“No offense to you, but how has that worked out in either of our lives? I believe you were, as you call it, madly in love when you got married before and—”
I flap my hands at him, beseeching him to stop. I was married to Steve Hanover for eight months, two weeks, three days, and either ten or eleven hours. And yes, I was in love with him beyond all sanity. But it went badly. Maybe he was too handsome for me—he was a 9.8, while, with excellent lighting and a new haircut and color, I can achieve an 8.2 for maybe fifteen whole minutes before I slide back down to a 7. Possibly you have to stay in your own category, looks-wise.
Anyway, I came home from work unexpectedly one day (which a person should never, ever do, by the way), and there he was in our bed with some woman underneath him. Her legs were spread out on my bedspread, and before I started to scream, all I could think was that sex really looks and sounds quite ridiculous when you arrive upon it without warning. When it’s not you doing it.
I hit him on the butt. I also threw my purse at her little pink polished toenails. I made screeching noises and pulled at my own hair. And then I delivered the ultimatum—that she was to get out of my apartment in two minutes or I was calling the cops.
It took her nine whole minutes to leave. And when she did, Steve sailed out right along with her. He said something about a lawyer, and also that he wished me good luck. He looked only vaguely chagrined that he’d been caught so dramatically. He actually said maybe it had been for the best, that at last I knew the truth.
The best? Who was he kidding, using the word best?
And yet . . . and yet, when Steve Hanover proposed, he had gotten down on one knee next to the boathouse in Central Park. His eyes had been glistening with tears of joy. It felt like magic. A crowd gathered and people cheered for us. There was an actual diamond engagement ring involved. We held it up for the crowd to see.
And when he left . . . well, I hate to admit this because I want to be a strong, independent, fearless woman, still fighting and rebelling and raising hell, but the truth is that Steve killed off something in me. I stopped feeling like there was somebody out there who was going to really understand me. Who would take care of my bruised little heart.
I guess I just stopped trusting in love to be the thing that would save me.
So now the contrast is not lost on me. Here I am, getting my second marriage proposal of my lifetime, and I’m sitting in a diner, under fluorescent lights that do not bring out my best features, especially at 1:05 a.m. And the gentleman proposing is now going on and on about how nobody we know who married for love is happy over that choice. He’s naming names, counting them on his fingers. This one is having an affair; this one wants separate bedrooms and separate vacations. These two don’t speak. And in fact, hadn’t I noticed that the whole scene at Tandy’s the past few years has just been filled with married people arguing?
Judd is now leaning forward, and his eyes are lit up from within, burning into mine. “If you look around, we’re the only ones who still get along, and you know why? Because being madly in love is a temporary condition of insanity, that’s why. Wait until this weekend when we go see Russell and Sarah to meet the new baby. Those two are so in love that they’re practically ready to kill each other.”
The twist tie ring sits between us on the table, getting wet from the condensation from the beer bottle. In another hour, it will revert back to just being a piece of wire.
He stops talking for a moment. I look at his eyes, the swoop of dark hair he has falling across his forehead. He looks older than he did the last time I really took a good look at him. We’re both older. God, we’ve been friends for so long. He knows my family history: my witchy, hippie mom in Woodstock and my algebra-teaching stepmom who worries about everything—and my grumpy old dad. He’s the one who can make my dad smile. He’s hung out with me and Hendrix our whole lives, slept over at our house countless times. We were the Three Musketeers.
Also, I know his parents—two sweet, baffled people from Hungary who married late and were nearly fifty when he, their only child, came barreling into their lives. They didn’t even know children had to have birthday parties! And they never once went to a football game of his. Thought they weren’t invited maybe.
“I gotta ask you something,” I say. “Are you doing this because you’re giving up? Is it because you’re afraid you’re not going to meet anyone you really could love?”
“What? No. No, Phronsie. I don’t want to meet anyone else. I don’t know anybody I’d rather be with than you. And I’m sick of dating. I want to be married. I want to have children. I want a regular life, like the other grown-ups. That’s it. My whole case. I want to marry you.”
“I’m sick of dating, too,” I tell him. Forty-three men and not one of them looked like anybody I could ever love. “But,” I say, “there is this firefighter who wants to have coffee with me . . .”
He puts both his hands down flat on the table and smiles. “Okay, so go ahead and date the firefighter. Date number forty-four. It’s fine. Go see if he’s your Prince Charming, but I bet you anything he isn’t. Anyway, even if he is, it would take you decades to fill him in on everything about you, stuff that I already know and accept. I accept you, Phronsie. Just let that sink in.”
My head is spinning the slightest bit. Like the way I felt one time on the roller coaster right before I threw up. I think Judd was there for that time, too.
“Also,” I say. “How to put this delicately? You like women who have . . . good looks. Push-up bras. Legs up to their armpits. And that’s fine. For you. But I don’t care about any of that. I can’t make myself go beyond, shall we say, a certain level of body maintenance. I will not, for instance, ever get a bikini wax. So if you’re expecting that, you are going to be—”
He is waving his arms around in front of his face. “Stop, stop, with the bikini whatever. No! No to that! God!”
“Well? It’s a reasonable question. I’ve seen who you date.”
“I don’t care about any of that stuff. Seriously. You have to believe me. I want this. This. And I also happen to think we’ll be terrific parents. We’ll have kids and take them to the park, and ride bikes together. We’re going to rock this parenthood thing.”
Yes. Parenthood. He loves children; he would read them stories and let them climb on his back. I’ve seen him with Hendrix’s kids. I’ve seen him making kids in the park laugh, even here in New York.
“So . . . in this plan of yours . . . what about sex?” I say.
He bugs out his eyes. “Did I not just tell you there would be children? Obviously there will be sex.”
“Well, that’s the part—I mean, we never have. Aren’t you worried that maybe we don’t have any, um, chemistry?”
“Nope. Sex is the easy part,” he says. “Of course we’ll have sex. It just won’t be the driving force. Our friendship is.”
“No offense, but I kind of like the driving force aspect. Driving force actually makes me swoon, now that I think about it.”
“Well,” he says. “I can manufacture driving force if that’s what you need. But we are not going to have romantic suspense and agony, if that’s all right with you. That I don’t want.”