Bundle of Joy?

by Ariella Papa

  “She might not be that far off.”

  Helen looked toward our mother. “I don’t want there to be a scene.”

  I scanned the room, taking in all the other older females. There is no way my mother would make a scene in front of these women. Her brand of anger usually had one direction: me.

  “Don’t worry. You’re not a teenager anymore.”

  “I know,” my sister said, meeting my eyes. “Neither are you.”

  She had a point. As I headed back over toward my mother, my aunt Effie stopped me and kissed my cheeks. She said, “your mother,” but that was it.

  My mother ignored me throughout the luncheon and the present opening. There were lots of pictures of the furniture that people had bought the couple. And underwear, a lot of underwear. Normally, it would have been embarrassing for me to see this stuff with my mother, but since she was ignoring me, I decided not to care. I laughed and whooped it up with everyone. It was freeing actually, to just not care.

  My mother wanted to leave as soon as I had taken my last bite of dessert. I got my coat and told her to hold on while I said goodbye to Helen.

  “Make sure you hurry,” she said coldly.

  “I hope it was okay,” I said to Helen, gesturing to the table of chattering professionals.

  “I learned a lot about modern advancements in mental health.”

  Again, I looked over toward my mother’s grimace. “Well, I wish I had been sitting here, Mom didn’t talk to me at all. So, are you still coming to the wedding? I think babba is actually flying over for it.”

  “Well, Andre will be with me, so it shouldn’t be as bad.”

  It was funny that she said that, because the idea of bringing Paul, an idea that had been crossing my mind a lot these days, seemed like it would only make things worse.

  I called a car to come pick my mother and me up and take us back to her place. She didn’t say anything the entire way. She sat folded up in the back of the sedan, implacable. I could have let it rest and gone home when we got out of the car, but I didn’t. I climbed out and called to my mother as she made her way toward her stoop.

  “Your daughter and her husband are coming to the wedding, like it or not.”

  She stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “That’s right, that guy you didn’t think was good enough has been her husband for years. They have two kids. You’ve been warned. And you better tell babba.”

  She turned to me. “You tell him. You’re so good at telling everyone everything.”

  I wasn’t sure why she was speaking English, but she was. I was surprised that she was fighting back. It was more like her to just ignore it and hope it went away. On the one hand I wanted her to fight back, on the other I feared what would happen.

  “I’m telling you so you’ll tell your husband and he won’t make a scene and I won’t have to call the police again. Or have you forgotten that he almost killed her.”

  “You called? You called?” She walked closer to me, not caring that her downstairs neighbor was putting his garbage out. “You didn’t call. I am the one.”

  With that my mother turned and walked up the stairs and into her apartment. And I began to see things differently once again.

  21

  The thing about March is that it sucks for clothes. I was wearing the black wool pants I had worn to the shower and had changed out of the cashmere twin set I had borrowed from Jamie (“you can have it, I’m never going to wear it again”) into a silk kimono top that was also hers (“that I want back”). The top was sexy, but I just felt bulky and pale. Why did my winter weight have to stick around for spring?

  I was going to see Warren Tucker. I hadn’t even told Paul about it, just that I was doing Jamie a favor by going to this party. It’s not like I thought we were going to run off together, but to me it was a big deal. I had spent so much time imagining meeting him again. In my fantasies he hadn’t changed a bit, he looked like he had on the jetty, not the tape. He would look at me like he did on the jetty, the night we finally hooked up, and he would say something like “It’s you, Voula, it’s always been you.” Okay, I know that Ross said that to Rachel, but whatever, I thought of this in 1995.

  So in a way I didn’t want to see him. I purposely avoided the channel that the show was premiering on because I didn’t want to see any promos for it, and I didn’t watch any talk shows the whole week before the premiere. I didn’t even want to catch a glimpse before the moment we met.

  I knew that Paul was the guy for me. Rationally, I knew it. But I thought that if Warren said that to me and looked at me a certain way—oh, who knew what I thought… It was stupid, knowing that he had liked Jamie, but I had held on so long. I still couldn’t stop thinking about Warren. The trouble was, Paul kept popping back into my fantasy whenever I tried to imagine that first meeting with Warren. The only way I could have gotten any further in the fantasy was to imagine Paul dead, and I definitely couldn’t do that.

  “Are you all right?” Raj asked, handing me a drink. We were at the W. It was swanky. The big terrace was full of people sipping drinks and grooving to the sounds of DJ Stinky. “I know it’s a bit of a scene.”

  “No, it’s awesome,” I said, taking a canapé. “Don’t feel like you have to stay with me, I know this is a work thing.”

  “Thanks, Voula. I should have told you to bring Paul.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  Raj kind of stared at me.

  “Really, he’s with his son tonight.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Listen, how does Jamie seem to you?”

  “I think she’s doing okay. I think it’s probably an adjustment. Why?”

  But Raj didn’t get to tell me why, because the head of the network was there commending Raj on all his hard work, and as soon as I got introduced, they were off to meet some other VIPs. I took a coconut shrimp as it went by.

  Then I saw Warren Tucker on the other side of the terrace with the backdrop of the city behind him.

  I swallowed. I think I’d stopped breathing. I forced the oxygen down into my lungs and walked over.

  As I got closer to him, he looked at me. His eyes were scanning the room and went right over me, but then quickly darted back to my face. In my fantasy about this moment, he never recognized me right away. I looked so good in my fantasy (of course!) that I was almost a different woman. In reality, he did recognize me.

  “Voula?” he asked.

  I was right in front of him.

  “Is that you?”

  “Hi, Warren.”

  The last time I had seen Warren he was a boy. His face was narrow and covered by scruff. I don’t think I ever saw him without a baseball cap and a T-shirt. Now, standing on the terrace, he wore an expensive suit, a receding hairline and rounder clean-shaven face.

  “I can’t believe you’re here. How great.” He kissed me on the cheek, like you might greet someone you knew on a city street, but I didn’t know him. Not anymore.

  I could tell as Warren started talking that he was different. He started telling me about his job like I should know the company he worked for. He was a man. His life had moved forward. Sure, it was about to completely change when he got recognized on the street, but Warren hadn’t fantasized about me the way I had about him. To him, I was just another hookup on a jetty.

  This was proven when he said: “Yeah, every now and then I wonder what you guys are up to.” By “you guys” he meant the girls who lived in the Jacobs house that summer. He really meant Jamie. I knew that if I let myself think about it I would feel hurt, so instead I asked Warren if he thought that he was going to win and be Mr. Right…Now.

  He laughed. “You wonder what these things are going to make you look like—you know they say it’s all about the editing.”

  “Well, you must have seen enough of these shows.”

  “Yeah. My buddies sort of dared me, and now, I’m not so sure.”

  “But I guess it’s worth it if you win. You get the girl and a m
illion dollars.”

  “Actually, we only get a half mil. I’m not sure about the girl. She’s pretty hard to read.”

  I assumed he was talking about Belinda, the contestant on the show. I still wasn’t sure what the point of this (or any) reality show was, but I didn’t want to ask.

  He looked around. “I think she probably picked Rod.”

  “Rod?” I nodded, and for some reason we both laughed. It was strange to be having a normal conversation with him, but as with most conversations with people you don’t know that well, there was soon a lull.

  “Well, listen, Warren. It was good to see you.”

  “Oh, you too, Voula. You look great.”

  “Thanks.”

  He bent to kiss my cheek again. “Say hi to Jamie.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but it stung. Was Jamie so hard to forget and our night together impossible to remember?

  I looked around for Raj, who was over talking to a bunch of men in suits. I wasn’t sure I wanted to disturb him. I walked away from where Warren was and looked out over the city. It was such a beautiful view, but I felt sunk. There was so much I still needed to learn about myself, about everything. I had pined for Warren even though he had wanted Jamie all along. I might have pined forever, even though I was with Paul, if I hadn’t seen him.

  “Don’t jump,” Raj said, coming up next to me.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry if this is boring for you. I told Jamie I would be okay by myself.”

  “But you wanted her to come, huh?”

  He nodded.

  I looked back over the city. “It’s breathtaking, it really is.”

  Raj turned and looked out at the view with me. “Yeah, but I would rather be there right now.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. He may have been a germa-phobe, but I shouldn’t judge. I was a many-things-phobe.

  “She’s gonna be fine.”

  “She is, right?”

  “Yes, she is.” I stared at his profile. I wasn’t sure I was going to be. “Now, do you mind if I get the hell out of here?”

  “Not at all.”

  When I got home, I checked my messages. There was one from Paul, who was calling me while Joe watched Finding Nemo for the eightieth time. It sounded loud at his apartment. I didn’t want to call him right back. I just wanted to have a moment to myself while no one was home.

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about meeting Warren Tucker. It was good, I guess, in a way. I hadn’t felt an overwhelming passion for him and that was right because I was feeling a lot of passion for Paul. But I had missed him for so long, wondered about him and compared people to him. In my world there were millions of irrational fears. Maybe the only time in my life where I had ever had irrational hope was when it came to Warren Tucker. I guess whenever things got me down, I comforted myself, knowing that there was someone out there who could make it all better. It was a ridiculous idea, but I had clung to it. I knew in my brain that we wouldn’t be together—I must have. But after seeing him, and knowing that there really was nothing between us, well, after all that time, I just felt let down.

  I went into my room and found the tape. I was going to be moving soon anyway—I might as well watch the rest of it and see what he said about Jamie and if I even came up at all. I popped it into the VCR in the living room. If my roommates discovered me, I planned on telling them I was doing research. I rewound the tape a little and pressed Play.

  “I used to work as a bartender in the summers when I was going to school. My senior year I did it on Block Island at this pub. There was this girl I had a crush on. She was a waitress at the pub.”

  Oh, boy, It couldn’t be that he was talking about that summer. Now, on top of everything, I was going to find out that he had had a crush on Jamie.

  “She had these eyes, these dark eyes, you know, they were almost black. She wasn’t even my type, but the way she used to look at me…”

  Oh panayia mou! I stood up. He was talking about me, not Jamie. All of a sudden I was scared. But fuck it. I had to hear the rest. I sat down again.

  “All summer I flirted with her. She just didn’t seem to like me.”

  Was he crazy?

  “I used to mess up drink orders so she would have to come back to the bar.”

  I guess I had always thought he was stoned.

  “But this one night, everyone decided to climb on these rocks on the beach. She didn’t want to. I think she was scared. So I stayed with her. There was a fire on the beach. She told me all about—”

  I paused the VCR. I felt tears coming to my eyes. For some reason, that night I had told him all about my sister. I didn’t want to hear what I had said. I didn’t want him to use it, use me, use Cristina so he could prove something to the judges.

  Then I had to see. I had delayed this enough. I pressed Pause again.

  “She told me about…all kinds of things. It was just a perfect night. It was like we were just talking. And then, I finally worked up the nerve and kissed her. We—we spent the night together, but it was that kiss and the breeze. That was it.”

  The judges didn’t say anything for a minute.

  “Thank you, Warren,” Raj said. “We’ll let you know.”

  Thank you, Warren Tucker. Thanks for not forgetting and not selling me out. If anything, this should have made me want Warren again, but it didn’t. I felt…happy. Somewhere in his head, he thought about me, too. It had been important to him, that night on the jetty. But that was in the past. I had Paul and Warren had the Golden Condom.

  I went to bed and slept soundly.

  On Sunday I was reading the Vows in the Sunday Styles section before heading over to Paul’s, when Maureen called. I hadn’t recognized her number, and when I heard babies crying in the background I knew she was calling me from her land line at home. It seems we were getting closer.

  “Hi, Voula. I’m sorry to call you on the weekend. I wanted to call you on Friday, but all three of the kids are sick, and even with Leona helping out it’s a challenge. I know you’re supposed to close on May first, but the co-op board is not going to meet with you until they get more information on your finances.”

  “What?” I had been hoping that the board would meet with me right before my closing, which I had been hoping would be the week of May third.

  “Yeah, they say you haven’t given them complete financials.”

  “Are they out of their minds?” I had rushed my accountant so I could get them my 2003 tax return along with my 2002 tax return. I had also given them two letters of personal and professional reference and they knew more about my credit (which was excellent!) than I did.

  “They’re confused about your job. Co-op boards have a tendency to be wary of freelancers. You’re depleting your savings to buy this place. I think they want to see that you are going to be employed for the rest of the year.”

  “Of course I’m going to be working this year. But I don’t know on what yet.”

  “Look, your sellers have already relocated to London. It’s not like they’re still in the building to push the meeting through. You have to play by the rules if you want this place.”

  I could walk away, I thought. I was feeling especially lazy spread out on the couch at that moment.

  “Well, how can I make them happy? Is it even possible?”

  “What I would do is get them all your stubs for the past year. They want to see consistency.”

  “I don’t have stubs. I invoice, but it’s not like every week. It’s kind of a mess depending on when I complete stories. It’s not going to look like your average job.”

  Maureen sighed. “Well, can you get an employer to write a letter saying that you will be working for them?”

  “I don’t think anyone is going to do that. I can’t ask unless I pitch something, and even then I don’t feel comfortable.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, Voula. They aren’t going to meet with you until you get this stuff together.
If they don’t meet with you, you can’t close. Maybe you could just try to get one letter saying you have some jobs lined up and explain it when you go in for your meeting.”

  I heard a loud wail behind her and Leona cursing.

  “Look I have to go. Give me a call tomorrow and I’ll walk you through this.”

  I hung up. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had two more pieces left on my real estate series. Incidentally they would be covering the co-op meeting and closing. The editor of Financial Woman had said we might want to think about doing one more. There was no way I was going to be able to coerce him into lying on paper about getting a job for the year. I didn’t even want to work for Financial Woman for a year. I was screwed! Who knew what was going to come up writing-wise? It just didn’t work that way. I did have a meeting with Eve Vitali, at On the Verge, coming up. I had finally tweaked my baby pitch enough to present it. If she went for it, I wasn’t sure that she would tell me right away. I couldn’t expect her to commit to a series and then commit on paper. Who the hell was this co-op board? And why did they have a right to judge me?

  “They’re the co-op board. They can do anything,” Maureen had said ominously when she first told me about all the personal information I would have to provide them with. Wasn’t there some kind of amendment to protect me from this kind of thing? I wrote down “the co-op board can do anything” in my notebook. It was a good title for my co-op board meeting piece. Hopefully, I would actually have a meeting to write about.

  I called Paul to find out what time he wanted me to come over.

  “Actually, I was thinking of coming into the city tonight.”

  “Why? Do you have to work?”

  “No, I thought I could have an actual date with my lady.”

  “You mean, instead of just doing it on the living room floor by the fire?”

  “Yeah, I thought maybe we’d go back to Esme’s Eatery. What do you think?”

  “Sounds fabulous,” I said. “I’ll try not to talk too much about how my co-op board is made up of a bunch of Orwellian assholes.”