The Breakup Club Part 17

"Okay," Amelia said. "But I have to pee first." She disappeared, sniffling, into the bathroom.

"I don't understand," I whispered to Lucy. "What happened?"

She shrugged. "He's keeping his New Year's resolution. He told me New Year's Eve. I should have confronted him when I found the stupid piece of paper. Maybe we could have worked it out"

"Lucy, it's not your fault he left," I said.

"Then why did he leave?" she asked, her voice breaking. "Amelia is right. Why? Why doesn't he love me anymore?" She burst into tears, my older sister, the strong one, the one who'd been protecting me for as long as I could remember. I squeezed her into a hug on the couch, and she put her head on my shoulder and cried.

I heard the bathroom door open, and I knew Amelia was standing there in the doorway. Watching your own mother cry was very tough stuff.

I'd seen my own mother cry only once, when she'd gotten the news that her mother had died. The phone had rung in our house, and Ia couple of years older than Amelia was nowhad answered it. It was the police. My grandmother had had a heart attack in the produce aisle of a supermarket. My mother listened to the officer, tears rolling down her cheeks, and when she hung up, her legs gave out and she dropped to the floor and sobbed. I'd run to Lucy's room to get her, and Lucy had come out and just hugged my mother, just held her and let her cry, like I was doing now with Lucy. After that, my mother stopped leaving for her "me-time."

"Why do they leave?" Amelia asked in such a low voice I wasn't sure I heard her right. "Why should I ever bother liking a boy if he's just going to dump me anyway?"

Lucy straightened up and quickly dried her eyes. Amelia stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Women break plenty of hearts too," I said.

"Yeah, name one heart you broke," Amelia countered.

"Lester Furman, in the seventh grade."

"No one is named Lester Furman," she said.

I could still see him, little Lester Furman, five feet tall, scrawny, all nose. His great pa.s.sion aside from chess? Me.

"Do you remember Christopher at my office?" Lucy asked Amelia. "You met him last year when you came in for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. His wife left him. Just up and left him for another man."

"Great," Amelia said. "So husbands and wives just walk out. People just leave their kids. That's really great. I'm going to grow up and get my heart broken and be unable to function, just like Aunt Miranda."

"Hey!" I snapped. "That's not nice."

"Well, it's true!" Amelia shot back.

"Amelia Masterson," Lucy said, "I'm going to give you a very small bit of leeway. But let me make one thing clearbeing mean to the people who love you most in life isn't wise."

Amelia's face crumpled.

"And, I just realized something," Lucy continued. "Your aunt Miranda does look like Samantha Perlmutter's mother. And it didn't make Gabriel stay, did it?"

"Aunt Miranda's not a mom, though!" Amelia said. "It's totally different!" She disappeared back inside the bathroom.

"Who's Samantha Perlmutter?" I asked.

"One of Amelia's cla.s.smates. Her mother's thirty-eight and dresses like Britney Spears. She thinks if I dress like that, her father will come back. Maybe I should show her that it won't happen."

"Yeah, but what if it does? What if you dolled yourself up and Larry took one look at you and came running back?"

"Is that what it takes?" she asked, her voice tired, defeated. "Is that all I need to be to get my husband to want to be my husband? s.e.xy? s.e.x is one tiny iota of a marriage. There are so many other facets, from daily life to children to family to sharing. s.e.x goes. s.e.xy goes. That's not what connects two people in a marriage."

"Well, you were right about s.e.xy clothes not keeping Gabriel around," I said. I had more hot dresses and s.l.u.tty see-through teddies and edible underwear than room for them in my apartment. I was a thin blonde with big t.i.tsthe three biggies on the scale of superficiality that a guy was supposed to want. And where was my great love? Marrying someone else who looked a lot like me.

Because it wasn't the size of your chest or how thin you were or your blond hair. It was YOU. It was who you were. What you looked like was just a piece of a much bigger picture.

"That's it," I told Lucy. "From this moment on, no more moping. No more whining. No more waiting. Starting right now, I'll set a new example for Meems. I know you'll need the help."

"You're a good baby sister," she said. "And a very good aunt. I can take care of myself, but I will need help with Amelia."

"You've got it," I promised.

Roxy and I sat on the living-room floor of our apartment with Diet c.o.kes, Jiffy Pop, which I didn't burn for once, and the New York Natterer open to the personal ads section. An hour ago I'd come home shaking, and Roxy made coffee and listened to me talk nonstop, about Emmalee, about my promise to Lucy, about how I didn't know what the h.e.l.l I was doing. She'd grabbed her coat, told me she'd be back in less than a minute and left the apartment. Less than a minute later, I heard her running back up the stairs. She set down two copies of the New York Natterer, a very popular free weekly newspaper.

"We're going to get proactive and become masters of our romantic fates!" Roxy said, handing me a pen and a pad of paper. "We're each going to place a personal ad and become dating fools."

"I've been a dating fool," I reminded her. "I want just one guy. The right guy."

"He's out there," Roxy said, pulling her s.h.i.+ny brown hair into a low ponytail. "You might not find him right now, but he's out there."

"Then what's the point of this?" I asked, holding up the paper. "Why put myself through the torture of a hundred horrible blind dates with SWM seeks? And with a personal ad, there's not even a middleman to yell at. At least when Lucy set me up, I was able to curse out her husband behind his back and blame his bad taste."

Not that he would be setting me up anymore.

"Miranda, I hate to sound like a self-help book, but I've been reading so many submissions at work that I can't help it. The torture, according to all the books, is part of the process. I'd love to meet the right guy for me too. But six weeks after I walked out on my own wedding? I don't think so. I put so much stock into that one date with Harrison, when what I need to want is experience. I want to have a romantic dinner with a guy who isn't Robbie. I want to kiss a guy who isn't Robbie. I want to sleep with a guy who isn't Robbie. Actually, that's all I really want. I just want to have s.e.x with a guy who isn't Robbie."

"You're a guy's dream!" I a.s.sured her.

We spread out the papers and read through the ads. Roxy liked the idea of newspaper personals instead of online personals because she didn't want to put any stock in a photo. To respond to a personal ad in the New York Natterer, a guy called the 800 number, pressed in your mailbox number, listened to your greeting, and then left you a message, leaving his phone number. If you liked what he had to say, how he sounded, you called back. If you got along on the phone, you made a date. It was that simple. That anonymous.

We scanned the ads, circling ones we liked for help in writing our own.

Grace Seeks Will, but don't be gay. SWF, 30, looking for friends.h.i.+p first.

Like Vin Diesel movies? Then don't respond to this ad...

Gabriel liked Vin Diesel movies.

Busty blond babe seeks supersuccessful SM, 3035, with full head of hair...

SWF, 29, smart, sincere, creative, looking for nice guy, late 2030s, for possibilities...

Hmm. That last one was normal. It sounded sort of like me. That was weird. That two completely different women could place a very similar ad. It reminded me that I had no idea what I was going to get.

After an hour of reading the ads and tapping our pens against our pads of paper, Roxy and I still had no idea what to say in our ads.

"Why don't we write ads for each other?" I suggested. "That way they'll be honest and we can say things about each other that we wouldn't feel comfortable saying about ourselves."

Like attractive. Or s.e.xy. Or any of the adjectives I had a hard time attributing to myself since getting dumped.

Roxy handed me her sheet. SWF, 29. Blond bombsh.e.l.l with heart and soul seeks counterpart...

I handed Roxy hers. SWF, 25. Sophisticated author seeks...

"I'm not an author yet," she said. "I haven't even finished writing the proposal."

"If you're writing a proposal, you're an author," I a.s.sured her.

She beamed. "To true love for you," she said, holding up her gla.s.s of Diet c.o.ke.

"And to a hot one-night stand for you," I added, laughing. "Hey, let's go plan date outfits. First dates and then second dates. Between us, we won't have to buy anything new."

We went through Roxy's closet first. "Same old story in here. Business casual. Lunch dates. Everything's beige. Or gray. There's not a single V-neck! And why are all your sweaters boatneck cable-knits?"

"It's my new look," she said.

"What look? Young Martha Stewart?"

She smiled and nodded. "All my other clothes are still in my closet at home. At Robbie's apartment, I mean."

"Are you ever going to get them?" I asked. "You must have a ton of stuff you want."

She sat down on the bed. "I haven't been able to go back. Everyone hates me in Bay Ridge. No one in my family is even talking to me. Except my mother, to yell at me. If she didn't yell at me, I don't know what I'd do."

"Just because you didn't want to marry Robbie?" I asked.

She nodded. "Not marrying Robbie was like telling them I'm too good for them. That I don't want to live like them. That's how they took it. I want something else than what they have? Fine, Miss Big Shot. Go ahead. Have a nice lonely life."

"But you're not lonely, are you?"

She shook her head. "Well, sometimes. But I love my job. I love this apartment. I love being here. And I love that I'm writing a bookwell, a proposal for a book. But it's weird when your family just turns their back. I feel like I have no net. Next week I need to start my interviews with some of my relatives about their marriages, and I have no idea if they'll even agree to talk to me."

I nodded, but I didn't know how Roxy felt. My parents were far away and out of it anyway, but I always had Lucy and Amelia, and even Aunt Dinah could be counted on in a pinch.

"Well, you have me," I said. "That almost counts."

She smiled. "It counts big time."

"Eww, we're sappy new best friends!" I said.

She laughed, and we headed to my closet. Roxy put together a bunch of date outfits in five seconds. For someone who liked pearls and one-inch heels, Roxy sure knew how to s.l.u.t up an outfit. "This is how I used to dress," she explained.

My closet was now in perfect order. I had three first-date outfits and two second-date outfits, to be rotated. We would choose third-date outfits when I got there. And hopefully there would only be one third-date guy.

Okay. I was now on my way to setting a good example for my niece by getting on with my life. I grabbed the phone to check in on my sister and settled back against the pillows on my bed for a long talk. I wasn't used to comforting Lucy. I had no idea what to say or how to help, but listening required no experience at all.

Chapter eleven.

Christopher "Waaaah! Waah! Waah!"

I peeled open an eye and glanced at the clock on my bedside table1:23 a.m.

Ava had been waking up every ten minutes since eleven that night. Gas? Teeth? Growing? According to the Modern Dad's Handbook, the actual physical process of growing could make babies squirm in their skin.

I wished I could call the Posse. I'd stopped thinking of them as the Know-It-All-Mom Posse and just redubbed them the Posse. They were still know-it-alls, especially Nell, who grated on my nerves, but they cared so much about their kids, their marriages, their families, their every single thought, that it was impossible to hate them. I always knew women talked a lot, but until I joined the Posse, I had no idea how much or how intimately. I'd been to a few playgroup sessions, and the conversation was the same. They talked p.e.n.i.s size. They talked arguments. They ranted about mothers and mothers-in-law. They despised their sisters-in-law. The ped said began at least fifty percent of all statements uttered by the three of them.

Any one of them would have great suggestions for calming Ava, but I couldn't make calls at one in the morning. I'd already been stupid enough to call Jodie around midnight, when the crying had escalated and my aforementioned magic ability to soothe her hadpoofdisappeared.

"Jesus, Christopher, you can't even handle some crying? Maybe we should rethink this custody arrangement," Jodie had snapped into my ear.

Why did I call her? What was wrong with me? Did I not already know that when the clock struck midnight, Jodie turned into the wicked witch of Westchester County? "Jodie, she's not crying. She's colic-crying. She's shrieking. She's unsoothable. I thought you might know what's bothering her."

"Because of my crystal ball?"

ARGGGGH! "Forget it," I said. "I'll figure it out."

"She's probably just teething," Jodie said. "Try some Baby Orajel. You do have a tube, right? It was on the checklist for what to keep stocked."

"Yes, yes, I have some."

"If she doesn't respond to that in fifteen minutes," Jodie added, "you can give her a dose of Infant Tylenol. The exact measurement is on the checklist. Follow it to a T. Ooh, my poor baby. I can hear her. I wish I were there."

Me too, I thought for exactly one second. Not this you, though. Not the mean you. The you who cheated on me. The you who took my baby and left me. For some Wall Street schmuck.

I want the you I fell in love with. The you who doesn't exist anymore.

"Call me back if she doesn't respond to the Tylenol," Jodie said.

"I will," I'd said, and hung up, sad, weary, bleary.

The Baby Orajel had worked for a little while. So had the Baby Tylenol. But I couldn't give her another dose for six hours.

I grabbed The Modern Dad's Handbook and headed to Ava's closet for the tenth time since putting her down to sleep at seven-fifteen.

Unexplained crying...check baby's temperature...

There was only one way to take a baby's temperature, and I wasn't sticking a Vaseline-smeared thermometer in a crying Ava's b.u.t.t. I would if I had to, but at one in the morning, I couldn't bear to.

Touch hand to baby's forehead...

She wasn't hot.

For the past couple of weeks, whenever Ava cried while we were outside, someone invariably said she must be teething. So I tried more Baby Orajel, squeezing the clear gel onto my index finger and then smearing. Ava bit my finger.