Love the One You're With (19 page)

“It’s not like Leo was some big love of your life or anything,” she finally says.

When I don’t respond immediately, she raises her well-arched eyebrows even higher, obviously looking for confirmation and reassurance.

So I say as decisively as I can, “No, he wasn’t.”

This time, I
know
I’m lying, but what choice do I have?

“He was just … some guy from a long time ago,” Margot says, her voice trailing off.

“Right,” I say, cringing as I think of that flight together.

Margot smiles.

I make myself smile back at her.

Then, just as the gate attendant announces the start of boarding and our husbands rejoin us with a stash of newspapers, magazines, and bottled water, she leans in and whispers confidingly, “So what do you say we just go ahead and keep this one to ourselves?”

I nod, picturing the two of us literally sweeping debris under an expansive Oriental rug as we hum along to the
Golden Girls
theme song, one of our favorite shows to watch after class in college.

“All’s well that ends well,” Margot says, words that, oddly enough, both soothe me and fill me with a sense of foreboding. Words that echo in my head as the four of us gather our belongings and saunter down the Jetway toward my new life, a fresh start, and something that feels a little bit like redemption.

twenty-two

For the next few weeks, as Andy and I settle into our new home, I do my best to stay on the road to redemption. I wake up every morning and give myself rousing pep talks, repeating chipper clichés out loud in the shower—things like,
Home is where the heart is,
and
Happiness is a state of mind
. I tell Andy and Margot and Stella, and even strangers, like the clerk at Whole Foods and a woman behind me in line at the DMV, that I am happy here, that I do not miss New York. I tell myself that if I can only will these things to be true, my record will be expunged, my slate cleaned, and Leo forgotten for good.

But despite my best, most pure-intentioned efforts, it doesn’t quite work out that way. Instead, as I go through all the moving-in motions—whether it’s arranging our framed photographs on the built-in bookcases flanking our stone fireplace, or perusing the aisles of Target for Rubbermaid storage containers, or poring over drapery fabric samples with Margot’s interior designer, or planting white caladiums in big bronze pots on our front porch—I feel out of sorts and out of place.

Worse, I have the nagging, sinking feeling that I was more myself on that red-eye flight than I have been in a long time—and that I’ve made a mistake in leaving New York. A big mistake. The kind of mistake that brews resentment and dangerous fissures. The kind of mistake that makes your heart ache. The kind of mistake that makes you long for another choice, the past, someone else.

Meanwhile, Andy’s contentment, bordering on outright glee, makes me feel that much more alienated. Not so much because misery loves company—although there is an element of that—but because his happiness means that our move is permanent, and I will be stuck in this world forever.
His
world. A life sentence of sitting in traffic and having to drive everywhere, even to grab a cup of coffee or a quick manicure. Of sterile strip malls and no late-night dinner delivery options. Of mindlessly accumulating shiny, unnecessary possessions to fill the empty spaces in our sprawling home. Of falling asleep listening to absolute unsettling silence rather than the satisfying hum and pulse of a city. Of still, sweltering summers with Andy off playing golf and tennis every weekend and no chance of a white Christmas. Of saccharine-sweet, blond, blue-eyed, Lilly Pulitzer–wearing, Bunco-playing neighbors with whom I have virtually nothing in common.

Then, one morning in August, just after Andy leaves for work, I find myself standing in the middle of the kitchen, holding his cereal bowl which he carelessly left on the table, and I realize that it’s not such a subtle feeling anymore. It’s full-blown suffocation. I practically run to the sink, toss his bowl into it, and phone Suzanne in a panic.

“I hate it here,” I tell her, fighting back tears. Just saying the words aloud seems to solidify my stance and make my feelings both official and entrenched.

Suzanne makes a reassuring sound and then offers, “Moving is always tough. Didn’t you hate New York at first?”

“No,” I say, standing over the sink and almost basking in feeling like a downtrodden, taken-for-granted housewife. “New York was an adjustment. I was overwhelmed at first … But I never
hated
it. Not like this.”

“What’s the problem?” she asks, and for a second, I think she’s being sincere—until she adds, “Is it the doting husband? The huge house? The pool? Your new Audi? Or wait—it’s
gotta
be the sleeping in late and not having to get up and go to work, right?”

“Hey, wait a second,” I say, feeling spoiled and ungrateful, like a celebrity whining about her lack of privacy, insisting that her life is
soo
hard. Still, I continue, believing that my feelings are legitimate. “It’s driving me crazy that my agent hasn’t called with anything and I spend my days snapping shots of magnolia trees in our backyard, or of Andy puttering around the house with his toolbox, pretending to be handy … or of the kids on the corner selling lemonade until their nanny glares at me like I’m some kind of child molester … I
want
to work—”

“But you don’t
have
to work,” Suzanne says, cutting me off. “There’s a difference. Trust me.”

“I know. I
know
I’m lucky. I know I should be thrilled—or at least
comforted
by all of …
this,
” I say, glancing around my spacious kitchen—with its marble counters, gleaming Viking stove, and wide-planked, cedar floors. “But I just don’t feel right here … It’s hard to explain.”

“Try,” she says.

My head fills with a litany of my usual complaints before I settle on a trivial but somehow symbolic anecdote from the night before. I tell her how the little girl next door came over peddling Girl Scout cookies and how irritated I was as I watched Andy labor over the order form as if it were the decision of a lifetime. I imitate him, exaggerating his accent—“Should we get three boxes of Tagalongs and two Thin Mints or two Tagalongs and three Thin Mints?”

“It
is
a pretty big decision,” Suzanne deadpans.

I ignore her and say, “And then Andy and the little girl’s mother made twenty minutes of small talk about their two degrees of separation—which, apparently, is a
lot
in this town—and all their mutual acquaintances from Westminster—”

“The one in London?” she asks.

“No. More important than that little ole abbey in England. This Westminster is the most elite private school in Atlanta … in all of the Southeast, my dear.”

Suzanne snickers, and it occurs to me that although she wants me to be happy, on some level she must be relishing this. After all, she told me so, right from the start.
You’re an outsider. You’re not one of them. You will never really belong.

“And then,” I say, “when I think it’s finally over, and we can go back to our mindless, numbing television watching—which by the way, feels like all we ever do anymore—the mother prompts her daughter to thank ‘Mr. and Mrs. Graham’ and for one disorienting second, I look over my shoulder for Andy’s parents. Until I realize that
I’m
Missus Graham.”

“You don’t want to be Missus Graham?” Suzanne asks pointedly.

I sigh. “I don’t want the highlight of my day to be about Thin Mints.”

“Thin Mints are pretty damn good,” Suzanne says. “Particularly if you put them in the freezer.”

“C’mon,” I say.

“Sorry,” she says. “Go on.”

“I don’t know. I just feel so … trapped … isolated.”

“What about Margot?” Suzanne asks.

I consider this question, feeling torn between a sense of underlying loyalty to my friend and what feels to be the sad truth of the matter—that, despite the fact that I talk to Margot several times a day, I have a slight feeling of estrangement lately, a feeling that began with her reproachful stare down at our going-away party—and has lingered despite our conversation the next day at the airport.

At the time I was grateful for her exoneration, her keeping me in the fold despite my transgression. But now I have the disturbing, chafing sense that she actually believes I owe her and Andy and the entire family
so
much. That I’m
so
lucky to be down here, in the thick of the Graham dynasty, and that I can’t possibly miss New York, and that I’m not entitled to have any feelings about anything or anyone if it in any way deviates from their vision, their notion of proper decorum and good values.

What appeals to you the most is the very thing that will drive you crazy,
I think—and it’s really true. I used to love how picture-perfect the Grahams’ world was. I admired their wealth, their success, their closeness—how even rebellious James (who finally moved out of his parents’ guest house) manages to show up in church most Sunday mornings, albeit with bloodshot eyes and a distinct aroma of cigarette smoke on his wrinkled khakis. I loved that they all consult with one another before doing things, are fiercely proud of their family name and traditions, and that they all put Stella on a pedestal. I loved that nobody had died or divorced or even disappointed.

But now. Now I feel trapped. By them. By all of it.

For a second, I consider admitting this to Suzanne, but I know that if I do, it will be game over. I’ll never be able to take it back or soften it, and someday, when the storm has passed, my sister might even throw it back in my face. She’s been known to do that.

So I just say, “Margot’s fine. We still talk all the time … But we’re just not on the same page … She’s so all-consumed with the pregnancy thing—which is understandable, I guess …”

“You think you’ll get on the same page soon?” she asks, obviously inquiring about our plans to start a family.

“Probably. I might as well pop out a few kids. We’re already all hunkered down as if we have them. I was just thinking about that last night … How our friends in the city who have kids make parenthood seem so palatable. They seem completely unchanged—the same combination of immature yet cultured. Yuppie hipsters. The urban mainstream. Still going out to see good music and having brunch at cool restaurants.”

I sigh, thinking of Sabina, and how, instead of just taking her triplets to play dates and inane music classes, she also totes them to the MoMA or the CMJ Film Festival. And instead of dressing them in smocked bubbles, she puts them in plain black, organic cotton T-shirts and denim, creating mini-Sabinas, blurring generational lines.

“But here the converse seems true,” I say, getting all worked up. “Everyone is a full-fledged
grown-up
even
before
they have kids. It’s like the nineteen-fifties all over again when people turned into their parents at age twenty-one … And I feel us turning into that, Andy and I … There’s no mystery left, no challenge, no passion, no edge. This is just …
it,
you know? This is our life from here on out. Only it’s
Andy’s
life. Not mine.”

“So he’s glad you moved?” she asks. “No buyer’s remorse at all?”

“None. He’s thrilled … He whistles even more than usual … He’s a regular Andy Griffith. Whistling in the house. Whistling in the yard and garage. Whistling as he goes off to work with Daddy or off to play golf with all his good ole boy friends.”

“Good ole boys? I thought you said rednecks don’t live in Atlanta?”

“I’m not talking about good ole boy rednecks. I’m talking frat boy yucksters.”

Suzanne laughs as I rinse the few remaining Trix floating in a pool of Easter egg–pink milk down the drain, and although at one time I might have found Andy’s breakfast of choice endearing, at this moment I only wonder what kind of grown, childless man eats pastel cereal with a cartoon bunny on the box.

“Have you told him how you feel?” my sister asks.

“No,” I say. “There’s no point.”

“No point in honesty?” she gently probes.

It is the sort of thing I have always told her when she and Vince are having problems.
Be open. Communicate your feelings. Talk it out.
It suddenly strikes me that not only are our roles reversed but that this advice is easier said than done. It only
feels
easy when your problems are relatively minor. And right now, my problems feel anything but minor.

“I don’t want Andy to feel guilty,” I say—which is the complicated truth of the matter.

“Well, maybe he
should
feel guilty,” Suzanne says. “He made you move.”

“He didn’t
make
me do anything,” I say, feeling a pang of reassuring defensiveness for Andy. “He offered me plenty of outs. I just didn’t take them … I put up no resistance at all.”

“Well, that was stupid,” she says.

I turn away from the sink and, feeling like I’m about ten years old, say, “
You’re
stupid.”

twenty-three

A few days later, Oprah is providing background noise while I succumb to my OCD, making slick white labels for our kitchen drawers. As I print out the word
spatulas,
I hear a knock at the side door and look up to see Margot through the paned glass.

Before I can so much as wave her in, Margot opens the door and says, “Hey, hon. Only me!”

As I mute the TV and look up from my label maker, I am two parts grateful for the company, and one part annoyed by her come-right-in presumptuousness. And maybe just a bit sheepish for getting busted watching daytime television—something I
never
did in New York.

“Hey,” she says, giving me a weary smile. Wearing a fitted tank, black leggings, and flip-flops, she looks, for the first time, uncomfortably pregnant, almost unwieldy—at least by Margot’s standards. Even her feet and ankles are beginning to swell. “We still on for dinner tonight at my place?”

“Sure. I just tried to call you to confirm … Where have you been?” I say, recognizing that it’s very unusual for me not to know Margot’s exact whereabouts.

“Prenatal yoga,” she says, lowering herself to the couch with a groan. “What have you been up to?”

I print a
slotted spoons
label and hold it up. “Getting organized,” I say.

She distractedly nods her approval and then says, “What about Josephine?”

I give her a puzzled look until I realize she’s talking about baby names.
Again
. Lately, it seems to be all we discuss. Generally, I enjoy the name game, and certainly understand the importance of naming a child—sometimes it seems as if the name shapes the person—but I’m growing a bit weary of the topic. If Margot had at least found out the sex of her baby, it would cut our task in half.

“Josephine,” I say aloud. “I like it … It’s charming … offbeat … very cute.”

“Hazel?” she says.

“Hmm,” I say. “A bit poserville. Besides … isn’t it Julia Roberts’s daughter’s name? You don’t want to be perceived as copying the stars, do you?”

“I guess not,” she says. “How about Tiffany?”

I don’t especially like the name, and it seems like a bit of an outlier on Margot’s otherwise classic list, but I still tread carefully. Saying you dislike a friend’s potential baby name is a dangerous proposition (like announcing you don’t like her boyfriend—a sure guarantee that they’ll marry).

“I’m not sure,” I say. “It’s pretty but seems a bit frou-frou … I thought you were going for a traditional, family name?”

“I am. Tiffany is Webb’s cousin’s name—the one who died of breast cancer … But Mom thinks it’s sort of eighties, tacky … especially now that the brand has become so mass-marketed …”

“Well, I do know a few Tiffanys from Pittsburgh,” I say pointedly. “So maybe she’s right about it being down-market …”

Margot misses my subtle jab and merrily continues. “It makes me think of
Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
Audrey Hepburn … Hey! What about Audrey?”

“I like Audrey more than Tiffany … although it does rhyme with tawdry,” I say.

Margot laughs—she’s a big fan of my playground-teasing litmus test. “What little kid knows the word
tawdry
?”

“You never know,” I say. “And if you stick with the family middle name Sims, her monogram will be ABS … and then she sure better have a flat stomach. Otherwise you set your daughter up for a lifetime of eating disorders …”

Margot laughs again, shaking her head. “You’re nuts.”

“What happened to Louisa?” I say.

For weeks, Louisa—another family name—was the front-runner for the girl’s name. Margot even bought a swimsuit at a children’s clothing trunk show and had it monogrammed with an
L
—just in
case
she has a girl. Which, by the way, is so clearly what Margot wants that I’ve begun to worry about the boy result. Just the night before, I told Andy that Margot was going to be like an actress nominated for an Oscar, waiting for the card to be read. Total suspense followed by elation if she wins—and having to pretend that she’s just as thrilled if she doesn’t.

Margot says, “I love Louisa. I’m just not quite sold on it.”

“Well, you better hurry and get sold on something,” I say. “You only have four weeks.”

“I know,” she says. “Which reminds me—we need to get cracking on that pregnant photo shoot … I’m getting my hair highlighted on Monday, and Webb says he can make it home early any night next week. So whenever you’re free …”

“Right,” I say, remembering a conversation we had months ago in which she asked—and I agreed—to take, in her words, “those artsy, black-and-white belly shots.” It seemed like a fine idea at the time but given my recent frame of mind, I’m just not that juiced to do it, particularly now that I know Webb is going to be in on the action. I picture him gazing at her lovingly, caressing her bare belly, and maybe even planting a kiss on her protruding navel.
Ugh
. How far I’ve fallen. If I’m not careful, I’ll have gone from shooting for
Platform
magazine to wiping baby drool or jangling rattles in front of a cranky toddler.

So, with all this in mind, I say, “Don’t you think that’s a bit … I don’t know …
fromage
?”

Somehow calling her cheesy in French seems to dampen the mean-spiritedness of the question.

For an instant Margot looks hurt, but quickly regroups and says, quite emphatically, “No. I like them … I mean, not to display in the foyer—but for our bedroom or to put in an album … Ginny and Craig had some taken like that, and they’re
really
amazing.”

I refrain from telling her that I’d hardly aspire to be like Ginny and Craig, who top my list of Atlanta irritants.

Ginny is Margot’s oldest, and until I dethroned her, best friend. I’ve heard the story of how they met at least a dozen times, most often from Ginny herself. In short, their mothers bonded in a neighborhood playgroup when their daughters were babies, but then dropped out of the group two weeks later, deciding none of the other mothers shared their sensibilities. (Specifically, one of the other moms served dried Cheerios for a morning snack, which might have been overlooked but for the fact that she also offered up some of the toasted treats to the fellow adults. In a plastic bowl, no less. At which point, Ginny inserts that always annoying and very insincere Southern expression, “Bless her heart.” Translation: “The poor
slob
.”)

So naturally, their mothers seceded from the group to form their own, and the rest is history. From the looks of Margot’s photo albums, the girls were virtually inseparable during their teenage years, whether cheerleading (Ginny, incidentally, always holding Margot’s left heel in their pyramid, which I see as symbolic of their friendship), or lounging about their country club in matching yellow bikinis, or attending teas and cotillions and debutante balls. Always smiling broadly, always with sun-kissed tans, always surrounded by a posse of admiring, lesser beauties. A far cry from the few snapshots I have of me and Kimmy, my best friend from home, hanging out at the Ches-A-Rena roller rink, sporting feathered hair, fluorescent tank tops, and rows of nappy, frayed yarn bracelets.

In any event, just as Kimmy and I went our separate ways after graduation (she went to beauty school and is now snipping the same overlayered do in her salon in Pittsburgh), so did Ginny and Margot. Granted their experiences were more similar, as Ginny attended the University of Georgia and also joined a sorority, but they were still different experiences with different people during an intense time of life—which will take the
B
out of BFF almost every time. To this point, Ginny stayed immersed with the same crowd from Atlanta (at least half of their high school went to UGA), and Margot branched out, doing her own thing at Wake Forest. And part of doing her own thing was bonding with me, a Yankee who didn’t fit into (if not downright defied) the social order of Atlanta. In fact, looking back, I sometimes think that Margot’s befriending me was a way of redefining herself, sort of like following a new, offbeat band. Not that I was alternative or anything, but a Catholic, brown-eyed brunette with a Pittsburgh dialect was definitely a change of pace given Margot’s Southern, society upbringing. Frankly, I also think Margot liked that I was as smart, if not smarter than she, in contrast to Ginny who had passable book smarts, but no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. In fact, from overhearing snippets of their college-era phone conversations, it seemed clear to me that Ginny had no interest in anything other than partying, clothing, and boys, and although Margot shared those interests, she had much more substance under the surface.

So it was pretty predictable that Ginny would become jealous and competitive with me, particularly during those first few years of the gradual power shift. It was never anything overt, just a frostiness coupled with her pointed way of rehashing inside stories and private jokes in my presence. I might have been paranoid, but she seemed to go out of her way to discuss things that I couldn’t relate to—such as their respective silver patterns (both girls’ grandmothers selected their patterns at Buckhead’s Beverly Bremer Silver Shop, upon their birth) or the latest gossip at the Piedmont Driving Club, or the ideal carat size for diamond-stud earrings (apparently anything less than one carat is too “sweet sixteen” and anything more than two-and-a-half is “so new money”).

Over time, as their friendship became more rooted in the past and mine and Margot’s became all about the present, first in college and then in New York, Ginny saw the writing on the wall. Then, when Andy and I got serious, and she realized that no matter how long she and Margot had known each other, I was going to be
family,
it became an absolute given that I would usurp her title and be named Margot’s maid of honor—the unambiguous, grown-up equivalent of wearing best friend necklaces. And although Ginny played the gracious runner-up at all of Margot’s engagement parties and bridesmaid luncheons, I had the distinct feeling that she thought Margot, and Andy for that matter, could have done better.

Yet all of this underlying girly drama wasn’t anything I gave much thought to until after Margot moved back to Atlanta. At first, even she seemed reluctant to entrench herself in the old scene. She was always loyal enough to Ginny—one of Margot’s best traits—but would occasionally drop a casual remark about Ginny’s narrow-mindedness, how she had no desire to vacation any place other than Sea Island, or that she never reads the newspaper, or how “funny” it was that Ginny has never held a single job in her life. (And when I say never, I mean
never
. Not a lifeguarding job in high school nor a brief office job before getting married and instantly having—what else?—a boy, and then, two years later, a girl. She has never collected a single paycheck. And incidentally, to me, someone who has worked consistently since I was fifteen, this fact was beyond funny. It was more akin to knowing conjoined twins or a circus acrobat. Bizarre in the extreme and a bit sad, too.)

But since our arrival in Atlanta, Margot seems to no longer notice these things about Ginny and instead just embraces her as a trusty hometown sidekick making a best friend comeback. And although well-adjusted adults (as I like to consider myself) don’t really do the straight-rank best friend thing, I still can’t help feeling agitated by my blond former nemesis now that I’m catapulted into her stylized, homogenized Buckhead world.

So, when Margot’s next words are, “Oh, by the way, I invited Ginny and Craig over tonight, too. Hope that’s okay?” I smile a big, fake smile and say, “Sounds peachy.”

A fitting adjective for my new Georgian life.

That night, I manage to run late getting ready for dinner, a curious phenomenon of having nothing pressing to do all day. As I wring out my wet hair and slather moisturizer onto my cheeks, I hear Andy run up the steps and call my name in an all’s-right-in-the-world tone, and then add, “Honey! I’m home!”

I think of that purported excerpt from a 1950s home economics textbook that routinely makes its way around the Internet, giving women
dos
and
don’ts
on being a good wife and specifically how we should greet our husbands after a hard day at the office.
Make the evening his … Put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking … Offer to take off his shoes … Talk in a soothing voice
.

I give Andy a kiss on the lips and then say primly, sarcastically, “Good news, dear. Ginny and Craig will be joining us this evening.”

“Oh, come on,” he says, smiling. “Be nice. They’re not so bad.”

“Are too,” I say.

“Be nice,” he says again, as I try to recall if that was in the article.
Always be nice at the expense of the truth.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be nice until the fifth time she calls something ‘super cute.’ After that, I get to be myself. Deal?”

Andy laughs as I continue, mimicking Ginny, “This dress is
super cute.
That crib is
super cute
. Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey were
soo super cute
together. I know it’s a shame about the Middle East turmoil and all, but that breakup is still, like, the saddest thing
ever
.”

Andy laughs again as I turn back toward my huge, walk-in closet, only about a third filled, and select a pair of jeans, leather flip-flops, and a vintage Orange Crush T-shirt.

“You think this is okay for dinner?” I say, slipping the shirt over my head and almost hoping that Andy will criticize my choice.

Instead, he kisses my nose and says, “Sure. You look super cute.”

True to form, Ginny is dressed smartly in a crisp shift dress, strappy sandals, and pearls, and Margot is wearing an adorable pale blue maternity frock, also with pearls. (Granted Margot’s are the whimsical, oversized costume variety tied in the back with a white grosgrain ribbon rather than the good strand her grandmother bequeathed her, but pearls they are.)

I shoot Andy a look that he misses as he bends down to pat Ginny’s hairless Chinese crested puppy named Delores without whom she never leaves home (and, even worse, to whom she habitually applies sunscreen). I swear she prefers Delores to her children—or at least her son, who has such a raging case of ADD that Ginny brags about strategically giving him Benadryl before long car trips or dinners out.