What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels) Page 12

  God, I can’t wait to get out of here.

  “Don’t you think I owe it to Kate to tell her what I saw?” I ask Jack as the sign changes to Walk and we cross the street.

  “You didn’t see anything. You said so yourself.”

  “I saw him with another woman.”

  “You don’t know what was going on.”

  “Even you think he’s having an affair.”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. Neither does what you think. I’m telling you, Tracey, I’ve been through a divorce with my parents. Don’t say anything to Kate about that night.”

  “Too late. I told her.”

  Jack just shakes his head.

  For a few moments, we walk on in silence.

  “I’m starting to think it’s a good thing we’re moving soon.” That didn’t come from me. I’m not just starting to think it’s a good thing we’re moving; I’ve thought so from day one.

  “I can’t believe you just said that,” I tell Jack.

  “Don’t you think things are getting a little claustrophobic around here?”

  “Definitely—but I didn’t think you did.”

  “Yeah,” Jack says, “I do.”

  “I didn’t think you were ready to move.”

  “I didn’t think so, either. Sometimes I think if it weren’t for you lighting a fire under me, I’d never make any changes in my life.”

  “I don’t know about that, but you’d still be living in your dumpy Brooklyn apartment with Mike Middleford.”

  He’s Jack’s former roommate, who was also my former boss, a minor stumbling block on our path to true love. I was initially reluctant to date Jack because I was afraid of running into my boss in his underwear.

  The funny thing is, it did eventually happen, but by that time, Mike and I were more like old pals and he was well on his way to getting fired from Blaire Barnett anyway. Not, thank God, for reasons that had anything whatsoever to do with me, or his tighty whities.

  Last we heard, Mike was still—or was it again?—unemployed and living in Jersey with his wife, Dianne, and a couple of kids.

  Funny how you manage to lose touch with the people who once shared so much of your life, right down to your address.

  Thinking of Mike, Yvonne and Thor, Sonja, and even my long-ago ex-boyfriend, Will McCraw, I can’t help but wonder who else is going to fade from our lives as the years march on. Especially if we’re no longer living in the heart of the city.

  Like I told Kate last night—or maybe Kate told me—nothing ever stays the same. Life is all about change.

  Wasn’t I the one who was telling Jack just days ago that he should embrace it?

  His family has certainly embraced it.

  When his sister Kathleen heard we were moving, she had the twins call us and leave an a cappella singing message on our answering machine, which was sweet.

  Kind of.

  Okay, it was also kind of awful: they had written the unintelligible lyrics themselves, either set to the tune of “Here Comes Santa Claus” or Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”; it was impossible to tell which.

  They ended the message with one of them—I’m sure it was Ashley—saying, “You’re going to love living here, Aunt Tracey and Uncle Jack, and just think, now you get to see us all the time!”

  Yeah. Just think.

  Jack’s sister Jeannie, a court reporter who lives with her husband, Greg, in Putnam County, called to offer their help in fixing up our house. That’s just like her: she’s working full-time to put Greg through law school, is six months pregnant, and they’re in the midst of dealing with their own fixer-upper. I found myself volunteering to help her and Greg paint the room for the baby and babysit when the time comes—not that Jeannie would ever take me up on it. She’s the opposite of Kathleen, who probably would have also asked me to build a bookshelf and be their wet nurse.

  Jack’s sister Rachel, who got married last year and lives about fifteen minutes from Glenhaven Park, is excited that we’ll be living nearby and said she and her husband, Nolan, can’t wait to show us around. She’s my favorite sister-in-law and I really like her husband, though Jack thinks he’s too competitive. I’m sure it’s all in his head because I’ve always found Nolan perfectly nice—not that we’ve ever spent much time with him. It was a whirlwind courtship and marriage. I’m looking forward to getting to know him better and spending more time with Rachel.

  As for Jack’s youngest sister, Emily, who’s single and works in the fashion industry, she’s in Paris on business. I e-mailed her to tell her about the move and received an e-mail back that said, “Wah! I can’t believe you’re leaving the city. What am I going to do without you guys?”

  Which is pretty ironic, considering that Emily lives a scant seven blocks from us in Manhattan yet we haven’t seen her since the holidays. She’s caught up in clubbing and hobnobbing with the socialite-heiress-debutante-rehab crowd; needless to say, Jack and I don’t fit in.

  We’ll slip much more smoothly into the suburban lives of the rest of the family, I’m sure.

  Well…pretty sure.

  I mean, it’s not like they’ll expect us to see them every day, right?

  Of course not. That would be my family.

  Jack’s family is much more hands off, thank God. Even Kathleen doesn’t bother us, for the most part.

  Then again, we’ve always lived miles away and Kathleen hates the city. It’s near the top of a long list of things that exhaust her. The devilmint twins, I’m sure, are number one.

  But when you’re married, family comes with the territory, right?

  Right.

  And God knows Jack has put up with his share of stress from the Spadolini contingent. A lesser man would have bailed the first time he came out of the bathroom at my parents’ house—way back before we were even engaged—to be greeted by Connie Spadolini asking, “Well? Did you poop?”

  I, of course, was mortified. But Jack, who had been having stomach problems that morning, didn’t bat an eye. He thought it was sweet that my mother was so concerned for his well-being.

  I can’t imagine Wilma Candell ever asking me, upon exiting her bathroom, whether I pooped.

  For that matter, I can’t imagine Wilma Candell pooping.

  Yes, Jack and I certainly do come from different worlds.

  As we walk down the stairs to the subway, I slip my hand into his.

  He looks at me. “What?”

  “Nothing. I just really love you.”

  “I just really love you, too.”

  He just really does.

  Even though I’ve gone and turned our lives completely upside down.

  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m not saying I no longer want to move, or that the house isn’t our dream house. I’m just saying it’s not going to be easy to leave another phase of our lives behind.

  But moving doesn’t have to mean losing touch with our city friends. There are people like Kate, and Buckley, and Raphael and Latisha, who I know will be a part of our lives forever.

  No matter what, I vow fiercely, and try to ignore a little shred of foreboding.

  CHAPTER 9

  Tomorrow is the long-awaited Closing Day on our brand-new Dream House.

  Today is the long-dreaded Purge Day on our cluttered old apartment.

  Jack and I have both taken a couple of personal days off from work for the move. Mitch wanted to do the same, but I convinced him it wasn’t necessary. Lately, he’s been hanging around even more than usual—if that’s possible. The last thing I want is him looking over my shoulder as I sort through my underwear drawer, trying to figure out what stays and what goes.

  In the interest of a fresh start—and not inflating the moving company’s hourly rate by having them pack and transport a lot of stuff we don’t need—Jack and I have made a pact to throw away every single thing that is not absolutely essential.

  That seems pretty cut-and-dried, doesn’t it?

  It might be, if we had the sa
me definition of essential.

  Jack says essential is anything a person can’t live without.

  I say essential is anything a person can’t live without and/or anything that a person once believed he/she—okay, mostly she—couldn’t live without.

  This includes but is not limited to dog-earred Judy Blume books; mixed tapes dating back to middle school; Cipro antibiotics in case there’s another anthrax scare (label says it expired in 2003, but I figure expired Cipro is better than no Cipro at all); an old address book; lots of small hotel-size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash, lotion and shower caps (no, I don’t use shower caps, but you never know when you might have a houseguest who will need one); three dozen take-out chopsticks in paper sleeves; two tall stacks of recycled plastic Chinese soup containers (I conceded and threw the third stack away); and certain trendy clothing items that will undoubtedly be making a reappearance in Glamour any season now. Leggings, anyone?

  This collection excludes mementos of Will McCraw, whom I once believed I couldn’t live without.

  Not only do I no longer think about Will, I no longer have the urge to keep anything that might trigger unwanted thoughts of Will. In the course of today’s purge, I’ve thrown away countless letters from Will, old programs from productions starring Will (though I did keep the hapless eye-candy review, tee hee) and even some old photos of me with Will, which I’ll admit were pretty easy to part with considering that I was a good fifty pounds heavier when I was dating him.

  I have also dutifully thrown away a lot of candy and gum wrappers, stray socks without partners, expired credit cards and a few nearly empty containers from the fridge. Yes, I’ve kept many other nearly empty containers—like my favorite Abraham’s baba ghanoush, which I’m not sure I’ll be able to find in Glenhaven Park. And yes, I kept a few single socks, as well as a select number of partnerless earrings I plan to wear if A) their partners ever surface, or B) that asymmetrical-earring look ever comes back into vogue.

  I’m not saying that would be a good thing. Just that if it does happen, I’ll be equipped.

  Meanwhile, Jack has been pitching mercilessly from the second he got out of bed this morning. It’s like he awoke with a mission: to rid our world of several perfectly good, expensive cardigan sweaters; a bunch of hardcover novels he claims to have already read; a pile of CDs he says he never listens to—true, but who says he might not want to listen to them someday?; even his old cell phone, which I pluck from the top of the garbage bag when I see it.

  “What are you doing?” Jack asks, looking up from my kitchen junk drawer.

  “You can’t just throw away a phone.”

  “Why not? I have no use for it.”

  I wait to answer him until a deafening wailing siren has passed by somewhere outside and below.

  “For one thing, it’s bad citizenship.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not environmentally responsible. It’s just going to sit in a landfill and poison the earth.” I’m actually not a hundred percent sure of that but I thought I saw something about it on Dateline, or maybe that was computers. “And for another thing, all your contact information is in there.”

  “So? It doesn’t even have a battery.”

  “What’s to stop an identity thief from getting a battery, powering up the phone and becoming Jack Candell?”

  He snorts. “All that’s in it are a bunch of old phone numbers.”

  “Or so you think. That’s what the identity thief is counting on.” I look up as, overhead, one of the circus freaks takes a ceiling-fixture-jarring dive.

  Ignoring it, Jack asks, “You honestly think an identity thief is going to rifle through that bag of garbage looking for a cell phone when he can just as easily steal someone’s wallet for a lot less trouble?”

  “Yes. It happens all the time. I saw that on Dateline, too,” I add for good measure. I can’t be sure, but it’s likely. I see a lot of things on Dateline.

  Jack grumbles something and goes back to the junk drawer, which is not likely to be spared, since it’s filled with…well, junk.

  Watching him dispose of several flat strips of twist ties, I vow to rescue them from the garbage as soon as he turns his back. You can never have too many twist ties.

  Meanwhile, I start emptying the cabinet under the sink, which contains two recycling bins, several of those no-frills glass vases you get when the florist delivers a bouquet, and a whole lot of cleaning supplies.

  “Wait, why are you throwing those away?” Jack asks as I carry half a dozen beer bottles toward the trash bag. “We can return them for the deposit.”

  “No, they were Coronas from that Cinco de Mayo dinner.” We had Buckley here that night. Jack had originally thought we should have a bigger guest list, but I (privately) decided we should limit it to just people who aren’t Mitch, and people who are psyched about our upcoming move.

  Buckley is seriously the only one of our friends who fits that bill—although I probably shouldn’t say he’s psyched, exactly. More like, not offended by it. I’m sure he would be psyched if he weren’t so distracted by the second novel he’s trying to write.

  I’m still not feeling the love from the others: Kate, Raphael, Latisha. I’m sure they’ll all come around, and of course they’re all busy with their own stuff these days.

  Too busy to help us purge and pack, that’s for sure. Well, Buckley said he would stop by, but he has yet to show.

  I guess I don’t really blame Kate for not wanting to pitch in. She and Billy are officially on the rocks. She confronted him about Marlise—I didn’t have the heart to ask her whether or not she mentioned my seeing him with her—and he not only promptly admitted to the affair, but asked Kate for a divorce.

  Which she refused him, if you can believe that. Instead, she dragged him to marriage counseling. I picture their sessions as Kate crying her eyes out to some impartial stranger while a detached Billy text messages his girlfriend.

  The sad thing is, according to Kate, I’m not all that far off the mark.

  “Corona bottles,” Jack is saying, “are recyclable. Now who’s a bad citizen?”

  “Sure as hell not me. There are old limes inside, see?”

  “Can’t you get them out?”

  “No, they’re all moldy.”

  “Yeah, but we can still put them into the bottle-recycling machine at the supermarket. It doesn’t care about moldy limes.”

  “Talk about bad citizenship…do you really want moldy limes ground into your recycled products?”

  “I’m sure the ground-up glass is cleaned before it’s turned into…what is it turned into, anyway?”

  “I have no idea. But these are disgusting and I’m throwing them away.”

  “A second ago you were worried about saving the planet from my old cell phone. Now you’re tossing bottles that are supposed to be recyclable.”

  “I sure am.” I pitch them into the trash with a clatter. “Mold overrules recyclable.”

  “If you found a quarter, would you throw that away?”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it isn’t. We can’t afford to throw away money these days.”

  Uh-oh. Here’s the austerity budget again, rearing its ugly head. We’ve been on it for over two months now, and it hasn’t been quite as bad as I expected.

  Yet ever since we signed the contract for the house—which was right around the time Jack’s father’s lawyer informed him that the contested will is going to be hung up indefinitely—Jack’s been quietly freaking out about money. Never mind that the bank concluded that we can afford the new house, even without the inheritance.

  Jack keeps asking—usually in the wee small hours of the morning—what we’re going to do if one of us loses our job.

  That’s not unheard of in our industry. Agencies lose accounts and have to do massive layoffs all the time. They fire people, too. Legend has it that some underling once left a comma out of a presentation document, and the group director was fired. W
henever someone makes a stupid mistake, the Client expects to see someone’s head roll as a result—preferably someone more significant and satisfying than the errant underling.

  Ironically, it took me this long to figure out that there really was an upside to underlingdom. When the powers that be don’t know you even exist, and you’re not making any money, you have a hell of a lot less to lose.

  But one of the agency’s premier accounts, McMurray-White, is up for review. They’re a huge Midwestern packaged-goods company, and the makers of Abate Laxatives, among many other products.

  If the agency loses the account, massive layoffs are inevitable. I—as low man on the Creative totem pole—would lose my job for sure. That would have been a godsend, pre-house mortgage.

  Jack, who also works on their business, has more seniority and other accounts, but who knows? Sometimes everybody goes, not just people who work only on that account.

  If Jack or I get laid off, our monthly mortgage payment would be in instant jeopardy.

  “Fine,” I tell Jack, and retrieve the beer bottles, with their white-fuzz-covered, blackened lime wedges from the garbage. “We can recycle them. But you deal with it, please.”

  “I will.” He tosses a handful of hot-mustard and duck-sauce packets, then asks, “Why do we have cherry-tomato-seed packets in this drawer?”

  “They came in the mail, some promotional thing, a few years ago. I saved them.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because I was going to plant them.”

  “Where, in the rug?”

  “Wait, don’t throw those away. They’re for my garden.” At Jack’s dubious look, I say, “Why do you always look at me that way when I mention my garden?”

  “Because you don’t have a garden?”

  “I will as soon as we move.”

  “I know, it’s just…you keep talking about it, and reading about it…” He eyes the stack of gardening magazines I’ve accumulated in the past few months. “Do you want to throw some of those away?”

  “No! I haven’t actually read any of them yet. I’ve been too busy. But I will.”