“I think I’d been sleeping,” I continue anyway. This is as much about my hearing my own words as it is about his hearing them. “I had been up all night drafting a brief for court, but I guess you could say fatigue won the race.”
“I love the athletic references, blondie. I’d like to think that is my influence on you?”
“Think whatever you want as long as you stop ogling Pocahontas Barbie for a minute and listen.”
He hands me a pair of ten-pound dumbbells. “Biceps,” he mutters, stealing another glance at the girl in the corner. I extend my arms in unison and bend them slowly, methodically, feeling the muscles tighten and swell each time.
“It was real. Too real. I was working on an assignment for this bastard partner I have told you about, Fisher.” In reality, he isn’t a bastard, but a corner-office superstar, a rain-maker with monogrammed rose gold cuff links. Sure, there are those alleged mistresses—there always are—but he’s for the most part a decent man, and far less acrid than some of the others.
“Why are you so worried about this dream?”
“Patience is a virtue, Victor.”
“Well then, I guess you could say that I’m having a hard time being virtuous this morning.”
“The cartoon paper clip, you know that icon with the googly eyes—it announced that it was my wedding day,” I say. “It was one of those computer reminder things.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” he says. I lie down flat on the rubber mat, hold tight to his ankles, and lift my legs one at a time.
“It was my wedding day and I didn’t realize it. Then I was in a courthouse in this bizarre fishing net dress and a veil. And I was naked under it all.”
“Veil?”
“Yes, I was wearing a veil. In a courthouse. And my briefcase turned into orchids. And then, all of a sudden, I was practicing an oral argument outside of a courtroom.”
“I like oral,” Victor says, and laughs. Another trainer nearby doing squats laughs with him.
“You’re disgusting. Now listen. I walked into the courtroom and everyone turned around to look at me. Everyone was wearing white. Everyone but her.”
“Her?”
“His mother,” I say. “There she was walking down the center of the courtroom in all black with silver buttons down her back, her hair bopping along. She turned around and smiled. She cradled a gun in one hand and balanced a pie in the other. Her smile was frozen.”
“Ah, the benevolent bailiff,” he says. “Lucky you. Hold up,” he says. I stop doing my crunches. “No—five more of those. You can see through fishing net.”
“Yes, genius.”
“Naked underneath?”
“Uh huh.”
He pauses. “Nice. Were your boobs bigger in the dream?”
I whip Victor with my towel. “Inappropriate, you sicko,” I say, red-faced, a fraction of a smile.
“The judge’s face was blurry like on those crime shows.”
Finally, Victor seems captivated. I’d like to think Pocahontas could do a striptease atop her Arc Trainer and he wouldn’t notice. He loses track of how many sit-ups I have done for the second time.
“Then the music started. And Dad was there to take my arm,” I say. And without warning, the tears come. Along with the realization that when this happens for real, when I get married, Dad won’t be there.
Victor grabs my shoulders, looks me in the eye. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “I’m fine,” I say, because this is what you’re supposed to say, what people expect you to say.
But this pity party is short-lived. He hands me a medium-sized ball, deceptively heavy, made of thick blue rubber. “It’s a medicine ball,” he says. “Thought to work wonders back then. Rumor is that Hippocrates used these balls to sweat fever from his patients.”
And I’m thankful for this timely diversion, this history lesson du jour from my trivia buff of a trainer. And I’m pleasantly surprised that he knows marginally sophisticated words like “benevolent” and how to pronounce “Hippocrates.” As if such knowledge is reserved for those of us with an Ivy degree (or two).
“A miracle worker?” I ask, twisting from side to side, holding the ball. “It can get rid of a fever, but can it banish belly fat?”
Victor smiles. “Sure thing.”
So, as quickly as those tears come, I’ve sent them away. “I’m sorry about before,” I say. “This isn’t about Dad.”
In my dream, Dad wouldn’t look at me. As if he was already gone from my life. As if I was already gone from his.
“There was a jury in the box. I saw Mom and Michael and Nietzsche. And guess who Mr. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was sitting next to? Britney Spears.”
“Hot couple,” Victor says, and I wonder whether he even knows who Nietzsche is.
“Dad started walking me down the center of the court-room. He walked slowly, limping from his college football injury, and I looked ahead, eager to see my future husband. But something was very wrong.”
“Time’s up,” Victor says, pointing at the oversized clock above us. It’s ten to eight. “Just kidding, keep going. This is fierce. Soap-opera silly.”
“There were three men,” I say. “Three grooms.”
“Shit.”
“I studied the faces. Everything grew sharper. Two faces and then, finally, Sage’s. Phelps and then poor Sage. He was just one of the guys on our wedding day.”
“Phelps? Ah, the infamous Rowboat Boy,” Victor says, grinning.
“My hands were suddenly behind my back, trapped in huge white handcuffs, and each groom dangled a key,” I say. “As if I were to choose.”
“Handcuffs? Kinky, Quinn. And here I thought you were the square attorney type.”
I shut him up with my eyes. “The music stopped and the judge slammed his mallet. He said, ‘Prudence, do you take…’ and then he named all of the guys’ names, ‘…to be your lawful husband.’”
“Wait—”
“Let me finish,” I say.
“Okay, but please tell me you said no,” Victor mock-pleads.
“No, I said what a happy bride is supposed to say at the altar on her big day. I said ‘I do.’ Then my handcuffs were gone and then so were the keys. Everyone clapped. Everyone was happy. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to kiss all of them, but then there was a loud noise, a piercing scream. It came from the jury box, from a little girl, my flower girl. And at first I didn’t recognize her. She was screaming, but then I realized who she was…”
“Who was she?” Victor asks.
“It was me. As a little girl. And when I realized this, I passed out, but my husbands—yes, husbands, all of them—they caught me. And then everything went black.”
“Gnarly dream, girl,” he says. Now, our time really is up.” Victor’s next client, a portly CEO type, white and bald as a golf ball, hovers, scratching his crotch.
I follow Victor to the back of the gym. To the massage tables where trainers stretch their clients. I hop on one and lie down flat, like I always do.
“I have a question,” he says, grabbing my leg and straightening it out.
“Hit me,” I say. I’m sweaty and nervous. My pulse: rapid-fire.
“Who’s Prudence?”
“That’s me. My name’s really Prudence.”
Confusion contorts his face, rearranging his features. “That one can wait until Wednesday, Miss Witness Protection Freak. You said there were three. Three grooms. But you named only two.”
“No, there were three.”
Now he’s rubbing my shoulders, getting the kinks out like he does at the end of every session. “Well, who was the last guy?” he asks.
I pause. I realize something. The music charges on. CNN terror alerts scream silently from muted televisions. Hurried souls braid in and out of each other, racing off to work with sopping hair and untied sneakers. Business as usual. The gym smells of sweat and burnt coffee.
“It was you.”
Chapter 2
In the locker room, nipples face north and south. Cobalt and eggplant veins stretch like spiderwebs over winter white skin. Floppy breasts and varicose veins welcome me. Mozart floats faintly from camouflaged speakers, drowned out by the buzz of hair dryers and morning gossip. Near the entrance, a squat woman in faded black stacks warm towels that smell like marzipan. A middle-aged woman sits naked and cross-legged, raving to no one in particular about her daughter’s performance in the holiday play. The room smells like burning hair and watermelon shampoo. Bodies snake by each other in various stages of undress; some are swaddled in crisp towels far too small for coverage. Some sport stringy thongs; others, sensible briefs. Many wear nothing at all.
A skeletal woman with a forest of pubic hair stands in front of the mirror, hips jutted forward, cleaning her nostrils with Q-tips. She leaves the yellowed and bloody cotton swabs on the faux granite countertop, angering the woman who stands next to her painting a freckled face with makeup many shades too orange.
I sit on the bench in the middle of the locker room, hunched over, ponytail flipped, eyes fixed on my tattered gray New Balances and the sea blue floor of tiles, wondering what’s wrong with me. Victor’s arrogant grin is tattooed in the front of my mind.
“Quinn!”
I turn and see Avery, my oldest friend and fellow West Sider. She bounds toward me in her matching pink sports bra and shorts, her blond ponytail dancing behind her.
“I just finished my first Buff Brides class,” she says, flexing thin arms. “That instructor kicked my butt, but hopefully it’ll show come wedding time.”
Avery is getting married to Jonathan, a lawyer like me, in the fall.
“Maybe I’ll have to join you in that class,” I say.
Confusion washes over Avery’s face only briefly, and then her eyes light up. She grabs my hand, lifts my ring to only inches from her face.
“Oh Quinny!” She hugs me hard. “You’re getting married! We’re both getting married!”
And she jumps up and down, jogging in place like a kid on Christmas morning.
“We’re not little girls anymore, huh?” I say.
She shakes her head, still grinning, perfect teeth shining bright.
“The ring is stunning, Quinn.”
“His mother picked it,” I say. “Same setting as hers.”
“That’s so sweet,” she says, smiling. “I love family traditions.”
And I nod. Because maybe, just maybe, “sweet” is the appropriate word for this “family tradition”? “Maybe you’re right,” I say.
“You don’t like it,” she says, pointing to the ring.
“I do like it,” I say. “What I don’t like is that he’s her little puppet.”
“No, he’s now your little puppet. Take the strings. Quinn, you should’ve told him what you wanted. Men need directions. They’re like kids. They need to be told what to do. They crave instructions.”
And I nod again. Because I have no doubt Avery, a kindergarten teacher, a sunny and sensible creature, is right about such things.
“But what if I don’t know what I want?” I say.
And I think we both know that we’re not just talking about diamond cuts and ring settings and meddling in-laws.
Avery, ever the optimist, grabs my shoulders, looks me in the eyes, and says, “You do know what you want. And here you are, getting it. You’re a lucky girl, Quinn.”
She grabs her things from her locker. And hugs me hard.
“I’ve got to run,” she says. “I want to get home to make Jonathan breakfast.”
While my friend hightails it home to fix her fiancé eggs, I decide to linger, to hide out in a public shower.
Normally, I would go home to shower there. My apartment is only a block away, and I much prefer the privacy of my own bathroom to this nudist shower scene. But I’m not ready to emerge from this haven to see Victor or Sage. A master avoider indeed.
So I grab three towels, turn toward my locker so no one can see me, and slither out of my sweat-soaked clothes. I wrap one towel around my top and another around my waist—a makeshift terry bikini—and tiptoe along the cold tiles to the showers.
The shower doors are transparent. Anonymous bodies twirl around, hands soap away. I step into an empty shower and drape the towels over the door so no one can see in. As I fiddle with the faucet, I notice the rainbow of hairs—blond, brown, gray, and black; curly and straight; long and short—slicked on the tiles. I remember Katie Couric’s exposé on foot fungus and long for a pair of flip-flops.
When I said those three damning words, “It was you,” Victor’s dark eyes glimmered and confidence rode his butter-scotch lips. In the mirror behind him, I caught the beet red of my face; I have an unfortunate problem with blushing.
“See you Wednesday,” I said to him before I escaped, not sure if I meant it.
“Looking forward to it…” Victor said, and winked, patting me on the back I pay him to sculpt. “…Prudence.”
Yes, my name is Prudence. I’m not in the Witness Protection Program, though that would be an infinitely more fascinating rationale for my alias. The truth: I was born Prudence Quinn O’Malley on January 12, 1975. I’m about as Irish as they come, keeping those naughty stereotypes nice and robust. Despite religious visits to an overpriced midtown salon, hints of auburn pierce through my dirty blond hair. My skin is translucent year round, alabaster sprinkled with connect-the-dot freckles.
Most importantly, I love to drink.
Especially since September.
Phelps Rafferty, a.k.a. Rowboat Boy (Boyfriend, 1987–1999). I could easily blame everything on him; my sudden and severe allergy to my given name, my fondness for cocktails, my soft spot for fishermen.
On my twelfth birthday, he called. Phelps lived in Chicago and I only saw him for a few weeks each summer when both of our families stayed at the private fishing club Bird Lake in Wisconsin. Though he’s my age, to me he always seemed older, and as far as I was concerned, the boy was full of infinite wisdom.
The summer before that phone call, Phelps kissed me for the first time. On the dock of the lake. We had told our parents we were catching tadpoles, but we came back that afternoon with an empty jar and big smiles.
“Happy birthday,” Phelps said, when Mom handed me the phone. Then he paused and laughed. “Remember to be prudent.”
“Huh?” I said.
Maybe he had been studying extra early for the SAT, but Phelps stumbled upon the truth about my name before I did. “Your name is a word,” he told me. “And not a cool one.”
When we hung up, I sneaked into Dad’s office and thumbed through the P’s in his battered maroon leather dictionary. I learned what it meant: exercise of sound judgment in practical affairs; wisdom in the way of caution and provision; discretion; carefulness. I was horrified. Why would my parents give me such a name? I didn’t understand why my older brother, Michael, had gotten so lucky.
I walked into the kitchen. Mom sliced big red tomatoes for my birthday dinner when I asked her the simple question that would change so much.
“My name is a word, isn’t it? It has a meaning,” I said.
“Prue, all names have meanings. Did you know Michael’s means ‘resolute guardian’? Yours just has a meaning that people know. Like Brooke or Charity. Yours is one of those names,” she answered, smiled, and went back to her chopping. As if that would be the end of it.
I became Quinn a few days later at my birthday party. It was a cold Saturday afternoon in winter; local weathermen paced in front of colorful backdrops buzzing about a looming nor’easter. Mom and Dad had rented the basketball court at the public school on the corner of our street for the evening. I divided my friends into two teams. Mom and Dad donned striped polyester and plastic whistles. Michael kept score.
The night before my party, I stayed up late with Mom and Michael spray painting numbers and names in green or red on the white Hanes T-shirts Mom bought in packs of three at the pharmacy.
When it came time, I wrote my name on the back.
My new name.
Quinn.
“What are you doing?” Mom asked, peeling plastic from a red whistle.
“I don’t want to be Prudence anymore. I’m Quinn now.”
Mom froze. She stopped blinking. She just stared at me. Finally, she moved, looping her long fingers through the red whistle cord, and muttered that one word: “Why?”
Sure enough, as anyone would have predicted—as my parents should’ve—my classmates had begun to call me Prude. We kids could be cruel. But I didn’t really care. In truth, I kind of liked the attention and the swells of laughter around me even if they were at my expense. And, anyway, I wasn’t a prude. At nine, my art teacher caught me kissing Bobby Sands under the metal slide on the school roof. Manhattan kids had recess on rooftops; we ran around in circles on concrete patches overlooking city streets. Bobby was king of the monkey bars and all the girls liked him, but no one admitted it. At that age, we girls weren’t worried about herpes or HIV, but something just as scary and equally enigmatic: cooties. Luckily, Mom and Dad, a lawyer and a doctor, ever the pillars of parental reason, assured me cooties didn’t exist. Little did they know this little lesson led to my first kiss.
The truth came too late to make a difference. My parents didn’t expect more of me than they did my brother with the more mundane moniker. They didn’t envision me, their baby girl, as president. They didn’t pray that with such a name, I would mature into the earthly embodiment of the Christian virtue. It was nothing like that.
The truth: They were huge Beatles fans. Mom said John Lennon appeared in her dreams. And Mom was a fervent believer in the importance of dreams. Dad said Lennon was the only other man Mom could kiss given the chance because he loved him too.
Together, Mom and Dad sang one of their favorites to me, their little girl—“Dear Prudence,” bodies curled like commas over my cedar crib when I was a baby and over my bed when I was a bit older.
“It was the only song I could bear to listen to at the hospital while we waited for you to come,” Mom explained, tears glossing her blue eyes. “When I was five months pregnant with you, we learned that you were a girl and it was obvious what your name would be. We loved you, little Prudence, even before we saw you.”
Life After Yes Page 2