The Solomon Sisters Wise Up

by Melissa Senate

  There was definitely something wrong with him.

  “Andrew, you’re the one who threw away our marriage.”

  I grabbed the suitcase back from him and headed downstairs.

  “Ally. Ally, c’mon. I can have the vasectomy reversed. Next year, when I’m ready to start a family—”

  “Just shut up already!” I screamed, and ran for the door.

  He stood at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips. “Ally, if you leave now, you’re telling me you’re not willing to work things out. You’re the one who’s bailing, not me. Despite our problems, I love you. My vows were for life. Maybe you just forgot the ‘for better and for worse’ part.”

  Ah, so it wasn’t that I was a fool or blind or even in denial. Andrew was simply that good at manipulation. Gold star. A-plus. Top of the class.

  I was a chump, was what I was.

  When Andrew and I got engaged, my father asked me if I was planning to take my husband’s last name or keep Solomon. When I told my dad that Andrew and I had agreed that I would hyphenate, Sarah said, “I wouldn’t if I were you. You’ll be Ally Solomon-Sharp—which means your new initials will be A.S.S.”

  I had definitely earned that monogram.

  6

  Zoe

  My flight to New York was leaving in a little over three hours, and my client’s date was late.

  C’mon. C’mon. C’mon. Show up already!

  I was sitting at the long mica bar of an out-of-the-way bar/restaurant, my notebook open, my pen tapping and my prop copy of Contracts Law in front of me. What I really needed was a prop volume called Places To Look For Your Mother in Manhattan When She Goes Crazy.

  I’d called my mother’s cell phone five times since she left her I’m On My Way To New York To Destroy Your Dad and His Child Bride message yesterday afternoon. Apparently, it was turned off or not working across the country. She’d left another message for me on my home machine, at a time when she knew I wouldn’t be home, letting me know that she’d landed just fine at LaGuardia early this morning, had a lovely vegetarian entrée on the plane and gave a gypsy cabdriver the what’s what when he tried to charge her seventy bucks for a thirty-dollar ride into Manhattan. She didn’t say where she was staying, how long she was staying or what she was planning to do in terms of ruining my father’s life. She only said she was fine, that the city sure was busy on Saturdays and I shouldn’t worry, and that she’d call in a few days to say toodles.

  I imagined my mother stalking Giselle and following her home from work one night, waiting for the right moment to throw her in front of oncoming traffic.

  No. My mother was crazy, but good crazy. She wasn’t psycho crazy.

  This morning, I’d called my dad to let him know that I was flying out tonight and would arrive very early Sunday morning on the red-eye—and why.

  “Honey, don’t worry about your mother,” my father said. “I’m not worried about her in the least.”

  I held my tongue, which was something I’d learned in my four years as the Dating Diva. My father had never been worried about my mother. He wasn’t a worrier by nature.

  “It’s not the L.A. way,” he always said. “It’s the New York way, which is why I wanted to move to the land of sunshine.”

  Perhaps now that he was a New Yorker again, he’d start worrying. Perhaps today or tomorrow or the next day, when he was taking a shower and found my mother parting the curtain with a pair of hedge clippers and aiming for the family jewels, he’d start worrying.

  Mom, where are you? She had no relatives in New York. And she’d lived there so briefly as a student (when she’d met my father) so long ago that she’d lost touch with anyone she might have known then. There were countless hotels in New York. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

  I glanced at my watch. It was seven-fifteen. My client’s date was set for seven, and I wanted to be on my way to the airport by eight.

  C’mon, Date Boy, show up already!

  My client, Tammy, was gnawing her lip and glancing at her watch at her table a few feet from my spot at the bar.

  Twenty-one-year-old Tammy thought she was boring her dates to death, which was hard to believe when you first saw her. A perky blonde with saucer-blue eyes, an ample chest accentuated by a tight V-neck cashmere sweater and long legs encased in knee-high black leather boots, she was a hot package. But unlike Amber, her problem wasn’t coming on too strong and making sexual innuendos.

  “The last guy I dated told me to stop talking so much,” Tammy had explained over coffee a few days ago. “Once, during a movie, I think it was the third Harry Potter. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it was the third Lord of the Rings. Did you read the books? Weren’t they great? Omigod, I loved them. I know to look at me, you’d think I only read Cosmopolitan, but I love to read. I swear I keep Amazon in business. My mother is uncomfortable making online purchases—she thinks there are little thieves in the computer, stealing her credit card numbers. I’ve already starting ordering Christmas presents online. It’s so convenient, and—”

  “Tammy,” I interrupted, “I think I’ll be able to help you.”

  “Whew! Fabu! Oh hey, that rhymes!” She cackled for a moment. “Did I mention I wrote poetry? Of course, the last asshole I dated told me I wasn’t exactly Wordsmith. Wait a minute—that’s not right. Wordsworth. Yes, Wordsworth. Do you like poetry, Zoe? The guy I’m meeting tonight was buying a book of poetry for his mom ‘just-because’ when I met him. Isn’t that sweet? It was a book on the Romantics. No, wait, the Victorians…”

  I loved poetry. Especially the Victorians. But the idea of discussing anything with Tammy seemed truly painful. Despite how attractive and sexy she was, I was beginning to wonder how she managed to get dates at all.

  My game plan for Tammy, which I’d explained to her in detail to keep her from talking, was to closely watch her date’s face and body language for clues that he was getting antsy. If his eyes started to glaze over and he began looking at his watch, I was to signal her, and we’d meet in the ladies’ room where I’d quickly explain why she was losing him and how to rectify the situation. I had a feeling all Tammy had to do to score a second date with anyone was to barely speak on the first date and let the guy do most of the talking. In my years as the Dating Diva, I’d noticed that men on dates with exceptionally sexy women like Tammy tended to want to talk themselves up and impress their way into a make-out session later. If she let the guy talk, she’d have him.

  Hey, my job was only to get her to date number two. Not marriage.

  The guy she was meeting tonight, who was now twenty minutes late, had made such an impression on her that she was willing to “put a muzzle on it,” which was what that ex-boyfriend had said to her during the third Lord of the Rings. (She had finally gotten back to that tangent.)

  Mr. Poetry was edging toward twenty-five minutes late. Tammy glanced at me and bit her lip; she looked like she was about to cry. First dates on a Saturday night had that extra zing of pressure and anticipation, and getting stood up on a weekend was a lot worse than getting stood up on a Tuesday, when you could go home and watch Will & Grace and comfort yourself with the fact that you had to get up early for work anyway.

  There was nothing I wanted more than to hop in a taxi and get to the airport, but I gave Tammy the “Give him a few more minutes” sign and she nodded and settled back down. As the clock ticked toward thirty minutes late, Tammy’s lower lip quivered and she stood up.

  Jerk! Why did he ask her out if he was just going to stand her up? Sometimes I didn’t understand men at all. Not that I claimed to understand them, but when it came to dating, I just wished that men (and women too, of course) would think first and ask out later. I closed my notebook and grabbed Contracts Law, then signaled the bartender to close my club soda tab.

  “Omigod! You’re finally here!” I heard Tammy say. “I was about to leave, but then I remembered a scene from this movie where the guy—”

  I was about to signal Tammy to meet me in t
he bathroom for an emergency shut-up now session, but when I glanced over to see her date, I was struck speechless.

  Her date, Mr. Poetry, Mr. Tall, Dark and Hot, Mr. Made Such An Impression on her, Mr. Thirty Minutes Late, was…Charlie.

  My Charlie.

  My boyfriend of over a year.

  He was dressed for a date. Black pants. Charcoal-gray button-down shirt. He looked very Banana Republic.

  “I’m sorry I was so late,” he said to Tammy. “I—”

  “Charlie?” I blurted out.

  He spotted me at the bar and paled. “What are you doing—” He glanced at Tammy, then bit his lip. “Oh, shit, did she hire—”

  “You two know each other?” Tammy asked. “Omigod, it is such a small world. Once, I was on a date, and who came in and sat down right next to us, but my high school English teacher, who I’d had a mad crush on. So I tell my date this piece of information, and he didn’t appreciate it one bit. Not with the guy sitting next to us. But everyone has crushes on their teachers. I mean…”

  “Tammy, this would be a good time to stop talking,” I said. “Do you see my expression? Your date’s expression? That should signal you to stop talking.”

  Clearly confused, she looked at me, then at Charlie. At least she shut up.

  “Zo—I—” Charlie began, and then he stopped talking too. He leaned his head back and let out a whoosh of a breath. “I can’t believe this.”

  He couldn’t believe this?

  Was I on Candid Camera? Was this some new kind of reality television show? Get the relationship guru?

  Charlie was a straight shooter. Pranks weren’t his style.

  “Hel-lo,” Tammy said. “Does one of you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on, Tammy,” I said, staring at Charlie. “My boyfriend here is cheating on me.”

  Tammy’s eyes widened, and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Omigod! You’re two-timing the Dating Diva? With me?”

  Now, that was one for the tabloids.

  “Zoe, can we please talk—in private?” Charlie asked.

  “Don’t you think you owe me a talk, too, Charlie?” Tammy asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “You asked me out. You’re supposed to be on a date with me. I think you owe me an explanation.”

  Suddenly Tammy was quite concise.

  “Look, Tammy, I’m really sorry. But I need to talk to Zoe right now.”

  “Asshole!” she snapped. “I hope she dumps your sorry two-timing ass.” She grabbed her purse and stormed off.

  Again, she was quite to the point.

  “Zoe, hear me out, okay?” Charlie said. “Please?”

  It made no sense. I knew Charlie. Or at least I thought I did. There were guys you knew were capable of lying to you, of cheating on you. Charlie wasn’t one of them.

  Yes, and that’s why he’s here, Zoe, meeting another woman for a date.

  “Zoe, I’ve been asking you to marry me for eight months. But you’ve been putting me off, and putting me off and two weeks ago—” He shook his head and sat down at the bar.

  I sat down next to him. “Charlie, if you want to marry me so badly, what are you doing on a date with another woman?”

  He took my hand and I grabbed it back. “I asked her out because she’s not the least bit my type. When I met her, she rambled on about astrology for ten minutes. I asked her out because she was safe.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Zoe, if you’re not going to commit, I’m going to date other women. Period. I used to think you were really commitment phobic, that I could work on you, but I’ve started to think that it’s not you—it’s me. Maybe I’m just not the one for you.”

  Was he? I love you, I love you not. I love you. I love you not.

  “Do you love me or not, Zoe?” he asked.

  I don’t know. I don’t know!

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  “Charlie, I don’t know what it is. I just know I’m not ready. I’m only twenty-six years old. Maybe that’s it.”

  “No, Zoe. Maybe it’s that I’m just not it for you. And you didn’t answer my question, either.”

  “It’s not you,” I told him. “It’s ambivalence.”

  “Well, I don’t want the woman I love to be ambivalent about me. I want her to want me as much as I want her. Look, Zoe, I’ve really had it. It’s either yes or no.”

  “Well, I can’t give you an answer right now. I have to be on a plane to New York in two hours. I have to get to the airport.”

  He shook his head. “Wait a minute. You’re going to New York? Tonight? And you didn’t even bother to tell me?”

  Shit.

  “Charlie, it all happened really fast, and I didn’t have time today to call you, and—” “You know what, Zoe? I’ve had it. You couldn’t see me last night because you were working. You couldn’t see me tonight because you were working. And now you’re flying off to New York for who knows how long, and you didn’t even think to mention it. Whatever. I’m sick of it. You know how many women come on to me a day? Between work and the gym and hanging out with my friends?”

  “Goodie for you, Charlie,” I said.

  “Yeah, goodie for me, because now that I’m a free agent, I can make up for lost time. A waste of time.”

  “You can start right now,” I countered. “There’s a bar full of single women right here.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here, Zoe. This conversation could have gone a lot differently, but you led us here.”

  “You’re the one on a date with another woman, Charlie.”

  But he was right and I knew it.

  “Whatever, Zoe.”

  And then he turned and walked out.

  In a city of eight million people, how was it possible that the first person I saw when I landed at LaGuardia Airport bright and early Sunday morning was Danny Marx, who’d asked me out at least a hundred times between junior high and high school?

  I’d never said yes.

  “Maybe that’s why my standards are high,” Danny said, grabbing my suitcase from the carousel the moment I reached for it. “No one I meet lives up to you. Not even my new girlfriend. And she’s spec-tac-ular.”

  “How’d you know I needed an ego boost?” I asked, trying to suppress a yawn. The red-eye from L.A. to New York was a killer itself without adding a few hours of crying to the mix.

  Six hours later I still wasn’t sure why I was crying: because Charlie and I had broken up, or because I was beginning to really wonder if something was wrong with me? I’d had a good guy. A great guy. Why would I just let him go?

  Because there’s something wrong with you, that’s why.

  “Geez, what do you have in here?” Danny mock-complained, hefting my suitcase as we walked toward the exit. “Dating Diva reference manuals?” He laughed. “And c’mon. Who are you kidding—Zoe Solomon needs an ego boost? Impossible.”

  That was pretty much the reason I’d never said yes to Danny Marx. He’d put me on a pedestal in the eighth grade and I didn’t want to get knocked off.

  Which meant I could never be myself around him.

  Which was the real reason I’d never said yes.

  “The Dating Diva in the flesh,” Danny said, wiggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx. “I read the article about you in L.A Magazine last year. I wanted to call you, but I also read about your boyfriend. You see how skinny I am—I figured he’d kick my ass if I asked you out.”

  He might have, until eight hours ago.

  Besides, Danny wasn’t all that skinny. He’d filled out. And he was tall. He was sort of cute, with his puppy-dog brown eyes and light brown mop of hair. But he’d always be Anthony Michael Hall in Sixteen Candles to me. Sweet and goofy and immature, yet just slightly wise enough to make him tolerable.

  “Well, Danny, you don’t have to worry about getting beat up. The
boyfriend and I are history.”

  I said it aloud to test out how it felt to say it, for it to be a true statement. It felt funny, sounded funny. A year was a long time for your life to suddenly change in an instant.

  “One minute you’re married and your life is great or even just fine and status quo,” my mother had said a few months ago, “and the next, your husband is running around with a woman who was in diapers when he had his first child. Some people say that’s just the way life is. But I say screw that! Life is what you make it. Not what it is!”

  My mother always made sense up until a certain point. And then you wouldn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Life wasn’t what it was? What?

  “Let me put it this way, Zoe,” she’d said. “Someone drops a bomb on your life, what are you going to do? Live in a ruin? Or are you going to fight back?”

  “What if there’s nothing to fight?” I’d asked. “What if you’re simply defeated?”

  “That’s what seeking vengeance is all about, dear.”

  And that was what my mother was up to this minute. I knew it. There was nothing and no one to fight, because my father couldn’t be less interested in having a casual or serious conversation with his ex-wife. That left my mother one option: retribution. What kind of retribution was beyond me, though. Phony phone calls in the middle of the night? Phony calls to Giselle claiming to be his gal on the side?

  Daniel dropped my suitcase and froze in mock shock. “Zoe Solomon is a free agent? Figures that I’m taken now. Because I know if I weren’t, you’d be panting to date me.”

  I laughed. Danny Marx had elicited my first smile in eight hours.

  “And it’s Daniel now,” he said. “I stopped being Danny when I turned the tassle on my high school cap.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said in my best Queen’s English. “Daniel it is.”

  “Daniel is an architect now,” he said. “What do you think of that? Class clown Danny Marx ended up doing pretty well, eh? My firm opened a New York City office a few months ago, and I volunteered to transfer and voilà.”