Two days later he called and asked me out. We went to Balboa Island and walked around eating frozen bananas like tourists. We talked about the elevator rescue and I told him I’d been a lot more afraid than I’d let on.
“You’re a pretty good actor, then,” he said.
I thought that was funny, because of the four people in my family, I had the least amount of dramatic talent.
“I knew when I woke up that morning something good was going to happen,” he told me. “I don’t know how I knew, but I did. And then we met.”
I remember being surprised, not knowing how to respond. Here was a guy who spoke his mind, wasn’t afraid to say what he felt, wasn’t playing games. How refreshing. I was the luckiest girl in the world. Or so I’d thought at the time.
Mom dumped the box of penne into a pot of boiling water. “Can’t you, Sara?” she asked.
“Can’t I what?” I watched the steam rise.
“Put the past aside.”
She made it sound as though Mariel stealing Carter was ancient history, but it had been only a year and a half ago. I’d given a New Year’s Eve party at my place in LA, the bungalow with the blue door I rented in Venice. I’d hired a caterer and a bartender, gone all out. My Christmas tree was still up in the living room, the scent of evergreen hung in the air, and a piece of mistletoe decorated the kitchen doorway. I’d dimmed the lights; candles flickered everywhere. The place was packed with guests, and Carter was there, of course. We’d been dating for almost two years by then.
I was mingling, going from the living room to the den, making sure everyone was having a good time, occasionally dashing into the kitchen to confirm that things there were under control. Once an event planner, always an event planner. Carter and I were pulled in different directions, but every now and then we’d make eye contact. At eleven forty, I went into the kitchen to check on the caterers and get ready for the champagne toast and the cake. The bottles of Veuve Clicquot were on ice, and my old stainless-steel Waring blender was whirring, mixing up a fresh batch of margaritas. Then, suddenly, it was almost midnight.
The guests began screaming, “Two minutes to go!” At eleven fifty-nine, they started counting down the seconds. I looked for Carter, and I couldn’t find him. I almost went outside, but it was a cold night, and I knew he wouldn’t have wandered out there. Finally, I saw him standing in a darkened corner of the den with Mariel. They were talking, but I could see, even in that crowded room, that something more intimate was going on. They stood too close, smiled too much. Their gestures seemed too familiar; their eyes never strayed from each other. Something had happened between them. Or was about to.
I walked out of the room, trying to steady myself. Carter. My Carter. With Mariel. My sister. I’d thought they barely liked each other. God, how wrong I’d been. I felt dizzy as I left the house. Outside it was fifty-five degrees, and I shivered in my sleeveless dress. In a daze I headed down the street, a video running in my head: Carter and Mariel, Mariel and Carter.
When I got to Abbot Kinney Boulevard, it was more hectic than ever, people driving by, honking horns, tooting party blowers, leaning from car windows to yell “Happy New Year,” all a blur of sound. I walked on through the noisy, drunken crowds, passing places I’d seen a million times. Now they looked foreign to me. Finally, I stopped and leaned against the wall of a café, hugging myself in the cold, wondering how all these people could go about their night as if nothing had happened.
Eventually I went home. After the guests were gone and the caterers had cleaned up and I was left with a pile of tattered party hats and blowers, I confronted Carter. Part of me wanted him to deny it, to convince me I was way off base. But he didn’t. He told me they hadn’t planned it, never wanted to hurt me, that it had been going on for only a couple of weeks, that they were waiting for the right time to tell me.
When would the right time have been? That’s all I said before I told him to leave.
I saw them together once, a couple of months later, in Beverly Hills. I was in my car at an intersection, and they crossed the street in front of me. He held her hand, laughed at something she said, gave her a little tug as if she were a child. Four months after that, Mom told me they’d gotten engaged.
“You want to know why I can’t put the past aside?” I asked my mother now as she gave the pasta a stir. “I can’t put it aside because it’s not the past. They’re together. It’s the present and the future.”
“That’s why you have to move on. Or you’re going to stay stuck right where you are. I’m sure Mariel would be willing to put it aside.”
Of course Mariel would be willing. She wasn’t the one who’d been betrayed. “She’s got nothing to lose. She’s got Carter. She’s not the victim here.”
Mom turned down the burner under the sauce. “Sweetie, do you know where the word compromise comes from?”
Oh no. I’d just landed in the world of etymology again. Mom never let me forget she had a degree in English from Yale. Language is everything, she liked to say. Theater, which she’d minored in, was the area she ended up pursuing as a career, but she’d never lost her obsession with words.
“Well, it includes the word promise,” I said, “so it’s probably something about making promises.”
“It comes from the Latin compromissus.” She took a colander from a drawer and put it in the sink. “Past participle of compromittere. ‘To make a mutual promise.’”
“Yes, okay, fine.”
“Pity you never learned Latin.”
“I’ve survived so far,” I said. “And I’m not compromising with Mariel in any language.” Didn’t she see how awful this was for me? I’d thought I was going to have love, a wedding, and children with Carter and now here I was, almost forty, without any of it.
Mom let out a breath like a deflating balloon. “But I know she would forgive you.”
“Forgive me for what? I didn’t do anything.”
“For not speaking to her in such a long time.”
“I haven’t spoken to her because of what she did to me,” I said. “I feel like we’re having two different conversations here. Did I ever tell you you’re like a walking non sequitur?”
She placed a bowl of salad on the table. “Now, there’s a great Latin phrase! Non sequitur. ‘It does not follow.’”
“That describes you perfectly,” I said. “Nothing follows with you. You refuse to hear what I’m saying. You always side with her.”
“Oh, Sara, there must be a way to make this better. It wasn’t really your sister’s fault.”
That was it. “I can’t talk about this anymore.” I held up my rental-car key. “I’m leaving. You lied to me. There’s not a thing wrong with you.”
Mom followed me out of the kitchen, her kitten heels clicking on the hardwood floor. “Sweetheart, come on. I’m sorry I brought you here under false pretenses, but this really does break my heart. I wish you’d stay. And not just for Mariel. For me. I want to catch up a little, do some mother-daughter things.”
“Some other time,” I said. “When she’s not going to be around.”