In a Moon Smile (3 page)

“Father Martin,” she repeated. “You know, my family priest. The guy who is
marrying
us next month?”

“I’m not marrying you, Chez,” Jack said softly. He took a few steps backward and stared at the carpet, where Belinda’s leopard print thong had been flung in a frenzy.

“What?” Her chest froze. Her breath wouldn’t come out of the bottom of her burning stomach. Chesney didn’t look at him, just continued to remove groceries from the bags, a head of lettuce, a cucumber, a tomato for the salad.

“I don’t want to marry you, Chez,” Jack said again. “I’m sorry.”

Why wasn’t she the person saying ‘I don’t want to marry you’? What in the hell was wrong with her? She walked in on her fiancé, doing it in a position he certainly never did with her. But instead of telling Jack that she hated his guts, instead of screaming that the wedding was definitely cancelled, Chesney was frantic to keep the plan. The damn reception hall was already paid for. Her family would never forgive her for such an embarrassment. They would never move past this- after all, it was the second wedding the Blake’s had paid for but never attended. And both of those weddings, by the way, were Chesney’s weddings, cancelled at the last minute.

Damn it.

As she watched Jack lazily straddle a bar stool, Chesney decided in that moment that his waxy, bare chest was ridiculous. There was no way a man had absolutely no chest hair, not one single stray curly hair blooming from a nipple. Nothing. Bare as a baby butt. Why did she ever think she could live with that sissy looking chest? Who in the world invented manscaping? What woman wants a man whose pubic patch is sculpted into a neat little box of designer pubic fur?

“Chez?”

“You shave it don’t you?” she asked as she planted one hand wearily on her hip.

“What are you talking about?” Jack asked in a slow, I-should-be-careful-with-the-crazy-chick voice.

“Your chest…” She eyed his hairlessness, then met his eyes. “You shave it. Don’t you?”

Jack’s face flushed and his arms crossed defensively over the pink skin.

“Jack, you also shave your balls,” Chesney said. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t think this is the time for this discussion,” he said softly as his face went deep red.

“Really?” Chesney smiled. “I step into your apartment with groceries so I can prepare your favorite dinner. I find you cuffed to the coffee table like you’re starring in a really bad porn flick. And suddenly you get embarrassed when I ask you to confirm a simple question?”

“Alright, yes,” he nodded.

“Yes what?” Chesney pressed.

“Yes, I shave my chest,” Jack said.

“And?”

“And yes, I shave my balls,” Jack mumbled.

“Why?”

“Why are you asking that question right now?”

“Why, Jack? Why does your chest look like you haven’t started puberty? Why is your ball sack velvety soft?”

“Women…uh…women like that,” he said.

“What women?” Chesney asked. “Did you ever bother to ask me if I found your Boy Scout looking body attractive? Are you saying you shaved for Belinda’s pleasure?”

Jack stared at the floor before looking up at her. “I still don’t want to marry you.”

“Here’s what I hope, Jack,” Chesney said with a sigh. “I hope Belinda develops the worst yeast infection in the world, from all the friction involved with having sex with
my
fiancé. The gyno calls it honeymoon cystitis.” She plopped the rest of the salad fixings into the sink and glared across the kitchen at Jack. “As for you, well, I hope you lose a testicle in Belinda’s huge vagina. And then, Jack, I hope your dick falls off.”

Very calmly, Chesney stuffed the wine and the edible panties back into the cloth shopping bag and left.

“I have no idea how in the world I will tell Lyle and Madelyn Blake that once again, their let’s-give-our-daughter-a-fairytale-wedding bucks were wasted,” Chesney said now, in the quiet, slightly messy apartment.

“Holy shit,” was Becca’s first response to the news. She dropped her head and ran her fingers through her hair. “Jack is a heartless son of a bitch.”

Chesney blew her nose and tossed the used tissue aside, near the growing mountain of other tissues from the meltdown before the book signing. Once she returned from Jack’s apartment, she had viciously shredded the edible panties and sprinkled them out the window of her ninth-floor dwelling. The pieces fell on the dirty concrete like hot pink confetti, all over the sidewalk.

Four years ago, she lived this moment. On the eve of their wedding day, Ernie Garrison didn’t show up for the rehearsal at the church. Near midnight, he finally called Chesney to tearfully confess that he would not be attending the wedding. He was leaving her for a guy named Enrico.

“We were such a perfect match,” Chesney had wailed as Becca patted her back. “He was the most androgynous man I ever knew.”

“That’s because he was gay, Chez,” Bec had sighed as she passed the tequila bottle to her broken hearted friend. “Straight men don’t usually knit for entertainment. Straight guys don’t hand wash their favorite sweaters. And they don’t usually own Yorkies or yell “Bingo!” when their favorite NBA team makes a basket.”

“I truly thought Ernie had those wonderful qualities because he was secure enough to explore his feminine side,” Chesney had sniffled.

“I bet he wore your panties when you weren’t around,” Becca said with an eye roll.

“Shut up. I loved him,” Chesney sobbed, even though Becca’s comment also made her laugh.

“Chez, would you
please
wake up and join
this
world? You know, the
real
one? Ernie only had sex with you when he was drunk,” Becca snapped. “Wouldn’t that be a red flag?”

“I thought he was shy,” Chesney sniffled.

“He wanted to be so intoxicated that he wouldn’t notice your vagina,” Becca said softly. “Ernie is gay, sweetie. Ernie wants a penis
not
a vajajay. Let it go.”

Now here they sat again, in a very similar scenario. Chesney, the jilted bride. This time she had a bigger diamond. And she thought she fell in love with a different man. Jack was very heterosexual. He was successful and financially stable. He had no prison record. Yet here Chesney sat, right in the center of another failed-wedding misery.

“I’ll have to call two hundred people,” she sobbed. “The same two hundred people I had to call last time I cancelled my wedding. Oh my gosh, Bec, I can’t face it.” She hid her red, swollen face behind a pillow and blubbered until the fabric was stained with tears and snot.

“This time you’ve got to learn something from the experience, Chez,” Becca said. “You’ve got to make some serious changes in the way you look at relationships.”

“Sure,” Chesney nodded with a big snort. “I’ll get right on that- unless my parents kill me when I tell them what happened.”

Four days after finding Jack and Belinda together, Chesney stopped by to visit her parents unannounced, which was unheard of for her. But she was testing the waters, trying to find a way to tell her parents the truth about the February wedding date. She was literally sick with shame and hurt, not only about Jack cheating but also about the humiliating truth that it was Jack who cancelled the wedding. Jack, who was caught naked on the marble floor with his penis hidden inside another woman’s body. But it was Jack who cancelled the wedding plans. The shame of it burned Chesney’s cheeks, made her nauseous, made her unable to close her eyes and sleep. She had absolutely no dignity.

She had no idea how to recover from this. She beat herself up with self-loathing. She knew she had to tell her parents the truth. But she slipped the engagement ring on her finger anyway, just in case she was not yet strong enough to tell them. She opened the front door and greeted her mom, even though she could not yet see her. Nothing in the living room was familiar anymore. And hadn’t been since the day Chesney packed a couple of pairs of favorite jeans and left for college. Actually Chesney doubted that even a month of college life had passed before her mother had taken over her oldest daughter’s childhood bedroom. Half of the room became a closet for Madelyn’s lovely clothes, shoes and accessories. The other half was crowded with exercise equipment. Every piece of who Chesney was before she became a pimple-faced college freshman vanished.

Two years later, when Chesney’s younger sister Charlotte left for college, Madelyn was on a full-fledged redesign mission. Every single room of the sensible Cape Cod was redecorated, from paint colors and window treatments to flooring. Like Chesney’s bedroom, Charlotte’s room was also assaulted. Her yesterday was tossed out and replaced by hunter green walls, mahogany bookcases and a large desk. Their dad proudly introduced Charlotte’s bedroom as the study he had wanted for all of his life. And Charlotte blinked tears away every time their father spoke of his new library.

A third bedroom, used primarily as a storage space for Christmas decorations, gift wrap and out-of-season clothing, was now painted Pepto pink with spring green accents. Charlotte’s first child and Chesney’s sweet niece, Piper, sleeps in the lovely white crib graced with a soft pink canopy. At least a twice a week, the baby visits to smile and make messes for her doting grandparents.

When she visited her parents’ home, Chesney still found herself scanning the rooms carefully hoping to find something from her yesterdays. She sat on the edge of the butter colored leather ottoman and looked over at the corner near the fireplace, hoping to see the large plastic box filled with Barbie dolls. She hoped to spot a tiny stray stiletto on the carpet, accidentally lost during Barbie’s ride across the living room to the beach, designated as the braided rug in the hallway. Barbie, in her pink sports car, powered of course, by Chesney’s slender, little girl hands. She wondered if finding one of Barbie’s lost accessories would somehow lead her to finding peace in her world. How dumb was that? Barbie stuff directly attached to surviving her latest crisis? That fantasy would not work. Ken never screwed Barbie over. He was happily content to love Barbie forever at the Malibu beach house. And Barbie never once found Midge handcuffing Ken to the
coffee table, either.

Chesney frowned as she realized that her father’s favorite faded recliner was gone. Twin wingbacks took the place of her dad’s favorite junky chair. The wingbacks had no personality, no fingerprints on the arm rests left by buttery popcorn fingers. No stack of Golf Digest and Time magazines on the floor. No scruffy house slippers. A heavy Italian leather sectional graced the far wall. Shiny end tables, accompanied by those snobby wing backs made the room a copycat from a home décor magazine. It was not a walk down memory lane. Chesney could not find her little girl self in this house. She could not envision the scrawny girl who stroked the family cat during Saturday morning cartoons.

The fake potted plant near the picture window, where she secretly stashed gum, was long gone. So were the two faded stains from a billion years ago where Chesney and Ruth Anne, the neighbor girl, puked elderb
e
rry wine on the carpet.

The room looked and felt more like a dentist office waiting room. Sometimes Chesney wondered if her Mom wiped away the yesterdays on purpose. She thought about asking that question then wondered why she cared so much about it, anyway. More than a decade ago, Madelyn Blake laid claim on the second room to the left at the top of the stairs….Chesney’s bedroom. She did away with rock star posters and both lava lamps, the lavender bedspread and fluffy white curtains at the windows. She never said so, but Chesney was hurt about the fact that her mother didn’t bother to ask if she had an attachment to the stack of teen magazines and Judy Blume books. She never bothered to ask if Chesney wanted any of the memories. She just packed them into boxes and dropped them off at the Goodwill store.

Madelyn Blake was a very structured person. These days she still lived life by a strict routine. Each morning she does a few stretches on a yoga mat before pressing the start button on the TV, to follow along with yoga tapes. After yoga, she stirred fresh chunks of pomegranate into a glob of oatmeal. By noon she had read a few paragraphs from two daily devotionals, walked a few blocks to the park and back and also spoken on the phone to at least two girlfriends.

Unlike her mother, Chesney hated routine. Charlotte was the offspring who loved a good old-fashioned daily schedule as much as their mom. Charlotte had always been the favorite child in the Blake household. And everybody knew it, even though Lyle and Madelyn were far too politically correct to admit it. She and Charlotte joked for years about the fact that Charlotte was the favorite.

Though Chesney had grown accustomed to the fact that she was anything but equal to her younger sister, it never meant that a sting wasn’t still there, right under that soft part of Chesney’s heart where she has never felt as wanted, as pretty, as adored or as understood as her baby sister.

She frowned and reminded herself to stop looking for a damn Barbie shoe. Even if she did happen to find one, it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring a miracle, unless, of course, Barbie’s plastic man Ken suddenly became a real guy with morals. That way he could be an immediate replacement for Jack, the cheating dog.