The Lonely Hearts Club (8 page)

“I belong at Dominick’s?” I say as I take my seat.

“With your
family
,” she says, dragging the word “family” out to its full three syllables as if she is the matriarch of some soap opera clan.

“Some wine, Pumpkin?” my dad asks me, already pouring the wine into my glass. I stifle the urge to run up to the bar and order myself a vodka tonic, and instead gracefully accept the glass of wine my father has poured for me.

I smile back and wonder why we’re gathered here today. Is my father sick? Is that why my parents have gathered all of us here? Is that why he’s ordering his favorite wine? Maybe he’s
just found out that he’s deathly ill and we’re supposed to be making him comfortable and letting him do what he wants in his final moments.

But my dad’s a well-known doctor who also teaches medicine. The chances of him not knowing that he was deathly ill are pretty slim to none.

Is my mother divorcing my father? She was really mad at him that other morning when we were on the phone. I mean, she’s always that mad at him, threatening to divorce him, but this time she may really mean it. It would be so like her to make some big huge announcement about it. To gather her whole family around her to tell us the news.

“Sooooo,” Barbie announces after we’ve ordered and all begun our first glasses of wine, “we have some news to share.” It was Barbie who called this family dinner. Which is odd, considering she’s not even part of this family. She’s just Andrew’s girlfriend. And a paid employee of my father.

I knew there had to be some reason I was forced to come out to Long Island for dinner on a Thursday. I tried to cancel this morning, using my breakup with Jesse as an excuse, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. First of all, she never really liked Jesse that much. She always envisioned me ending up with a smart, handsome Jewish doctor like she had, or at the very least, a rich, savvy Jewish businessman (which, actually, she had done, too). Second of all, she seems to have this crazy notion that spending time with my family will actually make me feel better about my life.

“News?” my mother asks coyly. I can’t tell whether or not she knows what Barbie is about to say.

“Yes, we do,” Andrew says, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead and taking a swig of wine.

“Excuse me,” my father says to a passing waiter, “could I get a refill on my water?”

“Oh, me too, please,” I say.

My mother clears her throat loudly.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“We had a wonderful time at the spa last weekend,” Barbie says, slowly.

“Yes, we did,” Andrew says.

“That’s your news?” my father says. “Mazel tov.”

“Marty!” my mother says, throwing a dirty look his way.

“Nooooo,” Barbie says, smiling. She looks at Andrew and he looks back at her. They continue looking at each other and then start whispering. “You tell them,” “No,
you
tell them!” to each other. They do this a couple of times until Barbie finally turns back to face my parents and me.

“We’re getting married!” she squeals, throwing her left hand on the table to show us her engagement ring.

We all jump up and start hugging Barbie and Andrew. Andrew is surprisingly calm in the wake of this announcement, sort of like Johnny Cash before he walked into Folsom Prison to perform.

“I’m so happy for you, Andrew,” I say on autopilot, before I can even decide if it’s true.

“Thanks, Jo-Jo,” he says. And I actually
am
very happy for my brother, despite the fact that my heart was recently crushed into a million pieces. But what’s really fueling my cry of “mazel tov” is the fact that my mother will now have this wedding to plan, and she won’t be bothering me any more about my birthday. After all, wedding trumps a non-milestone birthday any day.

“When we got to the spa, we just knew,” Barbie gushes. “We just knew that we wanted to spend our whole lives together! We came home, looked for rings on Monday and Tuesday, and then he popped the question last night!”

“How romantic,” my father says. I shake my head, too, and say, “So romantic.”

“This calls for a toast,” my mother says, and calls over a waiter to order a bottle of champagne.

“Wanna try it on?” Barbie asks me.

I do not want to try her ring on.

But she’s so excited about the prospect of my wanting to try her ring on that I don’t have the heart to say no. I put it on, and my mother compliments Andrew on picking out such a beautiful ring. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her wink at him as she says this and I immediately know that my mother was the one who actually picked it out.

“It’s gorgeous,” I say, half to my mother, half to Barbie. I give it back to Barbie and she instructs me to put it on the table first and not hand it to her directly—apparently, superstition states that if I hand it immediately back to her without setting it down on the table first, I will be an old maid. Barbie is the sort of girl who worries about such things.

“Jo,” Barbie says, suddenly very serious, as she puts her ring back on her ring finger, “will you do me the honor of being one of my bridesmaids?”

A bridesmaid? Haven’t I been punished enough lately? First, I lose my job. No, first,
my father fires me
. And then he takes my car away. Which is really worse than losing the job, if you think about it. Then the love of my life
leaves
me. In cold blood, no less. And now this. I will have to be a Barbie bridesmaid. No doubt the dresses will be bubble-gum pink and will fit all of
her Barbie doll friends and family perfectly. I, with my crazy black hair and most un-Barbie-doll-like figure, will look more like one of those troll dolls than an actual bridesmaid.

And I can’t even complain to my mother about all of this. I look up at her and can see in her face she’s infuriated that Barbie has asked me to be a bridesmaid and not the maid of honor. Even though Barbie has two Barbie doll sisters of her own.

“I would love to,” I say, and Barbie squeals and begins hugging the life force right out of me. She then starts bouncing as she’s hugging me and saying, “I’m so happy! This is perfect!”

I immediately feel another pimple coming on.

10 - How Soon Is Now?

Bad things happen in threes, so that’s how I know my gig will go well tonight. I’ve already used up my set of three—getting fired by my dad, getting dumped by my boyfriend, and then getting enlisted in a Barbie wedding party—so nothing bad can happen to me now. I did also get my car taken away, but that should be collapsed into the getting fired thing, right? So I’m technically still at three. But if the car counts separately, then being put in the Barbie bridal party starts my next suite of three.

This show is doomed.

“You’re on in five,” the manager says to me as he rushes by to get up to the sound booth.

I’m backstage at The Bitter End, New York City’s self-proclaimed oldest rock club, for a gig featuring three other singer-songwriters. It’s my favorite venue to play—small and intimate, it has the feeling of being in your living room playing for some friends. The manager here loves me, so tonight, as usual, I’m closing out the show.

I shake off the feeling that something bad is about to happen (two more bad things, to be specific) and listen to the singer-songwriter on stage. He’s a guy I’ve seen perform before who does his whole set behind the piano, à la Billy Joel. He’s singing a song about America and pounding away on his piano like he’s Liberace.

“I hate this guy,” Chloe says, walking over to me backstage and pointing at America guy. Backstage at The Bitter End is actually just the back of the club off the stage, so anyone can come back there.

“He’s not bad,” I say, putting down my guitar and really listening to America guy for a second. “He’s very patriotic.”

“He sucks,” she says as he starts wrapping up his set.

“Thanks for coming out, guys,” he says, getting up from his piano.

The stage is set up with the huge baby grand toward the back of the stage and a single stool at the front. The manager comes down from the sound booth and asks me if I want the stage changed at all, but I tell him no. It’s just me and my guitar tonight, no accompaniment, so I don’t need much. He goes out the back door to light a cigarette and the crisp winter air floats into the club.

I walk out on stage and sit down on the stool.

“Hi, I’m Jo Waldman,” I say. “Thanks for coming out on such a cold night. The first song in my set tonight is a song I wrote recently. I hope that you like it.”

My mother and father cheer from the front table, just underneath my feet, even though I’ve told them countless times that it distracts me when people I know are in the front row. (“We’re not people
you know
,” my mother says. “
We
are your parents.”) I can hear Chloe screaming my name from backstage as I start to play.

Night in, night out, I sit and wait for you

I’m here alone, it’s all that I can I do

You’ve got my mind, my heart and my soul

All this time, I still can’t let you go

When will tomorrow be?

I do the only thing that I know how

I pray for you to come back to me somehow

Day turns to night

And winter comes

Without your love

I’m all alone

When will tomorrow be?

Another day, another thought of you

It’s been a year since I’ve seen your eyes of blue

You’ve done something that can’t be undone

Now I can only ask, when will tomorrow come?

I do the only thing that I know how

I pray for you to come back to me somehow

When will tomorrow be?

“Thank you,” I say as the crowd begins to applaud. Since I still use the mailing list from my Lonely Hearts Club Band Web site, I recognize a few of the faces out in the crowd. I look
offstage to see why Chloe isn’t cheering for me, and I see that she has, rather quickly, changed her opinion of America guy. Not only does she no longer hate America guy, but she’s now making out with him against the wall.

With a laugh, I start in on the next song in my set. Looking out into the crowd at the faces of people who support me and my music—people who consider themselves my fans—I can’t help but think that my run of bad luck is over. Nothing else is going to happen to me; I’m not starting in on a new suite of three. I may have been having a rough time of it lately, but my luck is still better than most people’s, and it’s time that I stop feeling sorry for myself. As I see a girl in the back of the room mouthing the words to a song that I wrote, even though I’m singing a sad song, I can’t help but smile.

“Great job,” my mother says, hugging me before I’m even fully off the stage. “You were the best out of everyone.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say.

“You were great, Pumpkin,” my dad says. “Do you need a ride back to the loft?”

I take a look backstage, and through the darkness, see that Chloe is still entangled with America guy. “I think I’ll stay and have a drink,” I say. “Get home safe.”

I walk my parents to the front door of the club and then make a beeline straight to the bar.

“Nice set,” a guy who’d been sitting in the back of the club says to me as I walk toward the bar. I don’t recognize him from any of my old gigs. He’s wearing a baseball cap slung so low on his head that I can barely see his eyes.

“Thanks,” I say, slinging my guitar over my shoulder.

“You’re very welcome,” he says, following me to the bar as I order myself a vodka tonic, my post-show drink of choice.

“Anything for your friend, Jo?” the bartender asks me.

“He’s not my friend.”

“I’d like to be your friend,” he says. “Alan Golden.” As he sticks out his hand for me to shake, I recognize his name from somewhere, but can’t place him. “And this drink’s on me.” Drinks on him? I like Alan Golden already.

“Thank you, Alan Golden,” I say and shake his hand.

“I’m a music manager,” he explains, and I take a seat at the bar to listen. “I love your song lyrics. They’re amazing.”