Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (2 page)

She had never seen him in her life.

She scrambled to her feet, one high heel leaving a small, three-cornered tear in the hotel sheet, and stood swaying next to
her bed—which, of course, couldn’t really be hers. She’d already forgotten the dream; her imagination was busy doing what
it did best: spinning ghastly scenarios. He’d slipped her a drug, and they’d had wild, condom-free sex all night. He’d won
her trust by dressing like a nice, traditional gentleman, gotten her drunk, and persuaded her to empty out her bank account.
Or what about that urban legend where the traveler wakes up in a hotel room with a kidney missing?

The man mumbled and stirred.

Who is this person?
Peggy tried to force down her rising panic, the choking, suffocating sensation that signaled she was especially anxious.
She tapped him on the arm. “Excuse me.” Her voice was barely audible, a twig scratch on a pane of glass.

The man didn’t move. “Excuse me,” she croaked louder, and tapped him again, then jiggled his arm. Nothing happened.
I’m practically middle-aged,
Peggy thought. She hadn’t done anything like this in her twenties, when it might have been excusable. She was thirty-four
and mortified.

She tottered into the bathroom, hoping despite all odds to find Bex washing her face. There was no Bex, only Peggy’s own reflection:
chin-length hair falling in dirty blond strings across a forehead already traversed with worry lines like her mother’s; dark
circles and the first signs of crow’s-feet. Yet even as Peggy was bemoaning her appearance, she registered the leather Dopp
kit on the otherwise empty counter, and the full impact of the situation hit her.

She’d passed out in a strange man’s room.

Her next thought was,
My purse!

She half expected not to find it, but it was there, on a table with a scattered stack of papers, two smudgy champagne glasses,
and a bottle nose-down in a bucket of melted ice. The man’s jacket was draped neatly across the back of a chair. Peggy swooped
up her bag and wrenched it open. Wallet and credit cards—check. The photo of her and Brock at the Sports Emmys—check. Cash—not
as much as she remembered, but a few bills, and the card to her own hotel room.

A blast of electronic music shrilled. Peggy jumped and tripped over her feet to the door, fumbled with the safety latch, and
stumbled out into the hall, holding the door ajar with her elbow. She reached into her purse for her phone and flipped it
open. Mercifully, the music stopped.

“Bex?” Peggy whispered. “Are you okay?”

“Where are you? Brunch, remember?”

Peggy was flooded with relief at the sound of her friend’s voice. She glanced back into the room. All she could see was the
lower eighteen inches of the man’s legs. He didn’t appear to have woken up. She shut the door carefully. “I’ll be right there,”
Peggy said into the phone, steering herself toward the elevator.

“Are you bringing your future husband?”

Peggy made herself walk slower—the corridor was spinning. “What?”

“You told us you were engaged. You were skipping around with that WASPy guy, calling him ‘my future husband.’ The two of you
were all over each other. We couldn’t figure out what had gotten into you, Peggy. You wouldn’t let us take you upstairs. We
finally left you at the roulette table. Did you actually go to his room?”

Peggy pressed “Down,” and an elevator opened as if it had been waiting. There was a family inside—a mother and father and
two children, all bright-eyed and fresh and well rested. “I guess so. I’m coming to ours now.”

“We’re not there. Hilary and I packed and checked out for you. Meet us in the lobby and we’ll go straight to brunch.”

The children were staring at her. The parents were pointedly trying not to. Peggy wished she could vanish. “I have to change
my dress,” she whispered.

“No time, sweets. We’ve all got planes to catch. Meet us down stairs. We’ll wait for you.”

“Thanks, Bex. I owe you.”

“You’ll pay me later,” Bex said. “I expect a full report of last night.”

“All right, then, what about hepatitis?” Peggy worried aloud once the plane was in the air and pointing east. She was in the
window seat, and she lowered the shade against the sun. Every women’s magazine cautionary tale she’d ever read, every casual-sex
exposé about the dangers of letting one’s guard down for an instant, was coming back to her in a dizzying rush. She shook
out a small white pill from a vial in her purse.

Bex tilted back her seat and twirled her black-coffee curls into a chignon, which she secured with a pen from her handbag.
“Come on, Neurotic Nelly, open your shade or we won’t see the Grand Canyon. And don’t take that. There’s nothing to be afraid
of. The pilot knows how to fly the plane. And if you take the Ativan, you’ll pass out, and I’ll be lonely for the rest of
the flight.”

“Then you take one, too.”

“No thanks.” Bex pried Peggy’s fingers from the vial. “From here on out, my body is a temple. No alcohol, no late nights,
no stress. Only organic foods, yoga, and Josh giving me shots in my ass. Sexy, right? Put that pill back in here.”

Peggy dropped it in. “Bex, do you think I’ve caught hepatitis? Or worse?” She was making herself breathless.

“That guy was so conservative, he looked like a 1962 Brooks Brothers ad.” Bex clenched her teeth and finished in a mock upper-class
drawl, “No one like that could possibly be diseased.”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“And no one has sex and then puts his conservative pants, shirt, tie, socks, and shoes back on before passing out. Therefore,
you don’t have to worry about whether you had safe sex, because you didn’t have sex.” Bex capped the pill vial and returned
it to Peggy’s purse. “If I were you, I’d feel kind of cheated.”

Nauseated. That’s how Peggy felt. “If you knew anything, you’d tell me, right?”

“Only you know what happened. It’s back there in your subconscious. Concentrate.” Bex opened the in-flight magazine.

The plane vibrated. Peggy’s heart jolted. She looked past Bex into the aisle, at the passengers chatting or sleeping, the
flight attendants doling out drinks and bags of pretzels. Just a little turbulence. She made herself loosen her death grip
on the armrests.

Bex set down the magazine. “Did you get his name and number?”

“Why would I want his name and number?”

“He was cute. Did you give him yours?”

“I thought you were going to be quiet.” Of course Peggy hadn’t given out her phone number.
Then again,
she realized with dismay,
how would I know?

“Think back to the last thing you remember.” Bex rustled the magazine so Peggy would see she was reading.

Peggy had gone with Bex to Andrea’s room. There were margaritas from room service. She’d had one, possibly two. Jen, with
whom Peggy had bonded over a mutual love of Wallace Stevens during their freshman honors poetry seminar, had raised a glass:
“Okay, let’s go around the room. When did you know he was going to pop the—” She’d looked at Peggy and winced. “Yikes, Peggy,
sorry.” To shake off the weight of the bachelorettes’ pity, Peggy had busied herself gathering trash and going down the hall
for ice, reciting to herself a stanza from “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”

A man and a woman

are one.

A man, a woman and a blackbird

are one.

When she returned, Andrea was describing her wedding. It would be in Hawaii—just the bride and groom and their families. The
other bachelorettes clamored to hear about the dress, the food, the flowers. Peggy had poured herself another drink, reminded
herself to be happy for Andrea.

They’d had steaks and martinis and hit the casino. Peggy, by then considerably more cheerful, had played roulette with Bex,
jumping up and down and hollering, “Come on, rent money!” At some point, holding yet another martini, she’d lost her grip
and seen her drink on the floor. She was, inexplicably, on the floor, too.

“Are you all right?” The man had rushed over to her. He’d taken her hand and pulled her gently to her feet. She’d stood, leaning
against him.

Peggy tapped Bex’s magazine. “Why was I calling him my future husband?”

“You know,” Bex said. “Because of the tiara.”

It was frightening. Peggy rarely had more than a glass of wine with dinner and never in her life had gotten so drunk that
she’d blacked out. What subconscious, self-destructive impulse had taken over?

“Andie gave us tiaras at dinner. Remember?”

Oh, right. Peggy did, thankfully, remember: The bride-to-be had presented them all with gag veils—froths of tulle attached
to shiny rhinestone tiaras. Peggy had loved hers and worn it into the casino. “What happened to it?” She hadn’t seen it that
morning in the man’s room.

“You must have lost it. Anyway, you told Brooks Brothers you were a bride, and all you needed was a groom.”

“I wouldn’t say that!” It was too hot on this plane. Peggy reached up to the air blower above her seat, but it was already
on. “I respect Brock far too much.
Don’t
say a word about you-know-what,” she added—she’d just given her friend the perfect opportunity to mention Florida. Considering
the way Peggy had acted last night, she was in no mood to hear Bex, whom she loved with all her heart, dig up a two-year-old
mistake Brock had promised over and over not to make again. Bex’s disdain for Brock never failed to hurt Peggy’s feelings.

“Well, I think it’s great that you broke out of your comfort zone,” Bex said cheerfully. “You should do it more often. And
if you did sleep with Mr. WASP, you can just call it payback.”

“Shut up, Rebecca. I mean it.”

“Let’s change the subject.” Bex took a cardigan out of her bag. Peggy couldn’t understand how Bex could be cold when it was
stifling in here. “How are Max and Madeleine?”

“Remember Dad’s little cough that wouldn’t go away? He went to see some guy in the RV park. A retired veterinarian.” Peggy
rubbed her temples. “He told Mom it was cheaper than paying a real doctor. What if it’s serious? Those two make me crazy.”

“They’re cool—free spirits. All right, work. Think Padma accidentally burned down the store this weekend? Speaking of catastrophes,
how much do you think the Evil Empire will raise our rent? I was sure we’d hit the jackpot in Vegas and our troubles would
be over.”

Peggy had been struggling all weekend not to fret about the inevitable increase in their store’s rent. It was the exact opposite
of Bex’s way of coping—Bex liked to attack worries head-on. “Ugh, don’t remind me,” Peggy said.

Bex immediately upended her frown back to a smile. “Don’t beat yourself up over last night. You had a fight with Brock, and
you were acting out. Understandably, I might add.”

“I gave him an ultimatum. I said if we weren’t engaged in a year, I’d leave him,” Peggy mumbled.

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Bex said. “To show him you mean business.”

“He knows I’d never follow through. And to top that stupid move with last night’s stupid move—”

“Sweetie, stop. All that happened was you drank too much and had fun with a man and didn’t make it back to our hotel room.
Nothing bad. You’ll go home, and your life will be exactly as it was before. And if you do follow through on that ultimatum,
my offer stands.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Peggy said. Bex, who still lived in the apartment she and Peggy had shared in their twenties, was
always telling Peggy she could move back in anytime. Peggy was usually offended at the suggestion, but she had to think now
that it might come in handy.

“Here, eat.” Bex poked at Peggy’s bag of minipretzels. “And ask what’s going on with me for a change. It’s been Brock, Brock,
Brock, all weekend.”

Peggy opened the pretzels, ashamed of herself. “You’re right. I’m so sorry. When’s your appointment with Dr.…?”

“Kaplan. Guess what
New York
magazine calls him? The King Midas of fertility—everything he touches turns to gold.”

“So when are you going? Josh will be there, too, right?”

“Tomorrow morning. It’ll just be me. Josh will be in court.” Bex’s husband was a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society.

“I’ll go with you.” Peggy was glad for the chance to turn the tables and help Bex. “For moral support. You’re always taking
care of me. I’ll call in Padma to open up the store.”

“Some other time.” Bex helped herself to one of Peggy’s pretzels. “He’s just going to explain the protocol he’s picked for
me. The real fun begins later: hormones and blood tests and more hormones and blood tests.”

“And then what happens?”

“Then they retrieve my eggs. That’s what they call it, ‘retrieval.’ Like the eggs are lost in there. Then they fertilize them
in a petri dish or something, see if any of them take, put those in me, and it’s
Next stop, Babyville
. I mean, if it works.”

Peggy studied her best friend’s profile, the stubborn set of her chin. She ached for Bex whenever a customer came into the
store with a baby, whenever one of their friends blithely announced another pregnancy. When she and Bex walked together on
the Upper West Side, its sidewalks clogged with young families, Peggy tried to run interference. As if stepping between Bex
and a stroller could shield her friend from the fecundity that mocked from every corner. “It will work,” Peggy said. “It has
to.”

“Says the woman who’s sure a thief stole her kidney.”

Peggy laughed for the first time all day. “Then let me do the worrying, so you don’t need to. I’m excellent at it.” She took
Bex’s hand. “Let that be my job.”

It was nearly eleven when the taxi driver hoisted Peggy’s suitcase out of the trunk with a grunt and thudded it onto the sidewalk.
“Thanks, sorry,” she said, and overtipped him.

She stood in the middle of Fifty-ninth Street in last night’s dress and heels. She pressed her left leg against her suitcase,
claiming it, and looked up at the glass-and-granite facade of her building, trying to spot the dark windows of her and Brock’s
apartment on the twentieth floor; and then at the cab speeding off into the late-September night. A part of her wanted to
chase after the taxi and have the driver take her…where, she didn’t know. She reminded herself of what Bex had said: “Life
will be exactly as it was before.” Of course it would. Nothing had happened.