Slightly Engaged (11 page)

Now it’s more Jack’s idea. If it weren’t for him, I’d have at least cheated, or maybe even started up again before now.

So I suppose I should be grateful to him for helping me kick a deadly habit.

But really, I just want to kick him.

Especially when he clears his throat for the gazillionth time tonight.

“I’ve got a tickle,” he informs me for the gazillionth time tonight, too busy fast-forwarding through the commercial to catch the lethal look I give him.

I shake my head and look away, and my gaze falls on the Chia Pet on a nearby table. The seeds I grudgingly spread over its disgusting scalp As Directed have yet to sprout the promised tiny green seedlings. Every time I see the ugly, defective little gnome, I want to hurtle it out the window.

In case you haven’t noticed, my nerves are a little fried. If I could just have a smoke everything would be great, but I can’t, so I’m clenched and bitchy and Jack’s goddamned tickle and all this who-gets-booted tension isn’t helping.

Nor is the tasteless Nicorette I’m chewing while chain-eating candy corn. In fact, the Nicorette tastes better when I chew the corn-syrupy-sweet morsels right into it, although the texture is getting slimier and crumblier by the minute.

I really think smoking is infinitely more appealing, death sentence and all. But Jack is sitting right here like a gestapo guard and I promised him I’d quit and it’s been over a week and all I have to do is make it through tonight and then if I really want a cigarette I can sneak one tomorrow.

I jab another couple of candy corn in my mouth. Earlier, I started out eating my way through the bowl one piece at a time, in the usual method: nibbling off the white tip of the triangle, then trying to bite off the orange middle section as evenly as possible along the dividing line with the yellow base so as not to get any yellow with it and not to leave any orange on the yellow, and finally, eating the yellow.

That’s
my
usual method, anyway.

But tonight, I keep inhaling the whole triangle at once. Rather, a
couple
of triangles at once. I can’t help it. I need to keep my mouth busy so that I won’t smoke. Or say something stupid. Because not smoking makes everything and everyone get on my nerves.

Including Jack.

Especially poor Jack, because he’s the only one here.

Do you think he has any idea that if he clears his throat one more time and mentions that Goddamned tickle, I’m going to smother him with a throw pillow until he stops flailing?

Mental Note: L.W.C.
1
sucks. Don’t ever quit smoking again.
Jack presses a button on the remote and the show comes back on, but the cheesy host, Ed, whose teeth are blindingly white as all reality hosts’ teeth must be, and who speaks without verbs as all reality hosts must, is in midsentence and the players have begun a new stunt leading up to this show’s equivalent to the boardroom/tribalcouncil/mostdramaticroseceremonyever.

“Can you back it up?” I ask Jack, irritated. If he’d let me handle the remote this wouldn’t be happening but no, he thinks the remote is all his and it pisses me off.

“What?” he asks.

“Can you back it up?” I ask through gritted teeth.

“Why?”

“Because we missed what Ed said.”

“We didn’t miss anything. Maybe like two words,” he goes on, effectively drowning out everything that’s being said even now.

“Back it up,” I say again. Then add a grudging, “Please.”

He seems like he’s about to protest again, God help both of us, but then he obviously thinks better of it and points the remote to back up the scene.

Only it’s still not far enough—he gets Ed in midsentence again.

“Jack!” I shriek in dismay, just as the phone rings.

He promptly presses a button on the remote, freezes the picture and looks at me. “Should I get it?”

Is he asking my permission, or does he mean do I want to get it instead of him, or does he mean are we going to let it go into voice mail? What is he doing? What does he want from me?

God, I’m so stressed out!

“I don’t care,” I snap,
“whatever.”

He picks up the phone.

It’s his mother, my beloved and perhaps deluded Wilma. Maybe she’s so into having me for a daughter-in-law that she convinced herself it’s actually going to happen. Poor thing.

But at least someone is crazy about me.

And, perhaps, just plain crazy.

As I listen to Jack’s monotone
Yups
and
Nopes
for a minute and wonder why when he talks to her the conversation is entirely one-sided. Is it because I’m here listening? Is he effusive when I’m not here?

I doubt it. I mean, he’s not effusive when he’s talking to me on the phone, either. I bet our conversations sound pretty much the same way on his end.
Yup, nope, nope, yup.
Strictly taking care of business, especially now that we live together and see each other all the time.

“No, not yet,” he says as I reach into the candy bowl.

I wonder if she’s asked him whether we’ve had any trick-or-treaters for Beggar’s Night yet. Beggar’s Night, where I grew up, anyway. Around here, though, the night before Halloween is apparently called Gate Night. I have no idea what that means. Beggar’s Night is more fitting, don’t you think? Not that I’m going to get into that again with Jack. We almost had a huge screaming fight over it a little while ago.

Ironic, since it’s a moot point in Manhattan. At least, in our building. We don’t even get trick-or-treaters on Halloween.

“But I will,” Jack is saying into the phone.

Pause.

Perusing my handful of candy corn, I discard a mutant one that’s missing its white tip. If I’m going to eat this stuff, it’s going to have white tips intact, dammit.

“I don’t know when, Mom. Soon…As soon as I have a chance.”

Pause.

I eat the candy in my hand, bored, wanting to get on with the show and see who gets the boot.

I bet it’s Didi, the annoying female bartender from Wichita.

Or Heidi Jane, the single mom from Los Angeles. I hope it’s her. I feel sorry for her little kids, left behind with some random relative while mommy and her enormously fake boobs go off in search of reality-TV stardom. Give me a break.

“I know, I will. I promise…No, she’s right here…Yes.”

At that, it’s all I can do not to leap off the couch, grab him around the neck and demand to know what he’s talking about.

Because it’s obviously about me. I can tell by his tone, the way he lowers his voice when he says, “No, she’s right here,” and his voice goes up for emphasis on the first part of
here.

Okay, this is exciting.

My inner TiVo instantly rewinds everything Jack just said.

No, not yet…But I will…I don’t know when. Soon…As soon as I have a chance…I know, I will. I promise…No, she’s right here…Yes.

He is
so
talking about getting engaged!

I mean, what else can it be?

Especially when he says in obvious and irritated resignation, “Yes, I’ll ask her tonight, okay?…Yes, I’m serious…. Because I don’t want you to keep bugging me, that’s why…yes, I’ll let you know right away…. I know…. I will. Okay? Goodbye.”

He hangs up.

I flash him one of those big Snoopy smiles. If I were a cartoon, a glint would be pinging off my front tooth.

“So?” I ask.

“That was my mother.” He tosses the phone aside and picks up the remote again.

“How was she?”

“She’s fine.” He backs up the scene again, blip by blip, in obvious effort not to miss a word Ed is saying this time.

That’s odd.

Did he or did he not just promise his mother he’d propose tonight?

I know! He did!

Which in and of itself is bizarre enough, because don’t you think he’d have decided when and where to do it on his own? As opposed to spontaneously agreeing because his mom is imposing a deadline?

Then again, who am I to argue with any logic that will have a ring on my finger and a wedding in the works before midnight?

“There you go,” Jack says, and presses Play.

He presses Play.

I guess he’s waiting until after the show so that I won’t be distracted.

Okay, fair enough.

I did say earlier that I would be really pissed if, say, there were a terrorist attack before I got to find out who got booted off that caused such a watercooler stir.

But I wouldn’t be pissed if I got engaged before I found out. I guess I should have clarified that to Jack.

Too late now.

He’s all
and now back to our regularly scheduled programming,
watching television as though he hasn’t a care in the world. Good old calm, laid-back Jack.

Ed, the host, is talking, but I’m not hearing a word he’s saying. I’m thinking that I’ll always remember that I got engaged wearing these pink sweatpants with the bleach stain on the hip, and a mouthful of soggy Nicorette.

Didi the Wichita bartender gets voted off.

When Ed breaks the news, she kicks him in the
cojones
before storming off the set.

Okay, so that’s what all the hype was about.

Me, I barely notice. I’m busy trying to remember if the just-in-case bottle of champagne I stashed in the vegetable bin in the refrigerator a month ago is dry or sweet, because after all that candy corn I definitely can’t stomach sweet.

“That was great,” I say, stretching. “Why don’t we turn it off.”

“The TV?” he asks, looking shocked. “Don’t you want to see the scenes?”

I always want to see the scenes. He’ll be suspicious if I say no.

“Yes,” I say a little shrilly, “of course I want to see the scenes.”

We sit through the scenes. Next week’s episode seems to revolve around Heidi Jane and her tremendous boobage having a series of bouncy adventures in an exotic locale as other contestants scowl and plot to get rid of her behind her undoubtedly aching back.

“Isn’t that a repeat?” Jack asks.

“No, it said ‘all new.’”

“I was being funny.”

“Oh.” I snicker. Sort of. “So how was your mom?”

“Fine…remember? You just asked?”

“Oh! Right. I did. Sorry.”

Ask me to marry you, dammit!

It is
so
Beggar’s Night. At least right here, right now.

I try to calm myself down, lest I accidentally wrap my hands around Jack’s neck and start shaking him.

Out of sheer love, of course.

“Listen…” He shifts his weight on the couch. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“What is it?” I ask, managing to sound calm, wondering if he’s going to get down on his knee.

Here it comes!

OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod!!

This is so exciting! Can you stand it?

Me neither!

Then—hey, wait a minute!—I wonder why he isn’t going into the bedroom or something first, to get the ring. Does he have it stashed right here by the couch?

I give the vicinity a quick once-over for a telltale ring box that might have been under my nose all along.

Is it in the philodendron saucer?

No-o.

The messy stack of newspapers and magazines, mostly his?

No-o.

The nearly empty bowl of candy corn, mostly mine?

No-o.

I swear I feel like I’m mentally reading
Where’s Spot?,
which was my nephew Nino’s favorite book when he was a baby.

Where are you, Spot?

Where are you, sparkling diamond engagement ring?

“First, it was my mother’s idea,” he says. “Not mine.”

Okay, is this the most unromantic proposal preamble in the history of proposals, or what?

“Not that I don’t want you to say yes, but…I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it and I don’t want you to feel obligated. I was going to wait to ask but my mother’s really impatient…She’d ask you herself, but I told her I wanted to.”

I’m stunned into dismayed silence.

She’d ask me herself?

Major Oedipal issues, anyone?

Good Lord.

How could I not have noticed until now how unhealthy his relationship with his mother really is?

“Tracey, would you possibly consider…”

His proposal is drowned out by the roar of disbelieving anguish in my brain.

This isn’t his idea! This is his mother’s idea! Look at him! He doesn’t look like a man in love! He looks like a man who ate bad shrimp for lunch!

“What?” I ask dully, shaking my head to clear it.

He repeats the proposal…

Which isn’t a proposal!

He’s not proposing to me!

Hallelujah!

Make that semi-hallelujah.

I mean, I
want
him to propose…but not like this.

What a relief that this isn’t the big moment after all!

What this is, in fact, is an invitation to spend Thanksgiving with Jack’s family in Westchester.

The reason it’s such a big deal is that I have never
not
gone home to Brookside for Thanksgiving.

In a family where you’re excommunicated for forgetting an octogenarian’s birthday, you can just imagine the reaction if you skip a major holiday.

That hasn’t even been an option for me…

Until now.

But is it, really? My parents would be crushed. My siblings would be pissed. And my grandmother…well, if she hasn’t already written me out of her will for moving away, I think it’s safe to say this would clinch my not getting her bone china settings for eight and a cut of her passbook savings.

Then again…I’m all grown up.

I have a life of my own now. In New York.

A life with Jack.

Wouldn’t it be more natural to spend Thanksgiving with him than with my family, since Jack’s the person I share my daily life with now?

There are two ways of looking at that.

One is that Jack’s the person I share my daily life with now, meaning I see him daily…so shouldn’t I share special occasions like Thanksgiving with the family I rarely get to see?

The other view is that Jack’s the person I share my daily life with now, so why would I leave him for special occasions?