And when we made love again, it was with the same kind of passion that we had had for each other when we first started dating. None of the old resentments that had crept into the bedroom recently (the ones about marriage and babies and future) were there anymore. I’m not sure I even realized how heavy those resentments had weighed on me and my libido until they were gone. I felt free and uninhibited with Fred again. The way I had felt when we first started dating. Free and truly happy.
So when we fell asleep in each other’s arms, postcoital, I should have been blissful.
But instead, that knot in my stomach came back full force.
Something’s wrong.
I look at the clock: 2:34. Fred has been sound asleep for over an hour. I’ve been lying in our bed, naked, and staring at the ceiling.
Maybe I’m just determined to be unhappy. For the first time in my life I have everything I want: I should not be feeling like this. I am allowed to be ecstatic. Maybe I’m just one of those superstitious people who fears that if she has everything and is happy about it, it will all be taken away from her suddenly.
I look at my ring: glittery, polished, and new. I move my hand from side to side, watching it sparkle in the moonlight coming through the window. It’s a beautiful ring: a one-and-a-half-carat center stone, set in platinum, and surrounded by a pavé of shimmering smaller diamonds. It is absolutely stunning.
Nope. Something is not quite right. I can feel it in my gut. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but it’s … something.
I look over at Fred, out cold, and snoring ever so slightly.
His phone. That’s it! His phone hasn’t rung all evening. This is a man who gets at least twenty calls and texts from work every night. Why didn’t his phone ring or buzz?
I silently sit up in bed, watching Fred to make sure that I don’t wake him. Then I drop my feet to the floor and tiptoe over to his suit jacket. I notice I’m wincing as I pull his phone out of his jacket pocket. I keep an eye on Fred, still sleeping, as I check his phone.
It’s set to vibrate.
Okay, so this is our engagement night. A normal woman would think getting rid of all work distractions was just one of many romantic gestures her man would make to guarantee a perfect evening.
I wish I was normal. I wish I could totally forgive him for his dalliance and not be suspicious. But that’s going to take time.
Time and a few checkups.
I tiptoe out of our room, and quietly shut the door. I wait to hear a stir from him, but nothing. I check his phone:
A text from Svetlana:
Hej sötnos
I miss you. Good luck with your meetings tonight.
Jag älskar dig
I would say my heart sinks, but I’m too much in shock for that to happen. My head takes over, and I am determined to learn the truth.
I walk into our office, flip on the light, and turn on his computer. I don’t even bother being quiet anymore: if anything I am loudly pacing the room as I read through the rest of his text messages and check his phone logs. Not only is her number listed a million times, but there are other women on his call log as well. I have no idea if they’re coworkers, clients, or mistresses. But, again, time to find out.
My first step is to find a Swedish-to-English translator online, which is easy enough. I start typing in various phrases she has texted him, beginning with Hej sötnos and Jag älskar dig.
Hej sötnos: Hi, sweetnose
Jag älskar dig: I love you
Hjärtat: Sweetheart
Snigging: Handsome
Min alskling: My darling
Pojkvän: Boyfriend
Sot som en gris: Sweet like a pig
Oh, he’s a pig all right. I hurl his phone full force across the room, hoping to break it into a million pieces and wake him with my rage.
I wait a few moments, wanting to hear our bedroom door open, and preparing to have Fred walk into the office so that I can pounce on him and hit him with my fists over and over again until I’m worn out.
But all I am greeted with is silence. Deafening silence.
He hasn’t budged. Which is a blessing in disguise. Because it gives me one last chance to learn the truth. No filters. No explanations. Just the facts.
I click onto his e-mail and spend the next hour reading.
He doesn’t just have Svetlana. He has a girl in Chicago he sleeps with occasionally and an ex-girlfriend from high school who may or may not be sleeping with him (no mention of a husband or kids on her part, no mention of me on his).
I decide to go on Facebook to try and collect more information about the ex and the others. At this point, in my heart I know it’s over. But I want the truth—all of it. You can’t get rid of a cancer until you know how badly it has spread.
I click on his page.
I start by looking through his old Facebook e-mails. I click on the ex-girlfriend’s first message to him:
My God—why didn’t we do that back in high school?! I’m still all tingly. When will you be in D.C. again?
Fred responded with:
I wanted to do that back in high school—you said no! Probably for the best. I’ve gotten better over the years. I’ll be in D.C. next month, and can’t wait to see you.
But I meant what I said about you coming out here. My door is open anytime. (And my bed.)
As I continue reading, yet another woman, Ashley, ropes him into chat:
Hey, Hot Lips. Boyfriend is in town this weekend, but I should definitely be able to hook up some weeknight next week. Do you actually want to try for dinner this time?
I write back:
This isn’t Fred. This is his fiancée. Or should I say, ex-fiancée. And I’m about to break up with him, so he should be available any night next week, and for the rest of his life.
I calmly click him off Facebook and turn off his computer. I call a cab and request a pickup in twenty minutes. Then I walk into our room, quietly grab my two suitcases from his closet, silently open my closet and dresser drawers, and stuff everything I can into them.
Finally, I open a lipstick and write on the mirror:
Min alskling—I know everything
Then I say good-bye to my old life forever.
Fourteen
Seema
So, this past week has been … different.
Let’s see, where to start.
Scott has been pretty much AWOL since Tuesday: no middle-of-the-night phone calls, a few noncommittal texts. Which can only lead me to assume he’s having hot monkey sex five times a day with mystery girl Britney, who I hate with the fire of a thousand suns.
Mel has spent the week waffling between being heartsick over Fred and wanting to rip out his lungs with nothing but her bare hands and a pair of nail clippers.
Nic has been getting more and more agitated about the details of her wedding, to the point where the calm bride that I knew up until the shower has now been replaced by a Bridezilla who suddenly gets worked up over every little detail of her wedding—from the Clos Du Val red wine being cabernet and not merlot to the confetti being thrown after the ceremony being exactly the right shade of aqua and shaped like squares—not little boy babies. (Although I see her point on that one, what with the cake charm she pulled and all.)
Speaking of cake charms: I’ve also spent the week watching everyone around me have their cake charms come true. First, there was Ginger’s engagement. Then our pregnant friend Joyce, the one who got the Noah’s Ark, found out that she was having twins. Finally our screenwriter friend Jean, who pulled the wishing well, had jokingly said aloud that she wished she’d sell one of her scripts to Disney. She sold one to Disney on Monday, then a different script to Paramount on Wednesday.
And now I am at Nic’s rehearsal dinner, standing in the middle of the restaurant with Nic and Mel, and talking to Nic’s friend Carolyn.
And I may have a stroke from her news.
“So you actually won the lottery?” I ask Carolyn.
“I know!”
Carolyn exclaims. “It was the strangest thing. I never play. I mean, never. But I was driving home after the shower and just thinking about how kooky it would be if I bought a lottery ticket that won a buck. You know, like I got one number of the six. I thought it would be funny. I didn’t even know how you played, picked numbers, anything. So I just picked the birth dates of me, my brother, and my sister, bought the ticket, and here I am!”
“What are you going to do with all that money?” Mel asks her, with a smile that looks genuine to the untrained eye.
Carolyn beams as she tells her, “I leave for Paris first thing Sunday morning. Gonna just hang out for a few months in Europe with my boyfriend at all the five-star hotels, come home, buy a house, then figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. No more fucking newspaper jobs. I am done!”
I smile. “That’s awesome,” I lie. “I’m so happy for you.”
“I know! Isn’t it amazing!” Carolyn exclaims. “I’m gonna go find a drink. Got a limo tonight, so I can have whatever I want! Can I get anyone anything?”
We all answer with versions of “No” and “I’m good.”
The moment Carolyn is out of hearing range, my smile drops, and I turn to the girls. “She’s begging us to push her face in the cake tomorrow.”
“It’s a cry for help really,” Nic says dryly.
A thought occurs to me. “Maybe the shovel I pulled is the weapon I am supposed to use on all these bitches with their perfect runs of luck.”
“Oh, come on,” Mel chastises us. “How can you guys not be happy for her? Someone had to win the lottery. Might as well be one of your friends, right?”
Nic and I turn to each other to think about Mel’s statement. True: someone did have to win the lottery. And, logically, it doesn’t really affect my life one way or another if Carolyn won, and I should be happy for Nic’s friend.
Nic starts to shake her head. “Nah, I’m still jealous as hell.”
I nod. “It’s amazing how petty and small I can be,” I concur.
We hear Pink belt out “So What” on Mel’s cell phone. Fred. Mel reaches into her purse, yanks out the phone, and begins her latest tirade. “May you rot in Hell. What is it now, Fuckface?”
Nic looks at me in surprise. “You told her you called him that?”
“Of course not,” I say quickly. “I told her we called him that.”
This is followed by Nic’s phone chiming “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want to” by Lesley Gore. She picks up. “If you tell me one more kind of flower has frozen in the middle of August, I swear to God I’m going to climb through the phone and strangle you.”
Over the years, I’ve learned to hate the ubiquitous cell phone. I mean, besides the obvious: oh goody, I get to perpetually wait by the phone since if the bastard was interested in me at all he would call, e-mail, text, or Facebook me, all of which I can access now on my phone. (Side note: not feeling constantly rejected—is there an app for that?)
But, also, because it just encourages people to ignore you.
Even if you are a much more supportive and pleasant person than the dipshit on the phone.
“Oh no!” Mel yells into her phone. “The Britney Spears CDs are mine! You gave them to me! This is just your pathetic attempt to blackmail me into seeing you again.… Because heterosexual men look at Britney Spears. They don’t actually listen to Britney Spears!”
I shake my head. “Mel, just let him have the CDs. You can get all the hits you want on iTunes for twenty bucks,” I advise, as I snag a flute of Taltarni Brut Taché from a passing waiter.
Nic covers the phone. “Are you talking to me?” she asks me distractedly.
“No.”
“Because I’m on with my florist,” Nicole tells me. “Just give me one more minute.” Then she returns to her latest wedding adversary. “But I didn’t order the Biedermeier bouquet, I ordered the Cascade bouquet. It’s in the contract.”
Mel covers the phone to answer me. “I don’t want to go on iTunes, because I don’t just want her hits. The whole point of an album is to hear the lesser known, more artistic songs.”
“Of Britney Spears?!” I blurt out.
Mel takes my flute, gulps a huge mouthful of sparkling wine, then continues yelling at Fred, “No we are not talking about this in person … Fred, you show up at the wedding tomorrow, and I swear to God, I’ll castrate you with a butter knife.”
“Yes, I know the difference!” Nic yells in exasperation while grabbing a sourdough roll from a nearby table and stress eating. “How do I know the difference?” she says incredulously through a mouthful of bread. “Because up until today I’d never heard of a Biedermeier bouquet!”
“You miss me?!” Mel says incredulously. “Fan ta dig!” she hisses in Swedish.
“No, no. Not lilacs—lilies!” Nic says urgently into her phone. “What do you mean, ‘There’s really no difference’? I’m sorry: are you a gay man or a straight man? Because a man who sucks cock knows the difference!”
I jolt at that.
“You know what? Suck my cock!” Mel growls at Fred.
And I jolt at that. (I thought I was the one in this group who said raunchy, shocking things.)
Nic slams her phone shut. “Honestly, if you had asked me anything about bouquets six months ago, I would have said, ‘I don’t know. They’re pretty, and they usually come with a plastic thing you can hold when you’re walking down the aisle.’ Now suddenly I’m arguing about lilies freezing in summer.”
“Oh yeah, right!” Mel yells into her phone. “That’s about as likely to happen as lilies freezing in summer.”
Nic grabs my flute from Mel and downs the rest of my drink. She turns to me. “You know, for some stupid reason, I always thought my wedding week would be romantic. I pictured being so in love with my Prince Charming that we would spend the week making plans about our future: talking about our future babies, our future jobs, where we wanted to buy a house, dreaming of where we’d live in retirement. Maybe picking out a new sofa: our sofa. Instead, I have spent the entire week stressing out over stupid things like whether my parents can be in the same room together without killing each other and if anyone will notice if I’m carrying a Biedermeier bouquet.”
Mel covers the mouthpiece of her phone and returns to her normal voice. “That’s why I told you to get a wedding planner.”
“Do you have any idea how much a wedding planner charges in Los Angeles?” Nic tells her. “We’re already spending way too much on this wedding. Besides, it would be one thing if I had a job filling my days. But ever since I became a lady of leisure—a term I’m quite sure a man coined, by the way—I apparently have nothing better to do with my life than discuss fondant and fillings with cake bakers, argue with the caterer about the differences between crab cakes and ahi tuna sushi appetizers, and wonder why the Hell I ever agreed to go on a cruise.”
I eye Nic in confusion. “I’m sorry. Is the team going on some basketball cruise?”
“No,” Nic says, shaking her head. “We are. We’re not going to Italy. The honeymoon has been canceled. Or redirected or … something.”
Mel turns around to Nic in alarm. “I have to call you back,” she says to Fred, as she immediately flips her phone shut.
The two of us shoot a barrage of questions at Nic: “What? Why? When?” and “Wait. Does that mean you’re eloping on the ship, and we don’t have to wear the dresses?”
Nic glares at me for my last question, then tries to rush through her answers so that we can move on to another topic. “Seven days ago. It’s not Jason’s fault. And yes, you still have to wear the fucking dresses. Do you think ahi tuna is an appropriate appetizer?”
“I didn’t say ‘fucking,’ ” I point out.
“It was implied,” she assures me.
“Actually, it was inferred,” I say.
“No. What I said was inferred. What you said was implied. The difference is—”
“Are you two seriously deflecting the real is
sue here with a grammatical argument?” Mel chastises. “What happened? Why aren’t you going to Italy?”
Nic eyes the other guests mingling about in the room. She takes a new glass of bubbly from a passing waiter, then gestures with her head for us to follow her to a quiet corner, away from everyone. We each grab a glass of champagne as well, and follow her.
Once everyone is out of hearing range, Nic whispers to us, “Jacquie—she of the typewriter charm—got a job as a junior speechwriter for the governor. He’ll be announcing that he’s running for the Senate in the next few days, so she had to go to Sacramento immediately. Jason and she agreed that they didn’t want to pull the girls out of their school in Los Angeles. So we now have them full time. The plan is we’ll take them on weekdays, and she’ll fly home on Friday nights, and have them on weekends.”
“Is that all?” I ask. “You don’t need to cancel your honeymoon. Just take the girls with you to Italy.”
“I can’t,” Nic tells me. “The girls have to be back in school soon. And they’ve been promised this particular family cruise for the last year, followed by a trip to Disney World, which Jacquie now can’t take them on, because she’s already started her job in Sacramento. So we have to take them. No Venice. No Florence. Instead I’m going to be retching my guts out for seven days, then taking pictures with Mickey Mouse. We leave for Florida tomorrow night, right after the wedding.”
I shake my head. “Honey, I’m sorry their mom flaked on a trip she promised them, but this is your honeymoon. Their needs don’t automatically trump your needs.”
“Spoken like a single woman,” Nic retorts. “What kind of parent would cancel their kids’ trip to Disney World?” she asks me harshly.
“Um … their mom, off the top of my head,” I rebut.
Mel, of course, tries to play diplomat. “I think what Seema is trying to say is that this is only a few weeks out of everyone’s lives, but that these few weeks are crucial to you. You only get one honeymoon.”
“Familymoon,” Nic corrects her.
“Fam…” Mel begins. “I’m sorry. What is that??”
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