Adulation (5 page)

—and not just any ol’ dad, but Father of the Year. That included a stable marriage—or, as he called it, “a solid family unit.” He and Ramona had lasted way longer than we had, and they had two children.

How was I supposed to feel about this? I wondered. Considering he’d left me for Ramona, was this some kind of karma? Had the gods finally delivered on my jilted heart’s desire for their marriage vows to be sealed in the Temple of Doom? It sucked that my own relationship status had remained unchanged all this time, but I suspected that even if I had been blissfully remarried by now, the news still would have thrown me for just as much of a loop.

Georgie hesitated while Spandau Ballet’s “True” blared in the background of Molly Ringwald’s own love life problems.

“There’s more.”

I groaned. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, what else?”

“He mentioned you in the comment thread.”

My eyes reduced to slits, and Georgie handed me a pillow in self-defense; clearly he could tell Iwanted to hit something, and he didn’t want it to be the messenger. I clutched and squeezed the pillowwhile I said through clenched teeth, “What did he say?”

“I don’t know, but Eric said the word
 
spinster
 
was in there.”

Theo nervously eyed all the breakables in the room.

No. Teddy knew the rules. He was not to use my name, post photos, etcetera, in public ever again.

“Theo wasn’t sure if I should tell you,” said Georgie, “but I thought you were better off hearing itfrom me than some loser.”

I darted my eyes to Theo. “You knew about this?”

“For consultation purposes,” she clarified in an effort to stave off my death glare.

My eyes darted back to Georgie. “I would’ve been better off hearing it from Teddy—no, scratchthat. I shouldn’t be hearing it at all.”

“He was probably drunk when he posted it,” said Theo.

“Like the last time?” I asked, raising my voice.

I stared at the TV without actually watching it while my memory bank reopened the Teddy account. We had met during my junior year of college at a party following a basketball game. He was a year olderthan me and quite good-looking. Blond hair, blue eyes, tall, preppy... think the guy that was in
 
The Karate Kid
 
and
 
Back to School
 
and all those eighties movies—you know, the one who always played the tool. That right there should’ve tipped me off. He wasn’t really my type, but I assumed the alcohol was thereason for our hitting it off.

Although we flirted all night and even made out a little bit, nothing came of it. Not until almost fiveyears later, shortly after I broke up with another guy. Teddy came into Whitford’s to purchase a bunch of Dr. Seuss books for his niece. Something about that touched me. I was still working on the floor andbehind the cash wrap in those days, and the moment we saw each other, sparks flew—literally. One of theoverhead lightbulbs popped, and  thankfully no one was hurt. But Teddy and I knew better. Actually, I wassurprised that he remembered me—we’d both been kinda soused that night—but he told me on our firstofficial date that he’d never forgotten me and had kicked himself for not getting my number.

On paper he was perfect: smart, handsome, athletic, family-oriented, religious, you name it. Hedidn’t mind sitting through chick flicks and was more than happy to hold my purse while I tried on clothes. He’d buy me little teddy bears on anniversaries and slipped notes in my lunch bags when I wasn’tlooking. He was the only boyfriend to whom I’d ever showed my novel manuscripts, and he encouragedme to find an agent, fully supporting my plan to work at Whitford’s until we had children—then I’d quitand be a writer and a mom. Or rather, a mom and a writer. He very much wanted me to be a mom.

We dated for a year, got engaged, and lived together for another six months before the weddingand actually tried to get pregnant before the I dos, much to my parents’ chagrin (despite their touting of thesexual revolution and the fact that my brother had been a prenuptial conception). In hindsight, I think theymust have had some kind of intuition about our inevitable demise.

“Is this really what you want?” Mom had asked.

“Of course it’s what I want,” I had replied, annoyed. “Why would you say that?”

“I know you want
 
Teddy
,” she’d said. “I just question what you want more—to be a mother or notto be without Teddy.”

I’d dismissed her and brushed the conversation off as absurd. But looking back on it, I saw whatshe saw. I  had become
 
impatient
 
to find someone with whom to spend my life. Someone to and withwhom I’d dedicate my novels and live blissfully in the ’burbs until the kids went off to college, and thenwe’d buy a camper and take a cross-country trip. I’d had a string of boyfriends, none of whom lasted formore than eight months, and could rattle off their names the way Will Hunting named all his imaginarybrothers in
 
Good Will Hunting
 
(Marky, Ricky, Danny, Terry, Mikey, Davey...). But none of them felt “right” to me, or like—dare I say it—“the One.” I’d never been a comparison shopper, and I didn’talways know what I was looking for, but once I found it, the search was over. In the case of a mate, therealways seemed to be some missing puzzle piece, although I never knew what it was. All I knew was that Ihadn’t found it. And by the time Teddy came along, I had decided that it would reveal itself within thecourse of our marriage. Perhaps it would be our child, I told myself. Besides, how would I ever find

anyone better than Teddy? He even put the seat down, for chrissakes.

A year after we got married and my menstrual cycle became more erratic (prompting a number of false alarms), we started seeing the specialists. And about six months after that it was finally confirmed that I had an ovulation problem (and we couldn’t afford in vitro fertilization), Teddy insisted that he was put on this earth to be a father—a biological father, that is. Adoption was not part of his plan, nor were surrogates or stepchildren.

Then came Ramona and, shortly afterward, what I’ve since called “the Humiliation.”

Thing is, before Teddy, I’d never given the idea of having children much thought. I wasn’t opposed to it, but rather than forming my life plan around it, having children was more like a contingency plan. With Teddy, however, it had become the whole plan. But for some reason, finding out I couldn’t have children had somehow rendered all the other life possibilities pointless. In the way I had lived all my life knowing the Twin Towers were always relatively nearby, with no sense of urgency to visit them, when they were suddenly gone the heap of regret was as massive as the rubble left in their wake.

And in the blink of an eye, I was forty and watching twenty-five-year-old movies with a single girl and a gay guy in my bed. Georgie seemed to have been reading my mind all this time (and, bless him, wasn’t the least bit offended). He yanked me back into the present moment with a forceful “
Fuck him
, Sunrise. Rather, he can go fuck himself. Any man who doesn’t stick by you no matter what never deserved you in the first place. And it’s not too late—you can still adopt. Angelina Jolie hasn’t taken all the orphaned babies in the world. You’re strong enough to be a single mom.”

“It’s not that,” I started.

“Then what’s wrong?”

Tears came to my eyes. “I just...what’s happened to me, Georgie?”

I made a honking noise as I blew my nose and went to the bathroom to apply a Breathe Right strip. When I returned Georgie and Theo both looked at me, then at each other.

“
That’s it
,” said Georgie, fed up. He picked up the remote, aimed it at the television like a pistol, and clicked it off, not even bothering to stop the DVD player. He then hastily gathered the spilled popcorn, dumped it back into the bowl, and moved it to the floor next to the bed.

“We need a pad and pen,” he said. I pointed to the drawer of the night table next to Theo. She opened it and pulled out a legal pad, along with a purple ballpoint pen, and handed both to him. “This is great,” he said, scribbling the words “40 FOR 40” at the top of the page in block caps and underlining it twice. “We’re gonna make a list of forty things you want, and you’re gonna spend the next forty weeks crossing everything off the list.”

Theo squealed. “Ooooh, that is a
fab
ulous idea!”

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“I have never been more serious in my life,” said Georgie.

“Shouldn’t we watch
Ferris Bueller
 
first?”

“Screw
 
Ferris Bueller
—this is 2010!
 
Carpe diem
 
and all that shit.”

“What are we supposed to write?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Be like the song and reach up for the sunrise. Live up to your name.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Both Georgie and Theo knew how much I hated the name bestowed upon me by my ex-hippie parents.

“Fine. Change name,” he said as he wrote the words in block caps. “What else?”

I looked at him, dumbfounded.

“Oh, come
 
on
 
.” He seemed to be genuinely annoyed. “You mean to tell me that you’re so out of touch with  yourself you can’t even think of one thing that you’d like to do or have or be? Whatever happened to getting published? What about buying a house? I mean, geez, Sunny—how could we have let you stray so far?”

“Georgie, those things take
 
years
 
to happen, not forty weeks. And some of them never happen. For one thing, I can barely save enough for an IRA—forget about buying a house! And you know that finding a literary agent is about as difficult as getting a part in a movie or a play.”

He ignored my objections. “Never stopped you before. Now, what’s number two on the list? Just call ’em out as they come to you—they don’t have to be in any particular order of importance.”

I let out a loud sigh, and they went ahead without me. “Publish novels,” said Theo as Georgie wrote. “And don’t bother with the lame-ass excuse about getting an agent, ’cause you know you can selfpublish.”

“You know, I don’t even know if that’s such a priority anymore,” I said. “Getting published, I mean.”

He eyed me for a second, knowing I was full of shit, before returning to the pad. “We’ll edit later. What’s next?”

I shrugged. Georgie flinched with delight as the next idea came to him. “Ooh, I know.” He giggledas he scrawled the next item, blocking the pad with his forearm so I couldn’t see it. That giggle was thesound of mischief.

“What?” I asked. “What are you writing?”

He turned the pad to Theo, who let out an even more sinister laugh as she read it, before revealingit to me: SLEEP WITH DANNY MASTERS.

I rolled my eyes again. “Man, you do dream big. How ’bout I just meet him and shake his hand? Hell, I’ll settle for holding the door of his taxicab open for him.”

“Please, Sunny—you think he takes a
 
cab
?” said Georgie.

“Whatever. How ’bout we just go out for coffee?”

“Nope,” said Theo. “You wanna jump his bones and you know it.”

“I also wanna jump Rob Lowe’s bones, the guy from
 
White Collar
’s, and all of Duran Duran’s—not all at once, of course. That doesn’t mean I believe it would or could ever happen. Not to mention thatthey’re all married.”

“Or gay,” Georgie added. “And why not?”

“Which one is gay?”

Georgie waved a hand in impatience. “Whatever. Of all the celebrities in the world—”

“—and who says I have to sleep with a celebrity?”

“—I’d say Danny Masters is the one you have the best chance to be with.”

“Who lives on the other side of the country...”

“So? Get on a plane,” said Theo.

“And doesn’t know I exist.”

“You’ll have to work on that without becoming Creepy Stalker Woman,” said Georgie.

“Why do you think I have the best chance to be with him?” I asked, despite my having made amental list of answers many times over.

“For starters, you’re both writers—and I don’t care what you say; I hold your stuff up to his anyday of the week and twice on Sunday. You’re both from New York, and the part of New York that counts. You share the same birthday, and you’re only five years apart in age,” said  Theo. She sounded like afictional TV lawyer during opening arguments.

“Danny Masters also happens to be a recovering alcoholic, a self-described control freak,divorced with a child, and hopelessly in love with Charlene Dumont.”

“Who might very well be nothing more than a rather convincing drag queen,” said Georgie. “Besides, you’re basing this characterization on, what, the Internet? ’Cause that’s always right.” Hisvoice was laced with sarcasm.

“I am not going to sleep with Danny Masters within the next forty weeks.”

“Well, I ain’t crossin’ it off, so you’ll just have to.”

“You know, I don’t wanna be some fangirl,” I said. “I respect Danny Masters. I respect his writing and I admire his career.”