I was getting giddily stupid. I went to kiss her hello, but my lips ended up brushing her hair instead. She must have showered, because she didn’t smell like she’d spent the day in a busy kitchen.
“Hey, babe.” I tried my best to sound casual. “You okay? I was getting so worried.”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry I’m late. I left plenty of time to change, but then the subways were all screwed up.”
“It doesn’t matter, the main thing is that you’re here now. I hope you have comfortable shoes.”
“They’re in the bag.”
“Why not put them on?”
I waited while she kicked off her heels in favor of loafers.
“So, what’s with all the secrecy?” she asked.
“No secrets. We’re having dinner at Francesco’s.”
“It’s my favorite.” She smiled. “And?”
I was feeling better by the second. “And I thought we’d take a lovely stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge to watch the sunset.”
“I gathered that. And?”
“And let’s go, and you’ll see,” I said. I was ready to kneel down right there, but knew it would be so much more romantic on the bridge. “It’s gorgeous out.”
“That it is, and I’m with the most beautiful woman on Manhattan Island.”
“Nuh-uh,” I bumped her hip with mine. “I am.”
“Let’s not argue, but I beg to differ.”
“Let’s go then.” I clutched at her hand. “They’ve reserved us a table overlooking the water. Come on. If we hurry, we can still catch the sun before it sets.”
It wasn’t unusual for us to walk in silence, as she was often wrapped up in thought, especially in that after-work period when she needed to switch gears, so we ventured onto the pedestrian walk and admired the view. The weather continued to be ideal for a summer evening with a delightful breeze. The sun crept toward the horizon. I snapped one photo after another until Faith threatened to throw me and my camera into the river if I didn’t cut it out.
“Let’s rest a minute,” I suggested, while my stomach did backflips. I imagined I could feel the bridge sway, which was ridiculous, but everything made me queasy right now.
“What for? You’re acting weird, more wired than after downing an entire carafe of coffee on an empty stomach.”
Peering into her eyes, I ran my fingers through the soft locks on her head. “I love the way the sun brings out the highlights in your hair.”
“Honestly, Janalyn, what’s gotten into you?” She reached out to feel my forehead, but in one fluid moment, I snatched her hand, knelt down on one knee, and looked up at her. Her expression looked as if she would pass right out or die of embarrassment or both.
“What are you doing?” she exclaimed. “Get up, get up!”
“These past thirteen years have been the best of my life,” I said. “I love you more each day. You make me the happiest woman alive. I don’t ever want to live without you.” I removed the ring box from my handbag and opened it. There was barely enough sun left but the street lamps made the gold and diamonds twinkle. “Faith Stacey Horowitz, will you be my wife?”
The windy day had made her long straight hair a tangled mess, and it swayed now in front of her face. But it was not enough to conceal the tightness of her lips as Faith’s expression turned into one of clear horror. I had expected smiles at the very least and happy tears at most. I was not prepared for dismay.
“Janalyn…I…we. Oh, shit, what brought this on?”
Squaring her shoulders, she reached down and lifted me so that we were eye-to-eye. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t cry, because the pain was so great. I couldn’t even breathe. I gaped at her, waiting for her to say something as she peered into my eyes. Was that pity I saw?
“Why do we need to get married?” she finally said. “Everything is perfect as it is; a piece of paper won’t change that.”
“I love you, Faith. We’re so good together.”
“Precisely why we don’t need a silly certificate that’s not recognized by the majority of the country.”
“I thought you’d be overjoyed. Why are you so against it?” I said simply, but dying a slow death inside. What should have been the best moment of my life was turning into a nightmare.
“Janalyn, darling, why don’t we go to Francesco’s and enjoy a nice romantic dinner and talk about it over an expensive bottle of wine? What do you say?”
“I can’t believe you don’t want to marry me.” I stood there shaking but unmoving from the spot I wished would open up and let me fall through.
“It’s not that. Marriage is a waste of money. It’s not legal, for one, and two, what difference will a certificate make?”
“Why make excuses? If you love me as I love you, you’d marry me no matter what anyone—judge, court or country—thinks.”
“Stop it, Janalyn. You’re talking crazy. The main thing is that I love you and I don’t need to be reminded that our love isn’t recognized. Now, let me see this ring.”
She examined it in the box but didn’t put it on.
“Marry me anyway,” I said.
She reached for my hand, but I resisted, still standing firm in my spot, as if moving meant I was living and still breathing and not in the deep recesses of a nightmare from which I could still wake up. I gave it my best shot. I don’t remember why it mattered as much as it did, and I wasn’t beyond pleading, but I’d never expected I’d whimper.
“Faith, I’m asking you to be my wife. Give me a better reason why not.”
“I already said why: it’s not legal, we’re good, and there’s no need to flush money down the toilet for an institution that does not include us, period.”
“That’s a cop-out and you know it.”
“Don’t push me, Janalyn.”
“Marry me, then.”
“No.”
With my stomach twisted in knots, bile rose in my throat. This was simply not the reaction I had even contemplated, let alone one I could endure. Was this what thirteen years together had been to Faith? As good as it got?
“Tell me why, Faith; tell me the real reason. I think I have a right to know.” My voice rose close to hysteria. Faith’s grimace showed me she was growing weary of a conversation she clearly did not want to have, but I could not end it. I just couldn’t. I pushed her and pushed her until I thought she’d blow.
“I can’t marry you…because…why are you doing this, Janalyn?”
I shook her, as if trying to detach the words from her lips. Tears fell freely from my eyes, but I didn’t wipe them away. “Say it, Faith. Say it, damn it!”
“I’m already married.”
Her words hit me like a dump truck, and I swallowed hard to avoid losing my lunch. Married? What did that mean? For a moment, I considered turning around and leaving, running, actually; but I had to know the truth; I deserved to know. With every ounce of self-preservation and strength I had left in me after this revelation, I held her arms with an iron grip, just above her elbows. Neither she nor I would be leaving until I got answers.
“It’s complicated,” she said.
I waited, still too fragile to speak.
“I knew it was wrong, but when we met at Lincoln Center back then, I fell in love. I thought I could resist you—I tried and I tried, but…”
“Go on.” My voice was gruff. I didn’t sound anything like myself.
“I married my husband so long ago. He would contest me filing for a divorce, and honestly, I don’t know if I want one. I don’t know why I can’t have you both.”
Husband. She had a husband, whom she’d been married to before we even met.
“Stop.” I covered my ears; I’d heard enough. Reality had clawed its way into my life, and the claws were tearing th
rough my heart, ripping every part of me to teeny tiny pieces. Nothing in my entire life had ever hurt this bad. Nothing. It was like touching her burnt the flesh right off my palms.
“All I know is you lied to me,” I said in an empty monotone “I can’t stand the sight of you. Goodbye, Faith.”
I turned to leave and didn’t look back, despite the sobs I heard echoing behind me from a woman I obviously didn’t know.
At one point, I stopped to stare blankly at a spectacular star-studded sky I could not in the least appreciate. Life had been so vibrant one minute, and now it was all blurred and muddled. It was as if ice ran through my veins, and I shivered from head to foot. How I didn’t pass out or jump off the bridge that night was nothing short of a miracle. I walked around in a daze for hours—contemplating, unable to self-soothe. I hadn’t seen this coming at all. What had happened? What had I missed? How could I have been so stupid?
When I simply could not walk one more step, I sank into an empty park bench in Washington Square Park, I think. I bawled like a baby, not far from the loitering homeless folk, who kept their distance. I cried until all my strength and will had literally run out. When a jogger stopped to ask if I was okay, I could only manage a grunting sound and a feeble nod.
With a couple of bars left on my cell phone, I finally called Debs. She got me to her apartment, held me while I cried, and medicated us both with shots and shots of whiskey.
Except to use the bathroom, I didn’t even get out of her spare bed after that for a week. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I holed up at Debs’s place and called in sick most of that month, losing ten pounds and looking like death warmed over.
Once I emerged from my helpless state, I found that Faith had already put the house on the market. I couldn’t afford to buy her out without taking a major home equity loan on the existing mortgage, nor could I bear to stay there, surrounded by memories and her scent. She removed all her stuff right away, sold, or donated our shared items. I had two weeks to figure out what I would do or where I would go. She didn’t elaborate in our communications, because I would not give her the time of day anyway.
I thought I had known everything there was to know about her. I had thought I understood her. I had thought we would be together forever. But instead, the sun was gone and with it my heart. We were through; that was the easy part.
The hard part was figuring out how to get over her.
CHAPTER 5
Fall 2013
Goddamn it! Not another one of these annoying messages—the latest happy hump day greeting, from someone within the company who had nothing better to do than send out mass e-mails to coworkers. What was the world coming to? Correspondence these days was already a garbage heap overflowing with useless information in epic proportions! It was overwhelming just keeping up with urgent matters without having to filter through all the junk, especially junk with eye appeal. It’s not like I was averse to viewing sugary sentiments depicting scantily clad voluptuous women in my inbox—quite the contrary; I enjoyed it, more than I cared to admit. But after Faith’s bomb, everything had changed. I still couldn’t believe it was over. A revelation that sickened me to the core and back.
The effects of the breakup were long-lasting: One stray thought about Faith in the morning could still ruin an entire day. I became annoyed by things I hadn’t given a second thought to when I was settled in my personal life; a harmless random e-mail like this could set me off. But displacing my anger from Faith’s betrayal into griping at the flaws of the modern-day world only made it worse, so I hit delete and watched the distraction disappear from the screen.
It was no use pretending to concentrate, so I propelled my chair around to pester Debs during her bouts of peak production, hoping her work ethic was contagious. It was amazing that she never missed a beat, even with my interruptions. I poked my head around the partition between us. She smacked the keyboard, at times with one hand, turning pages with the other. Other papers went flying as she entered information.
“Sheesh, Debs! You type like a speed demon. I can’t delete spam as fast as that. Speaking of…I’m drowning in hump day greetings gone viral, not to mention tons of ads, dating sites I didn’t sign up for…need I go on? How do you keep up?”
“You’re either Miss Popularity, or your e-mail address has been hacked. Time for a new identity. Let me finish up here, and I’ll re-assign you a new e-mail—something easy to remember but impossible to abuse.”
With the prospect of this problem going away forever, I had to admit that a part of me liked some of these junk mails. But I had to stop ogling women who didn’t exist, I told myself. I rolled my chair back behind my desk. As if my computer had heard me, a glittery photo of a voluptuous bare-breasted fairy with wings large enough for two showed up on my screen, luring me in. Her come-hither smile and enormous eyes inviting me to fly away with her made a certain part of my anatomy clench, reminding me that its neglect was bordering on detrimental to my health. One look at this imaginary woman had me hot to pack it all in and head directly to fairyland.
Damn Faith for leaving me so desperate. These photos were constant reminders of what I was missing. It had me interminably depressed, cynical and with a low tolerance for minor inconveniences.
I didn’t have long to obsess before Patrick, who appeared to have aged significantly and was back to work not long after bypass surgery, headed my way. He’d enrolled in a medically supervised fitness regime, but in my humble opinion, he still had a ways to go before he was out of the woods, where his health was concerned. When he arrived at my desk, I practically knocked the escape key right off my keyboard in my rush to close the naughty picture, fearing any sudden rise in his blood pressure might land him back in the hospital.
“Hey, Patrick. What’s up?”
“Janalyn, do you mind figuring a way to use these handouts when you get a chance? Spruce ’em up a bit. Syd, the autocratic administrative pain in the rectum, is on my back.”
It was hysterical to hear Patrick speak this way, but I didn’t want to offend him by laughing. And rectum summed him up nicely.
I shifted a stack of papers to one side of my desk to make room for more, glancing briefly at the cover of the brochures. The outfits the models wore showed how outdated they were. I’d have to start from scratch, which I figured was what Patrick had in mind all along, the sly devil.
“Sure thing,” I said, since I didn’t really mind, “drop them here.”
“Thanks, kiddo, if anyone can do it justice, you’re the one.”
“No prob.” I smiled at him, wondering if he was getting laid regularly, possibly even against medical advice. The very idea that everyone was having sex but me, whether or not it was true, turned my smile to an instant frown. Since when had I become so pitiful?
Time to move on. I picked up where I had left off after Patrick had disrupted my fragile concentration. Too soon afterward, a random newspaper clipping with a photo of a beautiful woman landed on my keyboard from the other side of the partition, so Debs had to be the culprit; I tossed it aside, not amused. Every stinking thing these days oozed sex appeal. Even Scott Spencer Enterprises ads were guilty of exploiting the adage “sex sells.” I couldn’t escape it. If I didn’t nurture myself soon, I feared my libido would wither and die.
But Debs was going to ask me about it soon, so I reluctantly looked at the photo. It was none other than a publicity snapshot of Victoria Beckham. Somebody should send her food aid, I thought. My idea of sexy had a bit more cushion on them bones. But then, my idea of sexy had also been purely theoretical, past history, five excruciating years ago, to be exact. There hadn’t been anyone—ever—after Faith. Pathetic.
In spite of starving herself skinny, Victoria was attractive in that charismatic way that was impossible to deny. But clearly, Debs didn’t like her, because it was obvious that she had cut the former Spice Girl out
of a picture with her husband; all that was left of soccer god David Beckham was a part of his arm draped over her bare shoulder. As I examined the picture, I heard Debs’s unmistakable giggle.
I glanced up to find her looking down at me from the other side of my cubicle with my clearly labeled hands off scissors in hand. Sporting a huge grin, she held the rest of David Beckham’s photo close to her heart.
“Pretty please, Janalyn, be a pal. You take Victoria so I can have David all to myself.”
“You do realize that Posh Spice and David Beckham have four children together? Better leave this one alone,” I suggested. “And please put the scissors back where you found them.”
In response, Debs pouted flirtatiously, crumbled the picture of Mrs. Beckham into a ball, and promptly shot it into the wastebasket. “I was going to give you a new e-mail addy, but it can wait.”
She then made a major production of putting my scissors in my personal stash canister and sauntered back to her cubicle, grumbling. “All I asked was for help distracting Victoria so I can have a night with my heartthrob.”
I yawned and stretched, as much as my office chair allowed, when I caught a part of the Daily News Debs hadn’t butchered. What a bummer, I smirked: Faith’s favorite Latin group was disbanding after the lead singer allegedly ran off with their manager and all the profits.
Pain still pierced my heart at the tiniest reminder of Faith; this huge knot in my stomach made me nauseous. When would I ever get over the fact that our relationship had been a farce? I should be glad, right? Better we were done, kaput, so I didn’t waste another minute of my life on something that never was real. Thirteen wasted years had been enough.
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