Time of My Life (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

T
he time has come, I realize in late October, to annihilate my closet. Every morning, I’m lost in a sea of mismatched, crumpled clothes, unmoored shoes, and discarded coats and scarves and handbags.
Declutter your space, declutter your mind,
I tell myself on a soggy Saturday afternoon
(Woman’s Day!).

Since our return from Miami two weeks earlier, we’ve been thrown into a tornado of wedding planning, courtesy, primarily, of Vivian.

2:00
P.M.
, Thursday, just as I’m heading into a crucial meeting on the winter Coke campaign: “Jillian dear, just when are you going to set a date? Tick tock! If we don’t nail down the country club now, we’ll never get it! How does April 9 sound?”

8:47
A.M.
, Monday, just as I’m stepping off the subway to head to the office: “Darling, it’s me, Vivian. If we’re going to do a spring wedding, I’m thinking that we should do coral roses and white lilies. It will be just lovely!”

9:29
P.M.
, Friday, just as I’m finally leaving work and meeting Megan and some college friends for a girls’-night-out much-needed drink: “Yoo-hoo, dear, it’s imperative that we book a gown appointment ASAP! We’re pushing this a bit too close already, and you absolutely need six months to get your dress before the big day!”

After Henry and I got engaged, we called my father and shared the news, then phoned Henry’s parents to do the same. And then we both agreed that we wanted the event to be as intimate and non-frenzied as possible.

“Less of a circus, more of a celebration,” he said at the time, and I nodded my head concurring. So I casually flipped through
Brides
and I conferred with him on simple flower choices, and I asked Ainsley and Megan along to try on gowns, but mostly, I let my father and Linda, his girlfriend, work out the fine print. It all seemed so unnecessary—stephanotis versus baby’s breath, butter cream versus fondant, chicken versus steak. Did anyone ever look back at a wedding and say, “Thank God we opted for the cherry swirl in the middle of the cake because without it, it would have been a disastrous evening for all involved!” No. At least, that’s what I told myself at the time, and with Henry’s rational, always rational, opinion sounding in the background, it was easy enough to believe.

Now, maybe it did matter, I think, as I’m knee-deep in sweatpants that I hadn’t seen since college graduation. Maybe the enthusiasm that you put out for the planning trickles over into your early days of marriage, and maybe if I’d seemed a little more game, a little more intoxicated with love for Henry, our relationship wouldn’t have backfired so roundly. Besides, years of reading
Martha Stewart
and
InStyle Weddings
had led to near untoppable vats of knowledge: For an unhappily married woman trapped in suburbia with no hope of throwing a wedding anytime soon, I knew more than I’d earned the right to know about nuptial planning. So, after vetting Vivian’s relentless calls, I agreed to meet her later this month to discuss details with the planner she’s hired.

How did I live like this?
I say to myself, spinning around the wreckage of my walk-in.
How did opening the closet door each morning not make you lose your mind?

I stand on my tiptoes and reach for some partially folded sweaters, their arms hanging loose like a dead man’s, which I hadn’t worn since the year that Jack and I met. Tugging on the only one I can reach, I’m suddenly pelted with raining objects. The entire wire shelf comes careening down, and I jump back from the onslaught.

“You okay?” Jack calls from the living room where he’s attempting to revive his manuscript.

“Alive,” I say back.

“Almost done? I have a surprise for you.”

“A few more minutes,” I sigh.
Way more than a few more minutes.
Where was my
Real Simple,
complete with the perfect organizing tips, when I needed it?

I kick a pair of Levi’s that I’d donned for my twenty-third birthday and crouch down among the debris. Piles of merino wool turtlenecks, musty from years of nonuse; my high-school yearbook with curled pages due to water damage from the apartment above; pashmina scarves that I’d bought in Chinatown when one in every color wasn’t enough; mix tapes for boyfriends whose last names I could barely remember.

But then, peeking out of an old Yellow Pages
(I saved Yellow Pages??),
a corner of a photo catches my eye. I cock my head to make sure that I’m seeing it correctly, but it’s unmistakable. Adrenaline races through me, and my fingers shake almost on cue. I pluck it from the dusty urine-colored pages and sink to the floor, rapt and sickened all at once.

Though I had wiped clean every image, every reminder, of my mother, I’d been unable to release her entirely, and so, as I trekked from my childhood home to my dorms, from my dorms to my adult apartments, I’d always held on to one black-and-white picture, the way that a reformed binger might a piece of chocolate. Always there, just in case you need it. When Jack and I broke up the last time around, I’d moved out, and when packing up my things, I’d stumbled upon the photo. Still burning over my mother’s note and unwelcome reentry into my life, I heaved the photo into the garbage bag, just as I had her letter. Gone and nearly forgotten.

But now, here it was all over again, like
Groundhog Day
for the emotionally impaired.

The shot was taken that same summer that my mother and I had lazed around the yard at dusk and chased fireflies until we were wasted. She and I are in her garden, her temple, as she liked to call it. Long after she’d showered and rubbed herself down in
Charlie
body lotion, she always smelled slightly of soil, and even today, I am reminded of her whenever the scent of dirt wafts through the air. We are perched between her tomato vines and her rows of basil and green beans, and she, with a bandanna in her hair and just a smudge of dirt on her left cheek, is wrapped around me from behind. I’m smiling straight into the camera, but rather than looking at the lens, she is casting down at me, a warm grin on her face, but one filled with sentimentality, not necessarily ebullience. She would leave us only five weeks later.

I stare at the photo with new eyes, eyes now of a mother, and it’s as if I’m looking at it for the first time. In years past, hardened by fury, I’d always seen the photo as literal proof of her betrayal: that she could pretend to love me so vigorously but when the time came, she could disentangle her embrace and forget it entirely. But now I can see it as so much more: that perhaps, what she was doing that day in the garden wasn’t so much as holding me with no love behind the embrace; rather, she was clutching me, as if I were a buoy and the only thing that might save her from drowning. Looking at it again, I can’t believe that I’d never seen this clearly.

Jack pops his head into the closet, snapping me from my trance.

“You ready to head out?”

“A picture of my mother,” I answer, holding it up for him.

He grasps it and pulls it closer, startled. “Jesus, you look just like her.”

I shrug, then tuck the picture into my sock drawer and wade out from the mess, literal and not.

“Your surprise, m’lady,” Jack says, ushering me to the front door.

I force a smile and follow, trying to erase the photo from my mind. Because what’s most haunting isn’t how closely I resemble my mother or even how clearly I can remember that day in the garden. No, what racks me most is how now, years later, I inherently recognize my mother’s loving yet chagrined and weary expression because it’s the same one that I wore like a mask since the very day that Katie was born.

J
ACK’S SURPRISE
, lo and behold, is a new couch. Which on paper, I understand, isn’t particularly romantic or anything really to swoon over, but for him, it’s a concession, and thus, for me, it is indeed something.

“My engagement gift to you,” he says, as we’re ensconced on the second floor of ABC Home. His arm sweeps around. “Have at it. Any one you choose.”

My eyebrows dart down. “Where is my boyfriend and what did you do with him?”

“Fiancé,” he corrects.

“Where is my fiancé and what did you do with him?” I peck him on the lips. I’m still not quite used to saying that.

“Well, you know, now that we’re getting married, I do recognize that the couch of my bachelorhood should maybe take a hike.”

I look at him with suspicion.

“Okay.” He laughs. “And Leigh might have made a comment or two about how disgusting it was when she saw it last month.”

Of course,
I think, though say nothing.

I head over to a supple leather love seat and sink in. Jack opens his mouth to voice an opinion but I hold up a finger, and he snaps it shut with a smile.

“My choice this time!” I say, and he wordlessly plunks down next to me, like an obedient dog. If I’d gotten good at anything during my marriage to Henry, it was mastering the art of tasteful decorating.

A sand-hued, pebbled leather three seater on the other side of the floor looks exactly like what we need to spice up the living room, so I grab Jack’s hand and weave through the sofas and couches and reclining chairs toward it. Just as we’re about to park ourselves smack in the middle, a familiar stride wanders in front of me. The lanky torso, the sloping walk, I’d know it anywhere.

“Henry?” I say, then immediately regret it. My matted hair is tucked into a baseball cap, and my zip-up sweatshirt reeks of closet dust.

“Jill!” he says, his face ebbing into joyfulness when he sees me. He glances at Jack and extends his hand. “Jack, isn’t it?”

“Uh, it is,” Jack responds, reciprocating the shake but clearly having no recollection of their brief introduction at the Coke gala. Before I can explain the connection, a petite redhead slides over to Henry and slips her hand into his back pocket.

“Hey you,” she says, as if we’re not standing there, as if she’s
not slipping her hand into my fucking husband’s back pocket
!

“Er, hey. Celeste, this is Jill. A friend whom I know from around.” Henry swipes his bangs and attempts to tuck them behind his ear. “And this is her boyfriend, Jack.”

“Fiancé, actually,” Jack interjects. “Just happened a few weeks ago!”

“Congratulations, you two!” Celeste squeals, like she’s known us for decades. “How exciting! When is the big day?”

“Um, it’s not set yet,” I mutter. Henry freezes his face into a smile that he’d later reserve for horrid dinner parties that have lingered hours too long; at the first sign of it, I’d take it as our cue to start saying our good-byes. His “I’d rather be riding shotgun to the gates of hell than be here now” smile is exactly how we once classified it, after we’d rushed out of an evening at the Hollands’, who were each screwing coworkers and who had made not-so-veiled references to their mutual antipathy the night through, and after we cried with laughter in the car as we drove home.

“Don’t be silly,” Jack says, rubbing my back. “It’s set for April 9! Save the date! We’re inviting everyone we know.”

“Not everyone,” I demur.

“The country club seats four hundred,” Jack says to Henry and Celeste, as if this were a hard-won bragging right.

“Sounds like fun,” Henry finally manages.

“I’m hoping it might be a bit more intimate,” I say, too awkward to meet his stare. Mostly, I gaze at the floor.

“Oh, when I get married, I want it to be the biggest, most decadent thing anyone has ever seen!” Celeste says.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” Jack laughs. “It’s only once, so to hell with it!” He pauses. “So how long have you two been dating?”

Henry shakes his head almost imperceptibly, but Celeste answers for them both. “Oh, just a few weeks. We met on a blind date, and we couldn’t believe it, right, Hen?” She pokes him. “I mean,
finally
! A date that I don’t have to bail on halfway through.”

“It’s true,” Henry says, seeming to regain his composure and slinging his arm over her shoulders. “Been on enough bad ones to finally deserve a good payoff. Paid our dues and all of that.”

I smile roundly, pressing my cheeks into themselves and pushing my dimples in as far as they can go.

“That is just
wonderful
!” I say. “Wonderful!” I clap my hands for emphasis.

“It is, isn’t it?” Celeste looks at me conspiratorially, as if I’m in on the secret. “I’m so over dating at this point.”

“So you’re already shopping for furniture together?” I can’t help myself.

“No, nothing like that,” Celeste flits her free hand about. Her other one seems firmly entrenched on Henry’s ass. “I just need a new couch, and we were hanging out this weekend, so Hen came with me.” If she weren’t so casual about it, I decide, I’d have to hate her.

She’s probably one of those free spirits who turns into a wild monkey in bed,
I think, then nearly audibly heave at the thought. I glance around to make sure that, in fact, I
haven’t
retched out loud, but none of the three seems to have noticed. Then Celeste removes her hand from his pocket
(about fucking time!)
and rises on her toes to kiss him.