“Listen, Jacqs, I didn’t want to tell you like this, but I’m getting married.” Nate looks at me carefully.
“Really.” My heart sinks, but I look him straight in the eye. There is no way in hell I’m going to let him see how much those words have stunned me. “Married? To who?”
“A woman who works for the same company I do. That’s why I’m going to India.”
“You’re getting married in India?” I don’t want to ask if she is from India, but I’m curious. It would make sense, how he was intimidated by Bina and probably in love with her at the same time. Now he’s going to marry someone from India. Isn’t that a kick in the ass?
“No. In her hometown, outside of Chicago.”
“She’s from Chicago?” I ask stupidly. Of course she is. Why the hell would he get married near Chicago if she wasn’t from near Chicago?
“Yeah, and we’re going to India for our honeymoon.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you want to know when we’re getting married?” Nate asks.
“No. Not really.” Of course I do.
Nate accepts his fresh drink from the waiter. I pick at my dinner. I hate Latin-fusion cuisine, whatever the fuck that is. I hate LA. I hate Nate. I hate hometowns near Chicago.
“Are you OK, Jacqs?”
“I’m great. So is your fiancée so secure that she’s cool with you going out with your ex-wife?”
“Uh.” Nate squirms in his seat. “She doesn’t know. She’s back in Chicago taking care of last-minute details.”
“How very convenient for you.” So they’re having a real wedding. With a real dress, real church and reception. My ex-husband is just fine without me. Better than fine, he’s getting married.
“She has nothing to worry about,” Nate says defensively. Yeah, I’m sure any woman, even this saint who he’s fooled into marrying him would be OK with this. “You want to see a picture?”
I should say no, but of course I can’t. Who wouldn’t want to see? He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and fishes out a photo. It’s a professional black-and-white posed shot. And speaking of which ...
“She’s white.”
“Yeah. So? Her name is Bethany Michel, but she’s taking
my
name. My last name. Hyphenated.”
Toward the end of our relationship, when we had already started the divorce proceedings and we were getting along great in bed, Nate admitted that my not taking his name had hurt him very much. My name was on my diploma, for Christ’s sake, the single-most important document, next to my unused passport, that I own. Nate, of course, didn’t understand.
“At least it’s good to know you don’t stick to one type of girl.” I start to hand back the picture to Nate.
“What do you mean?”
“I always thought you were more into, uh, brunettes ... Latinas.” I mean, he did fall head over heels for me. “You had that thing for Salma Hayek.”
“Being with you wasn’t so different from being with a regular woman.”
“Gee, thanks.” There’s no point in trying to go deeper. To Nate, I was just his girlfriend and then his wife, who happened to be brunette and then some. The culture issue was never really an issue for him. He had the luxury of ignoring it and still does.
“She’s pretty, huh?” he asks, slightly unsure.
I sigh and take the picture back and look more closely. She’s OK-looking. Nothing special, not homely either. Blondish hair, chin length, good teeth, with her hand under her chin, and on her left hand, on her ring finger is
my
ring!
“Hey!” I yelp. People look up and over at our table. I lower my voice, trying not to hiss. “Nate, that’s my ring! You gave her
my
ring?”
“It’s not yours. You got the flat and I got the ring back,” he says stupidly. As if this makes perfect sense.
“I got the
flat?
I got the mortgage is what I got.” I feel tears well up in my eyes. I didn’t even want the ring. It got caught in my hair and snagged my favorite sweater. It looked so lonely on my finger without a wedding band to anchor it and I was the one who filed for divorce. But it’s my ring. My engagement-slash-wedding ring. And now he’s given it to someone else! “Does she know it’s been on my finger?”
“No. So what?”
Stupid Nate.
“So what! You gave your fiancée your ex-wife’s ring, for God’s sake. Why didn’t you at least get a new one?” I don’t know this woman, I don’t want to know her (in person), but I feel personally insulted for her.
“She found it in my drawer and assumed it was for her. What was I supposed to do?”
“Why did you have it anyway? I thought you were going to pawn it?” That’s what he told me, anyway. I thought he was just being petty. But when it came down to it, I knew the flat was sensible where the ring was merely sentimental. And in the San Francisco housing market, I couldn’t afford to be sentimental.
“That ring cost me more than my first new car. I was never going to get back what I paid for it.” Nate crosses his arms over his chest.
“So you thought the smart thing to do would be to recycle it? What is she, some militant ecologist? She can’t bear to see a Tiffany diamond ring go to waste?”
“No. She’s a lawyer. And she likes it, and that’s what matters.”
A lawyer. I was supposed to be a lawyer by now. I was all geared up to apply and then Nate moved in and my brain took a nosedive near the vicinity of his groin. But thanks to hours spent on Dr. N’s squishy leather armchair, I know it’s a choice I made and I can’t blame Nate. OK, I can, but not much.
“And she doesn’t know where it’s been, right?” I don’t know if you could find one woman on the planet who would accept a ring with that kind of history.
But for Nate it’s like wearing the same underwear two days in a row or farting in front of friends and then rating it by sound and smell. Giving your girlfriend your ex-wife’s ring is perfectly reasonable. To say otherwise is just nitpicking.
“Man, you have some balls, Nate. Giving a woman a
used
ring.” I shake my head. “Maybe in India you could study up a bit on karma.”
“So what’s new with you?”
For Nate this is a natural progression to a conversation. Inform your ex-wife she was a bad wife, tell her you’ve found her replacement and
then
ask about her life.
“Oh. Me?” Me, what? He’s getting married. He isn’t emotionally destroyed. He’s a normal person capable of having a normal adult relationship. He hasn’t spent one minute in therapy. He got divorced, moved away, worked, dated and got engaged. To a lawyer. I feel my shoulders slump in my exquisite dress.
“Listen, just because we didn’t work out ...” Nate, bless his heart, can tell I’m a tad upset. “It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Right, Jacqs?”
We didn’t work out, meaning me, I didn’t work out. This much is obvious. But why should I care? I don’t really, truly want Nate to marry me again, but it would be nice if he still liked me, or even loved me a little bit. Even though I don’t want to have a relationship with him, I don’t want him to have a relationship with anyone else either. At least not yet. Not until I find someone.
“Friends, Nate? What, are you going to have me over to a barbeque? Why didn’t you tell me you were getting married? Better yet, why
did
you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I know I should have called. Or dropped you an e-mail ...” Nate looks off over my shoulder.
“So if we hadn’t run into each other this morning, you’d have dropped me a postcard from your honeymoon?”
“No, of course not. I would have e-mailed you or something,” he says, as if I’ve just suggested he’d eat the still-beating heart of a baby lamb and then ask for seconds.
“Well, of course you would have! Stupid me,” I say, feeling the hurt thicken my tongue so it’s hard to talk. He’d tell me, after the fact, from a nice, safe distance. Men have it so easy. “So why did you even bother to tell me? Here? Now?”
“I guess it’s something I think you should know. I mean, you’d tell me if you were involved with somebody, right?”
“Maybe.” Of course I would, if I was involved with somebody so freaking fantastic that I couldn’t restrain myself from rubbing it in. But since I hadn’t waved a 2-ton rock under his nose at the coffee shop (where I was sitting
alone
) he should have understood that I don’t have anyone to mention and, therefore, he shouldn’t either.
“Are you involved with somebody?” Nate asks, suddenly unsure.
“Why do you want to know?” I sit back and try to look relaxed. Now, this is the way I like things: with me on the offensive and Nate not.
“So you’re not. I figured, since you asked me out,” Nate says.
Our time apart has made me rusty.
“I didn’t
ask you out.
My friend is sick. And we
used
to be friends so I thought we could have a friendly dinner. We haven’t seen each other in a year, more than a year ... And I was going to meet him, but he canceled—”
“But isn’t it weird that your
friend
just happens to get coffee in the same place I do?”
“Weird? No.” Obviously I am not showing enough cleavage to keep Nate from putting two and two together.
“All I’m saying is it’s kind of odd that you show up here in LA, right before I leave for Chicago to get married.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m
stalking
you or something?” I’m shocked, just shocked.
“I didn’t say stalking; you did.”
We stare at each other, silently. I know that he knows I’ve been visiting his blog and keeping up with his life. He probably thinks I’ve been sitting in our/my flat, pining away for him, scheming to get him back and tear him away from the loving, trusting arms of his precious and perfect Bethany. He probably thinks that’s why I’m here tonight.
I’m wearing a beautiful (free) dress, a bracelet from Cartier (a gift from my boyfriend) and earrings from Tiffany’s (which I purchased myself, thank you), but someone else is wearing my engagement-slash-wedding ring. And my ex-husband thinks I’m still hung up on him.
Where the hell would he get that idea?
“I have to go. It was ... Thanks for coming to dinner with me.” I signal the waiter and hand over my credit card without waiting for the bill. I’m expensing it anyway, so it doesn’t matter. This whole night doesn’t matter.
“Jacqs, wait. I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s really OK. Congratulations. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all the luck in the world.” I stand up and lean over to kiss him on the cheek. I feel his hand run down my back, and hover near the top of my hip. The place he always said was his favorite on my body.
“You mean happiness,” Nate says, his eyes firmly on my breasts, “you wish us all the happiness in the world.”
“Right.” I straighten up quickly, begin to walk away and then turn around. “Can I ask you one thing, Nate?”
“Sure.” He looks at me expectantly. He never did like to fight.
“If you’re so into this Bethany, and she’s everything I never was, what are you doing out with me tonight?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
45
Nate and Bethany
W
hen I get back to the hotel, I head directly for their business center, stake out a computer and open up a Web browser. From her picture I can tell his fiancée is totally conventional, modern and efficient. This means she has used the Internet to plan her wedding, which means I can find out every gory detail.
At 3
AM
I get up and stretch. I have a sheaf of printouts that document the love story of Nate and Bethany. (Nate and Bethany, Bethany and Nate. How grossly sweet.) She’s registered them at all the predictable places: Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Williams Sonoma
and
Target; I guess she has a sense of humor.
It never occurred to me to check to see if he had registered with any of these places. I had kept an eye on his Amazon wish list and I thought that was enough to supplement the info I got from his blog and message-board postings. From those, I never gathered Nate was getting married, or even laid, and would need a ceramic fish platter.
What woman would be OK with her man going out with his ex-anything while she’s stuffing Jordan Almonds into tiny plastic champagne glasses? The only answer is that he hasn’t told her about me. I wouldn’t put it past Nate to conveniently forget that little part of his life.
Oh, yeah, honey, by the way, I was married to this (nearly) perfectly proportioned Latina, and, oh, hee hee, that’s her ring you’re wearing.
That’s her problem, I guess.
I think I know Nate pretty well and I don’t think it’s my conceit that leads me to believe that the reason he hasn’t mentioned her on his blog and hasn’t mentioned me to her is that he still wants me, at least in a sexual way. I guess he thought that having sex with your ex-wife on the eve of your marriage isn’t technically verboten; he is an Episcopalian, after all. And when I just happened to show up, maybe he even convinced himself that having sex with me would be more of an act of charity than cheating. After all, I have been a frequent visitor to his stupid blog and just happened to run into him, invited him out to dinner, dressed better than I did on our elopement day ...
Poor Nate must have assumed he was going to have to do his all-American, former-frat-boy duty and put me out of my misery by putting out. God bless the USA.
I knew I had a sexual hold over Nate and, for a while, that was all that kept us together. I used it, and maybe even abused it, but I never thought it would come back and bite me in the butt. After a year apart, I guess I had hoped maybe he would have grown fond of me as a person, not just as a good lay.
And to come
this
close to cheating on his wife-to-be? What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Booyah!
Whatever. Not my problem.
I hope they find a good therapist and aren’t naive enough to go into this thing without some sort of prenup. Marriage is hard enough without bringing a closet full of skeletons. I wish them all the luck in the world. I really do.
Still, maybe I shouldn’t have sent them the George Foreman Grill with a note reading: “To Bethany and Nate, for when things need a little heating up. All the best, Jacqs.”