Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend (20 page)

“At Envy?”

“Yeah. And he had this adorable little brunette on his arm.” She swung around to face the traffic and began to walk backward, her eyes scanning the empty avenue. “Where the fuck are all the cabs?”

I was in shock. Not just because Michael had shown up at a club—Jade always said he hated them—but because Jade was clearly shaken by the sight of him. After two years.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I'll be fine. Don't worry about me. I'm immune to that asshole.”

“Jade—”

“He looked pretty cozy with that brunette. Maybe she managed to figure out what it takes to make that prick hard.”

“Jade, if you couldn't do that, I seriously doubt—”

“I don't care. What do I care? I've got someone who knows how to treat a woman in bed. I really don't—”

“Hey, Jade, why don't we go to the diner,” I said, cutting her off. “Get some breakfast like we used to do when we went club
bing.” My plan was to get her seated and calm somewhere so she could talk this through.

But Jade was on to me. “No way,” she said, as a cab finally pulled over to the curb. “I know what you're trying to do, Em, and you can just forget it.” As she held the door of the cab open and gestured for me to get in, she continued, “I've done enough crying over asshole men in my lifetime, thank you. I'm going home to bed.”

And as we rolled down the dark and empty streets, I didn't push her. Apparently she had been managing her angst over Michael just fine up till now. Who was I to force her to open those wounds again, when I couldn't even find a way to close up my own? But it bothered me that even after two years, her breakup with Michael still caused her pain.

I began to worry that maybe there were some men you just never got over.

Confession: I discover dysfunction is only a phone call away.

 

T
he next morning I woke up to the sound of a ringing phone, which reverberated maddeningly in my alcohol-soaked brain. I picked it up, if only to stop the sound.

“You're still sleeping? It's ten-thirty already. Whatsamatter?”

It was my father, full of the usual moral indignation he suffered whenever he was forced to recognize that neither of his children had inherited his solid discipline of early to bed, early to rise. My father was a firm believer in the early bird catching the worm. Even during his darkest drinking days, he always managed to pull himself out of bed, as if getting up before dawn might somehow save him from whatever damage his night-before debauchery had done.

“It's Sunday,” I said, knowing my protests were falling on deaf ears. I settled the phone comfortably against my ear, nestled farther into my pillow and prepared for the long haul. My father didn't call me on Sunday mornings without a very good reason.

“I've been up since five-thirty,” he said. “Not that it did me any good.”

“What happened?” I asked, bracing myself for whatever disaster he had heaped on himself.

“I had a little accident while I was replacing some roof tiles on the house.”

“Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, fine. Nothing that a couple of months in a sling won't cure.”

“What?”

“Well, I broke my right shoulder,” he finally admitted, sounding almost embarrassed.

“What?”
I repeated, alarmed.

“And my right arm. But it's no big deal,” he said, brushing off the concern he must have heard in my voice.

“What happened?” I asked again, waiting for an opportunity to give him my biannual speech about how he had reached a time in his life when home repairs, especially ones that required him to scale the house, might best be left to professionals. Somehow my father could not bring himself to pay for the kind of repairs he still felt young and able enough to do himself, despite all the mishaps he brought on himself.

“I was up on the roof, working, you know,” he began. “Everything was going fine. I even had on that harness Shaun bought for when he used to go rock climbing. I found it lying around in the garage and figured it might keep me from falling off of the goddamn roof. And then what do you know? One minute I'm working, the next I'm on the ground.”

“Did the harness break?”

“God only knows. It was all in one piece, according to Deirdre. But there must be something wrong with the clasp. In fact, I called Bernie—” my father was on a first-name basis with his lawyer these days “—to talk to him about it, and the bastard would barely listen to what I had to say. All he kept telling me was that I didn't have a case!”

I was immediately suspicious. “Were you drinking while you were working?”

“No, no,” he muttered, though the quickness of his denial made me even more suspicious. “Can you believe that bastard won't take my case, after all the business I've given him?”

“Hmm…” I replied, suspecting I was about to be brought into
my father's latest plight. When I heard his next words, I knew I was right.

“Anyway, I was wondering how that friend of yours, Alyssa, is doing. She still wasting time trying to save rain forests with that law degree of hers?”

“Alyssa can't take on your case, Dad, and I don't—”

“What about that lawyer she's dating? Where does he practice?”

“Dad, Richard practices corporate law. He's not an…an…ambulance chaser!”

“Ambulance chaser? What kind of thing is that to say? Your old dad wants someone good. Respectable. Not some ambulance chaser. I mean, I'm hurt here. I got pain shooting up my arm.”

A stab of sympathy went through me. “Are they giving you anything?” Then I realized what I was asking. Would they give painkillers to a man who had struggled with substance abuse most of his life? To me, it seemed like giving a loaded gun to a suicidal maniac.

“Of course they're giving me
something,
” he replied. “But it's not enough. This arm is killing me. And to top it off, I've got to look for a new lawyer now. Because I can't let these bastards get away with this. You use a product, you expect it's not gonna fail on you. What kind of world are we living in, here? Those bastards are gonna pay through the nose this time. I'm not kidding….”

After listening to his diatribe on the injustices of the world, I finally managed to calm him down by promising to ask Alyssa and Richard if they knew any good lawyers for his type of case. Satisfied, he made the usual inquiries about my life—had I made my first million and/or found a decent husband yet? Feeling a sudden urge to shake him out of his delusional state, I blurted, “Derrick and I broke up.”

“Is that right?” Dad replied, a mixture of surprise and sympathy in his tone. “Did the bum finally figure out he wasn't good enough for you?”

No, I thought dejectedly. He became
too
good for me. “He moved to L.A. Got a job as a script doctor for a studio out there.”

“Huh,” he replied, and I could tell he was surprised Derrick had managed to do so well for himself. Then, “I'm sorry, sweetheart.”

“Yeah, well,” I replied, not knowing what else to say.

“You know, you could sue,” he said finally.

“What?”

“I'm not kidding,” he said, warming to his subject. “I was reading just the other day how this woman sued her fiancé for emotional distress when he broke it off right before the wedding.”

“We weren't engaged, Dad.”

“That's true,” he said, and I could hear the wheels turning. “Did he ever give you any gifts? Love letters that might be construed as promises of commitment?”

“Forget it, Dad,” I said, not wanting to 'fess up to the fact that I had allowed myself to fall in love with a man who said from day one that he wasn't going to commit.

“Well, if you ask me, Emma, I think it's for the best,” my dad said soothingly. “Who knows, maybe you'll meet a nice lawyer. Then we could kill two birds with one stone!” And he laughed in some misguided attempt to cheer me up, but all I could think of was Henry Burke's shiny bald head and how utterly unable I was to love such a man, despite my father's wishes. I mustered up some halfhearted reply, then moved on to safer ground, like my job and how I was angling for a promotion. By the time I hung up, I had managed to convince my father that my life was a lot cheerier than it seemed. But as I stared at the receiver, I felt emptier than I had ever felt.

When I thought about it, I realized a lot of my dismay had to do with being almost certain that my father was drinking again. And there was nothing I could do about it. I understood perfectly why Bernie wouldn't take on my father's latest case. How could he argue the harness was defective when, in fact, it was my father with the defect? And the worst of it was, in my current hungover condition I was really in no position to judge. People did what they needed to do to get by, right?

But I could just hear my mother outlining a few psychological paradigms that might give shape to this particular dysfunction. And at the moment, most of them also applied to me.

Shrugging off the thought as the truly dysfunctional are wont to do, I called Jade, my comrade in debauchery, to see if she was
okay. I still thought she might need to meet over coffee and talk about this whole thing with Michael. But as I dialed, I knew I would have to tread lightly, because when it came to Michael, Jade tended either to clam up or get defensive.

I got her machine and wondered if she was screening. “Jade, are you there?” I paused to give her a chance to pick up. “Okay. Well, can't say that I am envious of your ability to get yourself out of bed so early after our raucous evening last night. My head is killing me.” I paused again, wondering once more if she was there and just didn't want to talk. “Anyway, I just called to see if maybe you wanted to go get breakfast, talk about last night. Not that I think you
need
to talk about last night,” I added quickly. “All right. Well, call me when you get a chance.”

I hung up and sat wondering where she might be. Then I dialed Alyssa, figuring I could both see how she was doing and get my father's request out of the way.

Richard answered the phone. “Hey, Em, how are you?”

“Good, good, how are you doing?” I replied. The image of Henry Burke rose before me, and I suddenly felt embarrassed. As if Richard had offered me a Mercedes-Benz that simply needed a wax job and I had politely declined.

“Great, great. So I heard my pal Hank and you had a good time the other night.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, we, uh—”

“Said he just picked up tickets to the Sting concert at the Garden this weekend. You going with him?”

“He did?” Maybe there was reason for me to return good ol' Hank's phone call, I thought, then was immediately horrified at the discovery that I was in danger of becoming one of those girls who would do anything for a free meal, a free concert, free anything.

“Yeah. I think he said he got floor seats.”

“You're kidding,” I replied, wondering why I
wasn't
one of those girls who would do anything for a free ride.

“Hank's the man. He's got connections everywhere. You'll never have to worry about a thing when you're with him.”

Except footwear. Could a woman really commit to low heels for
the rest of her life? “He seemed like a nice enough guy. I mean, he was very
sweet.
”

Richard was silent for a moment. “Oh, I get it. You weren't into him.”

Relieved that I wasn't going to have to live another lie, even for the sake of floor seats to Sting, I replied, “No, I guess I wasn't. He called…but I never got back to him,” I confessed guiltily.

“Hey, that's not a big deal. It was worth a shot, right? These blind-date things are tough, you know?”

He was so sensible, so good natured, I thought. Alyssa better not break his heart. “Yeah, I guess you're right. I feel bad, though, because he
was
a nice guy, and I don't want to hurt his feelings. Maybe I
should
call him back…or something.”

Richard laughed. “Are you kidding? Don't worry about Hank. He's probably lined up someone new already. In fact, I was out with him for happy hour last night, and I saw him talking to some pretty blonde. I think he may even have gotten her phone number.”

The creep. “Oh, well. That's…good, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah. Don't you worry about Hank. If you want, next time I see him, I'll cover for you. Say you left the country or something.” Then he laughed. “Hank will get over it. I mean, the guy
never
lacks for women.”

Suddenly Hank, with his gleaming bald spot and blah conversational skills, grew incredibly appealing in my mind. I quickly shook the feeling off. What was I, crazy? What kind of world are we living in here when short, balding men had dates lined up back-to-back and beautiful single women like Jade—and, yes, I would even venture to include myself in this category—could barely find someone to stick around long enough for meaningless sex? Oh, right. New York City. Where the women are plentiful and the men…pitiful.

“Well, I'm glad poor Henry won't suffer on my account,” I said.

He chuckled. “I miss that sarcasm of yours, Emma. When are you going to come over for dinner again?”

Just as soon as you and Alyssa are safely married and I don't have to feel guilty looking at you,
I thought. “Soon. Soon. Hey,
listen, I'm wondering if you can recommend a lawyer for my litigious dad.”

“Uh-oh. What did he do now?” Richard was well versed in my father's lawsuits, as we had spent many an evening analyzing the sheer audacity of many of them.

“Fell off a roof.” Then I added, “He was wearing one of those mountain-climbing harness things, and apparently the clasp wasn't working properly.” I didn't mention my suspicion that he might have been drinking. I always hesitated when it came to revealing my dysfunctional upbringing, especially to men like Richard, who grew up in Westchester in a perfect house with perfectly nice parents, one a doctor and the other a lawyer. His parents even had a golden retriever named Skip, for crying out loud.

“Is your dad okay?” Richard was asking now.

Depends on what you mean by okay,
I thought, but aloud I said, “Well, he did break his right shoulder and right arm.”

“Ouch,” Richard replied.

“Yeah, you're not kidding.”

“Well, let me think about it. See if I can come up with a good lawyer for him. Sounds like he might have a case, who knows?”

So sweet, Richard was. So very, very sweet. Damn Alyssa and her raging hormones. “Thanks, Richard. So, is Alyssa there?”

“Naw. She's at the vet.”

Oh
God.
“On a
Sunday?
”

“Yeah, well, you know Lulu went for those tests yesterday, and Alyssa was really worried. She didn't want to have to wait the whole weekend for the results. So the doctor offered to meet her today and talk to her about the results. Nice guy, huh?”

Helluva guy. “Uh, yeah.”

“I offered to go with her, but Alyssa wouldn't have it. She seems to think she's gotta manage this whole thing with Lulu on her own.” He sighed. “I guess it must be hard for her. She's had that dog since she was a kid.”

“Yeah.” My heart was doing a sad little plunge to my ankles as I listened to the concern in Richard's voice.

“I'm just hoping for the best,” he said. Then he chuckled ruefully. “You know, I used to tease Alyssa about her attachment to
that scruffy little ball of fur. I have to admit, though, I've grown quite attached to the old girl.”