Getting Over Jack Wagner (13 page)

b) my job (“when are they going to send you someplace sunny?”)

c) my nose ring (“won't that get infected?”)

d) my hair (“why don't you just
try
growing it longer?”)

e) and tonight, as a bonus, some coy, suggestive comments about me and Andrew being “just friends.”

I am about to explain that it's just this kind of guilt-inducing harassment that is the reason I can't bring the musicians to Sunday dinners (not to mention the reason I can't bring myself to narrate a sex scene in my book) when Camilla cuts in.

“Mom?”

This is an unprecedented move. My sister has put her utensils down and wiped her mouth carefully with her unswanned napkin. She looks at Scott, who gives her a smile of encouragement. What the hell is going on?

Camilla lifts her chin. When she speaks, her voice is trembling. “We were going to wait for dessert,” she says, eyes on her plate, “but I might burst by then.” A short yelp escapes her, and she squeezes her eyes shut and grips Scott's hand. Her knuckles are pointy and pink. “Scott and I have an announcement.”

My sister is pregnant, of course. There is nothing else that could follow the words “Scott and I” and “announcement” and require marital yelping and hand grabbing. She has heard the ticking of her biological clock and everyone at this table knows it. Harv knows it. Even Sue knows it. Mom, of all people, must know it, but manages to keep her expression carefully confused.

The room holds still for one whole minute, silent except for the incongruous background noise of Rod Stewart belting out “Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?” as Camilla's face turns about three shades pinker. Finally, she explodes: “We're pregnant!”

Mom clutches her heart and bursts into tears, a moment she's probably been rehearsing her entire life. Harv raises his beer in an awkward salute. Andrew says appropriate things like “Congrats!” and “Great news!” and reaches across the table to pump Scott's hand. Everyone is on their feet, hugging, back-slapping, wiping tears from their eyes.

Except for me. I can't move. Staring at the belly of my sister's lavender wraparound skirt, I am overwhelmed by a strange, sudden wave of shyness. I can't stand. I can't speak. I can't take my eyes off my sister. I am in awe of her—even intimidated by her—by the reality of what is happening under her skin.

If anyone notices my temporary paralysis, they don't let on. They are clinking glasses and Mom is saying that of
course,
now she sees Camilla is showing! and asking what was she doing,
cooking
in her condition? and posing all the usual questions: “How far are you?” (seven weeks), “Boy or girl?” (we want it to be a surprise), and “How are you feeling?” (fine, fine, just fine).

“Come on, honey,” Scott says. “You don't have to be a martyr in front of them.” He confides, “There have been a couple of rough mornings already.”

Everyone inexplicably laughs. I stare down at the Thai soup running across my plate, staining the rim of the mashed potatoes. Sue reappears, rubbing my leg, and this time I toss her a piece of tuna.

*  *  *

Parked by the curb in front of my mother's, in roughly the same spot Lou's cat-scratched armchair was dumped after he left us, Andrew and I sit in silence. The car windows are down. Crickets chirp sluggishly on the night air. I'm buzzed from the news and the beers and I don't want to go home yet to my closet/apartment. Camilla and Scott are still inside, rooting through old boxes of baby clothes and toys my mother has already dislodged from the attic.

Andrew is surfing the radio—typical, cheesy Sunday night call-in fare—and stops when he stumbles upon a long-distance dedication. It has all the usual components: thwarted love, mis-communication, a tragic accident in the Midwest. In this one, Sam from Wyoming had his hand sawed off in a tangle with a tractor, and when his letters stopped coming, Melanie from Idaho thought he'd forgotten all about her. Well, Melanie, even though Sam can't write those letters anymore, he
can
send this long-distance love song…

“That was touching,” Andrew says, as the Backstreet Boys's “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” comes oozing out of the speakers. It's the first we've spoken since Andrew was forbidden to start the car. “Speaking of love,” he ventures, “and stop me if you don't feel like talking about it, but how did things go with Karl last night?”

“Fine.” I shrug. “You know. The usual.”

You'd think I was discussing having a corn removed. Breaking up with boyfriends has become this routine, this mechanical, every one of them the final scene in the same movie: the predictable meeting, the excitement, “the moment,” the disillusionment, the ending. It scares me how familiar I've become with the endings. How accustomed to cutting people loose.

“Are you sad about it?” Andrew asks.

“The weird thing is, yes. And no.” I pull my knees up under my chin. “I'm sad, but I don't think it's Karl I'm sad about. I think I'm sad about
not
being sad about Karl.”

Andrew doesn't respond. When I glance at him, his profile is dark against the streetlamps. He looks much older than he did in college.

“What if,” I say, “my life is actually stuck inside this never-ending cliché where everything keeps happening predictably. It's the same story, over and over and over. Every guy I date is disappointing. Every relationship ends the exact same way.” I wrap my arms tight around my knees. “Basically, Andrew, I'm twenty-six and I feel like there's nothing in my life that could take me by surprise. Am I warped?”

“You're not warped.”

“Be honest.”

“I am being honest. I'm always honest. I'm a lawyer, remember?”

But I'm in no mood for jokes now, lawyer or otherwise. “What if I never find anyone?”

“Oh God, not this.”

“Andrew, I'm serious. I need this.”

“Okay, okay. You will. You will find anyone. I promise.”

“But how do you know? What if I'm just not capable of it? What if it's like a biological thing, like people who can't curl their tongues or wiggle their noses?” I lean my head back against the seat. Outside, the street is getting tipsy, telephone poles and trees and rooftops blurring into one another. “Maybe I can't be any other way.”

“Eliza, you can be anything you want,” Andrew says. “An astronaut. A ballerina. A firefighter.” He reaches over and gives me an exaggerated chin-chuck. “You can even make movies that smell.”

I feel the impulse to defend my idea—Movies That Smell was a
great idea
—but I decide to let it go. I am too tired. Something about me feels off kilter, but I can't put my finger on it. I don't feel up to being cynical, not about Karl, not about my mother or my sister and her Thai food and napkin origami. Under normal circumstances, I would have volumes to say about those stupid swans. I would have a field day analyzing the way Camilla announced: “We're pregnant!” Under normal circumstances, I could go off for hours on the use of the pronoun “we” alone.

The thing is, cynical can be exhausting after a while. Without it, though, I feel unprotected. Vulnerable to my own eye.

I turn away from the window. “What if I never have a baby?”

Andrew drops his head in his hands and moans. “Where is this coming from? Scott and Camilla?”

“Who cares.” I feel a wave of desperation, feel myself being sucked up in one of those estrogen clouds I've read about in women's magazines. “Don't go getting all practical about it. Just reassure me.”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice softening. He removes his head from his hands and looks at me. “I mean, of course you'll have a baby.”

“You don't think Karl was my last chance at reproduction?”

“You'll find a better dad than Karl, I promise.”

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where? There are tons of other bands at The Blue Room.”

I know he's trying to lighten the mood, but the last thing I want right now is to be reminded of the sad reality that is my dating pool. I don't want to think about The Blue Room, or the rock star wannabes who play there, or having to potentially make a baby with a Crazy Ape.

“Maybe I need a list.”

“What kind of list? Movies to Rent? Words to Outlaw If I Were President?”

“I'm serious. My sister used to have this list. I saw it once, when I was snooping in her room.” My voice is starting to quicken. “It was called, ‘Things I Need in a Husband.' And look. She got them. Every one of them.”

“Okay, okay. Hang on.” Andrew flips open his impeccable glove compartment. A light inside pops on. He fishes out a mini-golf pencil and Marriott notepad, saying, “All right. Let's make you a list. What kinds of things were on it?”

“You know,” I say, taking a deep breath, “must make blankety-blank salary a year. Must want children. One boy, one girl. Must like golden retrievers. Must want to settle in the suburbs. Must celebrate Christmas and Easter.” I pause, exhale, and jab at the hole in the knee of my jeans. “Must have good insurance. With dental.”

“So what are yours?”

I try to think. Andrew rests the notepad on the steering wheel, poised under the stubby pencil.
Putt-Putt at the Golf Caboose!
the pencil says. It's probably a keepsake from a date with Kimberley. I'll bet Kimberley is a really good golfer. I'll bet the two of them golf neck and neck, and by the time they hit the bonus hole, the combined competition and sexual tension is so intense they're almost nude.

I close my eyes, trying again to focus on my criteria for the perfect man. But anything I come up with sounds childish. Must play music? Must wear black? Must not produce earwax? Must not have mother? Must be passionate? Intense? Deep? I've been looking for these qualities for so long I can't remember what they were supposed to mean, or why I wanted them in the first place.

I open my eyes. Andrew is watching me, waiting for an answer. When I open my mouth, what comes out takes me by surprise: “Maybe I should try dating a nonmusician for a change.”

Andrew puts the pad and pencil back inside the glove compartment and flicks the door shut. The light disappears. It is quiet between us, the air dense with crickets and Backstreet and heat. Lightning bugs speckle the darkness. The music sounds as if it's coming from someplace faraway. I wonder if we're about to start kissing. It feels like something is supposed to happen, at the very least one of those “if-we're-forty-and-still-unmarried” pacts. Then something chirps in Andrew's pocket.

“What the hell is that?” I ask.

His face grows long with guilt. The pocket chirps again.

“Oh my God, Andrew. You didn't.”

As he slips the cell phone from his khakis, he can't even meet my eyes. He unfolds it and tucks it against his ear. “Hey,” he says, in a whisper. He doesn't have to ask who's calling. Not because he's looking at a Caller ID box, but because it's Kimberley. It has to be. “How was your night?”

I fix my eyes outside the window, trying hard not to listen. I focus on the mailbox beside the car window, topped with a humorless bluebird and the words
The Mackeys
in curly, rusting wrought iron. It used to say
The Simons.
Now it says
The Mackeys.
Across the yard Mom's front door opens and Camilla and Scott emerge, laden with plates of leftovers and boxes of hand-me-downs. “Thanks for everything, Mom,” I can hear Camilla saying. I watch as they cross the yard to the Saab parked in the driveway. Watch as Scott unlocks Camilla's door. Watch as he places a hand on the small of her back as she slides inside. This is what happens, I think, when you carry a baby: people treat you carefully.

Andrew is keeping his voice low, a lot of “mmm”s, “yeah”s, “me too”s, and a “soon.” The Backstreet Boys come to a dramatic finish and the deejay returns, sending us smoothly into a commercial.

“Okay,” Andrew murmurs. “Love you, too.”

After he hangs up—a smug bleep—he refolds the phone and slips it back into his pocket. Now, of course, everything feels different between us. I watch as Scott and Camilla's red taillights disappear down the street. Mom's porch light snaps off.

“We should go.” I say it, so Andrew doesn't have to.

“That was Kimberley.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“The phone was her idea.”

“Uh huh.”

“It's just so we can reach each other, you know, in emergencies.” He's trying to apologize or rationalize or some other kind of -ize, but it's only making me feel worse. We both know we're not talking about the cell phone, though what we are talking about I'm not really sure.

Andrew coughs and starts the car. He turns the headlights on. “She was just wondering where I was,” he concludes, then nods, as if satisfied with his defense. He starts to pull away from the curb.