Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown (23 page)

“Tell her,” my dad told my mom.

“They left us,” my mom cried.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” I asked.

No one had an answer.

Life went on as usual that day, minus Esther and Frank. I seemed to be the only one who realized it though. Everyone had already cried together and gone on with their lives and I didn’t get to say good-bye. A tray of corned beef and turkey sandwiches, cole slaw, and cold french fries with cheese from Hymie’s Deli was sitting on the kitchen table. We all consumed it, all except for the eternally size-six Arlene, dressed in a classic linen taupe-colored button-down top and matching linen pants that suddenly looked way too big on her.

Sometime later that day, I found myself in my mother’s closet. Hanging on a hanger was one of Esther’s favorite outfits, a coral knit top and matching skirt that she said of herself when she wore it, “I make all the other ladies feel drab when they see me in this.” I took the outfit in my arms and breathed in the scent of Esther’s floral and Aqua Net hair spray aroma. I snuck back the next day and the day after that and the day after that until the trace of scent had morphed into a bouquet of my mother’s own Chloé perfume (Arlene’s signature scent of that time) and Ban roll-on. After that, I pretended Esther and Frank were in Florida with all the other grandparents.

After we cleaned out their apartment, the clothing and jewelry arrived. It was said that one of Frank’s darkest days was when his accounting firm moved from downtown Philadelphia into the Main Line suburbs. No more shopping on his lunch hour. He must have found a way, however, since there were more than two dozen tailor-made shirts that were still in their boxes, never opened. There were so many gold bracelets, rings, faux diamond brooches, pearls, and earrings (all clip-ons) that it was too much to go over. My mother dumped it all in a large drawer. I wore one of Esther’s watches, a white plastic band with a black timepiece, for over a year. It never worked. Neither the grandmother nor the granddaughter bothered to put a battery in it. What was the point? Let someone else keep time and let us know when we had to be there.

Twenty-five years later, only one of the tailored boxed shirts remains downstairs in the basement closet of my parents’ house, never opened, along with a forest green suit with Frank’s initials embroidered on the inside pocket. That costume jewelry is still in that same drawer. Every now and then I go fishing through it and find some sort of treasure—a long strand of faux pearls with the paint chipping off, a plastic beaded necklace that looks like real onyx as long as you don’t get too close. Whenever my cousin Michele’s nine-year-old daughter Rachel comes over, she always picks something from the drawer as a special treat. Last time, it was a silver dollar spraypainted gold that was glued onto a gold backing and hanging on a gold chain—all faux of course, except for the dollar. I keep one piece of Esther’s jewelry in my own home. It’s a small gold (real for a change) umbrella charm with a diamond raindrop dripping from the side, and a gold chain. My mother and her sister, my Aunt Maxine, had given it to Esther for Mother’s Day one year and she never took it off. I won’t tell you where I keep it in my house. If it gets stolen or lost, I swear I’ll jump out a window I’ll be so upset. I only wear it for special occasions and think the same thought when I put it on each time: Esther would have hated to miss a good party.

That coral knit sweater and matching skirt still hangs in my mother’s closet. It’s the last outfit hanging on the left side on a plastic yellow hanger. Rather than placing the sweater to drape over the hanger with the skirt underneath, my mom has both articles side by side on the hanger. Whenever I come across it, I give it a touch and feel the fabric.

I just wanted you to know that I’ve missed you so much all these years.

There have been so many times when I wished that you were here.

In a way though, I know you always have been.

spent the next four days at Felicia’s house. Pete called and e-mailed nonstop about how the gardener mowed over the beautiful tulips I’d planted and how he had fired him over it. He called to remind me that it was time for my car’s three-month oil change. He called to remind me I had a dentist appointment and offered to bring over my toothbrush when he noticed I didn’t have it.

On the fourth day, a package arrived. It was a pair of the highest heels I’d ever seen, cushioned in broken pieces of tortilla chips. Felicia and I measured the heel and laughed when we saw that it was a record ten inches. The note on the gift said “
I miss everything about you.”

So I went home to my fiance.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he cried as we embraced.

We never talked about what he’d said to me, but it resonated every time I looked in my closet for something to wear. I saw Pete cringe in the slightest way when I went to grab my Theory khaki suit pants. Maybe he wasn’t cringing over my Theory pants. I mean, what could possibly be wrong with a pair of Theory suit pants in khaki? In retrospect, his bad back might have flared up for a second or he suddenly remembered that he forgot something at the office. He didn’t mention what the cringe was about though, so I could only suspect the cringe was over my choice in clothing. When I got ready to go the gym, I thought first about throwing on my gray cotton drawstring pants that I’d previously dropped some bleach on in a laundry mishap, but instead put on a pair of black wide-leg leggings and a matching black sports bra. He looked at me a little longer, maybe a half a second longer than he should have and it made me wonder. Was what I was wearing OK to work out in? Would someone recognize me at the gym and tell their friends, “I saw Pete Rodgers’s fiancée at the gym perfectly matched. I would have looked for the stick up her ass, but my Yoga boogie jazzercise class was starting.” Or worse, “I saw poor Pete Rodgers’s fiancée at the gym looking like such a schlep. I guess Pete’s going for the plain-Jane type now.” I had bought a new pair of pants and hadn’t been able to shorten them in time for an event we were going to and had no choice but to put on a pair of six-inch heels to make up for the extra fabric. You couldn’t even see the shoes under the pants, but I could tell by Pete’s quiet demeanor in the car that this was no good ... I think. Would he be embarrassed to be seen with me? I did notice that he didn’t introduce me to someone he said hello to. Maybe he didn’t know their name. I would never know, but would always wonder. So many questions to ask, so many petty arguments to get into before we could find a common ground. Any self-respecting woman wouldn’t have given two beans about what he thought, but I wasn’t at that point yet. Remember, I loved him and he loved me. He had even formally asked me to spend the rest of his life with him and had sealed my answer with a way-oversized-for-my-small-hand (not that I’m complaining) six-carat emerald-cut diamond ring from Tiffany’s on my now perpetually manicured hand. Again, any self-respecting person would have just asked if everything was all right. It would take a little more time until I reached that breaking point. In short, I did not want to rock the boat. And I was, as I had been once before in my life, willing to spend the next fifty years vying for a nice, clean sail.

And then the tsunami struck again.

We were getting ready to go to yet another benefit and I bought what I thought, what the saleswomen thought, what the saleswomen at the store next to the store I bought the outfit at thought, and what the Five thought when I went to each and every one of their homes with it, was a fantastic outfit. I had gorgeous shoes—four inches, a compromise—and, of course, my ring. I had spent the entire day at the hair salon, got my makeup done, a pedicure, a manicure, and various waxing that no one would ever notice but I did just to be on the safe side. I looked stylish, gorgeous, and I did it all myself. Pete said nothing, but he didn’t cringe or pause when he saw me. He simply said, “Great, ready to go?” As we walked out to get into the car, he turned to me in that matter-of-fact way and said, “I guess this is the best you’ll ever be able to do by yourself.”

I said nothing as I got into the car. My mind, however, was racing a mile a minute, as was my anger.

Who the heck was this guy? Who the heck was he to judge? That’s when his wardrobe choices came into my head. Weren’t there any other colors in the world to wear besides black, gray, and white? And no, to make up for this bland blunder, red corduroy pants with a bright yellow T-shirt that screams Ronald McDonald are not the answer. Hey, here’s an idea! How about some browns? And, by the way, a little pink would not make someone look as “swishy” as one might think.

Tighty whities that sagged in the ass. With all the talk about my underwear, Pete wore tighty whities. To be completely honest, I couldn’t have cared less what he wore under his jeans. Pete’s tighty-whitie underwear would never have been an issue for me had I not been told that my underwear was “for fourth-graders.” What I’m saying is, if you’re going to try to change someone else’s undergarment comfort for your own stimulating delights, do you really think that “Give it to me, big boy” is the first thing I’ll think of when I see those saggy drawers of yours coming at me?

And one more thing, I get the idea of mourning over a dog that has passed away. I’ve never actually had a dog, but I fully respect the love and care that a relationship with a dog over the years can bring to a person and I completely understand that, when taken away, the blow is right up there with losing a member of one’s family. Having said that, however, having your dearly departed bichon frise’s excess dog hair woven into a sweater is beyond any code of fashion, or ethics for that matter, that I could think of. Worse, wearing the sweater in public on numerous occasions. Worse than that, wearing the sweater on a rainy day, causing the smell of wet dog fur to become a call of the wild, inviting packs of dogs to come running from every direction within smelling distance to attack even the fiancée standing next to the person wearing the mordant item.

This was where my breaking point began to surface. I was literally starting to get sick of the sight of him. I could not even stand to be so close to him in the car.

Now, I could have freaked out on him, I could have told him all those things I was thinking in my head, but I didn’t. I could have jumped out of the car and walked the five miles back to the house in my dress and heels, but who was that going to punish? He was just not worth it, and there was no way I was going to start to cry and ruin my makeup for someone who didn’t deserve another ounce of my energy. I may not have had an ass, but I had just grown a backbone.

We went to the benefit and I smiled and laughed and talked the talk and walked the walk of a lady who, for the very first time in her life, absolutely loved the way she looked—inside and out. The compliments abounded

“I’ve never seen you look more beautiful,” someone said.

“Being in love agrees with you,” another person said.

“Did you get work done?” one more person asked.

As we got in the car to leave, Pete turned to me and said, “I didn’t think you looked so great, but evidently everyone else did. I guess I was wrong,” he said, leaning over and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

After we got home and I watched him hang up his coat, he turned to me and held out his arms to hug me. I did not come to him.

“Pete,” I said in the most matter-of-fact of ways, “I wanna break up.”

I told him it wouldn’t work in one of those crushing conversations where everyone cries and no one leaves happy, and you start to second-guess yourself but know that somehow it will all be fine in the end.

And it was.

It is.

Of course, I went through a terrible mourning period. I lost ten pounds over the breakup. OK, seven of those pounds was the ring (not that I’m complaining).

hen you break up with someone, there’s never just one reason. It’s never just because you caught him with three hookers in a motel room in downtown L.A., smoking crack (I didn’t; I’m just trying to make a point). It’s never just because you hate his mother or his sister or his best friend (which I didn‘t, again making a point). I certainly didn’t break up with Pete just because he was so insecure about himself that he threw it on me and my wardrobe choices. There are a million underlying reasons you are breaking up that add up to the ultimate decision to go separate ways. When people ask you what happened, though, something like finding your fiancé with three hookers smoking crack in a downtown L.A. motel seems like it would be such a wonderful cut-and-dried answer.

If only life were that simple.

The Five advised me to tell people, “It just didn’t work out,” which I found to be a really bad excuse. That flippant statement causes tons of questions like, “Why didn’t it work out?” “Couldn’t you work it out?” and, my favorite, “There must have been something that made you break up with him; you can’t just say that it didn’t work out.”

So what am I supposed to say?

“We broke up because he couldn’t decide if he loved or hated the fact that I had a habit of not closing cabinet doors or eating a meal off of a shelf in the pantry”?

“I called off the engagement because he despised the delight I took in wearing cotton underwear”?

“I took back my established affirmation of spending the rest of my life with him because I felt that he cared more about the depleting ozone layer than he did the people closest to him”?

“I canceled the engagement because I didn’t feel comfortable getting dressed in the morning for fear I was wearing the wrong thing”?

“I gave Pete back the ring because it was getting to the point where someone would ask me how I was and I’d answer, ‘Let me ask Pete just to make sure’ ”?

“You know what? He just didn’t love me for me and in return, I could never love him.”

I needed to go home to Philadelphia. I needed to get away from Los Angeles, away from Pete, away from my life, and get back to the womb until I could sort things out and see where my head was.