I nod again…
And, rounding a corner, walk straight into someone.
“Oh, sorry!” I say, then realize who it is.
Irony of ironies…
It’s Buckley.
“Tracey! Hi!”
“Hi.”
Dare I say he looks great? He’s wearing a tan shearling coat, jeans, boots.
But no, I don’t dare say it, because he might get the wrong idea.
Then again, it’s been weeks since he told me he was in love with me. Maybe he fell out of love when I told him I wanted to marry Jack anyway.
What if he didn’t, though?
What if Buckley is still in love with me? What if he’s still holding out hope that somehow we might get together?
A few times lately, I’ve found myself wanting to call him and get this all out into the open, but I haven’t. I guess I don’t know what I’d want to say.
I just miss him. As a friend. I miss the way we used to be.
Not as much as I miss the way Jack and I used to be, of course.
It’s as if this wedding has turned all my relationships upside down lately. I haven’t had time for my friends, and I’ve spent more time than I’d ever want to with people like Kathleen and the twins. Who, to be fair, have all been behaving themselves. At least when it comes to the wedding. The girls really are excited about being flower girls, and so is my niece Kelsey.
“Hi, Buckley—I’m here, too.” Raphael pokes his head out from behind the giant stuffed bear.
“Oh! I thought you were just a big escaped grizzly hanging out with Tracey.”
“You’re so funny, Buckley!” Raphael screams with laughter.
“And you’re such a good audience for my lame jokes,” Buckley says in return. “Listen, I hate to break it to you guys, but Billy hates stuffed animals. And that is no joke.”
“We know,” I tell him with a shrug.
“We don’t care,” Raphael adds. “Why should that poor baby suffer just because its father is a cold-hearted bastard? That’s no joke, either, Buckley.”
“No kidding. Have you guys seen the baby yet?”
“No, we just got here. Have you?”
“No. I’m going down to the nursery now. Want to come? The nurse is in there with Kate right now. She just put on some rubber gloves and kicked me out—not that I wanted to stay! She told me to come back in fifteen minutes.”
“Then let’s go with Buckley and see the baby,” I tell Raphael.
I’m in no hurry to see Kate anyway. When she called earlier to tell me she’d had the baby, she described every gory, nightmarish detail of her labor and delivery and informed me that there’s more—but she has to tell me in person. She also mentioned that I’d be out of my freaking mind to ever consider having a baby.
Raphael and I set off down the hall with Buckley. A few seconds in, Raphael sets the bear down in a huff and announces, “I can’t lug this thing another step.”
“Leave it here,” Buckley suggests.
“Buckley! I can’t do that. Someone will steal it!”
“How? By smuggling it out in a body bag?” I ask.
“Or they can dress it in a robe and push it out in a wheel-chair,” Buckley suggests.
Raphael scowls. “Laugh if you must—”
“We must,” Buckley inserts.
“—but I’m staying with Big Ted. You two go ahead. I’ll see the baby later.”
I hesitate.
“Coming?” Buckley asks me.
I nod. I do want to see the baby, even if it means being more or less alone with Buckley for the first time since that day on the beach.
We head off down the hall together.
I wish I could just grab your hand and run away with you.
No! I can’t start thinking about that again.
I’ve made my peace with the Buckley issue—even if I haven’t seen much of him since that fateful Sunday. I know he was at Jack’s bachelor party the night I was up in Brookside for my shower. I also know that Kate tried to fix him up with her sister-in-law Amanda, which didn’t work out.
Turns out down-to-earth Amanda only likes guys who have real estate, 401Ks and five-figure bonuses. Freelancers who rent aren’t her style. Imagine that.
Kate said Buckley didn’t seem very into Amanda, either.
“No chemistry,” Kate declared. “I could tell right away.”
Chemistry.
“Hey, where’s Jack today?” Buckley asks me as we turn down the corridor toward the nursery.
“He’s at the Mets playoff game with Mitch.” We were supposed to go to brunch, but then Kate had the baby, and Mitch called first thing about the game, so we went our separate ways for the day.
“I thought Jack was a Yankees fan and hates the Mets.”
“He is and he does,” I tell Buckley. “But Mitch got great seats through some guy at work at the last minute…”
And Jack probably couldn’t wait to get out of the apartment and away from me after I gave him the silent treatment all last night and most of this morning.
I couldn’t seem to help it.
I was overtired and cranky and I still haven’t gotten my period. Plus, I keep dwelling on how he had the perfect opportunity to say something really romantic and blew it.
Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Am I doomed to spend forever with someone who can’t be bothered to come up with something more compelling than “I love your hair”?
All right, maybe I’m being childish and unfair.
I mean, it could have been worse.
He could have said his favorite thing about me is my bullet boobs.
Maybe I’m trying to pick a fight because…
Well, I have no idea why I would want to do that.
“So are you getting excited about the wedding?” Buckley wants to know.
“Of course!” I say too quickly.
“Yeah…it should be fun.”
He’s right about that. It
should
be fun.
But lately, it’s just intense. The wedding machine has taken on a life of its own. And in the myriad details that are involved, nothing seems to really have much to do with who Jack and I were—or will be—as a couple.
It’s like our lives are hanging in limbo, and everything around us is changing. I don’t recognize us, and I don’t recognize anyone else lately, either. Buckley is distant, Kate is a mother, Kathleen’s twins are angelic…
What happened to my old life?
I don’t want it back necessarily. I just want to ease out of it a little more gradually.
Too late for that, though.
Buckley and I have reached the newborn nursery, where rows of babies lie beyond the glass.
“Which one is she?” Buckley squints at the pink and blue name cards attached to the glass boxlike cribs that hold the babies.
“There,” I say, and point at a pink bundle. “That’s little Kate.”
Yes, Kate named the baby after herself, surprising no one other than perhaps Auntie Amanda, who favored Cleopatra for a girl.
Buckley and I stare reverently at the infant for a few minutes, marveling at her tiny hands, her tiny head and her incessant wailing, which can be heard loud and clear through the glass.
“She’s her mother’s daughter, all right,” I say, watching a team of nurses scurry over to tend to mini-Kate’s needs. “Billy’s going to have his hands full.”
“He already does. But he’s glowing. He obviously loves his girls.”
“Wait, Billy’s glowing?” I ask Buckley.
“Yeah, I think fatherhood has tamed him. He almost seems human all of a sudden, and he’s fawning over Kate and the baby.”
Billy might be an ass sometimes—all right, most of the time—but you can’t say he isn’t crazy about Kate.
“Well, I guess there’s someone for everyone,” I say—and I’m talking about Billy and Kate, of course.
But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, and I see the expression on Buckley’s face, I wish I could take them back.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says right away. “Listen, I’m okay.”
“About…?” I decide to play dumb.
“About you and Jack getting married.”
“Oh.” I nod. “Good. That makes one of us.”
Dammit. Why did I have to say that? I didn’t even mean it.
Did I?
Buckley’s eyes widen.
“What?”
“No, it’s just…I guess I’m having…prewedding jitters.”
There. It’s out. It’s official.
“Cold feet?”
“No. I don’t want to back out. I just…I guess I’m second-guessing everything all of a sudden.”
“Yeah. I’ve been there.”
Yeah. He has.
But he backed out.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Buckley asks. “I’m a good listener. And a good friend.”
“No, thanks,” I tell him, and check my watch. “We should go and see if we can get back into Kate’s room yet. I want to give her these flowers before they wilt.”
“I already saw her,” Buckley says, “so I think I’ll get going home. I’ve got a copywriting project to finish by tomorrow morning.”
We walk slowly and silently down the busy corridor again and part ways at the elevators.
“Tracey, if you ever need to talk…” Buckley tells me, stepping into one.
“Thanks.” I wave.
The doors slide closed and he’s gone.
If only, I think wistfully, turning away, letting go of Buckley were as simple as letting go of Will McCraw.
Jack is home when I get back.
“Hey,” I say in surprise, dropping my jacket and keys on the nearest chair.
“How’s the new little family?”
“The baby is adorable, Billy gave me a cigar for you and Kate has blossomed into a mother hen, if you can believe that.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to see it to believe it,” I tell Jack, smiling at the memory of Kate making a loving fuss over another human being. “The center of her universe has shifted.”
“Good. It’s about time.”
“So what are you doing home? Is the game over already?”
“Nah. I left.”
“Well, you hate the Mets,” I say as he gets off the couch, where he was sitting with his feet up—and the television off, I notice in surprise.
“I do hate the Mets,” he agrees, “but that’s not why I left.”
“Are you sick or something?”
He shakes his head.
“Then what?” I kick off my shoes and leave them by the door.
“I missed you. I wanted to be here.”
It isn’t just the words—it’s his tone that makes me look at him in surprise.
“But—I wasn’t even gone that long.”
“No, not that. I mean…I
have
missed you. Lately. I’ve missed
us
.”
I find myself looking at him through tear-filled eyes. “I’ve missed us, too.”
He comes over and takes me into his arms, hugging me hard.
So maybe he does get it after all, I realize.
Maybe he’s just as scared—and tense—as I am about all the changes we’re facing.
There’s a measure of comfort in that…but not as much as you might expect.
I just wish I didn’t keep worrying that every minor moment of tension between us might herald bigger problems down the road.
I just wish there hadn’t been so many minor moments of tension lately.
I wish there could be more…joy.
I want Jack to tell me that we’re doing the right thing, getting married. Of course we are. But he doesn’t say that.
Because he isn’t any more sure of that than I am, I realize. We love each other—there’s no question about that. But are we really going to make it together forever?
We hold on tightly to each other, for a long time.
I want to ask Jack if he thinks we’ll ever be
us
again…
But I don’t.
Because I’m too afraid of the answer.
“Do you realize that in a matter of days Tracey Spadolini will cease to exist?” I ask Kate edgily in her apartment a few nights after she gets home from the hospital.
“Well, you can always keep your own last name if that bothers you.” She hands over mini-Kate and a bottle of formula the nanny just warmed.
No, she’s not breast-feeding.
Yes, she knows it’s better for the baby.
No, she’s not a terrible mother.
You have to give her credit for knowing her limits. This way, the nanny can get up with the baby in the wee hours.
By day, the well-rested Kate is downright doting.
It’s as strange to see her cooing and fussing over her tiny daughter as it is to realize that Tracey Spadolini is fading fast.
I ease the rubber nipple into little Kate’s hungry mouth and tell Kate, “I don’t want to keep my name. It isn’t about that. It’s about…the end of an era, I guess. I don’t know. Forget I said anything.”
“It’s prewedding jitters,” she tells me. “Look, everyone has second thoughts. I did.”
But she was marrying Billy. That’s to be expected. I mean, who wouldn’t have second thoughts about that?
I’m marrying Jack, though. Jack, who is as close to perfect—for me—as anyone ever could be.
Jack, whom I love more than anything, flaws and all.
I just wish I could relax and stop worrying.
“I’m not having second thoughts,” I tell Kate. “I want to marry Jack. There’s just a lot of stress and we’ve just been bickering a lot, about stupid things that don’t matter.”
“Like?”
“Like what he’s wearing to the rehearsal dinner, and which bags to pack our stuff in for our honeymoon, and why his mother can’t sit at a different table from his father at the reception and whose turn it is to wash the dishes.”
“Billy and I fight about stuff like that all the time, if it’s any comfort.”
It’s not. I don’t want to compare me and Jack to her and Billy.
“This just isn’t like us, though,” I say, stroking little Kate’s downy head with my freshly manicured fingertips. “We normally get along great, but these last few months—especially the last few weeks—”
“Everyone fights,” Kate says logically, “especially before they make a lifelong commitment. You’re about to take the biggest step in your life. It would be strange if you weren’t a nervous wreck, don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
I wish Jack were here. I could use a reassuring hug right now.
But he left this afternoon on a business trip to Knoxville, and he won’t be back until tomorrow night.
The next morning, I e-mail Buckley:
Hey, I would like to talk, after all. Can you meet me for lunch?
It takes awhile for the response to come back.