Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend (13 page)

The following afternoon, I called Henry Burke. His secretary answered, advised me that he was in a meeting and took down my phone number so that he could call me back. I hung up, feeling vaguely titillated. A secretary. I was going on a date with a man who had a secretary. How very adult. I answered the phone all afternoon in my best sexy-yet-unconcerned voice, until he called back just under two hours later. Perfect timing, in my opinion—not long enough to torture me with waiting, but not quickly enough to make me think he was some hard-up geek. The first few awkward minutes of conversation were filled with his bemused commentary on how all his Happily-Coupled-and-Practically-Married friends were always trying to fix him up. Of course, I made some sympathetic response. What else could I do? Admit that I had shamelessly prodded Alyssa to find me some suitable replacement for the man who had torn my heart to pieces?

After navigating a few more clever quips about single life, I learned that Henry was going to the Hamptons for the holiday weekend. Since I was going to my family's torture chamber—which I cheerfully described as a barbecue on Long Island—we made plans for the following Thursday. I hung up ecstatic. It was official. I had a date. With a successful lawyer, no less. Gone was the Ex-Girlfriend, replaced by the Woman-in-Demand.

As I packed a bag for the weekend, carefully folding the kind of flirty combinations that said I was carefree, fun-loving and free as a bird, I banished all thoughts of minischnauzers and lonely late-night TV. Yes, I was still that career woman whom Patricia would one day make her protégée, but I was also a single girl with a Big Date on the agenda. It amazed me how one little promise of drinks had changed my perspective, but I wasn't about to question my newfound cheerfulness. Even spending Saturday night at home with a video felt like a personal choice, rather than a concession to the
fact that I was dateless and all my friends had gone away for the weekend. Jade had invited me out to Fire Island with her, but I'd begged off. After all, now that I'd committed myself, I had to be at the family barbecue on Sunday, and there would be no getting out of the big Memorial Day Bridal Dress Run with my mother on Monday.

Still, I was in good spirits as I stepped off the train at Garden City on Sunday afternoon and found Clark waiting for me.

“Ah, the fair Emma has arrived on her trusty steed,” he said as he stood beside his sporty compact car, waiting for me. Leaning over, he planted a kiss on my forehead and declared, “You've never looked lovelier, my dear.” Then he took my overnight bag, tossed it in the back seat and held the passenger door open for me. Usually Clark's habitual chivalry embarrassed me, though today I was somehow able to accept it as my due. Must have been the soft pink sundress I had donned for the big family shindig—the only garment in my closet that could disguise the recent rolls and bulges I'd acquired.

“So how's everything, Clark?” I asked, once he had successfully negotiated the vehicle into the traffic.

“Fine, fine. Your mother is putting the finishing touches on some gelatinous dessert, so I thought I'd make the rounds and gather up her chicks for her.” He smiled at his own joke, dimples forming in his cheeks and bringing a sparkle to his dark eyes. He really was a handsome man, I thought now, eyeing his thick salt-and-pepper hair and wondering if he had managed to avoid baldness at age sixty-three through some sort of technology. He wasn't really the type to resort to such vanities, but one could never tell with these things.

“Have Shaun and Tiffany arrived yet?”

“Oh, yes, yes. Tiffany has already filled us in on her five-year plan, and Shaun has the cocktails flowing. I think he's whipping up piña coladas as we speak.” Then he winked at me, as if we were sharing some secret about my baby brother and his uptight wife.

Maybe today wouldn't be so bad after all, I thought, feeling as if I had Clark in my corner. Suddenly remembering his upcoming
nuptials to my mother—as if I could have forgotten them—I congratulated him.

He positively beamed in response and quoted John Donne: “‘Love these mix'd souls doth mix again and make both one each this and that.'”

Feeling too much a mixed soul to even
begin
to ponder that one, I simply nodded, and we fell into a companionable silence for the short trip home. Once we pulled into the driveway and disentangled ourselves from the seat belts, my mother appeared at the front door, waving ecstatically at us.

“Ah, there she is now, my queen,” Clark said as he ambled toward the door, a broad smile on his face, as if he hadn't seen her in months, when it couldn't have been longer than the twenty minutes it took him to get to and from the train station.

I followed, watching as my mother kissed him sweetly on the lips, then swatted his behind as he walked past. Then she opened her arms to me, her eyes taking me in.

As her gaze roamed over me, I immediately jumped on the defensive. “I know I'm fat. Don't you dare say anything.”

“Oh, Emma!” she cried out as she folded her arms around me and clutched me to her. Releasing me with a playful pinch to my waistline, she said. “More of you to love.” Then she smiled, relenting. “You look beautiful.”

As I studied her shining eyes, I almost believed her. Then, embarrassed, I excused myself and bounded up the steps to toss my overnight bag in the guest room, knowing that if Shaun and Tiffany decided to stay, I would be banished to the couch, where all the Single and the Sorrowful were doomed to sleep alone.

By the time I made my way back to the kitchen, my mother was at the stove, putting a cover on whatever she had cooking there. She turned to look at me, beaming as if this were our first get-together in months, when it had only been mere weeks.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, suddenly afraid to be alone with her. My mother was known to habitually delve into deep emotional territory at the most inopportune times—like right before I was going to face my successful brother and his perfect wife. And as I
had just put my Happy-Career-Girl-With-Prospects facade carefully in place, I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it.

“In the yard. Shaun made piña coladas.” Lifting a glass filled with a frothy concoction to her lips, she winked mischievously. Ever since her marriage to my father, my mother could no longer allow herself that daily drink after work others felt entitled to without thinking she was still somehow part and parcel of my father's particular brand of madness. Now, on those rare occasions when she did indulge in a cocktail, it was always with a sense of a forbidden pleasure. “Let's join them,” she said, ushering me out the sliding glass door that led to the back patio.

Seated at a round redwood table laden with a large sampling of every chip and dip known to humankind were my brother, Shaun, looking tanned and relaxed in khaki shorts and a terra-cotta polo shirt probably picked out by Tiffany, and Tiffany herself, looking a bit like a cheese danish—an expensive one, of course—in a cream and yellow short set and matching sandals. Grandma Zizi, so dubbed because as a baby Shaun hadn't been able to pronounce Zelda, sat off to the side, under a small clump of trees.

“Hey, Em, what's up?” Shaun said, lifting his face for a perfunctory kiss as I approached.

“Hi, Shaun. Hi, Tiffany,” I said, gliding by both their cheeks as we kissed the air. Straightening, I stared at Grandma Zizi off in the near distance. “Why is Grandma sitting all the way over there?”

“She doesn't like the sun,” my mother said, seating herself next to Clark with her cocktail in hand.

“It's probably all that polyester,” my brother said, his laughter trailing after me as I walked over to Grandma Zizi to say hello.

“Hey, Grammy!” I said, loud enough for her to hear—she usually kept her hearing aid turned down for some reason.

She looked up, startled, and stared at me momentarily as if she didn't recognize me. Then her soft, wrinkled face broke into a wide smile. “Emma!”

I hugged her, kissing both cheeks and then her lips, which was our tradition ever since I was a little girl. When I leaned back, I
saw a look of accusation in her soft brown eyes. “You lost weight.”

I smiled, wanting desperately to take her comment to heart but knowing that this was an assertion Grandma Zizi made fairly regularly to all the females in the family who suffered from fluctuating waistlines. I think it was her way of being encouraging—the senior equivalent of “You go, girl.”

“Thanks, Grandma. I'm trying. How are you?”

“Oh, you know. Old. How are
you,
dear?” Then, suddenly, as if struck by a memory, she stared over my shoulder, her eyes searching. I knew exactly who she was looking for, though I didn't offer any assistance as she struggled to come up with the name of my missing better half. Finally she asked, “Where's Derrick? You're still seeing him, right?”

I mentally cringed. Either no one had told her, or she had forgotten. More likely it was the latter, as Grandma Zizi's memory was not what it used to be. “No, Grandma. Derrick and I broke up.” As her mouth descended into a puzzled frown, I hurried to explain. “He got a job in California. He moved there.”

“Oh, dear.” Still that perplexed look. Then she looked up at me, her eyes filled with sympathy. A sympathy I could not handle at the moment.

“Let me get you some more ginger ale,” I said, carefully pulling her half-full glass from her fingers as she gazed sadly at me.

I made my escape to the cooler, slowly filling her glass with ice and pouring in some soda, in an attempt to give her enough time to lose her train of thought.

By the time I returned to Grandma Zizi, it was clear all memory of my previous visit moments earlier was erased. “Emma!” she said, leaning in close for our ritual series of kisses.

“You lost weight,” she insisted once more, and just as her gaze began to wander over my left shoulder in search of Derrick, I gave her a quick kiss to the forehead, muttered something about needing a drink myself and headed off to the relative safety of the picnic table.

As I sat down and pulled the pitcher of piña coladas toward me
to fill a glass, Tiffany was talking about the new job she had just landed.

“They practically doubled my salary,” she was saying now, “how could I
not
take it?”

Tiffany was a financial analyst who received bimonthly phone calls from competing firms, attempting to woo her over to the other side with promises of huge cash bonuses and extra vacation time. I suddenly felt ridiculous, pining away for a raise of a few thousand dollars and a semi-major title adjustment at
Bridal Best.
But I swallowed the thought, along with a mouthful of piña colada, which, I noted with satisfaction, had enough rum to keep me warm and friendly.

“Well, it sounds wonderful,” my mother replied, smiling at my brother as if
he
had just doubled his salary.

“I know I've been switching around a lot, but this seems like a company I might be able to stick with for a while,” Tiffany continued. “At least while Shaun and I work on getting our family started.” With this announcement, a flush covered her normally composed features, and she turned to smile at Shaun.

Looking at them together, I couldn't help but picture how outrageously adorable their children would be, dressed in designer duds and sporting her honey-brown hair and creamy coloring, with his green eyes.

Clearly this was also the direction my mother's thoughts had taken, as her eyes had misted over with a mixture of joy and, I suspected, grandmotherly greed. “Oh, you don't know how those words make me feel. Grandkids!” She turned to Clark, as if she were unable to contain her happiness and needed him to shoulder some of it. He, of course, leaned forward and plopped a kiss on her mouth as we all stared into our piña coladas with new interest.

“Not for at least a year,” Tiffany warned, but she was smiling off into the distance, probably mentally highlighting a block of space in her day planner for childbearing. It seemed to me that everything Tiffany had was the result of careful planning—the kind of purposeful strategizing I had yet to contemplate until Derrick up and left me with no game pieces.

As if sensing my unrest, Tiffany turned to me. “So how's everything going with you?”

“Fine. Great, in fact,” I replied, plastering what I hoped was a convincing smile on my face.

Tiffany's neat little eyebrows raised over her wide blue eyes and pert nose.

“We heard about Derrick. That must kinda suck,” Shaun said, with his usual aplomb.

“Yeah, well, you win some you lose some,” I said, ignoring the sight of my mother's concerned frown. “Besides, it's not like I could have
gone
with him to L.A. Especially now that I'm up for a promotion to senior features editor.”

“Oh, Emma, why didn't you
tell
me?” my mother chimed in.

“Well, nothing's been decid—”

“Big salary jump?” Tiffany asked, leaning in close.

“Not bad, not bad.”
Not great.
But I wasn't about to tell that to Ms. Meet Me for Lunch at the Plaza.

“Cool,” Shaun said now, picking up the pitcher of piña coladas and topping us all off.

Taking a sip from her glass, my mother licked her lips with a satisfied grin. “I think this is just what you need, Emma. There's nothing like a salary increase to make you feel human again. Maybe now you can start paying down some of those student loans, think about saving some money. I was just reading a book,
The Ten Steps to True Wealth—
”

As my mother rambled on about my apparently horrific financial outlook and how this meager yet somehow miraculous salary increase was going to change all that, I wanted to burrow into the patio floor. From the way Tiffany and Shaun kept throwing glances at me while she spoke, I got the feeling they had suddenly discovered my future prospects were even less cheery than they had realized. I mean, there was no room for a house, much less a BMW, in my future, while theirs was unthinkable without both these items. And though I never really craved material things, other than the season's offerings at Banana Republic, I suddenly felt the hole in my single life grow wider and wider.