The Sleeping Beauty Proposal (5 page)

Nope. None fits Hugh's type. Except for Isabel. I'll have to keep an eye on her, the hot-blooded Spaniard.

Speaking of hot-blooded Spaniards, here comes Jorge the cat staggering through the doorway in his blind pursuit of a sun patch and leftovers. He collapses on my carpet of roses and green vines, exhausted from having hiked all of five feet, and looks up at me with the equivalent of feline disgust.

My alarm clock claims it's seven thirty, though as it is a largely untrustworthy piece of junk, that could mean anywhere from seven twenty to seven forty. Still, enough time to make it to work and be reasonably efficient. I just need a cup of coffee, a shower, and a jiffy blood transfusion.

Oh, wait! It's not Monday. It's Sunday. Relief. I have one full day to recover and regroup. I could go back to sleep, but Jorge is having none of it. He is meowing relentlessly and won't let me rest until I've fed him and shot him up with insulin. (It's true. Jorge gets enough Humulin to treat a three-hundred-pound Snickers freak.)

Slowly, I ease myself out of bed, my head throbbing as I squeeze by the bureau. Gee. That brings back memories. Whenever Hugh bumped his knee on that damned bureau, he'd vow to get me out of this tiny apartment.

"You're a grown woman, Genie,” he'd say. "The era of living like a college student is over. You need to get yourself a decent space.”

No. Stop! I cannot spend my life like this, delving into nostalgia at the least little memory. I must move forward. Therefore, I march to the kitchen, grab a cupful of diabetic-maintenance cat food, and dump it in Jorge's bowl.

“You're up!”

Patty, her hair sticking out in scary angles and with dark black smudges of mascara under her eyes, is yawning and holding a gigantic plant tied up in a white bow.

“Don't hate me because I'm beautiful,” she says, handing me the plant. “Who knew that FTD delivered at seven on a Sunday morning?”

My pathetic reaction is to hope that Hugh has sent the plant with a card (“It was all a joke. Of course I love you, you sexy vixen, you!”) and a British Airways ticket to London. Jumping up, I grab the flowers and rip open the envelope while Patty collapses at the kitchen table.

Holy crap! I grip the counter for support as my entire body turns to petrified wood. I am both disappointed (that it is not a ticket to London) and terrified (that Aunt Jean has found out I am lying).

But how? I mean, I knew she did the Sunday crossword puzzles in pen and could guess all the answers on
Jeopardy!,
but I never figured she was this smart. Smart enough to smell a scam all the way in Jersey? I feel dizzy, as if I'm about to pass out.

Patty lifts her head from the table. She is wearing nothing but my old Supertramp T-shirt. “What's wrong?”

“Aunt Jean knows Hugh didn't propose to me.”

“She does not.”

“Read for yourself.” I toss it to her so she can read for herself.

While she decodes Aunt Jean's threat, I try to determine how quickly I can pack up and head west. Of course, I'll need cash and an alias. How about Penelope Truehart? And then there will be Jorge. It'll be a drag to carry around his fat ass in a cat caravan, begging for Humulin and clean needles along the way. Motels won't look kindly on lending out rooms to a drug-dependent cat.

Patty is smiling. “Aww, that's sweet.”

“Sweet?”

“Sure. It's an old expression. You know, now that Hugh's proposed to you, you're supposed to be over the moon with joy and the days only get happier.You are over the moon with joy, aren't you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, you better start pretending, because brides-to-be are supposed to be over the moon with joy.”

This raises a serious question. How can I pull off this charade if I cannot even fake being over the moon with joy in my own kitchen?

The coffeemaker orgasms and I pour us two cups, load both with milk and sugar, and head to the living-room side of my apartment. Patty follows me, along with Jorge, in case there might be food.

My apartment is in a brick walk-up designed for two units, divided into four. This means my kitchen is half its normal size and so is the bathroom. (My “back neighbor,” as I call her, got the bathtub. I got a kitchen sink with a window.) Half of the original living room was turned into my bedroom, as was a walk-in closet where Patty slept last night.The dining room does double duty as a TV room and a place to eat. It's like living in the Soviet Union circa 1972.

Patty and I sit on the couch and look at Aunt Jean's plant.

"I went too far last night,” I say. "With my mother.”

“No, you didn't. Except for that part about claiming Hugh was related to Princess Diana.That might have been a bit much.”

“I never claimed he was related. Mom asked and I said it was a possibility.”

“You shouldn't encourage her. It's dishonest.”

I give her a look.

“All I'm saying is you better disabuse your mother of that erroneous family trivia as I do not think the royal family is going to appreciate a call from Nancy Michaels of Belmont, Massachusetts, suggesting that they lend you Diana's sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring ‘for the nonce.' ”

That reminds me. “What am I going to do about a ring? People won't believe I'm engaged unless I'm wearing one.”

I inspect my left hand with its inelegant short nails. I bet Hugh's fiancée has long fingers and a French manicure that perfectly sets off her fabulous diamond.

Gack! I hadn't thought about that before, them choosing the ring. Please, God, don't let it be Tiffany. Immediately a vision of an Audrey Hepburn look-alike springs to mind. She is holding a robin's egg blue box and smiling up at Hugh. There is a gap between her teeth, a sign that she's a sexual dynamo like Lauren Hutton. Or the Wife of Bath.

Patty takes my hand in hers. Unlike me, she has always kept her nails long and painted in a tasteful pale pink. “You could splurge for once and buy yourself a diamond. I've often thought of doing that. Right-hand rings they call them, to celebrate being single.You know, your left hand's for love.Your right hand's for ... I forget.”

“Delivering an uppercut?”

“That's it.”

I try to picture a diamond ring on either hand.“I dunno. Buying yourself an engagement ring is so Britney Spears.”

“Hey. K-Fed wasn't going to step up to the plate.Then again, K-Fed did strike out looking.”

There is pounding on the steps outside my door and a rapid knocking.

“I'm gonna clobber that FTD man,” Patty says as I shuffle to answer.

Sure enough, more foliage. Only this time the flowers are being delivered by Todd, my older brother, a six-foot-three giant in running shorts and a sweat-soaked T-shirt. He could have changed after his run (he lives right around the corner), but he probably saw Patty's Porsche and decided to stop by my apartment to flex something.That's the way it is with him.

Todd's real name is Thaddeus. My real name is Eugenia and our baby sister's name is Lucinda. Todd, Genie, and Lucy. Thaddeus, Eugenia, and Lucinda. My parents, apparently, had no clue the nineteenth century had ended.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” Todd says dryly, producing the bouquet of flowers. “Don't think this means you won the bet, Sister Eugenia.”

In addition to the flowers, he is carrying something even better—a white box with its trademark owl. Gesine's pastry. I
love
Gesine's.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he taunts, holding the box out of my reach. “No sticky bun for you, not if you want to fit into your slinky wedding dress this September.”

“September?”

“Yeah,” says Patty from the couch. "Remember? Your mother picked your date. September fifteenth. It's Grammy Michaels's anniversary or something.”

“But that's three months away!”

Patty shrugs and says, “What do you care?”

Oh, right. I keep forgetting that I'm not really getting married.

"Long night?” Todd walks in and nods to Patty's legs, bare and tan and smooth.

“Kind of.”

“Most women I know get dressed after their one-night stands.”

“Most women you know are
paid
for their one-night stands.”

"I give that a C minus, but it'll do.” He holds open the box for her, displaying two gooey cinnamon rolls. “Care to ingest two thousand calories?”

“Don't mind if I do.” Patty, who has never counted a calorie, helps herself.

“You know, eat that and you're more than halfway to gaining yet another pound.”

Patty gives him a dirty look. “Tell you what. I'll worry about my weight and you worry about when knuckle dragging's going to be back in fashion.”

If I have any wish in the world (aside from being invited to spend a weekend with George Clooney on Lake Como), it's that my best friend and my brother would reach common ground. When they're together, all they do is snipe, snipe, snipe.

Personally, I blame Todd's insecurity. He's intimidated by Patty being a lawyer while he works in construction. Not that there's anything wrong with working in construction.There's not. It's just the way Todd was raised.

In my father's opinion, you're not
really
a manly income provider unless you're spending most of your life on the fifteenth floor of the Hancock building pushing paper around under fluorescent lights. I guess ripping out walls and building new ones is emasculating in the playbook of Donald Howard Michaels III.

The other theory has to do with Mom. She forever refers to Patty as “that horrid” Patty Pugliese. There is nothing about Patty my mother likes. She doesn't like that Patty's a lawyer who has made a career out of suing white-collar criminals, especially bankers like my father. She doesn't like that Patty knows what to do with an item you can buy online called the Fuzzy Teaser. She doesn't like that Patty's Irish and Sicilian and that half her relatives are under some sort of federal protection.

But mostly my mother doesn't like that Patty's so loud.

“You bring coffee for us?” Patty shouts. “Because your sister's stuff is shit.”

Todd takes a sip from his own white paper cup and closes his eyes in exaggerated ecstasy. “Mmm. Mocha caffe latte.
Delicioso
. Too bad you can't have any.”

“Be a hunk and get me one, would you?”

He shakes his head. “I know you're used to men waiting on you, darlin', but I'm not your errand boy.”

“All in good time, my pretty. All in good time.”

I take in the two of them munching on their cinnamon rolls and licking their fingers, both oblivious to the anxiety tearing at my soul, to my newfound failing as a sexual washout. Both oblivious to the fact that all they've left me are crumbs and cinnamon goo.

Snatching up the empty box, I shove it into the garbage loudly so they'll feel guilty, though they don't. “How'd you hear about Hugh's proposal so soon, anyway?”

“How could I not? Mom called on my cell when I was out last night to give me the lowdown and then Lucy called to talk about what Mom talked about.” Todd wipes off his hands and swigs more coffee. “Trust me.There's nothing I don't know.”

Patty says, "Wanna bet?”

Ever so slightly, I shake my head at her. Under no circumstances must Todd know I am lying. To do so would be to hand him an easy victory, one that could cost me beaucoup bucks.

The “Will Hugh Marry Genie” wager began years ago, the day after I'd carefully arranged a casual meeting with Todd at the Inman Square club Coco Joe's. He was there to hear my friend Steve Taylor play in his very loud, very bad “funkabilly” band called the Wily Coyotes, and Hugh and I were next door to sample some cuisine de Portugal. Hugh's not exactly a club type, but I managed to twist his arm with the bribe that Coco Joe's had lots of local color when really all it had of interest was my brother. (No offense to Steve.)

Here was my private hope: that Todd might find Hugh inspiring and that Hugh would find Todd interesting and that, together, we'd be the bestest of friends. I mean, even though my brother lives in the town where he grew up, he has led a fascinating life. He went to Harvard and then dropped out to see the world, traveling for two years in Asia, hiking mountains in Nepal, and even volunteering at Mother Teresa's orphanage in Calcutta (where he picked white maggots out of a villager's wound for days. Seriously).

And then there's the interesting side note that for a while there Todd was a practicing Sikh, which meant he believed we all have within us a spark that is covered by layers of greed and want and ego that need to be peeled away so that we can, finally, merge with the divine. Kind of like dermabrasion for the soul. Surely, Hugh would find that intriguing, no?

No.

Forget any talk of Sikhism or Mother Teresa; the men couldn't get past their differences in fashion taste.Todd wore a flannel shirt and jeans. Hugh wore khakis and a white, pressed, pinpoint oxford-cloth shirt.Todd pronounced Steve's band “kick-ass.” Hugh opined that the Wily Coyotes needed its “ass kicked.” Hugh worried out loud about hearing damage, to which Todd, an inveterate concertgoer, kept asking, “What?”

At the bar, I tried to explain to Todd that he needed to like Hugh because I was pretty sure he was “the one.”

Todd was incredulous. “That wimp? Get out. There's not a genuine bone in that guy's body. Listen to his accent.Totally bogus. It's John Cleese clapping coconuts together and you know it.”