Michael and Patrick glance at each other and both nod. “Capisce.”
“Super. So, you are a woman seeking a man aged what to what?” Karin asks.
“What if I give myself a ten-year buffer in either direction?” I say. “Is that too much or too little? Would we still have the same cultural references that way?”
Michael says, “Yes, for the most part. You don’t want to go too young because then they don’t know that Bill Clinton was someone other than Hillary’s husband.”
“Definitely,” Karin says. “Also, you can probably expect the interested men to skew a little older. A forty-one-year-old guy will be trolling for a chick in her thirties.”
“Ha! Try twenties,” Patrick says.
I grab Michael’s butter knife and make pretend slashing motions across my wrists. “Killing myself, thanks.”
“Remember to go with the grain,” Patrick tells me, repositioning the knife. “Vertical, never horizontal. Horizontal is a rookie mistake.”
Michael tsk-tsks him and takes the knife from me. “Not funny. Either of you.”
“Was a little funny,” Patrick mutters.
“Search radius—shall we say within fifty miles of your place?” Karin asks.
“No!” Patrick insists. “Too far. Do twenty-five miles. That will include the city but none of the grotesque suburbs. Bolingbrook? Ugh. I think not.”
“What’s wrong with Bolingbrook?” Michael asks. “There’s an IKEA there.”
“What’s right with it should be your question,” he replies.
“Let’s see,” she says, scanning the screen. “‘Relationship Status’ is ‘Divorced’ and under ‘Have Kids,’ we’ll put ‘Grown and out of the house.’”
“Add ‘Thank you, baby Jesus,’” Patrick suggests.
“Don’t add that,” I say.
“Under ‘Wants Kids,’ ‘No,’” she says.
“Or, ‘No, thank you, baby Jesus,’” Patrick says.
“I feel like Match is no place to joke about the Christ child,” Michael says.
“Unless you’re looking for someone who finds that funny, too,” Karin suggests.
“I don’t,” I verify.
“Then we won’t add it. Okay, ‘Ethnicity.’”
“Is ‘mayonnaise on Wonder Bread’ an option?” Patrick asks.
“‘WASP’ doesn’t seem like the worst drop-down menu choice,” Michael admits.
“‘Caucasian,’” I say, with some finality.
“‘Faith.’ Do you want me to put ‘Episcopalian,’ or are you willing to walk on the wild side if you were to meet, say, a hot Lutheran?”
“Can you put ‘Christian, but open to all faiths’? Religion isn’t a deal-breaker for me.”
“Well, look at you, embracing ecumenical dick!” Patrick exclaims, which makes Michael snort. I glower at both of them.
Michael shoots me an apologetic look and says, “I’m sorry, but that was funny.”
Karin begins tapping away as she finishes up the profile. “Alrighty, you’re five foot six, you have brownish hair, maybe a bit more gray than I’d like to see—”
“We should work on that,” Patrick says. “Highlights would not kill you.”
“Hush,” I reply.
“Hazel eyes, athletic build—”
“Don’t write that. Athletic implies I’m good at sports with balls,” I say.
“No, hon,” Patrick says. “That’s the thing with these dating profiles. A lot of times what you say has an entirely differing meaning in a profile. Like in a real estate listing? ‘Motivated seller’ means ‘owner losing his shirt.’ Saying you’re athletic doesn’t mean you play sports—it means you’re not a fat chick.”
I reply, “Then definitely don’t write that I’m athletic. I don’t want to date someone who’d be so discriminatory! I want a man who’d care more about someone’s heart than her hips! Actually, I’d probably look better if I put on a few pounds. The weight would fill in some of my fine lines.”
“So would Juvéderm,” Patrick says. “As would Restylane or Perlane. P.S. I am not opposed to going on a trip across the pond to see what’s up over there, because they’re a good three years ahead of us in terms of injectables. Do you know they have more than seventy-seven different types of hyaluronic acid fillers in the EU? Europe has a very simple approval process because they don’t have to mess with the FDA like we do here.”
“How do you know this?” Michael asks.
“Marjorie was educating me at the wedding. She’s kind of an anti-aging expert. She’s like the Stephen Hawking of cosmeceuticals. Did you know she uses a skin cream made out of foreskin?”
“She does not!” Karin exclaims.
“She does!” Patrick says.
“Wow, just when I think she can’t be more Cruella De Vil, there she goes,” Karin says.
Patrick says, “She says the serum works miracles—and you’ve seen her skin. The problem is the lotion is so expensive. You know, I always thought since I wasn’t having any kids, the whole circumcision debate was not my business, but now I have an opinion. Off with their heads! Bring those prices down! Baby wants his college complexion back.”
I start twisting my napkin again. “Do I just look old and worn-out? Is it that I’m hideous and no one thought to mention it to my face? Because my face is too hideous? Is that what you people have been keeping from me all these years?” I take a healthy slug of my wine.
“Pen, sweetie, you’re fab. This procedure is horrible. Imagine the online dating profile like a mortgage application—you have to check all the boxes to start the process. Once you get the house, you live in it however you damn well please, but these are the hoops you have to jump through to begin,” Michael says.
Karin says, “Anyway, ‘athletic build,’ you drink socially, and one cigarette a year behind your shed doesn’t count toward making you a smoker. Now, for the creative part, tell me about you in your own words for the ‘About Me’ section.”
I ponder this, taking another sip of my Chianti to buy some time. “Hmm. My own words . . . my own words . . . umm . . . I guess. Wow. Tough one.”
“Why don’t you let me write it?” Karin says. “My communication degree’s gotta be good for something, right?”
I snap, “No! I mean, I can do this. I guess I’d say . . . I’m an actuary.”
“Really, it’s no problem. Let me write this part for you.”
“How about—I’m an actuary and I like math.”
Karin gives me a blank stare while Patrick pretends to hang himself.
“Sweetie,” Michael says, pity practically emanating out of him. “No.”
Our dinners arrive before anyone can mock me further. A waitress, not our waiter, sets down the tray and begins to distribute our meals. “Baked eggplant?” she asks.
I raise my hand. “Hello!”
Mind you, I wanted the spinach gnocchi tossed in the gorgonzola sauce for my first course, followed by the filet of beef topped with sun-dried tomato butter and caramelized shallot and port wine reduction, served with horseradish mashed potatoes for my main, but since someone other than Chris or my ob-gyn may see me in my underwear for the first time since 1987, I figured now is not the time to eat my feelings, even if it would fill in a laugh line or two.
“Orecchiette with sausage, brown butter, and sage?”
“Present!” says Michael. The runner passes him the plate with a smile. Michael has that effect on people.
The waitress scans what’s left on the tray. “Saltimbocca?” She holds up a luscious-looking plate of veal, wrapped in prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, topped with a brandy and sage sauce.
“Over here!” Patrick says, waving both hands.
“No. You got the roasted radicchio salad, dry, with a side of chicken,” Karin says. “The veal is mine.”
Patrick practically eye-rapes Karin’s veal as it’s placed in front of her.
“Nope,” she says. “Do not give me sad face. You could have had this. You could easily have had this. You tried to steal it, but if you’d been successful, you wouldn’t have even eaten it. You’d have just looked at it and sighed and touched it with your fork. You’d have forked it, you motherforker. Again, we’re not playing your Carbie reindeer games today, Mary Chapin Carpenter.”
I whisper, “You mean Karen Carpenter. Mary Chapin is alive and well and singing on tour.”
Patrick takes an angry bite of grilled lettuce and chews with great discontent. Karin ignores him. “Hey,” she asks, “where’s Judith?”
“She texted back and just said, ‘family here, major chaos, pray for me.’ I believe all the kids are home from college for the summer and it’s too much so she couldn’t make it,” I say.
“Bummer,” she replies.
The eight of us—Karin and her husband, Tom; Chris and me; Patrick and Michael; and my brother, Foster, and his wife/my college friend Judith—used to go out together all the time. Although everyone in the group is Team Penny, it’s still like the band has somehow broken up, because without Chris, neither Tom nor Foster wants to hang out nearly as much. Judith’s and Karin’s husbands lobbied for Chris’s attention, and he was a terrific sport, spending hours debating Tom’s fantasy-football lineup while still showing equal enthusiasm for Foster’s endless indecision over whether Callaway or TaylorMade was the better golf club manufacturer. Now we’re much more splintered, and I don’t believe the seven of us have been together more than a handful of times in the past year and a half. And when we are en masse, it’s like our spiritual center is missing. Foster and Tom were beside themselves at the wedding, finally getting to see Chris again without having to feel somehow disloyal to me.
I hope that if and when I meet someone new, he’ll be able to mesh with our group and we can regain a little bit of what we lost. Divorce doesn’t just divide man and wife—it splits up the whole damn ecosystem.
“Hey, for my ‘About Me’ section, why don’t I say something about being a single woman looking for a kind, considerate, mature man to make our group whole again?” I suggest.
Karin stops chewing mid-bite and Michael drops his fork. Patrick’s laughter begins as a sputter, but the more he tries to suppress it, the more it spurts out. After a couple of seconds, he is full-on guffawing, slapping the table, and dabbing his eyes with his napkin. Karin and Michael have joined in, too.
“What is so damned funny?” I ask.
Karin clears her throat. “Penny Candy, when you phrase it like that, you’re basically asking an old man to have group sex with you and your friends.”
I consider what she’s telling me.
“Maybe you should just write this section for me.”
• • • •
Men are winking at me!
Ha!
I’m unclear what winking means, but I assume it’s positive and nonthreatening, and it’s not like someone flashing his genitals at me on the train. (Karin assured me it’s not that kind of Web site, so I consider this a win.) (And yes, her ‘About Me’ section turned out nicely. She made me sound intelligent without being overbearing or closed off to having fun. Also, in no way would someone interpret my description as an orgy invitation, so that’s a bonus.)
I wonder if I should hone my religion answer a tiny bit because I’ve already received an e-mail and apparently I’m not as ecumenical as I imagined. Should I specify “No Wiccans” going forward, or have I just heard from all of the fifty-year-old White Witches in the Skokie area?
Anyway, today was big. I made major strides. I have a live dating profile on Match.com. Maybe I’ll go on an actual date. Maybe soon my weekends will turn into something I actually look forward to?
Plus, I signed my listing agreement and faxed it back to Kathy, so my house is about to go on the market.
HA-HA, IT’S ALL UP FOR SALE NOW, BABY!
No, I’m not drunk—I only had two glasses of wine, but I did take an Uber to and from the city, just in case. (Tipsy, perhaps.)
If this is what moving on feels like, then . . . bring it on! I feel lighter and less encumbered than I have in a very long time. I feel like I’m about to start my second act in life and that there’s this whole new world of possibilities out there for me. Probably not with a Wiccan, though. But best of luck casting your circles, Rowan Sage-river. I wish you really symmetrical pentacles, or whatever it is you’re into, my magickal suitor.
I can’t express how pleasant it is to lie here in bed and not be enraged. I wonder if some of my calm is because of the pillows. When I cleared them off the bed last Saturday night after the wedding, I never put them back. They’ve just been stacked on the window seat ever since. For the past week, every time I’ve gotten into bed without delay, I’ve thought, Bonus month of my life back!
Before the wedding, I was holding on to everything so tightly—who knew that in letting go, I’d release all that built-up pressure? All that anger? I’m moving along with the stream now, literally going with the flow, instead of being lashed again and again by the water rushing past me as I cling tenuously to a limb.
I’m coming to accept that I can’t change the past; I can only look to what’s ahead of me.
And so far? That horizon is wide-open.
So, I’m alone and I’ve always hated to be alone, but I’ve found there’s a real peace that comes with the solitude. I’ve come to appreciate the stillness. Reflection is possible only in quiet like this. I should welcome the quiet now. I bet good times—boisterous times—are right around the bend, so I should appreciate the momentary tranquillity.
As I reflect on what I’ve accomplished today, I feel gratified.
I feel content.
I feel . . . so sleepy.
• • • •
“. . . marmalade.”
The Chianti is making me dream that Marjorie’s standing over me, demanding to know where I keep my marmalade. Only she’s pronouncing it mar-ma-LAHD. Yikes.
“Penelope. Where do you keep your thick-cut marmalade? I can’t have my toast without my thick-cut marmalade.”
More of a nightmare, then.
Wasn’t I dreaming about doing an audit with Daniel Craig a few minutes ago? I should get back to that dream. I will audit you anytime, second-best James Bond. I snuggle deeper under the covers, only to feel them being pulled back off of me.
I crack open one eye. Marjorie is indeed standing over me in the bright morning light of early summer. “Oh, good, you’re awake. I can’t find your marmalade anywhere. Thick-cut, Baxters if you’ve got it, but it must be orange. God help you if it’s not orange. Where do you keep it?”
I blink and reach for my reading glasses. “Marjorie?”
Then I take off my glasses and rub my eyes.
“Which cabinet is your pantry? Couldn’t find any in the icebox.”
“Marjorie?” I pinch myself. Nope. I’m definitely awake. “Why are you here? Wait, am I here?”
“Oh, darling, it’s too early for existential questions. I can’t possibly ponder something like that until I have my toast, and I can’t have my toast until I find the marmalade.”
“Did you look in the fridge door? That’s the last place I saw it. Again, why are you here?”
She breezes out of the room. “Because Foster’s wife is a harridan.”
Judith?
A harridan?
Judith is an accountant.
I hop out of bed and throw on my bathrobe, following Marjorie out the door. I pause in front of the guest room, which is now full to the rafters with my parents’ things again. Questions race through my mind: Why aren’t they in Florida? When did they get here? How did I not hear them come in? And what exactly is going on?
I hustle down the back stairway to the kitchen, where I find Marjorie spreading a microscopic layer of mar-ma-LAHD on her multigrain toast.
She holds up the almost-empty jar of Baxters. “Order some more, darling. We’re going to be here for a while.”
CHAPTER NINE
October 1987
I’ve made a huge mistake.
Massive. Colossal. Monumental. If errors were racehorses, mine would be the Secretariat of all blunders. What seemed like the best idea ever last night looks awfully different in the pale light of dawn.
Let’s go through the checklist, shall we? I am now:
Unemployed.
Unemployable in my field after having quit in such an unprofessional manner, namely leaving a rambling, drunken message on my boss’s answering machine.
Cheating on my lovely boyfriend.
My God, I am the Triple Crown of fuckups.
What was I thinking?
Sure, yesterday was a bad day, a terrible day, the worst day. And each day before that was no great shakes either.
Fine, I hated what I was doing and I could not see myself with Smith Barney for the long haul. But to be so flighty, so impulsive, to simply take my ball and go home? Max is going to murder me. He can’t stop “casually” mentioning to everyone that his kid’s a stockbroker, even though I’ve yet to execute a single trade on my own.
Max is so cagey about his own past that all of his country club cohorts assume he made his money the same way they did—inheritance. They haven’t a clue that he didn’t finish high school, having lied about his age to start a union carpentry apprenticeship. (And a union member to boot? Bunky Cushman would die!) So having a child with a legitimately blue-blooded career is doubly important to him. Appearances are everything to him and Marjorie. But at some point last night, the tequila convinced me that my happiness takes precedence over his pride.
By the Numbers Page 14