‘I’m so glad you did! And I can’t wait to hear every last detail, but you’ve got an engagement to consummate. Get off the phone with me and go make your fiancé happy. How weird does that sound? “Fiancé.”’
‘Oh, Avery’s on a call from work. I keep telling him to hang up’ – she announced this loudly for his benefit – ‘but he just keeps talking and talking. How has your night been?’
‘Ah, another stellar Friday. Let’s see. Millington and I took a walk over to the river, and some homeless guy gave her a biscuit along the way, so she was really happy, and then I came home, and hopefully killed what must be the largest insect in the tristate area. I ordered Vietnamese, but I threw it out when I remembered reading that some Vietnamese place near me was shut down for cooking dog, and so now I’m about to dine on reheated rice and beans and a packet of stale Twizzlers. Oh, Christ, I sound like a Lean Cuisine commercial, don’t I?’
She just laughed, clearly having no words of comfort at that particular moment. The other line clicked, indicating that she had another call.
‘Oh, it’s Michael. I have to tell him. Do you care if I three-way him in?’ she asked.
‘Sure. I’d love to hear you tell him.’ Michael would undoubtedly commiserate with me over the entire situation once Penelope hung up since he hated Avery even more than I did.
There was a click, which was followed by a brief silence and then another click. ‘Everyone there?’ Penelope squealed. This was not a girl who normally squealed. ‘Michael? Bette? You guys both on?’
Michael was a colleague of mine and Penelope’s at UBS, but since he’d made VP (one of the youngest ever) we’d seen much less of him. Though Michael had a serious girlfriend, it took Penelope’s engagement to really drive the point home: we were growing up.
‘Hi, girls,’ Michael said, sounding exhausted.
‘Michael, guess what? I’m engaged!’
There was the tiniest beat of hesitation. I knew that, like me, Michael wasn’t surprised, but he would be trying hard to formulate a believably enthusiastic response.
‘Pen, that’s fantastic news!’ he all but shouted into the phone. His volume did much to compensate for the lack of any genuine joy in his voice, and I made a mental note to remember that for next time.
‘I know!’ she sang back. ‘I knew you and Bette would be so happy for me. It just happened a few hours ago, and I’m so excited!’
‘Well, we’ll obviously have to celebrate,’ he said loudly. ‘Black Door, just the three of us, multiple shots of something strong and cheap.’
‘Definitely,’ I added, happy for something to say. ‘A celebration is most definitely in order.’
‘Okay, honey!’ Penelope called into the distance, our drinking plans understandably of little interest. ‘Guys, Avery’s off the phone and is pulling on the cord. Avery, stop! I’ve got to run, but I’ll call you both later. Bette, see you at work tomorrow. Love you both!’
There was a click and then Michael said, ‘You still there?’
‘Sure am. Do you want to call me or should I call you?’ We’d all learned early on that you couldn’t trust that the third line had disconnected and therefore always took the precaution of starting a new call before talking shit about the person who’d hung up first.
I heard a high-pitched voice in the background and he said, ‘Dammit, I just got paged. I can’t talk now. Can we talk tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Say hi to Megu for me, okay? And Michael? Please don’t go and get engaged anytime soon. I don’t think I can handle you, too.’
He laughed. ‘You don’t have to worry about that, I promise. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. And Bette? Chin up. He might be one of the worst guys either of us has ever met, but she seems happy, and that’s all you can ask for, you know?’
We hung up and I stared at the phone for a few minutes before twisting my body out the window in a futile attempt to see a few inches of comforting river landscape; the apartment wasn’t much, but it was, thankfully, all mine. I hadn’t shared it in the nearly two years since Cameron had moved out, and even though it was so long and narrow that I could stretch my legs out and almost touch the opposite wall and even though it was located in Murray Hill and even though the floorboards were warping slightly and the water bugs had taken over, I had reign over my own private palace. The building was a cement monstrosity on Thirty-fourth and First, a multi-winged behemoth that housed such illustrious tenants as one teenage member of a dismantled boy band, one professional squash player, one B-list porn star and her stable of visitors, one average Joe, one former childhood actress who hadn’t worked in two decades, and hundreds upon hundreds of recent college graduates who couldn’t quite handle the idea of leaving the dorm or the fraternity house for good. It had sweeping East River views, as long as one’s definition of ‘sweeping views’ includes a construction crane, a couple of Dumpsters, a brick wall from the building next door, and a patch of river approximately three inches wide that is only visible through unfathomable acts of contortion. All of this glory was mine for the equivalent monthly cost of a four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath single-family home upstate.
While still twisted on the couch, I reviewed my reaction to the news. I thought I’d sounded sincere enough, if not downright ecstatic, but Penelope knew ecstatic wasn’t in my nature. I’d managed to ask about the rings – plural – and to state that I was very happy for her. Of course, I hadn’t mustered up anything truly heartfelt or meaningful, but she was probably too giddy to notice. Overall: a solid B-plus performance.
My breathing had normalized enough to smoke another cigarette, which made me feel slightly better. The fact that the water bug hadn’t resurfaced yet helped, too. I tried to assure myself that my unhappiness stemmed from my genuine concern that Penelope was marrying a truly terrible guy and not from some deep-rooted envy that she now had a fiancé when I didn’t have so much as a second date. I couldn’t. It had been two years since Cameron had moved out, and though I’d cycled through the requisite stages of recovery (job obsession, retail obsession, and food obsession) and had gone on the usual round of blind dates, drinks-only dates, and the rarer full-dinner dates, only two guys had made third-date status. And none had made fourth. I told myself repeatedly that there wasn’t anything wrong with me – and regularly made Penelope confirm this – but I was seriously beginning to doubt the validity of that statement.
I lit a second cigarette off the first and ignored Millington’s disapproving doggy stare. The self-loathing was beginning to settle upon my shoulders like a familiar, warm blanket. What kind of evil person couldn’t express genuine, sincere happiness on one of the happiest days of her best friend’s life? How conniving and insecure does one have to be to pray that the whole thing turns out to be a giant misunderstanding? How did I get to be so wretched’?
I picked up the phone and called Uncle Will, looking for some sort of validation. Will, aside from being one of the brightest and bitchiest people on the planet, was my perpetual cheerleader. He answered the phone with the slightest gin-and-tonic slur and I proceeded to give him the short, less-painful version of Penelope’s ultimate betrayal.
‘It sounds as though you feel guilty because Penelope is very excited and you’re not as happy for her as you should be.’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
‘Well, darling, it could be far worse. At least it’s not some variation on the theme where Penelope’s misery is providing you with happiness and fulfillment, right?’
‘Huh?’
‘Schadenfreude. You’re not emotionally or otherwise benefiting from her unhappiness, right?’
‘She’s not unhappy. She’s euphoric. I’m the unhappy one.’
‘Well, there you have it! See, you’re not so terrible. And you, my dear, are not marrying that spoiled little brat whose only God-given talents appear to be spending his parents’ money and inhaling large quantities of marijuana. Am I mistaken?’
‘No, of course not. It just feels like everything
’s changing. Penelope’s my life, and now she’s getting married. I knew it would happen eventually, but I just didn’t think eventually would be so soon.’
‘Marriage is for the bourgeoisie. You know that, Bette.’
This triggered a series of mental images of Sunday brunches through the years: Will, Simon, the Essex, me, and the Sunday Styles section. We’d dissect the weddings for the duration of brunch, never failing to collapse into evil giggles as we creatively read between the lines.
Will continued. ‘Why on earth are you eager to enter into a lifelong relationship, the only purpose of which is to strangle every iota of individuality out of you? I mean, look at me. Sixty-six years old, never married, and I’m perfectly happy.’
‘You’re gay, Will. And not only that, but you wear a gold band on the ring finger of your left hand.’
‘So what’s your point? You think I’d actually marry Simon, even if I could? Those same-sex, San Francisco city hall weddings aren’t exactly my scene. Not on your life.’
‘You’ve been living with him since before I was born. You do realize that you are, essentially, married.’
‘Negative, darling. Either one of us is free to leave at any point, without any messy legal or emotional ramifications. And that’s why it works. But enough of that; I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Tell me about the ring.’ I filled him in on the details he really cared about while munching the remaining Twizzlers, and didn’t even realize I had fallen asleep on the couch until close to 3 A.M., when Millington woofed her desire to sleep in a real bed. I dragged us both to my room and buried my head under the pillow, reminding myself over and over that this was not a disaster. Not a disaster. Not a disaster.
2
Just my luck that Penelope’s engagement party fell on a Thursday night – the night of my standing dinner date with Uncle Will and Simon. Neither appointment could be denied. I stood in front of my ugly, postwar, high-rise Murray Hill apartment building, desperately trying to escape to my uncle’s huge duplex on Central Park West. It wasn’t rush hour, Christmas, shift change, or torrentially pouring, but a cab was nowhere to be found. I had been whistling, screaming, and jumping skywards like a lunatic for twenty minutes to no avail, when a lone cab finally pulled up to the curb. The cabbie’s response when I requested to go uptown was ‘Too much traffic!’ before he screeched off and disappeared. When a second driver actually picked me up, I ended up tipping him 50 percent out of relief and gratitude.
‘Hey, Bettina, you look unhappy. Is everything okay?’ I’d insisted that people call me Bette, and most did. Only my parents and George, Uncle Will’s doorman (who was so old and cute he could get away with anything), still insisted on using my full name.
‘Just the usual cab hassle, George.’ I sighed, giving him a peck on the cheek. ‘How’s your day been?’
‘Oh, just dandy as always,’ he replied without a hint of sarcasm. ‘Saw the sun for a few minutes this morning and have been happy ever since.’ Nauseating.
‘Bette!’ I heard Simon call from the lobby’s discreetly hidden mailroom. ‘Is that you I hear, Bette?’
He emerged from the mailroom in tennis whites, a racket-shaped bag slung over his broad shoulders, and picked me up in a bear hug as no straight man ever had. It was sacrilege to skip a weekly dinner, which in addition to being a good time also provided by far the most male attention I received (not counting brunch).
Will and Simon had developed lots of rituals in the almost thirty years they’d spent together. They vacationed in only three places: St Barth’s in late January (although lately Will had been complaining that it was ‘too French’), Palm Springs in mid-March, and an occasional spontaneous weekend in Key West. They drank gin and tonics only out of Baccarat glasses, spent every Monday night from seven until eleven at Elaine’s, and hosted an annual holiday party where each would wear a cashmere turtleneck. Will was almost six-three, with close-cropped silver hair, and he preferred sweaters with suede elbow patches; Simon was barely five-nine, with a wiry, athletic build that he swathed entirely in linen, irrespective of the season. ‘Gay men,’ he’d say, ‘have carte blanche to flout fashion convention. We’ve earned the right.’ Even now, moments off the tennis court, he’d managed to don some sort of white linen hoodie.
‘Gorgeous girl, how are you? Come, come, Will is sure to be wondering where we both are, and I just know that the new girl has prepared something fantastic for us to eat.’ Always the perfect gentleman, he took my exploding tote bag from my shoulder, held the elevator door open, and pressed PH.
‘How was tennis?’ I asked, wondering why this sixty-year-old man had a better body than every guy I knew.
‘Oh, you know how it is, a bunch of old guys running around the court, tracking down balls they shouldn’t even try for and pretending they’ve got strokes like Roddick. A little pathetic, but always amusing.’
The door to their apartment was slightly ajar and I could hear Will talking to the TV in the study, as usual. In the old days, Will had scooped Liza Minnelli’s relapse and RFK’s affairs and Patty Hearst’s leap from socialite to cult member. It was the ‘amorality’ of the Dems that finally pushed him toward politics instead of all things glamorous. He called it the Clinton Clinch. Now, a few short decades later, Will was a news junkie with political affiliations that ran slightly to the right of Attila the Hun’s. He was almost certainly the only gay right-wing entertainment-and-society columnist living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan who refused to comment on either entertainment or society. There were two televisions in his study, the larger of which he kept tuned to Fox News. ‘Finally,’ he was fond of saying, ‘a network that speaks to my people.’
And always Simon’s retort: ‘Riiight. That huge audience of right-wing gay entertainment-and-society columnists living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan?’
The smaller set constantly rotated between CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, and MSNBC, perpetrators of what Will referred to as ‘The Liberal Conspiracy.’ A handwritten sign sat atop the second TV. It read: KNOW YOUR ENEMY.
On CNN, Aaron Brown was interviewing Frank Rich about the media coverage surrounding the last election. ‘Aaron Brown is a lily-livered milquetoast pantywaist!’ Will snarled as he put down his crystal tumbler and hurled one of his Belgian shoes at the TV.
‘Hi, Will,’ I said, helping myself to a handful of the chocolate-covered raisins he always kept in an Orrefors bowl on his desk.
‘Of all the people qualified to discuss politics in this country, to offer some insight or an intelligent opinion on how media coverage did or did not affect these elections, and these idiots have to interview someone from The New York Times? The whole place is more bleeding than a rare steak, and I need to sit here and listen to their opinion on this?’
‘Well, not really, Will. You could turn it off, you know.’ I suppressed a smile as his eyes stayed riveted ahead. I silently debated with myself how long it would take for him to refer to The New York Times as Izvestia, or to bring up the Jayson Blair debacle as further proof that the paper’s trash at best and a conspiracy against honest, hardworking Americans at worst.
‘What, and miss Mr Aaron Brown’s blatantly opinionated coverage of Mr Frank Rich’s blatantly opinionated coverage of whatever the hell they’re talking about? Seriously, Bette, let us not forget that this is the very same paper whose reporters simply create stories when deadline looms.’ He took a swig and jabbed at the remote to silence both televisions simultaneously. Only fifteen seconds tonight – a record.
‘Enough for now,’ he said, hugging me and giving me a quick peck on the cheek. ‘You look great, honey, as always, but would it kill you to wear a dress once in a while?’
He’d not so deftly moved to discussing his second-favorite topic, my life. Uncle Will was nine years older than my mom and both swore they’d been born to the very same set of parents, but it seemed impossible to comprehend. My mother was horrified I’d taken a corporate job that required me to
wear something other than caftans and espadrilles, and my uncle thought the travesty was the suit as uniform instead of some killer Valentino gown or a fabulous pair of strappy Louboutins.
‘Will, it’s just what they do at investment banks, you know?’
‘So I’ve gathered. I just didn’t think you’d end up in banking.’ That again.
‘Your people, like, love capitalism, don’t they?’ I teased. ‘The Republicans, I mean – not so much the gays.’
He raised his bushy gray eyebrows and peered at me from across the couch. ‘Cute. Very cute. It’s nothing against banking, darling, I think you know that. It’s a fine, respectable career – I’d rather see you doing that than any of those hippie-dippy-save-the-world jobs your parents would recommend – but you just seem so young to lock yourself into something so boring. You should be out there meeting people, going to parties, enjoying being young and single in New York, not tied down to a desk in a bank. What do you want to do?’
As many times as he’d asked me this, I’d never come around to a great – or even decent – answer. It was certainly a fair question. In high school I’d always thought I’d join the Peace Corps. My parents had taught me that that was the natural step following a college degree. But then I went to Emory and met Penelope. She liked that I couldn’t name every private school in Manhattan and knew nothing about Martha’s Vineyard, and I, of course, loved that she could and did. We were inseparable by Christmas break, and by the end of freshman year, I had discarded my favorite Dead T-shirts. Jerry was long dead, anyway. And it was fun going to basketball games and keg parties and joining the coed touch-football league with a whole group of people who didn’t regularly dread their hair, or recycle their bathwater, or wear patchouli oil. I didn’t stand out as the eccentric girl who always smelled a little bit off and knew way too much about the redwoods. I wore the same jeans and T-shirts as everyone else (without even checking to see if they originated in a sweatshop) and ate the same burgers and drank the same beer, and it felt fantastic. For four years I had a group of similar-minded friends and the occasional boyfriend, none of whom were Peace Corps–bound. So when all the big companies showed up on campus waving giant salaries and signing bonuses and offering to fly candidates to New York for interviews, I did it. Nearly every one of my friends from school took a similar job, because when you get right down to it, how else is a twenty-two-year-old going to be able to pay rent in Manhattan? What was incredible about the whole thing was how quickly five years had gone by. Five years had just vanished into a black hole of training programs and quarterly reports and year-end bonuses, leaving barely enough time for me to consider that I loathed what I did all day long. It didn’t help matters that I was actually good at it – it somehow seemed to signify that I was doing the right thing. Will knew it was wrong, though, could obviously sense it, but so far I’d been too complacent to make the leap into something else.