At home, there’s an envelope waiting in my mailbox from one Mrs. Lois Spencer of San Jose, California.
Here they are, sweetheart. A few of Ask Allie’s columns. Think about it. Love, Grandma.
She printed them out from the Internet and mailed them to me. I laugh to myself as I look them over and then stick them in a box of miscellaneous stuff. I tell myself that I’ll sit down and read them soon. Then David calls asking if he can come over, and I say yes. I jump into the shower.
By the time I’m dressed and dry, I’ve already forgotten where I put the Ask Allie articles. They simply aren’t on my mind. I’m not thinking about what advice I need to fix my marriage. I’m not reflecting on what my grandmother thinks of what I’m doing.
I’m not reflecting at all, really.
I’m starting to just live.
In January, I help Charlie move into his apartment with Natalie. The entire family goes out for a big Italian dinner at Buca di Beppo, the plastic checkered tablecloths and old-timey photos reminding us all of when we came here as kids, when Mom would order two extra bowls of pasta and tell us it was our lunches for the week.
In February, I help Rachel put together her business prospectus. I help her research possible bakery locations. I help her learn the ins and outs of applying for a small-business loan. She asks me if I’d be willing to cosign, and I tell her I can’t think of another person I’d be ready to vouch for more than her.
In March, Charlie and Natalie decide to have the wedding at the house of one of Natalie’s friends in Malibu. Their house apparently backs up onto the beach. I determine that Natalie must have obscenely rich friends. The save-the-dates go out. The caterer is hired. Charlie’s only job is to choose a DJ. So that won’t be done until June.
By the beginning of April, Natalie is in her third trimester. And my mom is struggling with how to handle her relationship with Bill. He thinks they should move in together. She does not.
And meanwhile, I sneak texts with David. I open my door to him late at night. We call each other when we need a friendly ear or want an understanding touch. I like David a lot, and I know he likes me. But he’s still in love with the woman who cheated on him. And I . . . am in no position to be loving anyone. So we are good to each other and good for each other, and we are, essentially, that thing I’ve heard about from teenagers: friends with benefits. And there is something freeing about having sex with a man you don’t see a future with. It’s all butterflies and orgasms. There’s no politics or unspoken words. And when he’s going too fast, you just say, “Slower.”
When Mila asks me if Ryan has been writing to me, I tell her the truth. “I have no idea,” I say. “I haven’t checked in months.”
part four
MOST OF THE TIME
Rachel, Mom, and I have been planning Natalie’s baby shower. When we asked Natalie if we could throw it for her, she seemed really overjoyed and flattered. We asked her what sort of theme she wanted or what she’d like to do, and she just said that she was sure she would love whatever we came up with. She tries so hard to be accommodating and kind, and it’s really sweet, but sometimes I want to grab her by the shoulders and say, “Tell us the truth! Do you like the color yellow?” So at least we know.
Rachel, Mom, and I are sitting at this pizza place, trying to come up with a theme, but somehow the conversation evolves—or devolves, I guess, depending on how you look at it—into whether Mom should let Bill move in.
“I just don’t think I’m ready for something like that,” my mom says, as the waiter puts our pizzas on the table. The minute it’s in front of them, both my mom and Rachel start damping their slices with napkins to soak up the grease. I just bite right into mine.
“You guys have been dating for a while now,” Rachel says.
“Yes, but right now, on the nights that he doesn’t stay with me, I miss him.”
“Right,” I say. “Which is why you would ask him to move in . . .” I’m speaking with my mouth full, which my mother normally abhors, but she’s too focused on her own problem to notice me.
“No!” my mom says. “I like missing people. You know when you call someone just to hear their voice? Or you wait all day until you can see them that night? If Bill lives with me, he stops being this person I can’t wait to see, and he becomes the man who leaves his dirty dishes in the sink.”
“But you can’t sustain this part,” I say. “The natural process is that the relationship becomes more serious as time goes on.” Of course, there are exceptions to this.
“Yeah, or it fizzles out,” my mom says. “I don’t need a life partner. I’m not interested in a partnership. Someone to share the bills. Someone to raise children with. I did all of that, and I did it on my own. I make my own money. I pay my own bills. I want love and romance. That’s all.”
“But after a while, relationships become more about partnership and less about romance. That’s just how it works. It’s the nature of love. If you want to stay with Bill, he’s eventually going to stop bringing you flowers,” I say.
My mom shakes her head. “This is why I don’t want to commit to Bill.”
“Wait, what?” Rachel asks. “You are in love with Bill, right?”
“Right. Right now, I’m in love with Bill. And eventually, we will grow tired of each other.”
“And when that happens?” I ask.
“We’ll break up,” she says, shrugging. “I want romance in my life. That’s what I want. And I don’t need anything else from a man. I’ve lived my whole life, or, I guess, my life since you guys were little, dating for fun. If the romance dies, I want to be able to leave, is what I’m saying. I want to be able to have that feeling again with someone else. It’s how I’ve been living my life for a long time. It works.”
“So you’d never get married again?” I say.
“You just chew ’em up and spit ’em out?” Rachel adds.
“You two are ridiculous. All I’m saying is that I’m not looking for all of the work that comes with a long-term relationship. The best part of a relationship is the falling-in-love part. And there’s nothing wrong with admitting that.”
“You don’t think Bill’s different? You don’t think there is a way to have a long-term relationship that is worth the work?” Rachel says.
My mom starts to answer, but I jump in. “I guess if romance is your primary goal, then you can’t let him move in. I get it. Romance fades. It just does. If you don’t like the other stuff, then I get why you’d have to have an exit strategy.”
“I still think romance and commitment don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Rachel says, but she says it in a wistful way, as if she’s pontificating on the theory of love instead of the practicality of it.
I think back to when Ryan made my stomach flip, the way he used to look at me. The way his attention was enough to lift me off the ground. The way it felt as if anything could happen.
What if I never have that feeling again? That sense where your nerve endings are so raw that you can physically feel everything that he says? That feeling where your head is light, your stomach is empty, and your legs are on fire?
Ryan is supposed to come home in three months so that we can decide if we want to spend the rest of our lives together. I mean, the goal here is to spend the rest of our lives together. If I really feel that romance doesn’t last, if I really think that’s true, am I ready to never feel that tingle again? Was I ever ready?
“Let’s talk about something else,” my mom says. “Lauren looks like she’s about to cry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “I was trapped in my own mind for a second. But we should get back to Natalie’s shower, right? What else do we have to go over?”
“Well, actually, before we get back to that, I just remembered that I need a copy of your social security card to add to my loan package as the cosigner,” Rachel says.
&nbs
p; “Oh, sure. When do you need it?”
“Thursday?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll find it. It’s in my house somewhere.”
“I am so proud of you,” my mom says to Rachel. “This is such a brave thing you’re doing.”
“It’s stupid, right?” Rachel says. She still can’t fully believe in herself just yet. But I know she must believe in herself a great deal when she’s alone, working out what to do. Because you don’t go to the bank and discuss a small-business loan unless you’re serious. You don’t scout out bakery locations unless you believe in yourself at least a little bit.
“If no one ever did anything stupid, I wouldn’t have you girls and Charlie,” my mom says.
It’s supposed to be encouraging, but Rachel says, “So you do think it’s stupid.”
And then she and I start laughing before my mom can defend herself.
“Oh, you two are such a pain in the ass,” she says. “I swear.”
My desk is full of clutter. I used to sit down and actually do work at this desk in years past. I remember when Ryan and I first moved in and we had the extra space, and I would make a big show of sitting down at my desk to do things because it felt so fancy to have an extra room for things like desks. And then slowly, I got over the desk and started using it as storage for stuff that didn’t have a home.
I start searching through drawers for my social security card. It could be anywhere. I am not a person who labels files. One time, I labeled a file folder “Important Files.” That’s how lazy I am when it comes to organizing. I dig through the bottom drawer first, front to back. Oh, here is it. Here is my “Important Files” file. I open it, hoping to find the card, because, really, if you have an “Important Files” file, wouldn’t that be a good place to have put your social security card?
I have my birth certificate. I have my diploma. I have my old student-loan contracts. The title to my car. I even have the court order for my change of name from when my mom changed our last names after our dad left. She changed them all back to Spencer, her maiden name. Until I was about six years old, we were Lauren, Rachel, and Charles Prewett. I look at the document for longer than I realize. My eyes are focused on it, but my brain is elsewhere. I’m momentarily mesmerized, thinking about the life of Lauren Prewett. Would things have turned out differently if I’d kept my father’s name? Would I have met some nice young boy with the last name Proctor or Phillips in homeroom, the two of us seated next to each other thanks to the work of alphabetizing? Would my heart have held out for my dad longer if I’d kept his name? I don’t know. There’s nothing to know, really, because none of those things happened. But I’m thankful to my mother for changing it, for taking the time to go down to the courthouse and change our fates, for rightfully claiming us as her own.
I finish with the folder, and there’s no social security card. I put it back in the drawer. I shuffle through the things on the top of my desk, and that’s when I find Grandma’s Ask Allie columns. I glance at them, and one or two words catch my eye. I find myself sitting back, putting my feet up, and reading.
One man’s wife has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and he’s scared about how their life is going to change. He calls himself “Worried in Oklahoma.”
A mother writes in to say that she and her husband know their son is gay, because he has told his two siblings. But he hasn’t come out to them yet. She wants to know how to let their son know that he can be honest with them. She signs her letter “Eager to Be Supportive.”
There’s a woman who thinks her mother shouldn’t be driving anymore and needs advice on how to broach the subject with her. She calls herself “Hoping to Be Gentle.”
Allie tells “Worried in Oklahoma” that it’s OK for him to be scared and to find people other than his wife to talk about his fears with. “Talk about them so much with other people,” she says, “that by the time your wife is ready to talk about what scares her, you have answers. Above all else, find someone who can say to you, ‘Me, too.’”
Allie tells “Eager to Be Supportive” that it sounds as if she’s concerned that her son doesn’t know she loves him unconditionally. “Don’t be. You’ve spent twenty-three years unintentionally telling him this with every fiber of your being. That love has shown through everything you’ve said and done. Unconditional love is the freedom to follow your heart and still have a home. You have given that to your son, and now all you have to do is sit back, be patient, and wait for him to use it.”
Allie tells “Hoping to Be Gentle” that she can try to be as gentle as she likes, but the underlying message is going to hurt her mother. But that hurt is necessary in love, because “if your family won’t tell you the truth, who will? Be the daughter your mother needs. Be the daughter who does ugly stuff for the right reasons. That’s where the deep, beautiful, mystifying love of family truly kicks in.”
She’s not talking to me or about me or with me or for me, and yet everything she says resonates. Allie is good. Allie is real good.
Mila comes into the office in the morning with a latte for me.
“To what do I owe this gift?” I say, happily taking it. I didn’t get much sleep last night.
“They gave me the wrong one by mistake, so I took a sip, realized it was the wrong one, and they had to let me keep both,” she says.
“Well, thank you,” I say. “I needed this.” The coffee is still hot in the cup, so hot that it’s burned my tongue. I’m now going to have that annoying numbness for the rest of the morning.
“Up late?” Mila asks, her voice implying something salacious.
“Are you asking me if I was up late having sex with David?”
Mila laughs. “Wow, you really don’t understand subtlety.”
“I’d argue you don’t understand it as much as you think you do,” I say.
She hits me with the back of her hand. “So you were, then?” she asks.
“No, actually,” I tell her. “I stayed up reading the backlog of posts from this advice columnist.”
Mila’s shoulders slump. “I’m bored now. I was interested when I thought you were getting laid.”
I laugh. “You know, you never cared about my sex life when I was with Ryan. Now, with David, suddenly, you’re fascinated.”
“I’m not fascinated,” she says. “I don’t wanna know, like, what you guys do and stuff. I just like living vicariously through you. New love. The fun of sleeping with someone you’re just getting to know. It’s fun, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding my head. “It is. It is fun.”
“I don’t have that anymore,” she says wistfully. “And that’s fine. I’m not complaining. I love Christina more than anything. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have her.”
“But things slow down after a while,” I say. “I get it.”
“I mean, we haven’t been together all that long. Five years is long, I guess. But not that long. It’s the kids. Things slow down with kids. It’s like she’s not just this beautiful woman for me to explore and discover. She’s my kids’ mom. She’s my partner raising them. It’s . . .”
“Boring?”
“Yeah. And boring is great. I love boring. It’s just . . .”
“Boring.”
Mila smiles at me. “Right.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Hence why I need to get my thrills from your sex life, even if it is with a man. I can overlook that.”
“You know,” I say to her, my voice escalating to a wild idea, “you could write to Ask Allie.”
“Who?”
“The advice columnist I’ve been reading. She’s great. Oh, God, I was reading one last night, about this woman who can’t get over the trauma of being mugged at gunpoint years ago, and Allie said the most beautiful thing—”
Mila puts her hand up. “I’m going to stop you right there.”
I look at
her.
“You sound like a loony.”
I start laughing. I think it’s because she said “loony.” “I do not sound like a loony!” I say.
“Oh, yes, you do. You sound exactly like a loony.” Now she’s laughing, too.
“Maybe you’re the loony,” I ask her.
Mila shakes her head. “That’s exactly what a loony would say.”
“Stop saying the word loony, please.”
Mila smiles and starts walking back toward her desk. “Enjoy your coffee,” she says. “Loony.”
Admittedly, I floated the idea to Mila in part because I’m considering doing it myself. I wasn’t hoping to be called a loony, but maybe I don’t care if it makes me a loony. Maybe.
April 18
Dear Ryan,
I’m considering writing to one of those advice columnists about us. That’s how confused I still am.
When we started this, I thought that I just needed some time away from you. I just needed time to breathe. I needed a chance to live on my own and appreciate you again by missing you.
Those first few months were torture. I felt so lonely. I felt exactly what I wanted myself to feel, which was that I couldn’t live without you. I felt it all day. I felt it when I slept in an empty bed. I felt it when I came home to an empty house. But somehow, one day, it just sort of became OK. I don’t know when that happened.
I thought at one point that maybe if I learned who you truly are, then I could love you again. Then I thought maybe if I learn who I really am, what I really want, then I could love you again. I have been grasping at things for months, trying to learn a lesson big enough, important enough, all-encompassing enough that it would bring us back together. But mostly, I’m just learning lessons about how to live my life. I’m learning how to be a better sister. I’m learning just how strong my mother has always been. That I should take my grandmother’s advice more often. That sex can be healing. That Charlie isn’t such a little kid anymore.
After I Do Page 20