Will You Won't You Want Me?: A Novel (10 page)

“How much time do we have?” Marjorie glanced at her cell phone: 4:45. The kid was a decent distraction, but she needed to coordinate her move. Her stomach flipped just thinking about it.

“We have five minutes left.”

“Okay. I’m going to ask you some questions about yourself and you answer. Ready? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No.”

“Do you wish you did?”

“Sometimes.”

“What would they be like?”

“Actually, I have half siblings somewhere because my sperm donor was also used by other women besides my moms. But they don’t want me to meet them … yet.”

What a strange new world. “See? There’s a lot of interesting things about you. Go home and make a list of five experiences you’ve had. They don’t have to be major. We’ll find the basis for your story in no time.”

Belinda looked doubtful, as she licked the last cookie crumbs from her palms. “Isn’t that cheating?”

“Absolutely not. Write what you know. Ready to go?” Marjorie handed Belinda half of her own cookie, wrapped in a napkin. “Why don’t you have the rest?”

“Really? Thanks!” Belinda stuffed the treat into her backpack for later, then handed an envelope to Marjorie. “My mom said to give you this.”

“More allergies?”

“I think it’s money.”

Marjorie was grateful for the cash.

Outside, it was early evening, but still bright and warm.

“So, I’ll see you next week?” said Belinda.

“Oh.” Marjorie absorbed Belinda’s hopeful expression, felt the heat of the envelope in her hand. “I’ll be here!” she said before she could think better of it.

“Bye, Madge!” chirped Belinda, as she disappeared around the corner.

“Look both ways before you don’t cross the street!” Marjorie called back.

When Belinda got home, she opened her spiral notebook and reviewed her to-do list:

Belinda’s Tutoring Assignments

1. Lose the headband. Figure out how to do hair like Madge’s.

2. Convince Mom H. to stop giving people that dumb allergy list.

3. Download Liz Phair “Girls’ Room” song.

4. Write list of 5 things that have happened to me.

5. Borrow “He’s Just Not That Into You” from the library.

6. Get a nickname.

Bolstered, she decided to try, one last time, to write her own short story:

Belinda’s Attempt #6,002

Once upon a time, there was a girl
boy
dog
cat

Once upon a time

Long ago … in hell … In a land far

In Park Slope, Brooklyn

BLEH!

Once upon a time, a girl had no imagination. She never went anywhere or became anyone. She got kicked out of school before she was 12 and spent eternity in a pink headband, begging people to stop calling her “Blender.”

THE END

11

Leaving Belinda, Marjorie realized that she was not in the midst of an anxiety attack about her future. That seemed like a feat.

True, she was moving to a galaxy far, far away (from anyone she knew, anyway) to live with an alien hippie and had just impersonated a tutor, offering advice despite being
bad at life.
She would have to rely on her half of the returned security deposit from her old place to pay rent.
Pathetic.
Plus, she would probably never see her favorite pair of neon yellow underwear again.

But it was a glorious day in Brooklyn, a community that suddenly seemed not unlike
Sesame Street
. Folks—like so many Big Birds—chatted about whatever (
sleep training, victory garden composting, due dates, renovation plans
), blocking the sidewalk with giant strollers and laundry carts. Manhattan’s postwork crowd began to drizzle from the subway, plodding cheerfully toward couches, takeout, and Netflix.

Marjorie was distracted by all this, which was probably why her brain registered alarm long before she consciously understood what lay ahead. By then, it was too late: On the corner of Dean Street, a residential stretch straddling gritty and sweet, three men clustered in conversation. She made eye contact with the slim dirty blond among them. And all smugness vanished on both sides as recognition set in.

Mac rearranged his shocked expression into a grin as he broke off conversation. The other men—one in jeans, work boots, and a worn T-shirt, and the other, the diametric opposite, in a suit and tie—followed his gaze.

Marjorie had no choice but to stop. She adjusted the tote on her shoulder, praying that her dark circles from exhaustion were less visible in direct sunlight.

“Madgesty. Fancy meeting you here.”

“And here I thought you didn’t dare set foot in the outer boroughs, thought I was safe!” She crinkled her nose adorably.

Mac looked sheepish. “Yeah, well, duty calls. This is Hank and Keith.” He gestured toward his companions. “We just met with the Barclays Center people about having a DIRT annex there, down the line.” (The brand-new stadium had caused uproar, as locals feared it might disturb the peace—scalpers loitering in corners and such. The developers had yet to deliver the neighborhood improvements they promised in exchange for permission to build. Protesters stood behind a barrier outside, wielding signs and shouting at workmen, who weren’t in a position to change anything.)

Marjorie shook hands with Mac’s friends, assuring them with her brightest smile that it was a pleasure to meet them, while planning her escape.

“So.” Mac rocked back on his heels. “What are
you
doing here? I didn’t think you hung out in Brooklyn either.”

“Well, there’s an Everest-high mountain of things you don’t know about me, so…” She forced an even wider smile.

Mac lowered his voice, leaned in. “Are you mad at me, Madgesty?”

“Why would I be mad at you, Mac?”

She was struggling to be civil. He represented everything wrong in her world.

“Weird that you ran into each other, since you both never come here,” inserted Hank, the casual of the two and DIRT’s executive chef.

Actually, Mac and Marjorie—like two electrons magnetically drawn together—had a long history of accidental meetings: in the Miami airport, a Chicago hotel, an outdoor café in St. Thomas, the painkiller aisle at a Duane Reade pharmacy uptown, long after they’d both moved south. “We always run into each other,” said Mac. “It’s fate, right, Madgesty?”

“I think the kids call it
stalking.
” She winked.

“Not when it’s an accident.”

“That’s what all the stalkers say.”

The men laughed. Mac did not. There was an awkward silence.

“What’s wrong, O’Shea?” asked Marjorie. “Cat got your tongue? And by that I mean, ‘Some stripper named Kat give you oral herpes?’”

“I like her. She’s funny,” said Hank. Keith nodded, enjoying the show.

“Well, I better be going. Going, going, going.”

Mac, off his game, seemed desperate to stall and right the exchange. “Oh. Um. Where are you—I mean … sorry. Are you headed back to the city?”

“I’m getting the train at Atlantic. Why? Are you guys heading that way too?”

“No. We’re going to that new Pork Slope BBQ place.”

“Oh. Did you just want to tell me that or—?”

The guys laughed again. And Mac was suddenly reminded of an instance in fourth grade, when the housekeeper was off and his mother sent him to school with a paper bag lunch of Carr’s crackers and Camembert cheese. Kids teased him about the smell for weeks.

“Anyway. Okay, bye,” said Marjorie. “Nice meeting you!”

Mac bent to kiss her cheek, but she stepped away, stranding him midpeck. Performing her best Miss America wave, she headed toward the subway, cursing their synchronicity. She hoped her anger hadn’t been too obvious; she didn’t want to be the “crazy pissed chick” they discussed when she left.

As it happened, she
was
the object of speculation once out of earshot.

“Should we go?” Mac sighed, struggling to shake off the chance meeting.

“Um. Who the hell was that?” asked Hank.

“Nobody. Let’s go.”

“Dude. I’m not moving ’til you tell me what’s up.”

“Just some girl I went to high school with. She’s—nobody.”

“She’s hot,” said Keith, Mac’s financial adviser and resident dickwad. He stuck a finger in his collar for effect … and ventilation. It was a warm day.

“You like her?” pressed Hank.

“Is this seventh grade? Do I
like
her? Do I want to play Seven Minutes in Heaven with her?”

“I do.” Keith grunted.

Hank studied Mac’s face. “So you aren’t into her?”

Mac shrugged. “We used to hook up sometimes.” It was a minor exaggeration, really.

“Then give me her number,” oozed Keith. “I’m a sucker for a fire crotch.”

“She’s not really a full-on redhead.”

“Whatever. Don’t matter if the carpet matches the drapes.”

Ignoring Keith, per usual, Hank shook his head. “I never thought I’d see the day. You’re actually into her, which is a first. And, I don’t know what you did, but she’s pissed. You better find a way to fix that or you’ll regret it.”

Hank spoke from experience: His wife, Clara, was once a casual fling, whom he messed with between other conquests. It wasn’t until she cut him off to date an architect (and Bradley Cooper doppelgänger) that he realized he’d let someone amazing slip away. He groveled for seven months before winning her back. They were married within that year and were now rarely apart despite his late hours. It was always him with the baby strapped to his chest, her making self-effacing jokes about her cooking, them hanging in a beer garden with friends.

“It’s fine.
I’m
fine,” said Mac. He was far from it, at once embarrassed and tortured by the memory of her lips, parted in question, and her glare, in vivid opposition to the encouragement she’d whispered against his ear just nights before.

“You stuttered, man. The guy who can talk to anyone just fucking stuttered.”

Keith finally lost patience. “Enough with the girl talk. My balls are sweating. I want an overpriced IPA from some shitty second-rate city like Portland. Now. Let’s go.”

And with that, a conversation that might have lasted hours among three emotionally evolved women ended as the (mostly stunted) men moved on.

12

On the walk from the train to her apartment, Marjorie’s phone signaled a text from Vera with a furious
bong!

U need to have apt cleaned. Keep my half of deposit. Will more than cover cost. Assume u r moving. I let Victor know. He says leave keys inside apt when u leave Weds. I leave tomorrow.

Marjorie would have loved to tell Vera to shove her half of the security deposit, but pride was above her pay grade. She had thirty-six hours to pack before slumlord-in-training, Victor, started charging some inflated day rate.

In the building’s dingy basement that smelled of dead
something,
she miraculously remembered the storage unit’s padlock code. Vera’s belongings were gone. Inside sat only a broken skateboard—a gift from one ex-boyfriend, broken by another during a failed ollie—and some empty cardboard boxes Vera had called her a “hoarder” for keeping.

Once upstairs, Marjorie surveyed her bedroom and considered climbing into the closet to hide forever. Then she dove in.

The time limit meant no nostalgic pit stops along memory lane: no rereading yearbook entries (
“Have a good summer, beatch!”
) or staring at photographs of herself with rounder cheeks and self-cut bangs. No scanning passages from favorite books by Jane Austen, Joan Didion, and J. D. Salinger. No time to read the apology letter from the boyfriend who broke her skateboard.

Marjorie did linger on one twenty-first-birthday card: Vera and Pickles had thrown her a surprise dinner at a friend’s West Village bistro. The note—scrawled in Pickles’s left-handed chicken scratch on letterpress stationery—read:

Our Dearest Morningstar! (Get it? You will when you see the present! And then you won’t even care because it’s so awesome—ha!)

We love you, baby. Trio for life! Happy birthday and a million more—at which we’ll STILL be toasting with you at 2B (or not 2B!).

Love you 4-eva and eva! xoxoxoxoxo S & P

The gift had been gold stud earrings in the shape of stars, specked with tiny diamond chips. Marjorie loved them so much that when she wore them, she obsessively pressed her earlobes to make sure they hadn’t fallen out.

Suddenly, she felt so alone that she couldn’t breathe. She leaned back against the side of her bed and, desperate, tried her mother’s tactic:
There’s my desk, there are my books, there, beyond that door, Vera is finishing packing.

Marjorie grabbed her purse and fumbled for her phone, dialing.

“Hello?” The voice was less harried than expected.

“Pickles? It’s Madge.”

“Madge! It’s positively heaven to hear your voice.”

Pickles Marie Schulman, whose real name was Priscilla, had a flair for the dramatic and a vernacular more suited to a 1920s screen siren than a contemporary New York City housewife.