Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend (31 page)

“Good, good. How are
you?
” she said now, her eyebrows arching above her dark, carefully made-up eyes. Clearly I was the target of my mother's most recent concern. And this thought was confirmed when, mere moments after I had seated myself at the table, my mother jumped up and exclaimed, “Look at the time! I'll have to hurry if I hope to pick Clark up at the college before they lock him in for the weekend!”

“What happened to Clark's car?” I asked suspiciously.

“Oh, your brother is using it today—he needed an SUV to pick up Tiffany's new kitchen sink at Home Depot. I won't be long,” she said airily, grabbing her keys from the hook where she kept them and heading for the door. “Why don't you two have a little chat while I'm gone?” she added encouragingly. And with a wink at Dorothea, who actually had the grace to seem embarrassed, she disappeared.

I smiled wanly at Dorothea as she smoothed a carefully manicured and much-beringed hand over her shiny black bob. “Sorry about this, Emma,” she began, waving a hand helplessly in the air. “Your mother seems to think you might need someone to talk to…you know, because of all that's happened recently. With Derrick. Your father,” she continued, her eyes widening at me as if trying to say I
could
talk to her, if I wanted to, but she wasn't going to push it.

“My mother seems to think I can't manage my life without her butting into it periodically,” I replied.

“She cares about you, Emma. She wants you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” I protested.
I think.
Why was it that I always seemed happiest in opposition to my mother's attempts to
make
me happy?

Dorothea smiled as if
she
was satisfied with my answer. “I'm sure you are.” Then, “Are you still living in the city? West Village, wasn't it?”

“Yes…yes, I am,” I said.

“I love the West Village. I used to live there myself years ago. When I did my master's in Social Work at the New School.”

Now that the subject had safely turned to New York neighborhoods, we fell into a comfortable rapport, as Dorothea regaled me with tales of her days as a young single woman in New York, before she met her first husband—she had since divorced and remarried happily—and moved to suburbia. “Those were the days,” she said now, and looked at me with something close to envy. “And you can never go back to them,” she added philosophically. “I know you've probably heard this a million times Emma, but these really are the best years of your life. Take it from one who knows. Don't be in such a hurry to run to the next step. You're living in the greatest city in the world. Enjoy it while you can!”

Attempting to dispel some of the embarrassing exuberance her words cast over the room—bonding with my mother's friends always made me uneasy—I started in with my usual round of self-denigrating apartment jokes. “Well, I might enjoy it more if I were occupying the greatest
apartment
in the greatest city in the world. You know, living in the hippest neighborhood does have its price. My apartment is so small, the wall-to-wall carpeting says Welcome on it.”

This earned me a laugh. Then: “What are you in, a studio?”

“You could call it that,” I replied. “Most people living fifty miles or more outside of NYC might classify it as a walk-in closet.”

“Rent stabilized?”

“Yep.” Then I laughed. “Ah, the chains that bind us.”

“Don't I know it,” Dorothea said, waving a hand in the air. “In fact, the apartment where I used to live on Thompson Street is a rent-stabilized one bedroom, and to this day, I still haven't managed to let go of it. A friend of mine is living in it right now—and it turned out to be the perfect spot for her after her divorce.” Then, as a new thought struck her, her eyes lit up and she looked at me with renewed enthusiasm. “You know, last time we spoke, she was pretty serious about the guy she was seeing. They had been talking marriage, with a move back to suburbia and everything. Maybe I'll give her a call. If she gives up the place, you're welcome to it. It's a nice space. And not too far from where you live now.”

My heart started pumping madly, as it always did when anyone
dangled a larger but still rent-stabilized possibility in front of me. “I'd love to take a look at it. I mean, if your friend
is
moving.”

“Well, even if she isn't, it's only a matter of time,” Dorothea said. “Stacy hasn't known what to do with herself since she lost the status of Suburban Wife. She'll be married and back on Long Island soon enough.”

Her words filled me with glee, and by the time my mother returned with Clark in tow, I was brimming with barely contained excitement.

“Well,” my mother said, eyeing us speculatively, a smile lingering on her lips, “I can see you two have had quite a nice little chat while I was gone.”

Dorothea winked at me, and I couldn't help but smile back. “It was quite a nice little chat indeed,” I replied, feeling something strumming inside me that I had not felt for what seemed a long, long time.

Hope.

Confession: I have discovered the price of happiness, and it is below market value.

 

I
t amazed me how much the hope of space in New York could be a balm to my soul. I practically skipped to the subway on Monday morning as a vision danced in my head of me lounging on a sofa that did not double as a bed in some spacious future living room.

It was enough to make me think I needed nothing and, more specifically, no one. To hell with Max and his twenty-foot ceilings and slightly larger than average apparatus. If I got this apartment, I could do anything—even brave the Pink Pussycat Boutique. I was ready for sex toys, service for one and—you guessed it—that miniature schnauzer, who yelped joyfully at me as I passed the pet store on my way home from work that night. My life felt new again, and anything was possible.

My father came home from rehab on Tuesday—whether for good behavior or because his insurance had run out, I didn't know and was afraid to ask. But when I spoke to him he sounded unexpectedly cheerful. Turned out he'd hooked up with a new lawyer in rehab. Apparently Stan Farber had an occasional problem with barbiturates, but other than that, he was a pretty damn good attorney. And though I was afraid that my father's happiness would last only as long as his lawyer's patience, I was ready to relinquish him to his new god.

The work week flew by, with me suddenly productive now that no one expected anything more than my usual contributions. The
flutter over Rebecca's promotion had suddenly died down, due to new rumors—sparked mostly by Marcy Keller—that Patricia's marriage was on the rocks. Though I didn't think Patricia had enough of a marriage to warrant much excitement over her divorce, I was relieved to relinquish the role of object of everyone's speculation. In fact, everyone pretty much went back to ignoring my existence, much less the fact that I had been so recently and embarrassingly passed over for a promotion.

By the time the weekend came, I was feeling increasingly optimistic. In fact, I even caved in to Jade's insistence that I go to Fire Island with her for the July Fourth weekend. Especially since, after donning my bathing suit, I saw how much firmer I looked all around. Firm enough to allow myself to get on a scale—and discover I had lost seven pounds! And though my beach weekend did not result in any new romance—every man there was much too pretty for my taste—it served to solidify my relationship with Jade on a new level. For we were two women bonded by something even stronger than our growing-up years—we were both single women on the make who needed nothing and no one except each other and the latest shade of lipstick from Bobbie Brown—available, of course, in Jade's up-to-the-moment makeup stash. We ruthlessly prowled the bars on Fire Island in provocative clothing, flirting with the kind of men I once would have been frightened to share elevator space with. And then we blithely left those same men standing alone in the bar at the sight of even the slightest flaw—an open fly, a hair out of place, a blatant display of machismo. I had never felt so powerful. Or so sexy, despite the fact that I hadn't had so much as a good-night kiss since my ill-fated fling with Max Van Gelder.

But within two days of returning to the city, the bottom fell out—for me, that is. “You're never going to believe this,” Jade said when we met for drinks at Revolution after work on Tuesday night, hoping to somehow recapture the holiday weekend revelry despite our reluctant return to the nine-to-five life. “I'd believe anything at this point,” I replied, sipping a Tequila Linda as I studied her enigmatic expression.

“Ted is back.”

Tequila practically came out of my nose. “You're kidding?”

“Nope. And it gets even better,” she continued, her eyes filled with a mixture of disbelief and, I have to admit, excitement.

I waited, wondering what any man could have possibly done to arouse Jade to such a heightened state of emotion.

“Apparently you were right about him,” she said.

“That he was an asshole? A brainless musclehead?” I said, combing my memory for any epitaphs I might have devised for Ted in those early dismal days when Jade thought she would never hear from him again.

“No, no,” she replied, shaking her head. “Remember the first explanation you gave for why he didn't call me?”

I thought about this for a minute, then finally came up with it. “That he was hit by a bus?”

Her raised eyebrows and ridiculously large smile said it all.

“You have
got
to be kidding me!”

“Nope. I came home last night and there he was, waiting on my front stoop and looking just as scrumptious as ever, though he had this incredibly sexy scar on his chin.”

Leave it to Jade to find inflamed tissue appealing. “What the hell did he say?”

“That he'd been in and out of the hospital for the past couple of months. Apparently he got up the next day after our date, hopped on his bike for a trip down the West Side Highway and met a bus head-on. He was in ICU for the first two weeks, and—get this—when he finally got out, the first person he thought of was me. How much he wanted to call me, let me know how much he enjoyed being with me.”

I was filled with disbelief at the sight of Jade's dreamy-eyed expression. “So why
didn't
he call?” I asked suspiciously. After all, one of us had to remain rational here, and clearly it wasn't going to be Jade.

“Well, it wasn't so easy for him once he got out of the hospital. He was forced to face a new reality. His body was broken, his face scarred. His modeling career was essentially…over,” she finished, her face long with sympathy.

“So what? Did you tell him you only dated models or something?”

Jade eyeballed me as if I were some sort of dimwit. “No, no. It was nothing like that. It was that he no longer had a
job.
His confidence dropped, and he fell into a kind of funk. He figured no woman, especially one as successful as myself, would want anything to do with a jobless loser.”

“Hmm…” I said. Though I didn't want to forgive Ted, I was starting to understand. While women suffered from body issues, men suffered from provider instinct. If they couldn't bring home the bacon, they didn't feel very appetizing themselves. Still, I resisted. “I don't know, Jade.”

But judging by the look on her face, she wasn't listening. “You know, he even thought I wouldn't find him attractive anymore. I mean, not only is his face scarred, but his back is, too. The funny thing is, I thought he looked kind of…of rugged with all those scars. And it was so sweet the way he looked at me—like he wanted me but was afraid I…I wouldn't want him.”

“If he wanted you so bad, then why didn't he
call?
” I insisted. “I mean, being injured is one thing. And the job thing, well, that's understandable. But to make you wonder all these months, not just pick up the phone and—”

I came to an abrupt halt when I realized Jade was staring at me. “What has gotten into you, Emma? I thought you'd be happy for me. I thought—”

“I'm sorry,” I began, “You'll have to excuse me if I'm a little distrustful of anything a man has to say these days. Especially when it borders on the absurd!”

She relented a little. “Look, I was mentally right where you are when I came home last night and saw him sitting there. I was ready to make a few cutting remarks and walk on by. But then he started talking. And maybe it was the sight of those forearms, but I started listening.” She smiled at the memory. “He explained that when he first came out of the hospital, scarred and out of work, he didn't even dream of calling me. He pretty much put me out of his head. And after a month or so of physical therapy, and lots of soul-searching, he realized he needed to move on with his life. So he
got a job with a friend's construction company. Once he started working with his hands for a while, he felt a satisfaction, a confidence, he hadn't known before. He said he thought of me all the time at that point. Wished he'd called me earlier and thought now it was probably too late.” She looked me straight in the eye then. “He said he'd felt this…bond, this
connection
with me from that first night. Can you believe that? I guess I
didn't
imagine it…” she said, her expression growing dreamy once more before she continued. “He knew I'd slam down the phone if he even tried to call, so he came to my apartment last night and just waited until I got home, trying to figure out how he was going to get me to at least listen to him, never mind go out with him again.” She leaned back in her chair. “And believe me, when I saw him there, I was shocked. And angry. Until I saw that look…” She sighed.

“That look?” I inquired.

“There was something in his eyes, something that told me that this wasn't bullshit. Something…real.”

Suddenly realization crashed down on me. Dear God, was it possible? I studied Jade's eyes, and when I saw the emotion glowing in them, I knew. Jade, my best friend, soul sister and newfound partner in Single Girldom, was on the verge of falling hopelessly, maddeningly, in love.

 

Confession: Ted isn't the only one with scars…

 

Okay, so I wasn't exactly happy to be left alone on the brink of my newfound Single Girldom. And, yes, I'll admit that it took me some time to be happy for Jade. In fact, it wasn't until I saw her and Ted together the following Friday—we had all met for dinner, that is Alyssa and Richard, Jade and Ted and me, playing fifth wheel—that I started to come around. I needed to see for myself the evidence of Ted's recent bodily injury. Yes, it was real. And when I witnessed the goofy glaze of happiness that came into his eyes whenever he looked at Jade, which was often, I knew that Jade had found it. True love. The kind that could wipe away any lingering doubts that the men who had come before might have placed in her heart. The kind that could heal.

So there I was, spending Saturday night alone again, but this time it felt different.
I
felt different. For one thing, I had heard from Dorothea and learned that her friend Stacy had, in fact, gotten engaged and was happily making plans to move back to the burbs in about three months' time. By mid-fall, I would be living in an adult-size apartment, complete with wood-burning fireplace, which I discovered with great delight when I dropped by after work to view the apartment. After being greeted by a glowing Stacy, who couldn't help showing me her 1.5 carat marquis as she escorted me through the rooms(!), I thrilled to the sight of the high ceilings, picture-frame moldings and even a claw-foot tub. This was a place I could truly make a home. And maybe, I thought as I eyed the spacious bedroom and ample storage, share with someone someday.

But as I headed down the steps of my own dilapidated building that Saturday night, hoping to escape my four walls temporarily while I sought out something that might resemble dinner, the dream of a new man seemed impossible. The best vision I could conjure up was an image of me in my new apartment, curled up in front of a blazing fire, a book in my hand and a schnauzer at my feet.

As I descended the final flight of stairs, I was stopped dead at the bottom by the sight of Beatrice barreling—somewhat merrily, I noted—out her front door. And in a dress, no less. True, it was neon floral and could probably provide temporary shelter for a small family stranded on a desert plain, but she did look somewhat more…feminine.

“Hello, neighbor!” she bellowed when she turned and caught sight of me sneaking past her to exit.

“Hello, Beatrice, how are you?” I replied, resigned to have a bit of chat with the lonely old gal.

But Beatrice breezed by me, apparently in a hurry herself. “Wonderful, wonderful. Except I'm very late.” As she pulled open the outer door, she turned to me and whispered confidingly, “I'm meeting my
man friend
at the park. We're going to have turkey sandwiches and pound cake together!” she exclaimed, holding up the shopping bag she clutched in one hand, a girlish grin on her gruesome features. And with that, she was gone, leaving me holding the door, dumbfounded.

Even Beatrice, it seemed, was no longer without a man. While I…

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. I turned toward Heavenly Dee-lites, realizing that if a woman really wanted something in this city, she had to go for it, no-holds-barred. And I was determined to have the one man who had stubbornly taken up residence in my fantasy life, ever since that fateful day I first laid eyes on him over a gallon of Double Mocha Chip. The Skinny Scoop man. Who cared that he probably earned slightly more than minimum wage? He was gorgeous and he was male and I had come to believe that if I asked for much more from a man, it was asking too much. I felt powerful all of sudden, as I marched confidently toward Heavenly Dee-lites, checking my reflection in a storefront as I went by. I looked powerful. I was Jade before Ted. And that wasn't so bad, was it? Better that than the mopey, pathetic ex-girlfriend of Derrick I'd been for so many weeks.

When I finally reached my destination, I combed my fingers through my hair one more time for courage, pulled open the door, which jingled madly in anticipation, and stepped inside.

Only to be greeted by the sweet old familiar face of the woman who owned the place.

“Well, hello there!” she called out to me pleasantly as I moved helplessly toward the counter.

“Hi, how are you?” I replied, noting how very tanned and relaxed she looked.

“Wonderful! My husband and I just got back from a cruise to Barcelona!” Then she smiled. “A little gift from our son.”

Swallowing my disappointment that they weren't still away cruising while I seduced their stock boy, I replied, “That sounds wonderful. Your son is very generous.”

She beamed. “He is such a
good boy.
He almost never thinks of himself, and yet he works so hard. I swear the only time I see him relax is when he comes over to play cards with us on Friday nights. My husband and I have a bridge group,” she added.