The Sleeping Beauty Proposal (8 page)

Nick has stopped chuckling. “You're serious, aren't you?”

No, I want to say. I'm lying through my teeth. Who the hell would build a house based on the philosophy of Walt Whitman? Still, I continue to press on with my lie as if it were a game.Which it is, kind of.

“As a matter of fact, it was while building this house that Hugh kept a diary on his meditations that turned into
If I Had a Hammer,
his first book. One year later, it was published by an independent press.”

“Because it sucked.” Patty pops open a can of Red Bull that had been keeping company with the tequila in her Tod's shopper. "No big New York publisher would touch it and for good reason. It started out,‘I am a mighty maple, yielding to the sawyer's whim.' Personally, I couldn't get through chapter one.”

Oh, that's good. Really good. I'll have to compliment her later. The thing is, as Patty is well aware, my story's not entirely without merit. (This is the art of a well-crafted lie, to wrap it around a kernel of truth.) Hugh really did build a post-and-beam house—just not
all
of it, only a little part. And that part he ended up having to supervise—albeit against his will—because his doctor warned him in no uncertain terms that one wrong move while heavy lifting and his bad back would be out of commission like that. Hugh was devastated. He really looked forward to hammering and mitering and stuff.

On the bright side, he did get in a lot of journaling.

Now Nick is grinning like he did the other day. It's that same I-know-something-you-don't-know grin and it requires every ounce of my will not to self-combust.

“You know,” he says, putting one hand up against the doorjamb and sticking his other thumb in his belt, thereby striking the ultimate beefcake pose, “I think I may have heard of this Hugh Spencer.”

"Really?” I say with shock, before I can catch myself.

“Really.”

“Interesting.” I am trying very hard not to admire the way his shirt hugs his abs or how his bicep is flexed or how the strong slope of his thigh looks under his worn jeans. He is attempting to cast his spell and I must not be tempted like Patty, the million-dollar litigator, who is transfixed, mouth agape.

"I figured you would,” I say. "He's famous.”

“Oh, I have no doubt. I'd like to meet him and ask him for some ... pointers. Is he around?”

“England,” I reply, my mouth suddenly parched. “Won't be back for the whole summer.”

Patty blurts, “We hope.”

Cripes. Her brain really does go south in the presence of a good-looking man.Thank heavens most of the Massachusetts Bar is ugly or this woman wouldn't have a career to speak of.

Luckily, before Nick can grill me any more, Todd stomps in, red-faced and out of sorts from his phone call with Cecily. "The day I never speak to that woman again can't come soon enough. She must call me every hour, on the hour. Talk about the owner from hell.”

“Have you ever heard of this famous Hugh Spencer?” Nick asks.

"Sure.” Todd gestures to me dismissively. "He's Genie's fiancé. Finally asked her to marry him last night after shacking up with her for four years.”

A kind of dawning realization sweeps across Nick's face, as if he has just put into place the last pieces of a confounding puzzle. “I see.”

His expression raises my concern that perhaps he overheard Patty and me talking about my fake engagement. And, if so, then I've got a potential problem on my hands. Instead of feeling hot, now I'm feeling nervous. Really nervous.

“Then, may I congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials,” Nick says, extending his hand. “I apologize for accusing your future husband of never really building a house. I was totally out of line.”

I take his hand and shake it, Nick's pulse strangely beating against mine. Oddly, he doesn't let go. I'm not sure I can, either.

“Don't feel bad,”Todd says. “Hugh's always telling me how to maintain my car when he's never once done an oil change himself. Too many carcinogens, he says. Can't risk getting cancer every four thousand miles or something. He's just book learning. Lots of tweed and elbow patches, if you catch my drift.”

I don't care if Todd's losing my argument for me. Because right now I have bigger worries—like whether Nick knows I'm not really engaged to Hugh and, worse, whether he's going to reveal my precious secret to Todd.

Chapter Five

I don't want to pretend that I'm engaged anymore.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Nick and how he looked leaning against the doorjamb. It might
seem
as if my desire not to be engaged might have something to do with Nick and my curiosity about how he looks with those jeans off, but, really, nothing could be further from the truth.

Nor do I want to sleep around as a free woman—Patty's theory. It is just like Patty to distill the most noble of human actions, whether rocketing to the moon or unraveling our DNA, into two basic drives: greed and sex.

Sex is fine for some women, women who excel at the physical gymnastics of love. But as I've been disqualified from the sex kitten club (thanks to Hugh), I will have to hope that eventually some kind and decent man will appreciate me for my mind. I will take up knitting and he will wear slippers and together we will watch PBS before retiring to our separate beds.

I'm sure we'll be very happy. In a way.

Honestly, there is one simple, fundamental, and honorable reason why I want to stop this charade and that is this: If Nick overheard Patty call my engagement a crock of shit, then it is just a matter of time before Nick lets my secret slip to Todd. I would much rather tell Todd the truth myself than have him hear it from his carpenter over a beer at the Cambridge Grill.

But first, I need to come clean to my parents. Starting tonight.

The weekly Sunday dinner with my parents is my mother's single-handed attempt to delay the unraveling of her matrilineal dominance over our family.

For years she reigned supreme, withholding allowances or the family car from those of her children who misbehaved, bestowing her mad money on and extending curfew for those who bent to her will. (Notice I did not say “behaved.”)

Then we drifted off like dandelion seeds in a summer breeze. First, Todd left to go to school, and when he refused to come home—though he lived right down the road in Cambridge—my mother saw the writing on the wall.

She was not happy about her waning power. She threw fits. She threatened. She cajoled, and, at her most evil, she baked sour cream apple pie and deposited it outside Todd's dorm room with a note: “See what you missed?”The plate was empty, aside from a puny sliver, just enough to fan the flames of apple-pie addiction.

Don't even ask about her late-night calls to him about Leroy, Todd's beloved Jack Russell terrier, whom she hysterically claimed was wasting away from “Boy Abandonment Syndrome.” Thank God Todd was smart enough to call the vet, who—after collapsing on the floor in a fit of laughter—confirmed there was, in fact, no such disease, though Leroy's diarrhea might disappear if our mother quit feeding him leftover sour cream apple pie.

I was the next to fly the nest and, warned in advance by Todd, would not acquiesce to her absurd demand that I return
every weekend
“to rest”—no matter how enticing her offers of clean bedding, washed laundry, a quiet house, free meals, HBO, and endless hot showers might be. Lucy, the youngest, was smarter. She fled to Charlottesville to attend the University of Virginia. With her my mother didn't try so hard. By then, I think, she was exhausted anyway. Plus, she had run out of tricks. Lucy didn't even have a dog.

All was going fine until we made our fatal mistake: Todd returned home after traveling the world for two years, Lucy married Jason and moved to nearby Concord, New Hampshire, to run Jason's family business, and I, well, I never went anywhere. I just stayed. For the first time in years, all of us were within my mother's reach. And that's when she bared her claws.

We didn't stand a chance. Before we knew what was happening, Mom's Sunday dinners were required attendance. Only Hugh managed to weasel out of them and that was largely due to his ability to stutter his way out of anything.

Though I love my sister and can, usually, tolerate her goody-two -shoes husband, I am extremely disappointed to see their Windstar in my parents' driveway when I arrive. Telling my parents that I made up my engagement with Hugh will be painful all by itself; having perfect Jason and Lucy there to witness my shame will be intolerable.

I park at the curb, apply a modest coat of Honey Blush lipstick, grab the plate of brownies I made, and set my shoulders back. I march past my mother's roses to the patio, where my family, a smoldering charcoal fire, and certain damnation await.

“There she is! There's the bride-to-be!” My father throws down his Sunday newspaper and stands to greet me with open arms. “Nance! Lucy! Come on. Our Eugenia's here.”

If he's calling me “our Eugenia,” then this is going to be worse than I expected. My father is in a cheerful, short-sleeve madras shirt that only a sinister wife like Nancy Michaels would order from
Sears.com
for her husband. I have barely put down the plate of brownies when he smushes me against him and starts mumbling something about me being such a great daughter. He smells of barbeque and vodka.

Darn.They've started already.

“She's here. She's here!” This is my mother screaming as she whips back the sliding screen door and dashes to the patio. She practically flings a Saran Wrap-covered plate of marinated chicken (from Whole Foods—my mother never cooks if she can help it) onto the glass table and rips me from Dad's arms. “My baby girl's getting married. At last, at last.”

I sniff for the telltale vodka and find it under a layer of Trident cinnamon gum and another layer of Chanel No. 5. This could ruin all my plans. If Mom and Dad are truly on the road to Tanktown, there's no way I can drop the bomb. Dad will go ballistic and Mom will start sobbing. It'll be a mess.

“We never thought this day would come,” she blathers. “Four years. Four long years.Who knew?”

Not Hugh, that's for sure.

Dad puts his hand on my shoulder, paternally. “We figured you'd die a spinster. A dried-up old thing in lace. Just like your crazy old aunt Tilley.”

“Thanks, Pop. I appreciate that.” I must maintain my good humor.

Mom appraises me at arm's length as if I've just returned from a tour of duty overseas. As always, she is impeccably dressed in a Carolina Herrera white shirt. (The only shirt she wears. She's got, like, fifty.) And a pink and green Lilly Pulitzer wrap skirt. Her silver highlighted hair is pushed back from her face with her standard headband, thereby showcasing her famous Howland cheek-bones. (Mom openly brags that she can trace her ancestry back to
Mayflower
passenger John Howland—a claim to which my father responds, “You and half of America.”)

Tears spring to her eyes. “We're so glad it's Hugh. I can't tell you how glad.”

"And not that loser who sold T-shirts. What's his name ...” My father looks off, trying to remember. "Tommy.”

"Toby,” I correct.“He wasn't a loser. He was an assistant political science professor who printed T-shirts protesting the war and donated his profits to Amnesty International.”

Dad rolls his eyes as if there couldn't be a bigger waste of time than the pursuit of world peace.

Mom says, “At least Toby wasn't as bad as Kent. Honey, if you had married him, your father and I were prepared to abduct you and take you to one of those deprogrammers.”

She needn't have worried. Kent, like Hugh, had no intention of marrying me. Not because of my sexual inadequacy (though, you never know) but because I wouldn't go into therapy and admit my parents were self-centered social alcoholics who had never re-affirmed my validity as a person. As if I needed to shell out $200 an hour to learn that.

“Taken that boy out to the woodshed and strapped his behind is what I should have done,” Dad is saying, his hand balling into a fist.

"We don't have a woodshed,” I point out. “And Kent was six-three and outweighed you by thirty pounds. You wouldn't have stood a chance.”

“Oh, well. All's well that ends well.” This is Mom's standard line for changing the subject. “The point is we need to plan, plan, plan. Your wedding's in September. That doesn't give us much time. Are you sure you don't want to put it off a bit?”

Here, suddenly, is my out. Handed to me like dessert on a platter. A delay.What a brilliant idea. "Actually, Mom ...”

She lets out a screech. "What am I talking about? You don't want to put it off.You've waited all this time—of course you want to get him to the altar before he changes his mind!”

With this my mother—who I've just concluded is perhaps more soused than I initially assessed—sweeps her arm so wide it hits the umbrella at the center of the glass picnic table and the whole thing wobbles.

Fortunately, Lucy's there to catch it.As always, she is smashingly coiffed and composed, in a yellow halter top and white shorts that emphasize her toned physique. This comes from her daily schedule of working out, doing yoga, and assiduously avoiding any task smacking of actual employment.

Somewhere along the line, Lucy went from being my snotty kid sister, younger by a whopping eight years, who blew off her bills and nicked her car on fire hydrants (she is the worst parallel parker
ever
! ), to being a responsible, prudent hausfrau. It was as though the moment she said those marriage vows, people decided she was mature and stable while I, in my singleness, was reduced to the family baby.