Slightly Engaged (21 page)

Really? Why should he ask her? Does he want to take me there on
our
honeymoon?

“Yeah, you should definitely find out,” I say, and I can feel my heart beating a little faster.

“I will,” he says, “when I see her again at Christmas.”

My heart lands with a thud.

Christmas.

That was the main topic of conversation last night over dessert, which in absence of pumpkin pie consisted depressingly of Lorna Doones and sliced bananas.

I have long been aware that the Candells have always spent Christmas together in Aspen, where Jack’s dad has a ski house. Actually, it used to be the family’s house, but he got it in the divorce settlement.

I’ve seen plenty of pictures and heard countless stories about Candell Christmases, which are always made to seem excitingly Kennedyesque: everybody skis, even the twins, and they all wear three-hundred-dollar parkas accessorized by aviator lenses and those sporty headbands that somehow look great on the snowy, sun-splashed Colorado slopes, but would be ridiculously Olivia Newton-John circa 1982 anywhere else.

When the subject of Christmas came up Thursday, Wilma acted really excited to be going on her Caribbean jaunt with a fellow divorcée while the rest of the family took off for the Rockies with Dad.

But if you ask me, she seemed about as enthusiastic about her trip as I am about spending Christmas in Brookside.

“You mean you’re not coming with us?” Rachel asked me, looking genuinely shocked and so disappointed at first I assumed she was talking to her mother.

“Me? No, I have to go home for Christmas,” I told her. “My parents would be really upset if I didn’t, especially after I missed Thanksgiving.”

Everybody seemed to accept that answer, including Jack.

After all, where we would spend our respective Christmases hadn’t even been a topic for discussion with us.

But now, as we stroll
sur la
rocky but romantic
plage,
he looks a little wistful as he asks, “Are you sure you can’t come with us to Aspen?”

“For Christmas?” I shake my head vigorously. “No way. I’ve got to go home.”

“Are you positive?”

“Positive.”

“I hate the thought of us spending the holidays apart.”

So do I.

If only…

“We don’t have to, you know,” I hear myself say impulsively.

He brightens immediately. “You mean you’ll come to Aspen?”

“No, you can come to Brookside!” Why didn’t I think of it before?

Maybe, I realize on the heels of what I think was an invitation, because it’s a really, really bad idea.

Yes, he’s visited Brookside before…

But never for Christmas.

If Jack’s Aspen Christmases are Kennedyesque, my Brookside Christmases are…well, cross the Sopranos with the Gottis, replace the crime and guns with perpetual chaos and
cucidati,
and you get the idea.

Do I
really
want to subject nice normal Jack to
that?

Picture this: dozens of opinionated oddball relatives, some with bad colds, some talking loudly and asking too many questions; others not at all because you or somebody in your immediate family offended them last Christmas. Most of them are going to hug and kiss everyone in the house upon arrival and departure, regardless of whether they’re speaking to you and whether you happen to be a complete stranger, a.k.a., somebody’s visiting boyfriend from New York City. All of these will come bearing utterly useless gifts, which will be opened one by one in an endless ritual that goes on into the wee hours.

Throw in a bunch of bizarre yuletide traditions, too much food, too much steam heat, at least one vomiting kid, cat hair…

And then there’s the snow. Incessant, wind-driven snow. Feet of it pile up at a time, and my father would expect Jack to shovel it.

“Are you serious?” Jack is asking.

I feign confusion. “Serious about what?”

Jack: “Me coming to Brookside for Christmas.”

Tracey, brightly: “That? Oh, sure!”

I suspect my Oscar nomination just went the way of the reflexology session, judging by the look on Jack’s face.

“You don’t look like you mean it.”

“No, I do! It’s just…I mean, I know your dad is probably counting on you to come to Aspen.”

“Screw him,” Jack says darkly. “Look what he did to my mother. Who cares what he wants?”

Oooh-kay then. I guess it’s safe to assume he’s not quite over the divorce.

“I’d much rather spend Christmas with you and your family in Brookside,” Jack informs me.

You know what? I believe him.

Granted, he knows not of what he speaks.

Still…

“Great,” I say, cleverly noting that my chances of becoming engaged over the holidays will be much higher if Jack comes to Brookside than they are if we spend Christmas half a continent apart.

In fact…

Maybe that’s why he looks so enthusiastic about this sudden change of plans.

Look at him. Maybe he’s plotting right now how he’s going to smuggle a ring box into my stocking.

“My sisters are going to be pissed,” he says almost gleefully.

Or maybe he’s just out for vengeance.

Sigh.

Oh, well.

It’s too late to rescind the offer now.

Brookside for Christmas, here we come!

Part IV

Christmas

Chapter 13

“M
aybe he sold it for cash to buy drugs, Tracey.”

That, of course, is Raphael.

Re: the whereabouts of the diamond Jack has yet to offer.

“F&%# @(*.”

That, of course, is me.

Re: Raphael’s ridiculous claim.

“Tracey!” His newly dyed-blond eyebrows elevate toward his newly dyed-blond hairline. “That wasn’t a nice thing to say.”

“Neither was your thing. Jack isn’t on drugs.”

“You don’t know that for sure. Wait, pull over.” Grabbing my arm, Raphael steps out of the flow of pedestrian traffic along Saint Mark’s Place to examine a sidewalk display of sunglasses.

“I know for sure that Jack isn’t on drugs,” I argue in frustration, shivering in the brisk night wind blowing off the East River a few blocks away, “but I’m not so sure about you, Raphael.”

“If I seem high, it’s because I’m madly in love, Tracey.”

“Oh, please.”

Raphael stops fondling a pair of leopard-spot cat’s-eye lenses to rest a hand on my arm. “I know it must be painful for you. Jealousy is a natural reaction in your situation. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to mention Donatello any more than is absolutely necessary.”

“It’s okay. I’m really not jealous.”

No, just sick to death of hearing about their Valentine’s Day wedding and their safari honeymoon and living happily ever
blah, blah, blah.

“Of course you’re not jealous,” he says gently. Then, after a beat, “So do you think Donatello will find me more irresistible in the leopard-print or the zebra-stripe frames for Kenya?”

He pulls on one pair of shades, then the other.

I pretend to debate, while making absolutely certain out of sheer Raphael-induced paranoia that there’s not the slightest possibility Jack is, indeed, on drugs.

Of course he isn’t.

And I’m an idiot for even bringing up the subject of Jack and our nonengagement to Raphael, the voice of doom. Haven’t I learned he has nothing optimistic to say about my chances of becoming Jack’s bride?

He keeps telling me I’m the proverbial cow and Jack is getting the proverbial milk for free, and “Sooner or later he’s going to become lactose intolerant, Tracey. You’ll see.”

“What does that even mean?” I made the mistake of asking.

And Raphael told me. Nonproverbially.

Mental note: do not, I repeat,
not,
mention anything about Jack or the elusive diamond ring for the remainder of the evening.

The only thing is, there’s really not much else I care about right now in my life. Everything else—work, finances, Spadolini-family dynamics, pre-holiday madness—is status quo.

I’m sure I’d feel better if I could at least campaign for that promotion at Blair Barnett. But Mike’s replacement has yet to be hired, and even if he—or she—were already on board, everybody knows that nothing exciting happens in the agency at this time of year. Everybody’s just marking time until Christmas, which is when the agency, like most others in Manhattan, will close until after New Year’s.

As a result, there is very little at the office—other than the dreaded annual Secret Snowflake exchange—to keep me occupied.

Not that I’m lacking for distractions on the home front. In fact, there’s a lot to do. Cleaning, wrapping, packing…

I look up at the starless December sky, thinking I never should have agreed to come Christmas shopping with Raphael tonight. I should probably be home cleaning. The place is a mess, and to make matters even more depressing, the leg fell off our pressboard dining table when I bumped it earlier. I left it there on the floor because I was late for work. Jack will have to get wood putty or something and fix it when he gets home.

Still, I could be there wrapping the stack of gifts I still have left to wrap, or packing for our trip up to Brookside.

We don’t leave for another two days, though. Forty-eight hours. Which is plenty of time.

Plenty of time to go through my drawers and hangers in an effort to find a couple of outfits I can still squeeze into.

No, I haven’t lost the post-smoking weight.

If anything, I actually may have gained a few pounds since Thanksgiving—not that I’m willing to step on a scale to find out. Who wants to weigh themselves in December, the height of the holiday-binge season? Better to wait until a cold morning in January, when all that will be available to tempt me might be leftover candy canes and soon-to-expire dip.

“Tracey!”

“The leopard spots,” I tell Raphael, who’s still waiting impatiently.

“Reason, Tracey?”

“They go better with your tawny new hair.”

“You think?”

I nod vigorously.

“Oh, Tracey, I don’t know…” Raphael tries to catch sight of his reflection in the mirrored lens of the zebra-striped shades. “You don’t think they’re too campy?”

“They are, but since when do you care?”

“I wouldn’t want to be campy,” protests Raphael, who is currently wearing a vintage tweed overcoat on top of an outfit he had custom made by a costume-designer friend who specializes in pirate-wear.

Yes,
pirate
-wear.

I’d be willing to bet he’s the only swashbuckler to hit the streets of lower Manhattan in at least three centuries.

Meanwhile, he went platinum—or as he persists in calling it, “tawny”—a few days ago, because “gentlemen prefer blondes.” In other words, he caught Donatello exchanging small talk with a strapping, fair-haired mailman en route to mailing their wedding invitations. Talk about paranoia.

“I guess you’re right,” Raphael decides. “The leopard spots do go much better with my hair, campy or not.”

“You’re going to buy them?” I ask, even as he puts both pairs of sunglasses back on the display table.

“No, I don’t really like them, Tracey,” he says airily.

“Because they’re campy?”

“Because they squeeze the sides of my head.” He extends an arm, gesturing toward the teeming sidewalk. “Shall we?”

I swear, Christmas shopping with fickle Raphael is almost as exasperating as Christmas shopping with fickle Kate, which I did last weekend. I bought exactly one Christmas gift—a pair of gloves for the annual office Secret Snowflake exchange—and spent the remainder of the time watching Kate try on an entire designer line of darling maternity clothes.

No, she’s not pregnant yet.

She was “browsing.”

The only person I can really shop well with is Jack, but he’s in Toledo on business overnight. And anyway, I’m supposed to be buying his gift, something I can’t exactly accomplish in his company.

Something I can’t exactly accomplish, period.

At least, so far.

That’s because every gift item I consider seems all wrong.

A nice scarf?

Too insignificant, especially if he’s giving me a diamond ring for Christmas.

A nice Rolex?

Too significant, especially if he’s
not
giving me a diamond ring for Christmas.

See what I mean?

“I just wish I knew whether he’s going to propose or not,” I make the mistake of murmuring to Raphael, after discarding a pile of sweaters at another sidewalk vendor farther down the block, which Raphael has deemed “sub-par cashmere.”

His neck snaps around. “Did you just say you wish you knew whether he’s going to propose or not, Tracey?”

Okay, obviously I didn’t learn my lesson after making that same speculation and subsequent vow not to, ever again, because here I am, once again, watching Raphael shake his head vigorously in response.

“My guess is no, Tracey. He’s not.”

“Why not?” I ask reluctantly.

“Because he’s supposedly had the ring since August, so why wouldn’t he have given it to you before now?”

“Because he sold it for cash to buy drugs, remember?”

“Tracey!” He gasps, covering his mouth. “You think?”

“No! I don’t
think.
I already told you he’s not on drugs.”

“Well then, maybe he’s involved with somebody else, Tracey, and he’s planning on giving
her
the diamond.”

On a different night, or a bad-hair day, that suggestion might actually give me pause, but tonight it doesn’t. Not on the heels of this morning’s rigorously erotic goodbye before Jack left for the airport. Nothing like some good lovin’ to leave a gal feeling confident.

So it’s my turn to shake my head vigorously. “Nope. No way.”

“Well then, maybe he threw it overboard into the sea, like the old lady at the end of
Titanic.
”

There are so many things wrong with that scenario that I’m not sure where to start.

I choose, “Last I knew, Jack hadn’t gone to sea in at least a couple of years.”

“Well, then maybe he tossed it into the East River, Tracey. Ever think of that?”