Marrying Up Read online

  Marrying Up

  JACKIE ROSE

  lives in Montreal, Quebec, with her husband, daughter and dog. After cutting her teeth in the publishing world editing a travel magazine, she decided to devote herself to writing full-time (and not just because she prefers to work in her pajamas). Jackie is the author of Slim Chance, also published by Red Dress Ink. Marrying Up is her second novel.

  When she’s not looking herself up on the Internet, Jackie likes to spend her time sleeping, shopping and musing about the meaning of it all. She’s currently hard at work on her third book.

  Marrying Up

  Jackie Rose

  For Dan, the bookends of my love life.

  Eternal thanks to…

  My amazing editors: Sam Bell, for your kindness, calmness and can-do-ness (I’ll miss you terribly!), and Farrin Jacobs, for your thoughtful, artful guidance in shaping this story. My devoted agent, Marcy Posner, for all your wisdom and patience. Superdesigners Margie Miller and Tara Kelly for another wonderful cover. Margaret Marbury and the rest of the brilliant group at Red Dress Ink for making it all happen so beautifully yet again.

  A truly stellar team of baby-sitters—Sandy, Bubba, Rachel, Nelu and Allison Ouimet—for loving my kid as if she were your own. Galit, for letting me adopt and abuse your laptop (I hope it’s still under warranty). Shoel, Issie, Rose, Ted, Dan, Darline, Selena, Dino, Keenan, Jordy and Sarah, and all the girls, near and far, for asking, caring and sharing.

  Dan, most of all, for being my live-in motivational speaker. Your passionate sincerity, sympathetic soul and boundless enthusiasm for all things me remind me daily why I married you. And, of course, Abigail—the littlest, loveliest person I know.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Two

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Three

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  prologue

  The Last First Day of the Rest of My Life

  BUZZ BUZZ! “Looks like another scorcher today folks! Eighty-eight degrees and—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—rising fast! But we’ve got twelve uninterrupted minutes of cool tunes coming up—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—so stick around for some Culture Club, Metallica and Phil Collins—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—right after these—”

  My first conscious thought is that I want very much to stab myself in the eardrums to make it stop. But I smack Snooze instead, the blessed silence returns, and I bury my aching head beneath the pillow.

  Soon, instead of cursing Buffalo’s Number One Home of the Eighties, Nineties and Beyond with all the fire and venom I can muster, I’m dreaming fitfully about Phil Collins. He’s holding a crisp white bouquet of stephanotis and riding naked on a unicycle down the aisle at my brother’s wedding….

  BUZZ BUZZ! “—and the seventeenth K-HIT caller who can tell me Axl Rose’s real name—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—will win a pair of tickets for tomorrow night to see November Rain—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—the rockingest tribute band Buffalo has ever—” BUZZ BUZZ!

  Oh, for God’s sake!

  (SMACK!)

  I lift the pillow and squint, one-eyed, at the glowing green numbers…. 8:10. Crap. But everything gets fuzzy and warm again and I drift off… Ahhh…there’s Phil again, and he looks lovely—

  BUZZ BUZZ!

  Grrrr…

  (SMACK!)

  I squint again… 8:23? Damn. I squint harder… 8:28! Shit!

  Painfully, excruciatingly, I open the other eye. A pack of Canadian cigarettes next to the alarm clock comes slowly into focus….

  No. Please no. Oh God, NO! NOT AGAIN!!!

  I wipe the sleep from my face, panicking now. On the floor, ripped spandex shorts, a bicycle seat and a muddy tire….

  Maybe it’s a dream. A bad, bad dream.

  I pinch myself—hard—just in case, and wait.

  Nothing.

  Hoping against hope, I turn over….

  Ugh. There he is—Jean-Jean. On my formerly very white Egyptian polished-cotton sateen jacquard sheets by Ralph Lauren. Still wearing that dirty baseball hat. Still sleeping. Snoring, even. The audacity.

  Maybe he’s just a hallucination.

  Yes, that’s it! A hallucination induced by alcohol poisoning!

  But as last night’s events bleed through my slowly waking mind like a spreading stain, I recall that I only drank two and a half martinis over a four-hour period. Barely enough to give me a hangover, let alone mental delusions or visual disturbances of any kind.

  But wait… Hold on a second… I did have several olives, come to think of it, and hadn’t I once read somewhere that gin-soaked olives have been known to cause, in some suggestible individuals, effects not unlike those of the storied tequila worm?

  Perhaps not. But surely there was an explanation other than the obvious: That I’d slept with the idiotic French-Canadian bicycle messenger from work.

  Again.

  And yet here he is, all wrapped up in my fine 400-thread-count bedding like a birthday present from hell. Happy 29th, Holly! Here you go—humiliation incarnate. Hope you like it! What, pray tell, could I look forward to next year? A tumor?

  But it isn’t my birthday. Thank God at least for that. Nope, it’s just a plain old Friday morning. Which means that last night’s senseless debauchery was both desperate and stupid, completely devoid of any excuse—rational, alcoholic, depressive or otherwise. Understandable for a Saturday night maybe, when the symptoms of singlehood flare up and otherwise disgraceful hookups might be forgiven, but on a Thursday?

  I should be ashamed of myself. Beyond ashamed, really. Why hadn’t I just stayed home alone and watched an E.R. repeat with a cheap bottle of wine like all the other normal, hopeless, single women in Buffalo?

  “Excuse me,” I say, and nudge him with my heel. Hard.

  He turns over, grunts and smiles.

  “Ahem!” I say loudly, covering myself.

  “Heh?”

  “Please, Jean-Jean, wake up! Allez vous!” I don’t know much French, but I can assure you my tone spoke volumes.

  “Come hon now, ma petite. Believe me when I tell you I know you don’t want dat! For sure I know dat!”

  “Jean-Jean, it’s like this, so please listen carefully. Last night was a mistake. I know I’ve said this before and I’m sorry, but this time I really mean it—I don’t want to see you anymore! So please just go home, okay? Please. Just go…”

  He grins and rolls his eyes at me. “Dat’s what you said hlast week, ’Olly, and da week before dat! But you halways come back to Jean-Jean for more!”

  “Well, I can promise you I’ll be sticking to my word this time and—”

  “Eh!” He puts a nicotine-stained finger to my lips. “Why say someting you regret? Jean-Jean, you know, is twice da fun! And to love ’im is to deserve ’im more dan once, ma petite. Many, many more time dan dat! So now dat you ’ad ’im, you can’t forget. No never!”

  With that, he hops out of bed and begins collecting the T-shirts and rags and rubber bands which comprise his work uniform.

  “What does that even mean?” I moan to no one in particular, and fling his cigarettes toward the door. “Please hurry, will you? I’m late for work….”

  “Jean-Jean is halways ’appy to oblige
you, ’Olly. See you—layter!”

  The cheeseball winks at me twice, in case I didn’t catch it the first time. He stuffs his crap into a mud-splattered backpack and swaggers out the door, leaving me alone with a beer bottle full of cigarette butts and unwelcome memories of last night’s awkward fumblings.

  I pull the covers back up over my head for a few precious moments and vow to try and see the bright side of this latest romantic debacle. Like…at least I was getting some! That has to be worth something, right? And to be completely honest, Jean-Jean isn’t such a bad guy, anyway—he just needs to grow up a little. With some career counseling and maybe a Queer Eye makeover, he might even make a nice boyfriend for someone someday. Just not for me. In the meantime, what did it matter? Nobody would ever have to know…

  Except moi, that is.

  Fortunately, my history with Jean-Jean taught me that while the nausea and self-loathing born of my temporarily misplaced affections may linger for a while, eventually they dissipate along with most of the gory details. (Mother Nature is no fool—if the passage of time didn’t take the edge off our labor pains, our heartbreak, our bikini waxes, the human race probably would have died out aeons ago!) And thanks to a few modern amenities—namely condoms, soap and water—potentially unwelcome reminders of such ill-advised trysting are practically a thing of the past.

  The regret, though…well I suppose that’s a little different. It never fully disappears. It just sort of fades away until it becomes a tiny little pinprick of shame, part of the growing list of things I wish I’d done differently, or not at all. Yes, the regret is unfortunately quite permanent. Kind of like the new grease spot on my pillowcase.

  Two showers later—including a violent exfoliating session that would have skinned a lesser woman alive—I am officially late for work before I’ve even left my apartment.

  No, the day has not begun well.

  On difficult mornings such as these, I try to find solace in a series of uplifting aphorisms I’ve collected over the years. They help me salvage whatever shreds of optimism I can from the wreckage of my life. So I try to tell myself that the world is my oyster, that comedy is just tragedy plus time, that today is the first day of the rest of my life.

  Today is the first day of the rest of my life?

  The perfect mantra for chronically regretful yet eternally hopeful sorts like me. Most of the time, the simple, wonderful truth of it is enough to put the spring back in my step.

  Only today the slate is not clean, the start is not fresh.

  The start, in fact, stinks.

  part one

  Buffalo, New York*

  chapter 1

  The Day I Died

  It would probably go something like this:

  Hastings, Holly. 1975–2060. Passed away of chronic liver disease on Friday, December 31, 2060, alone again on New Year’s Eve, since she didn’t have a date, and hadn’t in many, many years. She was 85.

  Miss Hastings, was born in Buffalo, the fourth child and only daughter of the late Louise McGillivray Hastings, a bookkeeper, and the late Lawrence Hastings, a schoolteacher, both also of Buffalo.

  After completing a three-year degree in Journalism and Professional Writing in slightly more than five years at Erie County College, Miss Hastings took a job at this newspaper, which she believed would be an important stepping stone in her fabulous career as a writer. The single Miss Hastings quickly found her place among the many talentless hacks at the Buffalo Bugle, penning obituaries and taking classified ads for more than fifty years, until her forced retirement in 2052.

  During college, Miss Hastings took up social drinking, which eventually evolved into full-blown alcoholism after a string of failed relationships. Due to her inability to write the Great American Novel, or even a Not So Great One, the mateless Miss Hastings never left the Bugle, as she had planned. In fact, she never left the Buffalo-Niagara Region. Hell, during the last five years of her life, she never even left her house!

  Miss Hastings leaves behind nobody—not even a cat. The bulk of her meager estate will be divided among her many creditors, and her body will be donated to medical science, unless somebody claims it before noon tomorrow.

  Well, that wasn’t so bad, really. I’ve almost certainly—no, make that definitely—come across worse lives, written lamer obits for real, actual people. Haven’t I?

  Hmmm…

  Okay, so even if I haven’t, technically speaking, there’s no cause for alarm just yet. The whole point of the exercise is to imagine the way things might turn out, you know, if everything stays the same. To see where my life is heading, worst-case scenario. But even if it all comes true, so what? Cats, after all, are pretty crappy compared to dogs, so if ever there were a pet not to have… And let’s not underestimate the ultimate satisfaction of sticking it to the credit-card companies from beyond the grave.

  I print my final draft, fold it up until it’s a tiny little square and shove it way down into the bottom of my bag.

  Okay, Holly. Back to work. No need to feel sorry for yourself.

  Despite the fact that I hardly have a thing to do except sit around and wait for someone to call, I try to keep busy. I hone my pitch for a story about the Buffalo fashion scene (don’t laugh—we can’t all live in New York or London or Paris, no matter how much we might like to, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are oblivious to life’s finer things) and color-code my files until at last the phone rings. Will it be a trumpet seller? A passport found? A grieving relative? My boss, Cy, telling me he finally needs my feature, A.S.A.P?

  “Holly Hastings,” I say into the receiver.

  “Um, hi.” A woman’s voice. Very shrill. “I want to place an ad. In the personals.”

  “All right,” I sigh. “Go ahead.”

  “Okay. It’s for the ‘Women Seeking Men’ section.”

  Of course it is. “Yup. Go ahead.”

  “Will you tell me if you think this is okay?”

  “Sure.” Poor thing. I knew she didn’t have a chance, and I hadn’t even heard it yet.

  “Okay,” she exhales purposefully. “This is what I have. ‘Cuddly thirty-five-year-old princess seeks knight in shining armor. I love babies, four-star restaurants and international travel. You’re a gorgeous, tall, marriage-minded physician or lawyer, between thirty-three and forty. I’m five foot one, have brown hair and brown eyes.’”

  “Oh, that’s perfect,” I say, taking it down.

  “You think?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Oh my God! I can’t believe I’m doing this!” she shrieks. “I’m so excited! Can you get it in for tomorrow morning? Before tomorrow night, I mean? Can you? I have an extra ticket to The Vagina Monologues at Shea’s!”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Great!”

  I take the details and hang up.

  Women Seeking Men. As if. Had she ever taken the time to actually read our little rag, she might have noticed that for every ten women seeking men via the services of the Buffalo Bugle there is only one man seeking woman.

  It is all just so sad. Sad and funny. Sad that she dares to believe Dr. Right will call her by tomorrow night to begin with. Funny that she thinks a show about female sexuality and the c-word will make suitable first-date entertainment anyway. And sad again that The Vagina Monologues is not just a theatrical experience, but also a fairly accurate way to describe so many of our sex lives. Because only the rare, the proud, the few can claim to be involved in any coed, long-term, mutually respectful…er…dialogue.

  And that’s okay.

  Just because it’s sad doesn’t mean it has to ruin your life.

  You see, some women wallow in singlehood the way pigs wallow in shit. But that’s just not me. There’s no shortage of far worthier sources of anxiety and self-reproach, like bioterrorism and ozone depletion and flat-chestedness. I also find obvious desperation of any kind profoundly futile, since I know that men—even the most uninformed, unenlightened, uninspired of them—unerringly
pick up on that scent a mile away. In theory, therefore, there’s no point in being miserable simply because one happens to be flying solo, while broadcasting your panic at the thought of it will simply ensure that things stay that way.

  So even though the prospect of dying alone and poor and completely catless might faze some, I will probably handle it quite well; as a person who’s experienced near-epic singlehood, I don’t even know what it’s like to be in a meaningful relationship, save for one long-term mistake and a few flings here and there, all of which ended in varying degrees of disaster and confusion. Truthfully, it has never really bothered me before. I’ve always trusted that fate will bring me together with the man I’m designed for, some day, some way.

  Until now, I suppose.

  I reach back down into the bottom of my bag and feel around for the little square of paper. For the first time ever, as I reread my pitiful obituary, twinges of doubt make inroads into the romantic certainty that has served me so well for so long.

  What if he never comes? What if he doesn’t exist? What if we never meet, and just pass each other by in the street over and over again until we marry the wrong people, divorce, grow old, get senile and die? More likely still, what if I screw it all up when we finally do find each other, and all that lonely, crazy, catless stuff really, truly happens?

  The seeds of self-pity had been sown that morning, when Jill, my roommate, whose life I’d always thought was at least a little bit worse than my own, threw some sympathy my way after she saw Jean-Jean exiting my room.

  In the kitchen, she and her everpresent but vaguely mysterious boyfriend exchanged knowing glances across the table as I frantically ripped open a box of Pop-Tarts.