The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (15 page)

“Still what?” the redhead asked. “I’d
still
be single if I hadn’t given it a try. Single at Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s? No, thanks. I met a great guy. No one needs to know I met him online. Not that I’m embarrassed about it.”

“I always thought personal ads and online matchmaking services were for losers,” the friend said, taking out a compact and powdering her nose. “Sorry, but a lot of people feel that way.”

“I’m doing it,” the woman countered. “Am I a loser?”

Her friend colored. “I didn’t mean
that.
”

“There are people on it just like me.” The redhead grabbed the compact and checked her lipstick. “Just like you. Just like anyone. Where are we supposed to meet a man otherwise? In a bar? At work? On a blind date? Please. Online dating is totally mainstream now. You read through profiles, see who looks good to you, you write to each other, and when you’re comfortable, you make a date in a private place. You don’t like the guy, you leave in two seconds, no hurt feelings. You like each other, suddenly you’re on a date with a promising guy and there’s no busybody fixer-upper asking you questions.”

“I guess that sounds pretty good,” the friend said. “So you really like this man, huh?”

The redhead beamed. “I’m planning on taking him home for Thanksgiving, if we’re still dating in a month. For the first time in three years, I won’t have to listen to my relatives say, ‘Your time will come too, sweetie, but it might come quicker if you lost a few pounds and got a good haircut.’”

“I hear that crap too,” the friend said. “I am so sick of it! Okay, I’m sold. Maybe I’ll check out the site tonight.”

The redhead had me sold too. I needed a distraction? I needed something to make me forget my husband? I needed to retaliate? I’d found it.

I pulled out my Palm and wrote: FindAMate.com. And underlined it.

The room I was sharing with my sisters was slightly smaller than my bedroom at home, the one I used to share with Andrew. He and I were rarely in that bedroom at the same time, yet now, I was sharing the same-sized room with two other people. And two people who took up a lot of room. Not physically, of course. Sarah was only two months pregnant and thin as usual, and Zoe was a rail. But they both had mega presences.

At the moment, the three of us were on our beds, which were lined up, hotel fashion, next to each other. Beside each one was a round table upon which sat a tiny Tiffany lamp that I assumed was fake—but at my dad’s you never knew for sure, since he could afford the real thing—a travel alarm clock and a tiny crystal bowl of lemon balls, which I happened to love. Sarah was in the middle, making notes for an article for
Wow
and sucking on lemon ball after lemon ball (which I attributed to cravings). Zoe was lying on her stomach, her arm outstretched in front of her and staring at a wallet-sized photograph of a guy. Boyfriend, I assumed. And I was typing FindAMate.com into my Web browser, this morning’s eavesdropped conversation swirling in my head.

Sarah flopped onto her stomach and hung over the side of her bed, trying to pull her suitcase up and over onto the bed.

I lunged off my bed and grabbed it out of her hands. “You’re not supposed to lift anything! Jesus, Sarah.”

“This suitcase weighs about half a pound, Ally. The ba—” She glanced at Zoe, who was now eyeing us with curiosity.

“Do you want some privacy?” Zoe asked. “I can go examine wedding gown photographs on the bulletin board or something.”

Sarah laughed. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. And besides, Ally was about to go back to minding her own business. Weren’t you, Ally?”

I sat back down on my bed and dragged my computer onto my lap. “Do what you’re supposed to do, Sarah. If you would, I wouldn’t
have
to mind your business.”

“How’s Andrew?” Sarah snapped. “I haven’t heard you mention him once since I got here three days ago.”

“How’s Griffen?” I snapped back.

“I’m going to give you guys some privacy,” Zoe said, and she slipped out the door.

“I don’t care if she knows,” Sarah told me. “I’m getting tired of lying on my right side to read my pregnancy books so she won’t see. According to
But I Don’t Know How To Be Pregnant!,
I’m supposed to lie on my left side.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I remember reading that. How are you feeling, anyway?”

“Okay,” she said. “A little tired.”

“So you still haven’t heard from Griffen?” I asked.

She shook her head.

I tossed her a sourball. “Under the circumstances, Sarah, I guess he’s got a little leeway to spend some time thinking things through. Taking over a week seems a little excessive, but I’m sure he’ll call in the next few days. I don’t know what he’ll say, but I’m sure he’ll call.”

Sarah didn’t say anything. She popped the sourball into her mouth, flopped onto her back, clasped her hands over her stomach and stared at the ceiling.

“What do you want him to say?” I asked her.

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” she said without looking at me.

“Fine,” I told her. “Check your e-mail tomorrow. I’m going to send you some links to some good pregnancy Web sites.”

“Ally, I’ve been reading. I know the basics.”

I doubted that. And not only was I sure she didn’t know the first thing about expecting a baby, she didn’t have the means or wherewithal to take care of a baby. Until she found out she was pregnant, she didn’t even
want
a baby. She wanted her sort-of boyfriend to fall in love with her. She wanted to go to Puerto Rico with her friends to celebrate her birthday (guess who planned to buy her the ticket as a surprise). She wanted a black leather jacket, which I’d gotten for her from our mother (I’d bought Sarah a birthday present from our mother every year since her death). Sarah wanted a bigger bedroom and bigger breasts (which she’d now get). She wanted a pair of knee-high black leather boots from Steve Madden. She wanted to see the new Drew Barrymore (her favorite actress) movie. She wanted to be able to afford a venti-sized latte at Starbucks. She didn’t even seem to want a real life.

And yet she was pregnant. My dream in life.

“If you knew the basics, Sarah,” I told her, “you wouldn’t have been about to lug that suitcase. You’re not supposed to lift anything heavier than a hardcover book. You can have caffeine once a week. No alcohol, ever. Have you been taking your prenatal vitamins?”

“Ally—”

“Humor me, Sarah.”

“I always do, Ally.”

There was a soft knock at the door. “It’s me again,” came Zoe’s voice.

“You don’t have to knock, Zoe,” Sarah called out. “This is your room too.”

Zoe came in and shut the door. She sat down on her bed. “Dad and Giselle are in the living room, staring at photographs of tuxedo shirts. I couldn’t take it. Sorry.”

Sarah laughed. “At least cummerbund weekend is over.”

“Cummerbund weekend?” Zoe repeated. “Try cummerbund
week.
It’s all we’ve talked about since last weekend. And Ally arrived a day before me. She had to suffer it out all alone.”

“That’s right,” I said, tossing Sarah another sourball. “So I deserve a little peace.”

“Peace? You wanna
piece
of me,” Sarah said in her best Brooklyn Robert DeNiro accent, putting up her dukes, and the three of us laughed. “You wanna piece a me?”

Zoe sat on the edge of her bed, facing Sarah and me. She sobered up. “You want to know why I’m staying here?” We stared at her, dying of curiosity. “Because my mother’s on the warpath about Dad getting engaged. He sent her an announcement with an idiotic personalized note, and she went ballistic and flew out here vowing to ruin his life.”

“I don’t blame her,” I said. “He’s marrying a woman younger than her own daughter. It’s vile.”

Sarah and Zoe stared at me as though they couldn’t believe I actually said it aloud.

“I’m really worried about my mom,” Zoe continued. “She came here over a week ago, and I have no idea where she is. She’s left me a couple of messages on my home phone to say she’s fine and not to worry.”

“So maybe she is fine and maybe you shouldn’t worry,” Sarah said. “She was probably just being funny when she said she’s going to ruin Dad’s life.”

“Funny?” I repeated. “That I doubt. I remember Zoe’s mother.”

Sarah shot me a look. If I’d offended Zoe, it didn’t show in her expression.

“Well, why are you so worried about her?” Sarah asked. “Do you really think she’s going to do something crazy?”

“I don’t know,” Zoe replied on a sigh. “She’s gone nuts as it is with plastic surgery to try to look younger to win him back. She dresses like a trendy teenager. She’s a size four. She got her boobs done—bigger and lifted. She grew her hair even longer and made it even blonder. And when all the extremes didn’t work—I just don’t know what she’s capable of doing.”

“What
is
she capable of doing?” Sarah asked. “We’re not talking Lorena Bobbitt, are we?”

“I don’t think so,” Zoe said. “But honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know what she thinks she
can
do. She wants Dad back so badly she’ll do anything. That’s what I’m scared of.”

I shook my head. “You know what, Zoe? I don’t really think it’s your father she wants back.”

“What do you mean?” Zoe asked me.

“I don’t claim to know your mother that well,” I said, “but I’d bet anything it’s her dignity she wants back. Not your father.”

“Her dignity?” Zoe repeated.

I nodded. “Getting plastic surgery, dressing like Britney Spears—she’s trying to look like she’s twenty-five because she associates youth with dignity. She was treated like a queen when she was young and beautiful, and now she feels she’s being treated like shit. So she associates youth with dignity, instead of associating it with herself, with self-esteem.”

“Very impressive, Ally,” Sarah said. “Does that sound right to you, Zoe? You know your mom best.”

Zoe nodded. “It sounds exactly right. But I don’t get why my mom flew out here, then. If she’s after her dignity, why not just go meet a new man who’ll appreciate how well preserved she is? Why come after Dad? Why work so hard to get him back?”

Because she’s a beast like Dad, that’s why. They were made for each other.

I understood Judith Gold Solomon and Bartholomew Solomon as a couple. What I’d never understood was my mother and Bartholomew Solomon. I got why he wanted her—she was beautiful and the kindest person there ever was. But I’d never understood why she’d fallen for him, why she’d married such a superficial person.

“Why would you marry someone who’d just up and leave you one day for someone else?”
six-year-old me had screamed at her when she told me my father was leaving, that he fell in love with someone else. She’d picked me up in her arms and sat with me on the rocking chair by the window in our midtown apartment, and I’d screamed and cried and shaken my fists at her as though it were her fault. She’d held me against her, tight, trying to hold my beating fists, and soothed me with shushes and strokes of my hair and told me that my father was a good man, but that sometimes people changed, and if they did, you had to let go, had to let them be who they were.
“You didn’t even fight for him?”
I’d asked, crying and kicking again.

“Oh, Ally,”
she’d said over and over.
“Everything will be okay, you’ll see, baby girl.”

And everything had been okay, basically, because my mother, with an angry six-year-old and a newborn, was a strong person. We’d moved to a smaller and dinkier apartment on the Lower East Side, near my mother’s grandmother, and once a year Sarah and I flew out to California to stay with my dad, Judith and Zoe for two weeks.

Why would you marry someone who’d up and leave you one day for someone else…?
Oh God, Mom, I thought now. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.

“Zoe, your mom didn’t work so hard to get
him
back,” I said, “she worked so hard to get herself back. You said your mother was here in New York to ruin Dad’s life, not to get him back. When you want someone back, you don’t go about it from a ‘destroy their happiness’ angle. Unless you’re insane.”

“Your mom’s not insane, is she?” Sarah asked Zoe with a smile.

Zoe laughed. “She’s just normal crazy.”

“Like all of us,” Sarah said.

“Trust me, she doesn’t want Dad,” I said. “She’s after something else.”

Zoe lay down on her bed, on her stomach, and folded her hands under her chin. “I guess you’re right, Ally. I didn’t really look at it that way.”

“You know,” I added, “I never got the feeling that Dad and your mother really even liked each other. I mean,
really
liked each other, the way you really like a friend.”

“They were married for twenty-five years, Ally,” Zoe pointed out.

“Yeah, because they probably didn’t really care,” I said. “So they never actually fought and got along fine.”

“They cared about each other,” Zoe snapped. “I was there.”

“Yeah, you were,” I snapped back.

Sarah looked between us nervously. “So what are you saying, Ally? That a marriage based on something other than love will work just fine, but that a marriage based on love is doomed?”

“You’re generalizing,” I told her. “I was applying that strictly to Dad and Zoe’s mother.”

“You really hate her guts,” Zoe said. “Don’t you?”

“I’d have to
care
to hate her, Zoe,” I pointed out. “And I don’t. I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

Zoe’s mother had been vicious and vile to me and Sarah from the get-go, preferring to think that her husband didn’t have two other daughters back in New York. Once, during our annual two-week summer visit, when I was nine and Sarah just three, I’d come inside from the pool to use the bathroom, careful not to drip all over the rug (she’d had a major cow over that one year), and as Sarah splashed happily in the pool, the ever-present nanny watching with one eye while the other was on newborn Zoe, I’d overheard the witch trying to convince my father that a two-week visit was too long, that one week was surely plenty, since he flew to New York to see us twice a year for a day or two. The next summer, when we were invited back for two weeks as usual, I stopped hating my father, and my chronic headaches at age ten went away. I didn’t like him, but at least I didn’t hate him. In his own way and very indirectly, he’d chosen us over his new wife. That had meant something to me.