Slightly Married

by Wendy Markham

  Turns out down-to-earth Amanda only likes guys who have real estate, 401Ks and five-figure bonuses. Freelancers who rent aren’t her style. Imagine that.

  Kate said Buckley didn’t seem very into Amanda, either.

  “No chemistry,” Kate declared. “I could tell right away.”

  Chemistry.

  “Hey, where’s Jack today?” Buckley asks me as we turn down the corridor toward the nursery.

  “He’s at the Mets playoff game with Mitch.” We were supposed to go to brunch, but then Kate had the baby, and Mitch called first thing about the game, so we went our separate ways for the day.

  “I thought Jack was a Yankees fan and hates the Mets.”

  “He is and he does,” I tell Buckley. “But Mitch got great seats through some guy at work at the last minute…”

  And Jack probably couldn’t wait to get out of the apartment and away from me after I gave him the silent treatment all last night and most of this morning.

  I couldn’t seem to help it.

  I was overtired and cranky and I still haven’t gotten my period. Plus, I keep dwelling on how he had the perfect opportunity to say something really romantic and blew it.

  Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Am I doomed to spend forever with someone who can’t be bothered to come up with something more compelling than “I love your hair”?

  All right, maybe I’m being childish and unfair.

  I mean, it could have been worse.

  He could have said his favorite thing about me is my bullet boobs.

  Maybe I’m trying to pick a fight because…

  Well, I have no idea why I would want to do that.

  “So are you getting excited about the wedding?” Buckley wants to know.

  “Of course!” I say too quickly.

  “Yeah…it should be fun.”

  He’s right about that. It should be fun.

  But lately, it’s just intense. The wedding machine has taken on a life of its own. And in the myriad details that are involved, nothing seems to really have much to do with who Jack and I were—or will be—as a couple.

  It’s like our lives are hanging in limbo, and everything around us is changing. I don’t recognize us, and I don’t recognize anyone else lately, either. Buckley is distant, Kate is a mother, Kathleen’s twins are angelic…

  What happened to my old life?

  I don’t want it back necessarily. I just want to ease out of it a little more gradually.

  Too late for that, though.

  Buckley and I have reached the newborn nursery, where rows of babies lie beyond the glass.

  “Which one is she?” Buckley squints at the pink and blue name cards attached to the glass boxlike cribs that hold the babies.

  “There,” I say, and point at a pink bundle. “That’s little Kate.”

  Yes, Kate named the baby after herself, surprising no one other than perhaps Auntie Amanda, who favored Cleopatra for a girl.

  Buckley and I stare reverently at the infant for a few minutes, marveling at her tiny hands, her tiny head and her incessant wailing, which can be heard loud and clear through the glass.

  “She’s her mother’s daughter, all right,” I say, watching a team of nurses scurry over to tend to mini-Kate’s needs. “Billy’s going to have his hands full.”

  “He already does. But he’s glowing. He obviously loves his girls.”

  “Wait, Billy’s glowing?” I ask Buckley.

  “Yeah, I think fatherhood has tamed him. He almost seems human all of a sudden, and he’s fawning over Kate and the baby.”

  Billy might be an ass sometimes—all right, most of the time—but you can’t say he isn’t crazy about Kate.

  “Well, I guess there’s someone for everyone,” I say—and I’m talking about Billy and Kate, of course.

  But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, and I see the expression on Buckley’s face, I wish I could take them back.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he says right away. “Listen, I’m okay.”

  “About…?” I decide to play dumb.

  “About you and Jack getting married.”

  “Oh.” I nod. “Good. That makes one of us.”

  Dammit. Why did I have to say that? I didn’t even mean it.

  Did I?

  Buckley’s eyes widen. “What?”

  “No, it’s just…I guess I’m having…prewedding jitters.”

  There. It’s out. It’s official.

  “Cold feet?”

  “No. I don’t want to back out. I just…I guess I’m second-guessing everything all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

  Yeah. He has.

  But he backed out.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Buckley asks. “I’m a good listener. And a good friend.”

  “No, thanks,” I tell him, and check my watch. “We should go and see if we can get back into Kate’s room yet. I want to give her these flowers before they wilt.”

  “I already saw her,” Buckley says, “so I think I’ll get going home. I’ve got a copywriting project to finish by tomorrow morning.”

  We walk slowly and silently down the busy corridor again and part ways at the elevators.

  “Tracey, if you ever need to talk…” Buckley tells me, stepping into one.

  “Thanks.” I wave.

  The doors slide closed and he’s gone.

  If only, I think wistfully, turning away, letting go of Buckley were as simple as letting go of Will McCraw.

  Jack is home when I get back.

  “Hey,” I say in surprise, dropping my jacket and keys on the nearest chair.

  “How’s the new little family?”

  “The baby is adorable, Billy gave me a cigar for you and Kate has blossomed into a mother hen, if you can believe that.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to see it to believe it,” I tell Jack, smiling at the memory of Kate making a loving fuss over another human being. “The center of her universe has shifted.”

  “Good. It’s about time.”

  “So what are you doing home? Is the game over already?”

  “Nah. I left.”

  “Well, you hate the Mets,” I say as he gets off the couch, where he was sitting with his feet up—and the television off, I notice in surprise.

  “I do hate the Mets,” he agrees, “but that’s not why I left.”

  “Are you sick or something?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Then what?” I kick off my shoes and leave them by the door.

  “I missed you. I wanted to be here.”

  It isn’t just the words—it’s his tone that makes me look at him in surprise.

  “But—I wasn’t even gone that long.”

  “No, not that. I mean…I have missed you. Lately. I’ve missed us.”

  I find myself looking at him through tear-filled eyes. “I’ve missed us, too.”

  He comes over and takes me into his arms, hugging me hard.

  So maybe he does get it after all, I realize.

  Maybe he’s just as scared—and tense—as I am about all the changes we’re facing.

  There’s a measure of comfort in that…but not as much as you might expect.

  I just wish I didn’t keep worrying that every minor moment of tension between us might herald bigger problems down the road.

  I just wish there hadn’t been so many minor moments of tension lately.

  I wish there could be more…joy.

  I want Jack to tell me that we’re doing the right thing, getting married. Of course we are. But he doesn’t say that.

  Because he isn’t any more sure of that than I am, I realize. We love each other—there’s no question about that. But are we really going to make it together forever?

  We hold on tightly to each other, for a long time.

  I want to ask Jack if he thinks we’ll ever be us again…

  But I don’t.

  Because I�
�m too afraid of the answer.

  “Do you realize that in a matter of days Tracey Spadolini will cease to exist?” I ask Kate edgily in her apartment a few nights after she gets home from the hospital.

  “Well, you can always keep your own last name if that bothers you.” She hands over mini-Kate and a bottle of formula the nanny just warmed.

  No, she’s not breast-feeding.

  Yes, she knows it’s better for the baby.

  No, she’s not a terrible mother.

  You have to give her credit for knowing her limits. This way, the nanny can get up with the baby in the wee hours.

  By day, the well-rested Kate is downright doting.

  It’s as strange to see her cooing and fussing over her tiny daughter as it is to realize that Tracey Spadolini is fading fast.

  I ease the rubber nipple into little Kate’s hungry mouth and tell Kate, “I don’t want to keep my name. It isn’t about that. It’s about…the end of an era, I guess. I don’t know. Forget I said anything.”

  “It’s prewedding jitters,” she tells me. “Look, everyone has second thoughts. I did.”

  But she was marrying Billy. That’s to be expected. I mean, who wouldn’t have second thoughts about that?

  I’m marrying Jack, though. Jack, who is as close to perfect—for me—as anyone ever could be.

  Jack, whom I love more than anything, flaws and all.

  I just wish I could relax and stop worrying.

  “I’m not having second thoughts,” I tell Kate. “I want to marry Jack. There’s just a lot of stress and we’ve just been bickering a lot, about stupid things that don’t matter.”

  “Like?”

  “Like what he’s wearing to the rehearsal dinner, and which bags to pack our stuff in for our honeymoon, and why his mother can’t sit at a different table from his father at the reception and whose turn it is to wash the dishes.”

  “Billy and I fight about stuff like that all the time, if it’s any comfort.”

  It’s not. I don’t want to compare me and Jack to her and Billy.

  “This just isn’t like us, though,” I say, stroking little Kate’s downy head with my freshly manicured fingertips. “We normally get along great, but these last few months—especially the last few weeks—”

  “Everyone fights,” Kate says logically, “especially before they make a lifelong commitment. You’re about to take the biggest step in your life. It would be strange if you weren’t a nervous wreck, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.”

  I wish Jack were here. I could use a reassuring hug right now.

  But he left this afternoon on a business trip to Knoxville, and he won’t be back until tomorrow night.

  The next morning, I e-mail Buckley:

  Hey, I would like to talk, after all. Can you meet me for lunch?

  It takes awhile for the response to come back.

  Which is unusual, because he’s always online on weekday mornings.

  I’m busy running around preparing for a presentation, but I keep checking my BlackBerry.

  Finally, I hear from Buckley.

  Sushi Lucy’s, 1:00 p.m. B.

  That’s all it says.

  My reply is even shorter:

  OK.

  I’m fifteen minutes late, thanks to Carol and Adrian and a series of unreasonable Client demands. Nothing unusual about that.

  Buckley is waiting for me in the vestibule, unshaven and wearing jeans, sneakers and an untucked flannel shirt.

  Nothing unusual about that, either: he works from home, and Sushi Lucy’s is casual.

  Still—I’m not a big fan of the rumpled, stubbly look.

  Which is good. I’m really glad he didn’t show up clean-shaven and bare-chested.

  At a fairly secluded table, we order.

  Then the waiter leaves and I wonder, uneasily, what to say.

  I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve asked you here today would probably be a good start, but I’m not sure of the answer myself.

  It was pure impulse, and now that we’re here, I wish I hadn’t done it.

  Buckley rests his chin on his fist and looks at me. “You okay?”

  “Pretty much.” I sip my ice water, which leaves a funny aftertaste.

  “Meaning…?”

  “Meaning…I don’t know. I’m just stressed, I guess.” I gesture at my water glass. “I hate tap water. We should have asked for bottled.”

  “Is that why you’re stressed?” he asks, smirking a little.

  “That, and the fact that I’m getting married any second now.”

  He nods. “That’ll do it. Look, Tracey, for what it’s worth, coming from me—I don’t think you’re making a mistake. I think you should marry Jack. I think you’d be crazy not to.”

  Wow.

  “That’s worth a lot, coming from you,” I say softly.

  “You guys are good together. And you’re both ready for this. I mean, in an ideal world, you and I would have gotten each other out of our systems first, but…” He shrugs.

  Okay, I have to ask. That, after all, is why I’m here. To get him out of my system. But not, I suspect, in the way he has in mind.

  “What do you mean, Buckley?”

  “You know…we would have had our fling and moved on, instead of being left feeling like there’s some kind of…unfinished business between us.”

  Unfinished business.

  That’s actually how I’ve been feeling about it, too…

  But I wasn’t thinking fling.

  I was thinking more…

  I don’t know, that maybe if I hadn’t met Jack, Buckley and I would have ended up together. Long-term.

  “If I didn’t think Jack was such a great guy,” Buckley says, “I might actually be suggesting that we…you know.”

  “What?”

  “Have that fling before you move on and marry Jack and I move on and…well, don’t marry anyone. Not for a good long time, anyway. If ever.”

  “You honestly don’t want to get married?”

  “Not in this millennium. Just kidding,” he adds with a wry grin. “Sort of.”

  “That surprises me. You don’t have any desire to get married?”

  “It surprises me, too. I mean, it would make my life a lot less complicated, because most women are into monogamy.”

  For the first time, I’m seeing Buckley for who he really is—and isn’t.

  All these years, I was thinking he might be right for me, because of chemistry, and because we have so much in common, both being creative types and coming from large Catholic families.

  But now I realize it takes more than that.

  A lot more.

  “So if you weren’t friends with Jack,” I say, just to clarify what he’s getting at here, “you’d be suggesting that you and I…”

  Sleep together?

  I can’t say it.

  I don’t have to.

  We both know that’s what he means.

  And there’s a graphic—make that pornographic—visual in my head right now that I’m a little uncomfortable with. Then I remember Brenda and Tony, and Kate and Gabriel, and I forgive myself. After all, I’m only human.

  “I think that would be a really bad idea,” Buckley informs me.

  “Because of Jack.”

  “Right. And because it’s definitely not your style.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  Is it Buckley’s?

  He smiles—wryly—again. “You know, even though I knew that all along about you…I guess I was kind of hoping you were going to contradict me.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He sighs. “We’ll just move on, and it’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah? You think we can put this behind us now and get back to being friends?” I, for one, would relish at least one relationship in my life getting back to familiar footing again.

  “I never wanted any of this to come between us, Tracey,” Buckley says. “It was reall
y selfish of me to tell you that I loved you in the first place—even though I meant it.”

  “I thought it was really unselfish, actually,” I tell him. “Especially since you knew all along that nothing could ever come of it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a great, unselfish guy.”

  “You are.”

  “No, I’m not. Jack is a great, unselfish guy. That’s why you guys are getting married. Me—I’m too selfish to marry anyone.”

  “Maybe someday you won’t be. If you find the right person.”

  “Maybe.”

  He doesn’t look very sure about that, though.

  “You’ve found the right person, though,” he tells me. “You do know that, right?”

  I nod and reach for my icky tap water again. I do know that. It’s just…well, sometimes I’m scared shitless of the future. That’s all.

  “Good,” Buckley says. “Because the way Jack was talking about you at his bachelor party last week…”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he was trashed. I can’t repeat it.”

  “Buckley! You have to!”

  He grins. “No way. My lips are sealed. Just know that the guy is head over heels in love with you. Okay?”

  “No. You have to tell me what he said. At least one thing he said. Come on, Buckley. Throw me a bone here.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you one thing he said. He said he loves your hair.”

  Oh, God. Here we go.

  Why did I insist?

  “Why would he bring that up?” I ask, wondering if Jack told the guys the whole Pre Cana tale.

  “Oh, because Mitch was hitting on some bleached-blonde stripper with bad roots. And Jack started talking about hair, and how it reflects a person’s true character.”

  “He said that?”

  “Believe me, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but he meant well. He was going on and on about how soft your hair is, and how he loves the color—how he’s so glad that you don’t dye it or use a load of gunk in it. He kept saying how great it smells, and he loves when you fall asleep on his chest because he can breathe into it all night. And he said that sometimes when you’re away on business he opens your shampoo bottle in the shower so he can smell it and not miss you so much.”

  Wow.

  “Jack said that? At his bachelor party?”

  “I told you he was trashed.” Buckley shrugs. “The guys gave him a hell of a time about it. And if you tell him I said any of that, I will be dead to him, so keep your mouth shut, please.”