Engaging Men

“He’s all right,” Nonnie responded, with a wink that said Joey was more than all right in her eyes, as she engulfed him in a hug that practically swallowed his six-foot frame. “You remember Artie Matarrazzo, right, Joey?” Nonnie said, dragging Joey to Artie, who sat obediently on the couch. “Hey, Mr. Matarrazzo,” Joey said, shaking the older man’s hand with the same surprise my brother Sonny had displayed at the sight of my grandmother, flushed and beaming over a man other than Grandpa, who had been dead a good ten years now.

But no one had too much time to wonder over Artie, now that Tracy and Timmy had launched a full attack on the living room. They had already pulled all the cushions off the couch and were about to proceed with a pillow fight when my mother swooped down to hug them and shower them with the gifts she kept handily beside the sofa they had all but destroyed. It was as if she would gladly have taken on Tracy and Timmy, who with their big blue eyes and curly brown locks were irresistible, and put Miranda, who stood by gazing on the scene with love, out to pasture.

But whatever lingering animosity there was, it was immediately dispelled when, moments after Nonnie went into the kitchen to check on the sauce, she returned and announced, “Dinner’s ready. Let’s eat!”

Once we were all settled around the table, with me sitting between Tracy and Timmy to keep them from tearing at each other’s hair while we were eating, it suddenly occurred to Sonny that my other half was missing.

“Hey, where’s Kirk?” he said, between mouthfuls of eggplant and linguine.

“Who’s Kirk?” Tracy asked, completely forgetting the guy who had kept her giggling all afternoon with his silly little jokes the last time we were here.

“You idiot,” Timmy declared. “Kirk is Angela’s boyfriend.”

“I’m not an idiot, you’re an idiot,” she said, reaching behind me to yank her brother’s hair and sending my head jutting out neatly over my plate, giving my mother an easy aim as she set about taking it off.

“He went home to see his parents,” my mother supplied, eyebrows raised as if inviting speculation about Kirk’s intentions.

“Oh, yeah?” Sonny said. “I didn’t think that guy had a home, judging by how often he eats with us.”

“Doesn’t his family live in Massachusetts somewhere?” Vanessa said, clearly proud of herself for remembering the details of my boyfriend’s life. For whatever you wanted to say about Vanessa, she really did make an effort when it came to family.

“Newton, Massachusetts,” I replied, leaning back and neatly frustrating Tracy’s effort to get a grip on her brother’s head in turn. With a glance at my mother, I continued in what I hoped was a matter-of-fact voice, “It’s about six hours by train.” Not that Kirk ever took the train. He had so many frequent flier miles, he could probably take us both on the shuttle out of LaGuardia without making a dent in his considerable savings account. The jerk. Still, I had an argument to win here. “So it’s not exactly a hop, skip and a jump from New York.”

“I didn’t say anything!” my mother protested, completely denying the subtext her raised eyebrows were sending everyone at the table.

And just in case anyone missed the subtext, Miranda innocently laid it out for all to see. “Have you ever met Kirk’s parents?”

As I stumbled toward an answer, my mother declared, “No, she hasn’t. Don’t you think that’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Joey said, as if he weren’t following.

“I just think that if a man is serious about a girl…” my mother began.

“What? You thinking of marrying this guy?” Sonny said, as if marriage for his baby sister was an option he had yet to think of.

“I don’t know what I’m—” I began.

“Why shouldn’t she be thinking of it?” my mother chimed in. “She’s thirty-one years old.”

“Believe me, you’re better off waiting,” Miranda said. “I married Fred when I was twenty-five, and look where that got me,” she continued with the habitual roll of the eyes she made whenever she referred to her ex-husband.

My mother’s mouth dropped open, then she shut it soundly. But her expression, as it roamed over her prized firstborn son sitting next to his bride-to-be, said that she didn’t think Miranda had done too badly in the long run.

“Hey, Vanessa was only twenty-five when she married me. And you’re happy, baby, aren’t you?” Sonny said, turning to his wife, who scrunched up her nose and rubbed it against his, as her hand roamed over her ever-present abdomen. Somehow the sight of them made me feel…wistful. But only for a moment.

“Well, I was a young bride, too,” Nonnie said, “and all that made me was a young widow,” she continued, giving Artie a significant look. “But things are different today. Women today like to date around. Test-drive a man before they take him home for good.”

“What? I was wrong to marry my husband at twenty-two?” my mother said defensively. “We were in love. We wanted to be together.”

And there, I thought, lay the thing that stabbed most about Kirk’s weekend away. Did he even want to be with me? Really be with me?

“Tell you the truth,” Sonny said now, “I always liked that first guy you went out with. Vincent Salerno. Whatever happened to him?”

“Married,” my mother said, as if whatever point she was trying to make was already proved. “For over nine years now.”

“Whoa-ho,” Sonny said with a barely contained laugh. “Another one bites the dust. And didn’t you recently go to the wedding of that guy you went out with in college? What was his name? Randy?”

“That was five years ago already,” my mother said. Clearly she was a stickler for details tonight.

Oh, God, please don’t let them ask about Josh next….

But Sonny didn’t even need to ask about Josh to make his point. “Hey, you wait any longer, Ange, and all of the good ones will be taken,” he said.

“Not all of them,” Nonnie said, giving Artie a look that stopped his fork midway to his mouth.

Even my own grandmother was going to beat me to the altar, I realized now, judging by the blush that was crawling up Artie’s neck.

“Angela’s different,” Vanessa said in my defense. “She’s artistic,” she declared, her thick Brooklyn accent making the word sound more like “autistic.”

“Hey, Angela, can you do that headstand for us again?” Tracy asked, remembering a Rise and Shine routine I once demonstrated for her in my mother’s living room.

“No headstands,” Joey said as Tracy began to scoot out of her chair. “You gotta eat first. Then Angela will do her tricks for you.”

Tricks? Oh, brother.

When had I gone from “artistic” to circus sideshow freak?

I sighed. Maybe there really was something wrong with me.

4

I just called…to SCREAM…I LOVE YOU!

There is only one thing worse than returning to an empty apartment on a Sunday night—that’s returning to an empty apartment littered with the remains of someone else’s good time. Specifically, Justin’s and—judging by the two wineglasses nestled cozily together on the dining room table—Lauren’s. Apparently they’d come home early from the Hamptons. Candles littered the windowsill; the smell of burning wax was still in the air. A note left by the answering machine indicated in Justin’s loopy scrawl that he had taken Lauren to the airport. Which meant, since Justin didn’t have a car, that he was taking an expensive round-trip cab to LaGuardia, just so he could spend an extra hour with the woman he once described to me as “the best thing that ever happened” to him.

I sighed. When was I going to be anyone’s best thing?

As I headed into the living room and saw that sofa #3 had been maneuvered from its position in the middle of the room to a less prominent place in front of sofa #2, I realized I did have something to be thankful for. At least Lauren had used her considerable influence over Justin to persuade him that his most recent sofa acquisition was atrocious enough to warrant a slip-cover, which Lauren had no doubt created from one of Justin’s bedsheets, I deduced from the pale blue covering that now disguised sofa #3’s threadbare expanse. Since the two sofas faced the largest of our four TVs, their positioning created a movie-theater effect that satisfied my inner actor on some levels, despite the sacrifice of a good three feet of living space. I plopped down in the front row, grabbed the remote from the marble-topped coffee table (all the French provincial castoffs were Aunt Eleanor’s) and clicked on the TV, my eyes roaming to the clock on the far wall. Seven o’clock. Kirk’s flight landed at 7:50 (I saw the ticket on his dresser—not that I was checking). No luggage (Kirk always carried on), so he’d head straight for Ground Transportation. Give him five minutes to land a cab. Twenty minutes to the Midtown Tunnel. Ten minutes through the tunnel (after all, it was Sunday night, there was bound to be traffic). Kirk lived six minutes from the tunnel (he actually timed it once). That would put him in front of his building at precisely 8:31 p.m. Two minutes up the stairs, twenty minutes settle-in time (Kirk couldn’t relax until his bag was unpacked and his toiletries safely tucked away in his medicine cabinet once more. I found it cute at first. Annoying later, when I was waiting to hear from him after one of his frequent weekends away.) That took us to 8:53. By nine o’clock he would be on the phone, proclaiming how much he had missed me.

I only had to wait two hours for a reminder of why I had been in the relationship with Kirk for twenty months despite the fact that he hadn’t felt it necessary to bring me home with him. We loved each other, dammit. Had declared it so in month three. Reveled in it until month eight. Settled into things at the year mark. And now…now we sometimes took it (love, that is) and each other for granted. So what that he hadn’t asked me to come with him? It didn’t really mean anything in the face of all we had. Why, I bet if I just opened my mouth (because Grace always told me I was guilty of not communicating what I wanted) and told him how much it would mean to me to go home with him next time around, he’d happily invite me along. In fact, he might regret he hadn’t brought me along this time. He might even want to schedule a trip home within weeks just to make up for it!

And so, with this soothing thought I settled in to watch a round of mindless TV, starting with a rerun of Friends, which seemed to be on six times a day now that it had gone into syndication. I studied Jennifer Aniston with renewed interest, imagining this cheerful blond goddess settling in at home with her golden-blond god, Brad. Surely there was something to Michelle’s tight-lid theory if this woman who had had trouble attracting the attention of David Schwimmer in her fictional life had landed Brad Pitt in reality.

So much for my reality, I mused, quickly changing channels once Rachel et al’s coffee-shop existence was wrapped up with a rousing laugh track. One hour to go, I thought, with another glance at the clock. I spent it watching a news program on the deadly bacteria that resides in common household objects. And just as I was absorbing the fact that I had greater things to worry about than whether or not I will one day marry (like that I will certainly one day die), I realized it was just about nine and anticipation warmed me, reminding me that I was at the moment very, very much alive.

I jumped off the couch and headed for my bedroom to throw on a pair of boxers and a tee. Might as well get comfortable, I thought, with a vision of myself curled up cozily with the phone while Kirk whispered how much he’d missed me. Admittedly, he wasn’t usually so demonstrative, but I had begun to look forward to a certain heightened display of intimacy whenever he returned from one of his business trips. Once I even lay in wait at his apartment, wearing a black lacy bra and thong. You can imagine what kind of amazing sex we had that night.

With a glance at the clock, I realized it was 9:10 already—so where was my phone call? My hey-baby-missed-you-so-much-I-could-die speech? Maybe there were delays at the airport….

I heard a key slide in the door. Or maybe he decided to drop by!

“Hey,” came the sound of Justin’s voice in the hall. What was I thinking? Dropping by wasn’t the kind of thing Kirk did, after all. It wasn’t that he was unromantic, just…orderly.

“Hey,” I said, joining Justin in the living room, where he was toeing off his sneakers and settling in on sofa #3. “Lauren get off the ground okay?” I asked, my face a mask of concern. The subtext of my question was: Any delays at the airport that I should know about?

“Without a hitch,” he replied, his gaze falling on the dining room table with the two wineglasses. “God, I hated seeing her go.”

My stomach plummeted at his forlorn expression, and I remembered suddenly what it was like to really miss someone. The look on Justin’s face was the kind every girl pines for.

But it was only momentary, that look. For, suddenly, Justin glanced at the clock and snapped to attention. “Hey, mind if I put on the game? I just heard in the cab that the Yankees are up by three against the Red Sox.” He grabbed the remote.

I had my answer. The Yankees were playing the Red Sox. Kirk was a Red Sox fan. Was it possible he got home and immediately flipped on the TV to catch the rest of the game?

I glanced over at Justin as he pounded a fist in the air. “Yea!” he roared along with the crowd on TV.

Oh, yeah. It was not only possible, it was probable.

Despite the fact that I was annoyed at being beat out by baseball, I joined Justin on the couch, never mind that I was a Mets fan, mostly by birth rather than from any true allegiance to game watching. Yeah, I could sympathize. I had watched the subway series with great trepidation. But it wasn’t something I worked up a sweat about on a regular basis. Wasn’t something I ignored friends, families and people I allegedly loved for.

The clock ticked on. Justin became more jubilant with every pitch. The Yankees were up by five now. By the time I did talk to Kirk, he wasn’t exactly going to be Mr. Happy. I thought about calling him during the game, but didn’t want him if his attention was going to be divided. I decided to wait until the seventh-inning stretch.

When the seventh inning finally arrived and a Yankee win was all but secured, Justin decided this called for an all-out celebration. “I’m going down for beer and chicken wings. Want anything?”

“No, no. I’m good,” I said, making my way casually over to my bedroom, where I hoped to make my long-awaited phone call with Kirk in privacy. I was so high-strung at this point, I feared I might do something I’d later regret—like yell.

Kirk picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Noodles, I was just about to call you….”

Ah, if I could only have waited thirty more seconds, I would have had the upper hand. Still, I was glad to hear his voice. I missed him. “The lure of baseball was too great, huh?” I joked.

“You kidding? I couldn’t bear to watch that travesty once I saw the score. I shut it right off.”

Oh, brother. Then, as if to answer my unasked question—What exactly have you been doing in the one hour and fifteen minutes you’ve been home and not calling me?—he said, “I’ve just been settling in, unpacking.”

Uh-huh. “Did you have a good weekend?” I asked, trying to rise above it all.

“Great,” he said, his voice perking up. Then he proceeded to tell me, in lavish detail, all about it. Playing touch football with his cousins in the legendary acre lot his parents lived on (legendary to me, who had never actually seen it); holding his sister Kate’s baby; meeting his other sister Kayla’s boyfriend. All the children in Kirk’s family had first names beginning with K. His mother’s idea, according to Kirk. I wonder if she realized that she had created KKK with her alliteratively named progeny? The funny thing was, Kate had married a guy named Kenneth, and their new baby’s name was—guess what?—Kimberly. I wondered now if the other sister had managed to line up a K-man with this new boyfriend. Hey, wait a second. New boyfriend? Kayla’s new boyfriend was there?

“Um…how long has your sister been seeing this guy?” I asked, hoping “new” boyfriend meant new to Kirk but practically married to Kayla. After all, that was the only reason I could drum up why Karl, Kasper, Kirby, or whatever the hell his name was, had been invited and I hadn’t.

“I dunno. Couple of months?”

Couple of months? Remain cool, remain calm.

“Seems like a nice enough guy, but who knows? Kayla goes through guys like they’re going out of style.”

Remain cool, remain calm. Get the facts. “So, um, does anyone ever ask about your girlfriend, sweetie?” I knew it sounded like I was fishing, but there was no other way to do this. I had to know.

“Oh, yeah. My mother’s always harping on that subject, ever since Susan and I broke up. She always liked Susan….”

Liked Susan…

“But I learned my lesson that time around. Telling my family about stuff like that is like feeding hungry piranhas. They don’t let up.”

“Stuff like what?”

“You know, who I’m dating, whatever.”

Whatever. “Kirk, do you mean to tell me that after almost two years, your parents don’t know I exist?”

“Oh, they know I’m dating someone. But that’s all their getting outta me. Besides, they know I’m intent on getting my business off the ground….”

“Excuse me, Kirk. Someone? You’re dating someone?”

Silence on the other end. The dumb lug probably just realized he’d stepped on a land mine with his blithe comments.

Finally he said, “You know what I mean, Ange. Didn’t you tell me the less your mother knew about your daily life, the better?”

“I was talking about stuff like what I ate, how late I stayed out. Not the person I’m contemplating marrying!”

A new silence descended, this one a bit more harrowing. But no worse than the sigh that finally emerged, the words that followed. “Ange, you know how I feel about that….”

I did?

“My whole focus now is on building my business. I thought you understood. I thought…”

But I was no longer listening. I was tired of what he thought. It was just so…unromantic. I wanted to be caught up in a passion. I wanted a man to want me so badly it hurt to imagine life without me. And I wanted it with Kirk. Was that so much to ask for?

That’s how it happened. I suddenly found myself putting step one of Michelle’s engagement scheme into action. I don’t know why I succumbed. Maybe it was the fact of my absence (both literal and figurative) from Kirk’s big family weekend. Maybe it was the blasé tone Kirk used when he said before hanging up, “Hey, when you come over tomorrow night, could you bring my U2 CD?”

See? This is where we’re at. We don’t even ask each other out anymore. It’s all assumed.

Naturally, I had to start shaking up some of those assumptions. “Uh…actually, tomorrow night I’m meeting up with Grace.” There! Take that!

“Oh. Okay. Where’re you going?”

Wouldn’t you like to know, I thought, feeling a tad triumphant. Until I remembered I didn’t know where I was going with Grace, who didn’t yet know we were going anywhere. “Shopping.”

“Have fun,” he said, as if I’d said I was having my body dipped in hot wax. Kirk was not a shopper, unless we were in say, CompUSA. “You could come by after, if you felt like it….” he offered.

“Oh, well, I’ll probably be too tired. You know shopping wears me out.”

“Okay. I guess it’s just as well. I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do with work—I could stand to put in a little overtime. In fact, I’m gonna hit the sack now. I got a big day ahead of me tomorrow.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said and, after a muttered goodbye, I hung up the phone, dissatisfied. This lid might need the rubber glove treatment. Or maybe even a sledgehammer.

“Just sit tight,” Michelle advised at work the following Tuesday, when I informed her that I had put step one of her plan in action. “Give it a few days.”

“A few days?” I didn’t think I’d last that long. As it turned out, Grace had had plans with Drew last night and couldn’t be lured to Bloomingdale’s even to make an honest woman out of me. And since tonight she was attending some work-related cocktail party, I was faced with going straight home from Lee and Laurie to another fun evening at home.

So I sat tight. After all, I had plenty of couches to choose from.

Thank God for our large-screen TV, a hand-me-down from Justin’s friend C.J., who had married his long-time girlfriend, Danielle, and moved on to Westchester and a forty-two-inch. The only thing on, of course, was Friends, and, somehow, tonight I just couldn’t deal with it.

Deprivation was going to be a lot harder on me than on Kirk, I could tell.

Because the truth of the matter was, I had done that shameful thing that most women do when they get too cozy in a relationship. I had thrown over my own life for the sake of our life together. Take an average week in my life:

Monday: Rise and Shine, which I only get through at six o’clock on a Monday morning by telling myself that I am going to buy Backstage this week and begin to search for that great film or TV role I plan to land now that I have TV experience on my résumé and union cards from both AFTRA (for TV—see what a few leaps in front of a camera can get you?) and the Screen Actor’s Guild. But what usually happens is, I bypass the newsstand on the way home from the studio and pay a surprise visit to Kirk at his home office, where we eat bagels and lox until Kirk realizes he has too much work to do to sit around all day eating bagels and lox and sends me on my way.

Tuesday: Rise and Shine. Maybe breakfast with Colin. Maybe I buy Backstage today, but usually just go home to watch a movie (we have a hell of collection, mostly due to Justin) or read the complete plays of August Strindberg (if I really want to depress myself) until I realize it’s 2:10 and I’m never going to make it to Lee and Laurie on time for my three-to-ten shift. Rush to shower and change, arrive at Lee and Laurie at three-fifteen. Leave work at ten, take the crosstown bus to Kirk’s (thus securing myself sex and saving myself a transfer to the Second Avenue bus, which never comes every ten minutes like it says it will on the schedule posted at the bus stop).

Wednesday: Rise and Shine. Sometimes Rena wants to have a planning meeting, and then Colin and I have to sit and listen to her drone on and on about her dream plans for Rise and Shine. Go to lunch with Colin, complain about Rena (whom Colin defends), until it’s time for Lee and Laurie. Get off at ten, go to Kirk’s.

Thursday: Rise and Shine. Maybe breakfast with Colin, after which I decide that that the edition of Backstage on the stands is too old and not worth spending the cash on. Sometimes I go home to clean my apartment (a fruitless endeavor with Justin as a roommate, but I can’t seem to stop myself), or sometimes I find myself lured in to some treacherous sample sale, where I spend the afternoon trying to convince myself of the utter necessity of owning yet another stretchy black shirt. If I’ve dawdled in midtown long enough, I usually just go straight to Lee and Laurie. Sometimes I’m even on time! And guess where I head afterward? Kirk’s, of course.

Friday: Rise and Shine. And since I have no shift at Lee and Laurie and no desire to start any self-actualizing project, I find some way to waste the entire day. Like renting the complete movies of Bette Davis. Or giving myself a pedicure. Until Kirk and I go out for dinner, or simply sit around the apartment like the old married couple we are (not that he realizes that).

Saturday: The dreaded ten-to-four shift at Lee and Laurie. After a day like this, can you blame me for going straight to Kirk’s, where we order takeout and while the evening away in front of the TV or at the movies?

Sunday: Day of rest. Except when my mother manages to convince me of the utter necessity of my coming down to Marine Park for family dinner. Kirk comes, of course. After all, he loves my mother’s cooking. Kirk never says no to a Sunday in Brooklyn.