But Enough About Me (15 page)

After a two-week period of flying to Los Angeles, London, and Paris for interviews (the best being the Spice Girls, which took place while all of us lounged on a bed in their cavernous suite at Hotel Le Bristol), I was feeling like a devil-may-care citizen of the world. This was a state of mind so foreign to me that I had to capitalize on it and hastily make the move out of my Hoboken apartment into Manhattan. The whole process of breaking the bonds to Jersey had to take place quickly before I reverted to my regular owlish persona, and what made it tougher was that Dinah and Heather had also moved to Hoboken after they graduated college. Their apartments were mere blocks away, so close that I would sometimes run over to see them in my pajamas. Dinah, the first of us to get married (to a genial chef named Patrick whose main passions in life were barbecue, the Giants, and Dinah), commuted into the city for her publishing job.

Heather, meanwhile, had also become a chef, having nicely parlayed her profound love of food into her livelihood. When she was on the job, she had met the man that she, too, would eventually marry. He was—to the everlasting joy of the family—yet another chef. If you couldn't work at Penney's, reasoned my food-obsessed family, this was the next best thing.

Heather's first job was at the Weehawken branch of the Chart House, a feel-good chain restaurant where the waiters wore Hawaiian shirts and a sign with a hook hung outside the employee entrance that said
HANG YOUR BUMMER HERE.
When Heather was promoted from the salad assembly line to the more coveted prime rib carving station, she developed a ferocious crush on a tall, handsome cook named Rob. Unfortunately, he was just as shy as she was, so they mostly communicated through group conversations.

Every night she would pop over from her apartment with a progress report. Finally, after a few suspenseful weeks, a breakthrough. “He talked to me,” she said in a rush, bursting through the door and flopping dramatically on my couch. “He's so thoughtful and smart. He's going to cooking school and he wants to work in the city. He's so cute. His dad is from Puerto Rico and his mom is from Hawaii, so you can only imagine. He says he's going to give me his notes from class.”

“That's a ruse,” I said. “The old notes-from-class.”

She leaped up, rigid. “You think so? Is it? No, seriously. Is it a ruse?”

The thought of leaving my sisters in Hoboken was depressing, but a friend of a friend was moving out of a cheap apartment in the West Village and said I could take over the lease. Of course, I called my folks to consult. Why did I do this? I didn't need their permission. “It's time I moved into the city,” I announced to my father. A long silence followed.

“First of all, you'll have to pay an unincorporated business tax,” he said at last. “And in terms of rental units, you're looking at a thirty percent increase in price. Maybe double, depending on the area. And right now you're paying a dollar for the PATH train, while the subway is a buck twenty-five, which means that annually it's an increase of…” I heard him fumbling around the junk drawer in the kitchen for his calculator.

“Dad, I already have a place in mind, and the rent is reasonable,” I said.

“Those leases are full of hidden costs,” he said.

After twenty minutes of heated negotiation, he accepted that I was determined to do it. “Get Polaroids of all of your valuables before you move,” he advised. “And your mother and I are coming to see this place.”

Exactly four days after I had moved in, my parents arrived—my mother holding a Tupperware container with a lemon cake inside, my father carrying his Stanley Jumbo Organizer Top Toolbox. Delicately, both stepped inside the door and took in the bleak surroundings: a five-hundred-square-foot studio painted the peculiarly dingy grayish white of all New York rentals. A few weak rays of light struggled through an airshaft window.

“Welcome, welcome,” I said. They stood, frozen. “Sit down,” I said heartily, pointing to a fatigued pullout couch. There was no room in the place for any other chairs. I glanced toward the bathroom. The john was a companionable two yards from the couch.

“Please,” said my mother. “I'd rather you didn't sit on the toilet.” She gingerly lowered herself onto the sofa, still holding the Tupperware on her lap, while my father inspected the windows. “The lock is broken,” he said. “You'd better call the super.”

“He's never around.”

He crossed his arms. “Well, then, how about the owner of the building?”

“He lives in Israel,” I said. “I don't know if he even speaks English.”

My father raised an eyebrow. “Maybe he understands the words
Housing Court.
Maybe the words
New York City Citizen Service Center
will make him pay attention. How about that?” He stalked out the door. “I'm going to go find this super,” he said. “He should be ashamed that he's not doing his job.”

“Dad,” I called after him. “Shame is not a motivator in New York.”

Later, he returned, defeated, and the three of us spent a cheerless afternoon hanging pictures and exploring the neighborhood. When I walked them to the spot where their Buick was parked, I fought the urge to slip into the backseat and speed home to Jersey, as we had after our Bowery trips.

“I forgot to give you this,” said my mother, handing me a clipping from the
Newark Star-Ledger
on starting an indoor herb garden and a small tub of peppermint foot cream. “This is my new favorite. It smells so good. Put it on before you go to sleep.”

“I'm proud of you, kid,” said my father, giving me a hug. “But start saving to buy an apartment. On a rental, you're just throwing a quarter of your income away.”

I knew that on the drive home, my parents had a worried conversation about my suspended adolescence. I was nearing my late twenties, but because I lived in the city and worked in an industry that venerated youth, it was deceptively easy to travel in my own bubble of juvenilia, free of the quotidian markers of adulthood: mortgages and car payments and lawn maintenance and sitting on the bleachers on a Saturday morning, drinking coffee and chitchatting with the other parents as you watch your kid kick a soccer ball. I could barely conceive of the idea of getting married, let alone of having a child.

I barely had time to be lonely in my new apartment because the phone was constantly ringing with family members “just calling to check in.” I had taken the day off to unpack and was balancing on a ladder, trying to clean out some high kitchen cabinets, when the first call came in.

I heard my mother's voice on the machine. “Hi, honey. Pick up! Pick up the phone. I know you're there. Pick up.”

“I can't,” I said out loud to the empty room. “I'll call you back.”

“—Wait, your father is saying something. What? Jay, I can't hear you, you're mumbling. Your father says that maybe you're out getting that caulking that he talked to you about. Well, we're on our way to the spring flower show in Morristown and I thought I'd give you a call.” My folks had recently retired, and they hit every craft expo, antique fair, and flower show in New Jersey with a vengeance. Without a job, my father reached new levels of preparedness, so their car contained bottled water, energy bars, hand wipes, a roadside emergency kit with flares, books on tape, a coin dispenser, and two hand towels to use as makeshift bibs so that they could drive and eat without making a mess. And a handheld recording device so that he could speak into it when lightning struck about fixing the garage door. “Jay, you turn left here,” my mother was still saying. “I'm telling you.
Look at the sign.
Fine, do what you want. Well, honestly, I think I know how to read a map, and it says Route Eighty, right here.”

I sighed.

“So anyway, after this your father and I are going to see that movie about the detective. I forget the title. But it stars…who is that actress?” My father's disembodied voice, faint in the background. “Jay. Jay. It is
not Sally Field.
No, it is not. We just saw the pre—”

Beep.
End of message.

I had just started scrubbing when I heard another message, this time from Dinah. “I've got something important to tell you,” she said. “Call me, call me. I'm at the office.”

My curiosity got to me and I climbed unsteadily down from the ladder. I took the phone into the bathroom so I could pluck my eyebrows at the same time.

I called her at the office and she picked up on the first ring.

“Dine,” I said. I could hear some of her coworkers talking in the background.

“Oh, hi,” she said hurriedly. “Listen, can I call you right back? I have people in my office and I have to run into a meeting in ten minutes.”

I inspected my left eyebrow and plucked out a particularly stubborn hair. “Nope,” I said. I loved to do that to her.

“But—”

“Now's really the best time for me,” I said. I always said that. Then I would wait for her to demand why, exactly, my time was so important, but she never did.

“What? Well, okay.” I heard her apologetically shoo some coworkers out of her office. (“It's an important call…right…I'll come and get you in a few minutes.”)

“So,” she said, a little thrill in her voice. “I'm pregnant. It's early, and I might lose it, but at least I know I can get pregnant. I'm due in February. I kind of hope it's a girl, but Patrick will take either.”

“As opposed to you? What are you going to do if it's a boy? Leave it in a vacant lot?”

Dinah laughed. “No, no! I'll take anything, too.”

My eyes brimmed with surprise tears. “Oh, Dine. That is the best news in the world.” Dinah was the most traditional of all of us, and she had always hoped for a life filled with family birthday parties and vacations at the beach, just as we'd had.

“This weekend we're going to paint the baby room,” she said. “It's too soon, but I want to do it anyway. Maybe in a green.”

“Green's good,” I said. The tears kept coming. Fortunately, she was called into her meeting and she had to go.

Dinah always left in a flurry of good-byes. “Okay, then!” she said. “Talk to you soon! Good to hear from you! Keep in touch! Miss you!”

I heaved myself off the bed and grabbed a tissue. Why was I feeling so melancholy? I had long told her that I wasn't a kid person, so it couldn't be envy. Maybe it was that Dinah's life had suddenly formed into a clear path. The whole family, including my folks, had their romantic lives locked up before they were of legal drinking age. I, meanwhile, didn't know what the weekend held, but wasn't that how I liked it? I had recently begun dating a p.r. hotshot who was witty and charming but wanted to keep things “loose,” which meant a lot of last-minute plans. I could never call him right now.

Sniffling, I searched for one of the takeout menus that the last tenant had left, and ordered a grilled cheese from the kids' menu (it always had the best food) and a piece of chocolate cake. I was just splashing water on my face when the doorbell rang.

“How are you today?” the deliveryman said brightly. “Good! That will be ten dollars!” I handed him some cash and he bustled out. “Thank you, ma'am!” he called.

Ma'am? “I think you meant ‘miss,'” I called back, but he was already gone.

Dinah's pregnancy seemed to touch off an epidemic of conception among my friends. The announcements arrived in waves from all over the tristate area.
“Come see the baby,” said my high school friend Melissa, calling me one afternoon. Melissa was a fun-loving girl who drank her way through Boston College on a lacrosse scholarship. She did marketing for a hotel chain, commuting into the city from the suburban town of Summit. “Tyler's so lively now, you'll love him. I'll make some lunch. And bring Tracy.”

Tracy was my closest friend from high school, a veteran from the days of Jersey Shore trips and basement parties and long afternoons of watching soap operas at my house while the other girls played sports. Now she was a stay-at-home mother of three daughters who lived in a large, immaculate house in Connecticut and ran a small catering business on the side. She hailed from a venerable old southern family in Augusta, Georgia, and knew how to wear pearls, and host twenty people for brunch, and write beautiful thank-you notes on creamy embossed stationery in her elegant hand. We lived through each other: If I was backstage at Ozzfest and felt myself cracking after my twelfth interview, I would call her to retreat into her genteel world of recipes and books and decorating, while she would phone me for celebrity gossip after a long day of hauling the kids to various lessons.

“Tracy,” I said. “Please come with me to see Melissa's baby next weekend.”

“He's four months old now, right?” said Tracy. She always knew the ages of every child. To me, they were small, medium, or large. “I just sent Melissa a selection of my favorite baby books. I love to do that. The second child gets a sterling silver picture frame. Sure, I'll go with you. Hold on.” A small, reedy voice made a request in the background. “No. Elizabeth, we're having dinner soon. I'll be off the phone in two minutes. Stop bugging me. Go eat some M&M's.”

“What's for dinner?” I asked eagerly. I had vowed, as a single girl, to make myself balanced dinners, but I usually ended up eating a random collection of unrelated foods: a bowl of cereal, a handful of baked potato chips, five olives.

“One of my favorite menus,” she said. “Indonesian ginger chicken, which is luscious, curried couscous, and steamed haricots verts. And for dessert I'm
making an apple galette. It's fabulous because you can use Pillsbury roll-up pie crust to make the dough, so it's a wonderful presentation without much effort.” I heard the comforting rattle of pots as she prepared dinner. “I've got my book club meeting next week and I haven't even read the book because my parents are coming in from Augusta and I haven't had time,” she said. “They're so worried about the snow here in Connecticut. My father wonders how the plane is going to land in the bad weather, while my mother is dragging out a pair of heavy boots that she, quote, ‘once wore to Russia.' How about you? Whom have you talked to lately?”