Rich and Pretty(50)

“She was here a week ago,” she says.

“Maybe she should come weekly instead of bi-,” Dan says.

“That seems excessive. How much mess could we make in a week?”

“This much,” Dan says, gesturing around the apartment. “Aga is happy for the work, I think. I mean, we pay her well, we treat her nicely, I hope. I would like to think we’re model employers. Besides, if she comes weekly, the house won’t be as dirty each time she comes, so her job will actually get easier, even as she makes more money.”

“Fine, we’ll have her come weekly, then.” Sarah is displeased by the fact that he’s solved this problem so quickly.

“You don’t need to be angry. You have better things to be doing with your time, I think. Your work. The wedding. The pregnancy. I have less time to spare, to clean, with my work, and honestly, when I’m home like this, I would rather hang out with you than clean the bathroom. It’s not an ethical dilemma. It’s not even a financial imposition.”

“Fine, I don’t know why we’re talking about it.” She shrugs.

“We’re talking about it because when you, or anyone for that matter, says ‘fine’ they usually mean something else entirely, and we’re talking about it because you were just complaining that the apartment is messy and I was trying to offer a solution.”

“Okay.” She’s angry now for no particular reason. She counts to three, as she was advised to by her mother, once, and it works: The anger dissolves like a tablet in water. She sighs again, and it’s noisy again.

“You’re stressed.” Dan gets up from the desk, settles onto the sofa beside her.

“I am that,” she says. She looks around the room. The jade plant needs watering.

“What’s on the list?”

“There’s nothing on the list,” she says, though this isn’t the truth. She needs to remind her mother that their cleaning lady will have to come the day before the wedding, and she’ll have to bring a whole team with her. They’ll need someone to help with shifting around some of the furniture. These are things she can’t ask Dan to do, it doesn’t make sense for him to do them. They’re not impositions on her, even, just facts.

“Maybe you should take a day off,” he says. “See a movie, go shopping, walk in the park, it’s nice enough out. Go to the museum. Hell, go to the theater, isn’t that one of the reasons people are always giving for living in New York, the proximity to the theater? We never go to the theater.”

She laughs. “I don’t need to go to the theater, I’m not eighty years old.”

“David, at work? He told me we have to be sure to go to the movies and out to dinner whenever we feel like it, until the baby comes. That after, those things, those small things, those last-minute let’s-go-out-for-Indian-food whims, become impossible.”

“I’ll feel fine when this wedding is done with, I think. Coordinating, it’s fine, it’s what I do.”

“Yes, it is. You’re very good at it. You’re very good with a task.”

“But a meaningful task,” she says. “Not the task of throwing a party, with my mother and father, to celebrate our love.”

He laughs. “We should have eloped. To Paris. Or Vegas, do people still do that?”

“It’ll be fine,” she says. She gathers the pile of bridal magazines, walks to the kitchen, and dumps them into the can under the sink where they keep the recycling, where they land with a satisfying thud. She won’t be needing those anymore.

“Let’s go out.” Dan stands.

“What out? We were going to order Thai and watch that show.”

“Screw that show,” he says. “Screw this presentation, screw the world. Let’s put on our coats and go somewhere. Let’s get a cab. We’ll go to the Odeon.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead,” he says. He’s already stuffing his feet into his boots. “I’ll even look the other way if you want to take a sip of my martini.”

“Yeah,” she says. He’s right. She’d been looking forward to Thai and TV, but now that’s not what she wants at all. She wants to be out of this apartment, in the cold wintry night. She wants someone to bring her food, then take away the dirty plates. She wants to look around a crowded restaurant and try to imagine the lives of all the people around her. She wants to sit in a taxi, next to Dan, next to the man she loves, and remember that she loves him, and marvel at that, and think about the fact that they’ve made a human being, and that is a miracle. She doesn’t care about her wobbly biceps, she doesn’t care about what she’s wearing, she doesn’t care about the fact that they might run into someone they know; she only washes her hands at the kitchen sink, then wraps herself in her coat, and they go. She doesn’t even bother looking in the mirror by the door.





Chapter 14


She’s relieved to get to February. January is cheap gym memberships and best intentions. It’s atonement. For Lauren, a product of the American educational system, the year begins in September. The Jews had this one right, she remembers her dad saying, which sounds vaguely anti-Semitic in the retelling and so she never retells it. She can’t muster any of this self-improving spirit, because it’s the same instinct as its ostensible inverse, the greed and gluttony of the holidays. Some of the girls in the office brandish their juice fast bottles, numbered, multicolored, as proudly as if they were designer bags. The fridge in the kitchen is full of them, and when she’s getting milk for a cup of tea one particularly overcast Thursday, she briefly thinks about taking out one of the bottles, pouring its contents down the drain, just to see what happens.