The Cinderella Pact (41 page)

Voila! Instant husband.

This has been my problem. I'd like a husband in theory, but I don't want to have to work for one in practice. You know, keep my legs shaved and my figure trim. Dress well for all occasions. Learn how to grill a steak, twice-bake a potato, check my teeth for spinach, say no to desserts, look stunning in a bikini, bat my eyes, suck in my stomach, never burp, fetch beer, giggle at his every joke, wear thongs that ride up my butt, make nice to his sister, and play those games.

I am lousy at those games.

My mother loves them. She loves the whole challenge of baiting and trapping the elusive white-collar, upwardly mobile North American male. I think she wishes she were still single like she was back when she lassoed my father, the prudent bank president in a gray suit, the guy who never fails to lead strangers to the brink of suicide with mind-numbing lectures on the importance of building credit and pursuing equity.

For example, one day my mother sent me a present with a note on pink stationery that said: “Be the first to hang up and he'll be the first to call back!” It was a white plastic egg timer. I sat on my front step and stared at it, baffled.

Then I called my best friend, Patty Pugliese, who said, or rather yelled, as she tends to do, “It's so you'll know when to get off the phone with a guy, you moron!”

Patty's a successful lawyer at a boutique firm in Boston, unmarried and determined to stay that way. As the oldest sister of seven kids growing up poor in South Boston, she likes to say that she's already raised her family. To her, marriage means diapers and a husband who stops by long enough to get you pregnant again. She'd much rather sleep around and drive a Porsche.

I found a spot for the egg timer on my stove and there it sat for years, reminding me every morning, as I flipped my Egg Beaters omelet with salsa and low-fat cheese, of what I was doing wrong. Like putting it by the stove instead of by the phone, for starters.

One by one my closest friends from college got married. Mary Ann went to Germany, married a doctor, and had two children, named Louise and Hanz. Sara married Gary, who lived in the apartment above us junior year. (We'd all seen that one coming.) Julia married a guy she met in law school. Lorraine married her dentist. Only Ellie and I were left, and Ellie was looking hard. She had egg timers next to every phone in her apartment and the cell phone in her car. (I am not kidding.)

It haunted me, my egg timer. I'd think about it as I went to work, riding the #73 Waverly bus to Harvard Square and taking the Red Line up to Thoreau College, where I'm an admissions counselor. I'd ask myself, Is it me? Do men not find me attractive?

Clearly that wasn't true. Guys asked me out all the time, and they'd tell me that they loved my hair, which is nothing spectacular, your run-of-the-mill brown, or that they thought my legs were really strong. (Just what does that mean?) They said I was funny and had a great personality. But something about me was not marriage material. We'd last four, maybe five dates, discussing as always their ex-girlfriends and how to win them back, and that was it. They never called again.

Why? I mean, I had the timer!

Maybe it was my job. Maybe it wasn't exciting enough to attract quality men. In a college town like Boston, everyone knows there are two types of admissions counselors: the recent graduates biding time until something more exciting comes along, and the hacks like me who have decided to make a career out of breaking kids' hearts.

Not that I'm one of those. I'm not. I'm the person on the admissions committee who votes for Suzie Plain Cheese of Dayton, Ohio, because she's a hard worker and a sincere student who didn't pad her résumé. I know Suzie will grow up to be a generous member of society, joining her community's school board and maybe leading a Girl Scout troop or two.

But Thoreau College is in a losing war against Harvard. (As if we could compete!) Inevitably my Suzie is overruled in favor of the rich kid from New Jersey whose parents have paid for him to distribute clean needles in Ghana and take classes that coach him to a perfect 2,400 on the SATs.

So I went to work and did what I could for the Suzie Plain Cheeses of the universe. I spent my lunch hours eating turkey sandwiches with diet mayo, lettuce, and tomato on whole wheat, along with a Diet Vanilla Cherry Coke, while reading their essays about the life-changing aspects of
To Kill A Mockingbird
. On the train home I read their explanations for why they bombed biology and, after a dinner of Lean Cuisine and a Skinny Cow sandwich, I read about their plans to take over the world, while my overweight, diabetic cat, Jorge, barfs on the carpet by my feet.

I kept up this routine, hoping that life might change of its own accord.

And then, just when I had given up and signed myself over to a limited existence in my Watertown apartment with my nearly blind cat, a miracle occurred.

I met Hugh.

Not any Hugh. Hugh Spencer. I'm sure you've heard of him or read one of his books. Though when we hooked up, he wasn't famous. He was just an assistant English English professor. I didn't repeat myself. He taught English and he
was
English. How cool is that?

All the freshman girls had crushes on him. His office hours were booked faster than a Rolling Stones reunion tour. And they weren't there to discuss his brilliant analysis of Shakespeare's use of feminine foil in
All's Well That Ends Well
, either. The guy is the spitting image of Hugh Grant: heavy-lidded blue eyes, that naughty grin, even the stutter. (Though Patty thinks it's totally affected, and she may be right.)

Better yet, I didn't have to put out bait or trap him. He came to me. Literally. He opened the door of my office one night when I was “working” late, and there I was, naturally, with my skirt over my head, inspecting my ass with a hand mirror.

Granted, it wasn't the best of circumstances to meet a future husband. That's not exactly putting one's “best face forward,” you might say. But it was funny. Hugh had come looking for a flashlight to help Alice, our secretary, change her tire, and what he got instead was an uncontrollable fit of hysterics.

I, of course, didn't find it funny at all. I was mortified! But no matter how hard I tried to explain that I was checking for cancer—having just taken a break to read a
Cosmo
article entitled “Killer Moles You Don't See,” the more he bowled over. I mean, it was a matter of life or death. And he was laughing!

To make up for his callous attitude toward my health, he took me out to dinner. (All clear on the ass-mole front, by the way.) The next I knew, we had one, two, three, four, five, and six dates. Then I stopped counting.

It was glorious. Saturdays we'd go to the North End and pick up fresh pasta for dinner. Sundays we'd sleep late and read the
New York Times
. We biked. We jogged. We had mind-blowing sex on fresh white one-thousand-thread-count cotton sheets. It was like living in a catalogue.

Suddenly I had Adirondack chairs on my front porch. I was wearing gray yoga pants and facing the morning sun with a earthenware cup of fair-trade espresso in my hand, Hugh kissing my neck, his abs chiseled above his Ralph Lauren striped boxers. My kitchen was bright with fresh vegetables, green peppers, red peppers and organic garlic sautéing in heart-healthy safflower oil. I completely forgot the whole line of Lean Cuisine or my excitement when I learned that Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa now came in Chocolate Cherry Cordial!

Then came the Big Hurdles. You know the ones I'm talking about—the meeting of each other's parents; the vacation at a beach house; the Christmas together, alone; the one-year anniversary.

Surely, I thought, he will pop the question soon.

Not that I was one of those desperate women who, having passed her thirtieth birthday, was anxious to get on with the next half of womanhood: being a wife and mother. I wasn't.

Really. It was merely that I enjoyed being with Hugh, and he seemed to enjoy being with me, and, unlike Patty, I was of the opinion that two people in love in their thirties who had been together for more than a year should probably start discussing things like whether it was better to raise children in the security of the suburbs or amid the stimulation of a city, and if Labradoodles were really safe with babies.

But the first anniversary came and went, and the only diamond Hugh gave me was the one patterned on a blue silk scarf (to match my “cerulean” eyes). Nor was the famous Spencer family diamond ring hanging from the tree on our second Christmas, no sapphire at the bottom of my champagne flute on New Year's.

Summer arrived, bringing with it warm and romantic nights. We took what had become our “annual” vacation on Martha's Vineyard, strolling hand in hand down the beach as the fog rolled in. No diamond in the sand, either. And I looked. Looked hard.

Three years later, I was still looking. . . .

About the Author

Agatha Award-winning novelist Sarah Strohmeyer is the author of the successful Bubbles series (
Bubbles Betrothed, Bubbles A Broad, Bubbles Ablaze, Bubbles in Trouble,
and
Bubbles Unbound
). She has worked as a journalist for numerous publications, including
The Boston Globe, The Plain Dealer,
and
Salon.com
. She lives outside Montpelier, Vermont.