by Liz Astrof
Todd ordered wine. I normally didn’t drink, not after Dr. Oz told Oprah that the fastest way to get fat was alcohol. I was saving my calories for the frozen block of Cool Whip I’d gnaw at in bed later, my legs resting on Olive’s back, enjoying the latest murder installment of Dateline (remember, it was my birthday, not Todd’s). But I didn’t want Todd to drink alone, so I ordered a glass for myself. I even suggested we get a bottle. After all, we were both out of the house, away from the babies, and on a real date, just the two of us. We were actually not in sweatpants at seven o’clock at night, but in real grown-up clothes, in a restaurant without a kids’ menu or a changing table in the bathroom. I didn’t have to fish through my bag for crayons to keep Jesse occupied or pretend I didn’t see Phoebe eating straight ketchup because it was keeping her quiet. We wouldn’t have to flag down a busboy to drag out a yellow cone and bring us extra napkins after Jesse smelled something green and started projectile vomiting. And Todd would soon present the ultimate token of his love to the mother of those very cherubs.
Before the wine arrived, I got up to go to the ladies’ room. I had to pee, obviously, but I also wanted to put on fresh lipstick, so I looked pretty for my present selfies. When I came out, I saw Todd at our table across the room, his jacket off. Bracelet time. I fluffed my hair and looked down at my bare wrist for the last time.
I got back to the table to see two glasses of red wine and no signature red jewelry box.
“Did you order a soufflé?” I asked.
“I figured you’d have Cool Whip with Olive at home,” he said.
I scanned the table, then our surrounding tables—even the floor.
“Did you lose something?” Todd asked.
“Did you?” I checked out the waiters’ trays.
“No. Sit down.”
I sat and was about to ask our waiter if he could turn the lights up when Todd raised his glass. My heart stopped.
“To my wife—” he began. “Happy Birthday . . . I love you!” He started to drink, then stopped, noticing my face had gone dark. “What’s wrong?”
“I . . . I thought you had the bracelet up your sleeve.”
“What bracelet?”
“The Cartier Love Bracelet,” I pressed, like saying it might make it materialize. “In yellow gold, not rose gold, not platinum. I thought you were going to surprise me with it. I thought it was in your jacket sleeve—or is it? Maybe you hid it somewhere to tease me? Because you’re hilarious that way?”
“Why would I have a bracelet up my sleeve?” he asked, still holding his glass in the air.
“Why would you wear a sport coat if you’re not hiding a bracelet up your sleeve? You’re always hot!”
“Excuse me for wanting to look nice for your birthday,” he said defensively.
He wasn’t excused. I was red. Flushed. Livid. “What bracelet” . . .? How could he not remember? How was that not ALL he’d been thinking about? I’d been living a completely different night than he had—a completely different month than he had.
“Liz . . . I’m not getting you that bracelet,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It’s really expensive.”
“So? It’s not like I have any other expensive jewelry. I belong to the cheap gym. They don’t even have showers, Todd . . .”
I was standing my ground. Yes, of course Todd was right, it was expensive and extravagant—it was unlike anything he’d ever bought for me. I knew it was a big ask. I mean, it’s not like any old bracelet would have spoiled Samantha Bloum for love forever!
But when I added up all the money Todd hadn’t spent on birthdays past, he’d saved more than enough to pay for it.
And when I added the fact that we’d never gone to Europe, there was more money we hadn’t spent.
We also didn’t have a horse. Not that we should or would, but if we did, with all the stable rental, carrots, hay, transportation to wherever horses need to go, vet bills . . .
Basically, we were flush with money that we didn’t spend on things we never would have spent money on anyway, so I wasn’t about to let my husband defend his failure to produce my Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold not rose gold and not platinum on fiscal principles.
The waiter came over and started rattling off the specials. I heard “Branzino,” but nothing after that. He said he’d be back to take our order and left me to not murder Todd.
“You were supposed to screw it on my wrist, and I’d be yours forever until I died before Olive did, and they’d saw it off of me. I’d be publicly loved,” I said, not as quietly as I thought because now the people at the next table were staring (at me). I wasn’t “that girl.” I was . . . that other girl. The nagging wife who criticizes you in public.
“I’ll get it for you . . . someday. I’m just not ready to get it for you yet,” Todd said.
Wasn’t ready? Like I hadn’t earned it? I wasn’t good enough for it, yet?
“Can I please just make a toast?” He was raising his glass again.
I looked past him, my arms and legs now crossed as tightly as I could manage. I was completely closed off, my body language skywriting “You can’t hurt me.” But he had. Like my mother who left and my father whose love was conditional, Todd was withholding his “love” from me. As clichéd as it sounds, that’s what this felt like. It reopened an old wound I kept protected and hidden by never asking for anything. By always saying “Don’t get me anything,” I was able to always remain a step ahead of inevitable disappointment. Sure, I’d be crushed, but on my terms. By never asking Todd for anything, he never had to be forced to tell me I wasn’t worth anything.
Like he’d just done.
The rest of our precious time away from the kids that night was pretty much spent in silence, except for the clinking of silverware. I didn’t talk about the bracelet. I didn’t talk about anything. I didn’t talk at all. Which is nearly impossible for me.
The silence continued the whole drive home. I hadn’t uncrossed my arms and legs and wondered vaguely how I’d walked to the car that way. There’d be no taking pleasure that night in texting my friends about how Todd had let me down—I couldn’t even enjoy other people’s sympathy, not when I was this humiliated.
Pulling into the driveway, Todd said he felt bad, he was sorry he’d upset me.
I looked at him for the first time since the bracelet hadn’t been up his sleeve or in a chocolate soufflé at the restaurant. He was sorry? He felt bad?
He was making it sound like it was all over—“bygones be bygones” and all that shit. I’d been hoping he’d seen the error in his ways in not thinking I was worthy of a Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold, not rose gold, not platinum. But instead, he was sitting there actually waiting for me to take his apology and a Kindle as signs of his esteem.
Without realizing it, I’d built up expectations again—not for some half-assed strategic attempt at remorse but for a pledge of redemption from my bastard husband. I was barely going to be able to eat my frozen block of Cool Whip.
I couldn’t just ask again. I couldn’t possibly make myself that vulnerable again. I couldn’t set my twisted body and brain up to hear that he didn’t love me enough again.
But damnit, I still wanted that fucking bracelet.
So, as I opened my car door, I spoke the first words I’d said to him in eleven miles: “Well, don’t bother to buy me the bracelet now. It’s ruined. I don’t even want it anymore.”
• • •
AS THE WEEKS passed, we once again became engrossed in our kids and our jobs—and Todd went back to being an amazing, loving dad and husband. The bracelet incident slipped into the past.
As much as it could. Truth was, I was still hurt and resentful. Everything about him started to annoy me: the way he stood with one knee a little bent, the way he pronounced the word lunch as “lunsh,” the fact that he breathed so much. Even the shape of his head—so . . . round. My eyes would narrow, and I’d become angry at the sight and sound of him. Lik
e they say, it’s never about leaving the cap off of the toothpaste. And the way he did that bothered me, too.
The Cartier Love Bracelet had driven a yellow gold, not rose gold, not platinum wedge between us.
The next month was February, and Todd suggested we go out for dinner on Valentine’s Day to make up for my shitty birthday dinner. The last time we’d celebrated Valentine’s Day had been six months into our relationship. Back then, I’d ripped the ass of my favorite pants trying to pull them up—not even along the seam. Just a giant ass rip. I was so upset that I tore them to shreds, and when Todd had arrived at my place, I’d been in a towel, too upset to go out. Pieces of my pants littered the floor.
My secret had been revealed that night, and I remember expecting Todd to just leave upon discovering that I wasn’t in fact perfect, but that I came with many flaws, one of which had just gone up a size. Instead, he shrugged and suggested we rent a movie. We ordered Chinese food, and I ate it in front of him. I could be myself around this man, I learned that night. He accepted me. Even loved me.
For both our sakes, I really wanted to get past the bracelet thing.
But I also really still wanted the bracelet,
in
yellow
gold.
Not.
Rose.
Gold.
Not.
Platinum.
Goddamnit.
The Sunday before Valentine’s Day, Todd told me he needed to run to the Topanga Mall to pick something up. Todd hates malls and never “needs to run” to one, so I went online and saw that the Topanga Mall had a Cartier store.
YES.
“I’m getting it!” I cheered to my six-month-old daughter, who stared at me like she couldn’t give a fuck. I poked her belly playfully and told her she would get the bracelet when I was dead, that she might not have cared at the moment, but that someday she’d be standing over my dead body and telling the coroner that before they put me in the oven (Olive and I are being cremated together) the bangle needed to be sawed off of my wrist. She’d take it to her jeweler and have it melted down and turned into earrings she’d lose within a week. I could already tell Phoebe wasn’t going to be the type to be careful with jewelry.
On Valentine’s Day night, I left a bunch of new clothes all in separately wrapped boxes in that space between our sinks where presents went. I wanted Todd to have something to open, too. He loved them and decided to put them on for dinner. While I was in the shower, I saw him come into the bathroom and take a Cartier bag out from waaay back under his sink and take it into our bedroom. He looked toward the shower to make sure I hadn’t seen him, and I turned to face the faucet, smiling widely at the shower wall. Giddy, I barely got the soap out of my hair before I turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around myself, and got out.
“I hope you didn’t get me anything for Valentine’s Day!” I shouted playfully from behind the closed bathroom door. I winked at myself in the mirror, did a small victory dance, and had started to blow dry my hair when the door swung open and Todd came in, now dressed in the clothes I bought him and carrying the red Cartier bag.
I acted surprised. It was the right thing to do. “To-ooodd . . .” I singsong mock-chided. “I told you not to—”
“It’s not the bracelet,” he said, putting the bag on the counter.
My shoulders fell. “What is it, then?” I asked, looking at the bag, disgusted, like it had shit on it.
“I got you something else.”
“But I don’t want anything else.”
“Will you just look at it, please?” He took the big red box out of the bag.
I wouldn’t just look at it, so he opened the box. Inside was a thin silver necklace. I picked it up, and in the center there was a charm. It was a tiny replica of the Love Bracelet. In silver.
I held it up. “Why would you buy me this?” I asked, incredulous.
“Because I wanted you to have something nice to wear tonight,” Todd said.
“But I don’t want it.”
“Will you just wear it tonight?”
“No.” I put it back in the box. “Just . . . no.”
“Fine.” He left the bathroom, pissed.
I looked down at the silver necklace that had yanked me back down to earth, at the tiny charm that said, “You can have a little love. A replica of love—like 10 percent, but not the whole thing. Not yet. You haven’t earned it. Wear it in good health. Enjoy.”
I stormed out of the bathroom and threw the box on the bed.
“Return this,” I spat. “And get your fucking money back. And do not get me the bracelet.”
Another silent grown-up-restaurant dinner ensued. The couple next to us got engaged. I hoped they got E. coli. That was who I had become. That was what Todd had reduced me to.
The following day, I saw a receipt on Todd’s dresser for the necklace.
“You returned it?” I asked him, picking it up.
“Yeah. Got my money back, too,” he said and chuckled. “Can’t go back to that store again—I had to argue with the guy to get a refund. They’ve never done that before.”
A refund. He fought for a refund?
“Didn’t you get me the bracelet?!” I almost screamed.
“You told me not to!”
“I want that bracelet!” I was actually screaming now. “How do you not know that when I said I didn’t want it that I wanted it?!”
“You told me to get my money back!” He was screaming too, now.
Oh, no. There was no way he was going to get mad at me.
“Do not turn this on me, Todd . . .” I started.
“So, then what?” Todd said, flinging up his arms. “Are you saying you want me to turn this on you, is that what you’re saying? Because I should be doing the opposite of what you say?”
At that point, the Cartier Love Bracelet in yellow gold, not platinum, not rose gold, had finally lost its beauty. Even if I did get it, it would now be a symbol not of love, but of something I’d horsewhipped Todd into giving me. Which is not the way anyone wants to be loved.
I had to let it go.
So, I let it go. Insofar as I’m capable of letting things like that go.
• • •
DAYS LATER, I was in my car when I placed a call to my husband. “I’m on my way to Cartier,” I said on speaker, which probably made my voice sound even tighter, more sleep-deprived and hysteria-tinged than it was.
“Liz, don’t get it!” he shouted (he was in his car, too). “I’ll get it for you!”
“When you’re ready?” I asked. “Forget it.”
“Liz, it’s—”
“I know it’s expensive,” I cut him off. “It shouldn’t matter. Clearly, I’m not a good enough mother or a good enough wife. But if you’re waiting for me to get better, for me to ‘earn it,’ or something, it’s probably not going to happen, so forget it! Because I’m an unthinkable age now, and it ain’t getting better than this!”
Head rushing at the uncorking of my pent-up rage, I rolled my car into a crosswalk, barely missing several pedestrians. I think they would have understood if they’d known the situation. Lying there in the street, “But . . . you . . . told him what you wanted . . . ” one would try to say. “He doesn’t deserve . . . you,” another would eke out.
There was now silence on the other end of the phone. I assumed I’d lost him and went to cut the call.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
It was the question I’d been asking for nearly two months. Yet hearing him say the words knocked me clean off what had only moments earlier been my high horse.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Todd,” I said softly. “Nothing. There’s something clearly wrong with me. Don’t worry. I’m not going to buy the bracelet. Don’t worry.”
“Liz—”
“And I don’t want it now, I mean it,” I assured him, and I pretty much almost completely believed it myself. My disappointment, all thi
s strife, was my fault for asking for something so outrageous.
I hung up and drove home. And by nighttime, as I was very involved in peeling a Bioré strip off my nose, my mind was empty of all things Love Bracelet when Todd came into the bathroom. I felt him standing there, hovering. I didn’t speak to him, partly because I had only a three-minute window to slowly but firmly peel the strip off my nose or half my nose skin would come away with it.
Three-quarters of the way through my task, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he was holding a red Cartier box. For the first time, I genuinely had not been expecting it.
“It’s not the bracelet,” he said and smiled as he opened the box.
But it was the Cartier Love Bracelet. In yellow gold. Not rose gold. Not platinum. Wordlessly, he placed it on my wrist and screwed it together. I was his forever, until I died before Olive and they sawed it off me.
I looked at the bracelet. I looked at Todd. Then I looked in the mirror—at us, my husband beaming, my Bioré strip dangling. I caught the reflection of the Love Bracelet, glinting radiance off my arm . . .
And realized:
“I think I like the rose gold better.”
I’ve Got This
* * *
One Saturday night, I decided Todd and I would take our kids to the outdoor mall in Los Angeles that they love. Jesse was seven and Phoebe was five, which seemed like fine ages to keep them out past nine. But not much past nine, because since birth pretty much around nine-fifteen, Phoebe starts to turn sort of . . . mean. Like a bad drunk after two drinks, she becomes abusive, starts making false accusations, and it gets ugly.
But that still left us plenty of time to have dinner at Wood Ranch BBQ & Grill, then stroll around the mall, enjoying the giant water display in the fountain set to music, and riding the trolley. I might even get to run into Nordstrom’s shoe department, quickly, by myself, to see if they had the platform Oxfords I wanted.
How fun. How idyllic. How unlike my own childhood.
A few hours before we left, however, Todd came down with a stomach virus. Either that, or he ate sushi he’d left in his car all day, so he could get out of the trip. Though that seemed more like a “Liz thing” than a “Todd thing.”