by Liz Astrof
He was listening. My throat tightened. What did people say when they were saying good-bye forever?! In my case, given what Todd has had to put up with, it probably should have been “Congratulations.”
I spoke calmly. I reminded Todd that Jesse’s social skills group was meeting on Saturdays now and told him to make sure he didn’t miss even one, I didn’t want him to grow up to be weird. And Phoebe was growing out of her Crocs, her toe was poking the front. And she needed a new sunhat, the one she was wearing itched her, and I told him to get the pink mark on Jesse’s leg checked, it had been there for a week, and to also try and get him to eat grapes because—
“This is the one room I said not to go in!”
I looked around only to find Tim standing in the doorway, red faced, fists clenched.
The. One. Room. He. Said. Not. To. Go. In.
What had I done?!
“Todd. It’s happening,” I said. “Good-bye.”
I cut the call and bolted out of the room. I’d been so engrossed in their photos that I missed Tim telling us not to go into this one room that was definitely his body-hiding room, duh, which was such a me thing to do.
Tim followed. “Liz,” he said, “come take a walk with me.”
This was it. It. Was. Happening.
Just please don’t make me get into a wedding dress, was all I could think, suddenly. I’m so bloated.
I called to the others, who were relaxing in the living room, of all things. Clueless.
“Bye, guys,” I said meaningfully, and followed Tim outside to my certain death but not before checking the band of my underwear to make sure I was wearing ones I wanted to die in. I wasn’t. And, my thong was on backwards. The fact that I hadn’t noticed was almost as disturbing as the fact that I didn’t have time to turn it around. My body’s description in the paper would be “Woman too stupid to know which way is front of thong and too misshapen to notice found in unnamed lake.”
We headed into the woods. Tim led me to a river lined with rocks. And then we walked. In silence at first.
“Is your full name Elizabeth?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “Like your daughter!” That had to count for something.
“I never liked that name,” he grumbled.
“I’ll change it,” I said.
“I’m so angry.”
The words tumbled out of me. “Jake approves the scripts and the stories—I’m with you, Tim, I think they’re bad! And Keith brought you back to TV, not me, if anything I didn’t think it was a good idea at all, and Mitch called you stalwart, whatever that means—”
“I’m angry that my father died,” Tim said.
Oh.
“Did you . . . kill him?” I asked.
He looked at me, a little strangely. “I was six.”
I told him I was sorry about his dad and that if it made him feel any better, my mom left me when I was six. But I was happy she left, so maybe that was different.
“You weren’t happy,” he snapped.
Normally, you’d want to agree with a potential murderer. But I couldn’t—I just couldn’t agree that I was sad that my mom left, because the best childhood memory I have of her is her absence.
He accused me of lying. I accused him back of being wrong.
Unbelievably, both of us got madder and madder. He insisted I had fond memories. I insisted that she was a crazy bitch, and then the madder I got, the more I wondered if I was going to kill Tim Allen and not the other way around.
I finally asked him why he was so sure I had good memories of my mother. He said there was no way I could be such a high-functioning person and such a good mother if I didn’t have any good memories of my own.
“ ‘High functioning’?” I was stunned. “Me?”
I told him how I sent out a holiday card where Phoebe had a Hitler mustache and that I have to wear my house keys around my neck because I lose them so often, that my son has had to use underwear from my gym bag to wipe his nose more than once because I never have tissues in my car.
That I was a Stay-at-Work Mom who is terrified of ruining her children, which is why I stay at work. But also, I don’t always want to go home—which is also why I stay at work.
He told me that he’d heard what I had said to Todd (another name he hated) back in that room I wasn’t supposed to go in—everything I’d said about my kids, how I wanted them to be taken care of. Then Tim Allen told me what an awesome mother I was and how lucky my kids were and how cool it was that their mom was a comedy writer. On and on and on.
Then he said I was funny. Tim Allen said I was funny.
As jaded as I am, even I had to admit, that was pretty cool. Okay, maybe I still got a little starstruck.
So, between the delicious food, the cozy bed, the gorgeous lotion, the boat ride, the pretty great Elton John concert, the calling me a good mother and funny and smart and that private jet ride all those psychics were wrong about, our prediction came through.
Tim Allen tried to kill me.
With kindness.
And in that, he succeeded.
The Love Bracelet
* * *
On a recent birthday, as my gift, Todd got me a tour of the ice cream factory that makes my favorite low-carb, low-calorie, low-fat ice cream. He did this because I shame-eat the stuff in the dark over the sink at night. They don’t generally give tours, because who the hell actually wants to be faced with nine-hundred-gallon steel vats full of the ice cream they shame-eat in the dark? But Todd made a bunch of phone calls, told someone in charge exactly how much we’ve spent on the stuff, and now we were not only going, I was getting my own branded apron.
On the drive over, I asked him, “What—am I Augustus Gloomp or something? Do you have some Willy Wonka fetish you’ve been waiting for my birthday to share?”
“I don’t have a Willy Wonka fetish,” Todd said. “And it’s Augustus Gloop. I thought it would be fun . . . Forget it.”
Todd’s mad.
I Google. It is Gloop—he’s right. Now I’m mad.
But I was already mad. I was decidedly underwhelmed by my gift, and was only going on the tour to find out if they were lying about the fat content. (I’d been gun-shy ever since the New York Post reported that Hot and Crusty had lied about the dietary perks of their “light” muffins; it turned out that they were only “light” in color and texture—not calories and fat, as was advertised—which had left me one of countless very angry, very overweight customers.)
It all seemed as if Todd had learned nothing from the birthday present debacle of just a few short years earlier—the one time when, if either of us had been willing to part with our Labrador retriever, Olive, we would have gotten a divorce.
Now, I’m the first one to admit that I’m impossible to please. I don’t like getting flowers because they make me sad—the moment they arrive, they begin to die, like people. Which might be why I don’t like babies. I can immediately flash forward to what they’ll look like brown and dried up, sitting in murky water. The flowers, not the babies. You may as well get me potpourri and skip the grieving process. But I don’t like potpourri either. Why get flowers if they’re dead?
I don’t like being thrown parties for the same reason—the minute a party starts, we’re closer to the end of it, like life. I get sad at the beginning of a party so the sadness of it ending isn’t a shock to my system.
Clothes are also out—Todd gives me anything that doesn’t have an “extra small petite” label, and we’re sleeping in separate bedrooms. He can’t get me a weekend away for the two of us, either, because that’s a gift for him, too, and shouldn’t count as a gift for me. Same goes for concert tickets.
So, it’s a tradition that every year about a month before my birthday, we’ll be getting ready for bed—by this point in our marriage it’s open season for clipping toenails (his) and trimming mustaches (mine) in front of each other, so there I’ll be, trying to wrangle one stray stubborn hair on my upper lip, wh
en Todd will come in and ask, “What do you want for your birthday?” and I’ll say, “Nothing.”
And he’ll say, “I want to get you something.”
And I’ll say, “It’s fine. Really. Don’t get me anything. I’ll buy myself something, and we can say it’s from you.”
Then when my birthday comes, and he gets me what I asked for—nothing—I get to be furious. I’m also exhilarated, because now I get to text my closest friends and my brother to announce how Todd didn’t get me anything for my birthday. For at least twenty-four hours (give or take—it all depends what’s on the news) people will feel sorry for me. Instead of for “Poor Todd.” For one brief day a year, it’s “Poor Liz.” It’s my moment in the sun, until the next year rolls around and we get to do our dance again—the passive-aggressive tango, I call it. Hey, at least I know how twisted I am.
Everything changed the year I was turning forty, however, when, to my mind, the only thing that could have possibly cushioned the blow of a geriatric milestone like the one looming ahead was a Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold. Not rose gold, not platinum . . .
I’d wanted one ever since my friend Samantha Bloum’s parents got her one for her thirteenth birthday. It was an adult piece of jewelry, but Samantha was big-boned so it wasn’t an issue. Her parents adored her, no question. But when it came to Samantha’s Bat Mitzvah, her folks went to town, throwing her a bash replete with everything from hip-hop dancers and a face painter to a candy bar with to-go bags. And this was 1989: you couldn’t even post about all the good stuff on Instagram. Her parents made speeches about her, and her mother cried in a good way, and I was awestruck—I’d never seen such a public display of love.
The Cartier Love Bracelet was just another bauble that night for Samantha, an extravagance tossed atop extravagances already piled so high that my friend ultimately became ruined by them all, growing up to be as miserable as the men who tried and failed to worship her as much as her ostentatious parents had.
But I was turning forty—an appropriate age for a tribute like a Love Bracelet. From my husband. The father of my children. Plus, I’d spared him the angst of buying me birthday presents from day one—surely, I was worth this one expense, at least on a cumulative level.
So, that year, when Todd came into our bathroom a month before my birthday and found me slathered in face creams and serums (“rescue”-ing, “revive”-ing, “hydrate”-ing and “lift”-ing), I had my answer ready.
Putting toothpaste on his electric toothbrush, Todd asked, “What do you want for your birthday?”
I didn’t hesitate, even though he’d switched his toothbrush on, clearly expecting my standard response.
“I want the Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold—not rose gold, not platinum!” I shouted, actually excited about something.
Working on his molars, Todd realized he’d missed something over the din of his toothbrush. “Wha—?” he asked.
I waited for him to rinse and spit. “I want the Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold,” I said slowly. “Not rose gold or platinum.”
I ran into the bedroom and returned with an ad I’d torn out of the New York Times months earlier in anticipation of this moment. I showed the bracelet to him, so he couldn’t get it wrong. Wiping his mouth, he looked at the image as I explained how I couldn’t technically buy the bracelet for myself to spare him the stress, because it was called the “love” bracelet and therefore—to my mind and in the Cartier tradition—it needed to be from someone who loved me.
(The Love Bracelet is a bangle that comes in two parts, and the person who buys it for you screws the parts together around your wrist with a little gold screwdriver that comes with it—making you theirs forever until you die, and they saw it off of you. Now you see how creepy Samantha Bloum’s Bat Mitzvah gift from her parents really was. Todd knows Samantha, actually. He’s been to most of her weddings with me.)
He asked, I answered. I even provided him a picture and explicit instructions.
What could possibly go wrong?
The night before the dreaded birthday, I was in bed spooning Olive when Todd walked in and said he had an important question.
“Me, too,” I said. “If it ever looks like Olive is getting really old and sick—will you kill me first?” I’d never survive life without her.
“. . . Okay,” Todd said, realizing I was serious. “So, my turn: what do you want for your birthday?”
I reminded him that I’d already said I wanted the Cartier Love Bracelet. In yellow gold. Not rose gold. Not platinum.
“What else would you want?” he asked.
“The bracelet,” I told him before Olive slobbered a kiss into my mouth.
“But if I didn’t get you that,” he said, “what else would you want? It’s a big birthday, I want you to open something great.”
“I want to open the Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold,” I said, very slowly. “Not rose gold. Not platinum.”
Todd nodded as he watched Olive kiss me again. “You know she cleans her ass with that mouth,” he reminded me for the thousandth time, failing once again to understand my principle comparing dog’s mouths to self-cleaning ovens—which was fine by me, so long as he grasped the fact that he had T-minus twenty-four hours to produce my bling or be euthanized.
It was around midnight on the eve, well actually morning of my birthday, that I got up to pee (for the third time; It’s true, I thought, elderly people really do have to go more). There on my sink were three birthday cards—one from Todd, one from Jesse and Phoebe (as toddler and baby at the time, respectively), and of course one from Olive. And right beside the cards . . . a large-ish, gift-wrapped, not-very-Cartier-shaped rectangular box.
I stared at my present, confused. It had to be a gag. Todd must’ve put the bracelet in a different box to throw me off. Hilarious. Todd’s a funny guy—it’s something most people don’t realize about my husband right away because I’m the comedy writer, plus I talk over him. But Todd can be very funny. Like he was being now. I wasn’t sure if I should unwrap the box, because if it was the bracelet (which I couldn’t imagine it not being), I knew I should wait until Todd was awake so I could thank him and he could screw it on my wrist so I’d be his forever or at least until I died before Olive and they had to saw it off of me.
I decided to wait. Even if I opened my gift without him, my delighted squeal was sure to wake him, and we were both so sleep deprived because of our demanding jobs and two kids under three who were sapping the life out of us that to wake him up could truly be considered an actual hate crime.
I shut the light and returned to my bed, vowing to wait ’til the morning to open my present, then I hopped out of bed and raced back into the bathroom. I had to pee again, anyway.
I ripped the paper off of the box, tossing it over my shoulder. Inside was (as you surely have guessed) not a bracelet, but a Kindle.
A Kindle.
Why would Todd get me a Kindle? It was a joke—he was being hilarious again. He had to be playing a sick and perverse joke on me. I went over to his side of the bed and poked his shoulder.
“Todd?” He stirred, rolled over. “Todd . . .”
“Huh?” He was groggy.
I held the Kindle over his head, trying hard to make it not look like a potential murder weapon. “This is a joke, right?”
“Wha—”
“This . . . present. You bought me a Kindle to be funny?”
“You like to read in bed, and this way your light won’t keep me up.” He rolled back over.
I turned the light on. All the lights on.
He rolled onto his back, opened his heavy-lidded, big brown eyes. Eyes I loved. Eyes that saw a Kindle and told his brain it was something the mother of his children would like for her fortieth birthday.
“I thought you were getting me a Cartier Love Bracelet,” I said. “In yellow gold. Not rose gold. Not platinum. Yellow gold.”
“It’s just a little something from the kids.” He yawned.
/>
“Oh!” This wasn’t my gift-gift. “That’s so cute . . . you’re so funny! Okay—Shhh,” I soothed. “Go to sleep, sorry to wake.”
He grumbled and rolled over as I reminded him that he had to get up with the kids in the morning since it was my birthday. At that point, seeing as I was up, I settled in my armchair with my current read, a giant book called How We Die that I’d been saving for a beach vacation.
• • •
BY THE EVENING of my birthday, with no bracelet in sight, I was starting to worry. But the morning had been hectic—now that we had two kids, neither of us ever had our hands free, so there was no real time for him to have presented it to me, screwed it on, and made me his forever. Then we both got home late from work; we had to hurry getting ready to make the reservation for my birthday dinner (I wore a shirt that bared my wrist). But when we left the house and he wasn’t carrying anything, my worry compounded. Maybe it was in the glove compartment . . .?
Once at the restaurant, Todd pulled up to the valet and hopped out.
“Did you leave anything in the glove compartment?” I asked helpfully, hopefully.
“No.” He shrugged.
I followed him inside, wondering where my present could be. That was when I realized that he was wearing a sport jacket, which he never does. I saw him cup his hand between the jacket and his wrist, so as to not let whatever was up there (the bracelet) fall out. He really wanted to surprise me, I thought. It was obvious.
We were seated at a table in a dim, romantically lit corner—the perfect setting for him to pull my Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold not rose gold not platinum out from his sleeve. I had never been the girl at the restaurant who got the romantic gift or the engagement ring served to her in a soufflé. I was always the girl two tables away, close enough to see the action but craning my neck to hear exactly what was being said so I could imagine it was being said to me.
But tonight, I would be the girl everyone in the restaurant pretended to be happy for but kind of hated. It was my turn at last.