Slightly Engaged (4 page)

I guess he was oblivious to the fact that he’d been set free, because he asked me to dance. What could I do but say yes?

I guess I could have said no. But when “Brown Eyed Girl” is playing and it’s been dedicated to you and you happen to be a brown-eyed girl, well, you get your ass out on the floor and you boogie.

At least, I fully intended to boogie. But for some reason, Jack seemed to think that particular song called for a slow dance.

If you’ve ever tried to stay angry at somebody while slow dancing with them to “Brown Eyed Girl” at a wedding—and really, who hasn’t?—then you’ll know why I wound up more or less forgiving the poor lug. At least, for the duration of the night—which, in the end, actually turned out to be kind of fun.

The band was great, the food, when I recovered my appetite, was decent, and Mike and Dianne eventually made a reappearance. They had apparently reconciled, although she did seem to take perverse satisfaction in smushing the cake in his face when she fed it to him.

I found myself thinking that I would never smush the cake in my groom’s face when I got married; then remembered that I probably wasn’t going to be getting married.

Not to Jack, anyway. Not unless I was willing to wait for
years.
Which I wasn’t.

But I couldn’t dwell on that all night, could I?

Sure I could. And I guess, in the end, I did.

Jack slept the entire drive home while I listened to the day’s news over and over again on 1010 WINS, the only radio station I could get on the car’s crappy stereo without static, and tried not to hate him.

Now, here it is, Sunday morning, and Sleeping Beauty is still blissfully snoring in the next room.

Normally, I love our cozy apartment, especially on mornings when the sun is streaming in the window and we don’t have to be back at our desks for forty-eight more hours.

But today, the place seems a little too…Ikea. Probably because that’s where all our furniture comes from. Jack really likes that Scandinavian, boxy, functional style. My taste is more cottage chic.

Since the apartment is strictly boxy/functional without a hint of cottage, let alone chic, his taste won. I was so grateful to be jointly buying anything more significant than dinner that I didn’t put up much of a fight. Now here I am, over a year later, feeling like I should change my name to Helga and learn to make pepperkaker so I won’t clash with the decor.

Back when we moved in, the apartment seemed spacious compared to my old studio…at least for the first five minutes. Today, it seems positively claustrophobic. Probably because one can cross the living room in three giant steps, the bedroom in two, and touch all three kitchen walls with one’s fingertips by standing on the center parquet tile.

Plus, the place is cluttered.

Everywhere I look, there are piles of stuff. Not just his; it’s my stuff, too. But his is more annoying.

Like the twelve novels he’s in the middle of reading, and the stacks of freebie magazines he gets as a media supervisor and is definitely going to read as soon as he finishes the twelve novels.

Then there are the suit jackets draped over the backs of every chair. All right, we only have two chairs, but both are draped in suit jackets.

Don’t even get me started on the shoes, the CDs and DVDs, the stuff that comes out of Jack’s pockets every time he comes home.

It’s not like I’m FlyLady, or Will, but at least I’m neater than Jack, and his clutter is starting to bug me. It’s so tempting to start tossing it, which, don’t worry, I won’t do, because Will once threw away a magazine I was reading when I set it down to go to the bathroom. I’m serious; in the space of time it took me to unzip, sit, pee, zip and wash, he not only threw it into the garbage, but carried the garbage down the hall and dumped it into the garbage chute. He didn’t do it on purpose, he said, seeming shocked by my disbelief.

Yeah, and he didn’t do Esme Spencer, his summer-stock costar, on purpose, either.

Anyway, here I am, curled up on the couch with my second cup of coffee, trying to read the Metro section of the
Times
while pondering my non-future with clutterholic, marriagephobic Jack, when the phone rings.

I figure it’s probably my friend Buckley O’Hanlon. He mentioned something about me and Jack joining him and his girlfriend, Sonja, for in-line skating in Central Park this afternoon. It sounded like fun when he brought it up the other day.

Now, not so much.

For one thing, I’m exhausted from all that dancing, and Jack will inevitably be hungover. For another, I’ve never in-line skated in my life. If my ice-skating and roller-skating prowess are any indication of my skill potential, I should probably learn to blade in a private bouncy tent, as opposed to a public park with gravel, roaming humans and other hazards.

Then again, maybe we should go anyway. After all, Buckley and Sonja are the only true peers we have left in New York. Unbetrothed, cohabiting couples seem to be a dying breed.

As I pick up the phone, I am already wondering if perhaps my weak Spadolini ankles have strengthened over the years, and whether the skate-rental place Buckley mentioned also supplies full-body padding that doesn’t make you look fat.

“Hello?”

“Tracey?” says a voice that isn’t Buckley’s. “It’s me, Wilma.”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Candell,” I say to the wonderful woman who—
sob
—will never be my mother-in-law.

“Call me Wilma,” Mrs. Candell urges for the nine hundredth time since we met, and I murmur that I will, but I know that I won’t.

For some reason, I just can’t. Maybe because the name Wilma conjures an image of a cartoonish red bun, a prehistoric jagged-hemmed dress with a rock pearl choker and dots for eyes.

There’s nothing remotely Flintstone-ish about Jack’s mother, an elegant yet bubbly brunette with a penchant for designer clothes and chatty conversation. She’s the furthest thing from Wilma Flintstone, and the furthest thing from my own mother, that I can imagine.

You wouldn’t catch Mrs. Candell in a jagged-hemmed dress and rock pearls, let alone in stretch pants with graying hair and an unappealing line of dark fuzz on her upper lip.

All right, that’s mean. My mother might have a mustache, but she has her good points. She makes a mean minestrone, and she…um…

Well, she has some other good points. But it would be nice if she were as laid back and easy to talk to as Jack’s mother is.

“How was the wedding?” Mrs. Candell asks, and I marvel at how she always remembers exactly what our plans are on any given weekend.

“It was fun.” I tell her the highlights of the ceremony and reception, skipping over the bride and groom’s dance-floor fight as well as her son’s callous torture.

She asks about the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses, the flavor of the cake, the honeymoon destination.

I know! I told you she was great!

Then she says cryptically, “Well, I guess you’ll be next.”

Excuse
me?

Did she just tell me she guesses I’ll be
next?

What does she mean by that?

I’m silent for a moment, my mind racing. Can Jack’s mother possibly know something I don’t know?

I probably shouldn’t ask, but I can’t help it. My entire future—or non-future—with her son is hanging in the balance.

“Mrs. Candell?”

“It’s Wilma.”

Not.

“Oh. Right. Um, Wilma?” I ask, thinking
Mom
has a more natural ring to it.

“Mmm-hmm?”

“What do you mean? When you say I’ll be next,” I clarify, in case feigned confusion and sidestepping of issues runs in the family.

“You’ll be next,” she repeats. “You and Jack.”

“Next…?”

“Next. To get married.”

Next…after whom? Hazel and Phinnaeus Moder?

Okay, either the woman is seriously deluded, or she’s privy to some vast Candell conspiracy.

“I don’t think so,” I say cautiously, testing the waters. “I mean, I really doubt Jack wants to marry me.”

“Tracey! Why would you say something like that? Jack loves you.”

If those words coming from his mother don’t warm my heart, I don’t know what will.

Well, yes, I actually do. A proposal on bended knee from Jack himself would definitely be even toastier.

“Well,” I tell his mother, trying not to reveal my burgeoning excitement, “regardless of whether Jack loves me or not, I don’t think he wants to get married.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” Her tone is oozing confidence.

I think.

Well, it’s definitely oozing something. Hopefully not bullshit.

“Mrs.—Wilma, I’m not sure I get what you’re trying to tell me.”

Is
she trying to tell me something?

Or is she trying
not
to tell me something?

“Tracey, don’t worry about Jack. He wants to get married. He would kill me if he knew I was telling you this—”

I hold my breath.

“—but he’s definitely planning on getting married.”

Sensing there’s more, I’m afraid to exhale; afraid to move; afraid to do anything that might shatter the moment.

“In fact,” she goes on, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “when he was up here for dinner last week, he asked if I could open the safe-deposit box for him.”

I’m turning blue here, trying to figure out what that could possibly mean, certain there’s more. There has to be.

But she doesn’t elaborate, so I’m forced to let my breath out at last and ask bluntly, “What, exactly, does that mean?”

Silence.

Then, “You don’t know?”

Apparently, I don’t. But now I’m dying to.

“Know what?” I ask.

“About the stone?”

Stone? What stone?

I rack my brains.

Stone…stone…grindstone? Rolling stone? Pizza stone? Flintstone?

What the hell is she talking about?

“No,” I say tautly, “I didn’t know about a—er,
the
—stone.”

Her flat “oh” might as well have been preceded by “uh” because she’s obviously just spilled something she wasn’t supposed to. Which would be tantalizing if I could get a handle on whatever it is she supposedly revealed. But here I am, utterly clueless, my mind racing with possibilities.

“I just assumed the two of you had discussed it.”

“The stone?”

“Yes.”

“See, the thing is, Wilma…I’m just not following you.”

It’s her turn to take a deep breath. “Tracey, when Jack’s father and I separated last year, I had my diamond taken out of my engagement-ring setting, which I never really liked even though I was the one who picked it out—”

Oh…

Oh, wow.

Diamond.
As in
rock.
The only kind of
stone
that really matters.

Diamond.

Do you believe this? Are you hearing this? Talk about a bombshell…

“—and I told Emily and Rachel that the first one of them to get married could have it.”

Emily is Jack’s younger sister; Rachel is the next one up from Jack. They have two more older sisters, Jeannie and Kathleen, who are both married.

“But both of the girls are positive that they’ll want their own rings when they get engaged,” Mrs. Candell goes on, “so I decided my diamond is there for Jack whenever he wants it. And…he wants it.”

Well, slap my ass and call me Judy!

Better yet, slap my ass and call me “Mrs. Candell the Second!”

Tracey Candell.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Speaking of rings…

“You’re kidding,” I manage to squeak to Mrs. Candell the First.

“No…I gave him the diamond before he left. But you can’t tell him you know about it, Tracey.”

“I won’t. I swear.” My hands are shaking. My heart is pounding.

“Really, I thought the two of you must have discussed this. I guess my son is more romantic than his father ever was,” she adds with a brittle laugh.

I know that the Candells’ marriage was never lovey-dovey, and Jack said it was always only a matter of time before they split up. The month after Emily graduated from college and moved to Manhattan, they separated. The divorce will be final next spring, and everybody seems relieved that it’s almost over.

Still, sometimes I wonder if his parents’ failed marriage has anything to do with Jack’s reluctance to commit.

But right now, all I’m wondering is what cut Wilma’s diamond is, and when Jack is going to give it to me, and how I could have missed the subtle signs that he had this up his sleeve. Because there must have been subtle signs. There always are.

Do you think his comment that Marriage is for the Asinine was a subtle sign?

Me neither.

“Anyway,” Wilma is saying, “if Jack ever knew I’d let this slip to you—”

“I promise I won’t tell him.”

“Won’t tell who what?”

Startled by the voice behind me, I turn to see Jack standing there: boxer shorts, bad breath, bedhead…

Yes. There he is. The man I love. The man who loves me.

The man who apparently has a stone concealed somewhere in this minuscule apartment and is trying to throw me off his trail with all this convincing talk about only the Asinine getting married.

“Who are you talking to?” he asks.

“Your mother,” I admit, gazing adoringly at him, wondering how I ever could have thought I had to let him go. I didn’t have to let him go to find out that he’s mine. He always was. He always will be.

“
My
mother?” He frowns. “You’re keeping secrets from me with my mother?”

“Secrets?”

“You just said you won’t tell me something.”

“Not you,” I say as Wilma makes a warning noise in my ear. “We were talking about someone else.”

“Who?” he asks dubiously.

“You mean whom,” I amend, just to buy time.

He grits his teeth. “Whom are you talking about with my mother, Tracey?”

“Maybe it actually should have been ‘who’ when you phrase it that—”

“Tracey, come on! Who?”

“Your father.”

Judging by Wilma’s muffled groan, I’m guessing that wasn’t a good choice. But it’s too late now.