Chapter Five #2
“Lucky, lucky, lucky,” I sing. “So lucky that your adult son buys you diamonds and golf clubs to celebrate an anniversary that isn’t even his!
I can’t imagine to what lengths he’d go for his own anniversary.
” This time, I don’t dare glance at Nicholas.
He’ll want me to catch his eye so I’ll know that he’s seething, and not looking at him deprives him of this.
Conversation with Mrs. Rose is fifty percent listening to her swoon over Nicholas and fifty percent listening to her gripe, so it’s about time for her to swing the other way.
She asks why no one has received a wedding invitation yet, since she already had the type of invitation and wording ready to go.
I stay silent while Nicholas puts together a reply, leaving him to twist in the wind.
The truth is that Nicholas and I can’t agree on which engagement photo to attach to the invitations. Most couples attach engagement photos to their save-the-dates, but since we didn’t send those out Deborah says we Absolutely Must Include Them With The Invitations.
The one I want to use has captured me at a magical angle.
It gives the illusion that I have long eyelashes and fuller lips.
My chest looks larger. I’ve absorbed all of the photogenic magic and left none to spare for Nicholas, whose right eye is shut entirely and his left is halfway there.
We had the photos taken on a chilly day and the first thing you notice are his nipples pointing through his shirt. I laugh every time I see it.
The photo Nicholas wants to use makes him look like a GQ model, and my hair’s blowing all over my face. Nicholas tells his mother, “Oh, I thought we sent those out already. My bad.”
“You’d better do it,” Deborah says warningly. “Or no one will show up.”
Nicholas’s ears perk up at this. He looks inspired.
Those invitations are never going out in the mail.
I have no right to be offended that he doesn’t want to marry me, since I don’t want to marry him, either, but I am.
I console myself with the knowledge that I don’t want to marry him even more than he doesn’t want to marry me.
But when we’re alone for a minute, the smiles fade away and he mutters in my ear, “Why don’t you ever have my back? You always abandon me.”
“You always abandon me first,” I hiss.
–
“The woman” has fixed veal. Veal makes me cringe and Mrs. Rose knows it; it’s why, up until now, she’s offered an alternative dish if veal was going to be on the menu. Not tonight. It’s a creative reprisal, I’ll give her that.
She’s watching me closely, craving a reaction, so I look her right in the eye and take an enormous bite.
I don’t care about my moral convictions tonight.
I’ll eat a bloody half-formed cow fetus with my bare hands if it’ll get Nicholas to dump me in front of his mom like a total chump.
What has my life come to, if that’s my goal now?
Nicholas pins me with a glare. The angrier he gets, the more I feel like dancing.
He’s giving me so many nonverbal cues and they’re fine encouragement that I’m going in the right direction.
Muscle twitches. Clenched jaw. Fisted hands.
Someone’s got to teach this man about poker tells or he’ll get his pockets cleaned out.
Probably by me, in the inevitable divorce.
My brilliant lawyer and I will ride into the sunset with everything he’s got.
“Nicky just loves veal,” Mrs. Rose purrs.
Nicky just does not, but he won’t argue with her.
“What else does your adult son love?” I ask.
“You spend more time with him than anyone else, so you’re the one to ask.
” I heave a dramatic sigh. “Even after all this time together, there’s still so much I don’t know. Our Nicky is surprisingly mysterious.”
At that, his gaze snaps to mine, and there’s a glimmer of amusement lurking there. “Don’t sell yourself short, Naomi,” he replies. “I think you’re starting to figure me out.”
“Yes, I believe I am. It’s taken some time.”
“We can’t all be quick learners.”
I swirl my glass of cranberry juice as we watch each other through narrowed eyes. “You should tell your parents our special news,” I say at last, one corner of my mouth ticking up.
His eyebrows knit together and his mother is all aflutter. She probably can’t believe something’s happened in his life that she wasn’t the first to know about. “News? What news? Tell us, Nicky.”
“Tell them, Nicky,” I parrot.
Deborah divides a stricken look between us. Clearly, she’s terrified I’m pregnant. An out-of-wedlock baby! What would Pastor Thomas say? Just to scare her a little more, I absently drape a hand over my stomach. She makes a dry, rasping sound like the leg of a chair scraping across a wood floor.
Nicholas sees my game.
“Darling, I don’t think I know what news you’re referring to.”
“It’s unexpected news.” I’m relishing this. “We weren’t planning on it happening quite yet, but that’s the way life goes.”
“If you do have news,” he grates, “I know it’s not mine.”
I tilt my head. “We haven’t had anything newsworthy happen in quite a while, have we?”
“Speaking of news!” Deborah interrupts, dying to pivot the spotlight back onto herself. “I’m coming up on my fifth anniversary at the newspaper.”
“We know,” Harold mutters, spreading a cloth napkin across his lap. Deborah stares at him pointedly until he tucks a second napkin into his collar. I give it a year before she’s got him wearing a bib. “We all know.”
Deborah spoons more artichoke hearts onto his plate, much to his dismay. “They might not know.”
She texted Nicholas three times this week about it, hinting that if he wanted to take her out for a celebratory lunch she’s upholding boycotts with Ruby Tuesday, Walk the Plank, and Applebee’s because of spats with the staff.
“Congratulations,” Nicholas says automatically.
“Yes, it’s quite an achievement, isn’t it?
I think I’ve solved more problems than the mayor!
Lately I’ve been rescuing marriages left and right, but when you read tomorrow’s column you’ll see that even I can’t save the lady who recently wrote in begging for my help.
” Deborah smiles like the cat that ate the canary.
“She’s having an affair with the handyman. ”
“I wish Nicholas were handsier—I mean handier,” I say, stealing the spotlight right back. “I’ve been performing maintenance duties by myself. But I’ve been getting better results, interestingly enough.”
Nicholas’s stare is dehydrating. “Sounds unlikely.”
“Maintenance duties?” Deborah repeats, turning to him. “Has something broken? Naomi shouldn’t be trying to fix anything. She could make it worse.”
“I have no choice,” I tell her in a low, conspiratorial voice. “It’s a desperate situation, and Nicholas won’t use his tools.” I tap my mouth with a fingernail, watching him go rigid.
“Nicholas has no use for tools,” Deborah says emphatically, unaware that we are speaking in encrypted hate. “If something isn’t working, call a professional.”
“Good thinking. Do you know which handyman that lady was writing in about?”
Nicholas is fed up. “Being handy is unsatisfying when your fiancée is so obviously distracted and barely pitches in,” he tells me with thunderclouds sweeping over his expression.
His hands are hot and sweating. I can tell by the way the fork in his grip fogs up. This is what he gets for calling me a doll on the shelf. I don’t engage with his parents enough at dinner? He’ll regret saying that.
“Harold,” Deborah barks.
Harold jumps.
“What?”
“The kids are living in a broken-down hovel. Make them call a repairman.”
The idea of Harold making Nicholas or me do anything is ludicrous.
He can’t make himself stay awake for the duration of a commercial.
Harold only gets up from his chair if it means walking to another chair.
He and his wife are presently wearing matching burgundy sweaters, fur from his back and shoulders creeping around a Peter Pan collar in a way that has me side-eyeing how Nicholas will age.
He stopped having an opinion of his own in 1995 and lives for the moment he’s told he’s allowed to go to bed.
Trust this: you don’t want to know more about Harold. He’s like three-month-old lasagna left in the back of the fridge. With every layer it gets worse.
He drinks seltzer water with every dinner and his white hair sprouts from the top of his head in short tufts of cotton, same as his out-of-control eyebrows.
If you’re sitting directly opposite him, his hair is see-through and colors everything behind it with whimsical fuzz.
He communicates chiefly through snorts, grunts, and belches.
Once, I walked in on him while he was leafing through a Playboy and he said, “Have you ever been with an older man, Nina?”
My boss, Mr. Howard, says he knew Harold when they were younger and Harold’s “work trips” to Nevada in the eighties were actually stints at Bella’s Gentleman’s Club.
Like the innocent, na?ve sunbeam that I am, the words gentleman’s club conjured up genteel images of men playing cards and smoking cigars.
Then Zach told me what it actually was and it left me equal parts traumatized and enthralled.
I still haven’t let Nicholas in on this discovery.
It’s a pulled punch I’m saving for after I’ve already knocked him down but need to make sure he can’t get back up again.
I’m getting my goddamn lemon cake and your mom is uninvited to the wedding.
Roundhouse kick. I’m wearing a tuxedo and we’re eloping.
Jab to the throat. We’re never naming our daughter after Deborah.
High kick. I haven’t flossed in a year. Uppercut. Your dad goes to brothels.
“Call the repo man,” Harold advises. “Tell him he’s not taking anything unless he’s got a warrant. Then go stash it at your vacation home.”