Matchmaking for Beginners
Page 65

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.
But all that is nothing compared to Jeremy, whose eyes look like black holes in the middle of his face, and I can see that his wide, capable, physical-therapy hands are actually shaking.
I have broken this man.
Again.
“Talk to me,” I say. “Go ahead. Say it. Say it all.”
He shakes his head. I can’t bear to look at him. “There’s nothing . . . I’m in shock,” he says.
“No. Please. Say it.”
He exhales and looks around. I can see him taking in the whole rainy, desolate street scene. And then his eyes come back to me and he says in a low voice, “I’ve talked to you fifty times since you’ve been here, and you didn’t even once think it might be good to mention that your ex-husband was here? Not even once?”
“Well? I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“What part of it wouldn’t I understand?”
“How two people who were married to each other can stay in the same house.”
“I can understand that. I trust you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Try me. Please,” he says. “Just tell me you weren’t having sex with him, and I’ll believe you. I’m not a suspicious person.”
That’s when it hits me that he really doesn’t know. I look down at my shoes.
“Oh my God,” he says. “Oh my fucking God. Marnie! I can’t believe this! You’ve done this to me again! How could you do this?”
“I didn’t plan this.”
“What does that even mean? You didn’t set out to crush me, is that it? But why did you do it?”
“Oh, God, I am really and truly very sorry. Jeremy, listen. I didn’t know when I came here that he was here. And then when he was, I was thinking it was still okay and that I’d come back home next month and you and I would get married, and—”
“That’s bullshit. You’ve been lying to me! Talking to me almost every day and never telling me anything near the truth. I-I’m speechless.”
He stares out again at the dismal, dreary street, littered with leaves, and then he turns back to me. “This place sucks. You know that? This is what you’re picking, instead of the life we had talked about? This?”
“It doesn’t look so good right now,” I admit. “But it’s really kind of beautiful in its way. You’re not seeing it at its best. And under the circumstances . . .”
He looks at me a long time, and then he shakes his head. “I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t think I can take any more.”
“Before you go, can I ask you one thing? Did Noah set you up for this? Did he get you to come?”
“Wow. You really are delusional, aren’t you? I came here because I missed you, you idiot, because I thought it would be fun to surprise you since I felt bad that you were away for the holidays. Your whole family and I thought this up. That’s why nobody’s talked to you on the phone for the past week, because we were all so excited and worried that we’d spoil the surprise.”
“Oh,” I say. “Well. This may sound beside the point, but I’ve always said that I hate surprises. Now I know why.”
He gives me an incredulous look. “You suck, you know that?” And then he shakes his head and walks down the steps and turns down the sidewalk.
“Want me to call you a cab?” I call down to him. But he doesn’t even grace that offer with a backward glance, which is fine. I don’t deserve anything from him. Nothing at all.