Slightly Engaged

  Which means I should probably be enjoying every minute of it, ring or no ring, instead of wishing my life away.

  I’m going to enjoy Thanksgiving. With Jack. Ring or no ring.

  “Ma,” I say, determined not to let her distract me again from the business at hand, “I need to talk to you about Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh, Thadksgiving. Cad you pick up a couple of cads of those chi chi beads Joey likes? Because I cad’t fide theb adywhere.”

  Chi chi beans?

  I can’t be sure about some of what she said, but I know that I definitely heard chi chi beans.

  I know I said I wasn’t going to let her distract me, but…

  What the hell is she talking about?

  “Ma…what chi chi beans? And…pick them up where?”

  “The wuds that cub id the cad with the red ad greed label. They bust have theb id Little Italy.”

  “You want me to go to Little Italy, buy cans of chi chi beans with red and green labels, and then fly them to Buffalo on the plane?” I ask, just to be sure I have this straight.

  I really think somebody put crack in her Comtrex.

  Jack is snickering.

  I would be, too, if she wasn’t my mother.

  She affirms my question with a resolute “Yes,” as though her request is the most logical thing in the world.

  “Ma,” I say with remarkable patience for one who is in the throes of nicotine withdrawal, “the thing is…I can’t do that.”

  “Why dot?”

  Why dot?

  Oh, so many reasons why dot, starting with the one about canned chi chi beans not being allowed in carry-on luggage due to post 9–11 airline-safety regulations.

  Okay, I made that up.

  For all I know, canned chi chi beans are indeed allowed on commercial aircraft.

  Or would be, if anybody in their right mind ever found it necessary to officially establish that particular rule.

  FAA guy: Okay, George, we’ve covered your basic guns and knives, your box cutters, your cigarette lighters, your chi chi beans…yup, I’d say we’re good to go.

  “Ma,” I say, deciding to cite only the most important reason I will not be toting chi chi beans to Buffalo on JetBlue, “I can’t get the beans for you because I’m not going to be able to come home this year for Thanksgiving.”

  I know. I can’t help it. I wimped out. I stuck in “able to” at the last minute to make the whole thing seem more…I don’t know, involuntary.

  Why did I do that?

  I look at Jack to see if he caught it.

  He’s frowning a little.

  I guess he caught it.

  “What? Why? Tracey!” My mother is freaking out in my ear.

  Give me a break, I think ferociously at Jack. I don’t see you on the phone telling your mother you’ll have to dash her holiday hopes this year.

  Yeah.

  Why don’t I insist Jack come with me to Brookside for Thanksgiving? Huh?

  Because I don’t want to go to Brookside for Thanksgiving, that’s why.

  I didn’t before, and I especially don’t now that I know it would involve smuggling legume contraband through JFK.

  God, I need a cigarette.

  If I can get through this without one, I swear I can get through anything.

  “Is it work?” my mother asks. “Is that why you cad’t cub hobe?”

  “No, it’s not work, Ma. It’s…”

  “You’re pregdadt.”

  It takes me a second to decipher that one.

  When I do, I’m incredulous. “I am not pregnant.”

  Jack shoots me a look.

  I shrug at him—then clench my teeth when he clears his throat and whispers something to himself—or maybe to me—about that tickle.

  I ask my mother, “But if I were pregnant, which, again, I am not—what would that have to do with my not coming home for Thanksgiving?”

  “You dough…to hide it frub us.”

  “Do you think I’d actually go sneaking around hiding a pregnancy from you guys?” I ask needlessly, because yes, she clearly does think that. “If I were pregnant—which I am not—I would tell you.”

  To which she says, “Well, I woudd’t wadt to dough.”

  See what I mean about my mother? She’s impossible.

  “Well, I’m not pregnant, and I don’t have to work, and the reason I can’t come home—” I glance at Jack and amend, “The reason I’m not coming home, is that I’m spending Thanksgiving here this year.”

  There. How hard was that?

  Excruciating, actually. And it isn’t over yet.

  “Alode?” my mother wants to know, and her voice is on the verge of breaking.

  “No, not alone. With Jack.”

  “Two people? What kide of holiday is that?”

  In the Spadolini family, you see, holidays are all about the head count.

  I swear my grandmother approaches Christmas Eve as though her eat-in kitchen were a tiny car and the rest of us are clowns she’s determined to cram into it. The more—well, not the merrier, but the more people you serve, the more you get to cook in advance, and complain about it afterward for extra credit.

  I debate telling my mother flat out that I will not only be spending Thanksgiving away from my own family, but I will be spending it with somebody else’s.

  But I honestly don’t think I am physically capable of doing that without a cigarette, so I let her think whatever she wants to think. She usually does, anyway.

  Finally, and only when she’s in tears and inconsolable, I get to hang up.

  I look at Jack.

  “Bad, huh?” he asks, rubbing my shoulders.

  With a brittle laugh, I ask, “What makes you think that?”

  “Are you okay, Trace?”

  “I’m fine,” I lie, trying not to squirm out of his grasp.

  It’s not that I’m unhappy with my decision, or him.

  It’s just that I’m wondering if I should be inflicting maternal torture to spend Thanksgiving dinner with a man who isn’t entirely committed to spending the rest of his life with me.

  Not that one is a prerequisite to the other…

  Unless…

  Hey, maybe he’s going to pop the question on Thanksgiving Day?

  Is that what he’s been planning?

  If it was, then he didn’t do a very good job of it, considering that he let me buy a plane ticket to Buffalo and it was his mother, and not him, who put the wheels into motion to get me out of it.

  Well, now that I’m all set to spend the holiday with him, maybe he’ll realize Thanksgiving would be a perfect time to engage me.

  If not sooner.

  “So…” I snuggle into his arms after all. “Thanksgiving. Our first one together.”

  With any luck, the first of many.

  “Yeah,” Jack says contentedly, leaning his cheek against my head. “It’ll be great. I’ll call my mother and tell her. Or do you want to do that?”

  “No, you tell her,” I say, too drained to speak. Even to my beloved future mother-in-law Wilma.

  I sink back into the couch cushions and listen to Jack’s brief conversation with her. Maybe I should have spoken to her myself, because there is nothing the least bit satisfying about, “Hey, Mom, she’s coming…yeah…yeah…no…I will…okay…yeah…bye.”

  “What did she say?” I ask when he hangs up wearing a satisfied grin.

  “She wanted to know if you can bring the chi chi beans.”

  “What?!”

  He cracks up.

  I swat him with a pillow.

  Then I laugh, too.

  And then Jack, whom I love for so many reasons, but especially this one, kisses all the tension and frustration away.

  Part III

  Thanksgiving

  Chapter 9

  Ask not for whom the wedding bell tolls, folks…because it sure as hell isn’t me.

  Nearly four weeks have passed since the whole world got engaged, Mike got fired at last,
my Chia Pet refused to sprout and I quit smoking.

  Four excruciating, tobacco-free weeks. I may be no closer to a promotion, much less white lace and promises, but I’m definitely closing in on pink lung and Providence.

  In fact, that’s why my friend Kate and I have embarked on this Sunday-morning excursion to Bloomingdale’s. I need some darling—Kate’s favorite all-purpose shopping adjective—spa clothes for the Rhode Island trip Jack promised me next weekend. We leave Friday morning, after we spend Thanksgiving at his mother’s house on Thursday.

  Well, darling spa clothes are why I’m here.

  Kate is here because a rumor is circulating among Upscale Young Manhattan Housewives that Bloomingdale’s is hosting a pre-holiday Brow Event today.

  Yes, a Brow Event.

  A Brow Event is an event in which brow-challenged shoppers purchase their weight in cosmetics and are then treated to a Professional Brow Reshaping by a Professional Brow Reshaper.

  This, I learned just a short time ago, courtesy of Kate, whose brows are reportedly in desperate need of reshaping—as, according to her, are mine.

  At first I thought she was talking about how I really could use a Bra Event, since her Alabama accent can be a little thick at times. Believe you me, her reference to the extensive plucking and waxing I would undergo at the Bra Event had me confused and more than a little concerned.

  But no, it was a Brow Event—although I would most certainly benefit from a Bra Event as well.

  Losing those forty pounds shrank my grandmother’s famed bullet boobs (which had, mid-puberty, materialized on my rib cage) into a third pair of appendages with all the aesthetic appeal of tennis balls in tube socks. I have since become a Wonderbra devotee, and I’m thinking a sexy new push-up is in order for my spa getaway with Jack.

  That, according to Kate, can wait until after her own Bloomingdale’s agenda has been fulfilled.

  Which is a typical Kate reaction.

  I only hope Billy won’t give in to her longing for a baby before enrolling her in a maternal boot camp where she will learn the intricacies of diapers, bottles and selflessness. I adore Kate, but I can’t imagine her deferring her immediate needs to anybody else’s, including her own flesh and blood.

  Case in point: at Kate and Billy’s wedding breakfast last summer, I overheard her instructing her frail old grandmother not to eat or drink anything lest she dribble upon or smudge her pale yellow liquid lamé gown and ruin the pictures. It was enough to tempt Jack to sneak Grandma a powdered-sugar strawberry jelly donut just to spite Kate, but I stopped him, reminding him that all brides are self-centered on their big day.

  He in turn reminded me that Kate is self-centered every day. But lovably so, in my opinion. Most of the time.

  First on our shopping agenda is first-floor cosmetics where, alas, Kate’s Brow Event buzz turns out to be as founded as the rumor that the sleek black Prada bag over my shoulder is the real thing.

  Pssst: knockoff.

  There is nary a Brow Event under way in the bustling, spot-lit, perfume-scented cosmetics bazaar that encompasses much of Bloomingdale’s main floor.

  Kate nevertheless winds up purchasing her weight in cosmetics, which isn’t as impressive as, say, a person of normal stature purchasing their weight in cosmetics, but still…

  My waifish friend piles the counter with countless bottles, tubes, vials and compacts, all the better to accentuate that peaches-and-cream complexion, high cheekbones, wide-set eyes and rosebud mouth Francesca raves on and on about in a fake-sounding Nordic—or maybe French?—accent.

  Francesca—I can’t help but learn her name due to her towering stature and her nametag being at my eye-level—is a cosmetics saleswoman who apparently takes her job so seriously that she and her fellow scientists—er, saleswomen—are wearing white lab coats.

  Francesca enlightens us to the wonders of a brand new age-defying facial lubricant (patent pending).

  Kate, a modern-day Ponce de Leon, hangs on her every word.

  “You zee?” Francesca asks me, after dabbing some age-defying lubricant in the corners of Kate’s eyes and mouth. “No wrinkles!”

  I open my mouth to point out that there were no wrinkles before the lotion, but Kate interrupts me with a cheerful, “I’ll take three.”

  Francesca gloats, adding a trio of fifty-dollar tubes to Kate’s growing heap of revolutionary beauty products.

  “You will look years younger,” she promises Kate.

  “That would make her a tween,” I mention to the amusement of nobody other than myself.

  After securing her future children’s college tuition and returning Kate’s well-worn Bloomies charge, Francesca turns on me with a mad scientist gleam in her painstakingly mascara’d and shadowed blue eyes.

  “How about you, my pretty?” she cackles, practically rubbing her manicured hands together, imagining that charming Mediterranean villa she’ll be able to afford when she’s through with me.

  Okay, she doesn’t really say my pretty. But she definitely cackles.

  No, really.

  “Would you like to see your cheekbones and your eyes pop right out?” she asks.

  No. That would be fun-house frightening.

  However, I would like to see my boobs pop right out.

  But before I can depart for Destination: Lingerie, Francesca inquires whether I’ve sufficiently protected myself against environmental assaults.

  If a phrase like that doesn’t give one pause in this day and age, I ask you, what does?

  “I’ve got Mace,” I tell her, opening my fake Prada bag to show her the can I’ve been carrying ever since a woman in our building was reportedly mugged in a stairwell last week.

  Ignoring the Mace, Francesca bustles around behind the counter, proclaiming, “What you need is…this.”

  She places a tube of lotion upright on the outstretched palm of her left hand and runs her right fingertips, Carol Merrill–like, along the side to show it off.

  “What is it?” I ask reluctantly.

  And what the heck is an environmental assault?

  “This ointment contains an elixir that will shield your delicate skin from the dangers that lurk all around you,” she says ominously, shifting her eyes warily from side to side.

  I follow her gaze and spot a pair of elderly female shoppers who look as threatening as milk.

  “Environmental aggressors,” she clarifies.

  “Them?” I ask quietly, watching one old lady stray toward a display table and the other, who is even older, steer her back to the aisle and hook elbows with her. It could be a front. Any second now, they might attack.

  Or not.

  “Environmental aggressors,” Francesca clarifies. “You know…ultraviolet rays, exhaust…that sort of thing. You should be vigilant about laying down a line of defense if you’re going to expose yourself to environmental aggressors on a daily basis.”

  Vigilant…defense…aggressors…Are we talking about my complexion, or Homeland Security?

  “I’ll think about it,” I promise lamely.

  Which isn’t good enough for our zealous Dr. Francescastein.

  Brandishing a vial from the pocket of her white lab coat, she persists with her dramatic claim that she can make me over into a thing of great beauty. Like Kate.

  I half expect her to lead me to a granite slab as lightning bolts flash overhead. Or for electrodes and squared-off edges to sprout on Kate’s forehead.

  “You zee? You zee how your friend’s skin is glowing now?” Francesca asks fiendishly.

  Well, it seems fiendish.

  All right, maybe I’m just exaggerating and she merely has good marketing skills. And yes, Kate might be slightly glowing, but at least I can zee that she isn’t monster-green, thank goodness.

  Francesca cups my chin in her hands and says, “You can look just like her if you’ll listen to me.”

  Fiendish. Definitely.

  At long last, I summon the fortitude to say thanks but no thanks and fl
ee.

  Rather, I attempt to flee, but the glowing Kate, in tow, insists on meandering.

  The journey up three escalators to lingerie involves multiple pauses so that Kate can examine “darling little pants” and “darling little tops” and I can examine my reflection in various mirrors, wondering if I’m really as hideous as Francesca would have me believe.

  I conclude that I might not be a honey-toned Southern belle, but I’m hardly a hulking Boris Karloffesque creature in need of an on-the-spot mad-scientist makeover. Truly, there’s nothing wrong with me that a spa weekend won’t fix.

  Reaching the fourth floor at long last, I stride efficiently over to the nearest rack and select a black lace push-up bra and matching panties in short order.

  “Don’t you want to be fitted by the saleswoman?” Kate protests as I march them over to the register.

  “Nope,” I say breezily.

  “But how do you know you’ve got the right cup size?”

  “I just know.”

  I don’t just know, but being fitted for a bra and panties by a saleswoman is about as appealing as being grand marshal in a nudist parade down Lexington Avenue.

  In other words, I’d rather my C-cup runneth over.

  From lingerie, we head back down to Three so Kate can browse a bit in Petites. There, looming amidst the slender Lilliputians, I can’t help but feel once again like something conjured by Mary Shelley’s worst nightmare.

  After Kate purchases a couple of darling size zero outfits, we escalator it back to Two: swimsuit land. We’re greeted with a dazzling array of spandex and Lycra in a rainbow of colors and patterns, none of which will flatter me. I can just tell. No matter how much weight I’ve lost in the past few years, I’m beginning to think I’ll never, ever find a bathing suit I like.

  Yet I refuse to give up the quest, valiantly moving from swim dress to maillot to two-piece. No, not skimpy bikinis. Nobody looks good in a skimpy bikini.

  Nobody but Kate, who buys two before you can say Skeletor.

  “I don’t know when I’m going to have a chance to wear these,” she comments breezily, “but they’re darling, and you know me. I can’t resist a good buy.”