Fourth Comings (11 page)

While I winced at my friend’s enthusiasm, Siobhan set down one empty plate in front of Bridget, and another heaped with steaming meats and starches in front of me. Our waitress then paused long enough to smile with her lips pulled tight against her crooked teeth, and said something unintelligible in a brogue as thick as a pint of Guinness.

I waited until Siobhan hustled back to the bar before asking, “Did she just say, ‘Coughs on your anus’?”

Bridget cackled and said, “I think she said, ‘Coffee’s on the house!’”

“Oh,” I replied with a slightly embarrassed chuckle. “I thought it might be a traditional Irish blessing or something.”

As Bridget loaded up her empty plate, I realized such perks hadn’t been my imagination after all. I thought I’d noticed Bridget getting preferential treatment—free appetizers, cleaner dressing rooms, discounts taken off at the cash register—all given with a wink and a wish of good luck. But it was difficult to tell whether she scored freebies based on the humble diamond on her finger or the immodesty of her beauty. But free coffee for me? Is it possible that the whole world—including its most cynical city—is seduced by the sight of a betrothed young lady? I suddenly understood the advantages of an endless engagement, and not only those of a financial nature. Why not live in that lustrous state for as long as possible, when your love is only about the promise of a happy future? When total strangers want to get in on the goodwill and are compelled to wish you well?

“I can’t believe it!” Bridget burbled. “You’re getting married!”

“Well, I didn’t say yes.”

“Why didn’t you say yes?” she said, biting off a piece of bacon. Before I could open my mouth, she offered her own hypothesis. “I bet you feel too young to be married,” she said, gesturing with the half-eaten piece of pork. “I know! I kind of went through that, too. Everyone is like, ‘Bridget? What is this? Utah? In the 1950s?’”

“Well…”

“Manhattan is probably the toughest city in the world for marrying young. It’s got a lower number of married couples than almost anywhere else in the United States. And those who do get married do so later than the average, more like twenty-seven instead of twenty-five.” She paused to take a breath. “But there seems to be a bit of a reversal lately. In yesterday’s Styles section there was a twenty-three-year-old bride marrying a twenty-four-year-old groom—”

“It sounds like you’ve done your research.”

“I had to!” Her hands and fingers were flying like a whole flock of doves now. “Because, like, not a day goes by that someone doesn’t look at my engagement ring and tell me I’m too young, that marriage is a dying institution borne out of patriarchal oppression, that couples used to get married to have sex, and since the age of sexual liberation, of the Pill and
Roe v. Wade,
single women can have as much sex as they want without getting married….”

I imagine that Bridget’s fellow NYU undergrads have made these arguments many times over. For as many well-wishers as there are, there are just as many, if not more, naysayers. My predisposition is to be in the latter camp, but it was my obligation as maid of honor and best friend to stifle those natural instincts and put a smile on my face and a dress on my body that no alterations could turn into something I’d ever wear again.

Honestly, I could never understand how Bridget—an only child fought over in a nasty divorce—could have planned to get married at twenty-three. It didn’t matter whether they exchanged vows on the marble altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral or on the soft white sands of Montego Bay, I loved Bridget and Percy so much that I didn’t want to see them walk down the aisle to their doom.

So their decision to defer marriage comes as a relief. Sort of. What if all those naysayers have made Bridget reconsider, and this marriage-for-everyone argument is just a clever cover-up, a noble way to drag one’s feet indefinitely, and avoid taking the relationship to the next level without having to break it off? Or are they really so confident about the depth of their love that they don’t need all the wedding hoopla, nor the crashing, crushing banality that follows? An unconventional life. Together.

“Let’s say you wait until Marcus graduates,” Bridget continued, making mental calculations. “That’s four years from now, which would make him twenty-seven and you twenty-six. That’s, like, right around the national averages, and not at all abnormal even by, like, New York City standards.”

Again, I opened my mouth, but Bridget kept right on going.

“And if you’re thinking about having kids, you can get them out of the way early,” she said. “And you’re still young enough to embark on a career after your kids are in school….”

“Bridget,” I said, tearing off a piece of crusty soda bread, “you’re talking crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got me married and pregnant already,” I said, “and I didn’t even accept his proposal.”

“Okay,” she said, “which brings us back to the original question: Why not? Don’t you love him?”

(Yes.)

“Yes,” I said.

(But.)

“But…,” I said.

“But what?” Bridget asked. “Would you have said yes if he had a degree and a job?”

“But he doesn’t.”

“But what if he did?”

“‘What ifs’ are what Marcus calls counterfactuals.”

“Counterfactuals?”

“‘What ifs.’ Counterfactuals. Hypotheticals. All the same thing,” I explained. “All a waste of time and energy. Because no matter how long you ponder them, it doesn’t change the reality of the situation: Marcus is in school for at least four more years.”

“Move to Princeton.”

“What worked for you and Percy won’t work for everyone.” I sighed. “You transferred from UCLA to NYU because you hated the superficial L.A. scene. You had other reasons besides Percy for leaving. If I leave New York for Princeton, it’s only to be with Marcus. I don’t have any reason for being there other than to be with my boyfriend.”

“But isn’t that enough?” Her pretty face was marred by disappointment when I didn’t answer right away. “So you don’t want to move. Isn’t a long-distance relationship better than none at all?”

“I don’t know,” I said warily. “We’re exactly where we were four years ago, with him one place and me somewhere else. You saw for yourself how he can’t handle the city….”

“That night with the drag queen,” Bridget said, visibly recoiling. “The Shit Lit Hissy Fit.”

(Does it bother you to know that my friends have a special name for that night? Well, they do. It was that…memorable.)

“Right. And I don’t want to visit him on the weekends at Princeton, only to compete for his attention with twice-a-day meditation, term papers, and impromptu coed volleyball games.”

(I wish I had said this to your face, before I left your room on Saturday.)

“Maybe I don’t want to compromise anymore. Why should I have to be the one to compromise? Because I’m a girl? Please. I’d be letting down our gender with that kind of thinking.”

A knowing smile crept across Bridget’s face.

“What?” I asked.

“You sound like Manda.” Bridget giggled.

“I DO NOT SOUND LIKE MANDA.” I was coughing, nearly choking on my eggs. “Don’t ever say I sound like Manda.”

“But you doooooo,” she taunted in a jokey singsong. “She’s rubbing off on you.”

“I hope not,” I replied. “I would have to get a full battery of STD tests….”

At that moment my cell phone rang. I groaned when I saw that it was my sister, calling to remind me that I was already late for her Labor Day soiree.

“You’re still coming, right?” Bethany asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m already on my way.”

“Fabulous!” she said. “Just remember you’re a guest today. Though you’re not really a guest, because you’re family! You know what I mean! Just have fun and enjoy, Jessie. I mean it. Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!”

I assured my sister that I would enjoy myself as if my motherfucking life depended on it.

I hung up and rolled my eyes. “Don’t even ask,” I warned Bridget.

Siobhan slapped our bill on the table as she hurried past.

“Look, I love you and Marcus together,” Bridget said, returning to the topic I was eager to drop. “I just want you to be happy, whatever you decide to do.”

I sighed and examined the muddy grounds in the bottom of my coffee mug. “Me too.”

As we stood at the register paying the bill, I noted a small black-and-white portrait posted by the front entrance. In it, a foppish young man wearing a fur-trimmed cloak leaned toward the camera in a throne-like chair, one hand clutching an ornate staff and the other resting thoughtfully against his temple. His soulful eyes spoke almost as clearly as the words written beneath his photo:

“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”

—OSCAR WILDE
(1854–1900)

I had never noticed it before, though Bridget assured me that it has always been there.

We stepped outside and hugged good-bye. I turned to head in the opposite direction down the sidewalk when Bridget called out to me.

“Hey, Jess!”

“What?”

She raised her arm in the air, as if she were making a toast with an invisible mug. “Coughs on your anus!”

“Coughs on
your
anus!” I said, seized with gratitude for our friendship. “And Percy’s, too.”

twenty-seven

A Brief and Meaningful Conversation with Marin

“Y
ou know what would be awesome?”

“I don’t know, Marin. What would be awesome?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going to invent it. And if I tell you, you might inventit before I do.”

“I wouldn’t do that!”

“You say that now, but once you hear how awesome it is, you won’t be able to stop yourself, because my idea is just so awesome.”

“Okay, then I’ll just have to wait.”

“Auntie J? Just out of curiationosity…”

“Curiosity.”

“Cure-ee-oss-oh-tee.
That’s what I said. Anyway, has anyone ever tried to make a doll that totally knows you and talks and plays like a real sister but you can turn her off when she gets annoying?”

“Like a robot?”

“Yeah! Like a robot sister doll.”

“I think something like that has been invented. But that shows you what an awesome idea it was….”

“Darn it. Grown-ups get to do everything first.”

“You’ll be a grown-up someday.”

“Who cares? By the time I’m a grown-up, everything will already be done already!”

“Marin, I totally know what you mean.”

twenty-eight

I
’m aware that the preceding oh-so-twee exchange with Marin is nothing special, the fodder of a bizillion blogging mommies trying to out Dooce one another with tales of their precious, precocious spawn. Or worse, something straight out of the cornball Metropolitan Diary in the
New York Times.
But such conversations are meaningful to me, if only because I never expected them to mean so much. I love Marin, and value all the time we’ve spent together. She has single-handedly restored the term “awesome” to its fundamental awesomeness, and back from the meaninglessness of mundane misappropriation.

That said…

I’M SO RELIEVED THAT I HAVE A JOB INTERVIEW TOMORROW.

Seriously, after eight months of sponging off my sister, I’ve absorbed about as much guilt as I can handle. I’d hoped that moving out of her place and living on my own would help me feel less like a deadbeat and more like a sister again. This was an idiotic notion. How independent can I feel when Bethany’s exorbitant babysitting wages are the only thing keeping me doggy-paddling above the poverty line? I’m embarrassed for myself every Friday afternoon when I accept a check in the amount of three hundred dollars for ten hours of playing with my niece. This is twice the going rate (fifteen dollars) for babysitting services. And it’s almost one and a half times more than my hourly wage (eighteen dollars) at my “real job.”

I can’t help but use quotations. It feels like a fake job, one I can explain using terms of negation: I’m (minimally) paid for my (quasi) employment at a (micro) magazine with a (barely-there) audience. I am virtually employed in every sense of the word. I don’t commute. I don’t have a cubicle. I don’t have coworkers, which means no office rival to bitch about, no commiserating underling to gossip with, no clueless coworker on the other side of the divide who blasts his iPod too loud, no secretary with Dilbert clippings and
I DON’T DO PERKY
coffee mugs. It also means no coffee breaks or water-cooler conversation about last night’s episode of, uh,
The Office.
No staff meetings. No performance reviews. No punching in late or punching out early. There’s scarcely any evidence that I’m actually employed by
Think
magazine other than the assignments messengered to my apartment, the weekly time sheets I fill out and turn in after messengering back said assignments, and bimonthly paychecks for completing them to my editors’ approval.

Because you displayed a decidedly European indifference to my job, I will now answer all the questions you never asked about it. Every day I get an electronic message (or several) telling me what needs to be done: journals to be read, articles to be fact-checked, taped interviews to be transcribed. I’ve never met any of my fellow editors, and I’ve only spoken to my top editor once on the phone. I don’t even think of him as a real person, Robert Stevens, editor in chief. To me he’s an e-mail address: [email protected]. And I’m pretty sure they don’t want to put a real human face to my in-box either, otherwise they might feel more guilty about not hiring me full-time. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I am part of a grand experiment, the lab rat in someone’s postdoctoral thesis, “To Commit or Bullshit? A Case Study in Employee Loyalty and Productivity in an Imaginary Workplace.”

The worst part about it? I actually like what I do.
Think
mixes reprints of journal articles and research abstracts with original essays and interviews. Since winning the National Magazine Award for general excellence in the small-circulation category a few years ago, it has had no shortage of A-list contributors. The other day I spent four hours painstakingly transcribing a ten-minute conversation between Bono and Bill Gates about the psychology of philanthropy. It’s my job to geek out on the readings and research that I used to follow as a hobby. Isn’t this the goal for any worker? To be paid for what one would do for free? I would happily take a full-time position as the lowest of the low on the masthead, if such a position were available. But it’s not.

Prestige doesn’t equal profits. I mean, we’re not talking Condé Nast or Hearst here, or even Time Inc. or Hachette Filipacchi. This is Plato Publishing, which specializes in niche periodicals that are hybrids of commercial magazines and academic journals. In addition to
Think
(“Pop Psychology for Smart People”), there’s
Bio
(“Every Cell Has a Story”),
Theory
(“Where Your Guess Is as Good as Ours”), and a few others. Since
Think
’s target circulation is less than fifty thousand, I can hardly blame my quasi-employer for the budgetary constraints. There aren’t enough laypeople interested in subscribing to a publication that proudly compares itself to
Utne Reader
and
Psychology Today. Think
’s tagline should be revised to “Deep Thoughts, Shallow Pockets.”

Think
hires freelancers like me to do the work of an editorial assistant so the company doesn’t have to provide 401(k) plans or medical insurance. And though I could easily work eight hours a day, I can only bill a maximum of twenty hours a week because that’s all the budget allows. This isn’t enough to live on without the supplementary income from my sister. Thus, tomorrow’s job interview. It promises $32,000 a year with benefits, which might be enough to take me off Bethany’s payroll if all my meals come from a can. (More on this later.)

I don’t know why I’m so ashamed about accepting my sister’s money. I can only count one true trust funder among my circle of friends. (Author-turned-activist Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace is rumored to have inherited roughly fifty million dollars when her dad died earlier this year. Imagine the payout if he hadn’t split when she was four, or sired ten half siblings with his next three wives?) Yet nearly everyone I know who is not in the financial sector—and certainly all of us living in Sammy—are or have been subsidized by a munificent patron of the arts.

Hope has an ancient benefactress from her Tennessee hometown, whom she refers to as the “Sugar Grandmama.” Manda’s parents paid her college bill, so she can sort of afford to put herself into debt for grad school. I have Bethany, of course, and if Gladdie hadn’t left me $50,000 when she died, I would now be in that much deeper to that hillbilly bitch Sallie Mae who bills me $437.25 a month
…just on the interest.
One simply can’t pursue a vaguely creative career in this prohibitively expensive city unless you’re independently wealthy or your life has been generously underwritten.

(I know, I know. Then why live here? Why live in a city that is systematically designed to undermine happiness and prosperity? Why not come to the land of peace, quiet, and opportunity, colloquially known as the borough of princes? Why not come to the place where my true love resides…?)

Maybe I would feel more okay about accepting Bethany’s money if she had earned it herself and wasn’t married to half the mastermind behind the Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe/Papa D’s Donuts empire. I once made the mistake of referring to their money as
Grant’s
money and she didn’t talk to me for several weeks. I know better than to say it twice, even though I think it all the time. And yet Bethany must be aware of the awkwardness of our current patron/pauper relationship. She must know that if it weren’t for her generosity, I’d be maxing out my credit card on ramen and stealing rolls of toilet paper from public restrooms.

Or (shudder!) living in Pineville with my parents.

Lately she has repeatedly tried to persuade me to join the family business—a more legitimate and less humiliating form of handout. Her recruiting went a little too far last time, when she basically asked me to be a corporate whore for her hubby’s empire. And I mean that as figuratively as figurative can go before it turns literal.