Matchmaking for Beginners(98)

“Oh my God. I think he’s proposing to her.”

“Proposing? To Lola?”

“Are there flowers involved?” I yell to Jessica over a sudden din involving pots and pans, and she says there seem to be.

“I’ll report back,” she tells me.

The kitchen is starting to resemble a restaurant warehouse—except, you know, way more random. In the corner, Harry and the waitress’s boyfriend are talking politics. Leila and Amanda are trying to set up tray tables in the living room, but the legs of one are broken so Andrew says he’ll get a screwdriver and asks me where one might be kept, then it turns out that Bedford is happily chewing on it behind the couch.

The Yolk waitress says she’ll set all the tables, but then she needs help locating the serving spoons and then the tablecloths and the water glasses.

And then she stops and says, “Andrew? Andrew? Oh my God, you’re here! Are you with your wife? And son?”

I can’t. I just can’t.

Andrew, his face having gone white, is looking around the room, searching for Jessica, probably, and I hear him say, “Please—if you could just not—”

“Not mention that you dumped me? Of course I won’t,” I hear her say, and he takes her by the elbow and steers her into another corner of the kitchen. He’s saying, “I mean, I’ve told her about you,” as they go past. “It’s just that we’re so newly back together . . .”

Harry stops yelling about Republicans long enough to ask me sweetly if I think the lobsters are ever going to get their chance with the burners. And do I know where Houndy’s lobster pots are?

“Where are the serving spoons, again?” someone wants to know.

“Who made the squash casserole? Does it need oven space?”

There are a million conversations going on around me, and I’m basting the turkey one more time, and juggling the piece of aluminum foil I’m holding and the turkey baster, when suddenly I’m aware that Noah is talking to me.

“Ta-dah!” he’s saying. “Marnie, look who’s here! What a surprise!”

At first I think he means himself, and I am ready to glare at him and tell him he shouldn’t be here, not after what he’s done—I never invited him anyway—but when I turn my head, oh my God, it is Jeremy’s face that fills the room.

Jeremy. It takes such a long time for his face to make sense to me—why in God’s name is Jeremy’s face here in Brooklyn, standing here at Thanksgiving, with Noah, of all people, standing beside him, smiling at me with a shit-eating grin that could light up the whole freaking world?

And as I turn my head, my hand in the oven mitt goes with it somehow, and then the turkey—Tom, the pan, the juices, the stuffing, all of it—slides in slow motion to the floor, and I go down with it, hard onto the floor, banging my head on the table in the process, and in the screaming that follows, all I can think is that this is when it would be so good to be the sort of person who faints.

But no such luck. I am conscious for everything that comes next.





FORTY





MARNIE


This can’t be happening. Of course it can’t. In a minute I’ll wake up and this will have been a dream, and I’ll get out of bed and life will be normal.

But no.

Noah’s arm is still slung over Jeremy’s shoulders, and Jeremy looks blank eyed with shock while Noah is smiling this horrible grin, and oh my God, if so many things didn’t hurt me at once, and if I wasn’t stuck in this puddle of turkey fat, I’d get to my feet and I’d figure out something to say or do that would smooth things over, except that even in all the confusion and chaos and din of voices, it’s dawning on me that there isn’t going to be anything I can say or do. That this will never be smooth.

“Why?” I manage to say to Jeremy, which is, of course, the question he should be asking me. But I mean why are you standing here in this kitchen, and why didn’t I know you were coming. He doesn’t answer me, and somebody is trying to help me up, then she slips, too, and goes smack down in the turkey fat with me. And I want to laugh because it’s possible that this one turkey is going to take out the entire party. We’ll all be slipping and sliding here trying to save ourselves and each other in the very worst Thanksgiving party ever.

Jeremy’s face is saying: You are the worst person in the whole world.

And then he is gone.

“Wait!” I say, or maybe I didn’t actually get that word out in the din and pain and craziness. Two more people are sliding in the grease, and someone is tracking it across the kitchen, and Bedford is drinking the turkey drippings. I can hear Jessica and Andrew arguing by the kitchen table.

I get myself up, and head for the hallway. It hurts like hell to walk, and then Bedford dashes by me, holding the turkey carcass, with people chasing him, but I don’t care. I limp into the entryway and there is Jeremy heading for the front door, and I say to him, “Please. Could we go somewhere and talk?”

“Is there anything to say?” he asks. “I think I’ve got the whole picture.”

“Let’s go outside,” I tell him, and we go out on the stoop, where the rain is still listlessly falling, winding down to a gray, depressing, end-of-the-world drizzle. I don’t care. I’m covered in grease and turkey bits, even in my hair, and my hip is killing me, and I think my head might be growing some kind of huge lump where I banged it.