Even if David never became rich, there was still something else for her to worry about: aging. She was twenty-eight, zooming toward her thirties, a decade she had long believed marked the beginning of a woman’s journey into her new identity as a sexless, living Roomba. Meanwhile, David at twenty-eight was more handsome than ever. Just shy of six feet, with a full head of chestnut hair, and a face like a grown-up all-American lacrosse frat boy but without the arrogance. He was the man she dreamed about marrying when she was a little girl—except back then she had pictured him sporting a shaggy ’90s haircut parted in the middle and a puka-shell necklace. She thought David was better-looking than everyone else did, which was obvious from the incredulous looks her friends gave her every time she referred to him as “out of her league.” Regardless of what her friends said to reassure her that she and David were equally attractive, she didn’t buy it. David was tall and fit—that could carry a man his whole life. It could only carry a woman for a few years before the estrogen dipped and she became another crazy-armed Madonna look-alike, veins popping out and skin sagging over preserved mummy muscles, boobs like two half-empty water balloons bagged in wrinkled beige napkins. She could gain weight and avoid the gaunt face of middle age—perhaps wind up looking like a jolly, pie-baking Mrs. Claus—then use push-up bras and shapewear. That wouldn’t be very sexy, but at least then she wouldn’t have the desperate, roast-chicken look of all the Real Housewives. Her therapist told her these concerns stemmed from her body dysmorphic disorder, but she knew he was just saying that to be nice.
She knew that one day—perhaps not today, perhaps not even in ten years—David would look at her, look at himself and realize just how much better he could do. He was far too sweet and devoted to realize it now, but it was bound to happen by the time he hit middle age. As a result, she had to be vigilant. Plastic surgery was out of the question because of her fear of ineffective but paralyzing anesthesia—it had happened to some woman in Kentucky and the story had trended on social media—but there were other things she could do. Her fitness routine was intense. In college, she only did the occasional dance workout video, but she had come a long way since then. Darius, her fitness instructor at LifeSpin, assessed her as a Level Four during her StrengthFlex test. Her new LifeSpin routine involved light weights, yoga, Pilates and NaturBuzz hydration. She did squats in the shower while the conditioner was in her hair in the hopes of attaining a Photoshop butt.
Aboard the plane, she rolled on two tight black knee compression socks. They looked stupid with her dress, but this was one of the few health-over-beauty sacrifices she made. If there was anything she worried about more than her declining looks, it was her health. She had recently read a Dr. Oz article about deep vein thrombosis, the silent killer. There seemed to be way too many silent killers out there for one thing to be given the title, but as far as silent killers went, deep vein thrombosis—and its aggressive cousin, the pulmonary embolism—played the part quite well. They could strike any person, at any time, and one of the symptoms was “no symptoms.” She shuddered just thinking about it.
“You should listen to some music,” David said, handing her a pair of white earphones, the speaker area lightly dusted with his orangey earwax. They would be so gross if they came from anyone but him. Maybe that was something she could incorporate into her wedding vows.
“I actually popped a Benadryl right before we got on the plane. I’m going to sleep.”
“I wish I could sleep on planes. My neck always hurts and then I wake up as soon as there’s any turbulence. I don’t know how you can be so anxious and still have such an easy time sleeping in public places.”
She laughed. “That was a compliment, right? You should try to sleep too. We won’t get much sleep when we arrive. Everyone is going to ask us how work is going and a gazillion other questions we don’t want to answer.”
“Ugh, I hate talking about work.”
“Me too. I want to talk about fun things.”
“Like parasites?”
She gave him an indignant look. “Like fun things.”
“You’re cute.”
“Want to have sex in the bathroom?” she asked perkily. Sometimes she liked to throw out offers like that. David was too vanilla to ever take her up on them, but they made her appear kinky, so she could fulfill the roles of both seductive “other woman” and loyal, nurturing wife. If she were giving him so much sex, he wouldn’t have any energy left for all the other women she imagined were sneaking around him, waiting to strike as soon as she turned thirty. Sometimes she swore she could hear the popping of their bubblegum and the sizzling of their hair underneath curling irons when she walked down the street.
“Sex in the bathroom sounds illegal, but you can give me a hand job underneath my blanket.” She assumed he was kidding, but he really did have one of those fleece blankets given out by the flight attendant, so maybe he was serious.
“Just you? Like, I don’t get any...you know...under my blanket?” Having sex with a guy in the airplane bathroom was sexy, Pan Am, Mad Men stuff. Giving a hand job under a fleece blanket while everyone on the plane watched reruns of How I Met Your Mother was just sad. But if David really wanted it, she’d look so cold and withholding if she said no.
“Finger banging is harder to maneuver,” he said. “You don’t have to give me the hand job, though. I just thought...” He gave her a flirty smile.
“I’m just joking. I’ll give you the hand job.”
“Wait, seriously? I was joking too.”
“I don’t know why you would joke about that. People do this stuff all the time.”
“Have you?”
“No. Just people do.” He never wanted to hear about, or even think about, her previous sexual experiences, even though on their first date she was twenty-five and had obviously had relationships before him. No one-night stands, though—she was too afraid of antibiotic-resistant chlamydia. He had never even divulged his own number, which led her to believe it was either embarrassingly high or low.
“Okay, you can give me a handie, but only after the safety demonstration.”
“I can give you a hand job? I’m not begging to do it, I was just offering.”
“I mean, can you give me a hand job after the safety demonstration?”
A peppy blonde flight attendant popped her head into the row and reached her arm around David’s lap to make sure his seat belt was fastened. She pursed her mauve lips.
“Sir, in the future please do not have a blanket on your lap when we are checking seat belts,” she said, in a way that managed to be both unnecessarily friendly and unnecessarily rude.
“Uh, sorry.”
“And, ma’am?” the flight attendant asked. Emily realized her blanket was covering her seat belt, as well, and lifted the blanket to reveal that it was, in fact, fastened. Not that it would mean anything, if there were a terrorist on the plane. Why did anyone even check this? They should have been going around making eye contact with all the passengers to check for secret signs of nervousness, the way she once heard people did in Israel. Why didn’t she live in Israel? Her cousin Rebecca did Birthright in 2007 and kept going on about how the police presence “ruined the experience.” Of course, Rebecca was being stupid, because police were the only thing making the experience possible in the first place. Maybe if Emily lived in Israel, she’d feel safer. Except there would be a lot more threats in general—she wasn’t sure if the police presence outweighed the increase in threats.
“Thank you,” the flight attendant said.
“Oh, I have a question,” Emily said.
“Sure, ma’am.”
“Did you call me ma’am because you thought I was old, or because you say that to all women over the age of eighteen?”
She cocked her head. “I’m confused. Would you prefer something else?”
“I mean, I don’t prefer anything because it’s not
like I’m going to be hanging out with you loads of times, but I just want to know what calculation went through your mind when you looked at me and thought, She’s a ma’am.” Emily could see David wincing out of the corner of her eye.
“Well, you’re an adult woman, so we say ma’am to be polite.”
“It’s not that polite, though. I mean, you obviously weren’t trying to be rude, but when I hear ma’am I don’t think the person is being respectful. I think my crow’s feet are showing and that I look forty.”
“Well, how old are you?”
“How old did you think I was?”
“I don’t know, thirty-two?”
“I assume you were rounding down not to offend me. You probably meant thirty-five or older. I’m twenty-eight. Thanks.”
The flight attendant looked like she was about to say something but thought better of it and walked off.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” David asked. “She thinks you’re a weirdo now. Why do you always do that? For the last time, you don’t look older than your age. Stop freaking out.”
“Everyone thinks I look older than my age. You only say that to flatter me, which, trust me, I appreciate. But this isn’t just my anxiety. You can attribute a lot of stuff to my anxiety but not this. Everyone agrees with me except for you.” Emily longed for the days when “I thought you were so much older” was a compliment. It was great when she was nine and trying to look grown-up, useful when she was eighteen and trying to buy alcohol, mildly annoying by the time she hit twenty-three and devastating now that she was twenty-eight. Worst of all, nobody else seemed to relate. Even people she thought looked terrible for their age loved to regale her with their arsenals of stories of how they were mistaken for fetuses when trying to see R-rated movies.
David shook his head. “It’s really not you. People are just terrible at guessing ages. The other day at LifeSpin, one of the new trainers asked me if I was there with a parent because you need to be eighteen to have a membership.”
“See? This is exactly what I mean. Everyone else gets guessed as younger. That never happens to me. I was actually offered a free Jazzercise class.”
“If you’re referring to JazzSweat, that’s not for older people. It’s actually super intense. They give you free cashew powder if you get through all six classes without passing out.”
“Sure. Fine. But that flight attendant definitely thought I looked old.”
“No, she didn’t. Even if she thought you were thirty-two, that’s, like, no different from twenty-eight. You’re freaking out over something so tiny. Even for you.”
“Okay. Full disclosure, I asked her that because I actually was offended by her use of the word ma’am but the good news is, she thinks I’m crazy, so now we don’t need to worry about her bugging us while I give you a hand job.”
“You’re actually going to do that?”
“After the safety demonstration.”
DAY 1
Emily
AT SOME POINT during her Benadryl-induced stupor, Emily had gotten chilly, stolen David’s heather gray sweatpants from his carry-on, and put them on underneath her dress. By the time they landed at JFK around seven in the morning, she was too tired, and still too cold, to remove them.
“I thought you said you needed to look good every day this week or it would be embarrassing,” David teased.
“Not now. I’m freezing. Why do they make planes that cold? And then they offer air-conditioning on top of that? When it’s negative a hundred degrees outside, why not offer adjustable heat dials instead of AC? I know why—because they’re sadists.”
“Let’s just get to your mom’s house. We’ll feel a lot better when we see Lauren, my biggest fan.”
“Are you still upset about that? I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It’s actually not a bad thing. I can finally stop pretending to like her.”
“So you didn’t like her before?”
“I didn’t really interact with her long enough to form an opinion. I saw her—what, once, that time in Brooklyn? We had lunch in that Americana dim sum place with the grilled cheese gyoza.”
Emily turned to David. “Be honest. Is there anyone else in my family you don’t like? I may even agree with you.”
“Same question to you.”
“I like your family.”
“Okay, same answer.”
“Except you don’t actually like them. Your family is a million times nicer than mine.”
“Yeah, my family seems great, but trust me when I say they can be annoying too. What about my brother?”
“Oh, well, I mostly meant your father.”
“He’s not perfect either, believe me.”
“Emily!”
She turned and saw a young woman with long curly brown hair, a wide friendly smile and a Muppet-like bouncy walk. Emily couldn’t place her at first but squinted and got a better look as she approached. Finally she recognized the ten-year-old frayed cross-body bag with the faux tribal stitching. It was Stephanie Morris, an old friend from high school—so old, in fact, that Emily hadn’t seen her since her sophomore year in college when she was home for spring break. They had gotten coffee in Chelsea, but had very little to discuss other than Stephanie’s love of silent movies and hatred of designer fashion. The two of them once had a lot in common—they were both artistic, extroverted and energetic—but since Vassar, Stephanie had changed dramatically. Of course, Emily hadn’t spent enough time with her to know this firsthand, but she assumed as much from Stephanie’s social media posts. If Stephanie wasn’t posting about the dangers of vaccinations, she was posting about how meditation could cure cancer or how the only good decision a young person could make is to quit her job and live in Bolivia for a year without doing any research first. After Stephanie got her bachelor’s degree in psychology, she went backpacking in Europe and presumably had sex with a flock of rich hippies named Travis or Jared in hostel beds for a year and a half. She had neglected to find another job since returning to the United States. It had been six years. Of course, such important life-changing experiences were a lot easier when your parents paid your rent and subsidized your shrooms habit.
“Emily, is that seriously you?” she squealed. “How are you? You didn’t tell me you were back!”
Emily never told Stephanie when she was back home—because, naturally, they barely knew each other anymore—but every time Stephanie got any whiff of Emily’s return to New York on social media, she eagerly asked her if she wanted to meet up for coffee in Brooklyn. She never stopped to consider that Emily’s parents lived in Westchester.
“Oh, I’ve just been so busy with the wedding stuff.”
“When’s the big day?” she asked, her electric-green-lined eyes widening. She had gotten a nose piercing. That was new.
“Oh, just...in a week,” Emily croaked.
“A week? Oh, so, like, it’s a small ceremony with just you and your parents?”
“Um...not really. We have a few other people coming.”
Emily watched it slowly dawn on Stephanie that she wasn’t invited to the wedding. Eight years ago when they met up in Chelsea, Stephanie had promised Emily that she would give a kick-ass speech at her wedding. It seemed intrusive and weird even then, especially since Emily was single at the time. She racked her brain for all the consoling things she could say to Stephanie—for example, that her parents were limiting her to inviting five friends. Of course, the real reason she invited so few friends was that she didn’t have many friends. Her mother had actually urged her to invite more and said that she feared that she was self-sabotaging by “pushing people away” because it was implausible for a woman her age to have only two close female friends. Surely, her mother assumed, Emily had other friends she was intentionally alienating.
“I didn’t realize you wanted to come,” she said to Stephani
e. “Also, we don’t have a raw vegan option for dinner. You’re still raw vegan, right?”
“Yeah, but it could still work out! Especially since I’m currently fasting, except for alcohol, so you wouldn’t even need to provide a dinner for me. I’d even bring my own craft whiskey. Can I still come anyway?”
Emily desperately wanted to turn to David and share incredulous looks, but she knew that doing that would plunge them both into fits of laughter. It would be just like the time they were riding the 47 bus downtown in San Francisco and a middle-aged man wearing nothing but a clown wig and leather harness got on, his soft, leathery penis flopping around like a very large skin tag. Everyone pretended not to notice, because that was the go-to San Francisco reaction to a lunatic. Emily, however, had made the mistake of mischievously glancing at David. He began to laugh, and so did she, and before long the naked clown was serenading both of them with a surprisingly competent rendition of “Every Breath You Take.”
Emily smiled tensely. “Um... I mean... I can talk to my parents and see if they’re okay with it, but they’re being really strict about it. They’re paying and they’re on a tight budget, so it’s kind of their rules.”
Family and Other Catastrophes Page 2