The Breakup Club Part 14

We ordered another bottle of wine. We picked at our dinners. We ate all the rolls and bread sticks and asked for more. We watched our coworkers dance.

"So tell us something surprising about yourself, Lucy," I ventured.

"My husband's New Year's resolution is to leave me," Lucy said.

Miranda spit out her wine. Christopher and I just gaped.

Lucy took a deep breath. "I found it written down on a piece of paper in his pants pocket. He actually wrote it on a prescription pad, as though it would cure his misery. Resolution: Leave Lucy."

"Oh G.o.d, Lucy," Miranda said, grabbing her hand. "Why didn't you tell me? I'm so sorry. When did this happen?"

Lucy shrugged. "The night he flipped out over the paper plates and flung the turkey off the table."

"My mother did that once," Christopher said. "She spent a hundred hours cooking, and then one snide comment from my father and she picked up the platter and upended it on the floor by his feet. We went out to dinner every year after that."

"So we're not the only crazy family out there," Lucy said to Miranda.

While the band broke into a terrible rendition of "Celebrate" by Kool & the Gang, the four of us sat silently watching.

"You know, Roxy," Miranda said with a smile, "I'm not sure you qualify for this table. Table One is clearly reserved for dumpees."

"A breakup is a breakup," Lucy pointed out. "I know that, and I haven't even been officially broken up with yet."

"And I was stood up for my first date in twenty years," I reminded Miranda. "That gives me special a.s.sociate status." I'd glanced around a couple of times for Harrison, but thankfully he never did show uphis M.O.

Miranda laughed. "Agreed. All rightie, then, people. The first meeting of the Breakup Club is officially called to order. And I order another round."

"Hey, I'm the boss," Christopher said with a smile.

Lucy held up the last bread stick. "Yeah, but I'm Miranda's sister and Roxy's boss. And I concur. Another round. With one caveat. Nothing said here tonight leaves this table."

"That's right," Christopher said. "It's the holiday party and it's tradition to drink too much and act like an a.s.s. So anything said here tonight gets forgotten at midnight. Deal?"

Four gla.s.ses clinked.

Chapter nine.

Lucy If Larry were good at reading signs, he'd have noticed that when I arrived home from the holiday party, I was uncharacteristically tipsy and chatty and sitting next to him, thigh to thigh, something I never did. Something we never did.

He didn't notice. Especially because his attention was on popping pistachio nuts into his mouth and watching a Stupid Pet Tricks segment on Letterman while reading the Times.

I, on the other hand, was suddenly great at reading signs. For example, when I sat down next to him, the sharp edge of a pistachio sh.e.l.l cutting into my thigh (Larry was allotted thirty pistachio nuts a day on South Beach and left the sh.e.l.ls everywhere), I immediately sensed his discomfort.

He's having an affair, I knew with absolute conviction.

But maybe not! I thought with equally absolute conviction.

Then why hadn't he noticed my new look? Not that my subtle attempts at sprucing up counted as a new look. I would not compromise myself to keep my husband, so I was compromising at compromising. I was trying, that was all. I'd bundled the sweats and stacked them up on my closet shelf. I'd sorted through my underwear drawer and thrown out all the comfortable granny panties. I borrowed Amelia's hair gel. And lip gloss. I stopped wearing my white sneakers. And my clogs. And my fisherman sweater. If he noticed, he didn't say anything. The only thing he did seem to notice was that the paper plates were history, even the everyday ones I used for bagels and toast and grilled-cheese sandwiches. That he'd noticed.

A few days ago, when we were all actually in the kitchen together, he'd picked up his cloth napkin (I also chucked our perfectly good paper napkins and resurrected the cloth ones we'd gotten as a wedding gift and rarely ever used) from his place setting. "Now this is a well-set table," he said, nodding at the matching place mat.

Amelia looked at him as though he'd grown an extra head. Then she wolf-whistled at me. "Wow, Mom, you look nice! Daddy, doesn't Mom look nice?"

"What, hon?" Larry had said, looking up from his New York Times. "Yes, Amelia, you look very nice," he said. "That's a new shirt, right?"

Amelia rolled her eyes and wound her finger in front of her ear.

"I have a performance review coming up," I'd said. "So I'm just trying a bit." Look at me, dammit, I willed Larry. Look. Notice. I'm your wife.

But he didn't look up. "I'm sure you'll do fine, dear." He stood, brought his dishes to the sink, kissed Amelia goodbye and left.

Blind and deaf.

"Why didn't he kiss you goodbye?" she'd asked.

"It's just the bad carb withdrawal," I'd a.s.sured herand myself.

She'd made a snorting noise and went back to studying for her history test.

I willed myself to forget all that, but then made the mistake of glancing at the TV. My husband couldn't possibly be more interested in a trained German shepherd than in me, could he?

The three gla.s.ses of wine, the shot at the bar and the Cosmopolitan I'd had had surely done awful things for my reputation at work yet wonderful things for my bravado. I took off my jacket, trailed my hand up Larry's thigh and began kissing his neck. "You missed a great party," I said. "I wish you were there."

That was true. On both counts. I'd had a great time, even if I was dimly aware I'd be mortified in the morning when I realized what embarra.s.sing personal details I'd shared with the three people with whom you should never share such personal details, embarra.s.sing or otherwise: your boss, your direct report, your sensitive baby sister.

And I did wish Larry had been there. Sitting next to me, his arm slung casually across the back of my chair. Shaking hands with those he'd met over the years. My husband. My support. My best friend.

Former support. Former best friend.

I glanced at the row of photographs lining the mantel of our fireplace, so many photographs of Larry and me. Our wedding photos, pictures of us with Amelia at various ages. Family functions. Larry and me. Me and Larry.

He smiled at me without looking away from the screen, where a black and gray puppy was squeezing mustard onto hot dogs. "Glad you had fun."

I trailed my hand along his thigh and began kissing his neck, which did seem less jowly now. Or was that the last rum and c.o.ke talking?

"Luce, honey," he said, removing my hand. "I'm trying to watch this."

"You'd rather watch Stupid Pet Tricks than have s.e.x?" I asked, unb.u.t.toning my blouse. "Surely not," I added in as seductive a voice as possible and straddled him.

He immediately pushed me off him. "Lucy, I said I was watching this! And you wrinkled the newspaper!"

There was that pressure in my chest again. I blinked back the sting of tears. For a moment I was tempted to take the vase of flowers off the table and smash it into the television screen and grab his Times and shred it into a thousand pieces, but of course I did not. I might have been tipsy, but I wasn't out of my head.

For a moment I wished that I were, though. So I could forget how he'd just made me feel.

"I didn't get the promotion," I said, my heart feeling smaller and smaller and smaller with every beat. I hadn't told Larry the bad news the day I'd gotten it myself; I'd been unable to talk about it. "Futterman gave it to Christopher."

"What, hon?" Larry said distractedly, looking from the TV to me. "I wasn't paying attention." The TV won again as a cat played a great game of golf with her paw.

"Nothing," I said, standing up and heading for Amelia's bedroom. Only that our marriage is clearly over. That's all.

I peered into my daughter's bedroom. She was sleeping, a long light brown curl across her face. I tiptoed in and brushed back the curl and kissed her forehead, then sat down on the little white vanity stool next to her bed and watched her breathe. When that had worked its yoga effects, I went back to Larry on the couch and sat down next to him. It was time.

I took a deep breath and held it. "Larry, I've been thinking about making a list of New Year's resolutions. Have you made any?"

He cracked open a pistachio with his teeth and popped it in his mouth. "Luce, I'm really trying to watch this, okay? Anyway, you know I never keep my resolutions."

I woke up with a killer hangover. Had I announced to my boss, direct report and baby sister that my husband's New Year's resolution was to leave me? Yes, I had. Take blanket. Pull over head. Do not emerge.

At nine o'clock, I was still under the covers, my head pounding too hard for me to even think about moving, rising, making my way two feet to the bathroom for the Tylenol. And then of course the phone rang so loud in my right ear that I saw stars.

"'Lo," I mumbled into the receiver.

"Lucy, it's Roxy," came Roxy's chirpy voice. How was she so cheerful so early? "Are you feeling all right?"

"Fine," I said. "Just running a little late." The longer I stay in bed, the longer you'll all have to forget everything that came out of my mouth.

"I'm glad to hear it, because Edwin asked me to give you a call and make sure you were coming in. He told me to tell you he's scheduled an important meeting at ten."

Figured. "A staff meeting?"

"No, just you, Christopher, Miranda and me."

I sat up. "What's the meeting about?" Had I stripped and danced on the bar? Had I told Futterman he was a s.e.xist chauvinist piglet for promoting Christopher and not me or Wanda? Had we all made incredible fools of ourselves in ways we forgot and were being called to task for inappropriate behavior at the company holiday party?

"Sorry, I don't know," Roxy said. "He just told me that it was very important and about something very exciting for Bold."

Oh. So we weren't in trouble. But why the four of us? I understood me and Roxy, since she reported to me. And me and Christopher, since I reported to him now. But why Miranda?

I made it in to the office with two minutes to spare. At the sight of me, Roxy hurried into the kitchenette and handed me a mug of coffee as we entered the conference room. Christopher and Miranda were sitting at the long wood table, staring into s.p.a.ce and tapping pens against Bold Books notepads and sipping steaming coffee. Christopher looked a bit tired, but he was so annoyingly good-looking that being bleary-eyed didn't affect him. Miranda yawned twice in the same thirty seconds, but she didn't look the way I felt. And Roxy was as professional and pert as ever.

Maybe it was an age thing. Maybe when you hit your mid-thirties, you couldn't have five drinks and expect to stand up the next day.

"Morning, people," Futtterman said as he entered the room and took his usual seat at the head of the table. He set down a stack of magazines and newspapers, then held them up, one by one. "People magazine, front coverBrianna Love. Entertainment Weekly, front coverBrianna Love. Glamour magazine, Good Housekeeping, Vogue, front coverBrianna Love. Time magazinefront coverBeau Wellington. Business WeekBeau Wellington. Another People, front coverBri and Beau: America's Favorite Couple. Individually Beau and Bri are hot news, and since they became a couple a few months ago, it's been a media frenzy."

Beau Wellington, son of one of America's most popular political families, was a movie-star handsome widower with a young daughter. Brianna Love was the new Julia Roberts. They were gorgeous, famous and rich, and their faces were everywhere.

Two months ago, I'd submitted my own proposal for a biography about them. I'd attached clippings and covers from several of those magazines, written a three-page proposal, and I'd gotten it back with a Post-it: Lgood idea, but c'mon, they'll be broken up by the time we get a ma.n.u.script into production.E "I have it from a close personal source that Beau and Bri are engaged," Futterman announced. "It's going to be announced exclusively on Sixty Minutes tomorrow night as part of a feature about Beau's philanthropy and dedication to the plight of America's poorest children."

Aha! You should have listened to me, I thought smugly.

"Beau and Bri are planning a major televised wedding, a la Prince Charles's wedding to Diana, on July twenty first," Futterman continued. "I want an instant bioBeau and Bri: The Courtship of the Century. And I want it on shelves the day before the wedding, to capitalize on the publicity."

"What if they break up?" Miranda asked.

"Then the demand for their story will be even bigger. A dating couple's breakup isn't big news, but an engaged couplegiven who the groom isis. Beau Wellington doesn't go around getting engaged every day the way Brianna has. The announcement of their engagement and televised wedding is going to create an incredible media frenzy. Whether or not they go through with the wedding is beside the point."

The wedding was beside the point? Tell that to the billion-dollar wedding industry. And most human beings.

"Brianna's one of my favorite actresses," Miranda said, flipping through one of the magazines. "I've seen all her movies at least three times."

One of the reasons Miranda liked Brianna Love so much was that Brianna had had two very public breakups and sobbed about them to every women's magazine and TV talk show. Plus, Brianna always played the underdog in her movies.

"Everyone knows that," Futterman said to Miranda. "Including me. That's why you're on the team."

"What team?" I asked.

"The four of you are now Team Wedding," Futterman explained. "That's why I arranged for you to sit together last night and get to know each other. Well, Lucy and Miranda already know each other, of course. Anyway, for the next two months, you will live, eat, breathe and sleep this project. I want that book on the shelves on July twentieth. And Lucy, you'll be writing this one. None of our authors can possibly do this in time. I'll clear your calendar and we'll need to draw up a contract."

It was now December twenty-second. Forget what I said about having a hangover. It was reaching migraine status.

Futterman stood up and we all did too, but he lowered his hand. "Sit, sit. I want you to stay and discuss how you'll operate as a team. I envision Christopher line-editing and researching the groomhe edited a bio on the Wellingtons a few years ago. Miranda, you'll research Bri and serve as fact-checker, copyeditorthere won't be time to freelance anythingand team a.s.sistant. Roxy, you'll research and report on the wedding plans, and Lucy, of course, will put it all together in sparkling prose no later than eight weeks from today."

The moment Futterman left, Christopher held up his hand and said, "Say aye if working on this project will send you to an early grave."

Three hands joined his along with a chorus of "ayes."

"Let me talk to Futterman," he said. Five minutes later, he was back. "Team Prairie Bigamist is already in progress with Wanda as project editor. Short of telling Futterman that we don't want to work on the book because we're all having romantic crises"

"If anyone can get us all switched with Prairie Bigamist, it's you, Luce," Miranda said. "Futterman adores you."

I snorted. "He adores me so much he promoted me to executive editor!"

"Try," Miranda said. "Just try."

I glanced at Christopher.

"Can't hurt," he said with that sheepish smile of his.

"You look sharp, Lucy," Futterman said when I arrived at his office for our meeting that afternoon. "New suit?"

"Yes," I said. "And thanks." For some reason I thought a new suit, a half hour with a blow-dryer and cloth napkins would be enough to keep my husband interested in me. "Edwin, there are a couple of things I'd like to discuss. First, why I wasn't chosen for the executive editor promotion."

Futterman sighed. "Lucy, you're a strong editor and a top-notch manager, but you need to better balance work and your duties as a parent."

Before I could even begin to utter the word discrimination, Futterman ran down how many times I'd left early in the past month for Amelia Necessitiesschool events, illnesses, doctor appointments. "Whereas Christopher didn't even take paternity leave," he continued. "Nor has he taken a single sick day or personal day since his daughter was born."

And that made him employee of the year? No wonder his wife left him, I thought meanly.

Then again, what had trying to be wife and mother and editor of the year gotten me: my husband had made a resolution to leave me and I'd been pa.s.sed over for a promotion.

"Was there something else?" he asked. "I'm meeting with Team Bigamist in five minutes."