Matchmaking for Beginners(107)

“I guess . . .”

She leans forward. “So bad as this was, it got us to talking. Which was painful and excruciating, and I’m surprised you didn’t hear us. On Friday we took Sammy over to my mother’s house just so we could fight and yell and scream and get it all out. I don’t normally approve of yelling and screaming, but Andrew said we had to air everything, and if voices were raised—then that showed we cared enough to risk it. Or something. Anyway, we did. And at the end of it, hours and hours of talking and pacing and yelling, he said he wanted to keep trying. And I said I did, too. And so we are.”

“Wow.”

“Because what I realized is that I had something to do with the marriage falling apart, too. Here I was blaming him and everything, but I was really the one who checked out of the marriage first. I was bored and frustrated at my job, and I started criticizing him for everything, and getting so annoyed with him, and ignoring him and doing stuff elsewhere—and he just felt pushed out. Plain and simple. And then she was there—and nobody’s saying it was right—but I can see how somebody fun and interesting might be appealing when your wife is going to bed at eight o’clock just so she won’t have to talk to you.”

The waiter comes over with our eggs, and we make room at the table for our gigantic plates, filled with eggs and potatoes and whole-grain toast.

“So the bottom line is that we’ve decided we need to be in a different house, not his, not mine, which is convenient because mine is getting sold—”

“But not yet!” I protest. “You can stay. I’d like it if you stayed, in fact.”

She shakes her head sadly. “Nope. No can do. We need a fresh start, symbolically if not for anything else. We’ll stay in Brooklyn so that Sammy can continue to go to a school where kids are allowed to write poems about breakfast foods to embarrass their parents. I want to start my own business at some point, and Andrew wants us to spend every summer at his parents’ cabin in the Berkshires, now that they’re getting old. So . . . big changes.”

On the way home, I fill her in as best as I can on Noah taking Blix’s stuff so his parents can challenge the will, and William Sullivan not giving up on Lola. And Jeremy getting furious with me and believing that I’d somehow known all along I didn’t want to marry him.

She wrinkles her nose. “Well, I have to say that I’ve never been quite convinced of your supposed love for this guy.”

“My family is probably never going to speak to me again. They’re all so sure he’s the guy I’m supposed to be with.”

“Sorry. Nope, nope, nope. You couldn’t have settled for him. I wouldn’t have allowed it. And now—I don’t care what your family says—you’ve got other people looking out for you. We’re your posse now.”

“I have a posse?”

“Yes. And as a spokeswoman for the posse, I say you shouldn’t go back to Florida. There’s nothing for you there. You may have to face the fact that, despite all your best efforts, you actually do belong to Brooklyn.”

“But it’s dirty here, and cold, and there’s trash in the streets, and the subways don’t run on time, and you have to go grocery shopping every single day because nobody has a car . . .”

“Yeah,” she says, punching me in the arm. “We’re not perfect, by any means, but we’re your city. You might as well save yourself some trouble and accept it now.”

But Patrick, I think. I can’t tell her that part, that there’s a hole in my heart.





FORTY-FOUR





MARNIE


As soon as I unlock the front door and walk into the house, I nearly have four kinds of heart attacks. There’s Noah standing there in the entry hall, holding a cardboard box. I let out a blood-curdling scream, and he jumps in the air.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” (That’s me.)

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?” (Not his most original moment.)

We stare at each other. Then he says, “I came to get the rest of my great-aunt’s possessions. Now if you’ll just move out of my way, I have to take these to Paco’s before the UPS guy comes.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute here. What makes you think it’s okay for you to do this?”

He sighs. “My mother wants Blix’s clothes.”

“Why? Why? What is she going to do with all this stuff? You’re just doing this to get back at me, is all. I did not talk your aunt into leaving me this building, I did not interfere with her will in any way, shape, or form—and why do you have to be instrumental in contesting a will that you know from Blix’s lawyer is legitimate—”

He sighs again. “Listen. My family is freaked out. Okay? They know that you asked her for a spell, and they think that was tampering with the will. Or something. I actually can’t bring myself to pay attention.”

“So what, I asked her for a spell? I missed you. I wanted you back. What does that prove?”

He looks confused for a moment. “Fuck. I don’t know. Maybe she felt sorry for you and mad at me, and so she changed her whole will.”

“That was her choice, not mine.”

“Well, my mother wants the building, and my father has called his attorneys, and now they want all the evidence they can find, and also the contents of the house.”