The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (10 page)

“Ally, c’mon,” he said, touching my arm, which I wrenched away. “Let’s sit down and talk about this.”

“Andrew, just shut up.” I handed him the vasectomy claim form.

It’s interesting to watch people when they’re confronted with the inalienable truth of their deception. Momentary shock replaced by the wheels spinning to think up a new angle.

He sat down on the loveseat in front of the window and sighed. “Ally, look—”

I threw down the two suits I was folding into my suitcase. “No, you look, you lying son of a bitch!”

He leaned back the way he did when he was tired of our conversation. “You were so hellbent on having a kid, Ally. From the minute we got married. I wasn’t ready then, and I’m still not really ready.”

“But you said okay to trying to have a baby,” I pointed out. “We had sex how many times without protection? What did you think
I
thought we were trying to do? Not get pregnant?”

“I said okay because I couldn’t take it anymore, Ally. Having a baby was all you talked about. And you wouldn’t listen when I told you it wasn’t time. You never listen, Ally. So I made sure it wouldn’t happen. When I’m ready, I can reverse it. We can have a baby, Ally—when we’re
both
ready.”

I laughed in his face. “Are you thinking for a second that I might continue in this shitty, sham marriage? You’ve been lying to me for five years about the most important thing in the world to me.”

“There you go, Ally. Having a baby is the most important thing to you. Not me.”

I stared at him for a second. “That’s not true. Wasn’t true, anyway. But it doesn’t matter now, Andrew.
We
don’t matter now.”

“Ally, don’t get all melodramatic. I hate when you do that.”

“Well, I hate
you,
Andrew.”

“Ally, I know you don’t mean that.”

“Oh, but I do.”

And I did. I knew exactly how I felt about Andrew Sharp.

For the past few years, Andrew and I had started to become known in Great Neck as The Couple Trying To Have a Baby.
“I hear you’re trying for a baby,”
acquaintances would say as conversation openers, and with a deadly combination of embarrassment and the human desire to discuss what was fervent in my heart, I’d launch into a monologue about our rate of intercourse and my basal temperature.
“And when are you two going to start a family?”
strangers would ask at parties or at the health club or at work dinners.

Just as soon as rude people like you are obliterated from the earth,
I always wanted to yell back. What if I couldn’t have a child? Huh? How would a question like that make me feel, then?

I knew exactly how it would make me feel. Like how I felt when my father tried to explain to six-year-old me that he was leaving, even though my mother had just brought my brand-new baby sister home from the hospital. Like how I’d felt when that baby sister told me, eighteen years later, that our mother had died suddenly from a brain aneurysm while painting a watercolor in the living room of our house. Like there was a hole inside me, so deep inside I couldn’t feel it, couldn’t touch it, certainly couldn’t fill it with too much chocolate, alcohol, sleeping pills, exercise or bitchiness.

And now I could add like how I felt when I saw Andrew having sex with another woman in the hammock in our backyard and like how I felt when I found the claim form for the vasectomy.

Andrew stood up and stepped toward me, but my expression halted him. “All right, Ally, I’ll stop. I promise. I stand here right now before you and promise you that I will never even
look
at another woman. Doesn’t that tell you how much I love you?”

“Andrew, you’re free to look at all the women you want,” I said, throwing my cosmetics bag on top of my clothes and snapping shut the suitcase. “All packed. Goodbye, Andrew. Have a nice life.”

He shot up and grabbed the suitcase out of my hand. “Ally, I don’t have one friend who doesn’t have a little cake on the side. It never means anything. There are no emotions involved. It’s just sex, some release, like watching porn. Are you really going to throw away eleven years of marriage—thirteen years together—over nothing?”

There was definitely something wrong with him.

“Andrew, you’re the one who threw away our marriage.”

I grabbed the suitcase back from him and headed downstairs.

“Ally. Ally, c’mon. I can have the vasectomy reversed. Next year, when I’m ready to start a family—”

“Just shut up already!” I screamed, and ran for the door.

He stood at the top of the stairs, hands on his hips. “Ally, if you leave now, you’re telling me you’re not willing to work things out.
You’re
the one who’s bailing, not me. Despite our problems, I love you. My vows were for
life.
Maybe you just forgot the ‘for better and for worse’ part.”

Ah, so it wasn’t that I was a fool or blind or even in denial. Andrew was simply that good at manipulation. Gold star. A-plus. Top of the class.

I was a chump, was what I was.

When Andrew and I got engaged, my father asked me if I was planning to take my husband’s last name or keep Solomon. When I told my dad that Andrew and I had agreed that I would hyphenate, Sarah said, “I wouldn’t if I were you. You’ll be Ally Solomon-Sharp—which means your new initials will be A.S.S.”

I had definitely earned that monogram.

6

Zoe

M
y flight to New York was leaving in a little over three hours, and my client’s date was late.

C’mon. C’mon. C’mon. Show up already!

I was sitting at the long mica bar of an out-of-the-way bar/restaurant, my notebook open, my pen tapping and my prop copy of Contracts Law in front of me. What I really needed was a prop volume called
Places To Look For Your Mother in Manhattan When She Goes Crazy.

I’d called my mother’s cell phone five times since she left her I’m On My Way To New York To Destroy Your Dad and His Child Bride message yesterday afternoon. Apparently, it was turned off or not working across the country. She’d left another message for me on my home machine, at a time when she knew I wouldn’t be home, letting me know that she’d landed just fine at LaGuardia early this morning, had a lovely vegetarian entrée on the plane and gave a gypsy cabdriver the what’s what when he tried to charge her seventy bucks for a thirty-dollar ride into Manhattan. She didn’t say where she was staying, how long she was staying or what she was planning to do in terms of ruining my father’s life. She only said she was fine, that the city sure was busy on Saturdays and I shouldn’t worry, and that she’d call in a few days to say toodles.

I imagined my mother stalking Giselle and following her home from work one night, waiting for the right moment to throw her in front of oncoming traffic.

No. My mother was crazy, but
good
crazy. She wasn’t psycho crazy.

This morning, I’d called my dad to let him know that I was flying out tonight and would arrive very early Sunday morning on the red-eye—and why.

“Honey, don’t worry about your mother,” my father said. “I’m not worried about her in the least.”

I held my tongue, which was something I’d learned in my four years as the Dating Diva. My father had never been worried about my mother. He wasn’t a worrier by nature.

“It’s not the L.A. way,”
he always said.
“It’s the New York way, which is why I wanted to move to the land of sunshine.”

Perhaps now that he was a New Yorker again, he’d start worrying. Perhaps today or tomorrow or the next day, when he was taking a shower and found my mother parting the curtain with a pair of hedge clippers and aiming for the family jewels, he’d start worrying.

Mom, where are you?
She had no relatives in New York. And she’d lived there so briefly as a student (when she’d met my father) so long ago that she’d lost touch with anyone she might have known then. There were countless hotels in New York. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

I glanced at my watch. It was seven-fifteen. My client’s date was set for seven, and I wanted to be on my way to the airport by eight.

C’mon, Date Boy, show up already!

My client, Tammy, was gnawing her lip and glancing at her watch at her table a few feet from my spot at the bar.

Twenty-one-year-old Tammy thought she was boring her dates to death, which was hard to believe when you first saw her. A perky blonde with saucer-blue eyes, an ample chest accentuated by a tight V-neck cashmere sweater and long legs encased in knee-high black leather boots, she was a hot package. But unlike Amber, her problem wasn’t coming on too strong and making sexual innuendos.

“The last guy I dated told me to stop talking so much,” Tammy had explained over coffee a few days ago. “Once, during a movie, I think it was the third
Harry Potter.
Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it was the third
Lord of the Rings.
Did you read the books? Weren’t they great? Omigod, I loved them. I know to look at me, you’d think I only read
Cosmopolitan,
but I love to read. I swear I keep Amazon in business. My mother is uncomfortable making online purchases—she thinks there are little thieves in the computer, stealing her credit card numbers. I’ve already starting ordering Christmas presents online. It’s so convenient, and—”

“Tammy,” I interrupted, “I think I’ll be able to help you.”

“Whew! Fabu! Oh hey, that rhymes!” She cackled for a moment. “Did I mention I wrote poetry? Of course, the last asshole I dated told me I wasn’t exactly Wordsmith. Wait a minute—that’s not right. Words
worth.
Yes, Wordsworth. Do you like poetry, Zoe? The guy I’m meeting tonight was buying a book of poetry for his mom ‘just-because’ when I met him. Isn’t that sweet? It was a book on the Romantics. No, wait, the Victorians…”

I loved poetry. Especially the Victorians. But the idea of discussing anything with Tammy seemed truly painful. Despite how attractive and sexy she was, I was beginning to wonder how she managed to get dates at all.

My game plan for Tammy, which I’d explained to her in detail to keep her from talking, was to closely watch her date’s face and body language for clues that he was getting antsy. If his eyes started to glaze over and he began looking at his watch, I was to signal her, and we’d meet in the ladies’ room where I’d quickly explain why she was losing him and how to rectify the situation. I had a feeling all Tammy had to do to score a second date with anyone was to barely speak on the first date and let the guy do most of the talking. In my years as the Dating Diva, I’d noticed that men on dates with exceptionally sexy women like Tammy tended to want to talk themselves up and impress their way into a make-out session later. If she let the guy talk, she’d have him.

Hey, my job was only to get her to date number two. Not marriage.

The guy she was meeting tonight, who was now twenty minutes late, had made such an impression on her that she was willing to “put a muzzle on it,” which was what that ex-boyfriend had said to her during the third
Lord of the Rings.
(She had finally gotten back to that tangent.)

Mr. Poetry was edging toward twenty-five minutes late. Tammy glanced at me and bit her lip; she looked like she was about to cry. First dates on a Saturday night had that extra zing of pressure and anticipation, and getting stood up on a weekend was a lot worse than getting stood up on a Tuesday, when you could go home and watch
Will & Grace
and comfort yourself with the fact that you had to get up early for work anyway.

There was nothing I wanted more than to hop in a taxi and get to the airport, but I gave Tammy the “Give him a few more minutes” sign and she nodded and settled back down. As the clock ticked toward thirty minutes late, Tammy’s lower lip quivered and she stood up.

Jerk! Why did he ask her out if he was just going to stand her up? Sometimes I didn’t understand men at all. Not that I claimed to understand them, but when it came to dating, I just wished that men (and women too, of course) would think first and ask out later. I closed my notebook and grabbed Contracts Law, then signaled the bartender to close my club soda tab.

“Omigod! You’re finally here!” I heard Tammy say. “I was about to leave, but then I remembered a scene from this movie where the guy—”

I was about to signal Tammy to meet me in the bathroom for an emergency shut-up now session, but when I glanced over to see her date, I was struck speechless.

Her date, Mr. Poetry, Mr. Tall, Dark and Hot, Mr. Made Such An Impression on her, Mr. Thirty Minutes Late, was…Charlie.

My Charlie.

My boyfriend of over a year.

He was dressed for a date. Black pants. Charcoal-gray button-down shirt. He looked very Banana Republic.

“I’m sorry I was so late,” he said to Tammy. “I—”

“Charlie?” I blurted out.

He spotted me at the bar and paled. “What are you doing—” He glanced at Tammy, then bit his lip. “Oh, shit, did she hire—”

“You two know each other?” Tammy asked. “Omigod, it is
such
a small world. Once, I was on a date, and who came in and sat down right next to us, but my high school English teacher, who I’d had a mad crush on. So I tell my date this piece of information, and he didn’t appreciate it one bit. Not with the guy sitting next to us. But everyone has crushes on their teachers. I mean…”

“Tammy, this would be a good time to stop talking,” I said. “Do you see my expression? Your
date’s
expression? That should signal you to
stop talking.
”

Clearly confused, she looked at me, then at Charlie. At least she shut up.

“Zo—I—” Charlie began, and then he stopped talking too. He leaned his head back and let out a whoosh of a breath. “I can’t believe this.”

He
couldn’t believe this?

Was I on
Candid Camera?
Was this some new kind of reality television show? Get the relationship guru?

Charlie was a straight shooter. Pranks weren’t his style.