by Emily Giffin
"I thought you were going to make me wait until lunch!" I said, eagerly eyeing the present. Claire had excellent taste and never skimped in the gifting department. I ripped open the paper and saw a satisfying, red Baccarat box. I lifted the hinged lid and peered down at the chunky green crystal heart threaded with a black silk cord.
"Claire! I love it! I love it!"
"You do? Really? I have a gift receipt if you want to get a different color. The purple one was really pretty, too, but I thought this one would look nice with your eyes…"
"No way! This is perfect!" I said, thinking that Rachel probably would have picked some boring limited edition book. "You're the best." I hugged her, silently taking back every mean thing I had ever thought about her, every petty criticism. Like how annoying and clingy she got after too many drinks, always needing to accompany me to the bathroom at bars. How she bragged about her hometown of Greenwich and her debutante days. And how she stayed so hopelessly lumpy despite daily visits to the gym. What was she doing, I used to ask Rachel, eating Ho Hos in the locker room?
"The green matches your eyes," Claire said again, beaming.
"I love it," I said, as I admired the necklace from my compact mirror. The heart fell at just the right spot, accentuating my thin collarbone.
Claire took me to lunch later that day. I kept my cell phone on, just in case Dex or Rachel decided that lunchtime was the appropriate time to phone, apologize profusely, beg for my forgiveness, and wish me a happy birthday. It rang five different times, and every time I'd say to Claire, "Do you mind?" and she'd wave her hand and say, "Of course not. Go on."
All of the calls (except Bliss Spa reminding me of my five o'clock facial) were from birthday well-wishers. But no Rachel or Dex.
I know it was on Claire's mind, too, as she mouthed, "Who?" each time I answered.
After the fifth call, she asked, "Have you heard from Rachel today?"
"No," I said. Dex? Nope.
"How rude not to call on your birthday and try to make up."
"I know!"
"Any sightings since Crate and Barrel?" she asked.
"No. Have you seen them?"
"No. Nobody has seen them," Claire said-which was saying something as her network was expansive. The next best thing to hiring a private investigator (and believe me, I had considered it) was having Claire as my new best friend.
"Maybe they broke up," I said.
"Probably so," she said. "Out of guilt if nothing else."
"Or maybe they just went on another exotic trip together," I said.
She patted my arm sympathetically and ordered me a second glass of chardonnay. I knew I shouldn't be drinking-but Dr. Jan had specifically said that I could drink on special occasions. Besides, plenty of French babies were born undamaged, and I was sure their mothers kept up with their daily intake of wine.
"I do have a little nugget for you, though," I said, inhaling deeply, excited to drop the Marcus news on her. Minus the pregnancy, of course.
"Oh, really?" Her bangle bracelets clinked together as she crossed her arms and leaned toward me.
"I'm seeing someone," I said proudly.
"Who?" she asked, wide-eyed. I detected a hint of jealousy. Claire, bless her heart, was a fast and furious matchmaker, but she never seemed to make much progress in her own right.
I smiled mysteriously, took a sip of water, and wiped the lipstick off my glass with my thumb. "Marcus," I said proudly.
"Marcus?" she asked with bewilderment. "You mean, Marcus Marcus?"
I nodded.
"Really?" she asked.
"Uh-huh. Isn't that crazy?"
Something flashed across her face that I wasn't sure how to read. Was it jealousy that I had someone new so fast on the heels of a broken engagement? Did she, too, find him sexy in an unorthodox way? Or was it disapproval? My heart fluttered over the possibility of the latter. I desperately needed affirmation that Marcus was acceptable to a member of the Manhattan elite. I needed to be with someone whom everyone else wanted.
"When did this come about?" she asked.
"Oh, recently…" I said vaguely.
"I'm… I guess I'm a little bit surprised."
"I know," I said, thinking that she would have been less surprised if she hadn't been such a sound sleeper that night over our July Fourth weekend. "Who would have thunk it?… But I really like him."
"Really?" This time I definitely pegged her expression as disapproving.
"Why are you so surprised?"
"It's just… I don't know. I just didn't think Marcus was your type."
"You mean his looks?" I asked. "You mean the fact that I'm better looking than he is?"
"Well, that," Claire said, struggling for tactful wording. "And, I don't know, just everything. He's a nice, fun guy-don't get me wrong…" She trailed off.
"You don't think he's sexy?" I said. "I think he's so sexy."
Claire looked at me blankly. Her answer was clear. She did not find Marcus sexy. Not in the least.
"Well, I think he is," I said again, feeling highly offended.
"That's all that matters, then," Claire said, patting my hand condescendingly.
"Right," I said, knowing that that was not all that mattered. "I can't believe you don't think he's cute."
"I guess," she said. "In a… I don't know… 'guy's guy' kind of way."
"Well, he's great in bed," I said, trying to convince Claire-and myself-that this single fact could make up for all of his shortcomings.
By five o'clock, I had received a dozen or more birthday e-mails and phone calls, and a stream of chipper office visits from colleagues. Still nothing from Rachel or Dex. There was one last possibility: maybe they had sent a card, note, or gift to my apartment, which I hadn't returned to in several days. So after my facial, I cabbed it across the park to my apartment, anticipating the apologies that were surely awaiting me.
Minutes later I grabbed my mail from the lobby, unlocked my door, and surveyed my stash: I had cards from the usual lineup: my parents; my brother, Jeremy; my still-smitten high school boyfriend, Blaine; my grandmother; and my second-oldest friend from home, Annalise. The final one had no return address. It had to be from Rachel or Dex! I ripped open the envelope to find a picture of wriggling golden retriever puppies piled into a white wicker basket. A "Happy Birthday" banner stretched over the basket, each letter written in a different shade of pink. My heart sank, as I realized that the card was likely from my aunt Clarice, who still treated me as if I were ten. Unless Rachel was playing on the whole "friends since childhood" theme. I slowly opened the card, feeling hopeful until I saw the telltale ten-dollar bill taped inside and Aunt Clarice's wobbly signature below the greeting "Hope your day is a basket of fun!"
And that was that. There was no getting around it-Rachel and Dex had blown off my thirtieth birthday, a day we had talked about for at least the past five years. I started to cry, undermining the treatment for puffy eyes that I had added to my regular facial. I called Marcus's cell to garner some sympathy.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"That's for me to know-and you to find out," he said, the noise of heavy traffic in the background. I pictured him tripping down Fifth Avenue, his arms filled with packages.
"They didn't call. Neither of them. No calls, e-mails, cards. Nothing."
He knew who I meant. "The nerve of some ex-boyfriends," Marcus joked.
"It's not funny!" I said. "Can you believe them?"
"Darcy, didn't you tell them that you never wanted to speak to them again? That they were-what were your words?-'dead to you'?"
I gave him credit for recalling my precise wording. "Yes-but they could at least try to redeem themselves. They didn't even try. It's my thirtieth birthday!"
"I know, babe. And we're gonna celebrate. So bring your skinny ass down here."
He was right, my ass was still skinny. This observation cheered me up a drop. "Am I going to be a basketball girl?"
"What's a basketball girl?"
&nbs
p; "One of those girls who looks as if she has only a basketball under her shirt. You know, with thin limbs and a still-pretty face? And then the ball falls out and she is, voila, perfect again?"
"Sure you will. Now get down here!"
He hung up before I could ask him where we were going for dinner, how dressed up I needed to be. Well, there's no such thing as being overdressed, I told myself, as I selected my slinkiest black dress, highest Jimmy Choo stilettos, and gauziest wrap out of my closet, lining the ensemble up on my bed. Then I showered, blew my hair out straight, applied makeup to my glowing skin, opting for neutral lips and dramatic, smoky eyes.
"Thirty and ab-so-lute-ly stunning," I said aloud to the mirror, trying not to look at the tiny crow's feet around my eyes. Or worry about the fact that I was no longer in my twenties, and therefore on the road to losing my two most valuable assets: beauty and youth. I was filled with an unfamiliar sense of self-doubt that I pushed aside as I grabbed Aunt Clarice's ten for cab fare and headed out the door.
Fifteen minutes later I sauntered into Marcus's apartment, catwalk-style.
He whistled. "You look great."
"Thanks." I smiled as I noticed that he was wearing old brown cords, a pilled gray sweater, and scuffed shoes. I pictured Claire's disapproving frown when I told her about Marcus. Maybe this was part of the reason why. He was sloppy. But not couture sloppy-you know, the whole low-hanging Dolce amp; Gabbana jeans with a cool Hanes wifebeater. Just bad sloppy.
"No offense, but you do not look so great," I said, remembering that Rachel once told me that anytime I had to preface a statement with "no offense" I was probably saying something I shouldn't be saying.
"No offense taken," Marcus said.
"Please change and kick it up a notch. And FYI, brown and gray don't generally go together… although somehow Matt Lauer manages to pull it off."
"I'm not changing," he said stubbornly.
"C'mon, Marcus. Couldn't you at least put on some khakis and a sweater purchased within the last six years?"
"I'm wearing this," Marcus said.
We argued for a few seconds, and I finally gave in. Nobody was going to be looking at Marcus anyway. Not with me on his arm. On our way out the door, I heard a clap of thunder. I asked Marcus for an umbrella.
"I don't have one," he said, sounding curiously proud of himself. "Haven't for years."
I told him that I truly didn't get how one can not own an umbrella. Fine, people lose umbrellas all the time, leave them in shops or cabs when the rain has cleared, not realizing it until the next rainy day. But how could you simply not own one?
"What am I supposed to use to keep dry?" I asked.
He handed me a plastic Duane Reade bag. "Take this."
"Really classy," I said, snatching it from him.
The evening wasn't off to a roaring start.
It only got worse as we stood on the corner struggling to find a cab, which is close to impossible when it's raining. Nothing frustrates me more about living in Manhattan than being stranded on the sidewalk in inclement weather and very high heels. When I expressed this to Marcus, he suggested we make a run for the subway.
I scowled and told him that I couldn't run in heels. And besides, Jimmy Choos shouldn't tread the underworld. Then, when a cab finally arrived, my left shoe got stuck in a gutter, wedged in so tightly that I had to remove my foot from the shoe, bend down, and yank. As I examined the scratched heel, the Duane Reade bag flew up and rain splattered across my forehead.
Marcus chuckled and said, "The shoes would have been better off in the underworld, eh?"
I glared at him as he slid in the cab ahead of me and told the driver the address. I couldn't determine the restaurant from the address but thought to myself that it had better be a good choice, appropriate for a thirtieth birthday. An all-caps Zagat entry I had forgotten about.
But minutes later, I discovered that Marcus's idea of an appropriate thirtieth-birthday dinner was my idea of an appropriate twenty-sixth birthday dinner if the guy is near broke and/or not that into the girl. He had picked an Italian restaurant I had never heard of on a street in the Village I had never bothered to walk down. Needless to say, I was the only one wearing Jimmy Choos in the joint. Then, the food was awful. I'm talking stale, recycled bread plopped onto the table in a red plastic basket with a waxed-paper liner, followed by overcooked pasta. The only reason I braved it and ordered dessert was to see if Marcus had at least thought to request a candle in my cake, do something ceremonious or special. Of course, my tiramisu arrived sans accoutrement. No drizzle of raspberry, no presentation whatsoever. As I picked at it with my fork, Marcus asked if I wanted my gift. "Sure," I said, shrugging.
He handed me a Tiffany box, and for a moment, I was excited. But like his choice of venue, he had bombed in the gift department. Elsa Peretti bean earrings in silver. Not even platinum or white gold. Sure, they came from Tiffany, but those bean earrings were mass-produced, suburban Tiffany. Again, appropriate for a twenty-sixth birthday, but not a thirtieth. Claire had done better. At least her gift was shaped in a heart rather than a gas-causing vegetable.
As Marcus signed the check, I resisted making a snide remark on the off chance that the bean-earring stunt was designed to throw me off the scent of the diamond ring, hidden in the pocket of his leather jacket. Instead, I graciously thanked him for the earrings, replacing them in the box.
"Aren't you going to wear them?" Marcus asked.
"Not tonight," I said. I wasn't about to switch out of my diamond studs, which, ironically, were given to me by Dex on my twenty-sixth birthday.
After dinner Marcus and I had a drink at the Plaza (my idea) and then returned to his apartment and had sex (his idea). For the very first time with Marcus, I didn't have an orgasm. Not even a tiny hiccup of one. What was worse, he didn't seem to notice, not even when I furrowed my brow and sighed, the portrait of a frustrated woman. Instead, his breathing grew deep and steady. He was falling asleep. My day was beginning and ending in the same frustrating way.
"Well, I guess this means no engagement ring," I said loudly.
He didn't respond, so I shot him another pointed barb, something about winning some and losing some.
Marcus sat up, sighed, and said, "What's your beef now, Darcy?"
And that was that. We were on our way to a full-on fight. I called him insensitive; he called me demanding. I called him mean; he called me spoiled. I told him that the bean earrings were not acceptable. He said he'd gladly return them. And then I think I said that I wished I were still with Dex. And that maybe we shouldn't get married. He said nothing back. Just gave me a cold stare. It wasn't the reaction I was after. I thought about what Rachel always said: The opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference. Marcus's expression was the embodiment of utter indifference.
"You want to be off the hook!" I shouted. I turned away from him and sobbed quietly into my pillow.
After a long while, Marcus broke and put his arm around me. "Let's not fight anymore, Darce. I'm sorry." His tone was unconvincing, but at least he was apologizing.
I told him that I was sorry for the mean things I had said, especially the part about Dex. I told him I loved him. He told me, for only the second time, that he loved me too. But as Marcus fell asleep again, his arm still around me, I knew that our relationship wasn't quite right. Moreover, I think I knew that it had never really been right in the first place. Sure, we had shared some passion under a tree in East Hampton. And we had had a few good times after that, but what else did we have together? I reminded myself that Marcus was the father of my baby, and I vowed to make things work between us. I tried to come up with names for our daughter. Annabel Francesca, Lydia Brooke, Sabrina Rose, Paloma Grace. I envisioned our life together, pictured the pages of the scrapbook: rosy snapshots on creamy, linen pages.
But in the final seconds before I drifted off to sleep, in that time of semiconsciousness when what you think dictates what you dream, I thought of Claire's disapproving star
e and my own feelings of dissatisfaction. Then my mind was elsewhere, rooted in the past. Fixed on Dex and Rachel and what would never be again.
thirteen
In the following weeks, my relationship with Marcus disintegrated further. Even the sex-the cornerstone of our relationship-was starting to feel routine. I tried to tell myself that it was only the stress caused by the life changes hurtling our way: the apartment we had yet to look for, the wedding we had yet to plan, and our baby on the way.
When I asked Marcus why he thought we were fighting so much, he blamed it all on my "fixation" with Rachel and Dex. He said he had grown weary of my endless Q amp;A, that he didn't think it was healthy to spend so much time speculating over what they were doing, and that I should focus on my own life instead. I vowed to talk less about them, believing that in a matter of weeks, I would no longer care what they were doing. But a worry tugged at my heart that it wasn't that simple, that despite my efforts to make things work with Marcus, we were on the brink of a breakup.
What nagged at me even more than any relationship woes was the accompanying regret about the baby. I talked a big game, but deep down, I wasn't so sure I wanted a baby. Since I had been a teenager, my identity was about being thin and beautiful and fun and carefree. A baby threatened all of that. I didn't know who I was going to become. And I certainly didn't feel like anyone's mother.
My own mother called me every other hour in those transitional weeks, just to check on me, her voice filled with pity and worry. Being without a man was a fate worse than death to her, so I finally put her out of her misery and told her that I had a new boyfriend.
I was at Marcus's apartment, talking on his phone while he ate a slice of pizza. I was skipping dinner, as I had far surpassed my carb and fat allocation for the day.
When I told her the good news, she said, "That was fast," with not a hint of disapproval. Only pride that I was back on my horse. "What's his name?"
"Marcus," I said, hoping that she wouldn't remember that there had been a groomsman named Marcus. I wanted to ease her into that part of the story. Of course, I had no intention of breaking the baby news anytime soon.