Slightly Engaged (3 page)

“Oh, it’s your imagination,” I tell her breezily. “He’s actually got a diamond ring in his jacket pocket and he’s just waiting for the right moment to pop the question.”

Everyone laughs.

I try to laugh but end up making the kind of sound one might make if an MTA bus rolled over one’s pinkie toe.

“Are you okay?” Brenda asks as Latisha pats my arm and Yvonne’s eyes take on the deadly gleam reserved for bosses who ask her to start payment reqs at five to five on Friday afternoons and eligible bachelors who refuse to marry their live-in girlfriends.

“Yes,” I say, inhaling my filtered menthol. “I’m okay.”

When met with dubious silence, I add, “Sort of.”

“Are you sure?” Brenda asks.

“Of course she’s not okay,” Yvonne barks. “Her boyfriend refuses to marry her. She feels like shit. Who wouldn’t?”

Maybe somebody who hasn’t been told that she should feel like shit, I can’t help thinking. I mean, if my friends weren’t here to validate my irritation with Jack, I might be able to convince myself that it’s just a typical guy thing; that I should just bear with him a while longer.

After all, Jack isn’t downright commitmentphobic like my ex-boyfriend, Will, whom I dated for years without his even entertaining the notion of cohabitation.

No, Jack asked me to move in with him practically the second we met.

Then again…

Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?

Yeah, me too. But only lately. For the first year of our relationship, I was blissfully happy and oblivious to the idea of ulterior motives.

But that was back when I assumed that Engagement, Marriage and Baby Carriage would be the logical progression of our relationship. That’s how it seems to work for everyone else I know, though Latisha swapped the order of Marriage and Baby Carriage, and I seriously doubt there’s a Baby Carriage in Yvonne’s immediate future.

Meanwhile, now that Jack and I are stalled at phase one, Living Together, I can’t help wondering why he wanted to do that in the first place.

Was he merely desperate to get away from Mike’s eternal chipperness? Dianne’s eternal wenchiness? Brooklyn?

Obviously, he could never have afforded a Manhattan apartment with a roommate, because half the rent on a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment is way beyond a media supervisor’s salary.

Half the rent on a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment is just barely within Jack’s budget, and mine. So if we weren’t living together, he’d still be in a borough and I’d still be in my dingy downtown studio.

Or maybe I’d have given up on New York City by now and moved back to my hometown way upstate. That’s what everyone back home always expected me to do sooner or later. The residents of Brookside know that one doesn’t leave home without someday regretting it…or, at the very least, paying a terrible price.

I still remember the neighbor’s son who notoriously turned his back on his home, his family, his legacy.

In other words, he moved to Cleveland. When he was run over by a snowplow in a freak accident, my parents said he’d gotten what was coming to him.

Yes, I’m serious.

I’m the first person in my family to move more than a few blocks away from my parents. They’ll never forgive me for moving four hundred miles away, and I’m sure they’re assuming I’ll eventually get what’s coming to me. That would explain why my mother’s always offering up novenas in my name.

Forgiveness doesn’t come easily in the Spadolini family. My parents still haven’t forgiven me for daring to say that I don’t like the abundant fennel seeds in Uncle Cosmo’s homemade sausage, for missing Cousin Joanie’s first communion, for forgetting to call my grandmother on her birthday.

I sent her flowers.

But I didn’t call.

In my family, you call.

You can send somebody three dozen roses, imported Perugina Baci and front-row tickets to see Connie Francis, but if you don’t call, you’re out.

So yeah, I’m out.

Especially now that I’m living in sin.

In my family, living in sin is one step away from killing somebody.

Actually, it’s probably
worse
than killing somebody, considering my parents’ pride in our Sicilian roots, and how they’ve alluded to the fact that our ancestors weren’t exactly antigun lobbyists and didn’t take any crap from anybody.

My father likes to share a colorful anecdote about his father’s
compare
Fat Naso, and what may or may not have happened to Scully, the neighbor who called Fat Naso’s mother something so heinous it can’t be repeated at Sunday dinner.

Never mind that Fat Naso’s mother callously dubbed her own son Fat Naso because of his weight problem and prominent beak. Back then in Sicily, it was okay to insult somebody as long as you gave birth to them. Conversely, it was
never
okay to stand by while somebody else insulted the person who gave birth to you.

Pop never comes right out and says what Fat Naso did, but I do know that he didn’t just stand by, and that Scully was never seen again. Pop is real proud of that.

But he definitely isn’t proud of me, his daughter, the
puttana.

Okay, he’s never actually come right out and called me a
puttana.
But I know that to him and the rest of my family, a woman who blatantly sleeps with a man who isn’t her husband is a whore.

The thing is, I don’t feel like a whore. Should I?

I ask my friends just that.

“You? A ho? Get outta here,” is Latisha’s response.

“A whore is somebody who turns tricks for money, Tracey,” Yvonne informs me, in case I didn’t know the Webster’s definition.

But Brenda, who grew up in an Italian-American Catholic family like mine, gets it. “My parents would have killed me if I lived with Paulie before we got married. They’d have called me a
puttana
and worse.”

“What could be worse than
puttana?
” I ask her, and she shrugs.

So do I. Then I say, “I wonder if it’s even worth it.”

“If what’s worth what?” Yvonne asks, releasing a smoke ring that wafts into my face. Funny how my own smoke—the smoke I’m inhaling directly into my lungs—doesn’t bother me, but secondhand smoke does.

Mental note: Stop for patch on way home. Time to quit.

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought of that. Jack has been after me to quit smoking for a while now. He even promised me a weekend trip to a fancy spa outside Providence if I can go for an entire month without a cigarette.

So far, I’ve made it through an entire morning. Several times.

It’s the afternoon lull that’s a deal-breaker for me. I can never seem to get past the postlunch hump without lighting up. But I swear I will, sooner or later. I’ll do it for Jack. I’d do anything for Jack.

“I wonder if living with Jack is worth the grief that my parents give me,” I tell my friends. “Maybe if I weren’t living with him, I’d already have a ring on my finger. Do you think I would?”

Without the slightest hesitation, they all nod.

Terrific.

I definitely should have held out, like Dianne did. Well, it’s too late now.

“What do you think I should do?” I ask the three of them. “And don’t tell me to break up with Will, because I know I can’t.”

“Will?” Latisha echoes, her eyebrows edging toward her cornrows.

“What?”

“You said Will, Tracey,” Brenda points out. “Instead of Jack.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, yes, you did. And I bet it’s Freudian,” Yvonne informs me. “You’re in the same boat with Jack that you were with Will a few years ago.”

“I am not,” I protest, even though I realize she might be onto something. “Jack isn’t Will. Jack loves me. Jack wants to live with me. Jack—”

“Doesn’t want to marry you,” Yvonne cuts in. “Right?”

“Wrong. He’s just not ready yet. It happens all the time with men.”

Nobody says anything.

I glance from Brenda (who started dating the devoted Paulie in junior high) to Latisha (who turned down dedicated Derek’s repeated proposals for over a year) to Yvonne (who only intended to have a green card marriage and was promptly swept off her feet by dashing Thor).

Well, what do they know? Their relationships are the exception.

“You know what they say, Tracey,” Brenda tells me. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never will.”

“Was,” Yvonne corrects, stubbing out her cigarette. “If it doesn’t, it never
was.
Not
Will.
”

“Why does everybody keep slipping up and saying ‘Will’?” Latisha asks slyly. “Does Brenda have a subconscious thing for him, too? Bren, are you secretly lusting after Will?”

“Yeah, and I’m secretly lusting after Carson from
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,
too.”

Did I mention that all my friends were convinced Will was closeted and I was a deluded fag hag? No? Well, they did. And obviously still do. At least the Will-being-closeted part.

“Look, Tracey, the point is, maybe you need to set Jack free and see what happens.”

Maybe Brenda’s right. Good Lord, is this dismal, or what?

“Come on,” Latisha says cheerfully. “I bet it’s time for dinner.”

After a ladies’ room pit stop, where I ensure that I am still looking ravishing in red—so why doesn’t Jack want to marry me?—we troop back out to the ballroom, where the band is playing “Always and Forever.” That song, I recall, is supposed to be Mike and Dianne’s first dance together. But the dance floor is empty, the newlyweds are nowhere in sight, and the crowd seems vaguely uneasy.

“What happened to the bride and groom?” I ask Jack, sliding into my seat.

He sips his scotch. “Oh, they left.”

“They
left?
”

“Yeah, you just missed it. They started dancing and then they had an argument. You should have seen it, Trace,” he says almost gleefully. “She was shaking her fist at him and everything. Right out there on the dance floor with everyone watching. Then she went stomping away and he chased after her. Wuss.”

“Don’t call him that,” I say sharply, despite the fact that I silently called him the same thing a few hours ago. “He isn’t a wuss. He’s a man who’s…who’s in love.”

Oh, please,
I think.

“Oh, please.” Jack rolls his eyes and tilts his glass again.

I look around the table and see that nobody is listening to our conversation. They’re all caught up in the bridal debacle, oblivious to the antibridal one that’s brewing between me and Jack right under their noses.

“If you and I were married, I’d hope you’d come after me if we had a fight and I left,” I say unreasonably.

Jack feigns confusion. Or maybe, in his pickled stupor, he really is confused. He says, “Huh? What does this have to do with us?”

“It has everything to do with us. I’m talking about marriage, here, Jack. And the future of our relationship.”

I am?

Hell, yes, I am. And it’s high time I brought it up.

“I’m talking about why you don’t want to get married,” I go on.

“Who says I don’t want to get married?”

“You do.”

“No, I don’t.”

Hope springs eternal. “So you want to get married?”

“Now?”

“No, of course not
now.
Just…someday.”

“Sure,” he says noncommittally. “Someday.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a few years, maybe.”

Hope takes a hike.

“A few
years?
” I echo, supremely pissed.
“Maybe?”

“What’s the rush?”

I’m silent, glaring into the tossed salad that materialized on my place mat while I was gone. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation here. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation at all. But now that it’s under way, there’s no going back. I struggle to think of what I want to say next.

I assume Jack’s doing the same thing.

Until he asks, “Do you want your tomato?”

I watch him poke his fork into it without waiting for a reply.

He has some nerve! Aside from the fact that he just sidestepped the issue at hand, everybody knows the tomato is the best part of a salad, and that restaurants and caterers are for some reason notoriously skimpy with them.

Then again, maybe everybody doesn’t know. Or care.

But I do, and I do. It’s like tomatoes are some rare, expensive delicacy not to be squandered. When I make a salad, I cut up a couple of them so I can have some in every bite. But perhaps I’m alone in my passion. Maybe most people don’t
like
tomatoes, and they’re only in a salad for a splash of color to liven up the aesthetic.

Who knows?

Who cares?

Me. I care. Because the fact that Jack would blatantly help himself to my lone tomato just shows what kind of human being he is.

“I thought you had no appetite,” I manage to spit out between clenched jaws.

“It came back. Can I have your cucumber?”

It, too, is already on his fork, en route to his mouth.

“Take the whole thing.” I shove the salad bowl in his direction.

“Don’t you want it?”

“I lost my appetite.”

He laughs, with nary a care in the world, damn him.

“Really, Trace? Did you kiss the bride, too?”

No. I just realized I’ll never become one if I stay with you.

But I don’t say it.

What’s the use?

It’s all out there on the table. Now all I can think is that if you love something, you’re supposed to set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never will…or never
was.
Or whatever.

Goodbye, Jack,
I think sadly, watching him gobble the rest of my salad as though he hasn’t a care in the world.

Chapter 3

C
all me a hypocrite, but in the broad light of Sunday morning, the major confrontation Jack and I had at Mike’s wedding doesn’t seem quite so dramatic.

For one thing, Jack was apparently too drunk to even realize we’d
had
a major confrontation, which goes a long way toward diffusing any post-fight tension. Thus, it was particularly hard for me to stay angry at him, especially when he requested that the band play “Brown Eyed Girl” and dedicate it to me.