Читать книгу Confessions Of An Ex-Girlfriend - Lynda Curnyn - Страница 8

“Ex-Girlfriends are made, not born.”

—Emma Carter, recovering Ex-Girlfriend

Confession: I should have seen it coming.

M y friend Jade claims that if you’re dating a serial killer, he will, however subtly, let you know his intentions from date one. And if you are especially attracted to said serial killer, you will merely nod and smile at this admission, then promptly forget it.

It’s true that on our first date Derrick told me he’d be moving to the West Coast just as soon as he sold his first screenplay. But since this comment came just moments after our first kiss—complete with a sunset view of the Hudson, along which we were romantically strolling—I did not register that he would one day be leaving me but only that a) he was an amazing kisser, and b) he was a writer, which essentially translated into soulmate for me. I was a writer…of sorts.

Now it’s a horrible fact of New York City life that every man you pine for is either too ambitious, too creative or too desired by the rest of the world to even have the time of day for you. Yet somehow, after spending the past two years of weekend nights curled up with Derrick on the futon in my rent-stabilized studio, I had mistaken us for a couple Meant-To-Be. Especially considering how we got together against all odds.

We met on the West 4th Street Subway platform, the uptown side. The main reason I noticed Derrick was that we were dressed similarly, in black T-shirts and jeans. And there was something so stumbling and shy about the way he was trying to catch my eye, I could hardly resist. “Hi,” he said, meandering closer.

For a neurotic instant, I thought of those nutballs who had lately been pushing unsuspecting women onto the tracks, but when I saw his neatly trimmed goatee, I felt an odd sense of security. There was something soothing, yet edgy, about a man with a goatee. I also remember being startled by the clear blue color of his eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Oh, and the glasses got me, too. I love a man in glasses.

It was summer, and the air hung thickly around us. “Hot down here,” Derrick remarked.

“Like an armpit,” I replied, not thinking.

This was exactly the kind of blunt little vulgarity Jade had warned me against time and again. “There are some things you just can’t say to a guy if you ever hope to have sex with him.”

Derrick did look at me rather oddly, then gave a half laugh and proceeded to move on to introduce himself, “I’m Derrick, by the way.”

“Emma,” I blurted, as the subway car pulled up, rescuing us from our awkward dialogue.

In fact, the thing I loved about Derrick immediately was that he was so “unsmooth”—so unprepared to seduce me that I was immediately seduced. “Heading out of town for the weekend?” he asked, eyeing my oversize pocketbook.

“No,” was my less-than-scintillating rejoinder.

“Oh.” He studied my bag with a frown. “I am. Jersey shore.” And he held up a bag which, to me, looked like it would barely hold a bottle of suntan lotion and a change of underwear. But then, I was talking to an attractive man—this was not the time to mince words.

When the train pulled into Penn Station—his stop—just moments after I had explained that I was headed up to 85th Street to check out the Guggenheim exhibit on “Phallic Inevitability and the Surrealist School”—a conversational gambit that earned me an eyebrow raised in admiration—I made my first tactical error. Although Jade had advised me endlessly never to make the first move, I jumped off the train right after Derrick. What could I do? Seeing him on the platform fumbling for a pen to take my number as the doors stood temptingly open but in serious danger of swinging shut at any moment—destroying my every hope for happiness—I panicked.

“Oh, I thought you were going…” he began, puzzled.

“It’s better if I transfer here,” I replied quickly, hoping he wouldn’t realize this didn’t exactly make sense.

With a look that resembled relief, he produced a pen and a small scrap of paper and handed it to me. When I was done, he wrote his number down on the same paper before nervously tearing it in two and handing me half. Glancing at his watch, he mumbled a brief but endearingly warm goodbye. Then he was gone, leaving me dreamy-eyed on the platform.

Dreamy-eyed for all of three minutes.

Because as I stood there contemplating the two of us entwined in intimate conversation over drinks at some hip little boaîte downtown—maybe Bar Six or Lansky’s Lounge—I felt a flicker of doubt. To verify that I did, in fact, score an incredibly cute guy’s phone number, I glanced at the folded scrap of paper still clutched in my hand. With sudden horror, I realized the number I held was my own.

“Made for each other,” Jade said when I told her the story. “Neither one of you is ever going to get laid, judging by the number of attempts you probably have between you.”

I turned to my friend Alyssa for comfort, instead. Unlike Jade, Lys always managed to see a brighter side to things. When I explained how I hadn’t even given him a last name so he could look me up, she said hopefully, “Maybe he’ll take out an ad in the personals, looking for you. You know, some people do that. They even have a page devoted to things like this in the Voice. You’ve seen the ads: ‘Saw you on the A train. You, brunette, soft green eyes—’”

“My eyes are hazel.”

“‘Shy and sweet.’”

“Me?”

“Well, on first impression you can be!” Once again adopting the voice of the man she had never met but believed capable of such grand romantic gestures, she continued, “‘Me, writer looking for a beauty like you. Thought I found you but you got away. Please call….’”

“Not a chance. Guys don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Then you do it, Em. Take an ad! C’mon, what have you got to lose?”

“My sense of self-worth?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I used to read those ads, Lys,” I explained. “All the time. I used to think they were romantic, too. But the more you read the personals, the more you realize there are a lot of pretty desperate people out there. I mean, c’mon. To think that somebody might mistake a random encounter—the equivalent of stepping on someone’s foot in a crowd—for Kismet. Gimme a break.”

“Oh, here she comes. The cynic.”

It’s true I was a cynic in the pre-Derrick period. But who could blame me? At the time, I was twenty-nine years old, and had dated enough men to know that my soulmate would likely turn out to be nothing more than a good-fitting pair of shoes.

But then, destiny intervened. Two weeks after the hapless sub way encounter, as I shared coffee and the Sunday night blues with Alyssa at the Peacock Café, I spotted Derrick, sitting two tables away and wearing the most perfectly faded pair of Levi’s I had yet to find in my own endless thrift-store searches.

“Hey,” he said, jumping up and almost knocking over the tiny table in front of him. “It’s you.” And suddenly he was standing over the table looking down at me in amazement.

I stood, too, staring at his adorable face in disbelief and leaving Alyssa to gawk up at us, a smile spreading across her features.

“I can’t believe what an idiot I was that day,” he said.

“Me too.” I replied, Jade’s warning voice a mere whisper as I stammered through a ridiculously elated dialogue about how absolutely retarded I’d felt when I discovered the mix-up.

“I told you it was fate,” Alyssa said dreamily when he left our table fifteen minutes later, my number safely tucked in the pocket of his denim jacket.

Fate. This had come from the very same Alyssa who days ago had officially declared Derrick the man I needed to put out of mind. Forever.

Confession: Contrary to popular belief, I am not better off without him.

Even Derrick had the gall to attempt to come up with reasons why I should be happy, even though he was leaving me. According to him, I had a dream life. How many people, he argued, could claim that they had spent the better part of their twenties in the best city in the world?

“If it’s such a great city,” I argued back, “why are you leaving it?”

Then he explained once again, in the calm, rational voice I had begun to abhor in him during those last, angst-ridden days, that all his career opportunities were in L.A. That now that he had sold his screenplay, the studio wanted to hire him on as a script doctor. That he was better off on the West Coast.

Without me, I thought in silence that followed his speech. And as I considered throwing myself at his feet and begging him to take me away from this glorious city, he changed tactics.

“You have so much here,” he argued. “Your own apartment. A career.”

Now this statement requires some clarification.

First, my apartment. If the words “walk-in closet” send a tremor of longing through you, think again. My walk-in closet contains a bed, a dresser, a desk and a bookshelf that has seen better days. Oh, and did I mention the Barbie kitchen along one wall? Yes, that’s right. My apartment is a walk-in closet. Of course, there is something to be said for the fact that it’s not only rent-stabilized but below 14th Street—the only neighborhood really worth living in, in my opinion.

Now as for my career…when asked the inevitable “what do you do?” question at parties, the answer I give is that I am a writer for a national women’s magazine. This is not a lie, though my job is hardly as cool as this sounds. In truth, I am a contributing editor at Bridal Best, where I compose captions, headlines and—with ever-increasing frequency—articles on such subjects as “Hot Honeymoon Escapes” and “Wedding Dresses You Can Breathe In.”

At best, my illustrious career at Bridal Best could be called a happy accident, for it started as a two-week stint as an office temp which turned into a permanent position when Carolyn Jamison, the senior features editor I work for, took a personal interest in keeping me on. How could I resist all her encouragement when, up till then, the master’s degree in Creative Writing I had gotten at NYU had resulted only in a handful of unpublished stories and a full-time waitressing position?

Now, as I sat filled with self-loathing in an editorial meeting on the Wednesday morning of Derrick’s departure, counting the minutes until his plane left the ground and carried him away from me, I began to wish I hadn’t resisted the impulse to call him at 3:00 a.m. to let him know what a heartless bastard he was.

Looking up from my cloud of despair, I saw Patricia Landers, Bridal Best’s editor-in-chief, stand up to give us her weekly address. “At Bridal Best our editorial mission is to speak to the bride in every woman,” Patricia began, “whether she is simply dreaming of that special day, or taking the first steps toward making that day happen.”

Step 1: Don’t let your boyfriend leave the state.

I sighed, suddenly weary of the wedding planning mantra that was sure to issue forth from Patricia’s thin lips. As I studied her wispy blond hair, pale face and crisp blue eyes, I wondered if this would be my fate. To be the ultrathin, somewhat prim yet rather well-kept editor-in-chief of a national magazine. A career woman who needed no man, only a fat paycheck and enough take-home assignments to make her forget that there was so much more to life than work.

Then I remembered something else.

Unlike me, Patricia was married. And as dubious as that marriage was rumored to be, it set her miles apart from a manless and struggling contributing editor like myself.

My eyes moved frantically about the table, where the illustrious editorial team of Bridal Best sat, seemingly transfixed by Patricia’s words. There was Rebecca, the only office colleague I deigned to call a friend and who shared my enthusiasm for taking pott shots at the powers-that-be. But Rebecca had a boyfriend—worse, an incredibly perfect boyfriend, who not only had a high-paying accountant job but came from money. Big money. Then there was my boss, Caroline, of course, who was round with her fourth child, compliments of the hardworking husband she kept back at her sprawling Connecticut home. The other three senior features editors were married, too. Sandra, whose wedding to Roger two years earlier had been almost as splashy as Patricia’s; Debbie, pushing fifty and married for so many years no one even remembered what her husband looked like; Carmen, who not only had a husband but—according to our production assistant and resident office gossip Marcy Keller—a boyfriend on the side. Janice in production was married two times over, despite the hairy mole on the side of her face. Who was left among us single folk but the editorial assistants, who were too young to care?

I glanced down at the end of the table and swallowed hard as I caught sight of the strange trio who sat clustered there: Lucretia Wenner, the angry copy chief who neither woman nor man could truly love; Nancy Hamlin, the bodily pierced and butch admin everyone suspected was a dyke; and Marcy Keller, who spent so much time studying everyone else’s personal life she barely had one of her own. I quickly closed my eyes, shutting out the hopeless look in their eyes that not even their bitter smiles could mask.

Oh God, was this what I had to look forward to?

Confession: I am not ready to be an ex-girlfriend.

This fact became glaringly apparent on my first real weekend of singledom. Derrick had flown out only three days prior with a promise to call once he was settled, though we had agreed that from now on, we were strictly friends. I will confess right now that he is the only “friend” I have ever had whom I secretly wished would fail miserably. In fact, I was practically preparing for the day when he would return to NYC, tail between his legs, begging me to take him back.

Though Jade had invited me out for a girls’ night out with a couple of her friends from Threads, the fashion magazine where she worked as a clothes stylist, I opted to avoid an evening of gyrating on a dance floor looking fat and unfashionable next to Jade and her pseudosupermodel friends, in favor of a quiet evening at Alyssa’s.

“You’ve been denied your right to be angry, Em,” Alyssa explained after she’d set me up with a martini. Two sips of it made me fall into a state of self-pity that I was attempting to wallow in until Lys cut me off with her “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” brand of advice.

Sighing long and deep, I watched as she slid mushrooms expertly into a pan for the gourmet dinner she was cooking for her live-in boyfriend, Richard, who had yet to arrive home from his high-powered—and, need I say, high-paying—job as a corporate lawyer. Alyssa was a lawyer, too, but one of those earthy-crunchy ones who fight to save trees and make tap water fit for human consumption. In addition to being a top environmental lawyer and all-around hell of a gal, she liked to whip up heart-healthy, mind-expanding meals with names like wheat gluten casserole with roasted baby corn. Somehow these qualities, which I’d always admired in Alyssa before, began to depress me as I watched her cook. Is this what it took to maintain Girlfriend status? Maybe I should have made more of an effort with Derrick, whipped up something heartier than coffee with Cremora on all those Sunday mornings we spent together.

“Just because he had a perfectly good reason to leave doesn’t mean you don’t have a perfectly good reason to be angry,” Alyssa continued, sautéing in earnest now, her curly brown shoulder-length hair swept up into a ponytail, her brow furrowed over her bright blue eyes.

Though Alyssa knows me better than most, when it comes to this ex-girlfriend business she cannot relate. After all, Lys has been successfully dating since puberty. Once I asked her how she always managed to have a boyfriend on hand, and she laughed, saying she usually hung on to the guy long enough for them to grow completely sick of each other, then broke up with him just as New Boyfriend stood waiting in the wings.

Now if this were any other girl, I might have said Alyssa suffered from Chronic Boyfriend Syndrome—a condition that leads many women not only to date, but also to plan their lives around men who are for the most part reprehensible but seem preferable to the other option…which is no boyfriend at all. But I can honestly say that despite her claims, I am sure Alyssa never dated a guy out of this kind of neediness. It is just that she is utterly lovable—so lovable, in fact, that most men upon meeting her wish they had an Alyssa of their very own.

Her current beau, Richard, the first man Alyssa has ever dared live with and, I must admit, the best guy she’s ever been with, is a perfect example of this. Richard was the roommate of Alyssa’s last boyfriend, Dan. They were all in law school together, and since Alyssa pretty much lived at Dan’s place in order to avoid her own awful roommate, Richard took every opportunity to bond with her whenever he was in her warm and fun-loving presence. I can just imagine his joy when Dan up and moved back home to Ohio to practice law with his father’s firm, leaving Alyssa free and clear for Richard, who had already fallen hopelessly in love with her from the sidelines.

Now, as Alyssa looked up from her mushrooms, silently demanding my assent to her psychobabble, I struggled for words to explain how I felt.

“I don’t think I’m angry, Lys. I think I just miss him, is all.”

“Well, get angry, Em,” Alyssa said, turning from her sauté to look at me. “You’re not going to get over this unless you do.”

The thought of getting over Derrick horrified me. Derrick was the man I loved. My soulmate. Getting over him was not an option.

“Mmm-hmm,” I muttered vaguely in response, and while I sat pondering the audacity of her suggestion, I found myself agreeing to stay to dinner with her and Richard, which, I realized later, was a mistake. As I watched them exchange tidbits of their day along with meaningful glances, one thing became very clear: I needed to get a life. A life that didn’t involve…couples.

Confession: I have been operating under the mistaken belief that I would never, ever, have to enter the dating world again.

I called Jade first thing Saturday morning and practically begged her to have brunch with me. And despite a slight hangover, best bud that she is, she agreed to drag herself out of the house before dusk.

We met at French Roast, mostly because they had outdoor seating and Jade would be able to smoke. As I sat waiting for her at five to one—I am chronically early, a habit I developed probably to have something to hold over the chronically-late-but-otherwise-perfect Derrick’s head—I looked forward to some solid single-girl bolstering. After all, Jade was one of the few friends I had who seemed fearless in the face of the battleground that was the NYC dating scene. She never seemed to suffer the same kind of losses other women did. When she gave out her number, the man always called. Sometimes she didn’t even pick up the phone—that’s how sure of herself she was.

At one-fifteen, she breezed up to the sidewalk table I had secured, looking effortlessly gorgeous in capri pants and a tank that showed off her toned shoulders. Jade is one of those women who was born to wear clothes—a perfect size 6 with just enough bust to matter and no hips. Her hair, a deep, rich shade of red, fell in soft waves down her back, seemingly without effort or design. Her eyes are green, her skin smooth and flawless over high cheekbones. She is the kind of woman other women would hate if they could, simply by virtue of the fact that no man can ignore her when she is in a room. But there is something about her that is irresistible to both men and women. It amazes me sometimes that we are even friends, she graceful and self-assured, me always fumbling and often angry. Yet we’ve known each other since grade school and are bonded together by shared memories of first bras, first boyfriends and first successful undereye coverage finds. When she was edging toward twenty, a photographer encouraged Jade to put together a portfolio and she did, but when the time came to submit it to modeling agencies, she shrugged off the opportunity, as if it were something anyone could do. As it turned out, after various attempts at other careers, she landed a job on the other side of the camera, working as a clothes stylist for Threads Magazine.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, giving me a solid one-arm hug, then pulling back to look into my eyes—gauging my mood, I suppose—before she slid into the chair across from me. First we ordered, she the niçoise salad—not because she needed to eat light, but because she liked to, believe it or not—me, the smoked salmon hash with eggs—a fancier version of the kind of greasy, carbohydrate-laden meal I chose whenever I was throwing myself a pity party. Then she said, “Okay, spill. What’s going on with you? Are you moping? I can see you’re moping. He’s not worth it. No guy is, really.”

And so I began my discourse on how my life had suddenly lost all meaning now that I had gone from Happily Coupled-Off to Horribly, Achingly Single…and all before Memorial Day weekend, no less.

“Alyssa says I’m unable to get angry because he left me for a good reason. It’s true I can’t really get angry at Derrick for going after his dream. I mean, all he’s ever wanted to do was make a living at writing, and when he sold that screenplay, he got the chance to do it—in L.A.”

Jade lit a cigarette, making me painfully aware that I no longer smoked, despite the occasional desperate urge I suffered. “So let me ask you something. If you are so heartbroken without him, why don’t you go after him? Move to L.A.”

Leave it to Jade to go straight for the jugular, asking the question I didn’t even want to ask myself. “And give up my career?” I said, practically parroting Derrick’s rationale for not inviting me with him, a point that still jabbed at my ego.

“At Bridal Best?” she asked, her eyes bulging in disbelief.

“I am next in line for a promotion, you know,” I said defensively, realizing how ridiculous I suddenly sounded, glorifying my day job. The very job I took great delight in mocking whenever Jade and I got into a gripefest about work, usually over drinks during a Friday night happy hour. But how could I explain to Jade, who knew that all I’d ever wanted to be was a writer, that for the past two years of my life—The Derrick Years as I imagined I would one day call them—my creativity had been confined to my role as editor at a magazine? A magazine, as I often joked, that thrived on the fact that happily-ever-after was not only every woman’s ambition, but a prosperous industry. There had been room for only one writer in our relationship, and Derrick, with a screenplay under his belt as well as a string of short stories published in literary journals, had won the role hands down. As for myself, I hadn’t written a word for the last year and a half. Not that Jade knew that. No one knew, really. Except Derrick. There was no hiding your failures from someone who spent seventy-five percent of his life in your one-room studio.

“Besides, how could I give up my rent-stabilized apartment?” I added weakly as the waitress came by with our meals.

While Jade blew out a last puff of smoke, staring at me as she stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray, I tried to bury myself in my meal, avoiding her gaze. Jade knows me better than anyone, sometimes even better than I know myself, and I was not yet ready to face whatever ugly truths I was hiding from myself.

“Emma—”

“The truth is, Jade, he didn’t want me with him while he went off to become rich and famous. He doesn’t want—me.”

Her eyes were soft when I looked up again, and somehow her pity stung more than her anger might have.

“What you need is a nice rebound relationship. And I know just the guy,” she said, resolve firming in her eyes as she dug into her salad. “I just styled him the other day for an outerwear shoot.”

“I don’t date models.” Translation: they don’t date me. “You don’t even date models anymore.” After months of trying to keep one around long enough for at least one evening of unparalleled ecstasy, even Jade finally realized they were too self-absorbed to truly seduce. At least I hoped she realized that.

“C’mon, Emma. You know the best thing you can do for your self is get right back out there. Besides, this guy might even be nice.”

“Then why don’t you go for him?” I asked, studying her expression. I always distrusted the idea of dating the men Jade passed over herself. She was such a solid judge of masculine virtues, I knew that if she didn’t want the guy, she must have found some serious flaw she would never fess up to while she was trying to sell me on him.

“He’s not my type.”

Now I knew he was flawed. “Forget it.”

“I might even be able to line him up for next weekend.”

“Next weekend?” I said, shocked she might even suggest that I—with that extra five or so pounds of relationship flab firmly intact on my thighs and my emotions still tattered and flapping in the wind—might be ready to sit across a smoke-filled table from a startlingly handsome man and utter meaningless words designed to make myself seem just as accomplished and attractive as he was. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to get through this weekend, never mind next. Speaking of which, what are you doing later? Want to see a movie?” I asked, hoping to avoid an evening alone.

“Can’t. I have a date.”

“Really? With Steroid King?”

“You mean Carl? No, he’s history,” she said. “I told you—he couldn’t, you know, perform. I don’t think you should have to deal with penal dysfunction in a man unless you’re in love with him. You remember what I went through with Michael?”

Michael was the man I would say came the closest to being the love of Jade’s life, except that he brutally dumped her for some dippy little blonde from his office after she struggled for over a year to put up with his vanity, his immaturity and, worst of all, his impotence—not that he ever called it that. He just claimed not to be interested in having sex with Jade, which did wonders for her ego. Ever since their breakup two years ago, Jade has done everything in her power to keep her heart out of it and go strictly for kicks—all those kicks she never really got from Michael, sexually speaking. But the great irony of her life has been that despite the fact that she is beautiful, intelligent and financially self-sufficient, she can’t seem to find a man in all of NYC capable of delivering a satisfying sexual experience. Having gone through some dry spells myself since moving to NYC, I could sympathize. In fact, we often joked that we could start our own sitcom, called No Sex in the City. Carl had merely been Jade’s latest dating experiment—a musclehead so pumped up on steroids, he couldn’t seem to get a rise out of any other part of his anatomy.

“No, this is a guy from the gym, too, but he’s the real thing. Gorgeous, in that lean, surfer’s body kind of way.”

“Let me guess…he’s a model.”

“Yeah, but he’s very down-to-earth,” she argued, leaning back from the salad she’d barely touched to sip her water.

Though Jade didn’t like to hear it, I firmly believed her trouble with men began with her selection. She had always been a connoisseur of the beautiful people, which was probably why she was such a high-in-demand stylist in the fashion industry. But what she apparently hadn’t figured out yet was that that beautiful men all had one thing in common and that was an inability to love—or even desire—anyone more than they loved themselves.

“I know what you’re thinking, Em,” she said, “but this time I have the best of both worlds. Ted is beautiful, but I get the feeling he doesn’t even realize just how beautiful.”

“Hence, his career choice.”

“Please. The guy was living out in the middle of a cornfield in the Midwest when a scout spotted him at a club.”

“This story sounds familiar.” Why was it that no models ever seemed to actually apply for the glamorous, high-paid jobs they wound up in?

“He almost seems…innocent,” Jade continued. “I mean, he practically blushed when I gave him my phone number.”

“You’re kidding?”

She started to laugh, then lit a cigarette. “So what are you going to do tonight? Go out with Alyssa?” Jade and Alyssa had become fast friends from the moment I introduced them in college, despite their very different personalities.

“No, no. She’ll probably be doing something with Richard. And there is no way I can deal with a night of hanging with the Happily-Almost-Married.”

“Well, I don’t think you should stay home,” Jade advised. “Want to meet up with me and Ted for drinks?”

“His name is Ted?”

“I know. Doesn’t it sound almost…harmless?”

“Very boy next door.”

“Well? What do you say? Drinks with me and Ted Terrific?”

“Naw. No, really. I want to stay home. You know. Get into myself again. Maybe I’ll do a little renovating. I’ve been meaning to move my bookshelves. Maybe hang a few pictures.”

“Are you sure?” Jade demanded.

“Of course I’m sure. It’s not like I’ve never spent Saturday night alone before.”

Confession: I have not spent Saturday night alone for two years.

This wasn’t exactly true, as there had been times when Derrick spent Saturday night home writing, and I spent Saturday night home alone, also writing. Or at least that’s what I told Derrick whenever he suggested we take Saturday off to catch up. “Oh, sure. I’ve been meaning to get started on a short story I’ve been thinking about,” I would always say. After we hung up, I would turn my computer on, and as it booted up, I would start hand-washing all my lingerie or organizing my sock drawer. If things got really desperate, I would take an old toothbrush and some cleanser to the grout in the bathroom. If Derrick happened to call during these binges of avoidance to ask what I was up to, I always replied, “working.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

Now I didn’t dare turn on the computer. Couldn’t even bring myself to gather up the hand-wash, for fear of the memories it might conjure up. Instead I curled up on the bed, fetus-style, contemplating the night ahead of me.

I had already called Alyssa and learned that she and Richard were going to Richard’s sister’s house for dinner, confirming that I was, indeed, alone for the evening, without even friends to call. There was always my office pal, Rebecca, but she and I have never ventured into weekend territory together. Then there was Sebastian, my hairdresser and sometimes friend—that is, when Fire Island or some handsome new man didn’t beckon him away. But I hadn’t spoken to Sebastian in a while and felt like a fraud calling him up now, expecting him to be there for me when I hadn’t been much of a friend to him lately.

“Do something for yourself,” Alyssa had said when we spoke on the phone, “take a hot bath, do one of those home facials, curl up with a good book.” I knew she was right. That was what I should have done. It was, in fact, what was advised by every woman’s magazine and every relationship self-help book—not that I’d read any, but my mother always reads enough for both of us.

Instead I gorged myself on a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, overplucked my eyebrows and proceeded to pore over old photos of Derrick and me on vacation last summer in East Hampton, where we had rented a house with some of his friends. I studied that face I loved so much, saw the happiness in his eyes as we stood, arms entwined, tanned, rested and utterly in love. Or so I thought.

What had gone so wrong? I wondered now.

The phone rang, shattering the gloomy silence of my apartment. I picked it up, then remembered—too late—that I should be screening on this first Saturday night alone.

“Emma! You’re home! I didn’t think I’d catch you—”

“Hi, Mom.” There I was, caught by my mother, home on a Saturday night. “Yeah, well, figured I’d stay in tonight, catch up on a few things. How are you?”

“Fine, fine. Clark just went out to get some milk and eggs for the morning and I just thought I’d try you, see if you were around.”

Clark was my mother’s current boyfriend, and despite the fact that they had been together close to three years, I didn’t trust things to last. It wasn’t that Clark wasn’t the greatest guy in the world for my mother, it was that my mother didn’t have the best luck with men. I was starting to wonder if it was hereditary.

“So how’s everything with Derrick?” my mother asked. This question was a fairly routine one, occurring as it does at least once during our weekly phone calls. There was a subtext to it, which my mother will firmly deny if challenged: Is everything progressing normally? Will there be an engagement announcement soon? Am I ever going to see a grandchild?

I tended to ignore the subtext and answer with a cheerful “Everything’s fine.” And somehow, despite the fact that my mother would more than likely never see that grandchild now that her thirty-one-year-old daughter’s last chance had just up and left for L.A., putting that daughter—who had an average rate of two years between boyfriends, with one in three of those boyfriends actually being tolerable enough to consider propagating with—pretty much out of the running for motherhood. Despite all of that, I stuck to my faithful reply: “Everything’s fine. Derrick is fine. We’re fine.”

I don’t know why I lied. Maybe I didn’t want to get into it. I knew I would tell her. Eventually. I just didn’t want to hear how I had failed while my insides were still aching with the loss of him.

As it turned out, my mother had other things she wanted to talk about anyway.

After babbling on for a few minutes about her job as office manager at Bilbo, a pharmeceuticals company where she’d worked since I was a kid, she got to the real reason for her call. “I didn’t want to tell you this on the phone, but I don’t know when I’m going to see you again—” This was another point of contention with my mother, who apparently didn’t believe my monthly treks to Long Island to pay homage to her in her cozy Garden City home were quite cutting it.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Well, Clark and I have decided…that is, we’re going to get married.”

Now I must admit that upon first hearing, I was ready to completely disregard this statement. After all, this would be husband 3 (almost 4) and another in a long line of men my mother fell hopelessly in love with and considered marrying. Admittedly one could make the argument that my mother always went into marriage with the best intentions. It was the men she chose who always threw a kink into things.

There was my father, first of all, whom my mother discovered—after twenty years of marriage—to be a raging alcoholic. “He was always such fun at parties,” she once declared, remembering happier times. Then there was Donald—almost husband 2. After a whirlwind courtship that ended in a trip to Las Vegas to tie to knot, Donald was nailed by airport authorities with a warrant for his arrest…on three counts of embezzlement. Then came Warren, whom I would venture to call my mother’s true love…had their marriage lasted long enough to stand the test of time. After an eight-year courtship—my mother wasn’t taking any chances that time—they were wed in a small ceremony in our backyard, with me standing in as maid of honor. Unfortunately, Warren died of a heart attack within weeks of the honeymoon.

Now there was Clark. Sweet, lovable Clark, an English professor with a lopsided smile and a fondness for quoting from seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry, a trait my mother found absolutely charming.

But there was no shrugging off this announcement, I realized, when she began rattling off the details of the ceremony. “…I’m thinking mid-September…a small cruise ship, just the family. Clark and I, of course. Grandma Zizi. You and Derrick. Shaun and Tiffany…” Shaun is my married brother. Married younger brother, I might add. “Clark’s son and daughter and their kids,” she continued. “We’ll take a short sail through the Caribbean to St. Thomas, where Clark and I will be married with the waves crashing in the background and the family standing by. Kind of like a family vacation and a wedding all tied up into one. Won’t that be fun?”

Loads.