn’t counted on was having Zoe as a roommate. Or Sarah.

  I had to do something. Something to distract myself from myself. From images of Andrew in the hammock with that skank. From my father’s and Giselle’s beaming faces at six in the morning. From my sisters’ curiosity. Last night, I felt eyes on me, only to find Sarah staring at me when I thought she was absorbed in But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant! (Which she read facing me and not Zoe, since she didn’t want Zoe or my father or Giselle to know she was pregnant.) And twice I found Zoe watching me when I thought she was busy doing her usual thing of staring at the ceiling or contorting her body into yoga positions in a very small space in front of her bed. Granted, I watched them too, since Sarah’s favorite answer was I don’t want to talk about it, and I wasn’t exactly comfortable asking Zoe anything personal. So I watched them and they watched me. We watched each other.

  If I was going to stay at my father’s for a while—until I figured out exactly what I was going to do with myself, if I was going to rent an apartment in the city or buy a house of my own in Westchester, or visit a sperm bank and knock myself up—I needed to do something. Something proactive. Something to make me feel good about myself.

  Like I needed another facial, massage, shopping trip or an island vacation.

  What, then? What, what, what?

  Make appointment with good divorce lawyer was first on my list, but I wasn’t one hundred percent ready to deal with that yet.

  Corn muffin and coffee in hand, I sat down at a little table as far away from the kissing couple as I could get. I bit into my muffin and stared out the window.

  “I met him on a FindAMate.com,” a late-thirties woman at the next table whispered to her female companion. “He’s amazing. Forty. Divorced and over it. Loaded. And as good-looking as his picture.” She leaned close to her friend and flipped her long, curly red hair behind her shoulder. “I came for the first time in three years without the help of a vibrator.”

  Her friend’s mouth dropped open, and both women looked around to make sure no one was listening to them. (Lawyers learn in law school how to make potential confessors feel like the lawyer isn’t even in the room.) “You had sex with a man you met online?” the friend asked. “A stranger? Are you insane?”

  “He wasn’t a stranger when I slept with him,” the redhead responded. She wrapped her hands around her cup of coffee and breathed in the aroma, her expression satisfied. “I e-mailed him a note, he e-mailed back, and we went back and forth for a couple of weeks. Then we spoke on the phone a few times, long conversations, and when I felt comfortable, I arranged a date.”

  “I don’t know,” the friend said, biting into her bagel. “Still.”

  “Still what?” the redhead asked. “I’d still be single if I hadn’t given it a try. Single at Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s? No, thanks. I met a great guy. No one needs to know I met him online. Not that I’m embarrassed about it.”

  “I always thought personal ads and online matchmaking services were for losers,” the friend said, taking out a compact and powdering her nose. “Sorry, but a lot of people feel that way.”

  “I’m doing it,” the woman countered. “Am I a loser?”

  Her friend colored. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “There are people on it just like me.” The redhead grabbed the compact and checked her lipstick. “Just like you. Just like anyone. Where are we supposed to meet a man otherwise? In a bar? At work? On a blind date? Please. Online dating is totally mainstream now. You read through profiles, see who looks good to you, you write to each other, and when you’re comfortable, you make a date in a private place. You don’t like the guy, you leave in two seconds, no hurt feelings. You like each other, suddenly you’re on a date with a promising guy and there’s no busybody fixer-upper asking you questions.”

  “I guess that sounds pretty good,” the friend said. “So you really like this man, huh?”

  The redhead beamed. “I’m planning on taking him home for Thanksgiving, if we’re still dating in a month. For the first time in three years, I won’t have to listen to my relatives say, ‘Your time will come too, sweetie, but it might come quicker if you lost a few pounds and got a good haircut.’”

  “I hear that crap too,” the friend said. “I am so sick of it! Okay, I’m sold. Maybe I’ll check out the site tonight.”

  The redhead had me sold too. I needed a distraction? I needed something to make me forget my husband? I needed to retaliate? I’d found it.

  I pulled out my Palm and wrote: FindAMate.com. And underlined it.

  The room I was sharing with my sisters was slightly smaller than my bedroom at home, the one I used to share with Andrew. He and I were rarely in that bedroom at the same time, yet now, I was sharing the same-sized room with two other people. And two people who took up a lot of room. Not physically, of course. Sarah was only two months pregnant and thin as usual, and Zoe was a rail. But they both had mega presences.

  At the moment, the three of us were on our beds, which were lined up, hotel fashion, next to each other. Beside each one was a round table upon which sat a tiny Tiffany lamp that I assumed was fake—but at my dad’s you never knew for sure, since he could afford the real thing—a travel alarm clock and a tiny crystal bowl of lemon balls, which I happened to love. Sarah was in the middle, making notes for an article for Wow and sucking on lemon ball after lemon ball (which I attributed to cravings). Zoe was lying on her stomach, her arm outstretched in front of her and staring at a wallet-sized photograph of a guy. Boyfriend, I assumed. And I was typing FindAMate.com into my Web browser, this morning’s eavesdropped conversation swirling in my head.

  Sarah flopped onto her stomach and hung over the side of her bed, trying to pull her suitcase up and over onto the bed.

  I lunged off my bed and grabbed it out of her hands. “You’re not supposed to lift anything! Jesus, Sarah.”

  “This suitcase weighs about half a pound, Ally. The ba—” She glanced at Zoe, who was now eyeing us with curiosity.

  “Do you want some privacy?” Zoe asked. “I can go examine wedding gown photographs on the bulletin board or something.”

  Sarah laughed. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. And besides, Ally was about to go back to minding her own business. Weren’t you, Ally?”

  I sat back down on my bed and dragged my computer onto my lap. “Do what you’re supposed to do, Sarah. If you would, I wouldn’t have to mind your business.”

  “How’s Andrew?” Sarah snapped. “I haven’t heard you mention him once since I got here three days ago.”

  “How’s Griffen?” I snapped back.

  “I’m going to give you guys some privacy,” Zoe said, and she slipped out the door.

  “I don’t care if she knows,” Sarah told me. “I’m getting tired of lying on my right side to read my pregnancy books so she won’t see. According to But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant!, I’m supposed to
lie on my left side.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I remember reading that. How are you feeling, anyway?”

  “Okay,” she said. “A little tired.”

  “So you still haven’t heard from Griffen?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  I tossed her a sourball. “Under the circumstances, Sarah, I guess he’s got a little leeway to spend some time thinking things through. Taking over a week seems a little excessive, but I’m sure he’ll call in the next few days. I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’m sure he’ll call.”

  Sarah didn’t say anything. She popped the sourball into her mouth, flopped onto her back, clasped her hands over her stomach and stared at the ceiling.

  “What do you want him to say?” I asked her.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” she said without looking at me.

  “Fine,” I told her. “Check your e-mail tomorrow. I’m going to send you some links to some good pregnancy Web sites.”

  “Ally, I’ve been reading. I know the basics.”

  I doubted that. And not only was I sure she didn’t know the first thing about expecting a baby, she didn’t have the means or wherewithal to take care of a baby. Until she found out she was pregnant, she didn’t even want a baby. She wanted her sort-of boyfriend to fall in love with her. She wanted to go to Puerto Rico with her friends to celebrate her birthday (guess who planned to buy her the ticket as a surprise). She wanted a black leather jacket, which I’d gotten for her from our mother (I’d bought Sarah a birthday present from our mother every year since her death). Sarah wanted a bigger bedroom and bigger breasts (which she’d now get). She wanted a pair of knee-high black leather boots from Steve Madden. She wanted to see the new Drew Barrymore (her favorite actress) movie. She wanted to be able to afford a venti-sized latte at Starbucks. She didn’t even seem to want a real life.

  And yet she was pregnant. My dream in life.