I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag

by Jennifer Gilbert

  All those years with Evan had led me to Bennett, and thankfully Charles helped me realize it. I finally understood that love wasn’t about me trying to be perfect for someone else; it was about understanding who felt perfect for me.

  Finally I understood that the kind of love I had experienced didn’t make me feel anything but tired and unfulfilled, leaving me to search for the next challenge to prove myself again. Real love is consistent and always there, no matter what, and I was ready to try and feel it for myself. The only man who had ever felt like that to me was Bennett, and why would I ever walk away from that much love?

  The next day I went to Florida with my family, and I called Bennett to tell him that I’d broken up with Charles. Then I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking—”

  Bennett replied, “I know.”

  To this day Bennett insists that he had the whole thing planned out. He’d carefully designed everything about that birthday dinner party to show me that no one would ever know me better than he did. Especially not a man like Charles.

  Bennett is many things, but slow on the uptake is not one of them. By the time I got back to New York for New Year’s Eve, he’d broken up with Isabella. She was a beautiful girl, and I didn’t doubt that she deserved him far more than I did. But he and I had waited a long, long time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After All These Years

  On New Year’s Eve, Bennett and I were at a party together, and I knew that the time to act was then or never. If I didn’t just go for it—embrace Bennett and all the love he had for me—then I would regret it forever. It was time to stop waiting for the fantasy goodie bag, and to start appreciating what was right here in front of me. So that night, I kissed him for the first time. It was more a “jump him from behind,” because I totally surprised him by making the first move. That first kiss was clumsy, and totally embarrassing for me, and very, very surreal for both of us. We pulled back and started laughing. It broke the ice for the real kiss that came next. Let me tell you, it certainly was not like kissing a brother. Needless to say, we didn’t get out of our bathrobes or leave the house for four days. We were old friends but new lovers. It had only taken us nine years.

  From then on, we were inseparable. After all that time, there wasn’t any such thing as casual dating for us. We already knew each other too well. Of course his friends were suspicious, and I didn’t blame them. For years they’d been telling Bennett to get over me—they actually conducted “Jen interventions” with him during which they told him that he shouldn’t see me anymore. And now they were worried that Bennett would be devastated if I changed my mind. They weren’t wrong to be concerned. A few months into our relationship I began to get cold feet. I could feel myself shutting down. I was scared, really and truly scared, and all the old fears started creeping in. It was all too easy, it couldn’t be right. It was a lot of change for me in a short time, and old habits and patterns die hard. I still didn’t know: did I deserve his love, was I even able to keep it now that I’d let myself have it? Bennett was talking about summer shares and where we’d rent, and I started to freak out a little bit. So I did a terrible thing. I said, “Maybe we’ll be in different houses this year.”

  Bennett had been around the block with me too many times not to recognize the warning signal I was giving him loud and clear. His face said it all. When I saw how I’d hurt him, I knew that I didn’t want to keep going down that road—it was too familiar, and too sad. Anyone else would have just let me have it, but he didn’t. That night he sent me flowers, and I wondered, Why can’t I let myself accept his love?

  I’ve always said about Bennett, “No one has ever known me better, and no one has ever loved me more.” Because Bennett had flown under my radar as a potential partner, I had allowed him to get closer to me than any boyfriend ever had. Bennett had been unattractive to me for years because of his love for me. How could I love someone who actually loved me? I had always stayed in control by withholding the parts of me that felt less protected. But Bennett knew everything about me, and he still loved me. Now I had to choose love and choose the real me over all the masks that I’d been wearing—the Jen suit and the red lipstick and the bicycle pants. I had to open myself up and believe that it would all be okay—I just had to say yes.

  On July 1, we went out to dinner for our six-month anniversary. Bennett gave me a pair of lovely turquoise earrings. I gave him a letter I had never planned on showing him. I titled it “Timing Is Everything,” and in it I explained why I loved him so much.

  And then I gave him a box. I could tell the wheels were turning in Bennett’s head. He opened the box and saw this very beautiful watch, and he was thinking, Damn, I only got her earrings. I told him that the watchmaker put a hologram on the back of every watch, and then I said: “Let’s see what yours is.”

  He turned it over, and engraved on the back was:

  Bennett Will You Marry Me?

  MBT

  The initials “MBT” stood for millions, billions, trillions—his constant refrain in all the love letters he’d sent me over the years. The proposal itself needed no explanation.

  No one knew about my plan to ask Bennett to marry me except for my parents, who were dying with anticipation, and were praying I was as confident as I seemed about doing it this way. And of course, the people who’d engraved the watch also knew. They’d all asked me, “Are you sure he’s going to say yes?” Now, watching Bennett stare at the engraving . . . I wasn’t so sure at all. He was dead quiet, and I was so nervous that I started to babble. Finally I calmed myself, took a pause, and said, “We don’t have to tell anybody if you don’t want to marry me. I just wanted you to know that after all these years, you’re the one.”

  He said yes.

  I first called Bennett’s mom and said, “I proposed to your son, and he has accepted.” If her complete shock was any indication of what was to come, we had to tell people ourselves, so we could enjoy their reactions. We called the rest of our family and best friends as soon as we left the restaurant to tell them our news, and they were all floored and thrilled. By the time the weekend rolled around, we were sitting on Sagg Main Beach, enjoying the sun, when we heard a couple gossiping on the adjacent beach blanket. “Oh my God,” the girl said to the man, “did you hear about the girl who proposed to her boyfriend on the back of a watch?”

  We laughed and then leaned over and showed them Bennett’s watch. Then we laughed some more, sitting there on the same beach where I’d worn my bike shorts to cover my scars. The same beach where I had spent a lot of time growing up. The same beach where Bennett had spent a lot of time waiting for me. Now here I was, in my bikini for the first time in a decade, and I felt my life was starting again.

  I hadn’t been entirely truthful all those years that I said I didn’t care about an engagement ring. There was one ring that had been haunting me for a long, long time.

  I was single when I first saw it in a shop window while I was walking through Manhattan’s diamond district. I’m sure I was on my way to an appointment, walking at a fast clip, but that ring made me stop in my tracks. As a wedding planner, I’d seen a million rings. The first thing you do when you meet a bride-to-be is ooh and ah over her ring. But this ring was unlike anything I’d ever seen. The man in the store saw me staring, and he waved to me to come in. I was mortified—I couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing and so not me than ogling an engagement ring when I didn’t even have a boyfriend. I ran away.

  The next time I walked by that storefront, I stopped again. The same man smiled at me and waved me in, and this time I couldn’t say no . . . I even tried it on, God help me. He said, “Who’s the lucky man?” I told him there wasn’t one, and that unfortunately this was the one piece of jewelry that I couldn’t buy for myself.

  All the while I was single or dating, I had this ring in my head. I remember I’d even draw pictures of it for people—including Bennett.
I stayed away from it while I was with Evan—I have a strong superstitious streak, and it seemed like tempting fate. Just once I went by the jewelry shop during my years with Evan, and said to the smiling jeweler, “I finally found the ‘one.’ Phew!” And then Evan and I broke up.

  Since I was the one to propose to Bennett, he wasn’t ready with an engagement ring for me. Then a few weeks after I proposed, I kind of looked at him sideways and said, “So does this mean I don’t get a ring?” (Very smooth, Jen.)

  Bennett said of course I’d get a ring, but there was no way he was going to buy it without my involvement. Then he said, “What about the ring?”

  We went to the little shop on Forty-seventh Street, and finally I had a real, live fiancé by my side. We walked in together, and I smiled at the jeweler and said, “Hi, do you remember me?” And he said of course he remembered. Then he pulled out my ring, and told me that he’d actually sold it to someone else, but the wedding never happened. The couple broke up and sent the ring back, and it had been sitting there waiting for me ever since. Bennett liked the ring very much, but then he asked me if I wanted a bigger stone, or a different setting, or the same setting with a different stone. All of a sudden I could really have it—the ring—and I panicked. Maybe I should shop around, I thought. Maybe there were other rings in the world.

  So we looked everywhere, and we took our time, until finally I was positive—there was no other ring in the world for me.

  Bennett called to get the ring, and the jeweler told him that it had been sent out on consignment. A client wanted a few different rings to consider, and my ring was one of them. I burst into tears, and there was no calming me down. I finally understood all those poor brides I’d worked with over the years who’d freaked out over the little things. For them it wasn’t just “a dress” or “an invitation”—that piece of satin or slip of paper was the symbol of their hopes and their dreams. The same way this ring had become the symbol of mine. I begged the jeweler to get my ring back. And he did.

  To this day if you walk into that little shop on Forty-seventh Street they will tell you the story of the crazy lady who haunted her ring for years and years until she finally met her husband.

  Pity the event planner who has to plan her own wedding. Bennett had been in thirty-seven weddings already, and his one request was that he didn’t want a big, splashy event. I was fine with that. My sister’d had the huge University Club wedding with the centerpieces and the bridesmaids, the big band, the hundreds of guests. It was lovely and perfect in every way, but one wedding like that felt like enough for any family.

  Bennett suggested eloping, but I didn’t feel I could do that to my parents or my girlfriends, who’d be so sad not to see me get married. My parents planned to throw us an engagement party, so then Bennett came up with the idea of having a surprise wedding in the middle of the party. Now that idea had possibilities. But ever the planner, I immediately saw the inherent problems: what if people showed up late, thinking it was just a party? But out of that idea came the one that finally gelled: we’d have a small surprise wedding, but it would be planned to the hilt.

  We decided to get married in the fall, and since December is my chaotic season at work, we did everything backwards and went on a honeymoon before the wedding. I took Bennett to my favorite places—Rome and the Amalfi coast. Before we left, all the plans for the wedding were in place, except for one minor detail: I couldn’t make a decision about my dress. Physician, heal thyself. Cobbler, put some shoes on your kids’ feet.

  We were in Rome, walking down the Spanish Steps, when I looked up and saw a bridal atelier. It seemed like a sign from the gods, so I buzzed the door. A musical voice answered the intercom, and I said, “Hi, are you a wedding shop?” She said they were couture and by appointment only. So I babbled into the intercom all about how I was from America, and my wedding was just weeks away, and I didn’t have a dress. Thankfully, she found the whole story charming and told me that if I fit into any of her sample sizes, she’d sell me the dress. And I found the perfect one—a halter style with a straightish skirt and lace-up bodice. There was a little train with thousands of buttons down the back. But the most amazing part was the hundreds of tiny raffia roses threaded throughout the lace. It was gorgeous, and it fit me like a dream. She sold me the dress, and I dragged it with me all around the Amalfi coast for the next two weeks.

  All my friends knew that the holidays were my busiest time, so when they asked about the wedding date, I just said that I was way too stressed to think about it just yet. In the meantime, we told them that we’d be throwing an intimate little party to celebrate our engagement with our nearest and dearest. Bennett’s sister Ellen sent out the invitations, and even she wasn’t in on the secret. The invitation read:

  How do you celebrate the engagement of two epicureans? By having a movable feast, of course. Please join me for a night of interesting locations, great friends, and food. Don’t be late, or you’ll miss the bus.

  The word went out that the party would move from restaurant to restaurant around the city, and that it would be a fantastic night—not to be missed. We scheduled it the Thursday before Thanksgiving, since we knew that friends and family could tag a few more days onto their holiday travel. The only other people who knew about the wedding were my staff, who helped me plan it, and my sisters and Bennett’s sister Ellen, who we also told just a few weeks before because we needed them to participate. Finally, just a few days before, we told my parents.

  It would be nice to continue this story on to the happy ending without any more detours, but that’s not how life goes.

  The night before our wedding, I woke up in a panic—a full-on heart-racing, cold-sweat panic. I wasn’t sure I could go through with the wedding. I had worked my way through so many issues, I thought, but knowing I was really promising myself to Bennett, in marriage, I doubted myself again. Could this happiness last? Was it actually possible for me? My old feelings of unworthiness surged up—along with my fears that nothing good comes without a steep price to pay.

  I was alone, and terrified, and there was no one I could talk to. If this had been a typical wedding, I would have phoned up one of my best friends, and we would have talked it through. But this was a surprise wedding. There was only one person on earth I could confide in, and he was the one person who would be most devastated by what I had to say.

  I called Bennett, and I told him that I loved him, and I knew in my heart that he was the best man for me, and I assumed I was mature enough to really believe it in my head, but what if I was wrong? Because right now my head was screaming: Run. I was so used to being with a man who hadn’t been able to give himself to me that Bennett’s wholehearted, unselfish love for me still seemed impossible.

  To this day I don’t know how he maintained his composure, but that’s the kind of person Bennett is. He’s the least threatened, least jealous, least insecure person on the face of the planet. He just listened to me like a friend, and he talked me down off that ledge. Then he asked me if I trusted him.

  I told him I did.

  Bennett said, “Do you trust me enough to show up tomorrow?”

  I trusted him more than I trusted myself. “I do,” I said.

  “Okay,” Bennett said, “then just say those two words tomorrow.”

  When I woke up the next morning, I was calm. The clouds of dread that had been hanging over me in the night had lifted, and I could breathe and think clearly. I went for a run, and I got my hair done. I nonchalantly told the stylist that I was getting married that day, and she almost dropped the hair dryer. Later, when my sisters came over to help me dress, I was happy and in the moment.

  I hadn’t undergone a miracle transformation in the night, and there were no prescription drugs involved. It was love that got me through. Even if I didn’t have faith in myself, I had faith in Bennett, and he didn’t let me push him away. I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed
to be.

  We started at the Villard Bar, a cozy red-velvet-upholstered bar in the Palace Hotel. I wore a vintage Pucci dress, and Bennett walked over with his friends from Bear Stearns. After an hour bells rang, and all sixty guests emerged onto the street to find two shuttle buses to take them to the next stop. Bennett got on one bus, and everyone on that bus assumed that I’d gotten on the other bus. Really, I’d slipped out five minutes early with Rachel and we’d zipped over to a restaurant, Lutèce, right down the street on Fiftieth Street.

  Inside Lutèce there was a tiny bar up front, then stairs up to a long hallway that led to the back dining room. So for all intents and purposes when you entered you couldn’t see where you were going. When the buses arrived, we set up a diversion with the coat check so that Bennett could scoot out first, and head up the back stairs with just enough time to change his tie. When the guests walked single file up the stairs and down the hall, they spilled into a room filled with red roses, with an aisle of rose petals right down the center. There was candlelight and a chuppah made from my grandfather’s tallith.

  Each person who entered the room screamed, “Oh my God, they’re getting married!” But no one else behind them could hear, so it was a stream of shock and joyful amazement repeated sixty times. Bennett was standing to the right of the rabbi, and my sisters handed each person a candle, which Ellen then lit. Once everyone was up the stairs and in place, I walked in, wearing my wedding dress. While a band played Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You,” I grabbed my father by the arm on my way up the aisle.

  Bennett and I had written letters to each other, and the rabbi read them aloud. They were sweet and tender, but each of us had included a joke at the end. His was that he promised to finally start wearing sunscreen and to keep off the pounds he’d lost. In mine, I told him that he’d finally gotten what he’d been asking for all these years (me). And since he knew me better than anyone, and he actually asked for it, he’d never be able to complain about me. That definitely got a laugh.