Slightly Engaged (16 page)

But I do scowl.

“What?” he asks, oblivious. “You love ham-egg-and-cheese.”

The thing is…I really don’t. I can easily live without ham-egg-and-cheese. Just as I have more or less easily lived without most of the foods I’ve given up these last couple of years. But that was back when I had cigarettes to take away the hunger pains. Nothing like lighting up and breathing in a lungful of toxic smoke to diminish the old appetite.

Without smoking to fall back on, I have found myself mindlessly munching stuff I never would have dreamed of eating. Mostly Man Food, because I’m usually with Jack when I fall victim to temptation. Burgers, sandwiches, sausage…bulky fill-’er-up food that leaves you feeling bloated and lethargic.

But if I’m going to gain another ounce of weight from here on in—and believe me, I don’t
intend
to—it’s going to be accomplished with things I really like. Eggplant parmesan, raspberry pie, piña coladas.

Yum, yum and yum.

“Too fattening,” I tell Jack, vis-à-vis ham-egg-and-cheeses.

“Okay, so
I’ll
get a ham-egg-and-cheese,” Jack says reasonably, jangling his keys. “Ready to go?”

“You’re going to just eat in front of me?”

“You can get a bran muffin or something.”

“Where have you been?”

“What?” he asks with vacant-eyed man-cluelessness.

“Didn’t you know that bran muffins have way more fat and calories than, like, six Big Macs?”

“They do?”

I don’t know…do they?
Inner Tracey asks, ridden with uncertainty.

“Yeah,” Outer Tracey says firmly, because I’m sure I read that somewhere, and anyway, who’s in the mood to quibble with Jack over fat and calories, and what does he know from bran muffins?

“Besides,” I add, “it’s Thanksgiving.”

“Right.” Jack nods. Then asks, “What are you talking about?”

“You know…why would you want to eat a big breakfast on Thanksgiving?”

“Isn’t the whole point of Thanksgiving that it’s a feast day?”

We head for the door. Jack holds it open for me.

“Exactly,” I say. “Why ruin our appetites now?”

“Because we’re hungry?”

I shrug. “If I’m going to eat today, it’s going to be once. And it’s going to be good. I’m having everything I want later, when we get to your mother’s house.”

“So you’re saying, no deli?” he asks as we head toward the elevator.

“We can get coffee, but that’s it.”

“Yeah, the thing is…I’m not the one on a diet here. Not that you should be either because you look great—”
Ch-ching, ch-ching, ch-ching, boyfriend points adding up rapidly
“—but why do I have to save
my
appetite? It’ll be back in an hour either way. By the time we get up to Westchester I’ll be starved.”

“You know what? Go ahead,” I say with a shrug and a martyred expression guaranteed to wring every bit of enjoyment out of future ham-egg-and-cheeses.

“I can’t eat in front of you.”

“Well, I can’t eat, period.”

And you know, I can’t help thinking that it wouldn’t kill him to show some solidarity here.

Especially since, if it weren’t for him, I’d be puffing away on my Salem Slim Lights and skinny as ever by now.

I only quit smoking because he wanted me to.

Okay, I originally quit because
I
also wanted to, but I got over that fast.

Now I’m a nonsmoker because Jack apparently wants me to live forever.

Why, I don’t know, since he isn’t yet willing to guarantee that my immortality will be spent with him.

Regardless of his commitment issues, he doesn’t want me to die of lung cancer, so here I am, healthy and fat, and here he is, insensitively going on and on about ham-egg-and-cheeses.

“Okay,” he says reluctantly. “I’ll skip breakfast. But we still need coffee.”

“Coffee’s fine.”

We get two large ones at the deli on the corner as Jack looks longingly at the cold-cut display case.

“Two coffees…that it?” asks our friendly neighborhood deli man, who knows us well enough to always ask, when one of us is solo, where the other is. Who says New York City isn’t a friendly place?

“Two coffees…that’s it,” I say firmly, tearing my longing gaze away from the Funyuns display. Yes, I know they’re chock-full of salt, fat and calories. But I love them. And as soon as I lose a few pounds, I’m going to treat myself to some.

I dump a Splenda packet into my coffee and take two sips from my cup as Jack pays for them both.

“You probably shouldn’t have gotten a large,” he tells me.

“It’s the same amount of calories as a small. Coffee isn’t fattening.”

“No, I mean, what if you have to go to the bathroom?”

Oh.

I look at Friendly Neighborhood Deli Man. “Do you have a ladies’ room?”

He glances around like a spy about to open his trench coat and deliver the goods, then says in a conspiratorial whisper, “Shh, that way.”

He points to an unmarked door beside the Fritos display. “Just for you. Okay? You keep it quiet.”

“Thank you!” I say with fervent relief, and hand my coffee to Jack. “I’ll be right back.”

“You have to go already?”

“No, but…there’s a bathroom, so I should.”

Which makes perfect sense, because New York isn’t like other cities. Most public places here don’t have rest rooms. I’ve been a Manhattanite long enough to have scouted out a few that I can rely on—in Grand Central Station, in the Barnes & Noble in the Citicorp Building, in the basement of Trump Tower—but for the most part, preemptive measures are necessary.

The bathroom is surprisingly dirty.

Maybe not
surprisingly.
This is, after all, New York, where cockroaches stroll the walls of the nicest establishments.

Mental note: in future, find new establishment from which to purchase prepared food.

I try to pee, but of course, I can’t. Not when I’m half crouched so as not to let my butt cheeks make contact with a toilet seat that’s covered in stains and pockmarks.

How does a toilet seat get all beat up like that? I mean, what goes on in here?

I’d rather not picture it, thank you very much. In any case, my brief sojourn into filth alley is disappointingly uneventful. Nothing to do but pull up my fat jeans and hope for the best.

As Jack and I proceed to the subway, I find myself wistfully thinking of home. Not the home we just left, but the home I left a few years ago when I moved to New York.

Right about now, my mother is probably standing at the sink peeling and dicing the contents of four or five bags of potatoes.

When she makes mashed potatoes, she estimates at a pound a person.

My brothers probably eat close to that. I did, too, before I lost weight.

Good thing I’m not home today. I doubt that Wilma will make a pound a person of mashed potatoes or anything else.

Then again, there will be gravy and stuffing and pumpkin pie…which, even in small quantities, is lethal. The holidays are the worst time of year to diet.

I’m hoping the spa visit this weekend will jump-start my efforts. I’m sure it will.

Really. I’m positive I won’t end up gaining back all forty pounds I’ve lost.

Or even, like twenty.

God, I hope not.

Anyway, I’m homesick. Not just for a pound of well-salted mashed potatoes with real butter and heavy cream.

I’m homesick for my parents’ house and the way it smells on Thanksgiving morning, when the old-fashioned white enamel electric roaster is emitting its savory aroma from its annual place of honor on the laminate countertop. Homesick for my dad lifting the lid and sneaking bits of the sausage-studded stuffing when he thinks nobody’s looking; for my nephews playing with their matchbox cars underfoot; for Mom, official Spadolini Kitchen Slave, wearing an apron over her stretch pants, beads of sweat on her forehead as she bustles and measures and stirs and gives orders.

Usually the orders are directed toward me, as the only daughter without a family of her own to take care of, and thus eternally incumbent Spadolini Kitchen Slave Apprentice. Mary Beth is exempt because she’s got kids, and my brothers are exempt because they’ve got penises.

In Spadolini Land, anything food-related is women’s work.

Just as, come to think of it, in Kate Land, anything engagement-related is men’s work.

You’d think my mother and Kate might get along great, but I’d be willing to bet they’ll take one look at each other and cringe when and if they finally cross paths someday.

My mother will decide Kate’s ostensibly bulimarexic influence is the reason I’ve been “wasting away,” and Kate will decide my mother needs an emergency makeover by a Nordic mad scientress in a darling lab coat.

“Are you okay?” Jack asks, peering at me as we wait to cross Third Avenue.

“Me? I’m great.”

“You’re not homesick, are you?”

“Homesick? What makes you think that?” I attempt to tuck my hand into his, which is in his jacket pocket because it’s cold out and he forgot his gloves.

He immediately grabs my hand and pulls it out, with a jerking motion so sudden it’s almost as if…

Well, as if there’s some reason he didn’t want my hand in his pocket.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, my mind racing.

Does he have something in his pocket that he doesn’t want me to find?

Like…a lizard?

Or…a velvet ring box?

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says.

Uh-huh. Sure.

Something is afoot in Jack’s pocket, folks, and it ain’t lint.

The mere notion of what it might be jump-starts a flutter of excitement in my otherwise empty stomach that lasts all the way to Grand Central Station.

Raphael is waiting for us on the platform for the number-seven train. He’s wearing black velvet knickers, white knee socks and shiny black shoes with a buckle.

With Raphael, whenever I allow myself to think
now I’ve seen everything,
it turns out that I haven’t. Today is no exception.

“Look, it’s Miles Standish,” Jack says amiably as Raphael gives me what he refers to as a Big Fat Turkey Day Hag Hug.

“Jack! No! Well, maybe. But only from the waist down,” Raphael says slyly, and opens his arms.

Then, noting that Jack isn’t exactly eager for his own Big Fat Turkey Day Hag Hug, Raphael opens his jacket instead.

From the waist up, he’s…

“Naked?” I ask, frowning. “What’s up with that?”

“Tracey, I’m representing both the Pilgrims and the Indians,” Raphael informs me.

“Half Miles Standish, half Squanto?”

“It’s only fair to be impartial, don’t you think?”

“I think I’m glad you decided not to wear a waistcoat on top and a loincloth on the bottom. That’s what I think.”

Raphael swings his arm and snaps his fingers. “Why didn’t I come up with that?”

“Because we all can’t be as creative as Tracey is. Or as twisted.” Jack shakes his head as though he’s glimpsed Raphael’s Big Fat Turkey Day future, and there’s a loincloth in it.

“I love the holidays, don’t you?” Raphael asks, mercifully zipping his coat again as the crosstown train pulls into the station.

Raphael sings gaily—and I mean
gaily
—“It’s the
most
…wonderful time…of the year.”

“City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday cheer,”
I trill in response as we board the train and settle into three adjoining seats on the nearly empty car.

“Joy to the world…the Lord is come!”
is Raphael’s soprano response, followed by a muttered irreverent aside I don’t quite catch but can just imagine.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,”
I reply in my booming alto.

We both look at Jack.

“Yes?” he asks mildly.

“Your turn,” Raphael tells him. “We’re singing lines from our favorite carols.”

“Isn’t it too early for that?”

“It’s never to early to get the holiday season under way, Jack,” Raphael replies, bending over to adjust his knee socks, then the shiny silver buckles of his shiny black shoes.

After watching him for a moment, Jack sings,
“Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la la la la…laaaaa la la.”

“Jack! You’re so funny!”

“So are you, Raphael!” Jack replies good-naturedly.

As the train rattles through the tunnel, I rest my hand on his knee, thinking once again that some boyfriends wouldn’t be as tolerant of my flamboyant friend. I mean, I can just imagine how my brothers would react if my sisters-in-law were palling around with a flaming homo like Raphael.

No, I’m not being discriminatory. When Raphael isn’t calling himself a horny queen, he’s referring to himself as a flaming homo. Not in a self-deprecating way. More like a self-congratulatory way.

Anyway, Jack really is a great guy. I’m so lucky to have him. And right now, as we ride along to the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving Day singing carols and wondering what’s in Jack’s pocket—well,
I’m
wondering, anyway—my life feels just about perfect.

Two trains, fifteen minutes and three dozen lyrical yuletide lines later, we emerge on the Upper West Side, which has been drastically transformed into a surreal carnival of chaos, shrouded in a gray, misty drizzle. There are countless tour buses, cops on horseback, barricades, tourists. The side streets are lined with high-school bands, floats, Porta Potties and dozens of balloons that are as familiar as elementary-school classmates.

Raphael gestures at a distant, block-filling Bullwinkle hovering flat on its back. “Do you think he’s supposed to be that low?”

I follow his gaze. “I don’t know. He looks a little…”

“Flaccid?” Raphael supplies. “I thought the same thing.” He cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, “Don’t worry, Bully, it happens to everyone.”

Jack, who would normally have a flaccid-moose crack or two to add, says nothing. He seems distracted. And his hand is, again, quite noticeably lingering in his pocket.

Is it because there’s a ring in there?

Is he going to propose to me at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

Is he…

Wait! Is he going to propose to me on national television? Is that why he made sure we got these VIP passes from the network?