Measure of Love Read online

  I stare at my plate, suddenly not at all interested in either trying the meal nor photographing it for the blog. It seems unfathomable to be sharing a table with a couple who are so blind in their rage that they would describe their son’s childhood as a waste. The other couple, silent through this whole exchange, looks stricken. Even Oona—normally flitting around the table like a greenhouse butterfly—is staring sadly at the UN worker’s face, her mouth a straight, disappointed line.

  “It is very hard to hear you call your son’s entire childhood a waste,” I say softly, speaking more to my grilled salmon. “There are so many people who don’t have children—who can’t have children—who would do anything to have a child to parent. It is hard to hear you not appreciating what you have.”

  The spy man scrapes his chair back, tossing his napkin next to his untouched meal. “We’re not hungry tonight,” he says, his wife following his lead. “Thank you, everyone, and we’ll see you next week.”

  Alex the chef rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand as they slam out of the cooking school. “I think we should go too,” the poem transcriber says softly. “I’m sorry we caused this tension.”

  “Please stay,” Jared implores. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “I am sorry that I opened the door to that temper tantrum with a question,” Oona sighs. “You can never predict what people will do. People are the most wonderful and terrible animals on earth.”

  After another minute or two of awkwardness, everyone recovers simply because Xavier commands us to recover. “It’s selfishness,” he says, winking at me. “I want to try this salmon if I picked out all of those bones. I will be angry if all of this food goes to waste.”

  I pick up my camera and snap a few close-ups utilizing the macro feature on my point-and-shoot. I like that the cooking school uses plain white plates and plain white linens. It makes photographing all the dishes simple.

  I set back down the camera and take a bite of my fish. It has gotten cold, but the marinade is still a perfect blend of salty and sweet, the soy sauce practically candied by the grill. I look away from the conversation now ramping up again, a deconstruction of a movie Oona and Xavier saw at a film festival—a safe topic after the pre-meal verbal storm. Adam has yet to touch the food on his plate, his face a mixture of seriousness and anxiety.

  “Are you okay?” I mouth.

  Adam nods once or twice, looks at the poet, and then back at his plate. He finally picks up his fork and starts shoveling in his food without speaking, something that makes me suddenly feel decidedly uneasy. I think back through all the words I’ve spoken since we left the school kitchen. I mentioned that some people desperately would like to parent a child . . . did I freak out Adam with stating this publicly? Even if he brought up the topic of children earlier in the evening?

  He looks so uncomfortable pushing the food around his plate that I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about children in general. I mean, after seeing how gut-wrenching something as simple as school applications can be, I’m not sure I’m up to the task. But I’m also not the one who started this conversation in the first place. I only answered Adam’s question, which makes me feel as if I were told that I passed a test only to discover later that the teacher changed all the answers and has now demoted me to a failure.

  The group never quite recovers from the argument, and when Alex tells us to leave our plates on the table instead of busing them, we all comply, beating it out of the school in twosomes with the look of mourners exiting a funeral. Adam and I walk home, barely saying anything, the only indication that things are somewhat okay between us is the fact that Adam takes my hand as we walk back through the park.

  We enter the apartment in a comfortable quiet, and I decide not to broach the topic of babies again—to not pick at the subject by asking if his silence is tied to how many times I asserted tonight that I want to be a parent. Maybe he’s just thinking about what an ass the man-who-looks-like-a-bad-guy is. Maybe he’s just constructing imaginary blog posts in his brain, as I often do when I get quiet on a long subway ride. In fact, I would love to post about this evening, but one of the drawbacks to having a popular blog is that everything you write could possibly be read by the subject. And I’d hate to be on the receiving end of the man-who-looks-like-a-bad-guy’s wrath.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I tell Adam, dropping my purse on the floor.

  “You are?” Adam asks in a voice that makes me wonder if I unknowingly just said something completely different from the fact that I intend to bathe.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask him.

  “I’m fine.”

  Despite my internal promise not to pick at the subject, I put on my best I’m-seriously-not-pressuring-you-for-a-baby face and lean on the kitchen counter. “You’ve been sort of weird since the couple left.”

  “No, I haven’t,” he insists. “That was really awful, right?”

  I nod in agreement, study his features for a moment to see if they reveal anything happening internally, and unable to discern the root of his weirdness, retreat to the bathroom to shower the experience out of my pores before I sit down to write my blog post.

  What I really want to write about is whether every other male in the world gets this weird once they bring up the topic of babies. It’s like an arachnophobe begging to be brought to the science museum and then running like crazy once they actually have to face the spiders in their glass cages. If men don’t want to talk about babies and commitment and all other things that they see as taking away their freedom, they shouldn’t broach the topics in the first place. I’m certain that if I post about it, I’ll get 800 comments of agreement from other women, all saying the same thing: their boyfriends bring up the topic of marriage and then start pushing them away, their husbands bring up the topic of babies and then act weird the rest of the evening.

  I am rinsing the conditioner out of my hair when I hear Adam enter the bathroom and sit down on the top of the closed toilet seat, one of my least favorite things that he does. I don’t want to have a conversation while the water is running, and I can barely hear. And beyond that, I hate stepping out of the shower, dripping and water-spotted, and have someone looking at me before I can wrap a towel around myself.

  I don’t say anything to acknowledge him until I’ve turned off the shower head. “Do you need something?” I call out through the curtain.

  Adam is silent, which makes my body go still, as if my arm hairs can sense that something is very, very off. I have a sickening feeling that he’s going to tell me that he has suddenly realized that this is all wrong. That one of us needs to move out again—find somewhere else in the city to set up shop and rebuild our lives for the second time in the last 500 or so days.

  My hands start shaking as I wring the water out of my hair, trying to control my breathing because I am suddenly becoming enraged. Absolutely, beyond-able-to-calm-myself-down enraged. How dare he bring up babies and then act uncomfortable? I call out his name a second time, noting how shaky my voice sounds, and I take a moment to internally remind myself that I am in the right. Adam is in the wrong, and I am in the right.

  When he doesn’t answer again, except with a small throat-clearing cough, I take a deep breath and pull back the curtain to, first and foremost, yell at him about starting any sort of serious conversation with me when I’m showering, and then point out that he is the one who brought up children tonight, so he has no right to turn commitment phobic.

  Adam is holding my towel and hands it to me so I can wrap it around my body, tucking the end sloppily over my right breast and crossing my arms to hold it up. I scowl at him and then look at the door.

  “You know I don’t like it when you come in the bathroom when I’m getting out of the shower,” I tell him.

  “I know that,” he agrees. “But technically, you were still in the shower.”


  “That’s even worse.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he says softly, looking down at the curled edge of the bath mat. “I thought it just annoyed you when I timed it as you were opening the curtain.”

  “What do you want?” I ask, wiping a rivulet of water off of my forehead before it drips onto my nose. “Can this conversation wait until I’m dressed?”

  “No,” Adam admits. “It can’t wait. I know it has only been five months or so, but I really don’t want to wait any longer. I wanted to do this earlier tonight while we were at the cooking class, but everything got messed up.”

  He digs into his pocket and takes out a red silk pouch. A very Me&Ro-looking red silk pouch, the kind that jewelry from my favorite jewelry store comes from—the sort that Adam has never purchased for me in the past. In fact, the only item I own is the ring I bought for myself to replace my wedding band, the very same ring that Adam gently tugs off my finger, his own hands shaking so violently that I’m afraid he’s going to tear off my digit in the process.

  He pulls out of the pouch three hammered gold rings—simple bands with no adornment. Everything is starting to sound very far away, almost tinny, and I am acutely aware of how steamy the bathroom is as I suddenly can’t breathe. I hold onto Adam’s shoulder for support, because in the meantime, he has sunk down to the bath mat, his knee holding down the curled edge.

  “The first band is for our first marriage,” he says carefully, slipping it onto my finger. “The second band is for our time apart. Our divorce is part of who we are now as a couple, and I like to think that the break has healed us into a stronger relationship. This last band is for our future. Knowing how the world feels when I’m apart from you, I cannot imagine living one more second of my life without us permanently tied to each other. Rachel Goldman, will you marry me again and continue to be Rachel Goldman?”

  Adam looks up at me, his dark brown eyes unblinking. I focus on the tiny gap between his eyelashes on his lower right lid. It is barely noticeable; I doubt anyone else in his life has ever paid attention to this detail. But I have. I consider my hand, the one gripping his shoulder. Time passes in blinks. In tiny jumps from moment to moment, object to object. He’s waiting for my answer, his eyes never leaving my face as mine travel around the room.

  I do what every deer-in-headlights woman does, letting her voice go to autopilot, letting her lips move by their own volition. I say yes.

  Chapter Three

  ARIANNA AND I both stare at my hand while we sip our coffee. The rings are fairly unremarkable—just plain, hammered gold bands—so we’re not looking at them because we can’t get over the design or the cut of a precious stone. We’re looking at them because we don’t know what else to say. We’re letting our eyes do all the speaking.

  Finally, Arianna sighs and flicks at the bands with the tip of her nail. “Do you think you’ll wear white?”

  “Do you mean like an enormous meringue gown with a nine-foot train?” I ask.

  “I just mean that we all know that you’re not a virgin, you know,” Arianna points out. “The whole white thing? Virginity? Purity?”

  “I certainly wasn’t a virgin on my first wedding night!”

  “I know that, and you know that, and the rest of the guests probably knew that too. But that’s part of the charade of first weddings—we all still pretend that the bride is pure and innocent. But everyone knows that you’ve already been married.”

  “I’ll wear something simple.” I shrug. “Maybe pale pink or off-white.”

  “But,” Arianna continues, “that sort of ranks your weddings, doesn’t it? I mean, you did this huge, gorgeous affair the first time around. Don’t you think it speaks volumes if you do an understated pink cocktail dress for this wedding?”

  “Jesus Christ, what do you want me to do?”

  “I just want you to do what will make you happy,” Arianna tells me. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate, pointing out all the things you maybe haven’t thought about in agreeing to marry the very same person for a second time.”

  “Liz Taylor did it,” I insist. “I think she did. Or someone else famous did it if it wasn’t her.”

  “It was Elizabeth Taylor,” Arianna agrees. “To Richard Burton. Two times.”

  “And she had a pretty fantastic life, right? No one batted an eye over her walking down the aisle twice to the same man.”

  “Actually,” Arianna says, wrapping her hands around her coffee mug, “I think the fact that we know about it means that people did remark on it. I’m sure if you wanted to go bury your nose in some microfiche, you could find articles written at the time stating that Liz Taylor was an idiot.”

  “You think that I’m an idiot?” I ask, my voice sounding much smaller than it usually does. Arianna looks as if I’ve slapped her, and she sets down her coffee mug so she can squeeze both my shoulders simultaneously.

  “Rachel Goldman, I don’t think you’re an idiot. I think you’re an intelligent woman who knows exactly what she wants out of life; who is in a fantastic place right now in terms of her career and relationship and being self-assertive. I think you’re in love and that marriage is the next logical step for you. Liz Taylor on the other hand . . . everyone knew that Richard was terrible for her.”

  “I am in love, and it is the next logical step,” I say defensively, my shoulders aching a bit from Arianna’s firm grasp. She lets go and picks her cup of coffee back up. That is the truth: I am in love, and it sort of is the next logical step, though my gut reaction is making me think that maybe I hoped that there wouldn’t be a next step. That we’d just continue living in unwedded bliss indefinitely, both of us comfortable with this plan because we remember how awful divorce can be from the first time around. We’d have a kid, and we wouldn’t even need to stress out over whose last name to give her. Twenty-four hours ago, my present and future were all kinds of perfect. And now, instead of feeling as if I’m at one of those Bali beaches you see on the cover of travel magazines with the unnaturally blue water, I feel as if someone has just pushed me off the high dive, and I’m sputtering in the community pool. It’s still water, but that’s about all the two locations have in common.

  “Fantastic!” Arianna says cheerfully. She clinks her coffee cup into mine. “If I had any reservations at all about this union, it would be the fact that you described yourself as a deer in headlights when you said yes to the proposal.”

  “Well, it’s all very new. And sort of sudden. I think if we had discussed it more beforehand, I would have known that I wanted to say yes. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense since we were married once before,” I backtrack, not knowing why I’m lying to Arianna of all people. “I was just thrown off. He had been acting so weird, and I chalked it up to the baby talk on the way to class or to that situation with the other couple in class. I had no clue that he had planned to propose during dinner if that other couple hadn’t ruined everything. He had this poem picked out to read, and he had champagne chilling in the classroom refrigerator. Speaking of which, we should probably fetch that at some point.”

  Arianna glances at her watch and sets her untouched cup of coffee in the sink. “We can grab it on our way to the loft. I have to pick up five pounds of sequins.”

  “On second thought, I’ll let Adam schlep the champagne back across the park. Though I’ll tag with you to see what five pounds of sequins looks like.”

  “It looks like dread in tangible form. I have to hand-sew sequins onto the bodice of this evening gown. It is the most tedious job in the world.”

  I grab my purse and slip my sandals back on, finding myself touching the back of the rings with my thumb, as if I’m checking to make sure they’re still there. Did he actually place them on my hand last night? Did I actually say yes instead of something more along the lines of “can we talk about this? Or take a week to think this through? Or wh
y the hell do we have to change things when I like our life together as is?”

  We take the elevator down and step outside into the stagnant New York City summer air, breathing in the stench of the tourists and bus exhaust and rotting garbage.

  “Best city in the world,” Arianna tells me as if she can read my mind. We walk to the loft, navigating a bodega owner spraying down his patch of sidewalk while sidestepping around the nannies and their charges coming home from a sweaty trip to the park.

  If used as a normal living space, the loft would be a gorgeous, open apartment with polished wood floors and austere white walls with a breathtaking view of the nearby park. As is, it is a cramped workspace filled with rolling garment carts, cluttered fabric cutting tables, and closets with barely closeable doors. There are usually fourteen or so people all competing for space to complete their work, music blaring from a chalk-dusted, ancient-looking CD player (when we walk in, it is playing a club-style remix of Katy Perry tunes), and the ground is littered with glittering pins. There are always invisible threads of fabric floating through the air, and they collect inside my nostrils, causing me to not only sneeze, but to find microscopic bits of fabric in my Kleenex. Please don’t ask me how I know this.

  I normally like to visit Arianna’s loft because there are samples lying around that people have picked up at various shows. After you’ve worked in the industry for a few years, you cease to be enthralled with the majority of samples, and most are left on the grabs table for the taking. In fact, everyone who works for Arianna’s designers have been in the industry for decades—Davis and Howe don’t tend to work with people who haven’t paid their dues. Therefore, the grabs table is usually fairly full of random swag and samples.

  But today the loft looks like the pied piper, merrily stealing my friend away. The music is making it sound like a party, a diversion from the daily grind of changing diapers. It’s a harbor in the harried sea of naptime work-bursts. Even I can see how working here is preferable to being home, trying to string sequins onto the bodice of a dress while ensuring said sequins don’t go into the digestive tract of your adorable child. But just because I understand and agree doesn’t mean that I like it.