The Sleeping Beauty Proposal (10 page)

“For starters,” he says. “It'd be better if you were honest with them now so they wouldn't have to find out from other people, don't you think?”

I open the olive jar and dump in its brine, holding my fingers against the glass so the olives don't fall in.

“Might be too late. I may have passed that point.” Still no whooping or crying from the patio. My mother is not flinging back the screen door, demanding to know if I took her for a fool. What's going on?

Jason is washing glasses and setting them on a tray very neatly. I think about how tidy and uncomplicated his life with Lucy is, how they entered adulthood taking all the appropriate steps—a suitable courtship period, a proper engagement, and a religious wedding. They didn't move in together before they married.They bought a brand-new house and decorated it in coordinating colors so that it was ready and waiting for them, new sheets and all, when they stepped off the plane from their Jamaican honeymoon.

“Is it true Mom and Dad gave you guys two hundred thousand to buy your house?” Yes, it was rude to ask. It just slipped out.

“Three hundred.” Jason looks up. “Is that why you're faking your engagement?”

For some reason I feel busted, even though I didn't fake my engagement to get money. "No. I didn't find out Mom and Dad gave you that much until Todd told me today. I thought it was more like twenty or something.”

Jason reddens slightly. “It was way too generous of them. I wouldn't have taken it if Lucy hadn't had her heart set on the house. I mean, don't get me wrong. I was really relieved and grateful. Just that sometimes I feel guilty.”

Welcome to the club.

Still no sound from the patio and I'm not about to go outside and find out, either.

I pop a green olive into my mouth and suck out the pimiento. It tastes like salty tears as I do a mental tour of Jason and Lucy's brand-new house with its downstairs master suite, its media room with the plasma TV over the fireplace, and its upstairs “children's playroom” with four dormers and interconnecting bedrooms and bathrooms.

Three hundred thousand dollars.Whew. If I'd had one-third of that, I could have bought the Somerville house already.

“You know, Lucy wasn't the only one,” Jason adds, after thinking about it.“Your parents also gave Todd a chunk of change when he started his business.”

I nearly swallow my olive whole. “Todd got money? How much?”

Again, Jason reddens. “I don't know. I just didn't want you to get all mad at Lucy.”

“Was it three hundred thousand?”

“
Shhh.
We shouldn't be discussing this.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It's none of our business.”

It is too my business. Each sibling gets cash for neatly fitting into their assigned, gender-specific roles, whereas I'm left to ride the subway every morning, punch a clock, clip coupons, and live in a cramped apartment. I mean, I don't want to come off as a pig, but fair is fair.

“What if I never marry?” I ask.

Jason cocks his head thoughtfully. “I don't know. The way Nancy and Don put it, they were happy to pay for the house for Lucy and me so we could start off on the right foot.”

“Are you telling me life doesn't start until you get married?”

“That's the way your parents think. Me, too, I suppose. I mean, isn't that why two people get married? It's a foundation on which you build your family. People our age, the ones who are living together and hooking up and claiming marriage is dead, they're missing out on the best gift God ever gave to man, aside from life. Check out Genesis 2:24.”

Genesis, ha! Don't start throwing the Old Testament at me, buddy,
I want to say. Trying to hide my hurt, I reach for my purse. “I need to call Todd.”

“Don't be mad at him. Darn. I knew I shouldn't have told you.”

"Nonsense. I have a right to know.” Opening my cell, I quickly press 3,Todd's speed dial, while Jason makes a fast escape with the tray of martinis.

“Don't make me talk to Mom,” Todd says, knowing full well I'm at our parents' weekly Sunday dinner. “Not after the day I've had with Cecily Blake.”

“How come you didn't tell me Mom and Dad gave you money, too?”

Todd thinks about this before saying, “First of all, Greedy Gilda, there's nothing in the universe that says Mom and Dad have to treat us equally.”

I hate it when he calls me Greedy Gilda.

“But if you have to know, when I wanted to start up this home remodeling business—a brainstorm I see now was a totally cracked idea—Mom and Dad got right behind me. Dad even arranged for a no-interest loan so I could get all the equipment, hire Nick, that kind of thing. It was wonderful of him.”

I am dumbfounded.

“Is that a man thing?” I ask. “Because Mom and Dad have never indicated that they'd finance any of my pet projects.”

There is an uncomfortable silence. I may have pushed it here.

“Listen, don't go off half-cocked at this,” Todd says carefully,

“but I'm gonna come straight out and tell you that you don't take any risks, Genie. You get up and go to work and hang out with Patty on the weekends.You have since college. At least I traveled the world and started a business. At least Lucy got married. What have you done with your life except the bare minimum? What was there to finance?”

I have read the expression “to see red.” But until that moment in my parents' kitchen listening to Todd tell me that my life has been worthless, I have never actually experienced the act of seeing red. I am not only seeing red, I am
feeling
red. Every nerve in my body is on fire. I am hot. I am angry. I am, oddly, humbled.

If only he knew the risk I was taking right now.

I do not say anything to Todd. I don't say good-bye or scream that I hate all the Michaelses and I wish an earthquake would swallow them whole. I simply end the call, freshen my lipstick, and head outside.

Lucy and Mom are huddled in a gossip clutch. Mom seems to have been crying.

Obviously, they've found out.

"Hugh told you,” I say. "I'm so sorry ...”

“Not Hugh.” Mom dabs at her eyes with a tissue. “He wasn't there.And that wasn't Susanna Spencer, either.The Spencers are in Italy for the summer. It was their house sitter, Pippa, who answered the phone.That's why she didn't know your name.”

Relief cascades over me in a great blue refreshing wave. Can this be true?

"Then what's wrong?” I ask.

Mom says, “Don't play dumb, Genie. No wonder you didn't want us talking to Hugh. You were afraid he'd tell us, weren't you?”

I turn to Jason, who is helping my father at the grill, but he just purses his lips in disapproval. I can't believe Jason spilled my secret so fast.That fink!

“Jason told you?”

“No,” Mom says. “Lucy and I figured it out. Your paleness. Your utter panic at us calling Hugh's parents.”

“Your not drinking,” Lucy adds.

"What?” I shrug, clueless. "What are you talking about?”

“That you're pregnant.” Lucy throws up her hands. “There. I said it.”

For one brilliant moment I feel a breeze of bliss. An out-of-body snapshot of how ridiculous we all are.

“I'm not pregnant.”

“You're not?” Mom blinks and reaches for my hand. “Then what were you talking about in the kitchen with Jason for so long? We were sure there was some crisis.”

Jason gives me a thumbs-up of encouragement.

“No crisis. I was just hashing over the wedding.” I smile at Lucy. "After much thought and consideration, I've decided not to go with a wedding planner. I'll make all the arrangements myself, though Mom, I'm going to let you do most of the planning since you're so good at it. Also, I think we should move the wedding up to August. After all, what's the point of waiting? Seems to me I've waited long enough for what I should have done long, long ago.”

And with that, I help myself to one of Jason's martinis, a certain risk if there ever was one.

Chapter Seven

So, that's it. I guess I'm officially on the road to marriage. Let the chips fall where they will.

This is my new attitude as I leave my apartment Monday morning for the hike down Trapelo Road to pick up the number 73 bus. Now that I've given over to this concept of being engaged, of taking a risk, I feel different, free, as if anything is possible, good or bad. Though I'm not expecting bad. I'm betting on good. Absolutely good all the way.

Possibly, my spirit of optimism is due to the day itself, a sparkling warm June morning bursting with rebirth. The trees are now leafy and green, the daffodils have given way to rosebuds, wet wash is already on the lines, sprinklers are starting up, and, better yet, the kids are out of school. No more hordes of shouting, pushing teenagers deafened by white iPod buds to battle at the bus stop.

The air smells fresh and new, earthy. I could sprint to the bus, I'm so charged. I'm more than charged. I'm electric!

Really electric. This morning I bounded out of bed, fed and watered Jorge, shot him up with insulin, and deposited him outside to sit in the exact same spot until I came home from work to take him inside.After that I made my bed with dime-tight hospital corners, executed fifty sit-ups and fifty leg lifts while watching a rerun of
The Daily Show,
and did not stop once to think about being alone in a coat closet with Jon Stewart.

Showered with almond soap, exfoliated, shaved my legs and other parts. Chose a nice flowered sundress—the first of the season—and strappy sandals since we're allowed to “dress alternatively” during the summer. Blow-dried my hair and contemplated for the umpteenth time turning up the blond in my highlights. (Hugh was aghast at this suggestion since bleached blondes reminded him of scary German girls who used to sit on him at Turkish resorts. He much preferred my subtle honey brown. So much less threatening.)

Yes. I definitely should get highlights.

Then it was coffee with cream, no sugar (a holdover from my Atkins days), oatmeal, half a banana, and a review of my scheduled interviews: a Phoebe Shambo from Hanover, New Hampshire, and a Kara Weeks from Chicago. I hardly ever get the boys.They're too coveted. Those go to Bill, my boss, or his right-hand man, Kevin, the prodigy.

Yet, this morning not even my office's sexism can get me down. I am too ... Zen. This is my new philosophy. From now on, I am not going to worry about pretending to be engaged or the resulting consequences down the road (outrageous, expensive wedding being planned by mother/sister, Hugh finding out and going ballistic).

No.

I have resolved that life's troubles will henceforth be nothing but a tangent touching me at one infinitesimal point. Worrying is banished from my personal vocabulary, having served no purpose in the first place. (Worrying, that is, not a personal vocabulary.)

In fact, a case could be made that worrying about a problem actually
prevents
you from resolving it, because it deceives your mind into thinking that you're doing something when really you're not. Not only that, but worrying is super bad for your skin. Yes, I refuse to worry from here on out.

Take this latest crisis over Hugh. Naturally, I could wring my hands over him. I could stay up all night and call my friends and drown my woes in mint chip ice cream as I privately hash and rehash that line about him not being attracted to me sexually. (It still stabs me to the core. I'm not sure I'll ever recover.)

But I've done the ice-cream-and-whining routine with other breakups in the past and
nothing changed.
The guy who dumped me did not come back begging for forgiveness. He did not see the folly of his ways and prostrate himself at my feet. Instead, the sun set and rose again, day after day, the wounds healed, and eventually the man who had previously been the sunshine of my existence faded into a dim and dusty memory.

This is the gift of thirtysomething heartbreak, I think. It's not so life and death, unlike when I was twenty-two and I went to pieces because the man I'd slept with on Saturday hadn't called me by Sunday night. Back then I had to cook up all sorts of justifications for his silence (or, rather, rudeness): Work had piled up, his dog had died, his phone had been disconnected. Okay, so that last one made him sound a bit slack-jawed. Still, it could happen. Phones get disconnected every day for the oddest of reasons.

With Hugh, it's different. Already, I have put him behind me like a childhood best friend from summer camp or a freshman roommate. I'm even having trouble remembering what he looks like or what we did together for four years.

Though, I have to admit, I am kind of curious why he hasn't at least e-mailed, especially with my parents calling Pippa and all.

Not that I miss him. I
don't.
It's just that I would think he'd want to check how I was, at least to see if I'd recovered from the breakup. Or to inquire about Jorge and what I've done with the small collection of Hugh's winter clothes I stored under my bed in a zipper bag and if I still have his great-grandfather's gold cuff links in my bedside drawer.

Certainly, he must have been alarmed to find that my parents were calling his parents to congratulate them on our upcoming nuptials.

“Quite startling, really,” is something I can imagine Susanna Spencer saying about Mom. “Such a brazen woman, claiming her daughter was marrying you, Hugh. Do you suppose she was just completely blotto?”

If I'd been in his shoes, I'd have been on the phone
tout de suite.

Then again, these are Hugh's parents we're talking about and they are—let's see, how to put this—
completely bizarre.