The Breakup Club Part 23
"Do you want to go get a drink or something?" he asked. "We could go to Mo's right on the corner and have Hurricanes."
"Are you asking me on a date?" I asked. "I'm bawling my eyes out over my boyfriend."
"Ex-boyfriend," he pointed out. "Anyway, I'm not a pyscho killer or anything. I live in the building next door. I see you practically every day. We leave at the same time for work in the morning."
"Oh," I said. "Well in that case, if you're really okay with sharing your pizza, I could go for a slice. Two. Maybe three. And that drink."
His name was Jason and he lived with his boyfriend, also named Jason. On the way to the bar, we scarfed his pizza, and then over Hurricanes he told me how he threw away all his mementos from a relationship with an ex into the East River, then actually dived in after them. He almost drowned for a jerk. It wised him up fast.
"Yours are better left where they are," he said.
"But what if he mysteriously ends his engagement because he suddenly realizes he's supposed to marry me?" I asked.
"Then you'll make new memories," he said. "You're not going to want memories of the time before he broke your heart in a million pieces. It's about the new. Not the old."
Jason was right.
"Sounds to me like you're hanging on out of fear of what's out there," he said. "Not because you really still love this guy."
I shrugged. "I really don't know anymore. I am trying, though. I put a personal ad in the New York Natterer. I'm following Bri Love's advice for getting over your ex. I'm up to volunteering for a cause I love. I don't even know what that is."
"Why don't you try tutoring?" he said, taking a bite of his slice. "If you're in editorial, you must be great at English, and if your twelve-year-old niece is your favorite person, you clearly like teens. You can mix the two. I'm a high-school teacherhistoryand my school is always looking for volunteer tutors. Especially with Regents prep."
"Tutoring in high school?" I repeated. "Huh. That sounds fun."
"If you want, I'll arrange a meeting for you with the a.s.sistant princ.i.p.al."
Tutoring. Huh. Why hadn't I thought of that? "That would be great."
High school looked exactly the same as when I left it, except there was a guard posted at the main entrance and I had to show ID and sign in. There were the same endless hallways painted beige. Rusty-looking lockers. Wooden bathroom doors.
Jason arranged for me to meet one of the English teachers who tutored on the weekends. Anna introduced me to a ninth-grader named Candace who needed help with reading comprehension for the Regents exams, which you had to pa.s.s to graduate with a Regents degree. We headed into the library and sat down at the end of a long study table.
Candace was adorable. She carried a backpack that was bigger than she was, stuffed with notebooks and textbooks. She pulled out a study guide. "I've read this stupid thing like four times and I still get the first answer wrong."
I read the paragraph, about migrating birds. Then read the first question. Wow, this was hard. We bent over the guide and got to work. I hated standardized tests. All these annoying multiple choice answers. A, B, C or B & C. Or none of the above. Ugh!
Soon enough, Candace was putting her notebook away. The hour was up? I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was fifteen minutes past time. "I'll read it over tonight," she said. "I'll try to remember what you said about breaking up the paragraphs."
Anna came over. "You were great. Have you ever thought about teaching?"
"Teaching? Me?"
"Why not?" she asked.
"I don't know, I guess I never thought of myself as adult enough to boss around kids."
She laughed. "I'll tell you what. You can come as show-and-tell to one of my cla.s.ses.e.xplain what an editor does, and then you can observe my lesson. I'll clear it with the princ.i.p.al."
Any excuse to take a personal day.
On Monday morning I called in sick. Wanda was in a particularly nice mood, which made me feel guilty for two seconds. "Feel better. If you need anything, just give a shout and I'll send the temp uptown with some chicken soup."
I hated when Wanda was nice. It made staying at Bold too easy. If she were a raving b.i.t.c.h, I would have quit a long time ago.
What did you wear to be show-and-tell at a high school English cla.s.s? Over the weekend, I'd called my new friend Jason, and he said casual was fine. But shouldn't I dress up? I didn't even have any dress-up clothes. The dress code at Bold was "business casual," but all the a.s.sistants dressed down, so I never bothered to ama.s.s a real wardrobe. I raided Roxy's closet. She had great corporate clothes. She had five pairs of the same semi-dressy pants in different colorslight beige, medium beige, light gray, dark gray, black. I decided on the dark gray and paired it with her heather-gray wool turtleneck, which I loved. I added a funky brooch from my jewelry box, my most boring black boots, and I was off.
Anna introduced me as an editor at a publishing house in Manhattan, and I walked up to the front of the cla.s.s, as nervous as I was twelve years ago when I'd have to give an oral presentation.
I gave my rehea.r.s.ed opening, about how I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life when I graduated from high school, so I went to college to give me a few more years to figure it out. I told them I majored in English and then applied for an entry-level job in publishing when I graduated. They were staring at me, rapt, firing questions. They had no idea that important people like editors started out as a.s.sistants. They seemed truly enchanted with the idea that they could be editorial a.s.sistants and become big-shot Manhattan editors too.
"Do you know J.K. Rowling?" a girl asked.
I laughed. "No. I wish I did, though."
They fired off more questions, and then the conversation turned to what professions they wanted to pursue, but then my fifteen minutes were up, and I couldn't believe it had gone so fast. I'd thought I'd have trouble filling five minutes.
Then it was time to observe Anna in action. She was a great teacher. A couple of times she looked like she wanted to pour water on a couple of kids' heads, but she had excellent control of the cla.s.sroom, clearly loved her job and her students, and it showed. She'd had to interrupt her lesson at least twenty times in the forty-five-minute cla.s.s to tell a student to stop talking, to pay attention, to sit down, to stop eating. But she'd engaged them in the lesson. They raised their hands, they shouted out answers, they related some of the answers to their own personal experience.
The experience was so uplifting, so empowering. What she was doing was so important.
After cla.s.s, I asked Anna if I could arrange to observe a few other teachers' cla.s.ses. She said she'd talk to the princ.i.p.al for me and give me a call later in the week.
I think I'm meant to do this. I just might be meant to teach high-school English.
For the first time in forever, my heart lit up. And it had absolutely nothing to do with a guy.
"A teacher? You're not serious," said my date, an equity a.n.a.lyst. We were sitting at a little square table for two in a trendy bar. I hadn't planned on calling anyone else from my Respondees list, but the Breakup Club convinced me to give it one more shot now that I had a shiny new att.i.tude.
"I'm very serious," I said. "High-school English. There I'll be, standing up in front of twenty, thirty teenagers, discussing Romeo and Juliet. Or To Kill a Mockingbird."
He was staring at me as though I had four heads. "You're actually planning to go back to school, full-time, for a master's in teaching high school?"
"A master's in education," I corrected. And what part of that wasn't he understanding?
He shook his head. "You're going to put yourself tens of thousands of dollars in debt so that you can earn thirty thousand dollars a year and have chairs thrown at you? You'll tell a kid to stop talking and he'll tell you to f.u.c.k yourself."
I'd like to tell you to stop talking. "I don't have a romanticized view of teaching," I said, taking a sip of my red wine. "You can't have one, especially if you want to teach in the city like I do. I realize that I'll have to learn cla.s.sroom-management skills and deal with mind-bending bureaucracy and"
"Irregardless, isn't teaching blue-collar?" he interrupted. "I mean, anyone can be a teacher. My aunt Delores is a teacher. Come on. You can do better than that."
For someone who clearly knew it all, why couldn't he see that I was restraining myself from punching him in the face? "First of all, it's regardless. Second of all, teaching isn't blue-collar, but even if it were, that would be fine with me. Third of all, anyone can't be a teacher. You need to be a long list of adjectives that you, for one, sorely lack."
I was so happy I didn't have to feign a headache.
"We're not a love match," I said, threw a ten on the table for my wine and walked away.
I'd been tapping my pencil against page 207 of Beau and Bri: The Courtship of the Century for almost an hour when the phone rang. Great! Procrastination that I didn't engineer myself! I'd been to the coffeemaker three times, sharpened my pencils twice, stretched and done two downward dog posesin a skirtto avoid reading another word of this fairy tale. Lucy had done a great jobthe book was un-put-down-able. But I wanted to read it for funnot for work. And I had months to go before I could turn in my resignation. I'd just made the deadlines for applying to graduate schools for the fall. Which meant I had almost seven months to go at Bold Books. Lucy was so proud of me that she was sending me on a week's vacation in early August to the European city of my choice. That was some nice sister I had.
"Miranda Miller," I said into my phone. Thank you for interrupting me, whoever you are!
"Hi, my name is Callie. This is going to sound really weird, but did your dry cleaner give you a wedding gown that was hanging in his window?"
Eeep. "Um, yeah."
"Did you wear it yet?" she asked.
"No," I said. My ex-friend Emmalee is wearing it tomorrow night in her wedding, though. "I did try it on a bunch of times, so, if you need it back, I should probably take it back to the cleaners. A different one, of course. One who won't just give it away after ninety days."
She laughed. "That's totally okay. I don't want it back. I noticed it wasn't in the window months ago, and I started feeling funny about something, so I figured I'd call whoever had the dress and warn her."
"Warn her about what?" I asked.
It turned out Callie caught her new husband of two hours pressing his pelvis against a bridesmaid at the reception. He claimed to be drunk, but she'd had the marriage annulled. She brought the dress to the cleaners because she wanted it out of her apartment, but she couldn't bring herself to toss it in the garbage can. The gown had been worn in a cursed wedding.
"It has bad vibes," she said. "I thought whoever had it should know."
I couldn't help smiling. "I appreciate that. Are you sure you don't want it back? You could sell it. It's really gorgeous."
"I never want to see that dress again. Good riddance."
"Good luck out there," I told her.
"You too," she said.
I'd been to so many weddings that I had a closet full of c.o.c.ktail and black-tie dresses. For Emmalee's wedding, I decided on my favorite, a slinky pale pink satin dress with tiny pink rosebuds along the low V-neck. It was both vintage and modern at the same time. A little make-up, a spritz of Coco, and I was off to say goodbye to Emmalee, to wish her well in her new life.
When I called her to let her know I wasn't bringing a date, she'd said, "Oh, you poor baby! It'll be Valentine's Day, too. Don't you worry, hon. You'll be sitting at the singles table. You'll have at least three guys to dance with."
You're so thoughtful, Emmalee. I really don't know what I'd do without your friendship!
And so on Valentine's Day night, I, along with two hundred and fifty other guests, watched Emmalee walk down the aisle in her borrowed dry-cleaned dress with the bad vibes, her arm linked around her father's. Her dad was trying not to cry. So was Emmalee.
She looked so beautiful, her dark brown hair down in gentle waves, her hazel eyes sparkling more brightly than her two-carat diamond ring. The gown wasn't cursed, and it wouldn't curse Emmalee's wedding. It was Callie's ex-fiance who had bad vibes. Not the gown.
I knew I was saying goodbye, that I wouldn't see Emmalee again, and between that and the ceremony, the beautiful words from the rabbi and minister, out came the Kleenex.
In the receiving line, I hugged Emmalee. "You look so beautiful," I said. "I cried my eyes out during the entire ceremony."
Emmalee half rolled her eyes. "Miranda, this is my wedding day. Can't you put aside your own problems for a few hours and celebrate?"
I turned bright red. "No, Em, I meant"
But she was already on to the next guest, hugging, kissing. I hereby dub you b.i.t.c.halee!
I'd stay for one drink during the c.o.c.ktail hour and then I was outta there.
As I headed into the reception room, I noticed Gabriel's fiancee standing alone at the bar in her gorgeous red velvet bridesmaid dress. I spied the man himself with the other ushers on the other side of the room, the photographer ordering them around.
I stood next to her and ordered a gla.s.s of champagne. "I just wanted to say I was sorry for that day in the restaurant," I said, my eyes on the crowdand nowhere on Gabriel. "It was stupid and immature of me."
She lifted her chin. "Well, like I said, it got me what I wanted, so no harm no foul."
I nodded and sipped my champagne.
"Don't even think about asking Gabriel for a dance," she said, before turning on her three-inch heel and walking away.
Huh. I hadn't thought of it. Not once. In fact, I hadn't thought about Gabriel since I'd arrived. It had been Emmalee I'd been thinking about: the loss of our friendship, which had morphed into something else. Either she'd changed or I'd changed or we'd both changed. We'd never be friends the way we once were. Just as I would never be the Miranda who stood outside Gabriel's window, hoping his shadow could cross the light so I could see him just one more time.
I raised my gla.s.s to myself and took a sip of bubbly, then put down the gla.s.s and left, hoping Roxy might be in the mood for a movie.
Chapter fifteen.
Christopher On the way to Chappaqua on Friday night, I read the final section of the Courtship of the Century. The book would be a bestseller. I knew it. It had everything. It even made me want to be Beau, a perfect citizen, a perfect father, a perfect husband-to-be. I was so sick (read: jealous) of the sight of his perfect face in the photographs that in one copy of the ma.n.u.script I colored in his perfect teeth with black pen.
"It's spin," Lucy had reminded me at our last meeting. "It's pure spin, pure PR. It's all made up from carefully orchestrated previous interviews with the couple and their people. We're perfect examples of how you can never know what's going on in someone else's house, someone else's life. Even people who supposedly seem to have it all have problems."
When I arrived at the house, Jodie was cooking and Eye-in was making a bookcase. It was exactly like Jodie had always dreamed. Didn't seem to be any problems there.
"Christopher, come sit for a minute," Eye-in said. "There's something important that Jodie and I would like to discuss."
They want to kill me so they can marry immediately without Jodie committing bigamy? They want to move to California with Ava? They I sat on the far side from him and Jodie on an uncomfortable chair. Ava sat in her playpen across the living room, playing with her talking Elmo. Her stroller and diaper bag were at the ready as always by the door.
Make this quick, Eye-in.
He clasped his hands on his lap. "Jodie and I have been talking about our future, and we are definitely planning to marry. When things between you and Jodie are resolved, of course. In that event, I'd like to adopt Ava. I love her as though she were my own flesh and blood. I've known her from the minute she was born."
My blood boiled. "I don't recall seeing you in the delivery room, Eye-in. In fact, I believe I was there. Why? Because I'm her FATHER."
"Chris, calm down," Jodie said, shaking her head. "You always have to get all riled up."
"This isn't all riled up!" I shouted. "This is me controlling myself with every ounce of my being."
"Christopher," Eye-in said. "We're just asking you to think about it. Jodie and I like the idea of us all having the same last name. That's all. Jodie will be changing her name to mine when we marry, and it'll be nice if Ava has our last name, too."
Jodie smiled. "Ava Tarrington. Doesn't that sound elegant?"
I ignored that. "The answer is no."
"Chris, she's still your daughter no matter what her name is."
"Oh really?" I said, ready to KILL. "I heard the word adoption. That's not about changing her name. That's about changing her father. How dare you even ask such a thing?"