Love And Miss Communication Part 1

Love and Miss Communication.

Friedland, Elyssa.

Dedication.

For Mom, my biggest cheerleader.

Epigraph.

Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.

-STEVE JOBS.

Prologue.

Evie scooped up the glossy black-and-silver invitation perched on her vanity. In tiny cursive, she read the words "festive chic attire." What the h.e.l.l did that mean? Whatever it was intended to convey, it felt like a tall order after a ten-hour workday on a Sat.u.r.day. She pulled open the bifold doors of her overstuffed closet, filled mostly with conservative work suits that blocked the view of her formal-wear options. From the back, she pried out the navy blue crepe dress that she had last worn to her great-aunt's memorial service. By subst.i.tuting sensible pumps with strappy sandals and adding dangly earrings, the dress could likely make the transition from funereal to celebratory. After struggling with stubborn jewelry clasps and nearly throwing out her back trying to force a side zipper, it appeared that "festive chic" might be achieved after all. She couldn't help smiling to herself as she took a glance in her full-length mirror before heading out the door. True a blowout and an eyebrow wax would have gone a long way, but the reflection staring back wasn't that bad, considering her rush. Fortunately the humidity had given her amber hair a nice wave. Clear olive skin made foundation and blush almost unnecessary, which was a good thing because she had no time for either.

Her BlackBerry screeched like a rattlesnake from its perch on her bookshelf as she hastened to throw on lipstick and apply eyeliner. She forced herself to ignore its mating call. Instead she snapped up the phone and tried to fit it into her matching evening bag, a tiny sequined rectangle that she hadn't used in months. No such luck.

s.h.i.+t. She didn't know what to do. No feat of physics or geometry would get her BlackBerry into the purse. Carrying her phone all night was out of the question. Her friends would be merciless about her "Crackberry" addiction. Leaving it home was also a nonstarter. A corporate attorney without a BlackBerry at arm's length might as well not bother showing up for work on Monday. Quickly, and trying as best she could not to consider the implications for the rest of her evening, she hiked her dress over her waist and slipped the bulky PDA into her cotton panties. The plastic hit her flesh like a cool breeze. She could feel the tiny b.u.t.tons digging crannies into her skin. Evie checked her BlackBerry so often that it was actually fitting it should take on the role of a bodily appendage. Someday, a more evolved version of her would emerge from the womb with a smartphone already implanted. Evie 2.0. She reached back down to lock the keys so she wouldn't accidentally call anyone from down there. When her phone was safely secured between the grooves of her body and the fabric of her underwear, she actually felt satisfied with her solution and took a deep breath, sucked the air to the pit of her belly, and released. Everything would be okay. Just some minor discomfort. No big deal, really. She was late, as usual, and there was no time for reconsideration.

Chapter 1.

Another wedding for Evie Rosen. Not her own though. Tying the knot were Paul Kindling and Marco Mendez, Evie's college and law school friends, respectively. They officially were married in a private ceremony at unromantic City Hall a few days earlier. Friends and the more tolerant members of their families waited to fete them in grander style at a lavish party downtown. Sixteen years, she thought, smoothing the fabric of her dress over her midriff one last time. That's how long she'd known Paul. He was her first friend in college. And she was late to his wedding. Tardy, is what he would say.

Worse than her tardiness, though, was what she was thinking. Across the country, millions of people were trying to prevent unions like Paul and Marco's, and yet they had still beaten her to the altar. Evie tried her best to be happy for them-to silence her envy and vanquish any useless questions like "Why not me?" Because Paul was a true friend, a co-navigator in that terrible thing called freshman year and now a formidable partner in the madness of New York City life, and while he could be flighty at times, he'd never let her down in any significant way in a decade-and-a-half-long relations.h.i.+p.

With an aura of sophistication that far exceeded his years, Paul had stood out from the other newbies at Yale, a dichotomy of prep school kids from the coasts and public school valedictorians from small towns in between. Dressed in a dark s.h.i.+rt and slim trousers, he resembled a salesperson at an expensive boutique, while Evie looked like someone pretending to shop there so she could use the bathroom. On move-in day they chatted in the center of the freshman quad, where they exchanged the prepackaged bios every freshman brings, along with a computer and a forbidden halogen floor lamp. It turned out they were a.s.signed to the same dorm, which Paul helped her locate while her clueless parents ambled behind. It was hard to believe she'd known Paul for so long already-that after a chance conversation on the first day of school, she was rus.h.i.+ng to get to his wedding.

As Evie was about to step into the hallway of her building, at last presentable enough for what was sure to be a chic affair, she felt an unfamiliar sensation ripple through her body. When it stopped and started again, she realized it was her BlackBerry, rhythmically buzzing inside her panties. She dislodged the phone and saw the call was from her grandmother, Bette. She debated letting it go to voicemail. But Bette was too sharp. All the way from her white-plastic lounge chair on the balcony of her Century Village condo in Boca, she would know her granddaughter was dodging her call. Besides, her grandma was probably just calling to warn her about an outbreak of Listeria she heard about on the five o'clock news. Why deprive her of the opportunity to show Evie how much she cared?

Bette, Evie's paternal grandmother, was an octogenarian force of nature-a survivor of the Holocaust who had long since parted with her oral filter. She referred to Evie's singledom as "ze situation," as in "vhat are ve going to do about ze situation?" Evie's grandmother even had a signature move. When Bette would see Evie after any meaningful length of time, she would extend her hand-palm facing down-and point to her engagement ring, a tiny sapphire stone surrounded by diamonds on a yellow gold band. Bette wore the ring every day, even though Evie's grandfather, Max, had been dead for a quarter of a century. Then she'd ask "Nu?" (shtetl slang for "so?") and widen her eyes in expectation. Over the phone, Bette would resort to summoning a feeble cough and saying, "Don't forget, your grandmother's getting older. I'd love to see you settled." And then the clincher, "I know your father vould feel ze same vay, may he rest in peace," invoking Evie's late father, Henry, who died when Evie was finis.h.i.+ng her freshman year of college. Bette was a professional meddler and probably the person who thought the most about Evie on any given day. No, she would not ignore the call.

"Hey, Grandma," she said breathily, hand still on the doork.n.o.b.

"Evie-le, vhat's new?" Bette asked, her thick Eastern European refugee accent already making Evie feel guilty for needing to rush her off the phone. That accent was made for guilt-mongering. One w p.r.o.nounced like a v and Evie crumbled.

"Not much. I'm on my way to a wedding," Evie said. "I'm actually late so I can't really talk."

"Oh, very nice. Vish zem mazel tov," Bette said. It still hadn't occurred to her grandmother that not everyone Evie knew was Jewish. Imagine if she knew the couple getting married was short one X chromosome. "Anyvay, I just called to say h.e.l.lo. Oh, but zat reminds me, I just heard Lauren Moscovitz is engaged."

Ahh. The real reason for the call.

"Good for her," Evie said blandly. She used the extra moment on the phone to touch up her speedily applied makeup, lamenting that the call would surely get dropped if she got into the elevator. A disconnected call could easily send Bette into a nervous spiral about a possible terrorist attack in New York.

"He's an orthopedic surgeon. Rose, Lauren's bubbe on her mother's side, called to tell me. You know Rose. She has zat horse face. Her husband vas a terrible gambler. Anyvay, she just couldn't vait to tell me. It does seem like zis boy is a real catch."

Evie sighed deeply, not sure what there was to say.

"You remember Lauren, no? She vas a little zaftig. I think you babysat for her a few times."

Evie couldn't say for sure if her grandmother was truly trying to help her recall Lauren, or was purposefully showing her that someone whose diapers she changed was getting married ahead of her. Evie did remember Lauren. She had been an especially ugly child, with frizzy tendrils and a nose that always seemed to have a precariously dangling booger.

"Anyvay, the vedding is at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston, vhere ze boy is from. Apparently he's extremely vealthy."

Despite the fact that Bette moved to Florida shortly after Evie's father died, she managed to keep apprised of their old Baltimore neighborhood, and seemed particularly keen to share news of marriages and births with Evie. Surely some of their former neighbors were getting divorced, but those stories never extended from Bette's grapevine to hers.

"That's great for her," Evie repeated, trying to keep her annoyance in check. "You know, Grandma, the wedding I'm going to might as well be in Boston because that's how long it's going to take me to get there with the downtown traffic. Let me call you from outside so I can at least look for a cab."

"Okay, be safe," Bette said, as though Evie lived in the trenches and not the yuppie-lined streets of the Upper West Side.

In the warm air of the June evening, Evie spied her compet.i.tors jostling for cabs at each corner-old ladies wielding canes, moms with strollers, and throngs of teenagers in their evening hooch-wear. Evie started downtown on foot, hoping to outsmart the ma.s.ses by picking up a cab in front of Lincoln Center. She jabbed her grandmother's phone number as she walked.

"Hi, Grandma. I'm back."

"Good. I vas just about to ask, Evie, if you're seeing anyone now? Someone special?"

"Not at the moment. Jack and I only broke up six months ago," Evie responded, suppressing a groan. "But I do have some potentially good news. The partners.h.i.+p committee started meeting. I should hear by the end of the summer. Isn't that exciting?" Evie asked, wincing as she realized just how much she thrived on praise.

"Oy. Vhat do you need to vork zose long hours for? How vill you meet someone if you're alvays vorking? Your mother tells me you are practically living zere. You are sure you vant this?"

"Of course I want it, Grandma. Why else would I have been working so hard?"

Truthfully, it wasn't crazy of her grandmother to question her desire to make partner. Evie had only gone to law school because her father had been a lawyer and every other political science major was signing up for the LSAT.

"Okay, who am I? If you vant it, zen I hope you get it," Bette said, as though this would appease Evie.

"Yes, I want it. Anyway, let's talk later. I need to focus on getting a taxi. I love-"

"Vait, I have something else to tell you. It's important."

"Yes?" Evie said, a smile creeping across her face. She knew what was coming. The warning about Listeria. Or some lifesaving tip Bette learned on The Dr. Oz Show: Eat jujuberries daily. Parabens are lethal. Yada yada yada.

"Listen carefully. I heard ze most vild thing at Canasta today. Louise Hammerman's grandson just got engaged to someone from ze computer. She said zere are zese places vhere you can find people who are looking to get married. And zey're all Jewish. Louise told me. Her grandson lives in Manhattan too. Vith eight million people zere, I don't know vy anyone should need a machine to get married, but vhat do I know? It vorks. Anyvay, Evie, I can put you in touch with her grandson if you need instructions."

Evie's heart sank. So much for "I just called to say I love you." This was a tactical phone call, and a useless one at that. In her grandmother's mind, once Evie signed up for this "place" on the Internet, an eligible man would pop out of her computer screen like a stripper jumping out of a birthday cake. Evie didn't want to let her down by telling her she'd already been on thirty-plus JDates in the last decade, her only welcome hiatus was when she was together with Jack. The men she met online were almost always disasters, boasting halitosis, neurosis, scoliosis, and, quite recently, osteoporosis.

"Um, thanks, Grandma, but I actually already know about JDate," Evie said, keeping her eyes peeled for an available cab. Instead, already occupied, the fleet of yellow cars mucked up her shoes as they zoomed past her strappy-toed feet.

"Oh," Bette responded. Evie could hear the disappointment in her monosyllabic response. "Vell, I'd tell Susan about zis, but you know, vy vaste my breath?"

Susan was Evie's aunt who lived in New Mexico. She was a meditation consultant who loved all things hemp. It was hard for Evie to pinpoint even one strain of DNA her late father and her aunt shared. Only by Googling her estranged relative had Evie discovered that Susan lived in some bizarre commune called New Horizons. The most Bette ever said about her daughter was "vy me?" Aunt Susan served primarily to bring into stark contrast how much Bette was counting on Evie to lead a traditional life, i.e., get married and have babies, quickly.

"I know, Grandma."

"Anyvay, Evie, did you see ze latest issue yet? I svear n.o.body has taste anymore," Bette said, s.h.i.+fting topics like a seasoned politician.

Evie's grandmother was referring to Architectural Digest, a.k.a. "the Bible," which she and Bette both loved to a.n.a.lyze each month, hankering after outrageously expensive silk carpets or haranguing total strangers for choosing outdated damask curtains. Many of the apartments featured in the monthly magazine were located in New York City, but rarely was an actual address printed. Evie would sometimes gaze up at the windowed skyline and wonder: Are you the penthouse with the fabulous double-height living room? Are you the one with the Central Park view from the master bathroom?

"Not yet. Haven't even had time to check the mail all week. Listen, I'm going to miss the entire reception. I'll call you this week. I love you."

Evie hung up, her mood deflated. She hated being a letdown to her grandmother. Despite their strong bond, when Bette started up with the whole marriage bit, her nudging had a way of eclipsing the finer points of their relations.h.i.+p.

Evie looked at her watch again. s.h.i.+t. In front of Avery Fisher Hall, two well-heeled ladies exited a black town car and Evie threw herself in the backseat before the driver could tell her he was not for hire. Black cars charged nearly double the rates of yellow taxis, but this was no time for frugality.

"Metropolitan Pavilion, please," she said breathlessly. "Eighteenth Street."

"Thirty dollars, miss," the driver responded, and Evie nodded her acquiescence to the exorbitant price. She pressed her body into the soft leather of the seat and closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself take a one-minute breather before checking her work e-mail. It seemed hard to imagine Evie and her team would be ready for Tuesday's closing, when Calico, the country's largest manufacturer of plumbing supplies, would take over Anson-Wells, a related chemicals company in a stock-purchase agreement. But there was a certain thrill in racing to meet the deadline. As a senior a.s.sociate, it was Evie's job to marshal the juniors toward the finish line. Florencio Alvez, Calico's COO, had sent her nine new messages in the last hour. She had a particular fondness for Florencio, who she knew had personally requested that she be put on the project. They had worked together previously when Calico sold off its residential parts division last fall. It was those moments-being in charge of a team, the satisfaction of a job well done, having her efforts rewarded by being personally solicited by a client-that made the tedious work and the grueling late nights almost manageable. She responded to Florencio and rested her head against the cus.h.i.+ons once again, but couldn't find peace. She was still stressed about being so late to the wedding, and even more so, unnerved by her conversation with Bette.

Looking out the window, she noticed there was still another ten blocks of Lincoln Tunnel traffic before they would pick up any speed. She decided to call her mother, Fran, for a pick-me-up. Fran was what most daughters would consider a maternal dream come true: wholly uncritical, perpetually optimistic, and unfailingly supportive. If Fran ever expressed worry about her daughter being overworked or lonely, she was sure to mask it exclusively as concern for Evie's happiness. This was unlike Bette, who didn't bother with pretense. Bette was legally blind when it came to finding a bright side in bad situations, which was a personality trait Evie regrettably shared. Fran, on the other hand, was the master of manufacturing silver linings.

"Hi, Mom," she said.

"Hi, Evie-where are you?"

"On the way to Paul's wedding, though I'm like friends.h.i.+p-ending late at this point. There is so much Lincoln Tunnel traffic. Honestly, who knew so many people wanted to go to New Jersey?"

"You'll get there, sweetie. Please congratulate Paul for me. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine, but I just had the most aggravating conversation with Grandma." Evie relayed the details.

"Evie, you know how she is. She's a woman of a different generation. She wants you to get married, have kids. She never had the chance to pursue a real profession. It's foreign to her."

"What about you? Is that what you want too?" Evie asked. "I a.s.sume you're excited that your daughter might be a partner at Baker Smith in a matter of months. There are only like twenty female partners total." Twenty-two to be precise, but Evie didn't want to show that she'd counted.

Before having Evie, Fran was an advertising executive at Ogilvy in their D.C. office. After becoming a mom, Fran parlayed her experience into consulting work for local businesses, still finding time to devote considerable attention to her real pa.s.sion-third-tier regional theater.

"You know I'm proud," Fran said. Evie noticed her mother didn't answer the first part of her question.

"Good. Because it's a really big deal. I wish someone would acknowledge how prestigious this is. Or at least pretend."

"I do realize. Remember the 'Yale Mom' hat I wanted to wear on Parents' Weekend but you wouldn't let me? I'm very proud. But these are your accomplishments, not mine. You don't need my validation. Or Bette's."

Don't I? Evie wondered. It certainly seemed at times that she did.

"I know that."

"Listen, honey, you have a great time at the wedding. We're meeting a colleague of Winston's in town for dinner, so I have to jet."

Winston was Evie's ultra-WASPy stepfather, who Fran married two years after Evie's dad pa.s.sed away unexpectedly. Winston was tall and built like a boxcar. His face was perpetually tan. Not in an artificial orange way-more like a worn-in leather couch. Pink polos and Nantucket red pants with embroidered whales made up a good chunk of his wardrobe.

"Oh, and don't forget that April and May are also coming for brunch tomorrow," Fran added, referring to Evie's stepsisters. "It's at eleven because they have so much school shopping to do. It'd be great if you could get here early to help out. I have an early morning rehearsal that I can't miss. I swear this is the trickiest production of G.o.dspell I've ever done. If you get here early enough I can drive you over to see the sets."

"Yes, I'll be there. Love you," Evie said, but just as she was about to hang up the phone, Fran cut in with, "Did you hear Lauren Moskovitz is engaged? She was an odd little girl, wasn't she? I guess there's someone for everyone." Then click, the phone went dead, and Evie was still entrenched in horrendous Midtown traffic and not one bit calmer.

She turned her attention back to the ticker tape of e-mails on her phone, several of which were from Bill Black, the supervising partner on the Calico deal. Bill's awareness of the division between weekdays and weekends was negligible at best. Evie dashed off some quick responses that she hoped would pacify him for at least an hour and checked her Gmail. She subtly returned her phone to its ridiculous spot, wondering when her next point of access would be. It occurred to her then that she could have brought a blazer to stash her phone in, but it was too late to turn back, especially now that she was a few blocks away from the tunnel entrance and her car was finally about to move.

Out of the window, from Ninth Avenue, she spotted the office tower that housed Cravath, Swaine & Moore, arguably the city's most prestigious firm and the only one of the seven she applied to from which she didn't receive an offer after law school. She had burned at the time-receiving the thin envelope in the mail with its form-letter text: We appreciate your interest in a position at our firm. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you employment at this time. Have a nice life. Well, it was their loss.

From Columbia Law School, she joined another white-shoe firm that represented more than half of the major investment banks and a sizable percentage of the Fortune 500. Baker Smith had even stolen away several of Cravath's biggest clients since she'd joined (having nothing to do with her work-but it was still satisfying). For the past eight years, she had pored over contracts, revised purchase agreements, blacklined merger doc.u.ments, and sat in on conference calls ad nauseam. She gave her life to the firm, canceling dates and weekend brunches with friends and at times abandoning what most would consider basic hygienic practices. Around the time of a deal closing, her bikini line was the stuff of horror films. When things got really crazy, the only way she could see friends was if they were willing to meet for a twenty-minute lunch in the office cafeteria-and even that could be cut short if her BlackBerry buzzed with something urgent. The work could be very stimulating, but with each new project that landed on her desk, she still felt like an anxious freshman unsure if she was up to the task. Luckily, with fourteen-hour workdays a regular occurrence, she had little time left for contemplation.

Finally it seemed her dedication was going to pay off. Her department, Mergers and Acquisitions, had no female partners, and all the existing partners were around the same age-sixty-and would be retiring soon enough, to finally start enjoying their lives and their nest eggs. She'd never received anything less than a stellar review. Her a.s.signments were usually among the most high profile and complicated in the firm's portfolio. Woefully, she accepted the fact that the partners.h.i.+p committee likely considered having no family responsibilities a plus. She was never running off to do anything foolish like taking her kids to Disney World or the pediatrician. If things with Jack had worked out, she might be in an entirely different place now. But they didn't "work out," and unlike the reorganizations and liquidations she witnessed in the firm's bankruptcy unit, there was no orderly division of a.s.sets or mitigation of emotional damage after she and Jack split. Just two jagged halves of a former whole left to fend for themselves.

So this is where she was.

Single, but on the brink of partners.h.i.+p, and actually pretty d.a.m.n proud of her efforts. She was looking forward to having a bigger office, and the impressive t.i.tle would certainly be nice, but mostly it was the fatter paycheck that excited her. The salary jump from eighth-year a.s.sociate to junior partner was enormous. She'd be more than doubling her earnings next year, meaning she could finally afford to buy her own apartment instead of renting. A charming, prewar one-bedroom near Lincoln Center that was only ten blocks from her current apartment on West Seventy-Sixth Street had been bookmarked on her computer for the last three months. She stared at the pictures of the listing so long she had practically memorized every detail, from the working fireplace with the intricately carved gray-veined white marble mantel to the six-over-six oversize windows that framed the southern wall of the living room and looked out onto a lovely tree-lined side street. She knew where she would put her beloved tufted couch and could precisely imagine the tall lacquered bookcases she would buy to flank it.

As her town car glided to the entrance of her destination, Evie promised herself she'd e-mail the listing broker the same day she made partner to arrange an appointment to see it. Living next door to Avery Fisher Hall and the Metropolitan Opera, maybe she'd actually take advantage of everything New York had to offer. She could finally see her first opera. It was embarra.s.sing that she'd never seen the one about the b.u.t.terfly.

The reception was in full swing by the time she arrived. Through the gaggle of attractive gay boys doing an ironic nod to the Electric Slide, Evie spotted her friends seated together in a booth at the back of the room. She reached them just as they were toasting. The brilliance of their ring fingers, each boasting a sparkling engagement ring, beamed at her like flashlights. The weight of what rested on their hands, perhaps a combined total of eight carats (most of which came from just one of those stones), told the world that her best friends were spoken for-loved-part of a team. Evie wondered if her own naked hand, adorned only with nail polish chipped from rampant typing, signaled the opposite.

"Evie, finally!" Stasia shouted over the music. "You are so late. I told Paul your taxi hit one of those food delivery guys on bikes. So just go with that. Anyway, let's get you a drink." She motioned to her husband, Rick, to go to the bar.

"Evie, you look great," Rick said, giving her a warm hug. "What can I get for you?"

"I'd love a white wine."

"Actually, I'll help get refills for everyone," Stasia said and popped up from the banquette to follow her husband, moving through the crowd with the elasticity of a Slinky. Evie admired the back of the conservative white s.h.i.+ft that her friend wore so effortlessly it managed to look s.e.xy. Evie had almost chosen a white dress but decided against it, thinking it was inappropriate for a wedding. Now she felt like a fool, realizing that rule only applied if a bride was present. Her friends returned a few minutes later with beverages for all.

This was hardly the first time Evie had compared herself to the manor-born Stasia. She hailed from San Francisco, where she was raised in a double-wide town house by her father, a successful venture capitalist turned congressman, and her mother, a pencil-thin blonde who could trace her roots to the Mayflower and acted, with Locust Valley lockjaw intonation and a general haughtiness, like that was the only respectable means of arriving in the United States. Evie's family was more Ellis Island. Stasia reached New Haven as a freshman sans her mother's att.i.tude, but with pedigree to spare. (She was fluent in boating vernacular; Evie knew one word-seasick.) Stasia would be so easy to hate if she didn't possess a remarkable amount of patience for Evie's occasional bouts of neurotic behavior.

"How are you feeling?" Evie asked, turning to face Tracy, who was digging her hands into a bowl filled with monogrammed M&Ms.

"Fat," Tracy responded, the word spewing from her mouth. "I'm just pregnant enough to look chubby and not far enough along to make it clear there's a baby inside. And don't try to bulls.h.i.+t me and tell me I'm glowing."

"You look beautiful, honey," Tracy's husband, Jake, interjected, resting his hand on his wife's belly. Today, Jake's tenderness didn't make Evie swell with envy like Rick's often did. Burdened by the Calico closing and still smarting from the call with Bette, it was making her skin crawl.

"You look great, Trace. And you're having a baby. It's worth it," Evie said in what she hoped was a rea.s.suring tone, though she always felt like a fraud when she tried to talk to her friends about marriage and babies. After all, she was basing her comments on nothing but guesswork.