Swell. I don’t say that out loud, of course. Instead, I say, very calmly, “I thought you said she stopped being your fiancée a few months ago.”
“Well, that’s the tricky part,” Jordan says, pensive. He kisses me lightly on the shoulder, and continues. “I guess it was about two months ago, yeah.”
“You guess?” I ask.
“Yeah…See, she hasn’t given the ring back yet, and I’ve had to see her a couple of times to get the ring back, and I still haven’t.”
“Did you break up with her?” I ask. “Or did she break up with you?”
“I broke up with her,” Jordan says.
“Then she doesn’t have to give back the ring,” I say, hoping he will understand that what I really mean is, And you don’t have to see her ever again. She is an ex—she is exiled into the photo album part of your life.
“Like I said, it’s complicated,” Jordan says.
Then he sighs. And he looks like he’s going to cry, and I hate myself, but I still like this guy.
I blow out a big sigh, and ask, “All right, I’ll bite. Why is it so complicated?”
“It was my grandmother’s engagement ring. My mother’s mother. And my mom didn’t like Janet, my ex, to begin with, so she really wants her mother’s ring back.”
“And Janet doesn’t wants to give it back?” I ask, knowing the answer.
“No. She thinks we’re just having some problems because we’re in a long-distance relationship. She wanted to go into counseling.”
“Where the first thing you would do was tell the counselor that you wanted to break up and wanted your ring back?” I say, possibly a bit harshly.
Jordan smiles. “Actually, kind of. Janet thought even if I went in saying I didn’t think the relationship was working out that we might have a chance at a reconciliation. Her thinking was that if I could get some of my reservations about the relationship out in a safe environment, we could talk about them, and hopefully fix whatever problems I was having. Or we were having. Whatever…”
His voice trails off. I don’t say anything for a while. I just stare at the wall. I’m so mad right now that I can’t even look at him.
I finger-brush my hair, more out of nerves than anything else, and bite my lip. Still not taking my eyes off the wall, I ask, “So, is that why you’ve been seeing her—to go into counseling?”
“No,” he says softly. “Look, do you want to go get some breakfast?”
“Why?” I say, hoping to God I don’t start crying in front of him. “So I won’t cause a scene when you tell me the truth?”
Jordan takes my shoulder and turns me around to face him. He looks me right in the eye. “Charlie, I like you. I didn’t go into therapy with her because I liked you.”
I meet his eyes, but I can’t think of a thing to say. Feeling a headache coming on, I look down at the carpet. God, please let me not cry. Just once can things go my way enough that I get to keep my dignity with a man I’ve slept with?
“Remember when I was gone that weekend after we talked?” Jordan continues in nearly a whisper. “Janet came down for the weekend, and I broke it off completely. I told her there wasn’t anything wrong with the relationship, that she was a great girl, and that I would always love her in my own way, but that she wasn’t the girl I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.”
Emotionally, it’s better to be homicidal than suicidal. When you’re upset with a guy, at least know which way to point the gun.
As I continue to stare at him, I start to get angry. Which is good in this case. “Did you sleep with her that weekend?” I ask. I stare right at him, knowing that I will get my answer without a single word.
He turns away from me, and I don’t need the verbal answer. “Great,” I nearly spit out, shaking my head, and putting on my shoes.
“Look, in my defense, you and I weren’t dating yet…,” Jordan begins, but I interrupt, because a worse thought has occurred to me.
“Last weekend, after we made out at the wrap party…Did you see her then? Is that why you disappeared?”
“You mean the weekend I heard a guy giving you a booty call while we were making out?”
“Oh, so it’s my fault now?!” I yell, grabbing my purse from his side table, and standing up to get the hell out of there. “Some guy I’m not seeing anymore calls me, so that gives you the right to jump into bed with your ex-girlfriend?”
“Ex-fiancée,” Jordan corrects me. “Look, I told you, all I was trying to do was get the ring back. She hadn’t brought it down the weekend of the final breakup, so I had to—”
“Did you sleep with her last weekend, too?!” I scream, already knowing the answer. I mean, let’s face it, a woman desperate to win a guy (or, worse, win a guy back) pulls out all the sexual stops. And few men choose to say no.
Jordan opens his mouth to speak, but I put up my hand stop him. I have that moment of clarity, and I become inhumanly calm. “You know what? There’s no point in answering, because all you’re going to do is give me excuses about why it happened, and I don’t need those. I’ve been through this before. I don’t date men who lie to me.”
Now Jordan looks like he’s going to cry again. He almost whispers, “Charlie, please don’t do this. I like you. I made a mistake.”
I look at the ripped-open condom wrapper on the floor. “You know what? Me too.”
And with that, I just walk out of his room, and out of his life.
And he lets me. There’s no drama as I walk out the door, no one follows me down the hallway. When I get to my room, there’s no one calling me to ask me to come back.
Which tells me I was right to leave.
Men aren’t stupid, and you don’t need a complicated set of rules to find a good one who loves you. Here’s the only rule you need: if a man loves you, he will do anything he can to keep you around. Anything.
To be honest, it was pretty hard to leave. I desperately wanted to turn around, and tell him everything would be okay. That I adore him and I trust him and that I’ll stand by him while he goes through this tough time.
But I’m just too tired. I’m thirty years old. I’m tired of relationships that are always painful. I’m tired of hurting. I’m tired of waiting by the phone, and second-guessing what a guy says and trusting someone not to hurt me. Again. I’ve been storming the relationship castle for fifteen years, and I still don’t have my prince. I’ve got a bunch of battle scars from the field and I want to go home and nurse my wounds. I don’t want to fight anymore.
I throw myself on my bed and stare at the ceiling.
I know I will hate myself, but I pick up the phone and dial.
“Hi, this is Jordan,” I hear as his home answering machine picks up. “I’m in Las Vegas this weekend, so please call me on my cell at 323-555-9457. Or leave a message, and I’ll get back to you soon.” Beep.
“Hey, it’s me…listen, I’m still really upset but…if you ever get your ring back, let me know.”
Thirty
Breaking up is hard to do. Do it anyway.
Sunday morning, after our fight, Jordan took an early flight home. I was relieved to see him go.
But by Sunday night, I missed him, and had replayed the morning scene in my head a hundred times.
And, by Monday night, I had almost called him.
Tuesday night, I consoled myself with videos and an entire Sara Lee cheesecake, followed by a pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge brownie ice cream.
Wednesday night, I almost called him, and had to stick one of those damn Post-it notes on the phone to tell me not to. Then I called him from a payphone (so as not to trigger his caller ID) and got his machine. I hung up.
On Thursday, I decided to get a little advice from the enemy camp. So instead of calling Jordan, I called Jamie.
“You’re a pig,” I say calmly on the phone to my brother after I’ve explained the whole Jordan story.
“Maybe so,” Jamie concedes. “But if a guy says he’s in the middle of a
breakup with his girlfriend, fiancée no less, what he really means is he’s dating someone else, but wouldn’t mind a little nookie on the side. Provided, of course, you don’t blab to your friends about what an asshole he is.”
“Why do you assume every guy in the world wants sex without responsibility?” I ask him as I scrounge through my cupboard, searching for depression snacks.
“Why does the sun rise every morning?” Jamie asks. “By the way, what does it mean when a girl says, ‘I’m really swamped with work lately, and I don’t think I can start anything serious right now.’”
“Kate say that?” I ask.
“Yeah. When I called her Monday night. What’s it mean?”
“Depends,” I say. “Did you see her Monday night?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, it probably means, ‘I like you, I may even love you. But I’m not in love with you, and if you’re waiting for that, it’s never going to happen.”
Jamie’s silent on the other end. “That’s pretty much what I figured,” he says. “Hey, but at least I’ve got a date for the wedding, right?”
“Right,” I say, trying to sound encouraging.
I can’t tell from his voice if he’s sad and covering it up, or if he’s just being his usual “Jamie Edwards: lousy boyfriend, perfect fling” self. “You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, then changes the subject. “So, you’re depressed. I’m guessing you could use some company and some ice cream.”
I smile. “Indeed I could.”
“Are you ‘I’m slightly depressed, but I’ve been binging all week, so bring frozen yogurt’ ‘I’ve just started my binge, so bring a pint of Häagen-Dazs’ or ‘It doesn’t matter how fat I am anyway—I’m just going to become your kids’ bitter, fat, chain-smoking aunt, so if you bring less than a quart I’ll send you back out to the store?’”
I put my hand up to my heart and sigh happily. “You know me so well. I’ll take door number three. And bring Oreos.”
It’s Friday now, and I still haven’t heard from Jordan. But now I’m not sure if I care. I’m not sure if he’s still dating Janet. I’m not sure of anything anymore.
I am sure that I didn’t want to hear from my mother this morning, or pick up her parents and her mother’s mother from the airport today.
It all started this morning at six A.M.
Drew had kept his word, and had given me the week off to help with the wedding. I had avoided my family most of the week, so that I could wallow in self-pity.
Really, I was doing them a favor. What is more cliché than a bitter maid of honor? (Oh, right—one that just turned thirty.)
Anyway, the phone range at six (or 5:57, to be exact), and I saw from the caller ID that it was Mom. I tried to ignore the call, but unfortunately, my answering machine is right by my bed.
“It’s time for you to pay back those nineteen hours of labor I went through for you,” Mom begins.
I light a cigarette, pick up the phone, and say in my “Elmer Fudd, I just woke up” voice, “Would now be a good time to point out that you got drugs the entire time?”
Don’t worry about labor pains. There’s this wonderful invention called the epidural. Get one in the parking lot on your way into the hospital.
It’s always been a pet peeve of mine when women talk about how long they were in labor. When my cousin Jenn was in labor, she had so many drugs pumped inside of her, the only way she knew she was having a contraction was to see it on the computer screen.
But I digress.
“Your sister says you’re depressed, and that some guy dumped you. She also told me that you finally quit smoking,” Mom says.
I take another drag from my cigarette. “I’m not depressed.”
“At any point this week, have you eaten whipped cream straight from the can?” Mom asks.
“I won’t dignify that with a response,” I say, although we both know that means yes.
“Are you still smoking?” Mom asks.
“Are you still smoking?” I respond belligerently.
“I’m raising you. You’re not raising me,” Mom says. “Speaking of, Grandma and Grandpa are on the noon flight with your Mawv. I need you to come with me to get them.”
My grandparents are good Midwestern folk who never understood why their daughter moved to Sodom and Gomorrah to follow her dream and write sitcoms. My Mawv is my great-grandmother (grandma’s mom), and my favorite person in the world. She’s ninety-five, smokes two packs of cigarettes a day, and drinks really bad whiskey. Her lifelong dream was to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and drink really bad whiskey. So she respects anyone who follows their dream.
She’s the ginchiest.
Anyway, so I trek off to LAX and meet my mother in baggage claim. (You can’t go up to the gates anymore for security reasons. Which I think is a good thing—think of it as five fewer minutes with your family.)
I spot Mom, pacing, holding a venti Starbucks coffee in each hand, and chewing vast quantities of gum.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Mom says, handing me one of the two large cups. “I don’t think I could have handled my mother on my own.”
“It’s not going to be that bad,” I say, taking a sip of the coffee Mom bought me.
Mom nearly chokes on her cappuccino. “Oh, that’s easy for you to say! She’s not your mother.” Mom pulls out a fresh pack of orange-flavored nicotine gum. Her hands shake as she tries to open the plastic wrapping. “She’s judgmental, she talks too much, she gives a ton of unsolicited advice, and she embarrasses me every chance she gets.”
Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle “Mom.”
My mother starts ripping at the plastic packaging madly. “Goddamn it! What’s wrong with these people making it so fucking hard to open their product, knowing damn well how much you need it.” Mom puts her teeth up to the box and tries to rip it open that way.
“Mom,” I say, then calmly take the package of gum out of her mouth. I open it easily, and hand it back to her. “How much nicotine have you had this morning?”
“I don’t know. A box, two…I can’t keep track. These people just make me a nervous wreck.”
“Ya think?” I say sarcastically.
Mom looks around the airport, her eyes darting around like a hummingbird’s. “Maybe I should take a Valium. I’ll have your father bring some by the hotel later. By the way, I haven’t told your grandparents that your father and I are living together again, so don’t mention it.”
“Okay,” I say. But then I think about it. “And that would bother them because…?”
Mom rolls her eyes and shakes her head, visibly astonished that I could ask such a stupid question. “Because they don’t want me living in sin with a man.”
“You mean the man you’re still married to in the eyes of our Lord?” I say sarcastically. “In the eyes of our Lord” is big with my grandmother.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady,” my mother says, wagging a finger in my face. “You aren’t so old that I can’t still take you over my knee.”
“The only time you ever took me over your knee was to read to me.”
“And do I get any appreciation for that?” Mom asks in a screech, nearly bursting into tears. “No! All the unconditional love and kindness I gave you all through your childhood, and all I ask is that you not tell your grandparents that I’m shacking up with your father! Is that too much to ask, after all I’ve done for you?”
People are starting to turn and stare at the crazy woman.
“Mom?” I say calmly.
“Yes?” Mom sniffles back.
“She’s making you crazy, and you haven’t even seen her yet.”
“I know,” Mom says, inhaling a deep breath and chanting her mantra, “nee-who-mah, nee-who-mah” several times. Her shoulders relax ever so slightly with the final deep breath. “You are so lucky you don’t have parents who make you crazy.”
Before I can ask my mother what deluded uni
verse she lives in, we see my grandparents and Mawv coming down the escalator.
Grandma and Grandpa look like a couple of Protestants on vacation. They’re dressed head-to-toe in L.L. Bean, including the shoes. If they were visiting New York, they’d have been mugged already.
My Mawv, on the other hand, is dressed in a beautiful pink dress that I swear I saw this spring at Bloomingdale’s, and three-inch-high heels.
A ninety-five-year-old woman in three-inch-heels. If that sight doesn’t cover the cost of admission, I don’t know what does.
Grandma holds Mawv’s hand, treating her like an invalid who could break at any moment. “Are you all right, Mother?!” Grandma screams into Mawv’s left ear.
“Rose,” Mawv responds in her normal voice, “I bought a hearing aid so that people wouldn’t shout at me.”
“Bernice!” Grandpa screams into her right ear, “Your hearing aid isn’t working! You couldn’t hear a word I said on the plane!”
“No, I was ignoring you!” Mawv (aka Bernice) mockingly screams back into Grandpa’s ear. Then she returns to her normal voice. “I bought this damn thing because it said on the box that it filters out unwanted noise. But I can still hear every damn thing you say.” She sees me and her face lights up. “Munchkin!”
“Hi, Mawv,” I say brightly as I pull her into a hug. Then I whisper in her ear, “Was it awful?”
“Dreadful,” she whispers back. “I have got to be the only one I know in my retirement home who hides when family comes to get her.”
“Hi, Mom,” my mother says sheepishly to Grandma, putting her arms out for a hug.
Grandma eyes her up and down. “You’re wearing that?”
Mom throws her outstretched arms in the air in exasperation, then plasters a fake smile onto her face. “Nice to see you, too. You’re looking good.”
“Well, I’ve been doing my power walking four times a week,” Grandma says, walking past Mom to hug me. “I’ve lost five pounds since January. And your father and I don’t eat bacon anymore.”
A Total Waste of Makeup Page 27