The Men I Didn't Marry (24 page)

“Don’t read too much into some flour and sugar,” I say.

“I won’t. But it’s good.” He takes a bite of the topping. “And having you here is the real icing on the cake.”

I smile despite myself. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be charming.”

“It comes naturally.”

We push into the store and are immediately greeted by a blast of loud music and a male model wearing low-slung jeans and a big grin. His bare chest is bronzed and buff and his perfect pecs glisten.

“Welcome to Abercrombie!” he says. “What can I show you?”

“A shirt,” I say, half-joking. I look around and there are stacks of them everywhere, but apparently none were good enough for this guy. How smart is it for a retailer selling tops to send the message that you’re sexier without one?

Bill and I head onto the crowded main floor and immediately raise the average customer age by about ten years. Or maybe twenty. Throngs of teenagers storm past us, searching for the perfect pair of jeans with an intensity they should be saving for applying to college. But the qualifying exam here is much harder.

“What’s the difference between stonewashed, whiskered, and antique finish?” Bill asks, looking at the tags.

“The bigger question is where you want the rips,” I say, pointing to a display. “A hole at the knee? A rip at the thigh? Or some shredding at the butt?”

“All of the above,” he says. “Nothing’s too good for Emily. In fact, let’s forget the jeans and just buy the holes.”

“Genius. It worked for Dunkin’ Donuts,” I tell him.

Bill laughs. “Too complicated to buy Emily jeans, right?”

“Right,” I say. “How about a sweater? That’s safe.”

“What?” he asks, trying to hear me over the music, which seems to have gotten louder now that 50 Cent is playing.

“A sweater,” I say, practically screaming as I compete with the beat of the heavy bass. It occurs to me that neither Abercrombie nor Fitch really wants me shopping in their store. If they did, they’d be piping in Carly Simon, about thirty decibels lower.

But since we’ve come all the way down here, I grab a hot-pink argyle sweater and a corduroy blazer, both of which Bill immediately approves. Of course, I could get him to approve anything right now. For anybody over twenty-five, shopping at this store is practically torture. Now that the government has closed down Guantánamo, Homeland Security might want to conduct their interrogations at Abercrombie. After an hour facing a wall of cargo pants available in seven different shades of khaki, any terrorist would break down and confess.

After we’ve paid, Bill picks up a navy blue T-shirt with a moose insignia—the last remnants of the days when Abercrombie was a hunting store. Not that I think an alligator is more elegant, but why do teens suddenly want to run around with antlers on their chests? Give me the Ralph Lauren polo player any day.

“Do you really want that shirt?” I ask Bill.

“I really do,” he says, going back to the register.

But when we get to the front of the store, he hands the package to the bare-chested male model.

“It’s January. Put something on. You could catch a cold,” Bill tells him.

The model looks stunned and I burst out laughing. Bill takes my hand and pulls me out of the store.

“A cold’s the least of what he could catch,” I say.

Since Abercrombie was my idea, Bill gets the next choice. He walks by J. Crew, Guess, and Coach and leads me over the cobblestone street toward Brookstone, the fancy gadget store selling everything from rotating shower heads to radar detectors. Bill is in male shopping heaven, immediately captivated by four different versions of a digital travel clock.

“Look at this one. You can get the time in seven zones, the local humidity, and the barometric pressure.”

I pick up the square black object with its blinking electronic dial. “Ah, yes, the perfect choice for a young woman,” I tell him.

He puts it back down. “That’s a no, huh?”

“Huh,” I confirm.

“So I don’t always know what women want,” Bill says with a shrug. “What man does?”

I sit down on one of the black leather chairs on the selling floor and glance at the price tag: four thousand bucks. For that much money, this chair better sing and dance. I play around with some buttons on the side, and suddenly the chair is murmuring sweet nothings and gently caressing my hips.

“What a woman wants is a man as good as this chair,” I tell Bill as I lean my head back into the headrest with its hidden speakers and feel the lumbar support getting toasty warm, its vibrations soothingly massaging my back.

“Is that what your boyfriend does?” Bill asks.

“What? I don’t have a boyfriend. Where’d you hear that?”

“I ran into your friend Steff’s husband in the city. Richard and Steff aren’t talking but at least they’re gossiping. He told me that you told Steff about some young stud you’ve been shacking up with.”

“I didn’t say anything like that,” I protest, impressed at how my one little mention snowballed. If I let the rumor mill keep grinding, maybe by tomorrow everyone will know that I’m marrying Jake Gyllenhaal, if only they could pronounce his name.

“So what’s the real story?” asks Bill.

I squirm in the chair. A little hard to have a serious conversation with your ex-husband about your ex-boyfriend when you’re nestled into a chair that’s fighting for your attention.

“I visited an old boyfriend and then he visited me, but now we’re just friends.”

“You slept with him?” asks Bill, sounding a little like Steff.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m trying to figure out if this makes us even.”

Annoyed, I turn the massage dial to “high” and the chair gets as agitated as I am. It’s worth every penny to find an inanimate object that can express your innermost feelings.

“We’re not even,” I say. “You’re the one who walked out, ran off with some girl, behaved like a jerk.”

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” Bill says cavalierly.

“That’s the only way to look at it. We’ll never be even.”

Bill gets up and wanders over to the “Auto Care” section. I watch him from across the store, not sure what I’m feeling. If I could give second chances to all my former boyfriends, doesn’t my almost-former husband deserve one, too?

“Come here,” he calls to me, motioning me to join him. “I don’t think you should be driving around alone without a Talking Tire Gauge. I’ll buy it for you.”

I look at the tool. A typically sweet Bill present—and only fifteen bucks. High-end for him.

“It displays and speaks the tire pressure up to 150 pounds per square inch,” he says. “Underinflation is a tire’s number-one enemy.”

“Then we have to fight it,” I laugh. For a moment, I let myself feel close to Bill, and my spirits begin rising.

But not too high. Bill’s cell phone rings and he glances at the number and grins. Flipping open the phone, he doesn’t even turn his back to me as he gushes into the receiver.

“Hi, gorgeous. Great night, wasn’t it?” he says lustily, obviously to some woman. He pauses as she says something, then replies, “Of course you’re not interrupting anything, doll face. I’m just here all by myself. Nobody I’d rather talk to than you.” He winks at me then struts away to continue his conversation.

I stare after him. How could I have allowed myself even forty-five seconds of feeling good about my deceiving ex-husband? I was right when I told Steff I could never trust him. Bill’s a jackass, but it’s really myself I’m annoyed with. By the time he comes back, I’m fuming.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Nobody special. Just some woman I’m dating,” he says dismissively.

“Bill, let me ask you something. What was that whole little game of yours on New Year’s Eve? Asking me to go out on a date, bringing me Dr Pepper. The whole bullshit about your wanting to move back.”

“It was a definite possibility, but you didn’t seem too interested.”

“I’ve got good judgment, don’t I?”

“I don’t understand it, Hallie. We were married for years. I like you a lot. Why do you get so threatened just because I’m going out with other women?”

Maybe if I weren’t so angry, I could laugh at what a self-serving moron he is. But at the moment, all I can think to do is toss down the present he wanted to buy and head out of the store. I don’t need his stupid tire gauge. My number-one enemy isn’t underinflation—it’s over-expectations.

The next afternoon, it’s my turn to entertain the Chaddick pack and I’m glad for the diversion. They start to arrive promptly at four, and Bellini, more used to being fashionably late in Manhattan than anally on time in the suburbs, strolls in twenty minutes later.

“This is such a great idea,” says Amanda. “A Sunday afternoon get-together. So decadent.”

Bellini looks around, trying to figure out what could be decadent in a room of six properly dressed women. If she’s expecting a male stripper, I better warn her that the most shocking thing she’ll see today is a burnt quiche.

“I never leave the twins on a Sunday. It’s always family day,” says Amanda, explaining why this gathering seems so illicit. “But I’m glad to get a break from the noise.”

“And I’m glad to get a break from the quiet,” the recently separated Steff says mournfully.

“Poor you,” says Rosalie sympathetically. “I can’t believe Richard left.”

“Or that Bill left,” adds Amanda.

“Every time we get together there’s one less husband to worry about,” says Darlie cheerfully. “It’s like an Agatha Christie novel—
And
Then There Were None
.”

Rosalie looks at me hopefully. “Any chance . . . ?”

“No,” I say resolutely. “You can try and try to hold on to old things but at some point you have to clean the closets.”

I stop there, not wanting to get into a lengthy explanation of what happened yesterday—how I wanted to see Bill, knew it was a bad idea, thought I owed it to both of us to try, and then discovered all over again why it wouldn’t work. I can’t let Bill trample my heart again. The world doesn’t have an unlimited supply of double-stuff Oreos.

“Clean the closets,” I say, getting myself back on track. “Get rid of what doesn’t work anymore and try not to regret it.”

“You always regret it a little,” says Bellini, jumping in to help me out. “But whether it’s a polyester wrap dress or a cheating man, you have to move on. And that’s what we’re doing today, right? At least with the wrap dresses.”

“And I’m so excited!” says Rosalie clapping her hands, completely missing any of the poignant overtones of the conversation. “Wasn’t it clever of Hallie to invite us?”

We all troop into the dining room, where the women had deposited their shopping bags on the way in. I’d invited them each to bring over at least one item of clothing they’d bought and never worn.

“Here are the rules,” I say. “Everybody has that Big Mistake hanging in her closet with the price tag still attached. With luck, somebody else here will think it’s a Big Find. If not, we send it off to charity, and you never have to think about it again.”

“I love this idea of Swap & Talk,” says Amanda.

Bellini gives a little laugh. “When I told Hallie about this I said it was called a Switch & Bitch.”

“This is the suburbs,” I chide her. “We don’t bitch.”

“I bitch, and under the right circumstances, I might be available to switch,” says Darlie provocatively.

“That’s a different kind of party, dear,” says Bellini, patting Darlie’s shoulder. “And it went out of style in the seventies.”

Jennifer titters. “Well, speaking of going out of style, let me show you what I found.”

She pulls out an orange velvet blazer with a sequined floppy flower sewn onto the lapel, and we’re off. The Big Mistakes—most of the women have brought several—spill out of the bags. Bellini takes Jennifer’s blazer, saying she could wear it to a club in the East Village. My boxy pleated suit finds no takers, even though it still has the tags on, because it makes everybody’s hips look big. We vote to send it to Teri Hatcher along with a chocolate triple layer cake. One way or another, Teri’d look better with a few pounds on her.

The problem with the slinky cocktail dress Bellini’s brought isn’t that it makes her look too big. Rather, she bought the dress too small.

“I found it at Roberto Cavalli right after I’d been on a grapefruit and cucumber diet for two weeks,” Bellini says, holding up the skinny mini. “Even then it barely fit, but I always figured it would someday. I’ve held on to it for two years for inspiration. But I had my real inspiration this morning when I realized screw this. Who needs to be that thin, anyway?”

We all laugh in agreement and decide to put it in the Teri Hatcher care package.

Amanda then shows us her big bargain, which was irresistible at the time. “It’s Moschino, marked down to thirty dollars from six hundred,” she says, displaying a white vinyl miniskirt with metal grommets at the hem. “But who’d ever wear something like this?”

“Heather Locklear. Anna Nicole Smith. A well-dressed hooker on Forty-second Street. The patrons at Lucky Changs,” suggests Bellini.

“And me,” says Darlie, snatching it from Amanda’s hand and obviously thinking she’s putting herself in good sartorial company. I don’t tell her that Lucky Changs is a famous downtown transvestite club.

“How about you, Steff? What’s your Big Mistake?” I ask.

“Buying this teddy and thinking Richard would care,” she says tossing a beautiful creamy silk Natori onto the table. Her eyes glisten with tears and she stares at the lacy confection. “Nobody will ever get to see it now. One of you might as well take it.”

“I will,” says Darlie, grabbing again. She’s like a vacuum cleaner, sucking up everything she can find.

“No, you won’t,” says Amanda snapping it out of her hand. A catfight over Natori? I start to step in and explain you can get them on sale at Bloomingdale’s, but Amanda has a different agenda.

“You keep the teddy, Steff,” Amanda says firmly, giving it back to her. “Somebody will get to see it. There’ll be another guy. And then you’ll thank me.”