Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to test our luck again,” I whine to Nicole. “What if something goes wrong?”

  “What could possibly go wrong?” Nic asks me huffily.

  “Okay, I can think of, like, five bad romantic comedies off the top of my head whose trailers all started with that statement.”

  “Not to worry.” Nic pulls a two-layer cake from a pink cardboard box on the counter. “This time, I figured out how to rig the cake correctly.”

  Seema and I exchange cautious looks. “I’m pretty sure I can name at least one bad romantic comedy that started with that statement,” Seema whispers to me.

  I put up the peace sign with my index and middle fingers and silently mouth, “Two.”

  I’ll admit, the cake does look amazing. A two-layered confection covered in white buttercream frosting. White satin ribbons spoke out of the middle of the cake, and on top sits a giant porcelain topper in the shape of a heart. Nic takes a small bowl of white frosting out of her refrigerator and adds a little frosting here and there to make the cake look perfect.

  I begin to question her. “Are you sure you can—”

  Nic quickly drops her frosting knife. “Ow! Owwwwww!” she howls, then quickly grabs a chair with one hand and clutches her stomach with the other. “Ow, ow, ow, sweet mother of holy fuck!”

  Seema and I both rush to her. I quickly ask, “Is it time?”

  Seema asks if she should call the doctor.

  Nic makes a show of waving us off with her hands, but she’s doubled over in pain and can’t speak.

  “What can we do? What do you need?” I ask Nic.

  “I’m fine.” Nic takes a deep breath and consciously releases the tension in her body.

  “I knew this was too close to your due date. You should not be throwing a party in your condition,” I say to Nic, who goes back to frosting the cake with more buttercream as if nothing ever happened.

  Nic waves me off. “Women have been in my condition since … well, since there were women. I’m fine. I’m just in false labor.”

  Seema and I exchange pained looks. Seema asks first, “What the hell is false labor? Is that a thing?”

  “Yes. Although I’m pretty sure the term was coined by a man. Nowadays they call it Braxton Hicks contractions. I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. More fun things to think about, such as … ta da!” Nic does her best impression of a knocked-up Price Is Right model as she presents the cake to us.

  It does look good, and I’ll bet she’s got dark-chocolate layers in there. But I’ve been burned by cake before.

  “You’ve got it straight this time, right?” Seema asks Nic dubiously as she takes a sip of champagne from my flute.

  “I have it straight,” Nic tells her irritably. “Mel, you wanted the antique phone, it’s right here. Pull.”

  “No, I didn’t want the antique phone,” I insist to Nic as I tug on a white satin ribbon and pull out a sterling-silver phone charm. “I wanted the passport.”

  “But the phone means good news is coming your way,” Nic tells me.

  “Not specific enough. I want the passport.”

  Nic makes a show of rolling her eyes. “Fine.” She points to a different ribbon. “Passport’s right there.”

  I yank out the ribbon and grin from ear to ear as I admire the silver passport.

  “Pull gently!” Nic lectures me. “You’re going to get the cake all messy.”

  “Better the cake look messy than I get the wrong fortune again!” I tell her.

  “Was it really such a bad fortune?” Seema asks me.

  I turn away from her ever so slightly. I kind of don’t know how to respond to her question. Was the charm I pulled a year ago really such a bad fortune? Maybe not, but I want a better one this time.

  Last time Nic tried to rig a cake, it was for her bridal shower, and she attempted to give me the engagement-ring charm. I had been with my boyfriend, Fred (now known officially as Fuckhead), for six years, and I desperately wanted to marry him. But instead of the ring, I pulled the chili-pepper charm, which was supposed to symbolize a red-hot sex life in my immediate future. At the time, sex with Fred had dwindled to nearly nonexistent, and I hated that damn cake. But the nine-inch disks of baked chocolate batter turned out to be right. I soon learned Fred was cheating on me, and I kicked him to the curb.

  The next few weeks after the breakup were hideous. We got back together, he proposed, I said yes, but I soon realized he was still cheating. I did what any smart woman would—I got the hell out.

  Then I made the mistake of trying to date again. How the hell do people do it in this day and age?! I tried to tackle dating the way I do everything else in my life: find out the requirements to attain your goal and work like crazy to fulfill the requirements. Buy cute new underwear: check. Run every day for a cute body: check. Let all of your friends know you’re looking: check-minus. Horribly bad idea in retrospect. I did the blind dating thing, the online thing, I tried speed dating, I perused “target-rich environments” (the target being a nice single man) such as sports bars, hardware stores, and one spectacularly craptastic deep-sea fishing trip.

  I might as well have slept until noon, then stayed on the couch in my pajamas guzzling mai tais all afternoon while watching Food Network for all the good it did me. The results would have been almost the same, except with the PJ/mai tai/TV option I might have finally mastered the art of making the perfect crêpe suzette or roasting and deboning a whole chicken.

  The rewards for all of my hard work included a guy throwing up on my shoes after I kissed him, going out to dinner with a man whose fiancée showed up halfway through the date (although technically she wasn’t his fiancée when she first got to the restaurant, since he didn’t propose to her until the end of dinner, sooo … yeah), getting propositioned for a threeway by a dentist, and having a pimply teenager at Home Depot generously offer to sleep with me. If my dating life had been a rocket, it would have leaked fuel all over Cape Canaveral, then accidentally blown up Florida.

  And then I met Danny. Beautiful, perfect-bodied Danny. He was smart, nice, funny. He had a good job, genuinely liked me, and told me constantly that he was in love with me. And the cake nailed it in terms of the red hot chili pepper, for that man had a knack for making a woman …

  TMI. Let’s just say our sex life wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was I wasn’t in love with him. Maybe because he was the first guy I dated after a serious relationship; I don’t know. For months I kept trying to force myself to feel that … spark. I was thirty-two and desperately wanted kids. But every time he brought up marriage, I got nauseous. Like a genuine, sick-to-my-stomach, “What is wrong with me?” pukey feeling. No matter how hard I tried, it never felt right. And I had compromised on so many other aspects of my life, I couldn’t compromise on whom I was going to hold hands with in fifty years.

  So we broke up.

  If you ask my friends, they would tell you that it was completely amicable. They were wrong. The only time breakups are amicable is when no one cares enough to be hurt. That was not the case for either of us.

  I turn back to Seema and shrug. “Fair enough. But I still want the passport this time.”

  As I carefully push the passport charm back into the cake, Nic points to Seema. “Seema, you want the baby charm, right?”

  “Yes!” she says excitedly, which is rather uncharacteristic for her.

  “It’s right here, under the four o’clock position from the heart cake topper,” Nic tells her.

  As Seema pulls out the baby-carriage charm (just to be sure), I ask Nic, “Why do we need a cake topper?”

  “It’s just another insurance policy against getting the wrong charms,” Nic assures me. “Not that we got the wrong charms last time, but this time I want to control my destiny a bit more. Based on the angle of the topper, I can point to each ribbon around the cake and know exactly what charm is hidden inside. Check out this ribbon. That’s mine.”
/>   I pull out a square charm. Nic smiles, clearly pleased with herself.

  Seema leans into Nic to get a better look. “What is that? An earring?”

  Nic is clearly offended. “No, it’s not an earring. It’s a picture frame. It means a future with a happy family.”

  Some days I swear these jewelers just make this shit up.

  The doorbell rings. “Your guests are here,” Nic chirps excitedly to Seema. “Can you guys go greet them while I finish tucking these charms back in?”

  “Okay,” I say, hopping off my seat to go greet the guests in the front hallway. “Just remember the passport…”

  “One o’clock position, after I place the topper directly in front of Seema. You can’t miss it!” Nic assures me. “Seema, you’re midnight.”

  Seema and I head over to the front door, and I begin the long-standing single-gal tradition of trying to be happy for yet another friend who got to a major milestone first.

  Actually, I am happy for her; I just wish that I didn’t have to participate in the following conversations over and over:

  Happy Guest: “So are you and Danny thinking about tying the knot?”

  This question should be followed by a swig of peach Bellini, followed by my upbeat, though not too cheerful, answer that we broke up months ago. (Instead, since I am driving, I drink Diet Dr Pepper. It is not the same.)

  My answer is always incredibly well received, with said guest looking embarrassed and grief stricken for me, patting me on the shoulder, and telling me I’m still young, I’ll find someone even better. Or that she never really liked him. (Say what now?) Or that ubiquitous assurance that, and I quote, “Everything happens for a reason.” A statement that people only use when your news is so hideously awful, they can’t think of anything comforting or useful to say.

  But the romance question isn’t nearly as bad as the questions about my pink slip.

  Guest (looking at me with a mixture of concern and pity): “Have you any more news about your job next year?”

  I teach calculus at a public school in Los Angeles, and unfortunately, because of state budget cuts, this year they’re going to have to lay off a bunch of teachers. Because my union insists on “last in, first out,” I may not have enough seniority to stay. So last March, I received a “possible layoff” slip from my high school, and it’s been weighing heavily on my soul ever since.

  What is a “possible layoff” slip? Government bureaucracy at its finest. Basically it’s a sheet of paper that tells me that it is possible that my employer won’t be needing my services next year, but that I shouldn’t make any plans to do anything else because they’ll probably need me. This is the fourth one I’ve received in as many years.

  My perpetual job insecurity is probably the last thing I want to talk about at a party. (Though why I’m not married yet is definitely running a close second.)

  Since I’m driving Seema later, I continue to console myself with more Diet Dr Pepper, then give my pat answer: No, I have not heard anything yet, but pink slips are common in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and they happen every year. I am always hired back, I will be fine.

  Grief stricken and/or embarrassed look by guest, followed by comments ranging from “I’m sure it’ll all be fine—you’re so good at what you do” to “Everything happens for a reason” to “You still get unemployment and some pension though, right?”

  And finally, there are the conversations of where I will be living next month. You see, Seema owns her house; I am just renting a room from her. I have agreed to move out when Scott moves in. And the rental market in Los Angeles is everything you’d think it would be in terms of both affordability and quality—meaning it lacks either one or both of those features, depending on where you look.

  By the fifth time I am asked, “How is the apartment hunt going?” and “Are you excited to finally get to live alone?” I have switched to full-sugar Coke and begun counting down the minutes before we start the opening of the presents (Ooh … Aah…), the pulling of the charms from the cake (Yikes! Really?), and the hugging good-bye of the guests, followed by the postgame gossip session (“She’s back together with that loser?” “I swear to God if I had those Miss Piggy legs, I would never wear that skirt”).

  An hour later, we have all stuffed ourselves with mini quiches, mini arugula-and-shrimp pizzas, melon balls with prosciutto, and bowls of namkeens (a sort of spicy, salty snack mix) and samosas (Indian potato pastries). The food is amazing, Nic’s place is beautiful, it’s a great opportunity to see my friends—and yet I just want to curl up in a ball and cry.

  At some point, I wander into the empty kitchen, ostensibly to get more food, but really to take a time-out. I walk over to Nic’s sink and admire her backsplash.

  Nic has two stepdaughters (bonus daughters, she calls them), Megan and Malika, who are ten and six. They’re constantly drawing pictures, so last year she had her favorites turned into kitchen tiles, which she has turned into a backsplash above her counter. The pictures show the kids’ versions of a perfect family. One was made by Malika when she was five and is a line drawing that looks like four little snowmen in the family: big snow-daddy Jason, slightly smaller snow-stepmommy Nic, an even smaller Megan, and the smallest, Malika. Next to that is a much more artistically advanced Christmas tree; a heart tile made by a smaller child with I Love You written in the middle, an arrow going through it diagonally; and about a gazillion tiles showing stick figures, hearts, and I Love Yous in various combinations.

  A long line of pictures representing nothing but peace, tranquility, and love. Not to mention knowing what your life’s passion truly is, and that you’re fulfilling it daily.

  I’m horribly jealous of Nic for a moment. I wish I knew what my life’s passion was. I wish I had something in my life I was motivated to work on every day.

  I hear the kitchen doors swing open, and turn around to see Nic. “You okay?” she asks quietly.

  “Never better,” I lie, smiling and holding up my flute of Coke for a toast.

  The two vertical lines between her brows shows me she doesn’t believe me. “You missing Danny right now?”

  “Not exactly,” I tell her truthfully. Though I do wonder why I’m feeling such sadness in my gut right now, almost like a weight that’s pulling me down. I absentmindedly play with a white doily on her shiny granite counter. “I think I miss what I thought he’d be. Or I miss knowing what I thought my future was going to look like. Or … I don’t know…” My voice peters out.

  Nic sits down on a chair at her kitchen island. “None of us ever really know—”

  “—what our future is. Yeah, I know, I get that. But you know you’re going to be a mom, Seema knows she’s going to be a wife. I just … I guess I just wish I knew what I was going to be. Like, if I knew I would always be single … okay, fine. Maybe I’d be okay with that. Maybe I wouldn’t keep hoping for something that doesn’t exist.”

  Nic’s stares at me, clearly studying me. “What are you hoping for?”

  I think about her question for ten seconds, then twenty. It’s a good question. Finally, I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of the problem.”

  Nic considers my answer. “For the cake, you wanted the passport charm. Where do you want to go?”

  I can think of twelve places off the top of my head. But only one really stands out in my mind: “Hawaii.”

  “Well, there you go. School is over, get on a plane.”

  “I don’t want to go to Hawaii alone. How depressing.”

  “You’re not alone. Jeff lives there these days.”

  “Yeah, running a bar for honeymooners. Hawaii’s the place you go to when you’re in love. Not run away to because you can’t find love. I want to see it when I can share it with someone.”

  “Go anyway.”

  Before I can answer, Seema pushes through the doorway. “I need cake.”

  “Why? What happened?” I ask.

  “Nothing happened. I just need cake
.”

  Nic picks up the cake and heads for the kitchen door. “Your wish is my command. Mel, can you grab the cake knife and pie server?”

  As I grab Nic’s superfancy sterling-silver serving pieces, Seema puts her hand on Nic’s chest to stop her. “You’re sure you did this right?”

  “I’m sure,” Nic insists, a bit insulted.

  “Because I don’t want to pick a Winnebago charm,” Seema warns her.

  “First of all, it’s not really a Winnebago. Symbolically, it’s a travel charm—”

  Seema puts her hand to her chest. “Nic, try to understand that in my mind, if there is a hell, I won’t spend eternity in a fiery abyss filled with sinners. I’ll be stuck in a Winnebago for all of time, driving around North Dakota in February with Karl Rove and Kim Kardashian.”

  Nic shakes her head slowly. “That’s oddly specific.”

  “I have nightmares. Let’s go.”

  Seema opens the kitchen door to let Nic through with her cake, and me to follow closely behind with the serving pieces.

  Earlier, Nic promised us up and down that she would put the cake topper in front of Seema, we would pick the charms in the midnight and one o’clock positions, and we’d live happily ever after.

  Now, as a math teacher, I could have told Nic the problem with using a cake topper as a marker for a circular cake. If you turn the cake 180 degrees, the cake topper looks exactly the same. Which means the midnight position is now in the six o’clock position, and my one o’clock position is really seven o’clock. Etc. So when we all grab our white satin loops and pull out our charms …

  While other guests squeal in delight, let’s just say I am not as enthusiastic. “What the hell?” I blurt out after seeing my charm.

  “No…,” Nic groans as she sees hers for the first time.

  “Okay,” I ask, showing mine to Nic, “can we trade this time?”

  “What did you get?”

  “The money tree,” I say sadly, tossing it on the table.

  “Oh,” Nic says, confused. “Well, at least that’s not a bad one. It means a lifetime of financial security.”

  Right. That’s not so bad. Maybe I’ll just spend the rest of my life worrying about making money, and waking up every morning to go to a job that I hate just to have more of it. Fan-fucking-tastic.