“Well, if you’ve got momentous news, maybe I’d better wave some sage around the room and sit down,” Tenaj says, laughing.
“Ha! It’s not that bad. It’s that I’m getting married.”
I may have said this a little too loudly, because, here at the corner, waiting for the light to change, several people turn and smile at me. I wave at them, shrug, do a little curtsy.
My mother, however, reacts without emotion.
“Again you’re getting married? Why in the world are you doing this?”
She can’t just let herself be like other moms, say, Oh congratulations! Who’s the lucky fellow?
“You say that like it’s something I do all the time.”
“But you have been married before.”
“Yes, I have. You’re right.”
“A really good-looking, sexy guy, as I recall. You loved him more than any human had ever loved another, you said. He had everything. Great sense of humor, gorgeous gray eyes, wonderful body—”
“Yes,” I say drily. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Well? We need to remember our old selves, the way we once loved. You know, Pablo Neruda has lots of poems about that. In one of them, he says something about how he’s forgotten the love itself, but says he glimpses her in every window.”
“Yeah, well, this is not like that guy I married. This one is faithful.”
“Faithful, got it,” she says. “And are you in love with him?”
I laugh. “Who asks that question when somebody says she’s getting married?”
“No. I thought not.”
“Would you stop? We’ve known each other forever, for instance. He’s a kid I grew up with on the farm. Judd Kovac. My oldest friend. We hang out together all the time.”
“Listen to me. Don’t get married to somebody because you’ve given up on love. There’s a saying, you know, that you should never get married until and unless you’re bowled over by your amazing luck. Or something like that. So are you bowled over by your amazing luck?” Then, before I can even answer, she says, “No. You’re not.”
“You don’t know!” I say. “He’s a good man. He’ll be good to me. I’ve known him forever, and I’m going into this with my eyes wide open. Our marriage is going to be based on harmony and trust and affectionate friendship.”
“Listen, sweetie. You may think I don’t have any right to be talking about anyone’s marriage ideas, being as how I’ve gotten married and divorced three separate times—but I just know that you’re going to come across a man who’s going to love you, and it’s going to be magical. And I think you shouldn’t stop until you find that man, that’s all.”
“Well,” I say. “How do you know Judd Kovac isn’t that guy? That’s what I want to know. How you’re so sure.”
“Because I’m paying attention. People deciding to get married simply because they’re old friends basing their marriage on harmony and trust, blah blah blah, sounds like a business arrangement to me.”
“That’s the way you see it,” I say. “But you could be wrong.”
“I don’t think I’m wrong. And also, I now remember calling you one day because the universe wanted me to tell you to not do something you were about to do, and I just have a feeling this—getting engaged to this guy—might have been what it was talking about.”
“I have some news for you. There is no universe that gives instructions. It’s all just in your head.”
To my surprise, she laughs. “Have it your way. If that’s the way you want to see things, I’m not going to argue with you. My job, from now until the rest of time, is just to love you up. And not try to convince you of anything.”
“Anyway. The wedding is going to take place in June. And Maggie is coming to the city to help me shop for a wedding dress.”
So there.
“How delightful. And will the future Mrs. Judd Kovac be wearing white Chantilly lace?”
“Ms. Phronsie Linnelle-Kovac is going to fight like hell not to wear something that looks like a throwback to the 1940s, so no.”
“That’s my girl.” Then she says, in a voice so casual I almost don’t see it coming, “I’m actually going to be spending some time in the city, too. I’m teaching a couple of seminars at the New School. In February.”
“Oh!” I say.
“And I would love to spend some time with you.”
I have gone nearly half my life without laying eyes on my mother in person. And, for some reason, standing there waiting while Mr. Swanky executes his ninety-fifth pee of this walk, I am suddenly blinded by tears.
I don’t even really know why. Only that it has to do with that girl I was, sitting next to her on the porch in Woodstock, dazzled by the love she seemed to generate all around her. And how after spending so many years with my heart turned against her, I realize I want to see her again. And that I’m also scared of seeing her, too. And in some weird way, these tears are for Adam, too. Telling me he’d be on Tenaj’s side. Because he believed in love. And he was sure I did not.
I often think of calling him up, but then I push the thought aside. I’m sure I’m the last person he wants to hear from. But I so want to tell him that I haven’t been writing my novel, and that maybe he was right that I need to let go of that story I was telling because it was holding me back. Maybe I could tell him that sometimes I wake up in the night and look over at Judd on the next pillow, and I want to get out of bed right then and go and write and write and write. About a woman who needs magic in her life. I feel that woman trying to tell me a story. I could thank him for putting that idea in my head. That’s all I’d say. Nothing else. Just thanks.
The next Monday, during a lull time, I call my friend Leila, the one who works at McCutcheon. I’m sly about my intentions, just asking nonchalant questions like, “So, how’s the new guy doing?”
Oh, she says, he’s wonderful. Three of the women in the office have little crushes on him, she tells me. And he came to the Christmas party with some stunning young woman, breaking everybody’s heart.
“Does he have gnomes?” I ask.
“Gnomes?” she says and laughs. “Did you say gnomes? No, he does not.”
At the end of the call, she says, “You guys were so great to send him over to us. I’ll tell him you said hello.”
“No,” I say. “No, that’s fine.”
Later, I realize that of course he doesn’t have gnomes at work because they’re all hibernating.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Christmas, New Year’s. It all goes by in a blur. I’m busier than ever at work, organizing spring and summer campaigns for my authors: one who has written a craft book for children on their summer vacations; a couple of dystopian mysteries; a love story between two vampires. There are book tours, magazine reviews, staff meetings.
And I am on top of it all. Making lists, being efficient and organized. Judd and I are doing well. Also, he sleeps with me most nights every week, and we’re getting a bit more practice with the lovemaking thing. Mr. Swanky is getting used to having both of us take him out on walks in the evening. We went to the usual round of Christmas parties and practiced being an engaged couple.
Talia said I looked radiant, but I am not radiant. I miss writing so much that it is like an ache in my chest. But I don’t have time for that stuff now. I have to make lists and get prepared.
Then one night I have a dream about Adam, and it is so vivid that I snap awake in the morning fully expecting he’ll be there in the bed next to me. I am a little startled to find Judd there instead, propped up in bed with his laptop, checking his spreadsheet for the gym. Year-end client totals. Bench press numbers. Who knows?
After I get off the subway that morning—well, I find myself walking to McCutcheon. Tiller has offices in two different skyscrapers, four blocks apart. I pretend to myself that I’m just going for a healthful walk before work, but it’s thirty degrees outside, and the wind is blowing flurries, and the truth is, this day reminds me a little bit of the Sno
w Hurricane.
It’s not that I want to see him. In fact, I’d be mortified to run into him. I just want to be in the vicinity, to see where he is.
I just want to see his face again. And then maybe I could tell him in person that I’m so sorry. I could tell by the way he looked at me if he really hates me.
I could give Gnomeo back to him. Because Gnomeo probably misses Juliet, who is hibernating without him.
But then before I even get to the building, I turn around. Because this is crazy, and it’s unfair, and I don’t have any right to know anything about him after what I did.
A new employee moves into Adam’s office next to mine. She places a bunch of smooth river stones on the windowsill, and I can’t help thinking that the gnomes would have found that delightful. They could have moved them around with their tractor, perhaps.
One day, near the end of January, Maggie calls to say I still haven’t let her know about the font for the wedding invitations.
“Really? How many people are coming to this shindig anyway?” I say. “I pictured it being about seven, to tell you the truth.”
“What? You don’t want any more than that?” she asks.
“No, no, not at all! This is your show,” I say. “As for the font, I agree with whatever you think. You have carte blanche.”
“But I want you to care,” she says. And then I know what she means. My father will never express an opinion on most things that don’t concern him. I’ve watched over the years as she’s tried to get his attention about the throw rugs, the geranium pots on the porch, the replacement linoleum on the kitchen floor. He won’t care.
So I rustle up some opinions. I look at font styles online with her. I exclaim over the fun ones with curlicues. She says, in a worried voice, “But . . . should it be a more stately font, do you think? Maybe we need to pick out the dress first, and then we can decide things like which font gives the same spirit as the whole wedding.”
“The dress will set the tone then?” I say. Really?
“Yes,” she says. “We want consistency in tone, I think. I mean, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” I say. Then I add, “Mags, I’m so glad you’re coming soon. You can help me think about all these things I probably would never have known to think of.”
“Yes, me too,” she says. “I hope you’re making a list of places we can go so we can be efficient.”
“Definitely,” I say.
“The Wedding Industrial Complex,” says Judd when I hang up the phone.
“I just hope and pray we get a font that doesn’t interfere with the wedding dress,” I tell him, and he laughs. He’s making himself a kale smoothie with strawberries before he heads out to the gym. People are working off their holiday cookies. And he needs to be on hand to make sure the old ladies are doing it just right.
“I’m surprised my mom doesn’t want to come, too,” he says. “Do it up really right.”
“No,” I say, “that would be breaking wedding protocol. The groom’s mom gets a total pass. Apparently, according to all protocols, it would be highly inappropriate for her to express an opinion.”
I say this, but you know what I’m thinking? That this is all unbearably sweet, that everybody’s trying so hard on my behalf, and that—well, this is part of it, too—that I am taking my place in a long line of brides. Even at this late date in my life, I am being allowed to partake in the great pageant of matrimony.
Not what I would have chosen, or expected, but still, the closest thing I will ever have to being royalty.
Maggie arrives on a Friday evening in mid-February, one of those freezing cold nights when the Manhattan skyline looks like jewels against a black velvet sky.
I see her get off the train in Penn Station before she sees me, and so I get to observe her marching forward, grim-faced and holding a suitcase, wearing her tan puffy jacket and a plaid scarf, black pants and boots—and glaring at everyone around her as though she’s sure one of them is about to jump in front of her and try to rob her of everything. The trip had been fine, she says in answer to my questions; yes, the seat was very comfortable, and a nice couple had sat across the aisle from her and told her it was too bad she didn’t get to see all the Christmas hoopla on Fifth Avenue. The tall tree at Rockefeller Center was not to be missed.
“I told them, I’ve seen plenty of Christmas trees,” she says. “I have a bunch of them right in my own yard. New Yorkers always think they’ve invented everything.”
“They do,” I agree. I take her suitcase, and we get a cab and take it back to the apartment, where we have cups of tea and make a list for tomorrow’s marathon shopping event.
First stop the next morning is a small dress shop in Chelsea that Talia told me about. We have an appointment, and so we are given mimosas and some cookies while I try on one, two, six dresses, all of which will really do, but I watch Maggie’s eyes carefully and don’t see what I’m looking for yet: the amazed gasp, the tearful realization that this is it.
“Where to next?” Maggie whispers in the dressing room. “We don’t want to make the rookie mistake of buying the first ones we see.”
So we go to one of the warehouse-type places, where samples hang on hangers, and women move through the cavernous space fingering rows and rows of lace and tulle and netting. I am in row three, getting a little dizzy, actually, when I hear something—hands clapping from about fifty feet away—and I look up.
And there’s Tenaj.
Freaking Tenaj.
So this is surely an illusion, one of those tricks of the mind. Because Tenaj has never in the history of the world just turned up in my line of vision like this.
And then she waves, and my stomach goes into free fall.
I look nervously over at Maggie, who is down the row, not four feet away from me, reverently touching a dress that looks like it was made from a piece of satin with a tangle of shiny moonbeams stitched on it.
I feel the panic rising up in my throat as I try to reconstruct how this could have happened. I mean, sure, yes, I had casually mentioned to her the date of Maggie’s arrival. And yes, I had told her we were going to be shopping for bridal gowns. But not where. Somehow she’s got intuition for these things, and now she’s walking toward me from the front of the warehouse, smiling, and as she gets closer, I think she seems longer, thinner, more determinedly avant-garde than the last time I saw her. Her hair is a glossy silver now, shining and curly. As she comes closer, I see the lines in her face, and I see she’s still wearing clothing that looks like it was pieced together from old Indian pillows and saris. She has a bright orange beret, and a long lavender mohair coat over her patchwork mishmash of colors.
“Maggie?” I say in a low voice, not taking my eyes off Tenaj. “Maggie, honey.”
“I know, it’s not the right beads,” she says from down the aisle, moving farther away from me. “I’d like this one, I think, but with pearls. I think they’re so much classier, don’t you?”
“Maggie.” I move toward her, wanting to wrap my arms around her, protect her from what’s coming. Tenaj is out of view now; I’m in a thicket of dresses. Maybe I could take Maggie by the hand, and we could hide, like children in a forest. Tenaj wouldn’t find us.
“What?” Maggie looks up at me. “Are you all right?”
“There’s something I want to tell you,” I say. My tongue has thickened, like a piece of sausage in my mouth.
Maggie’s eyes are round now. She’s on full alert for trouble.
“It’s Tenaj,” I whisper. “Tenaj is here.”
Her eyes cloud over, and her jaw tightens. I see it all flash past—the jealousy, the hurt—but then it passes, and she clamps down on all her feelings. She smiles.
“Tenaj—right here?” she says. “Oh, honey, you scared me. I thought you were going to say somebody had died. Or that the warehouse was on fire. Where is she?”
“She’s . . . right here,” I say.
Because she is. She has materialized next to me, and she
’s smiling. And Maggie smiles right back at her. I feel once again like the little kid here with my two moms, and we’re back to it being a hot summer day, and I’m just the cargo being transferred from one car to another, from one life to another. With a stomachache. Looking from one of them to the other. Wondering if they’re going to hiss at each other. Tension so heavy it’s like gravity has doubled.
Only I’m thirty-six years old, and the two women standing on either side of me are looking at each other and sizing each other up but still smiling. Over the buzzing of my ears and a coughing fit that has suddenly seized me, I’m unable to hear anything, but I sense that the two of them are okay. They’re adults saying hello. Tenaj is being all willowy and magnetic, her electric eyes looking kind, and Maggie is smiling stiffly, holding her ground.
As for me, I can’t seem to stop coughing. Both of them look over at me with concern and start digging into their bags looking for a cough drop. Tenaj hands me a patchouli-scented handkerchief, Maggie has a lozenge of some sort, wrapped in cellophane.
At last my coughing subsides. Tenaj has asked a question, and Maggie seems to be politely showing Tenaj the satin number with the moonbeams. They both examine its fabric, shake their heads, look at me with some concern, and move on to the next dress.
“You know, I like the bodice of this one much better,” says Tenaj.
“True,” says Maggie.
I am incredulous. Are we—together in this?
“But are we absolutely committed to the white dress tradition?” Tenaj wants to know.
We? We?
Maggie says, “We didn’t really talk about it. I thought that was what she wanted. Perhaps you know more than I do.”
“She hasn’t told me anything,” says Tenaj. “I’m just wondering: Is she thinking of going the whole nine yards? The veil and all of it? The train? The bouquet?”
The Magic of Found Objects Page 30