Measure of Love Page 5

  Arianna goes around the room, kissing a few people on the cheek, and then disappears into a walk-in closet as if swallowed by a large fabric-belching monster. She returns a few minutes later with an enormous clear canister of delicate white sequins and a second, smaller one of white seed beads. She throws both into a backpack, and we set off again, back onto the street.

  “Do you want to stop at Volt?” she asks as we pass the storefront on the way out of her office. There are two Volts in the city—one on the Upper West Side by the park and another here by the Garment District—and they were both recently written up as a feature in the New York Times Sunday magazine. They’re both plain coffeehouses, but their claim to fame is that they’ve had more couples meet their respective partners in the store than any other Manhattan business. Both locations are in a fierce competition with one another to lay claim to more marriages, and they keep a scoreboard on the wall behind the cash register. The New York Times said that it will feature the 500th couple and the Volt location that gets to claim them as the featured story in the wedding section. Though I’ll admit it to no one, I’ve swung by a Volt every once in a while this summer to see how close they’re getting to the magic number. As of last week, I noted when I swung in to get an iced mocha that the two stores are neck-in-neck with 423 and 425 couples-reaching-marriage respectively.

  I shiver under a blast of air conditioning as I examine the scoreboard. West Side location: 423. Garment District location: 426. I wonder which happy couple got married over the weekend, earning a number on the board.

  We get our drinks and find a table, Arianna easing her heavy backpack off her shoulder. She follows my eyes to the scoreboard. “You’re never going to get to be the 500th couple,” she remarks.

  “Too bad we didn’t meet in a coffeehouse. Anyway, Adam and I don’t really have any good pictures of ourselves if the New York Times wanted to use us for a feature.”

  “I’m sure they’re going to want a shot inside the winning Volt,” Arianna says. “Actually, I have a really weird Volt story.”

  “Does it involve becoming Vouple?” I tease, using the slang term the author coined to describe this strange phenomenon of all the Manhattanites pairing off in the coffeehouse.

  “Not really,” Arianna says, stirring a packet of sweetener into her iced tea. “Last week, I was at the cleaners trying to pick up some clothes, and the woman at the front of the line got into this huge argument with the cashier, insisting that they lost her dress. She freaked out, and the poor woman behind the cash register didn’t really understand English, which just made the woman more frustrated.”

  Arianna stares at the scoreboard behind the cash register and stirs her drink without sipping it. “The rest of us were just waiting in this now enormous line, trying to get them to table their argument so the cashier could at least clear out the rest of the store, but the woman wouldn’t budge. I was going to leave and come back at another time, but I really needed the skirt for that night.”

  I pick at the edge of my paper napkin, rolling it into a tight spiral. “What does this have to do with Volt?”

  “Well, I was waiting there, reading blogs on my phone, when this guy behind me muttered, ‘what I would give for that woman to have a narcoleptic episode right now.’ Which is really funny, right?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I guess.”

  “I thought it was funny,” Arianna tells me. “So I started talking with him while we were waiting in line. Twenty minutes later, the woman finally fumed out of the store—she still didn’t have her dress—and the cash register woman helped the rest of us who had waited. Which was really only two or three of us by that point. I was walking outside with my skirt, and the guy who had spoken to me in line asked if I wanted to get coffee. There was sort of this survived-a-bank-robbery feel to getting out of that store with the other people who had been there for the fight.”

  “But it wasn’t a bank robbery. It was just waiting in a line.”

  “I know that, Rachel. I’m just telling you how it felt. So I grabbed coffee with the man at Volt.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “Why would you get coffee with a stranger?”

  “I don’t know,” Arianna sighs. “Because we had just lived through what may be the most frustrating thirty minutes of my summer. Because he was funny and interesting to talk to for an evening. Because we were both thirsty and a block from this coffeehouse.”

  “But why would you choose Volt? In a city full of Starbucks, why would you choose the coffeehouse which is tied in everyone’s mind to dating and relationships?”

  “Because it was right here. What are you implying?”

  “That you’re dating Ethan!” I’m careful not to point out the fact that he’s my brother in this argument. It’s not about being defensive for my sibling; it’s about pointing out that Arianna is in a committed relationship and suddenly having coffee dates with strangers.

  “This wasn’t a date,” Arianna shoots back. “There was nothing romantic about it. I didn’t even get his number, and I didn’t give him mine. We even spoke about Ethan at one point. I did nothing wrong. I just grabbed coffee with this funny person I met at the dry cleaner. Can’t someone go out with someone of the opposite sex and not have it be a date?”

  “Yes,” I reason. “When there is already a connection and purpose to the get together. Like if you wanted to go out with Carey—is that the guy who does marketing at the loft? Going out with Carey makes total sense. You see each other at work, there’s a reason to get to know each other better. But going out with a stranger socially . . . that’s a date.”

  “It wasn’t a date,” Arianna repeats. “There was nothing romantic about it. I doubt he could even find me again if he wanted to. I don’t even know his last name.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s actually a comedy writer. For the Nightly,” Arianna tells me, a hint of pride in her voice as she names the number one comedy news show. I examine her face for any sign of blushing.

  “Yeah, it would be really hard to track him down,” I drawl. “I mean, there are just thousands of guys writing for the Nightly. I’m sure a quick Google search of his first name and the show’s name wouldn’t yield anything.”

  “Rachel, I don’t want to find him. I’m not interested in having coffee with him again. It was just something to do that one evening. Now I regret telling you if you’re going to be all weird about it.”

  “I’m not weird about it,” I insist. I swallow the question that almost came out of my mouth, the one that is really none of my business: does my brother know? “It just falls for me over the boundary of an emotional affair.”

  “It doesn’t for me,” Arianna says, finally sipping her drink. I notice that she has yet to actually look at me.

  The barista behind the counter sets down the phone, lets out a whoop, and goes to erase the board, writing up the current number as 427. I try to think of something else to say, but suddenly, all the words feel awkward in my mouth.

  THAT NIGHT, Adam and I go over to my parents’ house for takeout Chinese food. While everyone else is in the dining room, digging into the Kung Pao chicken, I break open one of the cellophane-wrapped fortune cookies at the kitchen counter, looking to a cookie for guidance.

  I stare down at the slip of paper: “You will meet an old friend soon.” Not exactly the wisdom I was searching for. Adam is certainly an old friend; perhaps the meeting soon will be at the chuppah for a second time. I sweep the remains of the cookie into the palm of my hand and deposit the pieces into the rubbish bin along with the useless fortune.

  I remind myself that I love Adam, at least that wasn’t a lie when I was talking to Arianna. I am deeply in love with my ex-husband. Again. But there is a niggling feeling in the back of my heart that keeps shouting at me that it has only been five months—five unbelievably quick months. Jumping
back into marriage again so soon will surely bring us back to our old habits, regardless of what that piece of paper taped to the back of the mirror says. And there’s no escape hatch this time; we certainly can’t get divorced again. First time, shame on us. Second time, become the laughingstock of both sides of the family as well as all of our friends. Really, there’s no reason why we can’t stay engaged for a year. Or two. I breathe a sigh of relief with this realization. I only agreed to marry him; we haven’t set a timeline.

  I enter the dining room and take the empty seat next to Adam. He sets down his fork and squeezes my leg under the table while my mother recounts a particularly bizarre case she has been working on as an immigration lawyer.

  “And it turns out,” my mother tells us, brandishing her fork in the air, “that he had lied, of course. So I had to start all the paperwork over again for a third time.”

  “That’s crazy, Nedra,” Adam says. My mother’s name sounds strange coming out of his mouth, both affectionately familiar and awkward at the same time.

  “It took up a good part of Tuesday,” she finishes. “Pass the rice, sweetheart.”

  My father passes her the carton of white rice, and I clear my throat, glancing at Adam out of the corner of my eye. “Actually, we have a funny story about doing things over. Adam and I are getting married . . . again.”

  My mother’s eyes blink as if her eyelids are trying to absorb the information instead of her ears, but my father immediately gets a huge grin across his face and claps Adam’s back in a half-hug, spraying him with a dollop of duck sauce. “Goldman marriage, take two!” he jokes.

  “When?” is the only word my mother says, and I instantly have a twisting feeling in my stomach, like a fish caught on a line, wriggling against confinement.

  “We haven’t really talked about that yet,” I tell her. “We may even wait a few years. Not rush things. Right, Adam?”

  But just as I’m saying that, he breaks in with his own thoughts. “It would be great if we could work it around the school schedule. New York right before Thanksgiving is perfect. Pumpkins, leaves on the ground in Central Park.”

  “I love the fall. Yes, so, we’ll get married one November,” I say.

  “This November?” my mother asks incredulously. I gape at Adam when he agrees, apparently having not heard that part where I talk about not rushing things.

  “Sure, this November,” he tells us.

  “You’re obviously not going to do a big wedding,” my mother says, more as a statement than a question. “You’ve already done the big wedding.”

  “I think it will be just be a handful of people,” I murmur.

  “Really?” Adam interjects. “I was picturing something much bigger. Penelope as the flower girl. Beckett as the ring bearer. White gown. The whole thing—send us off on marriage the right way.”

  “But we’ve already done that,” I tell him, acutely aware that my parents are now staring at us. Using sex to cover up the post-engagement awkwardness last night—once in the living room and once in the bedroom—means that we really, really, really didn’t talk about how Adam envisioned this whole wedding going down. It’s my own damn fault for not remembering how important it is to be on the same page before being interrogated by my parents. A year of being single has made us soft.

  “We did, and it was great, so why not do it again? Doesn’t everyone lament that they only get one wedding? That they have such a great time, and then it’s over, and you never get to do it again?” Adam laughs. “Well, we do get to do it again.”

  “He has a good point,” my father comments and turns toward my mother, taking her free hand playfully in his own. “Wouldn’t you want to do it all over again?”

  “Not a chance,” my mother says crisply. “Who has time to plan a wedding?”

  My mother’s comment isn’t really directed at her own fictional future nuptials. She has been outwardly disapproving of my decision to leave the New York Public Library and my graphic art position, a job she wasn’t thrilled with in the first place since it wasn’t erudite enough. But even worse than dropping out of a 9-to-5 job to become a writer is the fact that I work out of the apartment. In my pyjamas. Cooking and cleaning in between writing blog posts and working on book stuff. She doesn’t know what to make of my life, of the sea of time I float in, picking and choosing how I spend my day. She has told me that I come across as lacking ambition, despite the fact that I’m about to have a book released.

  There is clearly only one type of person who has time to plan a wedding, and that would be me, the one person at the table who lacks a job with a clear structure. I swallow hard, pushing my mother’s judgment out of my head, and try to smile at Adam. “Anyway, we should probably think about money. We don’t really have the means to pay for a big party right now.”

  “Are you kidding?” Adam says, spearing a piece of sesame beef. “My parents will be falling all over themselves to be involved in this. If there’s one thing Anita Goldman likes, it’s a party. Don’t worry about it.”

  At the end of the meal, Adam helps my father clear the table and wash the dishes. This is my parents’ longtime delineation of household chores. Anything deemed housework falls to my environmental lawyer father, almost as payback for the way past generations of men have kept women in the kitchen. Anything dealing with the bills or house improvement projects falls to my mother. It’s a good fit because she never shies away from an argument, and I can sense from the way she stiffly sits in her chair that she is gearing up for one with me much larger than she has ever had with the IRS or an appliance dealer.

  My mother wipes her mouth and sets down her napkin on the table. “Actually, Rachel, there’s something I wanted to show you on the computer. Something I bookmarked earlier today.”

  I follow my mother into her office, fully aware that there is nothing she wants to show me on the computer. This is simply where she feels most comfortable. If I needed to have an argument, I’d want to be sitting around in my apartment kitchen, preferably with some vegetables to chop to keep my hands occupied. But she likes to be surrounded by her books and papers and filing cabinets. She sits down in her computer chair and leans back, swiveling it around on the plastic board over the carpet in order to face me. I sink into the other empty chair in the room wordlessly.

  “Rachel, what are you doing?” she finally asks.

  “I’m getting married,” I shoot back. “I’m living my life. I’m cooking. I’m writing. I’m trying very hard to make this new career work. That’s what I’m doing.”

  My mother purses her lips and looks up at the ceiling. It doesn’t matter that I made the most incredible brisket for Passover. That I made a whole roasted chicken and carved it. She still can’t respect the idea of a woman cooking, of engaging in such a time waster when food is simply something that goes in your mouth, that gets chewed up and disappears. At the end of the day, she has a fat stack of papers; an article in a law journal. I have a pile of empty plates to wash.

  “Did you tell your sister and brother yet?” my mother asks. She must be incredulous that no one called her to give her a heads up.

  “I told Arianna this morning, so I’m sure that Ethan knows by this point. And I was going to call Sarah tonight when we got home. I’ve sort of been busy.”

  She rolls her eyes at the word “busy.” Apparently, in her world, a person like me can never actually be busy. And then her face softens, and she stares out the window at the hydrangea plant that is all but withered in the July heat. A few dusty purple blossoms are visible through the glass. “I love you, Rachel, and I want to make sure that you’ve thought this through. That you’re not leaping into things, taken with the moment. I know you’re excited to have him back, but you can take some time to live together, see if the changes you both think are there are actually permanent.”

  At the end of the day, I am my mother
’s daughter, and as much as I lament that she doesn’t understand me, we often end up thinking the exact same thoughts. The little girl in me wants to beg her to talk to Adam for me, to get him to understand what my mother and I both think is true—that this is moving way too quickly to be an intelligent decision. But I also know the damage that could come from inviting my mother into our relationship, for allowing her to try to fix things, for letting her see any weakness in my thought. My only option is to convince her that I think this is brilliant until the day when I actually believe that it is a good idea or I can convince Adam to slow this down. If I don’t, I’ll never be able to quell my own worries if my mother is going to fan the flames. I need to do this on my own.

  I wait until my mother is finally looking at me, and then I slide my rolling chair closer to her. She is wearing a jangly bead bracelet, courtesy of one of the numerous trips my parents have taken over the years to South America. There is something comforting in the familiarity of the sight—my mother’s uniform of black pants and a button down shirt. Tonight’s shirt is short sleeved and red, made out of a shiny material. Her bead bracelets. She has been wearing the same things since I was a little girl. She never changes.

  I squelch my doubts for the moment in order to sound believable as I lie to my mother. “I am absolutely, 100% certain that this is the right move. That we don’t need more time to think about whether or not we’re ready to jump back into marriage again.” I grasp mentally for a good reason for racing into marriage, for myself as much as for my mother. “If we’re moving quickly, it’s because we want children, and we know that time isn’t exactly on our side.”

  My mother nods, as if this reason clicks with her, flipping the maternal switch she tries very hard to keep turned off. That impulse that makes women bake cupcakes for bake sales and watch soccer games and drive endless loops between the school and the house. That impulse that is as soft as a hug, as useful as an apron. Even motherless women like me feel that switch flipped upward when we see a lost child crying for his parents or a little girl gasp as she lets go of her balloon. It’s that need to run forward and buy her a new one, to tie it carefully around her wrist so it doesn’t happen again. My mother may not understand my desire to cook, but my desire to parent she understands in some quiet portion of her heart.