She, Myself & I (33 page)

“Oh, dear God,” I said, starting violently.

Paige groaned, opened one eye, and then heaved herself up into a sitting position. Behind her the television glowed silently.

“What are you watching? Is that the Home Shopping Network?”

“Where have you been?” she asked. “What time is it? Have you been having sex?”

“What? No. How can you tell?”

“Your hair’s all messed up.”

“Oh. No. That’s just from work. But wait, what are you doing here, and why are you sleeping on the couch?” I asked.

“Zack and I got into a fight, and I left,” she said briefly.

“You left him?”

“I left the house. I’m not sure about him yet.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Paige said, yawning. “I’m beyond tired.”

“Okay, but go sleep in your bed, I’ll take the couch,” I said.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m not about to deprive a pregnant woman of her bed, for God’s sake,” I said. “I’ll just grab a shower and then sleep out here.”

“When was the last time you changed the sheets?” Paige asked.

“Uh, never,” I said.

“Gross, Mick. I’ll get a fresh set out of the linen closet,” she said.

“You have a linen closet? That sounds so . . . grown-up,” I said.

“Sweetie, I am a grown-up. Want to know something even scarier? You are, too,” Paige said. She stood up, stretching her arms and yawning loudly.

“Shut up, I am not,” I said.

“Not only a grown-up, but a soon-to-be doctor,” Paige said, smiling and ruffling my hair as she passed by on the way to her bedroom.

“Yeah. How ’bout that,” I said weakly. “Here, I’ll help you make up the bed. Where is this linen closet you speak of?”

Chapter Thirty-seven

“I’m far too old and pregnant to be a bridesmaid,” Paige complained as she and I walked into the cheesy bridal boutique, Happily Ever After. The theme was carried throughout the store, from the grotesquely ornate crystal chandeliers to the liberal use of the color pink to the over-the-top swaths of rose velvet drapes. The look was Cinderella-meets-French-bordello.

“It’s unnatural to be attendants at your own parents’ wedding,” I agreed. “It’s like those families where the mother and daughter are pregnant at the same time, so that the mother’s baby is an aunt or uncle to the daughter’s baby. It’s all wrong.”

“What are you talking about? How is this anything like that?”

“It just is,” I said.

Sophie and Mom were already inside. Sophie was sitting on a pink satin slipper chair, with Ben beside her in his stroller, and Mom was standing at the counter, explaining to the tiny, dark-haired salesclerk what she was looking for.

“I’ll be wearing a tailored suit, and I want the girls in simple sheaths, fitted through the bodice and then going out like this to an A-line skirt,” Mom said, demonstrating with her hands while the salesclerk nodded.

“Hey, Soph. Hi, Mom,” Paige said. “How’s Ben?”

“Teething,” Sophie said. I looked down and saw that Ben was sucking on his hand, looking cranky. “I told Mom that today wasn’t a good day for this, but she insisted.”

“There will never be a good day for this,” Paige whispered, collapsing into another chair. Then, louder, she said, “Mom, make sure that you pick out something a pregnant woman can wear.”

“Pregnant? We don’t carry many maternity styles,” the salesclerk said doubtfully, looking at Paige’s still-tiny belly. “How far along are you?”

“Four months,” Paige said. “But I’m getting hungry, and plan on being good and fat by the time the wedding rolls around.”

“Why, what’s going on?” Sophie asked.

“Zack and I broke up. I don’t want to talk about it,” Paige said, reiterating what she’d been saying to me for the past three days.

She also had no interest in talking to Zack, who had taken to calling the apartment four hundred times a day. When she made it clear she wasn’t going to take his calls, Zack began leaving detailed messages on the answering machine, reminding her to take her prenatal vitamins, not to forget her obstetrician appointment, and pleading with her to give up running until the baby arrived.

“What did he do?” Sophie gasped.

“Why do you assume he did something? What, do you think it’s my destiny to get dumped by men? Maybe I just changed my mind,” Paige snapped.

“It’s just the hormones,” Sophie said sagely. “When I was pregnant, everything Aidan did irritated the crap out of me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Paige said.

“Mickey, come here and try these dresses on,” Mom said, holding up a half dozen satin dresses in a range of grotesque sorbet colors.

“Why me?”

“Because Paige is pregnant, and Sophie’s taking care of Ben,” Mom said.

“Luckies,” I hissed at my sisters.

I grabbed the dresses from her—I could already tell I hated all of them, especially the shrimp pink one—and stalked off into the dressing room. I hung the dresses up on the hook and pulled off my shorts and T-shirt, and then slipped into the first. Horror. It was light green crepe and chiffon, and had wide horizontal satin stripes around the bodice, and even worse, there was a long scarf thingy that you were supposed to drape around your neck.

“Mickey? Do you have a dress on?”

“Yes, and I’m not coming out. It’s awful,” I said.

“Come on, honey, just let us see.”

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, and then stalked out to the sitting area where my mother had joined my sisters. They were all drinking glasses of water with slices of lemon.

Sophie laughed when she saw me, and Paige grimaced.

“No way, Mom. That’s awful. And I’ll look like a Granny Smith apple in that color,” Paige said, looking at me.

“The choices are limited because of your . . . condition,” the salesclerk said delicately.

“Well, the next time I have an unplanned pregnancy, I’ll try to arrange it so it won’t affect my parents’ wedding,” Paige snapped.

“Paige, honey,” Mom began, but I retreated back to the dressing room before I heard her complete the thought.

The rest of the dresses didn’t fare any better. Sophie and Paige rejected each one—the color was wrong, the fabric was unacceptable, the bodice made my boobs look weird.

“Hey,” I said to this last one, lifting my arms to cover my chest.

“No offense, Mick,” Sophie said. “But you’re the skinny one, so if it doesn’t look good on you, how do you think it’s going to look on Paige or me?”

“This is the last one,” I said, peering down at the ugly pink satin dress. It did make my breasts look odd. They were pushed apart and then up, like torpedoes about to be launched off my chest.

“I don’t know what to do. Maybe we should just get the blue one, so that we have something,” Mom said.

“Ugh. Absolutely not,” I said. The powder blue one had a Juliet-style empire waist and looked like a prom dress circa 1978.

“Mom, that was the worst one,” Sophie agreed. “There’s no way that one will fit me through the hips.”

“I think it’s fine,” Paige said unexpectedly.

“Really?” Sophie asked.

“No. I just don’t want to have to spend one more minute trying on dresses,” Paige said.

“You didn’t try them on. I did,” I said. The synthetic fabric was making me hot and cranky. I lifted my hair up off the back of my neck. “Is the air-conditioning on in here?”

“Fine, if that’s how you feel, then you don’t have to be bridesmaids at all,” Mom said, her voice high and thin.

“Really?” Paige asked, brightening for the first time in days.

Mom burst into tears and stormed out of the boutique.

Paige, Sophie, and I all looked at one another, shamefaced.

“I was just kidding. Sort of,” Paige said.

I ran after Mom, although when I got to the door, the salesclerk started shrieking, “You can’t leave the store wearing that dress.”

“Okay, I won’t,” I told her, and so stood in the doorway. “Mom! Please don’t leave. We were just joking.”

“It isn’t funny. This wedding is important to me, and it’s important to me that you girls be there,” Mom said. She was struggling to unlock her car door and ended up dropping her keys. “Shit!”

“Come on, come back inside. We’ll look at the rest of the dresses. Maybe there’s something pretty we haven’t seen yet. Please.”

Mom hunched over, grabbed her keys, and then looked up at me. “Is it really so awful I’m marrying your father? Is it really so unbearable that you girls have to act like this?” she asked. The points of her cheeks were unnaturally red.

I hesitated, and pushed my hair back from my face, while the absurdity of the situation sank in. My mother had to pick a public place to throw a hissy fit, and now I—standing barefooted in the doorway of a strip mall, wearing shrimp pink satin, with the owner of the store standing about an inch behind me, prepared to tackle me if I tried to shoplift the hideous thing—was the one who was going to have to placate her with soothing promises that my sisters and I would be more enthusiastic about wearing insipid bridesmaid dresses the color of after-dinner mints in front of everyone we knew. All the while, people were staring at us as they streamed in and out of the Radio Shack and laundromat located on either side of the boutique.

“Mom . . . I don’t want to yell across a parking lot. Just come back inside, and we’ll talk about it,” I begged.

“No. I’ve had it with the three of you,” Mom said. She climbed into the car, threw it into reverse, and screeched out of the parking lot, leaving behind a pungent wave of gasoline and hot rubber.

“Really, I must insist that you come back inside. You’re going to get the dress dirty. Please at least lift the hem up off the ground,” the shop clerk said.

I shuffled back into the store, plucking the skirt up.

“What did Mom say?” Sophie asked.

“She’s mad we’re not being more enthusiastic about the wedding. I think we should probably follow her home and talk to her,” I said, sighing.

“Okay. But can we get something to eat first?” Paige asked. “I’m starving.”

“Maybe we should have been a little nicer to her about doing this,” Sophie said. “I didn’t mean to be bitchy, I’m just so tired. Ben was up half the night, and this was after I’d worked all day. And yesterday really sucked. I left Ben with the sitter for a few hours while I worked, and he sat up for the first time while he was there. I missed it.”

“I’m sure he’ll sit up again,” I said, trying to be supportive.

“Well,
obviously
. It’s just he won’t sit up for the
first time
again,” Sophie said. Her face crumpled. “I’m a bad mommy.”

“You are not a bad mommy, and you’ll be there for plenty of firsts,” Paige said, going to Sophie’s side and wrapping her arm around her.

“I’m almost always with him, and I leave him for three hours, and he has to go and reach a milestone without me,” Sophie said, her voice soggy and muffled against Paige’s shoulder. Paige stroked her head and made soothing sounds, and I stood there watching them.

“Are we getting something to eat?” I asked.

“Yes!” Paige and Sophie yelled simultaneously.

We thanked the salesclerk—who seemed miffed that after all of that we were leaving empty-handed—and walked out to where my sisters’ cars were parked. We agreed to meet up at a coffee shop down the street.

“Mick, why don’t you ride with me?” Sophie said, shooting me a meaningful look.

“Why don’t you be a little more obvious that you’re going to talk about me behind my back?” Paige said huffily as she opened the door of her car and eased inside.

“We’re not talking about you, silly. I want to find out the dirt on Mickey’s new boyfriend,” Sophie said.

“Good luck. I haven’t been able to get a single piece of information out of her. All I know is that she’s out late with him every night,” Paige said.

“How do you know? You’re always asleep when I get in,” I protested.

“I get up to pee ten times a night. You’re never home at my two a.m. pee, but you’re usually in by the four o’clock one,” Paige said.

I rolled my eyes and climbed into Sophie’s SUV. Once Soph had Ben buckled in and started the car up, she turned to me and said, “Okay, now tell me what’s going on with Paige and Zack.”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “He calls a lot, but she won’t talk to him. I have a feeling this is about his proposing to her last week. It really freaked her out.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Sophie said. “We’re going to have to get involved.”

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to get them together. Or do some kind of an intervention,” Sophie said. She turned around and looked over her shoulder as she backed her enormous Tahoe out of the parking spot.

“How do you ever see anything behind you in this thing?” I asked.

“I don’t. If I hit something, I stop,” she said.

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m guessing that you haven’t told Mom and Dad about medical school yet,” Sophie said. “Since I haven’t heard any high-pitched screaming from that direction.”

“You guessed right. And please don’t lecture me, Soph, I know I have to tell them. I’ve just been busy, and haven’t been spending much time at Mom’s,” I said.