The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (14 page)

“Everyone in this room is welcome to stay for as long as you like,” my father announced. “A toast—to my six girls!”

“I’m hardly a girl,” Giselle’s mother muttered, but she lifted her glass. I wondered what she thought of her daughter marrying a man her own age.

Ally, Zoe and I lifted our glasses as though they were weighted with bricks.

“Zal, honey, get a picture, will you,” my father said, and the housekeeper disappeared and reappeared with a camera. “First get Sarah, Ally and Zoe together, and then get a group shot.”

“Say cheesebiggers,” Zalla said.

“Cheese
burgers,
Zalla,” Giselle’s mother corrected.
“Burgers.”

“Burgers,” Zalla repeated, and clicked. Smiling on “burgers” didn’t exactly elicit grins.

Photos snapped, my father clapped his hands for attention, a bad habit of his.

“Sarah, I’ve got Ally and Zoe already thinking about this, and now I’d like you to join the think tank. Plaza, W, St. Regis, the Paramount? We’re thinking of a hotel wedding, but then something at the seaport might be nice too. Thoughts?”

Bartholomew Solomon carried on all conversations as though he were at an L. A. meeting.

“Dad, you’ve had
two
weddings already,” Ally pointed out, “so surely you know what you want and don’t want.”

If my father caught her sarcasm, he didn’t bite. “But that’s just it, Al,” he said. “I really don’t. I just want it to be spectacular. Spectacular like my Giselle.”

Giselle blushed and smiled. “I’d be fine with a small family wedding, but your dad really wants to go all-out. Ally, I heard your wedding was incredible. It was at the seaport, right?”

You had to hand it to Giselle for trying.

Ally sucked down some wine. “Yup. And what a waste of forty grand that turned out to be.”

All eyes swung to Ally.

“I mean, all that expense,” Ally continued, “all that planning, and for what?
One
day. Not even a day—five or six hours. The next day it’s business as usual.”

I was about to say something sarcastic, like
Oh, that’s romantic,
but there was a reason Ally was here, and it wasn’t to help my father pick out a cummerbund.

“As I recall, Ally,” my father said, pointing at her with his fork for emphasis, “the
next day,
you and Andrew arrived in Greece for a two-week honeymoon. Ah, Greece. What a beautiful country.”

Ally speared a piece of asparagus with a little too much force.

“Um, Dad,” I said, “where are you and Giselle planning to go for
your
honeymoon?”

“We’re thinking an African safari,” he replied. “We’re going to ride elephants through the jungle.” He then told a five-minute story about a trained elephant in an upcoming romantic comedy he was producing. “You’d love the film, Zoe.” He looked at her, then around the table. “Zoe’s a romantic comedy freak.”

Zoe’s only response was a tight smile. She then went back to slicing her steak to bits and playing with her vegetables.

“Speaking of comedies,” my father continued, “I was thinking about a movie theme for the wedding. Maybe the wedding party putting on minifilms at various points during the reception. Doesn’t that sound hip?”

We all stared him, including his future wife. He continued on about how the bridesmaids and ushers would get to be stars for the day too.

“Since the three of you are all here together,” Giselle said when her fiancé took a breath, “this seems like a great time to ask if you’d all be bridesmaids. It would mean the world to us.” She eyed Zoe, who stared at her plate, then looked at Ally and me.

“Do you even have a wedding date?” Zoe asked. It was the first thing she’d said in forty minutes.

“We’re thinking of June,” Giselle replied. “I’d love to add Central Park or the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to the list of venues, but your dad isn’t too keen on an outdoor wedding, in case it rains.”

“Gissy baby,” my father said, “if your heart is set on it, let’s add the park and the garden to our list.”

Giselle smiled. “Thanks, honey. So can I count on you three as bridesmaids?”

If I can fit into my dress,
I thought. “Sure,” I said.

Ally nodded.

All eyes swung to Zoe.

“June?” Zoe repeated. “I might be out of the country. I’m not sure yet. Can I let you know?” she added, looking at the platter of asparagus instead of Giselle.

“Sure,” Giselle said. “I just hope that you can, Zoe.”

Can you spell TENSION?

I wondered if the Zoe-Giselle ex-friendship was all that was bothering Zoe. If it were, she probably wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have survived a day, let alone a week.

And there was definitely a reason Ally was here. I had never seen her so distracted. She usually loved to try to embarrass my father with how self-absorbed he was, and I fully expected her to say something like,
Don’t you love the boots I got Sarah for her birthday?
And then my dad would look at me quizzically and say,
Oh, gosh, that’s right! I had it marked on my calendar, but then yesterday was such a wild day.
And then Ally would say,
Her birthday was a weekago, Dad.
And without missing a beat, he’d smile and say,
Everyone, raise a glass to Sarah!

But Ally wasn’t doing anything to antagonize our father. Like Zoe, she too was pushing her food around on her plate, staring at her watch, staring at her food. Perhaps the reason had something to do with Smarmdrew, her husband. During cocktails earlier, which had turned into another cummerbund session, I’d asked her privately why she was staying here, and, clutching her little dog for dear life against her chest, she’d said something about Andrew being in Tokyo on business and the kitchen being renovated. But maybe she was lying.

“How’s Andy’s business these days, Al?” my father asked, filling his wineglass. “The market’s tough right now.”

Ally stiffened. It was for just a moment, but she stiffened.

“Business is great,” Ally responded. “He’s in Switzerland right now, hammering out a new deal.”

An hour ago it was Japan. Now it was Switzerland.

“Well, I’d better turn in,” Ally said. “I have to walk Mary Jane, and then I’ve got to prepare for a killer meeting first thing in the morning.” She stood up. “Good night, everyone.”

We said our good-nights, and Ally practically fled.

“You know, I think I’d better hit the sheets myself,” Zoe said.

No way was I being stuck at the table alone. My sisters and I might not have spoken five words to each other, but there was still solidarity in sisterhood.

“Me too,” I chimed in. “Dinner was just great,” I said to Giselle before I realized she had nothing to do with it. “Well, good night.”

“Amazing,” my father said. “A two-year-old can stay up longer than my daughters!” He laughed and rushed over to Madeline, lifting her out of her high chair. “And what do you think of that, Maddy-Waddy? Huh? What?” He tickled her, and the toddler started a giggle-fest.

I watched him from the doorway. I remembered him being like that with Zoe when she was very little, when Ally and I would fly out to California to stay with him for a couple of weeks during the summer. If he was like that with me or Ally, I didn’t remember it. Maybe we were too old by then. Then again, I’d never lived in the same house with my father.

“Let the baby digest,” Giselle’s mother complained. “It’s me she’s going to spit up all over later, not you.”

“You won’t spit up all over Grandy, will you, pumpkin pie?” my father singsonged to Madeline. “You’re way too sweet for that!” And he continued the tickle and giggle-fest, then began swooping her high in the air, much to Grandy’s frown and Giselle’s delight.

“Oh, Sarah?” Giselle called just as I turned to go.

I turned back.

“Will you let Ally and Zoe know that I’ll be tacking wedding gown photographs to the bulletin board later and that I’d love their opinions any time before our bridal boutique appointments next month?”

“I’ll tell them,” I said.

She smiled and joined her fiancé and daughter in the fun.

Weird. I thought I was long over feeling funny about watching my father interact with a new family. But apparently, that funny feeling never went away.

8

Ally

T
he moment your marriage ended, you had a tendency to notice the world was full of couples, baby strollers and love songs. The young couple in front of me in line at Au Bon Pain were making out. Kissing with tongue at eight in the morning on a Monday, when most people were half-awake and in a bad mood and on their way to work.

“What are you getting, snookums?” the guy kisser asked, his tongue darting in the woman’s ear. The slacker probably didn’t have a job. The eyebrow ring was a dead giveaway.

“Whatever you’re getting,” she breathed back at him. “I want to experience what you’re experiencing.”

Could I throw up all over them?

They began making out again, their hands in each other’s hair.

“Hel-lo,”
I snapped. “Could you get your tongues out of each other’s mouths long enough to move forward? You’re holding up the entire line.”

They whipped around and stared at me. Someone behind me giggled.

“Next,” called the clerk behind the counter, and the slackers finally moved.

The woman kisser turned around and shot me a nasty smile. “We’re always cranky about what we don’t have, aren’t we,
ma’am?
”

I held up my left hand and waved my wedding ring at her. “Nice try, sweetie.”

“Like married people get any,” she countered, and she and her boyfriend laughed.

“Just forget it,” the male kisser said, playing with her hair. “Unhappy people hate it when other people are happy.”

“I happen to be very happy,” I announced.

“Whatever, lady,” the male kisser said.

“Could this line move any slower?” I snapped around him at the clerk.

I hated being called “lady.” It reminded me that I wasn’t twenty-two anymore and that I looked like a
ma’am
to twentysomethings. It reminded me that I
wasn’t
“getting any” because I
was
married.

Ha. That was a joke. I glanced at the wedding ring I’d just waved around. Talk about an empty gesture.

I
was
unhappy. Plenty unhappy.

I’d walked out of my house with a suitcase one week and two days ago, and Andrew hadn’t called once. Not that I’d talk to him.

And I was living in hell. Between the pregnancy books Sarah had under her pillow, and the wedding bulletin board in the living room, I was surrounded by babies and marriage.

I’d surprised myself by ending up at my father’s apartment. A week ago last Saturday, I’d left my house with a suitcase in one hand and Mary Jane in the other and had no idea where to go. I’d thought about staying in a hotel, but the two-hundred-dollar bill I’d received for breaking that cheap, ugly lamp, plus the loneliness of waking up in a hotel room when you weren’t away on business, was too much to bear. At least at my father’s, there were people I knew walking around, but the plus was that my father tended to mind his own business because he didn’t care about anyone but himself. What I hadn’t counted on was having Zoe as a roommate. Or Sarah.

I had to do something. Something to distract myself from myself. From images of Andrew in the hammock with that skank. From my father’s and Giselle’s beaming faces at six in the morning. From my sisters’ curiosity. Last night, I felt eyes on me, only to find Sarah staring at me when I thought she was absorbed in
But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant!
(Which she read facing me and not Zoe, since she didn’t want Zoe or my father or Giselle to know she was pregnant.) And twice I found Zoe watching me when I thought she was busy doing her usual thing of staring at the ceiling or contorting her body into yoga positions in a very small space in front of her bed. Granted, I watched them too, since Sarah’s favorite answer was
I don’t want to talk about it,
and I wasn’t exactly comfortable asking Zoe anything personal. So I watched them and they watched me. We watched each other.

If I was going to stay at my father’s for a while—until I figured out exactly what I was going to do with myself, if I was going to rent an apartment in the city or buy a house of my own in Westchester, or visit a sperm bank and knock myself up—I needed to do something. Something proactive. Something to make me feel good about myself.

Like I needed another facial, massage, shopping trip or an island vacation.

What, then? What, what, what?

Make appointment with good divorce lawyer
was first on my list, but I wasn’t one hundred percent ready to deal with that yet.

Corn muffin and coffee in hand, I sat down at a little table as far away from the kissing couple as I could get. I bit into my muffin and stared out the window.

“I met him on a FindAMate.com,” a late-thirties woman at the next table whispered to her female companion. “He’s
amazing.
Forty. Divorced and over it. Loaded. And as good-looking as his picture.” She leaned close to her friend and flipped her long, curly red hair behind her shoulder. “I came for the first time in three years without the help of a vibrator.”

Her friend’s mouth dropped open, and both women looked around to make sure no one was listening to them. (Lawyers learn in law school how to make potential confessors feel like the lawyer isn’t even in the room.) “You had sex with a man you met
online?
” the friend asked. “A
stranger?
Are you
insane?
”

“He wasn’t a stranger when I slept with him,” the redhead responded. She wrapped her hands around her cup of coffee and breathed in the aroma, her expression satisfied. “I e-mailed him a note, he e-mailed back, and we went back and forth for a couple of weeks. Then we spoke on the phone a few times, long conversations, and when I felt comfortable, I arranged a date.”

“I don’t know,” the friend said, biting into her bagel. “Still.”