Marrying Up (14 page)

“Lunch is on me.”

She grabs for the bill. “No way—you’re unemployed. Let me get it.”

“I’ll be rolling in it soon enough, my friend.”

“Oh yeah? And how’s that? You find a job? Sell your book?”

We haven’t talked about it since the flight home from Florida. Presumably, George is happy to pretend it never happened, that she hadn’t agreed—or at least sort of agreed—to leave town with me in search of greener pastures. But I can’t let it go. It is potentially the best idea I’ve ever had.

I brace myself and launch into the conversation I’ve been practicing in my head for the past week. “No, silly—I’m going to marry rich! My parents married for love, or so I thought…and well, whatever it was,
that
didn’t work out so well. So I might as well be practical about the whole thing.”

George rolls her eyes. “Not this again.”

“There’s nothing for me here but an empty apartment and
in a month or two, being forced to take some job I really don’t want. I’ve got nothing to lose, so why stay?”

She sighs dramatically and picks at what remains of my fries as I continue.

“…and what better place to find a nice, rich,
young
guy than San Francisco? I tell ya—all those delicious dot-com millionaires are out there, George, just waiting to be plucked out of Silicon Valley. Can you see it? Can you? They’re wealthy, lonely, sexy…”

“And geeky!” she interrupts. “I thought you were kidding about all that San Francisco stuff.”

I exhale slowly. Time is running out, and I’ve been putting off telling her for too long.

“I leave in ten days.”

George drops her fork.

“What?”

“I bought a one-way ticket.”

Her eyes widen with panic and disbelief. “No you didn’t.”

“The moving company’s booked. And I’ve sold my car.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I found an apartment online. It looks pretty great, actually.”

She pushes my plate away in disgust. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Don’t
leave
me, Holly,
please!
You have to cancel your ticket!”

“You know I can’t do that!” I’m far too superstitious to cancel travel plans. Once you’re booked, you’re booked. (Unless, of course, you get That Feeling when you’re boarding the plane, something I was actually hoping
wouldn’t
happen for a change.) “But don’t worry—I made sure to get us a place with two rooms. I would never leave you behind, G! You’re coming, too!”

“No! No, I can’t!” she says, pressing the corners of her eyes to try and stop the tears.

“Yes, you can!
We
can. We can try it for a while. Nobody’s
saying we can’t come home if we don’t like it. Think of it as an adventure—an amazing, crazy adventure you’ll remember for the rest of your life….”

“No, you don’t understand. I have no money…and my moms will
never
let me go…”

“Don’t worry about money. My dad’s going to help us out for a bit, just until we get set up.”

“He said that?” she sniffs.

“Uh-huh.”

“He thinks I’m going? And he doesn’t mind?”

“Of course not! He loves you. You’re part of my family.” I squeeze her hand. My dad knows how much it means to me to have George along, and he’s more than willing to help out for as long as we need it. “He’s going to float me for a while, anyway, whether you come or not, so there’s really no reason for you to feel bad about it.”

“But…” She hesitates. “But…can he afford it?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” If there’s any chance of convincing her, I know I have to be firm on this point. “My mom’s been so totally cheap for the both of them their whole lives. And now that she’s taking her little hiatus, I think he’s feeling the need to loosen the purse strings a little, you know?”

Before I agreed to accept his offer, my dad had shared the details of their financial situation. It turns out my parents have a nice little nest egg socked away, a respectable 401(k) and two really good pension plans, not to mention social security and, apparently, a decent inheritance from my father’s parents. I had no idea they were so comfortable, but I suppose I should have expected it—my mom’s a pretty good bookkeeper, after all, and I knew my dad would rather die than ever be a burden on his children. “All any decent father wants is to be able to help his kids,” he’d said. “Make things as easy for them as possible. And you didn’t have it easy, Holly. Your brothers put you through a lot. I can see that now, and
I’m sorry I didn’t do more to get a handle on them.” And here all these years I’d thought he was just oblivious.

George nods. “I can understand that.”

“He’s
really
happy to do it, George. And he completely offered, by the way. I didn’t ask. In fact, I already had my ticket booked when he suggested it.”

“Yeah?”

“Honest to God.”

“You didn’t tell him about The Plan, did you?”

I shake my head. “It’s
our
plan.”

She turns to stare out the window just as a woman across the street slips on the ice and falls. Two men walk by before a third stops to help her up. Silently, George breathes out onto the cold glass, fogging it up. With her index finger, she traces the letters
O.K.

A wave of relief washes over me and I jump up to hug her from across the table. “You won’t regret this! I promise!”

“But we’ll pay your dad back once we get jobs, right?”

“We could think of it as a long-term loan, if that makes you feel better.”

“It does.”

“Then we’ll pay him back as soon as we can.”

“Maybe my moms could help, too,” she suggests.

“You could always ask…”

But George’s mothers won’t help.

Quite the opposite, in fact. They’ve screwed things up entirely.

After extracting the whole story from their beloved only child—who’d been too nervous to tell them she was going anywhere until the very last minute, the day before we were scheduled to leave—they forbid her from getting on the plane.
Forbid
it entirely. I knew it wasn’t because they couldn’t afford to help her. Dr. Perlman is a dentist with a very suc
cessful practice, but I highly doubt either she or her wife would have been willing to support, financially or otherwise, any scheme that put twenty-three hundred miles in between them and their daughter. Especially one that involved hunting rich men.

None of it comes as any surprise to me, but George, for some reason, is shocked and devastated.

“I…”
Sniff.
“I…”
Sniff.
“They…”
Sniff.
“I…”
Sniff.

“George, you should have told them sooner. So they would have had a chance to get used to the idea.”

“But…”
Sniff.
“But…”
Sniff.

I try to contain my frustration. “But what?”

“But…but why don’t they want me to be happy?”

“It’s not that,” I sigh, annoyed that I’m forced to defend them to her. “It’s because they don’t want to lose you. And telling them
everything
just made it worse.”

George’s relationship with her parents was stalled in adolescence. Dr. Perlman and Mrs. MacNeill were beyond over-protective, probably because some of their daughter’s more suspect decisions as a teenager had, in their minds, warranted her close supervision. Her inability to lie without getting caught didn’t help matters. Apparently, they nailed her every time she skipped school, got drunk or smoked pot. Once, when George was about fifteen, they came home early from a movie to find her wrapped around their twenty-one-year-old gardener in the sauna.

“Ricky was so cute,” George used to sigh. “If only he hadn’t been so old. I think my mothers would have liked him.”

“They’re so mean,” she sniffs now, just as she had then.

“What the hell did you think was going to happen?” I snap. “That you’d say ‘Oh, by the way Moms, I’m moving across the country tomorrow to go and stalk millionaires,’ and they’d be
happy
about it? That they’d throw you a bon voyage party?”

“Now you’re being mean.”

“You would have had an easier time telling them you were eloping with Milt!”

“Mine was Morrie. Yours was Milt.”

“Whatever, George.”

“You’re right, though. At least Milt is Jewish.”

“God, I’m sure they blame me for all this, too,” I say, more to myself than to her.

“They do,” she concurs. “For putting the idea into my head. They think you might be a bad influence.”

“Well, you didn’t have to tell them everything!” I growl into the receiver, pissed that the mothers didn’t like me anymore, because I still liked them. I can’t help it. They’ve always been super to me. “I can’t believe you. I could have told you this is exactly what was going to happen.”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t think, I guess.”

But the dream is slipping away and I am furious. “They’re so hypocritical. Who are they to say what we’re doing is bad? Feminists my ass….”

Mrs. MacNeill is a suburban housewife like any other. Always has been. She cooks and cleans and irons and sends her spouse to work every day with a nice healthy lunch packed in a brown paper bag. The only difference being, of course, that unlike the rest of the kids on the block, her daughter had two mommies.

“I’ve been dealing with this my whole life,” George says.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Just tell me exactly what they said. Maybe we can convince them. Do you want me to come over so we can try together?”

“No! That’ll just make it worse!”

“Fine. So what do you plan to do to fix all this?”

“Nothing,” she moans into the receiver. “We’ve been arguing about it for six hours and they won’t budge. There’s no hope.”

“I hate to point out the obvious, but you could just come, anyway.”

Silence.

“I mean, you are technically a grown-up,” I continue. “You don’t have to do what they tell you. They can’t
forbid
you from doing anything.”

“I know that, Holly. But you don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“I can’t go without their blessing. I don’t want to disappoint them.” Her voice is small and tinny, like she’s on the other side of the world. “I’m all they have.”

What can I say to that?

“What about your job? Are you going to get your job back and just pretend everything’s okay? You’re going to just pretend you’re happy and live the rest of your life the way you’re living it now?”

“I, uh, didn’t quit yet, Holly.”

Of course she hadn’t. Except for a brief moment or two when I’d pumped her up, George was probably never really planning on coming with me anywhere, and caused this whole stir with her parents at the last minute so that she’d be able to back out and blame it on them without losing face. She’s happy enough with the way things are. And what kind of monster am I to convince her that her life sucks? Just because
mine
does, just because
I
want out, doesn’t give me the right to manipulate my best friend into doing something drastic that she isn’t ready for.

“I’m sorry, George. I feel awful now. I didn’t mean to put so much pressure on you. I’ve been horrible. Absolutely horrible…”

“No,
I’m
sorry, Holly. I’m sorry I’m backing out like this.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. You
never
have to apologize to me. Just promise me you’ll make this decision on your own. Stay here if that’s what feels right for you, but
if you do want to come—if you really do want to come, George—then there’s still time to change your mind. The plane leaves tomorrow at ten. And I’m going to be on it.”

“I know, Holly. But I just can’t.”

“So…this is goodbye?”

“I guess so.”

A little part of me thinks she might actually show up at the last minute.

As I wait in line at the metal detector, and as I wait in line again to board the flight, I keep glancing over my shoulder to see if she’s here.

But she isn’t.

Even after I buckle my seat belt as tightly as I can and the plane is careening down the runway like a runaway train, I half expect her to slip into the seat beside me.

The City by the Bay

S
an Francisco International Airport has seventeen bars and I am beginning to fear I won’t be able to find a single one. I’m still in a daze from almost fifteen hours of delays, layovers, weather warnings, rubbery chicken with asparagus, sleeplessness and a small nervous breakdown at thirty-six thousand feet, so the jumble of multicolored signage isn’t going over too well. Still, despite my physical and emotional fragility, I figure a celebratory drink is in order—not only am I on solid ground again, but this is my first time ever on the West Coast.

The
real
first day of the rest of my life.
Finally.

Bleary-eyed and unable to locate alcohol in the immediate vicinity, I ditch the bar plan and shuffle toward the next best thing: food.

The moment the first bite hits my belly, I realize how famished I am. And with the food, the fog and monotony of the
day begin to lift, replaced by that sort of hyperreality you usually only notice at times of either great stress or complete boredom. Moments of being and nonbeing, Virginia Woolf called them. At least, I think that’s what she called them, if I’m remembering my Modernism 101 class correctly.

I pull out my notepad and jot that down. Peppering my manuscript/memoir (as it was quickly becoming) with literary allusions might guard me from accusations of frivolity later, although I’m not exactly sure how that particular quip might fit in, or how Virginia herself would have felt about her inclusion in a project she’d likely consider anathema to her life’s work. From the beginning, I’ve known the hardest part about writing my book would be finding a way to elevate it beyond the obvious—that it was nothing more than a poison-filled how-to guide for morally bereft gold diggers—and convincing intelligent women that the end sometimes justifies the means, provided the ending is of the fairy-tale variety and the means not too mean.

I tuck the notebook back into my bag. Moral semantics aside, I’m also pretty sure Woolf was a big proponent of stopping to smell the roses, and that’s exactly what I’m planning to do every chance I get from here on in. She’d certainly agree with that, wouldn’t she?

“I can’t believe I’m actually here!” I whisper to myself as I look around. Although it’s dark out, about 10:00 p.m. local time, this unknown city where I will make my new home reveals a tiny suburban bit of itself through the food court’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the hangars and rows of jets are hills and highways, twinkling amber lights and nary a snowbank in sight.

It’s all almost too good to be true.

I scarf down my second Nathan’s hot dog and wonder if it’s cool to ring my new landlord’s doorbell at midnight. Probably not. Pissing him off before I’ve even moved in isn’t a good
idea, seeing as how I have no backup living arrangements. Then again, he did sound pretty young when I spoke to him on the phone earlier this week, so maybe he wouldn’t mind.

Just as I’m resolving to err on the side of caution—book a hotel room near the airport for tonight and pick up my keys in the morning—a cute young businessman in a two-thousand-dollar suit floats by, speaking Japanese into the tiniest cell phone I’ve ever seen. The airport is far from crowded, and the guy stands out brightly among the few straggling tourists and cleaning staff. He’s walking quickly towards the International Terminal on the other side of the building, a black Tumi carry-on trailing behind him.

Hmmm…

How amazing would it be if I found the love of my life the instant I stepped off the plane? I frantically wipe the mustard from my fingers, hop down from the stool and turn to follow him, imagining a luxurious life of silk and sushi in Tokyo….

“What took you so long, Holly?”

I spin around on my heel.

A headful of brown curls, big boobs, a nose ring…

The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen!

“George!”
I shriek, and practically collapse into her arms. “What the hell!? I mean, how did you…? What are you
doing
here?!”

“I should have known I’d find you in the food court…. Come on—I’ve been waiting around this bloody airport for four hours. They changed your arrival gate three times, you know, and by the time I found the right one, well, I must have missed you getting off the plane. Let’s get your bags.”

“No way! Not until you tell me what’s going on!”

She smiles mischievously. “I guess I just got a better flight than you. Cost me an arm and a leg, though. Man, they really gouge you when you book last-minute!”

“George!” I jump up and down impatiently.

“Okay, okay! Let me see… Well, I couldn’t sleep after everything that happened yesterday—my God, was that yesterday? It seems like a million years ago!—anyway, I suppose it just finally hit me, what was really at stake. I know my moms love me, and I certainly don’t want to give them any
tsouris,
but—”

“Sorry, George. My Yiddish is a little rusty…”

“Oh. Sorry. Umm…
tsouris
is like aggravation, heartache, that sort of thing. You know, what pain-in-the-ass kids give their parents. So after I tossed and turned on it for, like, five hours, I guess I realized I really
did
want to do this, and the only reason I was backing out was because of them. ’Cause I didn’t want to hurt them, blah blah blah. And the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like not really such a good reason. So I told myself, why the hell not? I know they love me, and eventually, they’ll get over it and forgive me.”

“Of course they will!” I should have known the tough-as-nails, matter-of-fact George would shine through in the end. “You know, I was kind of expecting you to show up at the last minute this morning.”

“I tried! By the time I realized I was being a chicken-shit and packed up whatever I could carry and lugged it all on the bus and train to the airport, I’d missed the flight! So I just grabbed the next one I could. I take it yours wasn’t direct?”

“We stopped in Chicago for three hours. And we hit a
huge
storm going over the Rockies so we made an un-scheduled stop in Denver. The plane was shaking and rolling almost the whole time!” I explain, as we walk over to the baggage claim area, arm in arm. “Wow! I really can’t believe you’re here.”

“Jeez! I’m just glad I wasn’t on that flight with you.”

“Ha, ha. Actually, I was fine, for your information. A nice lady sitting next to me gave me a few of her Valiums.”

“That’s great, Holly. I bet if the plane actually
had
crashed, you’d have been the only one too drugged to find her way to the emergency exits.”

I stop so I can hug her again. “I’ll never forget this, George.”

“I’m not doing this for you, silly. I’m doing it for me.”

“And I’m doing it for me. But I’m glad we’re doing it together.”

“So am I. Now tell me—where the hell do we live, exactly?”

“Tonight, the Best Western! Tomorrow, the Western Addition!”

By the time we check in, we’re both too exhausted to even think about hitting the bar. I make sure to pull the heavy blinds together as tightly as I can, in case any hint of sunlight dare wake me in the morning. I hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, take a shower, then crash.

When I wake up, George is already watching CNN. I stretch and realize it was the best sleep I’d had in months.

No dreams. That’s the key—no dreams.

“Are you sure this is it?”

“This is Pierce Street, lady. Take it or leave it.”

I look down at the scrap of paper I’d scribbled the address on. This had to be the right place.

“No, this is fine,” I tell the cabbie as George and I exchange glances. “Thank you. You can keep the change.”

We get out of the cab and grab our bags from the trunk. The car screeches off down the street, dipping out of view almost instantly.

George blows out a sigh and drops her backpack down on the curb. “Whoa. It’s…quite something.”

I shield my eyes from the midday sun and look up at the tall, narrow house. It’s perfect.

To my left, a dozen steps lined with potted purple flowers dissect a tiny front yard and lead up into a small front porch with carved columns at each corner. Above the impressive double doors, which are painted a cool steel-blue, a pitched overhang drips gingerbread trim in different shades of gray and blue. Two stories of rectilinear bay windows framed in teal woodwork are stacked one on top of the other on the right side of the house, jutting out from indigo horizontal wooden strips covering the facade. Beneath them, at street level, a smaller steel-blue door next to a quaintly shuttered window stands where there had probably once been a garage door, and leads into what I am by this point desperately praying is our apartment. Way up high, oversize brackets are tucked beneath the eaves of a gabled, gray-and-purple shingled roof capped with ornate millwork and, at the very top, an iron weather vane.

“I think it’s a Victorian,” George whispers.

“Really? Ya think?”

She shoots me a look. “Don’t tell me you rented this on Priceline.”

“You don’t have to whisper!” I laugh. “It’s not going to disappear. At least, I hope not!”

“Seriously, Holly. How’d you find this place?”

“Craig’s List. It’s a great Web site for finding rentals. There were no pictures of this one, though, so I’m just as surprised as you are.”

“Well, what did it say?”

“I don’t remember… I guess something like, ‘Renovated two-bedroom in Western Addition. Appliances, utilities included.’”

“Uh-huh. And exactly how much is this costing us?”

“$700 a month!” I beam. “Do I have a horseshoe up my ass, or what?”

She looks up at the house again, then back at me skeptically. “What’s the catch?”

“Why does there have to be a catch?”

“Is this some sort of crack neighborhood or something?”

“Not that I’m aware of…”

We look left and right. More houses like this one, some a little run-down, maybe, but all of them old beauties just the same. On a wrought-iron bench across the street, in as quaint an urban patch of green space as you are ever likely to see, a pair of young mothers in Madonna-inspired tracksuits chat and clutch Starbucks cups while their bundled babies snooze in matching Italian strollers. There isn’t much traffic, but the smattering of parked Volvos and BMWs hints at affluence. Unless, of course, that guy walking the King Charles spaniel with the Burberry booties is a drug dealer.

Probably not.

“You ring the bell,” George says.

“No, you.”

“I’m shy.”

“So am I!”

She crosses her arms. “Well, I’m not going to do it.”

“Fine.”

I push through the little wrought-iron gate and walk up the stairs. George is right behind me. A wood-framed stained-glass square bearing the house’s address hangs beside the door. I put down my bags, shoo away the fat tabby cat curled up on the welcome mat and ring the bell.

Nothing.

George nudges me. I ring it again.

Still nothing.

“What’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

“Remy something. Wakefield, I think.” I check my paper. “Yeah—Remy Wakefield.”

“Sounds like the hero of one of those cheesy romance
novels with Fabio on the cover. I used to buy them secretly with my allowance money, from the 99-cent bin at the library.”

“My grandmother read those. The large-print kind. Before she died, we spent a month every summer at her house in Saratoga Springs, and I used to sneak her books and read them under the covers at night with a flashlight. It was years before I finally figured out what all that throbbing and groaning was about.”

“Still, you knew enough to know you shouldn’t be reading them!”

“Why do you think I loved them so much?”

George sighs and goes to sit down on the top step. “My mothers found my stash when I was thirteen. They bought me a leather-bound Anaïs Nin collection for my birthday that year—to try and counteract the effects, I guess—but it was already too late. They say that’s why I turned out straight. So, you think maybe he’s not home?”

I shrug.

“Try the knocker.”

I knock as loudly as I can. “Maybe we should have called first.”

“He’s probably just out. We could wait for him across the street….”

Just as we’re about to leave, we hear the creak of floor-boards. They get louder and louder until they stop behind the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s, um, Holly and George. From Buffalo….”

The door swings open.

“Oh my God!” George whispers, louder than she probably wanted to.

The guy standing in the entrance laughs. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a wet, naked guy before!”

Not like you, that’s for sure!

In my peripheral vision, I notice George’s face flush pink at the speed of light. “S-sorry,” she stammers. “I just wasn’t expecting…”

What she wasn’t expecting was for our new landlord to be, well, for lack of a more mature way of putting it, super hot. And wearing only a towel.

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I was just in the shower. Didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m Remy, by the way. Nice to meet you. Which one of you’s Holly?”

I smile.

“So that makes you George.” He grins at her.
Teeth: Just the tiniest bit crooked. Charming.
“I’d, uh, shake your hand, but I don’t want to lose my towel. Come in, already—it’s freezing.”

“Freezing is where we just came from,” I say as we step inside. “This is positively balmy for us.”

“Yeah, well, I’m from San Diego, where it’s seventy-five degrees in the winter and seventy-six degrees in the summer. I’ve been here almost ten years and I still can’t get used to it.”

The tabby cat from the porch darts into the narrow vestibule and begins rubbing his face ferociously against my shin in an apparent effort to rid himself of eye crust. “Uh, is this guy yours?” I asked, hoping it isn’t.

“Yeah. That’s Fleabiscuit. He moved in last summer. You like cats?”

“Oh, yeah. Can’t get enough of ’em,” I lie.
For you, I’d swim across a sea of whiskers, climb a mountain of hairballs…