“I’m twenty-nine!” I snapped.
“Look, honey, you’re the one who lied on your profile. Shaved off a few years, sent in a younger photo. Happens all the time. The problem is that when you lie, you’re wasting someone else’s valuable time. And as a doctor, I don’t have time to waste. I’d expect a lawyer to understand that, but I’m sure you lied about that too. What are you, a manicurist or something?”
Jerk! But my nails did look good. “Satisfy my curiosity for a moment, will you, Doctor? Let’s say I am thirty-five or thirty-six, which I’m not—” and that was true for another month “—so what? You liked my photo, you liked my e-mails, you liked me on the phone. You’re thirty-six. What, you can’t handle a woman your own age?”
He rolled his eyes. “Look, lady, I just got out of a bad marriage—or did you forget that from our telephone conversation? I’m not looking to jump into another one so fast. So if I meet someone and it gets serious, I want to date for a couple of years, then get married, then start a family. You’d be too old for that.”
I gasped. Literally.
“I’m thirty-four,” I snapped. “I’m plenty young to have a child. Two or three if I want! So fuck you.”
“You’ll never get the chance,” he snapped back and walked out.
“You’re thirty-four?” the woman a seat over asked me. “You look a little older. I swear by Botox. Really, you have to try it.”
“You’re not my type,” Rick said with his mouth full the moment I introduced myself. He finished chewing. “I hope you don’t mind my honesty. And I hope you don’t mind that I ordered something to eat,” he added, swiping a chicken shish kabob into dipping sauce. He had sauce on his chin. “You were a little late.”
After the nightmare in Technicolor I experienced yesterday with Jeffrey, I’d decided to take the upper hand and arrive ten minutes past the meeting time.
Apparently, arrival time had little to do with upper hands.
“I’m not your type?” I repeated. “What?”
“Want a piece of chicken?” he asked, gesturing at the plate before him. Now he had sauce on his fingers. “You’re a little too type A.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I only said hello. How the hell can you tell what type I am?”
“How you phrased that last question is a dead giveaway. But I can tell just by how you look—the suit, the too-severe hairstyle. You’re type A.”
Moron. Although, technically, he was right.
“We spoke for twenty minutes on the phone a few days ago and we spoke again last night. Couldn’t you tell my type from our conversation?”
“You didn’t sound type A on the phone,” he said. “You sounded nervous. I liked that.”
“Oh, so you like nervous women,” I said. “Makes you feel more like a man, is that it, you wuss?”
“Look, I was just being honest. If you’re going to be like that, maybe we should just cut this short.”
Good idea, prick.
Next.
The trouble was, I was afraid of Next. My first foray into dating was about as bad as it got, which, then again, might not be such a bad thing, since it could only get better.
Right?
I stared at the little alarm clock on my bedside table. It was 4:00 a.m.
Maybe if you didn’t lie off the bat, Ally. Maybe if you approached dating honestly. Dr. Jeffrey might have been a jerk, but he had reason to be upset. How would you have liked it if a bald, overweight insurance salesman had shown up and said, Well, you wouldn’t have liked me as I am so I said I was a tall, dark and handsome doctor.
Oy.
But I didn’t want to be thirty-five if the men I wanted wanted a twenty-one-year-old.
Did you want a man who wanted a twenty-one-year-old?
What I wanted was some sleep!
I was now wearing a tight, colorful Betsey Johnson dress with a flouncy hem. My hair was slightly windblown to avoid the “severe” look, and my lipstick was sheer and glossy.
I didn’t look like a lawyer. I looked like a good-time girl.
I didn’t look like anyone in the Candle Café restaurant on a Saturday at noon, but that was okay. I had a hot date.
Thanks to jerks one and two, I’d decided to go with something a little less aggressive, a little more feminine. Even though I was about to confess that I was about to turn thirty-five, I felt twenty-nine. I looked twenty-nine.
Ralph had a star next to his name in my Palm. And he earned another when he sat down across from me at my table, on time. Over fresh-made vegetable juice, which I’d never had before in my life, we discussed: Where we grew up. How many siblings we had. Last book read. The violence of The Sopranos.
And then he looked at his watch. A Cartier, I noticed.
“Oh, man, is it one o’clock already?” he said. “I’m meeting a friend.”
I’d spent almost three hundred dollars on a dress, eaten some sort of vegan appetizer at the juice bar (I hadn’t realized the Candle Café was a vegetarian restaurant), had the kind of conversation you might with a stranger in an elevator and then been dismissed after an hour?
It wasn’t because I wasn’t twenty-nine, which hadn’t even come up.
“Ralph, I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but I’m new at this dating thing, and I’m just trying to figure out why some dates are, well, duds. Can you enlighten me a little bit? Why are you cutting this short?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” he said. “No chemistry, I guess.”
“Ah, that makes sense. No chemistry. Can’t place blame for that.”
He gnawed his lower lip. “And, well, you did make fun of the menu. I’m a vegetarian, and I’m not militant or anything, but that sort of bothered me. And you did sort of ask me a lot of questions, like you were interviewing me to be your husband.”
Asswipe!
“I would hardly be interested in you for the position of husband,” I said. “We just met.”
“Well, that’s how you came across. Look, I have to go. It was nice meeting you. Good luck! Take care!” And then he hightailed it out of the restaurant.
Had I interviewed him? I didn’t mean to. Or maybe I did. I just asked a few questions that I thought would let me know whether or not we were really suited to each other. I didn’t ask his exact salary or anything, just where he intended to be in five years, that sort of thing.
Nothing that a prospective father-in-law wouldn’t ask.
Oh God. I had to calm down. You have to calm down.
What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn’t even interest one guy into moving on to dinner, let alone a second date.
Andrew, meanwhile, was busily dating every blonde in New York City and Long Island. Kristina had seen him nuzzling a Heather Locklear look-alike in the Blue Water Grill last night.
I had a very hot date on Saturday. I would not interview him. I would not make fun of the menu. I would not be bitchy.
He didn’t show up.
And I’m giving up.
12
Zoe
My father thought a macrobiotic wedding reception would be the height of trendy, potentially worthy of a write-up in In Style magazine.
The bride and groom, the bride’s baby and mother and the groom’s three daughters were waiting in the reception area of Cater To Me, the fifth caterer we’d been to in as many days. Giselle, her mother, Sarah, Ally, the caterer—who’d burst through a set of double doors just in time to hear my father’s pronouncement—and I turned to stare at my father in horror. At the sudden silence, Madeline, in her umbrella stroller, covered her face with her hands and let out a shriek.
Giselle laughed and wheeled the stroller back and forth. “He’s joking, everyone!”
“You didn’t think I was serious, did you?” my father asked, grinning. “You guys don’t know me at all! I’m a total carnivore!”
Ally looked like she wanted to punch him.
Sarah just looked sad.
We didn’t know him at all.
I cro
ssed my arms over my chest, a habit I tried to break in all my clients. “Dad, the last time we had dinner, you said you were a vegetarian.”
“Well, honey, that must have been a long time—” He caught himself. “Ah, there’s the caterer! Hello, there. We’re the Archweller-Solomon party.”
Sarah glanced at me. So you don’t have a relationship with him either, I could hear her thinking.
I knew my sisters had always thought I had some sort of Daddy’s Little Girl relationship with my father. Ha. Bartholomew Solomon was an equal opportunity father: if he was going to ignore his daughters from his first marriage, he’d ignore his daughter from his second, too. The last time I’d had dinner with my father was right before he’d broken the news to me that he’d left my mother for my friend. We’d met for lunch once or twice several months later, but the broken record kept skipping on the age-is-just-a-number routine, and my father and I had drifted even further apart than we’d been.
Bartholomew Solomon seemed to not even realize that his three daughters had been living in his apartment for three weeks now. Three weeks. Not a weekend. Not a week. Three weeks. Gee, Dad, do you wonder why a married woman is suddenly living with her sisters in a small bedroom in your apartment? Gee, Dad, do you wonder why Sarah fell asleep at the dinner table last night? Gee, Dad, do you wonder why I always look like I’m going to cry?
Last night at a rare family dinner (we all happened to be home at around the same time), while Sarah was dozing during the soup course, my father sent Zalla for the wedding bulletin board, which now held photos of bow ties.
“It’s too bad Andy’s not here, Al,” he’d said. “Your husband knows a good bow tie.”
Silence from Ally.
“So when’s the Andymeister due back from—where is he? France, right?” my father asked.
No, Dad, don’t you listen? He’s in Switzerland and Japan simultaneously.
“Yes, France,” Ally said, pushing a cherry tomato around on her plate. “Paris is his favorite city, so he’s extending his trip for a week to do a little sightseeing. I’ve already been three times and this is such a busy time at the firm, so I opted to stay home.”
Ally then changed the subject to which bow tie she liked best. As she went on and on about how the right tie could make or break a tux, Sarah and I glanced at each other. We both knew there was something very wrong in Ally’s marriage.
Many times over the past week, I’d woken up to the sound of sniffling. It was Ally crying. I was so tempted to go over and ask her what was wrong, if she wanted to talk, but I knew the response I’d get. She’d snapped me away so many times, I was afraid to even approach her.
I glanced at Ally now. She was twisting her wedding ring and staring out the window at a brick wall.
“A may-crow-bee-ahtic vedding receepshun,” the caterer said with a forced chuckle. “Goood vun! Three quarters of ze guests vould not show up! Okay, folks, right thees vay,” he added, leading us into a tasting room. A bunch of little plates were set around a long wooden table. “Here ve have our famed cheeken cordon blue, our avardvinning fil-et mignon, and our cheef’s speciality—swordfish.”
We all picked and nibbled the forkfuls on our little plates and cleansed our palates with orange slices.
“I vill leave you alone to deescuss,” the caterer said, and whooshed out of the room.
Every chicken dish tasted the same, no matter the sauce or what it was stuffed with. Same for every steak and fish dish.
“What do you think, Ally?” my father asked.
“Nothing special,” she said. “I’d pass.”
“I like the swordfish,” Sarah said. “The other caterers all had salmon. Swordfish is different, unexpected.”
“You’re not even supposed to be eating swordfish,” Ally snapped at Sarah. “The mercury levels are very high.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I don’t think one forkful of swordfish is going to hurt—”
“Since when is fish unhealthy?” Giselle’s mother interrupted. “I’ve been cooking a nice filet of sole or flounder for Giselle’s stepfather three times a week for twenty years now. The man is healthy as a horse. I’ll tell you what the real danger is—these stupid health fads. That’s what’ll kill people.”
Giselle’s grumpy mother talked nonstop. No wonder her husband had opted to stay home in California.
Sarah walked slowly over to Ally and nudged her in the ribs with an accompanying shut-up look.
“Zoe, what do you think?” Giselle asked me. She was forever trying to engage me in conversation and I was forever leaving the room. “The caterer we saw at noon had a better chicken dish, but the filet mignon here is out of this world. Do you agree?”
“I liked them all fine,” I said.
“No one loves a good piece of filet mignon better than you, Zoe,” she said. “I remember the time we went to—”
“They’re all good,” I interrupted.
“You must have a preference, Zo,” my dad said. “You’re my steak reference point. C’mon, what do you think?”
“It’s hard to get excited about a piece of too-tough steak when your mother is God knows where doing who knows what!” I yelled.
Everyone turned to stare at me, including the two other parties. I felt my cheeks burning. I was acting like a five-year-old. I hadn’t meant to burst out with that. I wasn’t even thinking of my mother at that moment.
Or maybe I was.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I’m just a little stressed out at the moment.”
“That’s okay, hon. But really, Zo, your mother’s fine. I’m sure she’s at the Statue of Liberty right now, asking if there’s an elevator up to the chin.” He laughed, then rubbed my shoulder. “She’s fine, Zo. Your mother has always been able to take care of herself.”
I fake glanced at my watch. “Is it two already? I’m supposed to meet someone.” I wasn’t lying—well, not completely. Daniel and I had arranged to meet at three in Bloomingdale’s to hunt for my mother. We didn’t really expect to find her, but Daniel thought the looking would make me feel better.
“Von more feesh to try,” the caterer said, carrying a platter with little plates. “Zish particular feesh eez am-a-zing!”
With everyone’s attention back on the food, I slipped out the door.
I found Daniel at Bloomingdale’s Estée Lauder counter. Joy was behind the counter, slathering moisturizer on his cheeks.
“This moisturizer is me,” he said, making faces into the mirror. “Yes, it is definitely me.”
“Daniel, I’m working,” Joy said. “If you’re going to joke around, you’re going to have to leave.”
He eyed me at the next counter. “I’ll let you work, my sweet. We’re on for tonight, right?”
“I’ll have to let you know, okay?” Joy said. “I might have to work late.” A woman approached and starting asking about eye shadow, and Daniel made his way over to me. Joy did not follow him with her eyes.
“Maybe you should introduce me as your friend, make her a little jealous,” I suggested.
“I thought about that,” he said, “but I don’t like playing games. She likes me or she doesn’t, right?”
I was impressed. “Right.”
“Okay, let’s look for Madame Solomon,” he said. “Should we split up or search together?”
“Let’s look together,” I said, surprising myself.
He smiled. “You just can’t get enough of me, can you?”
Actually, I couldn’t. I’d begun to need Daniel the way I needed coffee or a hug, and there weren’t many hugs coming my way these past few weeks.
“She left another message on my machine in California saying she was fine and taking a fondue course,” I told Daniel. “She said she’s been taking tours. She’s been to the Aquarium at Coney Island, the Statue of Liberty, up and down Fifty-seventh Street, the Lower East Side and Central Park. She sounded great, like she’s been having fun.”
“She didn’t say anything about you
r father?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“So maybe she’s over it,” he said. “Maybe she just needed to feel like she was doing something. Maybe flying here was enough. Maybe she bought a voodoo doll, stuck a few pins in it and felt be—” Daniel froze. “I don’t believe it, but there she is!” he said, pointing. “She’s trying on lipsticks at the Bobbi Brown counter. Unbelievable. I never expected to actually find her—I just thought a look-for-your-mom session would make you feel better.”
I turned to where he was staring, and there indeed was my mother, puckering her dark red lips in a display mirror and blotting them. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Girls, that salesclerk was helping me,” she was saying to a gaggle of teenagers vying for attention at the counter as I ran over. “Where are your manners?”
“Mom?”
At the sound of my voice, Judith Gold Solomon whipped her head around so fast that she accidentally dabbed the woman next to her with the tube of lipstick.
“I’m so sorry!” my mother said. “I’m sure they have something to get that out with,” she added, gesturing behind the counter. She put down the tube of lipstick, grabbed my arm and pulled me into the crowd, darting her gaze back to see if the lipstick-stained woman was chasing after her.
“Mom, you’re not going to get arrested for getting a little lipstick on someone. Slow down,” I said.
She pulled me into the wallets and day-planners section. I glanced around for Daniel and found him sniffing a fragrance with an eye on us. I nodded and turned to my mother.
“Mom, I have been worried sick about you for three weeks! Where have you been?”
“Dear,” she said, “I told you my plans. I’m fine. I’ve been leaving you messages every few days.”
“Where have you been staying?” I asked.
“You remember my friend Sasha?” she said, rubbing a cashmere scarf against her arm. No, I did not remember a friend Sasha. “Oh, how nice this feels, Zoe.” She rubbed the fabric against my cheek. “Sash is going through a divorce, so when I called her to let her know I was in town, she asked if I wanted to stay with her. We’ve been having a grand time. Taking cooking courses, going on tours, visiting plastic surgeons to discuss some nipping and tucking. We even went out at night a few times to a popular theme bar and flirted!”
The Solomon Sisters Wise Up Page 16
