The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (24 page)

It was interesting that the three of us felt compelled to go on these little trips; it was as if each of us felt we had to go in lieu of rent or something. Or perhaps we simply thought our crankiness about choosing china patterns and wedding gowns and rubber chicken would make our own love-life issues a bit too apparent. Ally still hadn’t mentioned her husband’s name once. Zoe stared at a wallet-sized photograph of a good-looking guy every now and then, but without expression. And I spent my nights thinking up baby names for boys and girls, rejecting anything that didn’t sound musical with both Solomon and Maxwell.

The waiter arrived with refills of our drinks, three more Sprites in honor of my inability to consume margaritas.

“How about a toast—to the new addition-to-be to our family,” Zoe said, and we raised our glasses and clinked.

A couple passing by smiled at us in midclink, and I realized we probably looked like three friends or possibly sisters (not that we looked that much alike, except for the eyes; we all had the Solomon almond-shaped dark blues), out for a fun night together. This was the first time the three of us had gone anywhere alone together. And it was nice. If I didn’t have to write a two-thousand-word article on sex and relationships by the crack of dawn, I’d even suggest a movie after dinner. It wasn’t every day (or any day) that Ally and Zoe could be in the same room, let alone sitting right next to each other, without one of them (usually Zoe) stomping away hurt.

Brainstorm. “Are you guys in the mood to help me plan out an article I have to write by tomorrow morning?” I asked my sisters. “If I don’t get started now, I’m screwed. I can’t keep my eyes open past ten o’clock anymore and I can’t have caffeine to help me.”

“What’s the topic?” Zoe asked.

“How you know it’s too soon to have sex in a new relationship,” I said. “And let’s not use me as an example, Ally,” I added fast. I knew my older sister too well.

“Okay,” Ally said, forkful of refried beans in her hand. “It’s too soon to have sex if you don’t know where you stand.”

“Only if you
care
where you stand,” Zoe said.

“Yeah, but you can’t care where you stand on the third date,” Ally countered.

“Who has sex on the third date?” Zoe said. “That’s
way
soon.”

Ally and I stared at her.

“In fact, my boy—my
ex-
boyfriend made me wait,” Zoe said. “His last girlfriend was two-timing him, and he got so burned that he wanted to take things slowly in the intimacy department. It took him three dates to French-kiss me, a month before he went near my bra, and it was two months before we slept together.”

“How long were you together?” I asked.

“A year,” Zoe said. “So maybe he had something there.”

A year. I slept with Griffen on our
second date.
I even initiated it. Well, not sex itself so much as sexuality. He’d walked me home after the movie, I invited him up for a nightcap, and a glass of wine later, we were liplocked on the couch. Of course, Jennifer walked out in her bra and teeny-tiny underwear (
“Oh my God, Sarah, I am so sorry. I totally didn’t know you were even here. Oh my God, if I’d known you had a guy here, I would never have walked out like this. Giggle. Giggle. Oh hi, there. You must be Griffen. Really, I never would have walked in half-naked if I’d known Sar had a guy here. She never does. Oops, I mean, well she’s no slut, huh! You two have fun, see you in the morning, singsong, singsong.”
)

I was not exaggerating.

Something about Jennifer’s little cutesy routine worked, though, because Griffen and I both rolled our eyes in unison and shared a laugh, a real laugh, and I’d felt better than I had in forever.

And then he leaned closer to me and kissed me. A sweet kiss, with tenderness, that he turned hot real fast. And then I took his hand and led him into my bedroom and closed the door.

And unbeknown to either of us, sperm met egg.

I dipped a tortilla chip in salsa. “How about, it’s too soon for sex if you don’t know how he’d react if you got pregnant?”

“I don’t know, Sarah,” Zoe said. “No one really knows how they’re going to react. You couldn’t have said for sure how you’d react. Even married couples don’t necessarily react well to a pregnancy. What if it’s unplanned?”

That was true. “I think I should skip the pregnancy angle anyway.”

“Consequences of sleeping with a guy too soon are important to mention,” Ally said. “Let’s say you don’t know someone’s sexual history and end up with chlamydia?”

“Good one,” Zoe said, pointing a chip at her.

During dinner on that second date, I’d asked Griffen about his previous relationships, not so much for sexual history but because I was curious and wanted to know what his track record was.

“What would the Dating Diva say about that question?” he’d asked. On our first date, I’d told him about Zoe and what she did for a living. He was impressed that someone could make such good money telling people to stop talking about sex and politics on a first date, essentially what they already knew if they’d been socialized in this country.

“The Dating Diva would say there’s nothing wrong with a provocative conversation about experiences,” I told him.

He tapped me on the nose. “Unless one party of the conversation would rather not discuss his experiences.”

I’d turned red. “Oh. Okay. I didn’t mean to pry.”

He softened. “I’ve had a few relationships, one serious that didn’t work out a few years ago.”

I wanted to ask five more questions, but I held my tongue. He hadn’t asked me about my history, which consisted of three prior relationships, none lasting longer than six months.

Ally grabbed a tortilla chip. “It’s too soon for sex if you don’t know some basic information about his family, his prior relationships, his work and his values.”

I didn’t know anything about Griffen when I slept with him, except that I found him gorgeous, sexy, smart, funny, his own person, creative, interesting and kind. I knew he worked as a producer in television. I knew he grew up in Brooklyn. I knew he had a brother who worked in the White House as some sort of congressional aide. I knew he liked red meat. Black coffee. Violent guy movies. Pop culture. Breasts. Running. Talking about current events. Sex.

And I’d thought he liked me. The way he looked at me while we were making love seemed to say what was in his heart and head. Was I a naive idiot? Did all men look like they were in love while they were having sex? Maybe. I’d slept with four guys, the first guy only once, and the other three regularly enough for a few months. No one had ever looked at me the way Griffen did. And I had never felt about anyone else the way I felt about him.

I couldn’t describe why he overwhelmed me. I was wildly attracted to him, yes, but not just physically. Our chemistry was unlike any I’d ever felt. We could talk about anything and did. We could disagree and did. We laughed a lot. We could kiss for minutes on a street corner. We were in sync. We were friends, lovers and, I thought, on our way to becoming the mythical soul mates.

“Well, Zoe, let’s say you decided to make a play for Daniel,” I said. “Because you’re such good friends already, would you immediately sleep with him? Or would you wait until your romance was more settled first?”

“Good question,” Zoe said. “I’m not sure.”

“Because you don’t really know how you feel about him,” Ally said. “You want him, but you don’t.”

“No, she just wants him at arm’s length,” I said.

“Then it’s definitely too soon to sleep with him,” Ally said.

“I’m glad I asked,” Zoe said, winking at us.

“Speaking of you, Zoe,” I said. “I told my boss about you this morning, and her eyes lit up at the idea of you writing an article or even a column about being the Dating Diva. She wants you to call her if you’re interested.”

“You’re kidding!” Zoe practically shouted. “That sounds amazing! I will call her.”

“This Dating Diva thing is a scam,” Ally said with a wink at Zoe. “You’re making a shitload of money by telling people what they already know.”

“What they already know?” I repeated. “Who knows
anything?
If I knew anything about when it was too soon to have sex, I might not be pregnant.”

“Yeah, Sarah, you might not be pregnant,” Zoe said quite seriously. “Look, I know being single and pregnant might not be how you planned things, but being pregnant is quite a blessing, quite a beautiful thing.”

“I’ll second that,” Ally said. “On the one hand, in your situation, there’s a lot to work out. But on the other, you’re damned lucky, kid.”

“A toast to me, then,” I said with a smile, raising my glass. We clinked. “Okay, so how about it’s too soon to sleep with someone you’re not in love with—that takes the guesswork right out of—No, that’s unrealistic. You could be very interested, very attracted, and that could be reason enough. It takes a long time for real love to develop.”

“That’s why single people have sex and married people don’t,” Ally said. Then she blushed and hurried to say, “Not that my marriage is an example. I’m just
saying.
When you’re in love, you’re blinded by romance. You have sex four times a day. It’s why people who marry after two weeks end up divorced a minute later. You’re in love with newness, the mystery, the zing. Once you’re living daily life and putting up with his obnoxious friends and being nice to his overbearing mother at family functions, the in-love part tends to recede and the love part takes over.”

That did make sense.

“Take you and Griffen,” Ally went on. “Let’s say you’re living together, changing diapers, picking up his socks from the living-room floor, he’s pulling your long hairs out of the bathroom sink. The baby’s crying. When are you going to have sex then? That’s real life. Dating isn’t.”

“So are you saying it’s too soon to have sex if you’re not ready to move in with the guy?” I asked.

“If you get pregnant, then yeah,” Ally said.

When I arrived at work the next morning, Griffen had left a message.
Beep:
“Um, Sarah, it’s Griffen. I tried you at home, but your roommate said you moved out like four weeks ago. Where are you living? Is everything okay? Um, I have to go out of town on business for a story this week, but, uh, I told my parents the big news, and you’re invited for pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving at their house if you can make it. They’re really anxious to meet you. Uh, give me a call back when you have a chance.”

As if calling him back wasn’t the most important thing on my to-do list.

“Why
is
it?” Ally asked that night. “I mean, I’m happy for you that he called and that he told his parents and that they want to meet you. But you haven’t been the most important thing on
his.
”

“You don’t know that,” Zoe said, twisting herself into a painful-looking yoga position. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s thought of nothing else but you and the pregnancy. And telling his folks is a big deal.”

“What I’m saying is that I don’t think Sarah should count on Griffen or get all hopeful about his involvement, even if he told his parents. This isn’t a fairy tale.”

No kidding. Even Cinderella got her own room.

14

Ally

M
y mother-in-law wanted to know, via telephone from Cincinnati, why Andrew was bringing home another woman for Thanksgiving.

“Because he’s a lying, cheating—” I stopped when I remembered that I was talking to Andrew’s mother, not that she’d ever been particularly warm and fuzzy to me. As Mrs. Sharp went on and on about forgiving and forgetting and compromising and what Dear Abby would have said, I held my cell phone at arm’s length and seethed.

“No, there’s no chance of reconciliation,” I told her. “No, I don’t think there’s anything he could say or do.”

So Andrew was bringing someone home for Thanksgiving? Which just happened to be my birthday this year? And whom could he have possibly met in a month, five weeks, that he liked so much he was bringing her to meet his parents—for a major holiday?

“You superwomen try to do it all, and what happens?” Mrs. Sharp went on. “You implode. You try to do it all, having a high-powered career and taking care of a house and a husband, and what happens? The house falls to pot and the husband is tempted away into the arms of another woman. But don’t blame yourself, Ally, dear. I’m sure this Valerie person cooked her way into Andrew’s heart. All a man really wants is a good hot meal waiting for him at the end of the day.”

Remember that she’s seventy-four. Remember that she’s seventy-four. Remember that she’s seventy-four.

“Mrs. Sharp, with all due respect, I don’t agree with a word you just said.”

“Well, Ally,
that’s
your problem. You do a lot of arguing—I guess it’s that career of yours. Arguing is what you do for a living, isn’t it? Well, dear, maybe if you’d done a little less arguing and a little more
agreeing,
Andy wouldn’t have had to look elsewhere. He would be bringing
you
to our Thanksgiving celebration.”

It was too bad that cell phones didn’t have cords. I needed something to strangle and Mrs. Sharp was in Ohio. A little too far away for neck squeezing.

“Mrs. Sharp—” I had been calling her Mrs. Sharp for thirteen years. “During eleven years of marriage to your lying, cheating son, I’ve been subjected to your overcooked turkey, limp, tasteless vegetables and ridiculously outdated views on life. So if Andrew is bringing his latest floozy to the family Thanksgiving, I can only hope they both choke on a turkey bone. Happy holidays,
dear.
”

I threw my cell phone against the wall and sank down on my bed. My legs were shaking.
This Valerie person. This Valerie person.

And suddenly my sisters were staring at me, their mouths hanging open to the floor. My heart had been beating so fast during that little conversation that I hadn’t even heard them come in. Sarah was clutching one of those two-pound hollow chocolate turkeys you found in drugstore candy aisles during the holidays. The head had been gnawed off.