“Yes, you do, beti. But that’s okay. All daughters judge their mothers. But the more you react against me, the better I understand you,” she explained, smiling warmly. “You are a very strong person, and you are your own person. You always have been. Yet Monica, you are not your own mother. I am. Please believe me when I tell you that sometimes it is good to soldier through. However, in the long term, if you keep your feelings inside, they do not disappear…they will emerge at some later time, in a way that you cannot control. Whatever it is with you and Raj, you should discuss it. You should talk.”
“I understand that, Mom.”
“Good, beti. Good.” She rose to drop the shades before she headed for the door. “Now I will let you sleep all day, like a schoolchild, na?”
“So you want me to make it work with Raj.” I turned on my side, wrapping myself in the comforter like a nasty, hungover, champagne-and-hint-of-regret-soaked pig-in-a-blanket.
“I don’t remember saying that,” she said, before closing the door behind her.
Any other day, the Santa Monica beachfront overlook on Ocean Avenue would have been invigorating. But that morning the combination of crisp air and orange light was only oppressive. I raised a hand to block the sun from my heavy, tired eyes. There was something about being surrounded by chipper joggers and power-dogwalkers that made me feel like a degenerate. It was possible, I thought, that I had suggested the location deliberately to chastise myself. It was also possible, I reasoned, that I had wanted a location conducive to my breaking into a dead sprint in the other direction in case Raj wasn’t willing to accept my apology. No, neither I nor my vulgar breasts could have bared that.
I knew that I wasn’t at my best that day, but I felt as if it just couldn’t wait. I hadn’t even been brave enough to call him; I just sent a text message laced with hidden meanings that only he would understand.
Me: Can we talk?
(Meaning: I’m an idiot with a hangover who is too ashamed of herself to call you right now. I fear that you will read my stupid behavior in my voice, and choose never to speak to me again. Also, I don’t want to confuse the issue of my general stupidity with my particularly classy behavior last night. Nobody needs to know except me and God and the elevator-security-camera screeners at The Mondrian. Is there a convenient time for you to sit back and watch me grovel?)
Him: I don’t know. Can we?
(Meaning: I am not correcting your grammar merely to imply that the few years I spent in England have made me more articulate. I am correcting your grammar to be snide. I’m aware that you are an idiot and I am glad that you realize it. In fact, you are such an idiot that I am not entirely convinced you are capable of a rational conversation with me. And even if you are, I’m not sure that I’m interested. But maybe if you grovel a little more through text messages, I’ll consider it. Like, for example, if you admit in writing that you were wrong.)
Me: I’m sorry. I was wrong. But I think we need to talk. Maybe today?
(Meaning: I’m sorry. I was wrong. But I think we need to talk. Maybe today?)
Him: Where?
(Meaning: Your groveling pleases me, but your behavior was so atrocious that it has rendered you unworthy of the effort it would take for me to text you in full sentences. I am meeting you only on the condition that you understand you are terrible. Where?)
Me: Ocean Avenue overlook. In an hour.
(Meaning: Agreed.)
I leaned against the guardrail. Two power walkers with their SUV strollers and healthy complexions passed me by, while a homeless man came out of the public restroom, shook his fist at the sun and walked off, pushing his shopping cart. I still had no idea what I was going to say.
“Hey,” Raj called to me as he came down the winding dirt path. Even in his favorite jeans and that sweatshirt I had worn so many times, he could not have looked less recognizable. That was when I knew it might actually be over.
“Hi.” I bit my lip, unsure of what else to say or do.
He leaned over the railing facing opposite me, both of us unsure how to greet each other. Moving backward on the spectrum of affection always feels so unnatural.
“So should I take the way that you look as an indication that you’ve been up all night crying your eyes out over me?” he asked wistfully.
Meaning: Please tell me that you’ve been crying your eyes out over me all night, because even though I know this isn’t the ideal for either one of us, I’m not sure I’m ready to walk away.
“Raj.” I swallowed, feeling my face get hot. “I…I’m not sure that we’re in this for the right reasons anymore.”
As I said it, it occurred to me how true it was. The thing that felt like it had changed the night before had actually been a long time coming. Despite how wonderful he was, and how good we had been for each other for all that time, this was the end of the road. I could see that he knew what I was thinking.
He looked back out over the water, and nodded. “Is there…someone else? Is it…Is it Alex?”
“No, Raj. No.” I shook my head, gnawing at the inside of my lower lip. “It’s that…I’m not the end of your story.”
Meaning: You’re not the end of my story.
“You know I always wondered if on some level we began just as a salve for your relationship with him,” he stated, rather deliberately, not in the form of a question. “There was just a part of you that I never reached.”
“But that part of me was not with Alex,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think it has ever really been opened with anyone.”
“I hope you can find someone to open it up to, Monica,” he told me, while an in-line skater zoomed past.
It was strange to hear him say my name that way. Almost as if I had been demoted to a more formal circle of acquaintances. Already? But I knew he was doing it as much for my sake as for his own.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, after a while. “Inga. The umm…the redhead. Did anything ever happen with her?”
“No,” he said quickly, and then thought about it. “She put it out there, while we were in London. But I never touched her. I just…I needed to know where we stood first.”
He twirled the class ring on his finger, the way that men do when they’re working on a serious thought. This might be the last time that I knew him that well. The intimacy was dissipating before my eyes, and the next time I saw him someone else would know him better than I did. Perhaps he was thinking about it, as well, because we seemed to be sitting in long, comforting silences between our thoughts.
My eyes were moist by the time I reached for the ring waiting inside my pocket. I didn’t want to let it go. More because of the gravity of that gesture than because of anything else. We could fight and we could talk and we could make all sorts of proclamations. But until I gave him back that piece of himself—of us—it wasn’t real.
“Then you’re a better man than I am,” I said, thinking about everything I had put him through.
Would I have stayed with someone who refused to wear my ring? Someone who laughed in my face at the idea of moving for my career? Someone who kissed another woman on national television and had an ex-girlfriend as a client? Probably not. Would Raj have been prepared to do his absolute best to make me feel safe and adored for the rest of my life? Probably so. Was there any chance that I was going to leave that overlook with that ring still on my person?
Absolutely not.
Because there are moments in a woman’s life when she knows it can go either way. There is no right and there is no wrong; there is only the knowledge that she is what she is about to choose. She can feel her entire future shrink into the space of the decision that she is about to make. These are the tipping points on the karmic map of her life, and they are there to force her to admit what sort of person she is. A woman who can sleep at night, knowing that she has singlehandedly ruined someone’s career? A woman who can see her adversaries in herself, but who refuses to be ruled by her baser instincts, even as she learns to accept that
they will always be there? A woman who would rather be on her own than be with anyone for whom she wasn’t willing to risk it all?
It was time. Forcing myself to look him in the eye, I held the ring out on an outstretched palm. He shifted his weight away from my hand, as if I were holding a tarantula.
“It’s all right, Raj. This…this was never really mine.”
He took it without looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was.
“I’m not,” he replied. Then he smiled at me as if we were still sweethearts, for what would, I knew, be the very last time.
twenty-five
“MORE WINE,” I ORDERED CASSIE THROUGH THE CELL PHONE as I burst through her door an hour later.
“I didn’t give you any wine,” she replied, before snapping her cell phone shut and following me down her hallway.
“Fine, then.” I dropped my jacket and ran both hands over my face, having no patience for the time it would take her to catch up. “Wine!”
“Coming up. Just let me get Phil out of my bed. He’s been pissing in it every night for a week for some reason.”
Since it was a studio, her bed was front and center, and the stench of cat pee was even worse than it should have been. She ripped the purple duvet off her bed, sent the virtually hairless mongrel scurrying to the floor, and shoved the sheets into her hamper. Why she had decided to rescue that poor specimen from the shelter in the first place, I would never understand. He may not be pretty, but he’s got spunk, she told me the first time I’d seen him. And I appreciate his potential.
Potential, my ass. Her apartment smelled like that homeless guy who had been shaking his fist at the sun.
“I’m cracking a window,” I said, heading toward the sill.
“Bad cat!” she scolded over a shoulder, while the rail-thin Phil struggled to hack up a hairball.
She swiped two wineglasses from her cabinet and a half-empty bottle of red from her countertop.
“What’s wrong with him, anyway?” I asked, looking for a somewhat sanitary place to sit.
Which was kind of like looking for a somewhat sophisticated way to pull out a wedgie.
“I don’t know. I think he’s just being a bitch to make my life hell. I woke up with his butt in my face this morning.” She handed me a glass, took a sip of her own, and smacked her lips like it was a cold, satisfying beer. “So you really gave back the ring?”
“You say that like you’re surprised. Do you really think I have that little class?”
“Monica, come on, everything is not a moral issue. It’s not about class. It’s…well…nobody ever gives back the ring. It’s like, a rule or something. Compensation for the cost of your time.”
“But I’m the reason we’re over,” I said, while Phil eyed me like I was what was making him sick.
“It’s never that simple,” she said, as if she had been engaged so many times.
“Look, I don’t exactly know the rules of etiquette in a case like this. Or in a lot of other cases, either.” I thought back to Luke’s face as I darted from the hotel room the night before.
She lifted the magazine Phil was curled up on, forcing him off her desk. “Clearly, because there is no rule in favor of doing a striptease to a techno song for a stranger with a ponytail.”
“Shut up.” I dropped into an armchair, taking a heavy gulp and trying to think of ways to deflect her attention. “What happened with Long John Silver, anyway?”
“Nothing, really.” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to give him my number, so I took his.”
“You gonna call him?”
“Probably not.” She twirled the stem of her glass and then noticed Phil trying to nose his way into her closet. “Phil, No! Did I mention he pooped in a pair of my Ferragamos last week, too? Mommy’s little angel is going to have to sleep in a shoebox if he doesn’t learn where it is not all right to relieve himself! He must be depressed. I should Google Kitty Prozac.”
I raised my eyebrows, gesturing with the wineglass that that wasn’t a good enough explanation and that I needed a lot more wine.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, filling my glass to the rim. “It’s not about Jonathan. Hey! Damn it, Phil!”
Impressively, my mother barely blinked at the news of her only daughter’s newfound spinsterhood. I found her in her room when I got home.
I waved a hand before her eyes to make sure she hadn’t had a spontaneous aneurism and gone catatonic in her chair.
“You have done what you think is right,” she decided, resuming consciousness, folding a shawl over her arm and then plunging it into a travel bag.
“What’s going on?” I sat on the bed.
“It is time for me to go back to London,” she said, examining the contents of her open suitcase. “And you can take me to the airport tomorrow morning on your way to the office.”
“Already?” I asked, surprised at my own reaction to the idea.
She paused, and softened. “Yes, beti. You don’t need me. But please, check on Sheila. Marriage is not always as easy as it may seem from the outside.”
And I did. From my cell phone in the car right after I delivered my mother to the airport the following morning.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out when Sheila answered the phone on the first ring. “I just want you to be happy.”
“I know, babe. You were trying to protect your little cousin.” She exhaled. “I understand.”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have attacked Josh like that. He is your husband, after all.”
“Yes, that’s true. But for what it’s worth, maybe you’re better off. Marriage isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t think your mom called my mom right after you told her you broke up with Raj last night? Come on!”
“I was gonna tell you myself, you know.”
“Monica, we should talk about this. Are you okay?”
“I will be.” I glanced at the rearview mirror before merging onto the 405. “But I can’t talk now. I have to get to work. In fact, I wanted to invite you and Josh over for dinner at my place. Josh is family and I don’t want things to be awkward. How’s Friday night?”
“I’ll check with him and let you know later today.”
“Be careful with that thing!” Jonathan shoved a briefcase between the closing elevator doors and then wedged himself in beside me. With a nod toward my latte, he said, “You could really hurt someone this time, slugger. And this suit is brand-new.”
“Not funny,” I complained, taking a large gulp and then shoving half of my cinnamon scone right into my mouth just to do my part in the fight against non-trans fats.
The beep of my cell phone indicated a message from Josh:
We would love to come to dinner on Friday. It will give me a chance to apologize. In fact, I’m going to bring along something that I think will be good for you. Olive branch extended…
I replied:
Olive branch accepted, cousin-in-law. Just bring dessert and we’ll be a-o-k!
“Come on,” Jonathan insisted. “There was coffee everywhere! It was like a WWE Women’s Wrestling Championship, except with a lot less oil and kissing than when you and Stefanie used to wrestle in my imagination.”
“Not on my first day back, Jonathan.” I closed my eyes.
“C’mon! You know what they say, partner,” he quipped. “If you can’t laugh at yourself…”
“And how often do you laugh at yourself?” I snapped at him.
He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I know you didn’t out Stefanie on purpose. Nobody who knows you would ever think that. You just need to really believe that for yourself.”
“Since when are you so Zen?”
“I dated a yoga instructor once,” he said. I could tell by his tone that this was meant to be sufficient evidence.
“Since we’re not on the topic, what’s up with you and Cassie?”
“Nothing. Why?” He got agi
tated. “Did she say something to you?”
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” I said, stepping out of the elevator before him on our floor. “You need some sort of resolution.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Actually, I am,” I whispered, looking from side to side. “I broke up with Raj yesterday. Officially.”
“Wow.”
“At least it’s not being dragged out anymore. Clarity is valuable.”
“Good perspective, slugger,” he said, turning toward his office.
“Hey, listen.” I had an idea. “What are you doing Friday night?”
I had decided that Sheila wasn’t the only person who deserved an apology from me.
“What?” Luke answered on the fifth ring later that afternoon.
“Luke, hi.” I chewed on my upper lip. “I just called to say that I’m sorry.”
“All right,” he was short. “Is that it?”
“Luke, please,” I tried.
“Please what? You said you were sorry. I heard you.”
“You’re obviously still angry.”
“Monica, I’m not angry. I’m done.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want some guy walking around Los Angeles hating me.”
“Why shouldn’t I stay angry at you?”
“Because I apologized.”
“Yes, you apologized, but you’re not really sorry. You’re schizophrenic.”
“I am not!” I was taken aback. “I am not schizophrenic. I was about to make a mistake…. We both were…. And I stopped it. I shouldn’t have taken it that far, and I shouldn’t have run out like that. It was childish, yes. But I’m not emotionally disturbed.”
“Oh, no…not at all.” His sarcasm came dripping through the phone. “Not you. You’re perfectly stable.”
All Eyes on Her Page 22