Mating Rituals of the North American WASP (3 page)

In the elevator, she searched her purse for her keys. Before she’d stormed off to the airport, she was pretty sure Brock had
said he was going to Chicago. Wait, Cleveland. Bengals at Browns. His return flight wouldn’t get in until past midnight. If
you were going to be a sports cameraman’s girlfriend, you had to accept that he’d be away most weeks, from Thursday or Friday
through late Sunday night. It had come to seem normal to Peggy. She spent her weekends minding the shop anyway and often came
home drained from hours of bright-eyed girl chatter, with nothing to talk about beyond the typical store happenings—a European
tourist who’d bought one of every soap, lotion, and shower gel on the shelves; a customer who’d tried to return an empty jar
of body scrub. Tonight, Peggy was downright glad of Brock’s absence. For starters, she wouldn’t have to explain why she’d
flown across the country in a little black dress badly camouflaged with an airport gift shop T-shirt that said “Sin City.”

She stepped out of her shoes at last and dragged the suitcase through the dark living room into her and Brock’s bedroom. A
bath. That’s what she needed to wash away last night once and for all.

In the tub, Peggy channeled the instructor of a meditation course she’d once taken. She imagined Birch—that had been the woman’s
name—in the lotus position with one of the different-colored stick-on
bindis
she’d change to coordinate with her tank tops, saying,
If a negative thought enters your mind, observe it impartially, and let it go
.

It was time to let Las Vegas go. Peggy was home, where she was comfortable and knew her place in the world. Tomorrow at the
shop she had two deliveries coming in and was planning to redo the windows and balance the books. A busy day, but she could
do these tasks in her sleep. She’d just spent the weekend with her oldest and most beloved friends. Tomorrow morning, she’d
apologize to Brock for her outburst. The truth was, they had been getting along far better than during the rocky period after
Florida. Maybe that’s why Peggy had been so shaken this morning: She’d barely escaped pulling the rug out from under herself,
upsetting the stability she’d worked so hard to create.

She slid deeper into the tub, tipping her head back into the lavender-scented bubbles. She concentrated on relaxing.

“Hey!” The front door slammed. “What’s for dinner?”

It was Brock’s voice, she knew it as well as her own, but still she shrieked. There were heavy footsteps, and Brock appeared.

“Sheesh!” He had his keys in one hand and a colossal bouquet in the other. “Kidding. I ate already.”

“You scared me!” Peggy’s hands were shaking. “I thought you weren’t back until late.”

“I caught an earlier flight.” He held out the bouquet. “For you.”

So
he
was apologizing. Peggy reached out both hands to take the flowers—each bloodred rose the size of a child’s fist. She braced
her arms on the edge of the tub. After Florida, Brock had sent bouquets just like this to the store—one a day for twenty-three
days, until Peggy had relented and let him move back into the apartment.

“They’re beautiful,” she told him now.

Brock Clovis was black-haired, blue-eyed, a former high school football star with the shoulders to prove it. People on the
street often mistook him for someone famous. When he smiled, a dimple deepened in his chin. “How do they smell?” Brock bent
to nuzzle his face in the roses.

“Careful, thorns.” Peggy waited for him to apologize so she could, too. Marriage was overrated. She and Brock were in a committed
relationship. What did she need a piece of paper for?

“Huh.” Brock lifted his head. “They don’t smell like anything.”

Peggy drew her knees to her chest. “Could you please put them in a vase for me while I get out of the tub?” The bubbles were
starting to dissolve, reminding her of a dream she had occasionally where she’d be in Grand Central, confused about which
train to take, and she’d realize her clothes were slowly falling off.…

A wisp of something, perhaps a déjà vu, drifted into her brain. A vague memory of laughing with a friend while lights sparkled
all around.

“Hang on a sec,” Brock said. The wisp drifted back out. “There’s one thing. It’s kind of serious.” Rarely emotional, he had
the faintest tremble in his voice.

Peggy shivered in the no-longer-hot water. She wasn’t irrational enough to imagine he knew how she’d woken up this morning,
but something was clearly bothering him. Had he had another slipup? That’s what he’d called it last time: a slipup. Wouldn’t
that be ironic, she and he both in the same twenty-four hours. “Brock—” she began.

“Close your eyes.”

“Something very odd happened this weekend.”

“Close ’em.”

Peggy bit down on the inside of her cheek and closed her eyes.

“Open.”

She opened her eyes.

Brock was holding out a small blue box with a white satin ribbon.

“Open it, Pegs,” he said as Peggy sat in the tub, finger-tips wrinkling, wet hair plastered to her face, the last of the bubbles
melting away.

A
promise ring?” Bex yelled. The string of bells on the shop door jingled as it shut behind her. “Brock gave you a
promise ring
? What is this, seventh grade? Hi, Padma,” she added to the only other person in the shop, their new, nineteen-year-old salesgirl,
as if “seventh grade” had reminded Bex of her presence.

“It’s an engaged-to-be-engaged ring. It’s pretty, see?” Peggy was behind the counter, unpacking a case of Gaia Apothecary’s
Vision Body Splash, with extracts of hibiscus and ylang-ylang, reconciling the contents of the carton against a purchase order
in her accounts binder. She held up her left hand to show Bex the ring, a spray of small diamonds set to resemble a flower
and leaves. It glinted in the late morning light.

“He couldn’t give you the real deal?”

Peggy had known this was coming. “This is a major break-through for Brock. You know how afraid he is of commitment.”

Bex rolled her eyes. “I realize he’d be shocked to hear this, but at a certain point men do grow up. Let me guess. He gave
you that line about not wanting to turn into his dad.”

“How was your appointment?” Peggy didn’t need to hear Bex say anything else discouraging.

“It went well. Actually, I can’t stay long.” Bex took a square of paper from her pocket. “Would you believe it’s a prescription
for—”

The phone rang. “I’ll get it!” Padma shouted unnecessarily—the phone was three feet away—and picked up. “ACME Cleaning Supply.”
Pause. “We sell specialty soaps and lotions, uh-huh.…Um, Columbus Avenue, between, uh, Eighty-first and Eighty-second.” Peggy
made a mental note to coach Padma on her phone manner. “Today’s Monday, right? Till eight.…Okay, yeah, bye.”

“—birth control pills?” Bex went on, seemingly oblivious to the interruption. She walked through the store as she talked,
neatening shelves, straightening sample bottles so their labels faced forward. “Kaplan says I’m supposed to take them for
a few weeks before the hormone injections to ‘quiet my ovaries.’ All I can think of is my ovaries rampaging around in there
like hyperactive schoolkids—Oh, no!” She interrupted herself, pointing out the front window. “Black and White Books is going
out of business!”

Black and White Books was an Upper West Side institution, a large, cluttered store across the street from ACME Cleaning Supply.
Both Peggy and Bex hated to hear of any shop failing.

“I can’t believe it.” Bex shook her head sadly. “I’ve been buying books there since I was six.”

The phone rang. Peggy picked up before Padma could.

“My darling. You’ve been ignoring me. I call and call.” Peggy recognized the voice of Mark, the sales representative for Promised
Land, a line of biblical-themed products. His flirtatious greeting was a giveaway that he was about to try to wheedle her
into placing a bigger wholesale order than she’d already committed to. Bex was better at dealing with the line reps; you had
to talk fast or they wouldn’t let you off the phone. Yes, Peggy agreed with Mark; Promised Land’s frankincense-and-myrrh shampoo
was
flying off the shelves, but—

Mark cut her off. Peggy let her attention roam around the familiar room. The store was a tiny, narrow rectangle, with windows
at the front, a tin ceiling, and a trompe l’oeil cloud mural Peggy and Bex had painted on the back wall. It had taken them
twelve years to build their little business, including two working at Bex’s parents’ store, Sabes Shoes, after college before
landing a small-business loan for a place of their own. Peggy was proud of the shop and of herself for gambling on it in the
first place. She’d been a different, braver person back then.
The real me,
she liked to think.
She’s still in there somewhere.

Bex waved good-bye. The door jingled shut behind her. Mark was still talking. “Tell you what,” Peggy jumped in. “I’ll have
Bex call you.” She hung up.

Padma was wandering among the displays, dabbing herself with essential oil. “Who was that?”

“A sales rep. If you get one of those calls, give it to Bex. She’s the only one who can rein them in.” Peggy wished Bex had
stayed a little longer; she would have liked to hear the rest of what Dr. Kaplan had said. She decided to stop over at Bex’s
place after work.

“Got it.” Padma reached her arm up and over to scratch her own back. There was a small tattoo on the side of her neck that
said “IH.” Padma had explained this was so she got a friendly message when she looked in the mirror: HI. “Can I run out for
coffee? I was up till, like, four.”

“Get me a cup, too, and I’ll treat.” Peggy took a twenty from the register.

Padma dashed for the door. “Someone dropped off an envelope for you guys yesterday,” she called over her shoulder.

The envelope was from Empire Property Management.

The new lease would be inside. Peggy wasn’t ready to open it without Bex around for moral support, although if Bex did get
pregnant, Peggy would have to shoulder more of these burdens on her own.
When
Bex got pregnant, Peggy corrected herself. She wished she could figure out a way to solve the coming rent crisis on her own.

She put away the unopened envelope and returned to the Gaia Apothecary purchase order, then gave up and studied her pre-engagement
ring. All right—a vague promise wasn’t what she’d hoped was in that Tiffany box. What she’d really wanted to do last night
was shake Brock and yell,
Just get on with it! Everyone’s already having babies!
How long would it be before Bex, too, abandoned Peggy for her new role and new friends—mommy friends with whom she’d have
everything in common?

No, Peggy decided. Better to think positive: A real proposal couldn’t be far off. She tested phrases in her head:
Mrs. Patricia Adams Clovis. Brock and Peggy Clovis. Mr. and Mrs. Brock Clovis
. She could use this waiting time to at long last get Bex to see Brock’s good side, to think of him as a friend in his own
right, the way Peggy loved Bex’s lawyer husband, Josh. Bex could certainly stand to be more tolerant of Brock’s marriage fears,
since Bex had her own odd notions about relationships. She’d been with Josh eight years, ever since he’d moved in down the
hall from the apartment Bex and Peggy had shared and had come over with a letter for Bex that had accidentally ended up in
his mailbox. But after five happy years of marriage, Bex and Josh still lived in their separate apartments. Bex called it
the best of both worlds—she and Josh could be together when they wanted and alone when they needed. But once, Josh had confided
in Peggy, “I think she likes to believe she has an escape route.”

The bells tinkled, and in a flash the room was overflowing with the orthodontic smiles and tossing hair and high-pitched shrieking
of a horde of teenage girls cutting class. One was preoccupied with a text message on her pink phone and nearly upended a
table of organic soaps. “Watch
out
, Courtney!” a second girl screeched from behind her Chanel sunglasses.

“Stop it!” squealed a third.

“Devon, cut it
out
!” yelled a fourth.

Peggy was thinking she’d have to say something, but just then the bells heralded the return of Padma, who stepped briskly
into the maelstrom. “Hold this.” She handed a teen a coffee cup. The girl took it, surprised. Padma held a patchouli-passion-fruit
candle high above her head, a retail Statue of Liberty. “Get this. A couple of nights ago I lit one of these just before a
guy came to my apartment to study, and now he’s, like, my boyfriend. The wax melts into massage oil!”

“No way!” The girls started to grab for candles.

Padma caught Peggy’s eye and grinned, just as the phone began to ring. Peggy nodded—
Don’t stop doing what you’re doing
—and reached for the handset.

“I’m looking for Peggy Adams,” said the man on the line.

The teenager Courtney placed her candle on the counter. Peggy clutched the phone in one hand and started to ring up the purchase.
“This is Peggy,” she spoke into the receiver.

“This is Luke.”

Another sales rep. Peggy held the receiver against her shoulder. “Enjoy your candle.” She gave the girl her receipt.

“Are you there?” the man asked.

The girl with the Chanel sunglasses put three candles on the counter.

“You’re calling from where?” Peggy understood the man on the phone was just doing his job, but really, there were too many
reps asking for their money. There was a new chain of stores in the Midwest, Bath, that was having success by showcasing hundreds
of bath-and-body lines in huge, airy spaces, but Peggy and Bex had to make do with keeping their shop small and praying the
rent stayed low enough to keep them in business.

“I’m from New Nineveh. But we—”

“The thing is, we already carry a biblical line that’s doing well for us.”

The Chanel girl waved an American Express card from chipped-burgundy-polished fingertips. “I’d like each of these candles
gift-wrapped individually.”