Slightly Engaged

by Wendy Markham

  I’d rather not picture it, thank you very much. In any case, my brief sojourn into filth alley is disappointingly uneventful. Nothing to do but pull up my fat jeans and hope for the best.

  As Jack and I proceed to the subway, I find myself wistfully thinking of home. Not the home we just left, but the home I left a few years ago when I moved to New York.

  Right about now, my mother is probably standing at the sink peeling and dicing the contents of four or five bags of potatoes.

  When she makes mashed potatoes, she estimates at a pound a person.

  My brothers probably eat close to that. I did, too, before I lost weight.

  Good thing I’m not home today. I doubt that Wilma will make a pound a person of mashed potatoes or anything else.

  Then again, there will be gravy and stuffing and pumpkin pie…which, even in small quantities, is lethal. The holidays are the worst time of year to diet.

  I’m hoping the spa visit this weekend will jump-start my efforts. I’m sure it will.

  Really. I’m positive I won’t end up gaining back all forty pounds I’ve lost.

  Or even, like twenty.

  God, I hope not.

  Anyway, I’m homesick. Not just for a pound of well-salted mashed potatoes with real butter and heavy cream.

  I’m homesick for my parents’ house and the way it smells on Thanksgiving morning, when the old-fashioned white enamel electric roaster is emitting its savory aroma from its annual place of honor on the laminate countertop. Homesick for my dad lifting the lid and sneaking bits of the sausage-studded stuffing when he thinks nobody’s looking; for my nephews playing with their matchbox cars underfoot; for Mom, official Spadolini Kitchen Slave, wearing an apron over her stretch pants, beads of sweat on her forehead as she bustles and measures and stirs and gives orders.

  Usually the orders are directed toward me, as the only daughter without a family of her own to take care of, and thus eternally incumbent Spadolini Kitchen Slave Apprentice. Mary Beth is exempt because she’s got kids, and my brothers are exempt because they’ve got penises.

  In Spadolini Land, anything food-related is women’s work.

  Just as, come to think of it, in Kate Land, anything engagement-related is men’s work.

  You’d think my mother and Kate might get along great, but I’d be willing to bet they’ll take one look at each other and cringe when and if they finally cross paths someday.

  My mother will decide Kate’s ostensibly bulimarexic influence is the reason I’ve been “wasting away,” and Kate will decide my mother needs an emergency makeover by a Nordic mad scientress in a darling lab coat.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asks, peering at me as we wait to cross Third Avenue.

  “Me? I’m great.”

  “You’re not homesick, are you?”

  “Homesick? What makes you think that?” I attempt to tuck my hand into his, which is in his jacket pocket because it’s cold out and he forgot his gloves.

  He immediately grabs my hand and pulls it out, with a jerking motion so sudden it’s almost as if…

  Well, as if there’s some reason he didn’t want my hand in his pocket.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, my mind racing.

  Does he have something in his pocket that he doesn’t want me to find?

  Like…a lizard?

  Or…a velvet ring box?

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he says.

  Uh-huh. Sure.

  Something is afoot in Jack’s pocket, folks, and it ain’t lint.

  The mere notion of what it might be jump-starts a flutter of excitement in my otherwise empty stomach that lasts all the way to Grand Central Station.

  Raphael is waiting for us on the platform for the number-seven train. He’s wearing black velvet knickers, white knee socks and shiny black shoes with a buckle.

  With Raphael, whenever I allow myself to think now I’ve seen everything, it turns out that I haven’t. Today is no exception.

  “Look, it’s Miles Standish,” Jack says amiably as Raphael gives me what he refers to as a Big Fat Turkey Day Hag Hug.

  “Jack! No! Well, maybe. But only from the waist down,” Raphael says slyly, and opens his arms.

  Then, noting that Jack isn’t exactly eager for his own Big Fat Turkey Day Hag Hug, Raphael opens his jacket instead.

  From the waist up, he’s…

  “Naked?” I ask, frowning. “What’s up with that?”

  “Tracey, I’m representing both the Pilgrims and the Indians,” Raphael informs me.

  “Half Miles Standish, half Squanto?”

  “It’s only fair to be impartial, don’t you think?”

  “I think I’m glad you decided not to wear a waistcoat on top and a loincloth on the bottom. That’s what I think.”

  Raphael swings his arm and snaps his fingers. “Why didn’t I come up with that?”

  “Because we all can’t be as creative as Tracey is. Or as twisted.” Jack shakes his head as though he’s glimpsed Raphael’s Big Fat Turkey Day future, and there’s a loincloth in it.

  “I love the holidays, don’t you?” Raphael asks, mercifully zipping his coat again as the crosstown train pulls into the station.

  Raphael sings gaily—and I mean gaily—“It’s the most…wonderful time…of the year.”

  “City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday cheer,” I trill in response as we board the train and settle into three adjoining seats on the nearly empty car.

  “Joy to the world…the Lord is come!” is Raphael’s soprano response, followed by a muttered irreverent aside I don’t quite catch but can just imagine.

  “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,” I reply in my booming alto.

  We both look at Jack.

  “Yes?” he asks mildly.

  “Your turn,” Raphael tells him. “We’re singing lines from our favorite carols.”

  “Isn’t it too early for that?”

  “It’s never to early to get the holiday season under way, Jack,” Raphael replies, bending over to adjust his knee socks, then the shiny silver buckles of his shiny black shoes.

  After watching him for a moment, Jack sings, “Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la la la la…laaaaa la la.”

  “Jack! You’re so funny!”

  “So are you, Raphael!” Jack replies good-naturedly.

  As the train rattles through the tunnel, I rest my hand on his knee, thinking once again that some boyfriends wouldn’t be as tolerant of my flamboyant friend. I mean, I can just imagine how my brothers would react if my sisters-in-law were palling around with a flaming homo like Raphael.

  No, I’m not being discriminatory. When Raphael isn’t calling himself a horny queen, he’s referring to himself as a flaming homo. Not in a self-deprecating way. More like a self-congratulatory way.

  Anyway, Jack really is a great guy. I’m so lucky to have him. And right now, as we ride along to the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving Day singing carols and wondering what’s in Jack’s pocket—well, I’m wondering, anyway—my life feels just about perfect.

  Two trains, fifteen minutes and three dozen lyrical yuletide lines later, we emerge on the Upper West Side, which has been drastically transformed into a surreal carnival of chaos, shrouded in a gray, misty drizzle. There are countless tour buses, cops on horseback, barricades, tourists. The side streets are lined with high-school bands, floats, Porta Potties and dozens of balloons that are as familiar as elementary-school classmates.

  Raphael gestures at a distant, block-filling Bullwinkle hovering flat on its back. “Do you think he’s supposed to be that low?”

  I follow his gaze. “I don’t know. He looks a little…”

  “Flaccid?” Raphael supplies. “I thought the same thing.” He cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, “Don’t worry, Bully, it happens to everyone.”

  Jack, who would normally have a flaccid-moose crack or two to add, says nothing. He seems distracted. And his hand is, again, quite noticeably lingering in his pock
et.

  Is it because there’s a ring in there?

  Is he going to propose to me at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

  Is he…

  Wait! Is he going to propose to me on national television? Is that why he made sure we got these VIP passes from the network?

  But he almost didn’t come with us today.

  Or so he claimed.

  Was it all a clever ruse to throw me off his nuptial trail?

  I hurriedly pat my hair.

  It feels damp and messy. I stuck it back with a plastic banana clip after drying it this morning, figuring the wet wind would toss it around and I could comb it later, before we head up to Westchester.

  Why didn’t I at least use mousse or gel? Or pull it back in a neat bun?

  A bun? Who am I, Wilma Flintstone?

  Okay, no bun, but I should have at least gone for a tousled sex kitten look as opposed to a tousled wet dog look.

  I tug Raphael’s sleeve as we all pause to allow a sequinbedecked, corn-fed, nude-stocking-wearing female color guard to pass.

  Raphael looks at me. “What, Tracey?” he asks loudly enough to be heard by the color guard’s extended families gathered around their television sets in Des Moines.

  Jack, however, doesn’t even glance in our direction. He looks preoccupied with visions of marital bliss. Or something. He’s hurrying along with his head bent against the wind, or so I assume. There’s something almost furtive about his posture.

  He’s about to give me a ring. That has to be it.

  “Do I look all right?” I subtly ask Raphael, ventriloquist-like.

  “What?” he screams. “Tracey, what?”

  Jack looks up over his shoulder at Raphael, then at me.

  I flash an everything’s just fine with me but who knows what’s up with Raphael smile.

  Jack drifts back to thinking about honeymoon locales. Or something.

  “Do I look all right?” I whisper frantically into Raphael’s ear.

  He blinks, then gives me a lingering once-over. Then he asks, “Do you want honesty? Or kindness?”

  “If one precludes the other—which I’m assuming it does—then I probably don’t need to ask. But I guess I’ll take honesty,” I add hurriedly, thinking a little constructive criticism can’t hurt under the circumstances.

  “Well, you pretty much look like hell, Tracey. Why?”

  “Give me a comb,” I say under my breath, slowing my pace further as Jack strides along a few steps in front of us.

  “A comb?” Raphael echoes as though I’ve just requested a salon chair with drying dome. “I don’t have a comb.”

  “Oh, well, I just thought maybe…”

  “How about a brush?” Raphael promptly produces one from the pocket of his Pilgrim knickers. He also hands me a compact mirror.

  “I love you,” I say, surreptitiously flipping the mirror open.

  “Smooches, Tracey,” is his cordial response.

  I make myself as presentable as I can, what with the gusting wind and the banana clip and no makeup whatsoever. A liquid eyeliner stashed in Raphael’s knee sock is probably too much to hope for, but I ask anyway.

  “I forgot it on the table at home,” is his reply. “Sorry, Tracey.”

  “It’s okay. Do I look better now?”

  Again, the once-over.

  “Not really,” he says. “Why?”

  “No reason. I just like to, you know, look good.”

  Especially when I’m about to be proposed to in front of millions of viewers. I wonder if my nephews are watching the parade at home. I wonder how impossible it would be to sneak in a quick cell-phone call to alert Mary Beth.

  Pretty impossible, considering that I left my phone at home with my brush, toiletries and makeup. What was I thinking, leaving home this unprepared and unkempt, wearing sneakers and thermals?

  Jack glances back at me as we cover the last block along Seventy-ninth Street single file between the blue barricades, due to the hordes of people. “You okay?”

  “Yup. Great!”

  “I’m great, too,” offers Raphael, two steps behind me. “But these shoes kill.”

  “Beauty—and historic authenticity—are pain, Raphael,” I toss over my shoulder.

  “You were so right, Tracey. I should have listened to you,” is his reply. “Barefoot, loincloth would have been a much better way to go.”

  Oh, yay. I’ll get all the credit for next year’s obscene Big Fat Turkey Day attire.

  At the viewing stand beside Central Park, where the parade kicks off, Jack shows his ID and presents our VIP passes to the burly security guard.

  I watch carefully to see if the guy winks, but he doesn’t. He just says, “Go ahead,” to Jack, same as he would to a total stranger.

  Okay. So maybe Jack didn’t tip off the guard. That doesn’t necessarily mean the televised engagement is off.

  It could still be on.

  Or maybe there’s a lizard in his pocket.

  Which would be fine, I hasten to remind myself. I am just fine with not getting engaged today…or ever. I wouldn’t even be thinking about it if he hadn’t yanked my hand out of his pocket that way.

  I’d be merrily rolling along, la la la, married or single, who cares, life is great, la la la, from now until forever.

  But no, here I am, holding my breath in anticipation of something that may or may not happen today, on live television, or ever. Why do I do this to myself?

  A second guard at the foot of the bleachers reminds us that we won’t be able to leave and reenter the VIP area now that we’re in, due to security concerns.

  I can’t help but feel vaguely claustrophobic at that news. Nor can I help but wonder how letting VIPs come and go as needed would jeopardize security.

  But hey, this is post 9–11 New York City, and I’m sure the guards have valid reasons. Even if they don’t, who’s going to argue with a menacing Wall of Man?

  We find seats right behind a woman and a medium-size kid that I could swear are Al Roker’s family.

  I even nudge Raphael and whisper, “Al Roker’s family.”

  Then they turn around, and they’re whiter than I am, and Raphael smirks and says, “Somebody’s star struck” in a really annoying singsong voice.

  So I stop looking for celebs, even when I’m absolutely positive I catch the guy who played Gunther on Friends checking me out.

  Good thing I ignore him, because he turns out to be the butch half of a lesbian couple and she looks as though she thinks I’m checking out her girlfriend, and I wish Jack would give me the damn ring so she could see that I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in her girlfriend or her or, for that matter, the guy who played Gunther on Friends.

  God, I wish I had a cigarette.

  That, or a confirmed future with Jack.

  But he’s currently looking around like a little kid who hasn’t been to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade fifty or however-many times, and I’m inexplicably supremely annoyed with him, especially when he says, “Isn’t this great? Don’t you love these seats?”

  “Eh,” I say, still feeling claustrophobic and idly wondering what would happen if I had to pee now that we’re here in VIP territory—then, of course, immediately realizing that I have to pee. Badly.

  I don’t suppose they provide, within the cordoned-off area, heated Porta Potties for VIPs with raisin-size bladders.

  They don’t.

  I know, because I just asked Raphael, who asked Jack even though I told him not to, who reluctantly asked the menacing Wall of Man.

  “What do I do now?” I ask Jack in the wake of this bad news.

  “Hold it?”

  “Hold it?” I echo. “For how long?”

  “Until Santa passes by?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I am not kidding you. Santa’s the end of the parade. And anyway, I told you to go when we were back at the deli.”

  “I tried.” Is this not the most annoying, least romantic
conversation ever? I can’t believe we’re actually having it on our engagement day. Or not.

  “Do you want to leave and try to find a bathroom?”

  “By myself?”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “But we can’t get back into the bleachers if we leave.”

  He shrugs. “We’ll go home.”

  But what about the televised engagement?

  Is he testing me?

  Does he think I’m suspicious and testing him?

  “You know what, Jack? Never mind. I’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” he says, either believing me and relieved his engagement plans haven’t been derailed, or callously unconcerned about my bladder.

  What now?

  For a few seconds, I watch the parade preparations in the street and try to focus on something else.

  But I can’t.

  “Raphael,” I say, turning to him and seeing that he’s exchanging winks with a cute homosexual to our left, “I have to pee. And you’re engaged, by the way.”

  “I know. But he’s so adorable,” he hisses. “I can look.”

  “You winked.”

  “I can wink.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Donatello and I discussed it. Winking is allowed. It’s harmless.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Tracey, you have a dirty mind.”

  “So do you!”

  “I know!” He is gleeful. “But it’s okay, because I love Donatello. If I have lust, it’s only in my mind.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to pee,” I say.

  I’m not asking for assistance in this matter; I’m merely sharing so that I can receive sympathetic support in my time of need.

  “Tell Jack,” is Raphael’s unsympathetic response.

  I notice that Jack is busy turning his back to us and pretending to be very interested in something on the north end of the bleachers. Is he giving the high sign to a waiting camera crew so they can come over and film the engagement?

  Play it cool, Tracey.

  Further perusal indicates that there is no camera crew in sight on the north end of the bleachers, unless they’re disguised as a popcorn-toting Midwestern family of five.

  “I did tell Jack,” I whisper to Raphael. “He didn’t really seem to care.”

  Unless he was merely acting as though he doesn’t care for the sake of preserving his engagement surprise, in which case, I forgive him.