He twirled the class ring on his finger, the way that men do when they’re working on a serious thought. This might be the last time that I knew him that well. The intimacy was dissipating before my eyes, and the next time I saw him someone else would know him better than I did. Perhaps he was thinking about it, as well, because we seemed to be sitting in long, comforting silences between our thoughts.
My eyes were moist by the time I reached for the ring waiting inside my pocket. I didn’t want to let it go. More because of the gravity of that gesture than because of anything else. We could fight and we could talk and we could make all sorts of proclamations. But until I gave him back that piece of himself—of us—it wasn’t real.
“Then you’re a better man than I am,” I said, thinking about everything I had put him through.
Would I have stayed with someone who refused to wear my ring? Someone who laughed in my face at the idea of moving for my career? Someone who kissed another woman on national television and had an ex-girlfriend as a client? Probably not. Would Raj have been prepared to do his absolute best to make me feel safe and adored for the rest of my life? Probably so. Was there any chance that I was going to leave that overlook with that ring still on my person?
Absolutely not.
Because there are moments in a woman’s life when she knows it can go either way. There is no right and there is no wrong; there is only the knowledge that she is what she is about to choose. She can feel her entire future shrink into the space of the decision that she is about to make. These are the tipping points on the karmic map of her life, and they are there to force her to admit what sort of person she is. A woman who can sleep at night, knowing that she has singlehandedly ruined someone’s career? A woman who can see her adversaries in herself, but who refuses to be ruled by her baser instincts, even as she learns to accept that they will always be there? A woman who would rather be on her own than be with anyone for whom she wasn’t willing to risk it all?
It was time. Forcing myself to look him in the eye, I held the ring out on an outstretched palm. He shifted his weight away from my hand, as if I were holding a tarantula.
“It’s all right, Raj. This…this was never really mine.”
He took it without looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was.
“I’m not,” he replied. Then he smiled at me as if we were still sweethearts, for what would, I knew, be the very last time.
“M
ORE WINE,”
I
ORDERED
C
ASSIE THROUGH THE CELL PHONE
as I burst through her door an hour later.
“I didn’t give you any wine,” she replied, before snapping her cell phone shut and following me down her hallway.
“Fine, then.” I dropped my jacket and ran both hands over my face, having no patience for the time it would take her to catch up.
“Wine!”
“Coming up. Just let me get Phil out of my bed. He’s been pissing in it every night for a week for some reason.”
Since it was a studio, her bed was front and center, and the stench of cat pee was even worse than it should have been. She ripped the purple duvet off her bed, sent the virtually hairless mongrel scurrying to the floor, and shoved the sheets into her hamper. Why she had decided to rescue that poor specimen from the shelter in the first place, I would never understand.
He may not be pretty, but he’s got spunk,
she told me the first time I’d seen him.
And I appreciate his potential.
Potential, my ass. Her apartment smelled like that homeless guy who had been shaking his fist at the sun.
“I’m cracking a window,” I said, heading toward the sill.
“Bad cat!” she scolded over a shoulder, while the rail-thin Phil struggled to hack up a hairball.
She swiped two wineglasses from her cabinet and a half-empty bottle of red from her countertop.
“What’s wrong with him, anyway?” I asked, looking for a somewhat sanitary place to sit.
Which was kind of like looking for a somewhat sophisticated way to pull out a wedgie.
“I don’t know. I think he’s just being a bitch to make my life hell. I woke up with his butt in my face this morning.” She handed me a glass, took a sip of her own, and smacked her lips like it was a cold, satisfying beer. “So you really gave back the ring?”
“You say that like you’re surprised. Do you really think I have that little class?”
“Monica, come on, everything is not a moral issue. It’s not about class. It’s…well…nobody ever gives back the ring. It’s like, a rule or something. Compensation for the cost of your time.”
“But I’m the reason we’re over,” I said, while Phil eyed me like I was what was making him sick.
“It’s never that simple,” she said, as if she had been engaged so many times.
“Look, I don’t exactly know the rules of etiquette in a case like this. Or in a lot of other cases, either.” I thought back to Luke’s face as I darted from the hotel room the night before.
She lifted the magazine Phil was curled up on, forcing him off her desk. “Clearly, because there is no rule in favor of doing a striptease to a techno song for a stranger with a ponytail.”
“Shut up.” I dropped into an armchair, taking a heavy gulp and trying to think of ways to deflect her attention. “What happened with Long John Silver, anyway?”
“Nothing, really.” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to give him my number, so I took his.”
“You gonna call him?”
“Probably not.” She twirled the stem of her glass and then noticed Phil trying to nose his way into her closet. “Phil, No! Did I mention he pooped in a pair of my Ferragamos last week, too? Mommy’s little angel is going to have to sleep in a shoebox if he doesn’t learn where it is not
all right
to relieve himself! He must be depressed. I should Google Kitty Prozac.”
I raised my eyebrows, gesturing with the wineglass that that wasn’t a good enough explanation and that I needed a lot more wine.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, filling my glass to the rim. “It’s not about Jonathan.
Hey! Damn it, Phil!
”
Impressively, my mother barely blinked at the news of her only daughter’s newfound spinsterhood. I found her in her room when I got home.
I waved a hand before her eyes to make sure she hadn’t had a spontaneous aneurism and gone catatonic in her chair.
“You have done what you think is right,” she decided, resuming consciousness, folding a shawl over her arm and then plunging it into a travel bag.
“What’s going on?” I sat on the bed.
“It is time for me to go back to London,” she said, examining the contents of her open suitcase. “And you can take me to the airport tomorrow morning on your way to the office.”
“Already?” I asked, surprised at my own reaction to the idea.
She paused, and softened. “Yes,
beti.
You don’t need me. But please, check on Sheila. Marriage is not always as easy as it may seem from the outside.”
And I did. From my cell phone in the car right after I delivered my mother to the airport the following morning.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out when Sheila answered the phone on the first ring. “I just want you to be happy.”
“I know, babe. You were trying to protect your little cousin.” She exhaled. “I understand.”
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have attacked Josh like that. He is your husband, after all.”
“Yes, that’s true. But for what it’s worth, maybe you’re better off. Marriage isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Huh?”
“You don’t think your mom called my mom right after you told her you broke up with Raj last night? Come on!”
“I was gonna tell you myself, you know.”
“Monica, we should talk about this. Are you okay?”
“I will be.” I glanced at the rearview mirror before merging onto the 405. “But I can’t talk now. I have to get to work. In fact, I wanted to invite you and Josh over for dinner at my place. Josh is family and I don’t want things to be awkward. How’s Friday night?”
“I’ll check with him and let you know later today.”
“Be careful with that thing!” Jonathan shoved a briefcase between the closing elevator doors and then wedged himself in beside me. With a nod toward my latte, he said, “You could really hurt someone this time, slugger. And this suit is brand-new.”
“Not funny,” I complained, taking a large gulp and then shoving half of my cinnamon scone right into my mouth just to do my part in the fight against non-trans fats.
The beep of my cell phone indicated a message from Josh:
We would love to come to dinner on Friday. It will give me a chance to apologize. In fact, I’m going to bring along something that I think will be good for you. Olive branch extended…
I replied:
Olive branch accepted, cousin-in-law. Just bring dessert and we’ll be a-o-k!
“Come on,” Jonathan insisted. “There was coffee everywhere! It was like a WWE Women’s Wrestling Championship, except with a lot less oil and kissing than when you and Stefanie used to wrestle in my imagination.”
“Not on my first day back, Jonathan.” I closed my eyes.
“C’mon! You know what they say, partner,” he quipped. “If you can’t laugh at yourself…”
“And how often do you laugh at yourself?” I snapped at him.
He shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I know you didn’t out Stefanie on purpose. Nobody who knows you would ever think that. You just need to really believe that for yourself.”
“Since when are you so Zen?”
“I dated a yoga instructor once,” he said. I could tell by his tone that this was meant to be sufficient evidence.
“Since we’re not on the topic, what’s up with you and Cassie?”
“Nothing. Why?” He got agitated. “Did she say something to you?”
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” I said, stepping out of the elevator before him on our floor. “You need some sort of resolution.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Actually, I am,” I whispered, looking from side to side. “I broke up with Raj yesterday. Officially.”
“Wow.”
“At least it’s not being dragged out anymore. Clarity is valuable.”
“Good perspective, slugger,” he said, turning toward his office.
“Hey, listen.” I had an idea. “What are you doing Friday night?”
I had decided that Sheila wasn’t the only person who deserved an apology from me.
“What?” Luke answered on the fifth ring later that afternoon.
“Luke, hi.” I chewed on my upper lip. “I just called to say that I’m sorry.”
“All right,” he was short. “Is that it?”
“Luke, please,” I tried.
“Please what? You said you were sorry. I heard you.”
“You’re obviously still angry.”
“Monica, I’m not angry. I’m done.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want some guy walking around Los Angeles hating me.”
“Why shouldn’t I stay angry at you?”
“Because I apologized.”
“Yes, you apologized, but you’re not really sorry. You’re schizophrenic.”
“I am not!” I was taken aback. “I am not schizophrenic. I was about to make a mistake…. We both were…. And I stopped it. I shouldn’t have taken it that far, and I shouldn’t have run out like that. It was childish, yes. But I’m not emotionally disturbed.”
“Oh, no…not at all.” His sarcasm came dripping through the phone. “Not you. You’re perfectly stable.”
“Luke.” I stood up.
“You didn’t avoid making a mistake, Monica.” He continued, “You ran screaming because you couldn’t handle that you were opening up.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You’re closed off,” he concluded as matter-of-factly as if he had mentioned that he was allergic to mushrooms.
“Luke, I am sorry that you need to accuse me of these things to massage your ego, but I am not closed off.”
“Prove it,” he challenged.
“What?
How?
”
“I don’t know. But if you really mean it, then prove it.” He was so smug.
“You want me to prove to you that I feel nothing more than embarrassment when I think of you.”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” I went calm, suddenly seeing the most obvious way to kill at least three birds with one stone. “Why don’t you join me and my friends for dinner on Friday night?”
“A
PPLES AND BLUE CHEESE FOR THE SALAD?”
C
ASSIE HOISTED
herself up onto my counter and popped a few pecan-halves into her mouth that Friday night. “This doesn’t look very Indian to me.”
“You know I can’t serve Indian food.” I shooed her away from the pecans, handing her a Granny Smith and a peeler instead. “It’ll never be as good as my mom’s cooking.”
“So?” She took a bite out of the apple.
“So…I have no problem serving mediocre French or Italian food, but I will not serve sub-par Indian food.”
“Then why don’t you learn how to make better Indian food?”
“I will…one day. Why don’t you stop eating the things that you’re supposed to be chopping up for the salad? What are you, pregnant?”
“No.” She pouted, swinging her heels off the edge of my counter. “I’m nervous. I can’t believe you invited Jonathan.”
I stopped stirring to wave a ladle at her. “You two need to decide whether you’re gonna kiss and make up or grow up and move on. No more games. No more wasting time. Stop messing around.”
“But…”
“Stop it.”
“Well.”
“Cut it out.”
“Monica, I—”
“Don’t make me force everybody to play Seven Minutes In Heaven just to get you two alone together!”
“I miss that game,” she said wistfully.
“This is not for fun, Cassie. We all need to get things out in the open and act like adults,” I ordered, wondering why I had chosen to step into my party clothes before finishing up with the cooking.
“You’re mean.” She snatched another pecan.
“And you’re tall.” I skimmed the recipe for my entrée one more time, to make sure I hadn’t left anything out.
“So?” she asked.
“So, that makes you a mutant among Indian women. And it also makes you useful in the kitchen because you can get me another boullion cube from the top cupboard without my having to climb up onto the countertop in my dress.”
I was breathing heavily onto one of the soup spoons, so that I could shine it on my apron, when the doorbell rang a little while later. I lined the spoon up with the fork, grabbed a matchbox from my pocket, and lit the five votives positioned down the middle of what I had to admit was an impeccably laid table. After a final once-over, I yanked off my apron and swiveled in the direction of the door, shoving the apron into the closet.
“I don’t remember you having such a
domestic
side to you” came a voice from the other end of my hallway that stopped me in my tracks.
“Alex?”
I almost whispered.
“And dessert, too!” Josh barreled past him to thrust a cake box at me before heading toward my dining room. “I brought wine. See? Two presents!”
I gritted my teeth and headed for the kitchen.
“Why don’t I help you with that?” Alex appeared behind me. “You know you always leave the cork in the bottle.”
I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Not one bit.
“It’s been a long time since you’ve seen me open a bottle of wine,” I said, yanking the cork out in one clean gesture, and then yelling to Cassie, “Cassie, can you please set another place at the table?”
“True, Monica. But people don’t change that much,” Alex said.
I gently shooed him away from the oven door. “What are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to talk to a dinner guest?” he asked my behind as I leaned down to check on the chicken in the oven. And to ponder what it might be like to stick my head in.
Inside the oven, not the chicken. Try to keep up.
“Josh told me that you and Raj ended your engagement…and it got me thinking.”
Before I could respond, or vomit, or fake unconsciousness, the doorbell rang again. I bolted upright, slamming the oven door shut.
Oh crap. Luke and Alex and me and Cassie and Jonathan and Josh and Sheila musing about the state of the economy over chocolate cake? What could possibly go wrong?
I was pulling off my oven mitts when I heard Sheila’s voice booming through the apartment. Her signaling was about as subtle as a train wreck.
“Oh, hello! You must be Luke!” she bellowed. “It’s nice to meet you! And you brought a bottle of wine, too! Well, how thoughtful! What is that, red wine? Is it a cabernet or a merlot? Really?”
“Luke,” I called, swooping down the hallway with a glare in Sheila’s direction to rescue the confused man who didn’t understand why my cousin was trying to deny him entry. “Come in, come in! We’ve uh…got a full house here, tonight. But I’m glad you could make it.”
“Hey, man.” Alex offered the first firm, eye-contact-intensive handshake of the evening. “Good to meet you. I’m Alex. Can I take that bottle of wine off your hands?”
His voice must have dropped three octaves. And to drive the point home, he laid a hand on my waist before swinging nonchalantly toward the kitchen. “I got it, babe. I know where you left the corkscrew.”
Luke replied with a short, upward nod that men have been using to acknowledge each other for centuries. The kind that says everything and nothing at once.
“Ah-huh-huh-huh” was all the awkward banter I could manage.
“Hey, people,” Jonathan cut his wobbly salutation short, having wandered in just behind Luke.
He took one look at Luke, nodded in Cassie’s direction, and then threw his coat over a chair with a satisfied and inebriated flourish.
“Awesome,”
he said. “Soooo, anybody need a stiff drink? No? Just me?”
“Um, Luke,” I began. “This is my cousin Sheila and her husband Josh, and Cassie and Jonathan from work, and well…you already met my friend Alex…”
“Friend?”
Jonathan guffawed, while blowing into my martini shaker, as if it might be filled with dust.
“Are you drunk?” Cassie came up to my wet bar and accused Jonathan, while Sheila and Josh stared nervously at one another.
“Are you
frigid?
” he shot back, loosening his tie.
“Idiot,”
she mumbled, before heading back toward the kitchen.
“Tease!” Jonathan called after her.
“Alex!” I said, way too cheerfully. “It’s time to bring out the salads. And why doesn’t everyone, um…er…have a seat?”
“You invited that guy from the TV show to dinner?” Alex’s nostrils were flaring when I got into the kitchen.
“What’s with the attitude?” I asked, lifting up the tray of mushroom soup, and whisking them out of the room…
…and almost slamming into Luke, who also suddenly seemed to have developed the need to make himself useful.
“Can I get that?” He took the tray from my hands. “It seemed like your cousin and her husband needed a minute alone, so I thought I’d come hang out in here.”
Two men, a hot kitchen, a lot of wine…I think I had a dream like this once. Although I couldn’t be sure which one of them would be feeding me strawberries, and which one would be dipping me gingerly into the massive vat of chocolate fondue.
“Thanks, Luke.” I slipped on my oven mitts, reminding myself that this was not the time for my imagination to be running wild. “I’ll bring out the chicken and we’ll get this party started.”
“You don’t look so good, Sheila,” Cassie was saying while I ladled chicken onto everyone’s plates.
“Oh, I’m a little distracted. My husband here thinks we should give the baby a Hebrew first name and an Indian middle name, but I think it should be the opposite.”
“It’s just another one of the many things we should have talked about before we got married.” Josh lifted her hand from her belly to kiss it. “But at least we’re working through it all now…just the two of us.”
I couldn’t resist a smile in Alex’s direction. Back in college he had always said that he loved my grandmother’s name so much that he would gladly have swapped it for the promise of an annual family trip to Italy. He must have been thinking the same thing, because our eyes met when I looked up.
“So, you guys dated in college, huh?” Luke slopped some spinach onto his plate rather abruptly. “Jonathan mentioned it didn’t end very well.”
“Jonathan, I can’t believe you’re gossiping like that!” Cassie admonished.
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he slurred in her direction, while chomping on an olive.
“Honey, don’t you think maybe you’re overdoing it with those peppers?” Josh asked Sheila.
“Not at all,” she replied, before dropping her fork with a clatter and palming her belly. “Seriously, though. Back me up here, ladies. Don’t you think I’m justified, Cassie? Monica?”
“So Monica’s opinion is relevant, but mine isn’t.” Jonathan burped.
Cassie shoved a hunk of bread in his direction with a glare that apparently amused him into momentary silence.
“Well, I can see both sides,” I began carefully. “I will say that it’s gonna be easier for your child to lose out on the Indian part of its heritage in this country than it will be to lose out on the other part…just by virtue of the lack of Indian visibility in the popular media and landscape…as opposed to the Jewish synagogues on practically every street corner in Beverly Hills. So maybe an Indian first name wouldn’t seem so unfair. But then again…”
“Seriously, Sheila. Maybe you should take it easy on those peppers,” Josh urged.
“I’m
fine,
” she insisted. “And don’t cut Monica off!”
“You don’t have to finish it just for her sake!” Josh pushed. “It’s not like she’s married and cooks all the time or anything. She’s not gonna take it that personally.”
“So now single women can’t cook?” Cassie sprang to my defense, waving her wineglass at him.
Jonathan grinned, satisfied that her irritation had really been inspired by him.
“Oh…I’m sure that’s not what he meant.” I tried to keep the peace. “More chicken, anyone?”
“Don’t tell me what I meant,” Josh said, rendering the table silent.
Until…
“When have you even managed not to burn a
Pop-Tart?
” Jonathan snapped.
“Insults will not win me back.” Cassie stood up and headed for the bathroom.
“Then what will?” he mumbled, but she didn’t hear him.
“Josh…” Sheila said.
“No, Sheila. If she can speak her mind while we’re eating, just because we’re
family,
then so can I! It goes both ways!” Josh lifted his napkin from his lap and dropped it onto his plate.
“I already apologized for what happened at brunch!” I said.
“You’re doing a lot of apologizing these days.” Luke was snide.
“How exactly did you two manage to…er…reconnect?” Alex hacked into his chicken and shoved a heaping spoonful into his mouth. “After he humiliated you on national television, I mean.”
“Los Angeles is a small town.” Luke took a massive mouthful of his own, before starting to gag on an oversize pepper.
It might not have been Tandoori, but at least it was spicy.
“What’s the matter, buddy?” Alex sneered, lifting a similar pepper off his own plate and chomping proudly into the middle. “Can’t handle the heat?”
“Excuse me.” Sheila stood up and started to wobble toward the bathroom. “I think I’ll go powder my nose.”
Jonathan dropped an armful of dinner plates into my sink rather theatrically: “Are you going to do something about the situation in the dining room?”
I was hovering over the cake, dropping raspberries onto each plate.
“Monica!” He practically stomped to get my attention. “Are you listening to me? Josh went after Sheila to make sure she didn’t fall into the toilet bowl, so now it’s just Alex and Luke growling at each other. The tension’s so thick it sobered me up.”
“Are you gonna do something about the situation with Cassie?” I raised an eyebrow, while drizzling a little too much powdered sugar over the raspberries.
“What can I do? She obviously hates me.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Because women always get that worked up over men they don’t give a damn about. Kind of like how stripclub owners with names like Bruno always marry for love.”
“I wonder where Bruno is these days.” He smiled to himself. “I should look him up.”
“Get out of my kitchen,” I said, putting on the coffee. “The sooner we all eat this damn cake, the sooner I can kick you all out and move on with my life.”
“What’s Luke doing here, anyway?” He sprayed whipped cream down the length of his finger, and then licked it off.
“Do you have to be so unsanitary?”
“I think you know that I do.” He faked a bashful expression.
“Long story.” I counted out the teaspoons. “I kind of almost slept with him this weekend, and then I ran out, and then I called to make amends and he wouldn’t accept the apology, so I invited him here as a peace offering. Sort of.”
“Almost?”
“What?”
“
Almost
slept with him? What does that mean? I know what it means to me, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean the same thing to a nice Indian girl like you.”