Yes. You look like a poodle. Why do you have a perm?
"Speaking of Team Bigamist," I said, trying not to look at the top of his head and its springy curls. "Our team would like to switch to that project, if possible."
He glanced up at me. "Why?"
I felt my cheeks burning. You are not going to tell the editor in chief that you, your a.s.sistant editor and your sister are such wussy babies that you can"t work on a project about fairy-tale love and a fairy-tale wedding while your own love lives are in the toilet. If Christopher wants to speak for himself, fine.
I cleared my throat. "We just thought that such a strong team of staffers might be more wisely utilized by the more serious, heartrending Bigamist project."
He raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, Luce, but I"m satisfied with the teams as they are. Plus, you yourself submitted a proposal for a book on Beau and Bri some months ago. And Wanda submitted a proposal for the bigamist book. So I think we"re in order. Let Wanda know I"m ready for her crew, will you?" he asked, effectively dismissing me. "Oh, one more thing," he said as my hand was on the door. "Your new a.s.sistant editorwhat"s her name again?"
"Roxy," I said.
"Right, Roxy. I was struck by what she said last night about the zero divorce rate in her family history. That could make a potential bio or memoir for our spring list. Can she write? Or perhaps we could a.s.sign it."
"She"s fabulous at writing back cover copy," I told him. "Why don"t I have her write a proposal and we"ll go from there?"
He nodded. "There are countless books on how not to get divorced. But not a single one that I can think of about a family who actually stands as an example. What are their secrets, blah, blah, blah. I think it would make a fine book."
Futterman was a jerk, but a smart jerk. I"d buy that book in a heartbeat.
There wouldn"t have been another meeting of the Breakup Club in any kind of sober world, but when I reported back to Team Wedding that there was no hope of switching projects, Christopher suggested we all go out for a reasonably inexpensive dinner at Futterman"s expense to figure out how to proceed without being in a funk for the next two months. Two plates of nachos and a one-margarita-per person rule adhered to, we"d hashed out a timeline for research and a breakdown of chapters. Not bad for two hours" work.
I held up a People magazine with an article about the couple. "Listen to this. "I can"t believe I ever thought I was in love before," Brianna told reporters. "To think I went through all that breakup brouhaha and brokenhearted periods where I ate too much fat-free frozen yogurt and moped and whined to my friends and family and whammosix months later I meet my one real love.""
"That"s lovely," Miranda said, a forkful of flan in her hand. "Hindsight always is."
"I agree," I said, "But I like what she"s saying. Can you imagine if Larry doesn"t walk out the door on New Year"s Day? All these weeks of my angsting and worrying and crying into my pillow will have been for nothing."
"Not nothing," Christopher said. "Because at least you know how you feel."
I stared at him. "I have no idea how I feel."
Roxy scooped salsa onto her chip. "You just said you"ve been crying. So you must love your husband very much."
"Or maybe she"s just mourning the end of the marriage," Christopher said. "It"s scary as h.e.l.l to suddenly have your marriage fall apart when you thought everything was fine. Or fine enough."
"Luce, which is it?" Miranda asked. "Is it Larry you love or is it your marriage?"
What kind of question was that? "Both, of course."
"You know," Roxy said, "I never would have thought the two could be mutually exclusive. But I loved Robbie and there"s no way I would have loved our marriage. That"s why I didn"t go through with it."
"But then you couldn"t have loved him," Miranda said. "He is who he is, right? And you didn"t love that person."
Roxy shrugged. I shrugged. Christopher shrugged. Miranda shrugged. We stirred our margaritas and dipped tortilla chips in salsa and considered everything.
Maybe I didn"t know how I felt. "I don"t want my marriage to end, but why exactly? I do love Larry, but our marriage has been a crock for at least a year. We don"t talk, we don"t have s.e.x, we"re like roommates." My eyes welled up and I blinked back the tears. There was no way I"d cry in front of this crowd. But then an image of Larry floated into my mindof nothing in particular, just his face, the face I"d loved and looked at for twelve yearsand I felt unbearably sad. "No, I do know how I feel. I do love Larry. I just don"t love how our marriage has been for the past few months."
"How has it been?" Miranda asked. "You and Larry always seemed great. Fine. A teamwell, with the exception of Thanksgiving."
"Couples can act or seem perfectly fine when they have company," I pointed out. "Before Larry shoved the turkey off the table at Thanksgiving, wasn"t he his regular self? Wasn"t he his regular self for twelve years?"
"That"s so scary," Roxy said. "I broke up with Robbie because I did know what I would be getting. But from what you"re saying, everything can change down the road anyway. If Robbie had been perfect for me, he might not be twelve years from now."
That was true. Could I imagine that the pa.s.sionate med student I married at twenty-two would morph into a wham-bam-I-forgot-all-about-you-ma"am familiar stranger at thirty-four?
"People change," Christopher put in. "No, scratch that. I think Jodie left me because I didn"t change."
"Or maybe she changed," I said. "Maybe Larry changed on me and there"s nothing I can do about it. If he changed and now wants something different, how do I compete with that?"
"You can"t change who you are for someone else," Roxy said. "Ever."
"So he"s going to walk out the door on New Year"s Day?" I asked. "That"s it? Twelve years over?"
We all went back to stirring our drinks and dipping our chips.
"This is going to sound awful," Roxy said, "but sometimes I wish my parents would split up, and they"ve been married for twenty-six years. They barely speak to each other. When they do, it"s never kind. They complain about each other all the time. But whenever I"ve spoken to people about it, like Robbie or my aunt or friends, they"ve all said that"s what marriage is. Some days you bicker, some days you don"t."
Miranda snorted. "That"s what marriage is? That"s what I hoped and prayed for with Gabriel? A lifetime of bickering or status quo?"
Christopher leaned back in his chair. "I have to say, Jodie and I did a lot of bickering. When we got through a day without fighting, we weren"t exactly jumping each other"s bones. We just sort of coexisted."
"Okay, now this is just depressing," Miranda said. "This is what happens when lovebirds get married? Why?"
"Yeah, why?" Roxy asked. "This is what my family"s biography is going to be about? This is how they managed to avoid divorce? By being unhappy for generations?"
"What biography?" Miranda asked, sucking on a lime.
I quickly explained Futterman"s idea for a book about Roxy"s family"s marital success rate. Roxy"s mouth had dropped open when I told her. She couldn"t wait to write a proposal. And if she wrote well, Futterman would approve contracting Roxy to write the book herself. Otherwise, we"d hire a writer. But I knew Roxy would do a great job. She"d need editorial guidance at organization and focus, but the girl could write.
"First of all," Christopher said, "congrats on the project. And second of all, not all married couples are unhappy."
"Yeah, just fifty percent of them," Miranda said.
"But none of those fifty percent is from Roxy"s family," I said. "Those are amazing statistics."
"Yeah, but I know my parents aren"t happy," Roxy said. "Miserably married isn"t good."
"What about the other Marones?" Miranda asked. "Are they happy?"
Roxy gnawed her lip. "That"s hard to say. Sometimes they seem madly in love, and sometimes I"ve been afraid blood will be drawn."
"I hate to tell you this," Christopher said, "but that"s normal."
Miranda made a face. "Great. I can"t wait for my prince to come now!"
I laughed. "Miranda, I know many happily married couples. Aunt Dinah and Uncle Saul were happy. Mom and Dad, sort of. Many of Amelia"s friends" parents."
"I know some happily married couples too," Christopher said.
"Me too," Roxy added.
"Whew," Miranda said. "I was losing all hope."
"Who thinks Beau and Bri will be filing for divorce five months into the marriage?" Christopher asked.
"Cynical!" Miranda said. "If you"re marrying the right person"
"The right person?" I repeated. "I thought Larry was the right person. Christopher thought Jodie was the right person."
"Well, that"s not exactly true," he said. "She was pregnant and"
Huh. "So was I. A friend of mine once told me I"d never know if Larry proposed because I was pregnant or because he really wanted to marry me, and I said it didn"t matter, because we loved each other and that was what mattered. But maybe it did matter."
"Or maybe it is just time and changing and has nothing to do with how much he loved you twelve years ago or six years ago," Christopher said. "I didn"t start out wanting to marry Jodie, but I ended up wanting to be her husband more than anything."
"What are you all complaining about?" Miranda asked. "I didn"t even get a chance to have my marriage to Gabriel fall apart. Didn"t I deserve a chance?"
We all stared at her.
"Duh. Kidding," she said, and I flung a tortilla chip at her. "Anyway, Luce, what about what Larry said last night? That he never keeps his resolutions?"
I shrugged. "So he"ll leave and then come back a week later, off South Beach, off the gym, off learning Spanish or giving a flying fig about paper plates. And we just go from there?"
"There"s nowhere else to go," Christopher said.
It was all a white-flour and bad-carb-induced bad dream! Larry wasn"t leaving me on New Year"s Day! I knew because a few days before December 31, he asked if I"d like to go to Ellabet"s for New Year"s Eve dinner, and Ellabet"s was not only where he"d proposed to me, but where our wedding dinner was held. The tiny Italian restaurant meant so much to the both of us. It was our place. If he were going to tell me he was leaving me the next day, he would tell me in a restaurant we hated.
The holidays had pa.s.sed in a blur. Between reading and sorting through the research on Beau and Bri, organizing the outline, helping Roxy organize her own outline for her family biography, buying gifts for the relatives and getting through three family dinners, I"d managed to lose four pounds in almost two weeks. My gift from Larry was a cashmere bathrobe, which was both romantic (because it was cashmere) and not (because it was a bathrobe). According to Amelia, he"d picked it out himself, sort of. At first he"d chosen a gray robe, but Amelia had insisted on the pale pink with tiny rosebuds. When he gave me a fast, dry kiss on the cheek after unwrapping the must-have iPod I bought him, I immediately knew it was a sign that he was, indeed, leaving me in a week. But then he made reservations at Ellabet"s. Which required planning, doing and feeling.
I heard horn blowers and noisemakers on the street below and glanced at my watch. Six-thirty. Larry and I were leaving for Ellabet"s at seven. Amelia was spending the night at Lizzie"s. Miranda, who"d called to wish me a Happy New Year and blown a loud horn into my ear, was going to a party at her friend Georgie"s apartment. Roxy was ringing in the new year alone for the first time; she was looking forward to celebrating with herself and working on her proposal. And Christopher was spending New Year"s Eve and Day with his daughter after an hour-long telephone showdown with Jodie. As much as I was starting to like Roxy and Christopher (I already adored Miranda), I couldn"t wait to let my membership in the Breakup Club lapse.
I"d spent two hours getting ready, finally deciding on a red velvet dress that Miranda made me buy at Bebe, a store a woman my age shouldn"t even enter.
"Ready?" Larry asked, coming into the master bedroom. He glanced at me. "Wow. You look great."
I beamed and dabbed some perfume behind my ears. He noticed!
A half hour later, we were at Ellabet"s, still tiny, still low-lit and romantic after all these years. The waiter took our order (I chose the mushroom ravioli as I had twelve years ago on our wedding night; Larry, the salmon with absolutely no oil or sauce and dry vegetables).
"What gorgeous plates and silverware," Larry said, eyeing his place setting. He picked up the fork and examined it. "Great lines."
I stared at him. Was I supposed to get excited about a cool-looking fork? Since when did Larry Masterson care about utensils?
Before I could form another thought, he reached across the table for my hand.
"Lucy, I just want to tell you that I think you"re a very fine person."
Lucy, I just want to tell you that I love you. That you look beautiful tonight. That I"m sorry I"ve been a freak these past six weeks.
Those sentiments seemed glaringly lacking from that sentence.
He took a sip of water. "I think I should say this as plainly as possible, without preamble. I want a divorce."
My mouth dropped open as though I didn"t know it was coming, as though I hadn"t known for over a month that this was coming.
I grabbed my hand away. "You took me here to tell me you want a divorce?"
"I want us both to be able to come here again. I proposed to you here and we celebrated our wedding here, so I feel I should unpropose to you here. That way we take the personal out of the place. We both love Ellabet"s, so let"s give it back to each other."
If my mushroom ravioli were here, I"d throw it in his face.
"You"re completely off your rocker," I said. "Do your patients know this? That their births and babies are in the hands of an OB with a mental defect? I hope you"re seeing a good shrink, Larry. Someone who can prescribe medication."
"Lucy, I expected this kind of reaction from you. Why can"t you just accept that our relationship isn"t what it used to be? That we had some nice years, but we"ve grown apart. We were kids when we got married. And who knows"
I stared at him. "And who knows what? If we would have gotten married at all had I not gotten pregnant?"
He gnawed his lower lip. "I don"t love you anymore, Lucy."
Chest pressure. "Why not?" I whispered. "Why?"
He shrugged. "I realized a few months ago or so that I felt like I was living with a friend, a roommate. I care for you, of course, and I like you, but I don"t love you anymore. Not the way you"re supposed to love your wife."
There was very little you could say to that. Very little.
"Are you having an affair?" I asked.
"That"s beside the point."
a.s.shole! Jerk! Do not cry, Lucy. Do not break down in tears. Hold it together.
I took a deep breath. "You"re going to have to tell Amelia," I said, unable to imagine him doing so. "You"re going to have to explain it to her."
He nodded. "I"ll tell her tonight."
"You"ll tell her on New Year"s Eve? Nice, Larry."
"Fine, I"ll tell her tomorrow."
I shook my head. "You"ll tell her the day after tomorrow. Don"t ruin her New Year"s Day either."
"Fine," he said. "You"ll keep the apartment, of course. There won"t be any disruption to your life or Amelia"s. I"ll continue to pay my share of the mortgage and I"ll provide more than generous child support for Amelia."
No disruption to our lives. No, not at all. Where there was a husband and a father, there would now be no one. Amelia would now have "visits" with her father.
He took a deep breath. "I say we eat, discuss how we"ll arrange things, and then officially begin our separation after dinner, even if we"re still living together until Friday for Amelia"s sake."