Slightly Engaged

by Wendy Markham

Is he cheating on me?

  Is that why we’re not engaged?

  He turns around to watch me being searched by the metal-detecting wand. Then he smiles, and I melt.

  He’s so cute, isn’t he? And he loves me.

  “Ready?” he asks after I’ve returned my belongings to my pockets and my boots to my feet.

  “Ready,” I say, and we hold hands as we head toward the gate.

  The airport is packed with holiday travelers, which makes it impossible to get anywhere quickly, but we have plenty of time. All is right in Tracey World again.

  Until Jack abruptly lets go of my hand.

  Now, why would he do that?

  It’s not as though we can’t fit through the crowd walking two abreast.

  Did he spot his bridge-and-tunnel girlfriend across the way?

  Now you’re being ridiculously paranoid, Tracey.

  I reach for Jack’s hand again, find it, and squeeze it.

  He gives me a quick squeeze back, but drops it again.

  Okay, so he isn’t as into hand-holding as he used to be at the beginning of our relationship. Or two minutes ago.

  That doesn’t mean he’s cheating on me.

  Damn that Raphael.

  But of course Jack’s not cheating. There’s a perfectly good explanation for a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper in his pocket.

  Maybe…

  All right, maybe it’s the number for the jeweler from Sheepshead Bay who’s designing my ring setting. Maybe he’s a little old, I don’t know, Austrian man who’s been painstakingly trying to finish the job in time for Christmas. Maybe he ran into trouble because his arthritis is acting up and his gnarly old hands aren’t what they used to be. Maybe he needs Jack to call him so that he can send the ring via Fed Ex to my parents’ house so he can put it into my stocking for Christmas morning.

  “Are you coming?” Jack asks over his shoulder.

  “Yup.”

  “This place is a zoo.”

  “Yup.”

  I reach for his hand, but alas, it’s swept into a moving throng of humanity—insert dramatic sigh—perhaps lost to me forever.

  Is that a sign?

  Maybe.

  I’m starting to think that my getting engaged before the year ends—or ever, for that matter—is about as likely as the actual existence of the little old arthritic Austrian jeweler from Brooklyn.

  Jack didn’t have a ring in his pocket, so unless he checked it in his luggage—which he wouldn’t, because everybody knows you don’t check valuables—all I’m getting for Christmas is…

  Well, what am I getting?

  Not a ring.

  Not fine china.

  Does he even have a gift for me stashed in his bag?

  Not that I have a gift for him stashed in my bag.

  But I do have the fancy certificate I made on my computer, entitling him to one all-expenses-paid, all-inclusive weekend in Anguilla over Martin Luther King’s birthday weekend.

  We’re going to the Sea Plantation, a resort hotel I found yesterday on Tripadvisor.com. It looked good in the pictures, and it was more affordable than most places there.

  Yes, the customer reviews were a little ambiguous—some so glowing you know that whoever wrote them must be related to the resort’s owners, others so negative you know that whoever wrote them must have a personal vendetta against the resort’s owners.

  But at least none of the reviews mentioned bugs in the rooms. I can handle a delayed check-in, a hotel staff that’s less than exuberant, even skimpy towels. But bugs are out.

  So, yes, I have for Jack a handmade certificate—with fancy red and green font, no less—for a glorious weekend at a bug-free Caribbean resort. Which I can’t present to him in front of my mother because she won’t approve. She used to give me shit for calling boys in high school…can you imagine what she’d say if she knew I was inviting one on vacation?

  Not that I’m in high school, or that Jack is a boy.

  But there’s something about seeing my mother that instantly erases a decade from my life.

  I meet up with Jack again at the gate area, which is packed. No place to sit; barely room to stand.

  “We’re boarding in five minutes,” Jack informs me.

  “Good.” Time to pop a Xanax, courtesy of Dr. Trixie Schwartzenbaum, who prescribed it last year for potential extreme panic situations like this.

  By this I mean getting on an airplane, not finding out my boyfriend might be in love with another woman.

  Or not.

  By the time we’re taxiing out to the runway, I’m not only no longer worried about the phone number in Jack’s pocket, I could care less if the plane goes down over the Catskills.

  Xanax is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

  So, come to think of it, were my little pink pills. Maybe I should make an appointment with good old Doctor Trixie, whom I haven’t seen in months, and get back on the meds. Not because I’m having panic attacks per se, but they did wonders for my waistline.

  Jack and I rent a car at the airport after we make our bumpy landing in Buffalo, where a blinding snow is falling.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” I ask him, gazing serenely past the furiously working windshield wipers at the near whiteout beyond.

  “How are we supposed to drive thirty miles through this? And at night?”

  “Forty miles,” I correct him. “And it’ll be fine.”

  He says nothing, just sits there with his hand clenched on the gearshift, the car still in Park.

  “Do you want me to drive?” I offer. “I’m used to it.”

  “No, I’m used to it, too. I go to Aspen every December, remember?”

  “Aspen isn’t Buffalo, Jack. This is different. It’s lake effect. Really, I can drive.”

  “I can drive,” he says tersely, and shifts into Reverse.

  Which would have been fine if we were supposed to be backing the rental car out of our parking spot.

  Which we weren’t.

  “Do you think I dented the fender?” Jack asks, shifting into Drive.

  “Nah, I’m sure it’s fine,” I say, praying he opted for the extra insurance. I was at the luggage claim when he filled out the paperwork, hoping to grab his bag and sneak a brazen peak inside before he got there.

  Apparently, nobody in their right mind—aside from Jack—was renting cars in Buffalo this stormy eve, so he was back in time to pick up his own duffel.

  Mental note: get up extra early in the morning to snoop through Jack’s luggage.

  Mental note, Part II: stop being nosy and obsessive.

  The forty-mile drive down the New York State Thruway to Brookside takes us two and a half hours. Jack follows the taillights of the semi in front of us, but there are times when it’s obliterated by snow, even though we’re creeping along a mere two car lengths behind it.

  There are a few harrowing moments when I’m tempted to stage a mutiny, or at least seize the wheel from Jack. But I manage to control myself—and stave off a panic attack, to boot. Probably only because I’m still feeling the effects of the Xanax.

  Still, every time I hear Jack’s sudden intake of air or feel the car’s tires begin to slip, it’s all I can do to stay seated and silent.

  I find myself wondering if he regrets coming home with me to Brookside. He’d probably rather be winging his way to Aspen right now with the rest of the Kennedys.

  I mean, the Candells.

  Why didn’t I just let him go?

  If you love something, set it free.

  If it comes back to you, it’s yours.

  If it goes to Aspen instead, you can hardly blame it.

  When we reach the tollbooth in Brookside, Jack heaves a tremendous sigh, followed by a tremendous yawn.

  “God, I’m beat,” he says. “I can’t wait to get into bed.”

  Bed? Does he actually think he’s going to walk into my parents’ house and go to bed? Stealing a glance at the dashboard clock, I see that it’s merely ten-forty.
He has no idea what he’s in for, poor deluded soul.

  Why did I insist on exposing him to a Spadolini Christmas before I’ve even closed the deal with an engagement ring?

  If he still wants to marry me after this week, I guess I’ll know it’s true love.

  And if he doesn’t, I’ll know why.

  Finally, we’re turning onto my parents’ street, where every house displays a spotlit wreath on the door, elegant white lights in the shrubs and single white candles in the windows.

  Every house, that is, but one.

  “Wow, your parents go all out, don’t they,” Jack comments, turning into the freshly shoveled drive—which means that at least one of my brothers is here, because like I said, my dad no longer shovels. That job will fall to my unsuspecting boyfriend come sunup.

  Not that the sun ever actually comes up in Brookside at this time of year. Ominous snow clouds are pretty much the order of the day, every day.

  “What do you mean, my parents go all out?” I ask Jack, pretending not to see the thousands of blinking colored bulbs strung from every limb and rafter, the shiny garlands draped from pillar to post—and a showy new addition this year: an enormous inflated Santa anchored to the front lawn and bobbing wildly in the snowy gusts off the vast expanse of nearby Lake Erie.

  “Look at their house. I mean, it just screams hallelujah,” Jack says, killing the engine and my last remaining hope for his tolerance of a Spadolini holiday.

  Then he adds hastily, “But in a good way,” thus endearing himself to me all over again.

  “If you like the outside, you’ll love the inside.”

  “Then let’s go,” he says through a puff of frosty breath, already out of the car. “God, it’s cold here.”

  “I told you.” I shiver in my pea coat.

  “You’re not dressed right,” Jack tells me. “You’re turning blue. You need a hat.”

  “I don’t wear hats.”

  “Then you need a hood.”

  “I’m fine,” I say through chattering teeth.

  He insists on carrying my luggage and his, leaving my arms free to hug the barrage of family that greets us at the door.

  It’s almost eleven o’clock on a weeknight, yet the whole Spadolini clan has turned out to greet us.

  The crowd includes: Mom and Dad; my oldest brother, Danny, and his pregnant-again wife, Michaela, their two-and four-year-olds, Kelsey and Danny Junior; my favorite brother, Joey, his adorable wife, Sara, and their snoozing eighteen-month-old, Joe Junior; my laid-back brother Frankie and his cute redheaded, freckled wife, Katie; and of course, my only sister, Mary Beth, who is looking more like our mom every day, along with her two boys, Nino and Vince Junior, who unfortunately are looking more like their philandering father every day.

  My mother hugs me ferociously, telling me over and over again how worried she was about us driving in from the airport. “It’s snowing like crazy out there,” she informs everybody, her hand pressed against her ample and presumably palpitating bosom. “I was so afraid something happened to you two.”

  “We were fine, Ma. Jack drove,” I tell her proudly, so that she can love him even more than she already does.

  She might not approve of our living situation, or the fact that his parents are divorced and he’s not Italian, or Catholic, or from Brookside. But luckily, none of that stops her from treating him like a Chi-chi-bean-loving son. He won her over from the start with his voracious appetite and copious compliments on her cooking.

  “Thank you for taking good care of our girl, Jack,” my father says, shaking his hand.

  I should probably resent the implication that their girl is incapable of taking care of herself, but for some reason, I don’t. Not right now, anyway. I’m just glad they’re welcoming Jack as warmly as they’d welcome one of their own.

  I can’t help remembering how wary my parents were of Will—and rightly so, in retrospect.

  Granted, they were wary of Jack in the beginning, too, but not for long. Not after they met him. My mother quickly went from calling him a Smooth Operator to Fed-Exing him her homemade pizza.

  As I watch Jack greeting everyone in turn—by name, no less, even the kids, and with big hugs—I swear I’m falling more in love with him by the second.

  Who else could walk into this madhouse and willingly fit right in?

  “Jack, can I get you a glass of pop?” my mother asks lovingly.

  “Pop? Ma, get him a beer,” Danny speaks up. “I’ll have one, too.”

  My mother looks at me.

  “I’ll have one too,” I say in response—then realize that she wasn’t asking me that.

  In fact, she wasn’t asking me anything; she was giving a silent order: Go get those beers for the menfolk.

  Okay, she doesn’t really say menfolk.

  But that’s about the most progressive thing about her.

  Luckily, my newest sister-in-law, Katie, Spadolini Kitchen Slave In Training, comes to the rescue. “You guys go relax. I’ll get beers for everyone,” she offers.

  “Even me?” Vince Junior asks.

  She ruffles his hair. “You get pop.”

  “He gets water,” Mary Beth speaks up. “He drank three cans of Pepsi already. I’ll never get him to bed tonight.”

  “Isn’t it a little late for them to be up on a school night anyway?” I ask her as we all make our way to the dining room, which is, of course, the center of the house. Countless milestones have taken place around this long table.

  Come to think of it, this would be a fine site for Jack’s proposal.

  “It’s not a school night, Aunt Tracey!” says Nino, the proud kindergartner. “We’re on vacation!”

  I don’t reply to that; I’m too busy trying to figure out how to lure Jack to the table with a ring.

  But Jack says, “Well, Nino, the thing is, if you don’t get to sleep early tonight, you won’t get to sleep early tomorrow night, or the next night…and if you’re up late on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus won’t come!”

  By now, the entire family is gazing adoringly at my Jack, because around here, if you like my mother’s cooking, small children and Christmas, you’re in.

  Which, come to think of it, would explain why Will was always out. He liked none of the above. Especially Christmas. In fact, he’s spending the holidays alone in New York again, by choice, supposedly brushing up on his monologue for a January audition.

  I presume he didn’t get that film role he was so perfect for. I kept meaning to ask him about it the last few times he called—which he still does, from time to time—but he was too busy dominating the conversation to let me get a question in edgewise.

  Not that I care about Will’s fledgling film career.

  Or about Will himself.

  I try to imagine him here in Brookside with me for the holidays, sleeping in my brothers’ old bedroom and admiring my mother’s handmade ceramic Christmas tree and fiber-optic manger scene.

  Nope. That would never happen, even if my mother agreed to prepare strictly macrobiotic meals and outfit Danny’s lower bunk in Frette linens.

  But there’s Jack, wholeheartedly complimenting a glowing Connie on everything from the lopsided tree and Vegas-style manger scene to the worn but cheerful vinyl poinsettia-covered cloth that runs the vast length of the dining-room table.

  All the table’s leaves are in place, as usual. Not because we’re expecting to feed a big crowd over the holidays—which we are—but because my mother feeds a big crowd on a daily basis. You never know who might pop in, or at what time of the day or night.

  Speaking of which, no sooner have we sat down than the front door opens and a couple of my cousins walk in, dressed, as my father likes to say, to the nines. Here in Brookside, that means designer jeans with spike heels, plentiful cleavage and Sharpie-thick eyeliner.

  “Jack, this is Toni and Donna,” I say as we shuffle chairs around to make room for them at the table.

  “You’re the one with the big-shot job in New York City
,” Donna squeals, tipsy enough from what she and Toni coyly call “Girls’ Night Out” to transform Jack’s polite handshake into a full-blown bear hug.

  “Well, I’m not really a big shot…” Jack extracts himself from Donna’s embrace and looks at me, embarrassed.

  Maybe he’s not a big shot in New York, but…

  “Trust me,” I say with a bright smile, “you really are.”

  At least in Brookside.

  “So when are you two getting married?” Toni asks, reaching for one of the cucidati that are heaped on a platter in the center of the table.

  Everybody looks at Jack. Including me.

  Normally, I’d be cringing, but at this point, I want to high-five my cousin for putting him on the spot and making him squirm. It’s about time he had to answer to somebody for his actions—or lack thereof.

  Jack doesn’t squirm, though. Nor does he appear to be on the spot.

  No, he merely says, wily as Boston Rob, “Hey, are those the fig cookies I’ve been hearing so much about? They look great,” and helps himself to a cucidati, thus forever endearing himself to the woman who may—or may not—become his mother-in-law.

  As for everyone else, they’re suddenly busy helping themselves to the tray of drinks Katie has delivered. Nobody seems the least bit concerned about the fact that Jack and I aren’t engaged yet or that he didn’t answer Toni’s question.

  Maybe I shouldn’t be, either.

  Maybe I should try to just relax and enjoy the holidays.

  After all, everybody I love most in the world is right here in this room…how often does that happen? Hardly ever. So I might as well kick back and enjoy it while I can.

  Anyway, next year at this time, I’ll be married. I just know it.

  In fact, next year at this time…

  “Who’s hungry? I’ve got lasagna, eggplant and pizza in the oven,” my mother announces, even as I tell myself that next year at this time, Tra La!—I might very well have a little Jack Junior in the oven.

  Or not, I decide, watching my sister-in-law Michaela turn green and make a beeline for the bathroom at the mere mention of lasagna.

  Why rush into parenthood? Being engaged is enough of a goal to start with. Everything else will follow eventually.

  Jack catches my eye and smiles.

  I don’t even pretend he can possibly read my mind as I smile back at him.