Slightly Engaged (17 page)

But he almost didn’t come with us today.

Or so he claimed.

Was it all a clever ruse to throw me off his nuptial trail?

I hurriedly pat my hair.

It feels damp and messy. I stuck it back with a plastic banana clip after drying it this morning, figuring the wet wind would toss it around and I could comb it later, before we head up to Westchester.

Why didn’t I at least use mousse or gel? Or pull it back in a neat bun?

A bun? Who am I, Wilma Flintstone?

Okay, no bun, but I should have at least gone for a tousled sex kitten look as opposed to a tousled wet dog look.

I tug Raphael’s sleeve as we all pause to allow a sequinbedecked, corn-fed, nude-stocking-wearing female color guard to pass.

Raphael looks at me. “What, Tracey?” he asks loudly enough to be heard by the color guard’s extended families gathered around their television sets in Des Moines.

Jack, however, doesn’t even glance in our direction. He looks preoccupied with visions of marital bliss. Or something. He’s hurrying along with his head bent against the wind, or so I assume. There’s something almost furtive about his posture.

He’s about to give me a ring. That has to be it.

“Do I look all right?” I subtly ask Raphael, ventriloquist-like.

“What?”
he screams. “Tracey,
what?
”

Jack looks up over his shoulder at Raphael, then at me.

I flash an everything’s just fine with me but who knows what’s up with Raphael smile.

Jack drifts back to thinking about honeymoon locales. Or something.

“Do I look all right?” I whisper frantically into Raphael’s ear.

He blinks, then gives me a lingering once-over. Then he asks, “Do you want honesty? Or kindness?”

“If one precludes the other—which I’m assuming it does—then I probably don’t need to ask. But I guess I’ll take honesty,” I add hurriedly, thinking a little constructive criticism can’t hurt under the circumstances.

“Well, you pretty much look like hell, Tracey. Why?”

“Give me a comb,” I say under my breath, slowing my pace further as Jack strides along a few steps in front of us.

“A comb?” Raphael echoes as though I’ve just requested a salon chair with drying dome. “I don’t have a comb.”

“Oh, well, I just thought maybe…”

“How about a brush?” Raphael promptly produces one from the pocket of his Pilgrim knickers. He also hands me a compact mirror.

“I love you,” I say, surreptitiously flipping the mirror open.

“Smooches, Tracey,” is his cordial response.

I make myself as presentable as I can, what with the gusting wind and the banana clip and no makeup whatsoever. A liquid eyeliner stashed in Raphael’s knee sock is probably too much to hope for, but I ask anyway.

“I forgot it on the table at home,” is his reply. “Sorry, Tracey.”

“It’s okay. Do I look better now?”

Again, the once-over.

“Not really,” he says. “Why?”

“No reason. I just like to, you know, look good.”

Especially when I’m about to be proposed to in front of millions of viewers. I wonder if my nephews are watching the parade at home. I wonder how impossible it would be to sneak in a quick cell-phone call to alert Mary Beth.

Pretty impossible, considering that I left my phone at home with my brush, toiletries and makeup. What was I thinking, leaving home this unprepared and unkempt, wearing sneakers and thermals?

Jack glances back at me as we cover the last block along Seventy-ninth Street single file between the blue barricades, due to the hordes of people. “You okay?”

“Yup. Great!”

“I’m great, too,” offers Raphael, two steps behind me. “But these shoes kill.”

“Beauty—and historic authenticity—are
pain
, Raphael,” I toss over my shoulder.

“You were so right, Tracey. I should have listened to you,” is his reply. “Barefoot, loincloth would have been a much better way to go.”

Oh, yay. I’ll get all the credit for next year’s obscene Big Fat Turkey Day attire.

At the viewing stand beside Central Park, where the parade kicks off, Jack shows his ID and presents our VIP passes to the burly security guard.

I watch carefully to see if the guy winks, but he doesn’t. He just says, “Go ahead,” to Jack, same as he would to a total stranger.

Okay. So maybe Jack didn’t tip off the guard. That doesn’t necessarily mean the televised engagement is off.

It could still be on.

Or maybe there’s a lizard in his pocket.

Which would be
fine,
I hasten to remind myself. I am just
fine
with not getting engaged today…or ever. I wouldn’t even be thinking about it if he hadn’t yanked my hand out of his pocket that way.

I’d be merrily rolling along, la la la, married or single, who cares, life is great, la la la, from now until forever.

But no, here I am, holding my breath in anticipation of something that may or may not happen today, on live television, or
ever
. Why do I do this to myself?

A second guard at the foot of the bleachers reminds us that we won’t be able to leave and reenter the VIP area now that we’re in, due to security concerns.

I can’t help but feel vaguely claustrophobic at that news. Nor can I help but wonder how letting VIPs come and go as needed would jeopardize security.

But hey, this is post 9–11 New York City, and I’m sure the guards have valid reasons. Even if they don’t, who’s going to argue with a menacing Wall of Man?

We find seats right behind a woman and a medium-size kid that I could swear are Al Roker’s family.

I even nudge Raphael and whisper, “Al Roker’s family.”

Then they turn around, and they’re whiter than I am, and Raphael smirks and says, “Somebody’s star struck” in a really annoying singsong voice.

So I stop looking for celebs, even when I’m absolutely positive I catch the guy who played Gunther on
Friends
checking me out.

Good thing I ignore him, because he turns out to be the butch half of a lesbian couple and she looks as though she thinks I’m checking out her girlfriend, and I wish Jack would give me the damn ring so she could see that I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in her girlfriend or her or, for that matter, the guy who played Gunther on
Friends.

God, I wish I had a cigarette.

That, or a confirmed future with Jack.

But he’s currently looking around like a little kid who hasn’t been to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade fifty or however-many times, and I’m inexplicably supremely annoyed with him, especially when he says, “Isn’t this great? Don’t you love these seats?”

“Eh,” I say, still feeling claustrophobic and idly wondering what would happen if I had to pee now that we’re here in VIP territory—then, of course, immediately realizing that I have to pee. Badly.

I don’t suppose they provide, within the cordoned-off area, heated Porta Potties for VIPs with raisin-size bladders.

They don’t.

I know, because I just asked Raphael, who asked Jack even though I told him not to, who reluctantly asked the menacing Wall of Man.

“What do I do now?” I ask Jack in the wake of this bad news.

“Hold it?”

“Hold it?” I echo. “For how long?”

“Until Santa passes by?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I am not kidding you. Santa’s the end of the parade. And anyway, I told you to go when we were back at the deli.”

“I tried.” Is this not the most annoying, least romantic conversation ever? I can’t believe we’re actually having it on our engagement day. Or not.

“Do you want to leave and try to find a bathroom?”

“By myself?”

“I’ll go with you.”

“But we can’t get back into the bleachers if we leave.”

He shrugs. “We’ll go home.”

But what about the televised engagement?

Is he testing me?

Does he think I’m suspicious and testing him?

“You know what, Jack? Never mind. I’ll be fine.”

“Good,” he says, either believing me and relieved his engagement plans haven’t been derailed, or callously unconcerned about my bladder.

What now?

For a few seconds, I watch the parade preparations in the street and try to focus on something else.

But I can’t.

“Raphael,” I say, turning to him and seeing that he’s exchanging winks with a cute homosexual to our left, “I have to pee. And you’re engaged, by the way.”

“I know. But he’s so adorable,” he hisses. “I can
look.
”

“You winked.”

“I can wink.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Donatello and I discussed it. Winking is allowed. It’s harmless.”

“Sure it is.”

“Tracey, you have a dirty mind.”

“So do you!”

“I know!” He is gleeful. “But it’s okay, because I love Donatello. If I have lust, it’s only in my mind.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to pee,” I say.

I’m not asking for assistance in this matter; I’m merely sharing so that I can receive sympathetic support in my time of need.

“Tell Jack,” is Raphael’s unsympathetic response.

I notice that Jack is busy turning his back to us and pretending to be very interested in something on the north end of the bleachers. Is he giving the high sign to a waiting camera crew so they can come over and film the engagement?

Play it cool, Tracey.

Further perusal indicates that there is no camera crew in sight on the north end of the bleachers, unless they’re disguised as a popcorn-toting Midwestern family of five.

“I did tell Jack,” I whisper to Raphael. “He didn’t really seem to care.”

Unless he was merely acting as though he doesn’t care for the sake of preserving his engagement surprise, in which case, I forgive him.

If that’s
not
the case, then I have to say I have serious concerns about what kind of husband he’d be. I understand that these are extraordinary circumstances, but I wonder how he’d behave under ordinary circumstances. How many times has my father pulled over at a rest stop five miles into a trip so my mother could visit the ladies’ room?

Would Jack do that for me?

I think not.

I shift my weight and shiver. It might be easier not to think about going to the bathroom if a cold rain weren’t falling on my face. What if that triggers a biological reflex? Like the old slumber party prank where you put somebody’s hand in a bowl of warm water while they’re asleep so they’ll wet the bed.

It never happened to me, but that’s only because I refused to ever go to sleep at a slumber party. I spent many a restless night on faintly mildewed indoor-outdoor carpeted basement floors out of sheer urination dread.

“Come on,” Jack says, suddenly turning back to me and taking my hand.

“Where are we going?” I pat my hair with my other hand. Is this it? My big moment? I look around for the cameras.

“To pee,” Jack says. “You have to, right?”

That depends.

Is he telling the truth?

And if he is, will peeing now postpone or preempt my engagement?

Then again, do I really want Jack to engage me while I have a stream of urine trickling down my legs?

I look into his face, trying to read his inscrutable expression.

What to do, what to do…

Then I spot it.

A crumb.

A bread crumb!

Holy Hansel and Gretel, Batman, there’s a bread crumb in the corner of Jack’s lip!

It all falls into place then, just like that.

J’accuse!

I stare at him in disbelief, disappointment, maybe even disgust.

“What?” he asks, all innocence.

So it wasn’t a ring in his pocket, and it wasn’t a lizard.

It was a ham-egg-and-cheese, smuggled away from the deli counter while I was trying to keep my butt cheeks from making contact with toilet-seat muck.

I just know it, the way I knew last night, right from the start, that it was Colonel Mustard in the Conservatory with the Lead Pipe.

My hopes sag like a Bullwinkle balloon. How could I have gotten all worked up over a stupid sandwich?

But, to keep things in perspective, this doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen for us.

It just means Jack was hungry.

And
sneaky.

He’s only human, and humans get hungry.

And sneaky.

I can’t hold that against him.

Anyway, maybe we’re going to get engaged later, at his mother’s house.

If not, I remind myself that I’ll still have plenty to be thankful for this holiday…starting with the fact that I didn’t wet my pants in the bleachers on Central Park West.

Chapter 11

W
ilma Candell moved last year into a brand-new two-bedroom condo not far from the huge Bedford Colonial house where she and her soon-to-be-ex-husband raised Jack and his four sisters.

Don’t get me wrong; the condo is really nice. It’s much larger and brighter than our apartment, with a deck, a fireplace, an attached one-car garage and access to a community pool, tennis courts and golf course. The fixtures and appliances are brand new and the decor is pleasantly neutral, the better to accentuate her beautiful antique furniture and artwork.

But when you think about the drastic change in Wilma’s lifestyle these past few years, you can’t help but feel a little sorry for her. At least,
I
can’t. It must be depressing to go from six thousand square feet to a fraction of that, and there’s just something unsettling about valuable oil paintings hanging on a gypsum wall that has strangers living on the other side.

Wilma greets us looking elegant in a pencil-slim tweed skirt, black cashmere sweater and pearls. She’s made up and perfumed, and her shoulder-length dark hair looks as though she just brushed and sprayed it. I can’t help but immediately compare her to Audrey Hepburn.

Then to my own mother.

I do that every time I see her, but today, the contrast is more stark than ever because I know that at this very moment, my mother is flushed and exhausted, wearing either an apron or a gravy-and-grease-spattered double-knit pantsuit because she was too frazzled to remember to put on the apron. She always wears the same brown double-knit pantsuit for Thanksgiving. Or maybe it’s different brown double-knit pantsuits every year but they always look the same.