Ten Girls to Watch (22 page)

Chapter
Ten

A
s a tribute to the good old days, the Rollands kept Grandpa Rolland’s shop in the Lower East Side up and running. It was right next door to a shop that sold only pickles. Pa Rolland liked to call it the saltiest street in town. The mirth with which his eyebrows leapt every time he told this joke was responsible for most of the laughs it garnered.

Robert and I had arranged to meet at a restaurant around the corner from the original Rolland’s shop.

As soon as we sat down, even before the waiter brought the menus, Robert said, “I’ve been thinking.”

Here he paused, his face sliding into a mask of restrained distress. My stomach lurched. Like the split seconds when people are falling from a building and seem to have all the time in the world to see scenes from their lives, my body seemed to expand the moment long enough to pound with the feeling of every single reunion Robert and I had ever had. In that fifth of a second, I imagined him saying he loved me in a dozen different ways. Not that my rational mind thought this was what he was going to say, but my every muscle braced in anticipation.

The pause ended. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore,” he said.

What?

“I’m sorry, what?” I said. “You invited me to dinner to tell me you don’t want to have dinner with me? Also, we’re not seeing each other. You’re seeing Lily.”

“I don’t mean ‘seeing’ like ‘seeing.’ I mean seeing, at all.”

How was it possible I’d been looking forward to this dinner? How was it possible that any part of me had imagined he was going to say something the complete opposite of this? If I had been a cool character in a movie, I’d have gotten up and walked away right then and never looked back, except maybe at the end of the movie when I was looking out over a crowd of my adoring fans, all holding up books or photos for my signature, and I’d see Robert among the crowd and look at him for one second before brushing right past him. But I wasn’t a character, or if I was, I was more like a character in a horror movie, sitting inert in a room while the menace nears and the audience screams “Get out of there!” And so instead of making a glorious exit, I sat there and let Robert keep talking while I tore the paper napkin in my lap into tinier and tinier pieces. How did words like that actually come out of Robert’s mouth? A friend breakup on top of all the actual breakups? He had superhuman abilities to offend.

“Seeing at all . . . uh-huh.” I gulped down a lump in my throat.

“It’s actually flattering to you that I’m saying this.”

“Oh, really,” I said limply.

“It’s not forever. I don’t want us to end our friendship forever. I care about you too much for that. It’s just that I really like Lily. And when I spend time with you I get confused.”

“I’m flattered,” I answered sarcastically. But the problem was I actually was flattered. Or not exactly flattered. More like illicitly enlivened. The part of me that wanted Robert to be in love with me forever, no matter how profoundly that defied reason and reality, the part of me that had just imagined he was about to declare his love for me again, after all the months apart, despite Lily, despite everything, that part throbbed with excitement when he said those stupid words. It was like my feelings had disconnected from the proper channels, like instead of working properly my heart sprayed a mess of blood with each thump-thump.

“So I want to take a friend break,” he finished. “Just for a couple of months.”

“That’s fine,” I said evenly. “Do you want to start the break now, or should we order dinner?” Darkness had fallen, and I was descending into full wallowing mode, the pleasure of misery and martyrdom bubbling their way up to full boil.

“No, of course I want to have dinner!” Robert’s voice had turned flustered. “I just wanted to say everything now rather than at the end of dinner so you didn’t look back and wonder why I’d waited to say it.”

“Very considerate of you.”

The waiter came by. I ordered a rare steak. Robert ordered the “fiesta salad.”

“That’s great that you like Lily so much. I mean, I like her too. I see why you like her.”

“Dawn, don’t make this hard,” Robert said.

So what if there was an edge in my voice? He was the one who was making this hard.

“Well, I’ve been meaning to tell you,” I continued. “I met someone.”

“Really?” he said.

“You sound so surprised. Is it that shocking?”

“No, no, you’re supposed to meet someone. I should have said ‘great.’”

“Well then why didn’t you?”

He ignored that particularly barbed question and proceeded along with his most jovial tone. “So this new guy. What’s his deal? Did you meet him via TheOne?” Robert’s eyes lit up as he said “TheOne,” like Pa Rolland’s when he said “saltiest street.”

“He writes for
Charm,
” I said, leaving out TheOne bit of the story to avoid giving Robert that particular satisfaction.

“So now you’re dating gay guys?”

“Oh, I hate you sometimes.” Though I said it a little like I was kidding, it was true, true, true. “Why did I know you were going to say that? No, he’s not gay. He’s
Charm
’s dating columnist. His name is Elliot. He’s very cute. I kissed him on my doorstep a few weeks ago and that was that.”

“You kissed him or he kissed you? Remember, there’s nothing worse than coming on too strong.”

I wadded the whole stupid ripped-up napkin in my lap into a big ball.

“We kissed each other, okay. Oh, and la-di-da, did I mention that he’s divorced?” I waved the words like a flag, as if Robert should be impressed, like I was now dark and dangerous, dating divorced men. I set my fork down and waited for his response. When it came, it was inadequate.

“Watch out. Married people get used to regular sex. That’s probably why he’s a dating columnist. So he can make his living while simultaneously satisfying his sexual needs.”

“What is wrong with you?” I said.

“Did he try to sleep with you?”

“No, he did not try to sleep with me.”

“Two things. One, that probably means he’s at least a little bit gay. Two, as I have often said, novels don’t make babies. So when he does get around to trying to sleep with you, put your laptop down and consider your options.”

“I can’t believe the things you say.” I glared at him.

“I was being funny! Funny and true!”

The enlivened heart that had been spewing hot blood before was now spewing something more like oily black muck. The sludge spread further each minute I stayed there with Robert.

“Can we not talk about dating, please? Can you please just talk about pretzels or something?”

“We signed a big deal with a distributor in China this week,” Robert said, apparently not put off by the dismissive tone with which I’d said “pretzels or something.”

“Seriously, huge,” he went on. “Do you know how many pretzel-deprived people there are in China?”

He went into a lecture about China and how the real possibilities for growth were not importing from China but manufacturing and selling within China. I wished right then that he’d just go ahead and
move
to China to exploit that great opportunity.

When the check arrived, I let Robert take it. If I’d cared, I would have tried to split it, or pay the whole thing myself, laughable though that was. I thought of Elliot’s column about Boots; checks were indeed fraught. I’d always tried to pick up my fair share of bills when Robert and I dated, despite the fact, or really because of the fact, that I didn’t have a pretzel fortune of my own. I never wanted Robert to feel like that made anything different. Like I cared about that, or like I thought it should play into our dynamic in any way whatsoever. Now, whatever. I was poor, and he could pay. I didn’t feel like pretending I was unaware of the difference between us.

That dispatched, Robert insisted that we stop by the pretzel shop. I glumly let him talk me into it, like a sad, kicked puppy still following the perp in the vain hope of receiving snacks and love. Inside, all the men working away in their white aprons and hats came out from behind the counter and out of the kitchen and peppered Robert with “my mans” and high fives that turned into arm grabs and then partial hugs/body checks. Robert was the king of the pretzel world.

“Two soft Bavarians, Georgie.” Robert beamed. So at least there was a snack.

“And can we get some extra salt with them?” he said.

“What, for rubbing in my wounds?” I muttered.

“Ha-ha,” he said.

“Ha-ha, indeed.”

He handed me my pretzel, and we walked out into the warm September night. I said I was heading east, toward the subway, and he moved to hug me.

“Don’t hug me,” I said, backing away. “You don’t get to hug me.”

He looked like I’d uttered devastating words, like I was the one who’d hurt him this evening.

“I guess I’ll see you after you and Lily are married, or something. Or not. Or never. Or whatever.”

And with that, about ninety minutes too late, I turned and walked away.

My pretzel was warm, soft and a little tough, just as it should be. I licked up the salt crystals that had fallen into my hand and savored the tang as they dissolved on my tongue.

_________

Not that I hadn’t been mad at dinner, but on the subway I got angrier and angrier. And unfortunately for me, anger almost always translates to tears. What hadn’t come out at dinner came out all over the place during the course of the next five subway stops in the form of embarrassing, grimacing, runny-nosed tears and sniffles that I couldn’t wipe away fast enough to fool anyone on the train into thinking I was okay.

I hadn’t exactly been polite to Robert, but the fact that I’d sat through that whole dinner, that I’d even been in a position to be having dinner with Robert in the first place . . . What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I shake my inordinate need to leave feathers unruffled?

I stopped crying after I got off the subway, and the walk from the subway to home calmed me even further. I felt like I’d cried myself clean. Like I’d had a revelation. I was going to be a new person starting right that minute. No more Robert. No more passivity. I was going to be a clear-eyed, confident woman who told the world what was what in clear-eyed, confident, nonhysterical terms on a regular basis. As I fell into a drug-induced sleep that night, I became more sure with every passing groggy minute that I was going to change everything.

_________

Despite my big dreams, I didn’t wake up the next morning feeling fresh and new and ready to take on the world. Instead, I stayed under the covers feeling like a shipwreck, barnacles of sadness clinging to my every surface. I needed some company, and unfortunately, this need revealed that I didn’t have as many serious cry-on-your-shoulder friends as I maybe should have had.

In high school, I’d been part of a big group of girlfriends. We weren’t the popular crowd or the jocks or the geeks. We were more like “the nice kids,” the ones who babysat and got picked first for study groups, and to the extent we were competitive, it wasn’t over boys or clothes, it was over things like who got to be president of the Spanish Club. But they’d all stayed in Oregon, and as soon as I got to Massachusetts I felt like they were on the other side of a wall. Every party I went to with tuxedoed waiters—and there were a lot of those parties in college—the higher the wall got. These days, I kept track of what they were all up to mainly through my mom’s reporting. And while I had plenty of friends from college in New York, they were more the sort of pals who invited me to parties and plastered my Facebook wall with rabidly enthusiastic “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!” messages, rather than close friends who’d heard me blubber enough times to make out my words over the phone despite whatever heaving tears might come. Plus, almost everyone I knew from college was just as close to Robert as they were to me.

Of course I had Abigail. The first day of freshman year, we’d pushed our furniture around into every possible arrangement, a task that required a fair bit of stamina given the weight of the old wooden desks and dressers, not to mention the fact that Abigail was a tiny Asian girl with arms the size of chopsticks, and I wasn’t exactly a starter for the field hockey team myself. Halfway through, she was perfectly content with the setup and was ready to call it quits, but she kept shoving, just to make me happy. That had been the start of my adoration for her. In all four years of college, the number of breakfasts I ate either without Abigail or without Robert was probably in the single digits.

Despite the fact that she was from Wisconsin and I was from Oregon, one or the other of us had still managed to fly cross-country every winter break so we could spend New Year’s together. My mother had given her multiple free makeovers, products included, and Abigail’s parents sent me birthday cards in a timelier fashion than my own parents. All during college, Abigail had been an anchor of stability amid the stormy seas of Dawn and Robert, and I’d done my best to keep her safely moored as well, from going as her date to the freshman formal to trekking to Kinkos at two in the morning to help her print her thesis on biracial coalitions and the election of Asian-American legislators. Those years of connection and closeness meant a lot, but the whole rural El Salvador thing put a definite limit on her ability to offer real-time comfort. There was also the fact that she’d heard more than enough boo-hoo-Robert talk to last a lifetime. I sent her a woe-is-me e-mail anyway.