Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  “I got the moon,” Nic says, holding up her charm for me to see. “Trade?”

  It doesn’t look too ominous, her cute little half-moon charm. But, then again, I’ve been to this fire before. “Depends. What does it mean?”

  Nic can’t suppress an eye roll. “An adventurous nightlife.”

  I look down at her belly. “How are you…?”

  “I know, right? Trade?”

  As I try to decide if I even want an adventurous nightlife, we hear from a girl in the group. “Ooohhhh, I got the wedding cake!” she giggles. “Does that mean I’m the next one to get married?”

  “It does indeed,” Nic says, immediately plastering on her happy-hostess face. “The yellow sheet of paper in front of each of you is a list explaining what each charm means.”

  While all of the guests read their charts to foresee their futures, I watch Seema’s jaw tighten. She leans toward Nic and whispers, “I thought you had this rigged.”

  “I did,” Nic whispers back defensively, frowning at her charm.

  “What did you get?” one of Seema’s friends asks her excitedly.

  “The snake,” she says, reluctantly showing it to the bevy of giggling women at the table.

  And that’s when the gasping begins. “Oh my God!” Seema’s auntie Hema exclaims. “It’s a curse!”

  Seema sighs loudly, having clearly anticipated this reaction. “It’s only a curse if you kill it,” Seema tells Hema calmly.

  “No, it’s a curse,” Hema insists, throwing her left hand in the air. “The wedding will be cursed.”

  “No, no, Mrs. Suresh.” Nic points to Hema’s sheet of paper and moves her finger down the list. “A snake means ‘slow, steady progress and extreme good fortune.’” Nic taps a particular line on Hema’s chart. “See, it says so right here.”

  “Not in Indian culture!” Hema tells her authoritatively. “In our culture, a snake is bad luck.”

  Seema takes a deep breath and tries to calm her down. “Auntie Hema—with all due respect, just because you have a fear of snakes does not mean that an entire country—”

  “I’m telling you it’s bad luck.”

  I’m already on my iPhone, looking up alternatives for all of our charms. “According to this article I googled, it’s only several generations of bad luck if you kill the snake—but I don’t see anything about pulling it out of a cake.”

  Hema’s jaw sets as she glares at me. “Are you going to tell me about my own people’s traditions?”

  Oops. “No, ma’am,” I say, looking down sheepishly.

  “Do you see me telling you how Norwegians celebrate Christmas?” Hema asks me.

  I can feel myself squinting. “Um … actually I’m sort of an Irish/German mutt more than…”

  I’m pretty sure Seema’s aunt begins chanting a prayer under her breath.

  Seema leans into me. “Suddenly, the Winnebago isn’t seeming so bad.”

  FOUR

  An hour or so later, we have piled Seema’s gifts into my car and made it home relatively unscathed.

  “I always pictured my bridal shower going differently than that,” Seema says to me slightly slurrily as we get out of the car and I hand her a giant box of towels from Bloomingdale’s.

  “What? You didn’t think it would include your aunt calling your mother in a panic so that they could recheck your horoscope for next week?” I say as I pull out several boxes from Target and slam my trunk shut.

  “That, and I didn’t think I’d ever open a gift in front of my seventy-two-year-old aunt only to see that it was a vibrator.”

  “It was kinda cool that she knew what one was though,” I suggest weakly to Seema.

  “You know, it really wasn’t.”

  We walk up Seema’s flagstone walkway to the front door. I unlock it, and the two of us step in.

  “You’re home early!” Scott yells from the bedroom, maybe a little nervously.

  “I wanted to say good-bye before your bachelor party starts,” Seema yells to him, putting down the towels, tossing her purse down on the coffee table, and walking across our living room toward her bedroom.

  “Give me a minute!” Scott says. “I wasn’t expecting you for another hour.”

  Uh-oh.

  Seema walks to the bedroom, unfazed. “Don’t worry. I just want to take off my bra, slip into some yoga pants, and—”

  Scott slams the door shut before she can walk into their room.

  Seema jolts her head back in surprise. She turns to me, then looks back toward her door. She shakes her head. “Okay, I know you don’t have a woman in there,” she yells through the door. “So what’s the deal? Did you buy a snake?”

  Scott opens the door and pops his head through the doorway. He is wearing a red-and-gold turban. “Was I supposed to buy a snake for the ceremony?”

  “Well, look at you!” Seema exclaims. Then she smiles and flirtatiously asks, “Are you gettin’ all groomlike?”

  Scott grins. “I am,” he says proudly, making a show out of walking out of her bedroom. He is wearing a cream-colored dupion-silk sherwani (a groom’s overcoat) that is heavily embellished with intricate Zardozi, maroon embroidery and beading. He also sports matching maroon silk kurta pajamas, dark red beaded pointy slippers, and the red-and-gold turban.

  Scott does a spin. “So, can I rock a sherwani or what?”

  Seema continues to grin at him, almost blushing. “Wow … you look amazing.”

  “I do, don’t I?” Scott says happily, then leans in for a kiss.

  She smiles even more brightly as she kisses him back.

  All is well in the kingdom once again.

  And I, despite myself, feel a twinge of jealousy.

  My friend is totally and completely, butterflies still in her stomach, madly in love. And she gets to marry the man she aches for. After thirty-two years of waiting, fretting, bad dating, bad hair, bad outfits, and pretending to care about football scores, she finally gets her happy ending.

  And as much as I’m mad at myself for feeling this way, I’m a little saddened by that.

  Stop it Mel, I think to myself. You’re letting the lack of momentum in your own life get the best of you. People’s lives are like fields—there are times of rapid growth, and times when the soil is fallow. There is nothing wrong with taking a little time to figure out what’s next in your life. If people were constantly moving to the next phase of their lives as quickly as possible, we’d all be grandparents by thirty-six, and dead by forty. There’s nothing wrong with a little boredom.

  The two are giving each other bedroom eyes, so I decide to give them a little privacy. “I’m gonna go unload the car.”

  Scott offers to help, but I insist it’s one of my maid-of-honor duties, and I shall go it alone.

  By the time I get back, they’re locked in their room.

  And I decide it’s time to finally drink some champagne.

  FIVE

  Who’s the love of your life?

  Who’s the guy who just popped into your head?

  Who’s the man you would spend the rest of your life with, if it were totally under your control?

  I stare at the yellow legal pad I just wrote on.

  It’s ten in the evening and, boy, am I having a “glass half-empty” kind of night. Actually, I’m having more of a “glass completely shattered because I threw it against the wall” kind of night.

  But I’m trying to snap myself out of it. I’m trying to figure out what I really want in my life, so that I can go after it, full speed ahead.

  I look at my nightstand, where my money-tree charm sits, mocking me.

  Damn it, I hate that charm.

  I refill a champagne flute from IKEA that Seema received today from a bottle of champagne left over from the shower.

  It’s pink. It’s yummy. It’s expensive. And it’s not making me feel any better.

  I begin writing on the legal pad again.

  If you can’t face your job another day, what do you want to d
o instead?

  What makes you happy? It can be anything—biking near a beach in the Maldives, taking black-and-white photos in Chicago, throwing a great dinner party here in Hollywood. What is it? And why aren’t you doing it?

  Many women my age can answer that question with “Because I have children to take care of. And a husband, a dog, a job that pays the bills, an aging parent. I have responsibilities.” But I can’t say that. I don’t have any major responsibilities. So why don’t I get off my butt and start doing something to make my life better?… Anything!

  I toss the notepad onto my bed dejectedly, walk across my bedroom, open my top desk drawer, and rifle through the debris of old receipts and Post-its for a candy bar. I usually have a candy bar hidden in here somewhere. I find a Twix. A “fun-size” Twix, but a Twix nonetheless.

  Normally candy makes me very happy. I have a thing about candy; it’s one reason I used to regularly run five miles a day: so I can always eat candy.

  But tonight I am more relieved to see it than happy. The truth is, I’m never really “happy” anymore. Sometimes I’m “content,” I guess, but even that feeling is fleeting lately.

  Fleeting contentment. I suppose if one were honest with oneself, one might say that’s depression.

  Ick. Depression. That’s an ugly word. A serious word. One that implies doctors and medication. I’m not that bad. Or am I? Is how I’m feeling normal? And what is normal anyway?

  I pop the little chocolate bar into my mouth, stare at my wall, and think.

  I think one reason depression (if I should call it that) can be so insidious is because usually it just creeps up on you. Frequently, it’s not one really catastrophic event that brings on a bout of depression—a breakup, a death, a job loss. It’s more like a small snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger as it descends, until it becomes so gigantic you don’t even know how to get a meltdown started.

  Right now, nothing is wrong in my life. I’m just not … happy. And I haven’t been for quite some time.

  I go back to my bed, sit down cross-legged, and silently stare at the money tree.

  Something must really be wrong with me if I am depressed over getting a money tree. Who wouldn’t want more money?

  Easy. Someone who’s stuck in her job and wants out, but knows that in this economy there is no better job out there, and that she has no other options.

  Okay, maybe I’m in a mild depression. I can snap out of it. It’s nothing that requires medication, just a general lethargic feeling and a sneaking suspicion that there’s more out there in life and I’m missing it.

  I’ve never been to Paris. I’ve always desperately wanted to go, but it’s never been a good time. First, I had college, and college loans. Then graduate school, and more loans. By the time I got my first job as a public-school teacher, I was so in debt that I couldn’t imagine traveling anywhere farther than Fresno.

  I was just starting to see the end of my debt. Was finally putting away a little every month to use toward travel. Finally ready to move on to the next adventure in my life.

  And then I got the pink slip, along with a hint from my principal that this year might be different: this year I may really be let go.

  But here’s my dirty little secret—I kind of hope they do fire me. Then I’ll be forced to try something different. Right now, I’m just stuck.

  It’s weird to feel stuck on the path you worked your ass off to take. I have wanted to be a math teacher since I was in third grade. My parents thought I’d grow out of it, but no. The older I got, the more I wanted to teach children. I wanted to surround myself with their optimism, their zest for life. With the added bonus of having two months off in summer and three weeks off at Christmas. Plus I wanted to be surrounded by math, which is (well, used to be) my version of The New York Times crossword puzzle. Challenging, yet inherently logical.

  I followed my bliss, worked like a madwoman to get what I wanted, and found myself pretty happy with my job and my life for several years.

  And then … I don’t know, my job’s just not doing it for me anymore. I loved it for a really long time, and now I don’t, and I don’t know what to do.

  Then there’s my love life.

  I remember the butterflies I got in college when I met the man of my dreams. (Even if the man was only eighteen.) Mark. Before Jeff, I dated Mark. And for six blissful months we made out every free second we had, slept on top of each other on his couch so we could get alone time away from all of our roommates. Talked on the phone all night during the few hours when we weren’t in the same room with each other. We actually did the “You hang up first” thing on more than one occasion. But then I didn’t want to have sex with him, and we broke up, and I found Jeff (who had no problem not having sex with me), and back then I figured I’d find dozens of men in my future who would make me feel that way again.

  Now, I’m closing in on my thirty-third birthday. There are no butterflies for thirty-three-year-olds. There’s lust, there’s guarded hope for the future, but there’s no feeling as if you’re going to throw up in the time between when he rings your doorbell and when you open the door.

  In some ways, that’s actually a good thing. (Vomiting can be so off-putting.) But right now, that lack of excitement is probably contributing to my depression.

  Adding to my romantic and career problems is the fact that I have to move out of Seema’s house soon. I have never lived alone, and the fear of that could be causing some of my late-night ice cream binges and might be a plausible excuse for why I’ve been missing my five-mile runs lately.

  But deep down, I know it’s none of these things. My depression is so insidious because there is no real reason for me to be depressed. There’s nothing seriously wrong with my life, nothing to fix that I have the power to fix. I just have nothing I’m looking forward to. I have no passion. I believe the French call it ennui. I have nothing I’m dying to accomplish, no finish line to push myself to cross. These days are just about getting through the days—there’s no going forward. For someone as goal oriented as me, that’s depressing.

  I have put on ten pounds in the past six months. No one has actually commented on my rapid increase in size, but let’s face it, when friends gain that much weight that quickly, we all wait until they’re out of the room before tsk-tsking, “She looks awful. What happened to her?”

  What happened in my case was simple: I just quit running every day. It wasn’t something I intended to quit—just one day I didn’t feel like doing it, so I didn’t. Then the next day I didn’t run either. And I happily discovered that it was nice having an extra hour in my day, every day, to lie on the couch and leaf through the latest Cosmo or bridal magazine (Seema’s been leaving a lot of those around lately). Want to read twenty-seven different descriptions of the Hawaiian islands? Pick up three bridal magazines and let the dreaming begin. Not to mention Paris, London, Florence … Hell, at this point, I’d settle for a trip to the Poconos.

  Then on the nights when I didn’t feel like dreaming about travel, I’d turn on the TV and spend hours watching mindless sitcoms or reality shows. Usually with my trusty Häagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s sitting loyally by my side.

  It was way more fun than pushing through pains in the backs of my thighs while I ran uphill—the same hill I’ve been running up for eight years.

  Soon, I replaced my evening jog with a few glasses of wine at night. And that previously mentioned Twix bar. Some nights a slice of cake to cheer me up, or a trip to Pinkberry for a large chocolate yogurt, and instead of fruit toppings I now added Oreos.

  Oreos instead of fruit. The Real Housewives instead of running. A little wine to reward myself for a day of hard work. Nothing tragic—much of it quite pleasant. New activities to distract me from the ennui.

  But then my mind takes over again, and I go back to being me, and no amount of ice cream or cookies or wine can distract me from that. I wonder if this is what a midlife crisis looks like. I’m only thirty-two though. Do I pla
n to die young?

  I wash down the candy with champagne, pick up my money-tree charm from my nightstand, and stare at it. What if I do die young? What if I work my ass off for a retirement I never see? What if I spend my whole life preparing for the life I’m going to lead, then never get around to living it?

  There’s a sudden pounding at our front door, which scares the crap out of me. It’s after eleven, so I’m kind of spooked out.

  I freeze in my bed, careful not to make a sound.

  A few moments later there’s another knock, and a deeply masculine (albeit slightly slurring) voice booms from outside, “Seema, I’ve got the chauffeur standing here with my bags, I’m drunk, and I know there’s a key under one of these rocks, but I’ll be damned if I can find it in my compromised condition.”

  What drunken ex-boyfriend has decided to pull a Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate at this late hour? I think to myself as I tiptoe out into the living room nervously and silently lean toward the door to try to secure the dead bolt.

  I hear a key go into our front lock before I can get to the bolt.

  The door creaks open, and a mysterious man walks in.

  I scream and jump the guy.

  He screams too, grabs me by the waist, throws me onto the couch, and pins me down.

  It’s at this point that I realize that, on top of me, is one of the best-looking men I’ve ever seen.

  Lucky for me, he’s happy to see me. “Mel!” He beams. “Damn, woman, you get sexier every time I see you.”

  My eyes bug open. “Jay! What are you doing here?”

  Vijay, Seema’s smoking-hot older brother, slowly climbs off of me. (Rats.) “Visiting my sister. Who thoughtlessly forgot to pick me up from the airport tonight.” He gives me a kiss on each cheek and sits down next to me. (That’s not as cheesy as it sounds—he lives in Paris.)

  “That’s because we didn’t think you were coming until next Thursday.”

  Jay smiles. “Oh, I’m not.”