Me vs. Me Read online

  Imagine if I’d said no? And the whole party was planned and Cam came home and had to face the entire neighborhood? Sorry, you can all go home. Nothing to celebrate. Pass the potato salad.

  The entranceway is littered with family photos and cheap shoes. I hate taking off my sandals, but Alice insists. If we were somewhere that had winter, meaning slush, I’d understand. But here the closest thing we get to slush is Ben & Jerry’s. Plus Alice has a white cockatoo named Ruffles that likes to pace the floor and gnaw at my pinkie toes whenever I’m barefoot.

  “Let’s see the ring!” Blair screams, running over to me. She’s twenty-nine, only a year older than Cam, and three months pregnant. With her third. She’s five foot seven and is currently nestling her hands over her swollen stomach. Her blond curly hair—Cam and Blair have Alice’s golden-blond curls—is tied into a severe bun behind her head. Her face has a leathery quality to it, as if she’s spent too many afternoons in the sun. Honestly, if I ran into her on the street, I’d peg her more as mid-to-late thirties.

  When I show her my hand, she squeals like a twelve-year-old. Suddenly, still in the entranceway, I’m surrounded by Cam’s aunts and cousins and cousins’-wives, and the questions are fast and furious.

  “What’s the theme of the wedding?” asks Blair.

  Theme?

  “Aren’t you thrilled?” asks Jessica (wife of a cousin).

  “When’s the date?” asks Leslie (another wife of another cousin).

  “Who are your bridesmaids?” asks Tracy, mother-in-law of Leslie, sister in-law of Alice.

  “Are you going to change your name?” Blair again.

  Even though their mouths continue moving, suddenly I no longer hear what they’re saying. They seem to be on mute. The entranceway has turned into a steam room, burning hot liquid into my nose and mouth and ears, and now, not only have I gone deaf, I can’t breathe.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I manage to say, pushing myself backward and tripping over a sneaker.

  I steady myself and take off for a moment of privacy. I remember too late that the door’s lock has been broken ever since Blair’s youngest got locked inside a few months ago and Cam had to bust it open. How can anyone who has so many parties have a broken lock on their guest-bathroom door? I know this is a close family, but jeez. You have to push out your foot to barricade anyone from barging in on you.

  How long can I stay inside before anyone notices I’m gone?

  After doing my business, I sit on the furry orange toilet seat cover, my foot extended and pressed against the door, and try to catch my breath. The entire bathroom is orange. Alice loves orange. And brass. The two-floor split-level home is covered in gleaming brass statues, pots and massive picture frames. Since Richard owns a framing store, everyone is up on the wall. Many times. Many, many times. Everyone except me. But now that I have a ring on my finger, I’m sure to get up there. Many times.

  Unfortunately, most of the brass has seen better days. The bathroom faucet is rusty, the toilet seat chipped. The orange carpet is squashed and stained. Alice fancies herself a Martha Stewart apprentice but can’t quite pull it off. It’s the antithesis of the übermodern houses my dad and mom used to favor. They had both been in love with chrome. Personally, I couldn’t care less about design. Whatever bedroom I occupied was usually a mess. It drove my parents—and now Lila—crazy.

  I stand up. In the Windex-streaked mirror, there are deep circles under my dark brown eyes. Otherwise, I’m generally a fan of this mirror, since it’s a skinny one. I look at least two sizes smaller than my size-eight frame. Almost lithe. And my skin always has a nice glow to it because of the reflection off the orange wallpaper. My brown hair is tinged red. I hold my breath and push down my shoulders, trying to imagine what I’ll look like in my wedding dress. I try to smile. I’ve always been told I have a great smile. Two dimples, nice lips, naturally white and perfectly sized teeth. It’s my best feature. And it was the best smile of my class, according to my high school yearbook.

  I hadn’t really thought about the whole planning-the-wedding part. All those details to work out…bridesmaids, location, ceremony…honeymoon? I’m looking forward to that part. I’d always planned on running off somewhere romantic for my wedding. Like Fiji. No muss, no fuss. Just bliss. Not that Alice would let me get away with that. Blair’s wedding was the biggest event this town had ever seen. And everything, everything, was done by hand. They hand delivered two hundred invitations so they wouldn’t get dented in the mail. Made fortune cookies from scratch with personalized messages for each and every one of her 375 guests.

  Is Alice expecting us to do something similar? Do parents save money for this? Is my dad supposed to pay?

  Budgets. Registries. Licenses.

  Headaches.

  Last year I did a story on the wedding industry and met plenty of bridezillas. That can’t be me. I don’t have the time. Actually, I do have the time, since I’m currently unemployed. But I won’t have the time if I’m going to be freelancing. Which I’ll have to do if I can’t get my job back.

  Please tell me both my parents won’t have to come to the wedding. After the graduation ceremony from hell, where my parents started screaming at each other in the auditorium and my mother threw a program book at my dad’s head, I was hoping they would never again opt to be in the same city, never mind the same room. My mother is going to ignore him. Or throw a cake at him. It’s going to be horrible. This whole wedding is a mistake. A big, fat—

  The door pushes open and I make a grab for it.

  “Sorry,” says Blair in her nasal voice, slamming it closed. Okay, I’ll be honest. I don’t love Blair. Of the whole crew, she annoys me the most. She’s so bossy. And opinionated. (“You don’t waste your money and buy your shoes at shoe stores, do you? You should really be buying them at Wal-Mart.”)

  “No problem,” I say.

  “Is Gabrielle still in there?” I hear Alice say.

  Blair: “Yup.”

  Alice: “Beautiful ring.”

  Blair: “Yes, it’s nice. Pear is the latest style you know. I told Cammy he just had to get it. He was going to buy it at some jeweler in Scottsdale, can you believe it? I turned him right around, and told him to go see Stan in Phoenix.”

  Alice: “I told him the same thing! You know he needs a haircut. So does Gabrielle.”

  Nag, nag, nag. It’s not hard to see where Blair gets it.

  Or Cam.

  I lift my thumbnail to my lips and start nibbling. Oh, no. I haven’t bitten since college. I should definitely not be starting again now. I take another nibble. I can’t help it.

  “…I don’t know why she won’t let me clean up her split ends for her….” Alice’s voice trails off as she heads back toward the party. I can’t help but study my split ends. Which I will never let Alice touch. My future mother-in-law refuses to see a stylist. She cuts her own hair, in this very bathroom. She cuts Blair’s hair, too. She’s always offering to cut mine, but I keep inventing excuses.

  I pull myself together, shoulders down, big smile, and rejoin the party.

  The group is already in the process of piling potato salad and tuna wraps onto their orange paper plates.

  “There you are,” says Cam, wrapping his arm around me. “Hungry?”

  “Definitely.” I love Alice’s tuna wraps. She’s a nag, yes, but a nag who can cook. She is constantly copying recipes for me. As if I could cook. Not.

  “So dear, what are you thinking, a May wedding?” asks Alice as she refills the (yes, orange) potato-salad bowl. “I know how much Arizona girls love a May wedding. Perfect weather to get married outdoors.”

  Blair got married on May fourth. Alice got married on May thirteenth.

  “I’m not really sure yet, Alice.” Um, we’ve been engaged for less than ten hours? Can I have some time to breathe, please?

  “I told Cammy that he should have proposed months ago,” she continues. “So we’d have more time to plan, but did he listen to me? Do
es he ever? No. Now we only have six months to pull it all together.”

  “Mom, six months will be plenty,” Cam says.

  Hello? Have we picked May? Did that decision happen while I was in the bathroom?

  Alice shakes her head from side to side. “Gabrielle, I tried getting in touch with your mom to invite her today. But she didn’t return my call. Is she out of town?”

  My mother? Here? Thank God she’s out of town. I don’t know what she’d make of this quasi-Brady bunch, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “She’s doing some work in Tampa,” I say.

  I catch a look between Alice and Blair. They’ve never said anything outright, but I get the feeling that they don’t approve of my mother’s hectic career, her men, her marriages. “Ah, I see,” Alice says. “Well, when she gets back, I’d like the three of us to get together for tea. We should put our heads together and start planning. When will she be back home? Perhaps we can have a girls’ night this week?”

  Is she kidding me? My mother? Here? What if she throws one of the brass statues? Even without my father as a target, she’s always throwing something at somebody. I’m not sure how’s she going to react to Alice. I can’t quite picture her hand-making fortune cookies. Throwing the cookies, possibly.

  “She’s very busy,” I say. “It’s hard for her to get away.” Which is true. My mother is not in the best place in her life right now. She’s an entrepreneur and is always investing in the next “big” thing. Unfortunately, she loves start-ups, even though they don’t always love her back. Last year, she lost a mint and had to sell her Scottsdale house and move to a small condo in Phoenix. Right now she has her eye on some business opportunity in Tampa. Which is why she didn’t freak out when I told her I was moving to New York. She thinks we both have had enough of the dry heat.

  Alice rubs her hands together. “I bet she can’t wait to dig her hands into the planning!”

  “Um…I haven’t told her yet.”

  Up shoot Alice’s penciled-in eyebrows.

  When would I have found time to tell her? This kind of news takes more than the two seconds I had to myself while I was in the bathroom.

  Alice fidgets with her hair. “Talk to her soon, please. We need to get cracking. I’ve already spoken to the church and told them to hold May sixth.”

  Dread sets in. My mom and I declared ourselves agnostics, but we still fast every Yom Kippur. Just in case. I’m not religious, but I absolutely can’t get married in a church. And what about those wafers? Do they come in kosher? Do people actually eat wafers, or is that just in the movies? Are they carb-free? My mom is always on a diet. Oh God, my mom is going to throw the wafer.

  Cam sees the panic on my face and quickly adds, “Mom, we haven’t decided on St. George’s. I told you that.”

  “Calm down, Cammy. You don’t have to make a decision this second. But it is a family tradition, and it would make me very happy.”

  For someone not of the tribe, she sure has the Jewish guilt thing down pat. She could put my mom to shame.

  “And May six is the perfect weekend,” she declares. “Not that I’m pressuring, I don’t want to pressure, but Aunt Zoey and Uncle Dean bought tickets in from Salt Lake for the whole family.”

  But no pressure.

  Cam looks exasperated. “Why would she already buy her ticket?”

  Alice shrugs and stares at her plate. “American Airlines was having a sale.”

  I don’t believe this. The relatives bought their plane tickets before I even knew we were getting married. Is this normal? This is not normal. I know my own family history makes it difficult for me to understand normalcy, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. I should tell her to back off. Step back, missy.

  The words are at the tip of my tongue, but they don’t come out.

  “Anyway,” Alice says, “let’s talk about colors for the wedding. I think orange would be beautiful—”

  “Let me just get something to drink,” I say backing away. Vodka, perhaps. In one of Alice’s orange-tinted tumblers.

  “You know I’m not converting, right?”

  “You don’t have to convert to get married at St. George’s,” Cam says. We’re lying in his king-size bed, wrapped in his sheets.

  “I don’t even know if I want a big wedding. I always pictured myself getting hitched somewhere cool. Like barefoot on a beach in Fiji. Or at a campsite in Kenya. Or a mountain in Nepal.”

  “My family can’t afford to go to Nepal.”

  Bingo. “Who says our families have to come? I’ve always wanted to elope. So romantic.”

  “Watching me get married will be a huge joy for them. I can’t take that away. This is the moment they’ve been looking forward to their whole lives.”

  They could probably use a hobby. I lean up on my elbow and place my hand firmly on a patch of blond fuzzy chest hair. “Is this about them or us?”

  “You know what I mean. I’m sure your family would be devastated if they weren’t there. Don’t you want your dad to walk you down the aisle?”

  “Only if my mother is at the other end of the aisle at the time—and the aisle is five miles long.”

  He squeezes my hand. “What did your parents say? Were they excited?”

  Oops. I knew there was something I’d forgotten to do. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”

  His eyes cloud over. “How could you not want to talk to them? Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “We’ve been busy,” I say and pull him closer. I squeeze my feet between his knees to warm them up.

  “Phone them first thing in the morning. What if they hear from someone else?”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah? Like who? The National Enquirer? ET?”

  “Your feet are so dry,” he says, wriggling. “Why don’t you use lotion? It’s right by the bed.”

  “Because I don’t feel like it.” Nag, nag, nag. I pull my legs away. “Would you stop telling me what to do?”

  “I didn’t realize you were a fan of dry feet.” He nuzzles his chin into my neck. “I’m sorry,” he says, and sounds like he means it. “And we can invite whomever you want to the wedding. And dress them in whatever color you want. It’s about us, not my mom. Now give me a Gabby smile.”

  I smile. How can I stay mad at him? “Sounds good to me.” I kiss his forehead and rub my scaly heel against his calf.

  He runs his fingers through my hair. “But it would mean a lot to my family if it was at St. George’s.”

  You’ve got to be kidding. “We’ll see.” I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

  “Love you.”

  “You, too.”

  I close my eyes, squeezing the annoyance out like the last drop of toothpaste. I do love him. But is my whole life going to be about bowing to his mother’s wishes? Did I make the wrong choice? I toss and turn, and finally drift off to sleep.

  I’m awakened by blaring music, swirls of green hot light and another intense headache. Ow! What is wrong with me? I seriously have to see a doctor. My brain feels like it’s imploding.

  “Turn off the alarm,” I mumble to Cam, wiping drool from my lips. Lovely. Head hurts. Needles in eyes.

  The music is shrieking, “Let’s do the time warp again!”

  “Cam! Turn it off! It’s Sunday!” He’d better not be going into work today. I’ll kill him.

  “Well, I was walking down the street just having a think, when a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink—”

  I groan and open my eyes. Strange. My headache is gone.

  As is my fiancé. The spot next to me is empty. “Cam?” I wonder aloud. Where is he?

  “He shook me up, took me by surprise—”

  Why are Cam’s sheets pink? Am I…Is this…

  I’m back in my own bed.

  3

  Splitsville

  The alarm clock, my Hello Kitty alarm clock, says 6:30 a.m.

  I stifle a scream.

  I officially need to be institutionalized. What is wrong with me? I stare up at my ceili
ng in despair. Maybe there’s someone I can call? 1-800-CRAZY? I kick off my covers and peruse my bedroom. How did I end up back here when I went to sleep at Cam’s? I creak open my door and tiptoe around the apartment. The lights are off and Lila’s door is shut. My two red packed suitcases are in the center of the room, mocking me.

  When did I come home? How much vodka did I have at Alice’s?

  The apartment looks just as it did in my dream last night. After I told Cam I was moving to New York.

  Am I dreaming now? As I search the apartment for some sort of sign, my gaze lands on my left hand. My now diamond-less hand.

  What happened to my ring? Why am I back home? Was yesterday a dream? Did I never go to Alice’s? Am I moving to New York?

  I need to speak to someone. I need to speak to Cam. I race over to the living-room phone and dial his number. It rings once.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Cam. I can’t come to the phone…”

  Why isn’t he answering? He’s supposed to be my fiancé. A fiancé should answer even if he’s sleeping. I try to squash my rising hysteria. Something is wrong with my brain. I’m delirious. Maybe I have a brain tumor? I hang up and dial my mother’s hotel number. And then I remember that it’s 6:30 a.m. and hang up before she answers. And then I remember that she’s in Florida and it’s therefore 8:30. Or is it 9:30? I never remember. I call again.

  “The hotel has caller ID,” she says. “It’s not nice to prank call your mother.”

  “Hi, Mom?” I sit on the couch and try to keep the rising hysteria out of my voice.

  “Oh, God, Gabby, you’re not going to believe the day I’m having.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “Well, me first,” she says. “I was woken up at four this morning by the fire alarm. I had to put on my bathrobe, and wait in the lobby. Naturally it was a false alarm, and a big waste of my time and energy. Anyway, you just caught me. I was on my way to work.”