“Portera Brothers?” Andy says, smirking. “As in Loverboy Ty?…Ty ‘The Right Stuff’ Portera?”
“‘The Right Stuff’?” Webb says.
“Margot didn’t tell you about her little boyfriend’s stirring Jordan Knight air-band performance in high school?” Andy says, standing, spinning, and singing, “Oh! Oh! Girl! You know you got the right stuff!”
“Wait a sec, Margot. Your high school boyfriend lip-synced to the Backstreet Boys?” Webb says, giddy with his fresh ammunition.
“Get it straight, Webb. It was the New Kids on the Block,” Andy says. “And I think the year before he did Menudo, didn’t he, Margot?”
Margot slaps the table. “No! He most certainly didn’t do Menudo!”
I resist the temptation to point out that the only one at the table who can recite New Kids’ lyrics is Andy.
“New Kids, huh? Well, I guess that helps ease the blow a little,” Webb says, chuckling. “I mean, maybe the guy’s gay now. Or in a boy band. Or, God forbid, both.”
I smile, although I mentally put this comment in the category of “What makes Webb different from me”—I’m quite certain he has no gay friends.
Webb continues, “Seriously. Can y’all believe Margot hired her ex?”
“No,” Andy says with exaggerated somberness. “I really, really can’t. Disgraceful.”
I know Andy and Webb are only joking, but my stomach still jumps thinking of the message waiting on my phone. The message I should have deleted. I look down at my plate, tapping a sprig of parsley with a tine on my fork.
“C’mon, Ellen!” Margot says, resting her elbows on the table, something she would never ordinarily do. “Help me out here!”
I cast about for a second, trying to think of something helpful but noncommittal. I weakly offer, “They’re just friends.”
“Just friends, huh?” Webb says. “The olllllle ‘just friends’ routine.”
“Good Lord,” Margot says, standing to clear her plate and Andy’s.
“The Good Lord isn’t on your side any more than Ellen here,” Webb says. “Neither of them approves of these sort of reindeer games.”
“‘Reindeer games’? Oh, grow up, Webb!…Ty is so grandfathered in it’s not funny,” Margot says, returning from the kitchen. “We made the transition to friends a zillion years ago. When we were still in high school. And he’s been doing Mother and Daddy’s yard for over a year now!”
“And that makes it better? That he’s doing their yard, too?” Webb says, shaking his head. He looks at me and says, “Watch out. They’re all disloyal. The pack of them.”
“Hey! Don’t lump me in with my folks and sister,” Andy says. “I wouldn’t use the guy. Even if I had a yard.”
“Sorry, man,” Webb says. “They’re all disloyal except you. Even James.”
“James doesn’t have a yard either,” Andy says.
“Yeah. But he plays golf with the guy. Disloyal bastard,” Webb says.
“It’s not a question of loyalty to anyone,” Margot says. “And besides, it’s not like he’ll be over here doing the planting himself. He has employees for that…His company does great landscaping at the right price. That’s all there is to it, Webster Buffington, and you know it.”
“Yep,” Webb says. “Keep telling yourself that and maybe you’ll start to believe it.”
“Oh, puh-lease, you act like I just put my prom portrait on the mantel!”
“I’m sure that’ll be next,” Webb says. He then turns to me and says, “Ellen, you still talk to your prom date?”
I shake my head decisively.
“Does he…uh, clean your apartment or prepare your taxes or anything like that?” Webb presses.
“Nope,” I say.
“You talk to any exes, period?”
The follow-up is clearly for me, but I say nothing, dazed by the coincidence, and hoping that someone will jump in and save me. No such luck. The room falls silent. I look at Andy, as if the question were directed his way.
“What?” Andy says. “Don’t look at me. You know I’m not friends with any girls, let alone exes.”
“Lucy sent you a Christmas card a few years ago,” I say, feeling the familiar stab of faint jealousy thinking about sweet, hot, little Lucy.
“With a photo of her kid on it,” Andy says. “That’s hardly a come-hither invitation…Besides, I never sent her a Christmas card.”
“Yes, but you never sent them at all until we got married,” I say, standing to help Margot clear the table.
Andy shrugs. As a lawyer, he certainly knows an irrelevant tangent when he sees one. “The point is—I don’t talk to her. Period.”
“And I don’t talk to my exes, period,” Webb says.
Andy looks at me expectantly.
“And I don’t talk to my exes,” I echo shamefully.
Anymore.
“Oh, get over yourselves,” Margot says, wiping crumbs from Webb’s placemat into her open palm. She looks up and then around the table, adding, “And, while you’re at it, how about getting over your exes, too?”
That afternoon, Leo’s message is far from my mind as Margot and I shop for gender-neutral newborn clothes at a boutique called Kangaroo Pouch, cooing over the exquisite, impossibly tiny items and finally selecting a white knit gown and matching receiving blanket for the baby’s homecoming, along with a half-dozen fine-cotton onesies and an array of hand-embroidered booties, hats, and socks. I feel my nesting instinct kicking in, and for the first time, really wish I were pregnant, too. Of course I know that craving a baby while you shop for a layette for your best friend’s firstborn is akin to wanting to get married while you watch her slip on a Vera Wang gown and twirl before a dressing-room mirror—and that there are plenty of not-so-fun-or-cute things that come with motherhood. Still, as we go on to cruise by a few houses for sale, “just for fun,” I can’t help thinking how nice it would be to relocate to Atlanta, live near Margot, and watch our children—cousins and best friends—grow up together in a happy, beautiful world filled with white camellias and sweet tea.
But by the time Margot and I are changing for dinner, thoughts of Leo have returned full-force, my cell phone burning a hole in my purse. So much so that I feel dangerously close to divulging everything to Margot. I remind myself that although she is my best friend, she is also Andy’s sister. And, on top of that, she hated Leo. There is no way that that conversation would end well.
Instead I very casually resurrect the “Can you be friends with an ex?” debate, trying to feel my way through my emerging moral dilemma.
“So,” I say as I fasten the side zipper of my charcoal pencil skirt. “Webb doesn’t really care about Ty, does he?”
Margot laughs and waves her hand in the air. “Of course not. Webb is the most secure man I know…and he’s certainly not threatened by a nothing, high school crush.”
“Right,” I say, wondering if Andy would feel threatened by Leo—and more significantly, whether he should.
She holds up two options from her closet, a black jersey dress and a lavender crocheted jacket with a mandarin collar, and says, “Which one?”
I hesitate, then point to the jacket and say, “But let’s suppose for a second that you hired Brad to do your landscaping.”
“Brad Turner?” she says, as if I could be speaking of a Brad other than the handsome, bespectacled bond trader whom she dated for nearly two years before meeting Webb.
“Yeah,” I say. “The one and only.”
She squints and says, “Okay. I got a visual…Brad in his power suits out there with his lawn mower.”
“Would Webb be pissed?”
“Maybe,” she says. “But I’d never hire Brad. We don’t even talk anymore.”
“Why not?” I ask, because, after all, that’s the real crux of the issue. Why does one keep in touch with certain exes, and not others? Why is it okay to segue into a friendship with some? Is there a multi-pronged test or is it really more simple than that?
> “Oh, I don’t know,” Margot says, looking concerned. For one second I worry that she’s on to me, but as she slips on a pair of black pants and patent, peep-toe heels, her expression becomes placid again. Leo is the last person on her mind. I only wish I could say the same. “Why? Do you miss Brad or something?”
I smile and shrug and say, “I dunno…I was just wondering what the golden rule is when it comes to exes…I just think it’s an interesting topic.”
Margot pauses to consider this, and then proclaims very definitively, “Okay. If you’re totally over the guy, and he’s totally over you, and you were never that serious to begin with, I see absolutely nothing wrong with an occasional, friendly hello. Or some innocent yard work. Assuming, of course, your current beau-slash-husband is not a complete psycho freak. Then again, if your current guy is a psycho freak, you have much bigger issues than who you should hire to do your lawn.”
“Right,” I say, feeling pleased with her summation and even more pleased with the loophole she unwittingly created for me. “Well said.”
With that, I breezily tell Margot that I’m going to brush my teeth and put on my makeup, and seconds later, I am sequestered in the guest bathroom, the door locked and the water in the sink running full blast. I carefully avoid my own reflection in the mirror as I open my purse and pull out my cell phone.
After all, I say, repeating Margot’s sound, careful reasoning, there is absolutely nothing in the world wrong with an occasional, friendly exchange when you’re totally over someone.
Ten
Ellen. It’s Leo. Look. I got a question for you. Call me when you can.
Leo’s message, only four seconds and fifteen words long, still manages to intrigue me in a way I can only describe as highly confounding and even more annoying. After standing at the sink and staring into space for several minutes, I listen to it again, just to be sure I didn’t miss anything. Of course I didn’t, so I hit delete, saying aloud, Don’t hold your breath, buddy.
If Leo thinks that he can let all of these years pass, then call just like old times with some purported question, and expect that I will just hop to it and fire off a call back with some great sense of urgency, well, he has another think coming. At best he is being presumptuous; at worst, downright manipulative.
I indignantly brush my teeth, then carefully apply a new, rose-toned lipstick to my full lower lip and thinner top one. I blot with a tissue, realize that I’ve removed too much, and reapply, finishing with a layer of clear gloss. I highlight my cheeks, forehead, and chin with a bronzer and line my eyelids with a dark charcoal pencil. A touch of mascara and some under-eye concealer, and I’m good to go. I meet my gaze in the mirror, smile slightly, and decide that I look pretty—although anyone would look pretty in Margot’s soft bathroom lighting. Like her mother, Margot doesn’t believe in fluorescent lights.
I open the door adjoining the guest room, telling myself that checking my voicemail is one thing, calling Leo back is another. And I will not call him back anytime soon, if ever. I kneel in front of my duffel bag and rifle through it to find a small, snakeskin clutch that I remembered to pack at the last second. Stella gave it to me for Christmas last year, and I know it will please her greatly to see me using it. She is a thoughtful, generous gift giver, although I often read into her presents that she wishes I would be a certain way, a little more like her own daughter. In other words, the kind of girl who instinctively switches out handbags for the evening.
I transfer my lip gloss, a small mirror, and a pack of wintergreen Certs to the clutch. There is a little room left so I toss in my cell phone, just in case. In case of what, I’m not quite sure, but it’s always best to be prepared. Then I slip on a pair of black kitten heels and head downstairs where Margot and the guys have gathered on barstools around the kitchen island and are feasting on wine, cheese, and stuffed olives. I survey Andy and Margot, standing side by side and laughing at Webb imitating one of his clients, and note that their resemblance is even more striking than usual. Beyond their heart-shaped faces and round, well-spaced blue eyes, they share the same happy aura—a certain authentic way of being.
Andy’s face brightens even more as he looks over at me.
“Hey, honey,” he says, standing to kiss my cheek and then whispering in my ear, “You smell nice.”
Incidentally, I am wearing a blueberry-vanilla body lotion, also compliments of Stella. “Thanks, honey,” I whisper back, feeling a pang of guilt toward my husband and his mother.
I tell myself that I have done nothing wrong—this is all Leo’s fault. He has painted me into a corner, created a layer of deceit between me and the people I love. Sure, it is a small secret in the scheme of things, but it is still a secret, and it will grow—multiply—if I return his call. So I simply won’t do it. I won’t call him back.
Yet as I pierce an olive with a toothpick and half-listen to another of Webb’s client stories, this one about a Falcons football player who got caught trying to carry marijuana onto a plane, I feel myself caving ever so slightly. I reason that if I don’t call Leo back, I might continue to wonder what he has to say, what he could possibly want to ask me. And the more I dwell on those possibilities, the more I will be filled with unease, and the more he, and the past he featured in, might undermine the present. Furthermore, not calling might look strategic, creating the impression that I care too much. And I don’t care. I do not. So I’ll just call him back, field his so-called question, and then inform him, in fifteen words or fewer of my own, that despite what I said in the diner, I have enough friends. I don’t need to resurrect an old one—if, in fact, that’s ever what we were. Then I will be done with him once and for all. I take a long sip of wine, and think that I can hardly wait to get back to New York and get the conversation over with.
And yet, despite my vow to rid Leo from my life come Monday morning, I can’t manage to shake his hold on me this evening, even after I’m at Bacchanalia with the entire Graham family. I am so distracted, in fact, that Stella turns to me at one point, just after the third course of our tasting menu complete with wine pairings that Webb deems “brilliant” and says, “You’re a bit fidgety tonight, dear. Is everything okay?”
Her tone and gaze are concerned, but I’ve seen her in action enough with her children—and husband, for that matter—to know that it is a veiled reprimand. In her words, “being present” when you are with others is of the utmost importance—and too often in our culture of BlackBerrys and cell phones, people are disengaged and disconnected and distracted from their immediate surroundings. It is one of many things I admire about Stella—that despite her emphasis on appearances, she really does seem to understand what matters most.
“I’m sorry, Stella,” I say.
I feel guilty and embarrassed by her reproach, but her comment also has the odd ancillary effect of making me feel squarely in the family fold, like I am one of her own children. It is the way she has treated me for years, but even more so since Andy and I married. I think back to the Christmas after we got engaged, when she put her arms around me in a private moment and said, “I’ll never try to replace your mother, but know that you are like a second daughter to me.”
It was the perfect thing to say. Stella always knows the perfect thing to say—and more important, always means what she says.
She shakes her head now and smiles as if to absolve me, but I still go on to stammer an explanation. “I’m just a bit tired. We had a pretty early start…and then…all of this wonderful food.”
“Of course, dear,” Stella says, adjusting the silk, patterned scarf tied effortlessly around her swanlike neck. She is never one to hold a grudge, big or small, the one quality she did not manage to convey to her daughter, who can impressively hold on to petty ill will for years, much to all of our amusement.
And, with this observation, I push Leo out of my head for the hundredth time today, focusing as hard as I can on our next topic, spearheaded by Mr. Graham—the renovated golf course at the club. But afte
r about three minutes of talk of bogies and eagles and holesin-one among the four men at the table, and apparent rapt interest by Margot and her mother, I start to lose it again and decide I can’t wait another second. I must find out what Leo wants. Now.
My heart races as I excuse myself and make my way into the small upscale gift shop adjoining the restaurant where the ladies’ room is positioned. With my clutch in sweaty hand, I am perfectly aghast at myself, as if I’m watching one of those idiotic women in a horror movie—the kind who, upon hearing a disturbing noise late at night, decides that rather than calling 911, it makes a lot of good sense to go tiptoeing barefooted in the heavily wooded backyard to investigate. After all, there might not be an axe murderer lurking, but there are certainly clear and present dangers here, too. Margot or Stella could, at any moment, catch me in the act. Or Andy could, for the first time ever, decide to skim my cell phone bill when it arrives at month’s end and inquire who in Queens I felt the sudden need to contact right in the middle of our family dinner in Atlanta.
But, despite such obvious pitfalls, here I foolishly am, holed up in yet another bathroom, urgently debating whether to call Leo back or merely text him. In what feels like a moral victory, I decide to tap out a hurried message with two rapid, eager thumbs. “Hi. Got your message. What’s up?” I type, hitting send before I can change my mind or dwell on my word choice. I close my eyes and shake my head.
I feel simultaneously relieved and appalled at myself, the way an addict must feel after that first sip of vodka, emotions that are amplified a few seconds later when my phone vibrates and lights up with Leo’s number. I pause just outside the restroom, pretending to admire a display of pottery for sale in the shop. Then I take a deep breath and answer hello.
“Hi!” Leo says. “It’s me. Just got your text.”
“Yeah,” I say, pacing and nervously glancing around. Now, in addition to the possibility of getting caught by Margot or her mother, I am exposed to any of the male members of my family who could be making a trip to the nearby men’s room.