Jubana! (30 page)

“Thank God,” Lou said.

When we stepped into the street, the wind had picked up. It was biting. Mary Lou put her shades back on. I started to also, then didn't. I was still crying. Was it Woody or the wind? Whatever it was, it was good to be walking away from it.

F
or a Jubana who's never fantasized about her wedding day, it was amazing how effortlessly I clicked into my alter ego, Lulamae–Holly Golightly. Being in love and
Breakfast at Tiffany's
had brought me here, to Tiffany & Co. on Wisconsin Avenue in Chevy Chase, to check out engagement rings with Paul. Yes, my prehistoric beloved Dino boyfriend had become my prehistoric beloved Dino fiancé. Fee-
AAAHn
-ceh. Such a great word! Boyfriend can't compare to fiancé. It's so much more…
je ne sais quoi.
Wahndehr Brayt as opposed to
croissant.
Wal-Mart as opposed to
Tarjay.
Schlitz as opposed to
Champagne
—any
Champagne.
Or maybe I just like saying French words a lot.

So across the glass counter we leaned, and I knew we would lean that way forever. It was so beautiful and we had rain in our hair and I couldn't remember a happier moment than on this Saturday afternoon in October, with me in my single-breasted black patent leather raincoat with the electric-blue wool lining, and Paul in his lined khaki trench coat. The sky'd been Jeremy Irons moody since morning, when we'd drunk our
cafés con leche
and
chewed our toasted bagels—sesame for me, pumpernickel for
lui
—with cream cheese, sitting at the same family room table where Mami Dearest and I'd fought over the wedding guest
lees
and reception appetizer selections just weeks before. (The prospect of matrimony may be the only time in Juban life when people will actually, like,
plan ahead
.)

Lucida Lust. Who knew I had it? Must've been a
very
latent gene. Because when I laid my Helen Keller eyeballs on Tiffany's brilliantly blinding Lucida ring, I could suddenly, miraculously SEE! I was cured!
Tafetán color champán
—bring it on! A-a-a-mazing grace…Really. It was sick how much I loved that ring. First of all, the name. It's Spanish. Well, it's actually Latin. Close enough. It means bright or shining or clear.
Lu
cid, get it? LOO-see-dah. The distinguished, continental man helping us said it meant “the brightest star in the constellation,” but
en Español
that would be
lucidísima.
Whatever. Lucida was the One.

“Le plus lucide,”
I told Paul, who's sort of multilingual. He took off his raincoat. Perhaps I sounded a tad too enthusiastic; it seemed to be making the reptile fiancé sweat.
Do
reptiles sweat?

“Oui,”
said Paul.

I tried on a one-carat Lucida engagement ring in a platinum setting with a matching diamond-less Lucida wedding band, also in platinum. (I knew the 18-karat yellow gold setting would flatter my skin more, but the hell with that. Besides being the most durable of all the precious metals, platinum is, well, platinum.) The rings were truly, flawlessly, simply orgasmic. The closest mere mortals can get to this
mise en scène
is at www.tiffany.com/ expertise/diamond/rings/combination_lucida_ring .asp?ring=dia band&. What was weird about it in real life was that nothing was weird about it. Because it was
Tiffany.
Because it was
Paul.
Because it was
right.
After all, everybody knows nothing bad could
ever happen to you with a Dino-man in Tiffany. Plus, the man who loved Holly Golightly for the Lulamae she really was, in her soul, was named
Paul.
Plus, Holly realizes Paul is the One while they're
standing in the rain, holding each other and wearing raincoats!

“This is beautiful!” I cried. I put my hand in the fiancé's paw so he could have a closer look.

“Nice,” he said, nodding. Men know nothing. They just want to do this so they can move on to the next thing, which in Paul's current context meant either shrimp fajitas or
salmon a la parrilla
with shrimp and marisco sauce. We'd made plans to meet up afterward with my old
Washington Post
friend Joe McLellan at Cactus Cantina, our fave Mexican restaurant in D.C., just north of the National Cathedral. See? A very wedding-y weekend: Tomorrow morning we'd have our first appointment with Rabbi Bruce in his study at Temple Shalom for premarital counseling.

“We put as much emphasis on design as on the quality of stones,” said Tiffany Man. He reminded me of David Niven, suave and cosmopolitan with his thin little mustache, and John McGiver, with his balding head and vaguely superior manner. “The Lucida provides a marvelous alternative to a strictly traditional or modern engagement ring. It's a lovely blend.”

“It IS!” I cried. I glanced at Paul. Face shiny but body still vertical. Good.

“This diamond shape is called the Lucida cut,” Mr. Niven-McGiver continued. “It's our own creation. A mixed cut, not quite square, rather like a round brilliant on the bottom, so it has a lot of sparkle.”

“It DOES!” I cried. I sure was crying a lot in there. Hey, my Lucida was worth crying over. It was
lucidísima.

“The wide band gives the ring security,” Mr. Niven-McGiver
expertly explained. “It's a more contemporary style. Very sleek. Graceful. We're known for a few specific designs. This one was introduced in 1999.”

“You're not gonna stop making it, are you?” I asked, slightly alarmed. “It's like a perfect little sculpture from MoMA, but it's wearable!”

“We'll always carry it,” he answered, discreetly slipping me his card. Jesus, even the card stock was thick and creamy and gorgeous. Of course it was. “It's part of our permanent collection.”

“How are you doing?” I asked Paul. “Are you okay over there?”

“Sure,” Paul said.

“Really?”

“Why?” Paul asked.

“Could you give us a moment?” I asked Mr. Niven-McGiver, who nodded elegantly and glided to the end of the counter. “You. Divorc-ed Dino.”

“Si?”

“You. You are a…um, how shall I put this…”

“Cheap bastard?”

“Right. Exactly. Thank you. So why aren't you, like, passing out with fever or throwing up or running away screaming?”

The fiancé took my tiny fiancée hand in his huge big one and kissed my palm, careful not to mar MY LUCIDA.

“I love you,” he said. “And yeah, it's expensive.”

“Dear, it's, like, five digits, this combo platter.”

“It's Tiffany,” Paul said with a shrug. “And it's what you really want, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “It is.”

“Okay, then. This is, I hope, a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. That's what savings accounts are for. You know, an investment. You'll have it forever. I want you to have what you want. I live to
serve, isn't that what you always tell me my place is? My raison d'être?”

“It's becoming part of my haaand,” I said with a swoony sigh, clutching my hands to my chest like a nosegay. Lucida had to be better than crack.

“You know, Martha never liked diamonds,” Paul said, trying on one of the two plain platinum Lucida wedding bands Mr. Niven-McGiver had left on the counter for him. The plain ones are unisex. Men usually choose the 4.5 millimeters width, or the 6. Both were fabulous on Paul and the most expensive sohkehr was only $1,000! So cheap! That's like one little magazine story for me.

“The ex-rated wife didn't like diamonds?” I said, incredulous.

“Nope. Not her style. We had our gold bands made. We designed them ourselves.”

“You are
so
lucky to be with me,” I said, closing my eyes and shaking my head.

Paul kissed me.

“Hey, is this really okay?” I asked him. We were, after all, shlubby journalist Democrats. “Are you sure you can afford this? Because if not, we can look on Sansom Street. Isn't that where you told me in Philadelphia that's, like, a whole city block, and all the members of our tribe sell the pet rocks there?”

“Aw, come on,” Paul said, slipping off his Lucida. His naked hand looked sad without it. Just your basic reptilian paw. “Every woman wants that little blue box experience.”

 

“Can't put the rain back in the sky / Once it falls down / Please don't cry….”

“Ooo,” Paul remarked. “That's good. ‘Can't put the rain back in the sky.'”

We were sitting in my car in the Giant Foods parking lot behind Cactus Cantina, listening to Lucinda Williams's CD
Essence.
This song was called “Are You Down?”. We'd arrived early and were killing time waiting for Joe to join us. I'd loved Lucinda for years, especially
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.
I loved introducing the fiancé to the music I loved; musically he was kind of a one-trick pony. For him it was jazz, jazz, jazz.

“Lucida's amazing,” I agreed, exhaling my Parliament and sucking my lime Tic Tacs.

“Who?”

“Lucinda Williams.”

“You said Lucida.”

Well. Now that we clearly knew our ring's names—and sizes—Paul and I would buy each other's separately and act surprised when we proffered our little blue boxes.

“Can't force the river upstream / When it goes south / Know what I mean?”

 

In Rabbi Bruce's cozy study, I was excited and loose and giddy. Paul was grim and vigilant and tense—arms gripping his chest and legs crossed for the entire two hours. He appeared tortured.

“This isn't the Inquisition,” I whispered to him as Bruce gathered some papers. “You're allowed to take off your raincoat.”

“I'm fine,” Paul said, shifting mournfully in his chair as if it were electric and he'd spent the last decade on death row and all appeals for clemency had been exhausted.

Bruce talked with us about the history of Jewish weddings—Reform Judaism is about informed choice, and no limits were put on what was possible.

“You don't plan a wedding and make decisions as if the last
four thousand years of Jewish weddings didn't exist,” Bruce said. “So we'll consider that carefully. At the same time, you should be free to determine the most meaningful content. That's liberating: It creates awe and respect.”

“In with the old, in with the new,” I said. “I love it. Individuality! Right, sweets?”

Paul looked stricken. I attributed this to the fact that my Jewish fiancé had never had a Jewish wedding. Martha the ex was a WASP who'd converted to Catholicism.

“My primary point,” Bruce said, “is that only the bride and groom know what's truly meaningful to them. That's what I'm after. The only thing we always include in the ceremony is for each of you to tell the other, in Hebrew and in English, ‘Be consecrated to me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel, according to the law of God.'”

We moved on to the history of our romantic relationship. Bruce wanted to understand how Paul and I got from “Hello, how are you?” to “I want to spend my life with you.” Bruce asked about our biggest conflicts and how and if we'd solved them.

“We're trying to anticipate the big-ticket items,” Bruce explained, “so that when they come up in the future—and they will—they won't blow your marriage out of the water.”

Paul looked seasick. Was my Lucida sinking like the
Lusitania?
The Lucidania?

“You seem unsettled,” Bruce told Paul. “Unresolved.”

“Paul's broken up with me before,” I said. “Lots of times. Every time we get too close. He'll say stuff like, ‘I love you but I'm not
in
love with you,' or, ‘I just can't! Godspeed!' or—”

“So I'm watching
Groundhog Day
?” Bruce said.

“You totally are,” I said. “It's so predictable. Then he calls me up, crying, and we pick up where we left off. It's what we do. No biggie, really.”

“You can't keep going through that,” Bruce said. “It must be tearing you to pieces. Paul? Is this a pattern? ‘Marriage, don't tread on me'? Because if that's the case there's no reason to set a wedding date.”

“WHAT?” I shrieked.

“I'm…kind of…criss-crossed and padlocked,” Paul said. “I am.”

“His sister told him, ‘You're too old to make another mistake,'” I said to Bruce. “She's his only sibling and—”

Paul momentarily loosened his grip on himself to reach for the ChapStick in his raincoat pocket. He applied it heavily to his cracked lips.

“A certain amount of caution after a divorce is going to occur,” Bruce said. “The degree varies enormously from person to person. But Paul, my friend, you look a lot past cautious. The whole point of my rabbinate is to help people move toward wholeness of being. It's terribly important and a sacred obligation. There's a responsibility that goes along with it to do the very best I can to help you as a couple get off to the right start. I don't just show up and do a ceremony.”

“I am locked up,” Paul said. “Maybe you could help me unlock myself?”

“Me?” Bruce said. “I'm no rapist.”

“What?” Paul and I asked simultaneously.

“I don't go where I'm not welcome,” Bruce said. “And it's very clear Paul's not going down that road. You need the kind of help I can't provide. Commitment makes you nervous. Vulnerable. With Gigi, it's just the opposite. I think there's a powerful, mutual love here. I think you both want it to be wonderful. But Paul, you're not ready for a legally binding relationship and all that comes with it. You're not free. Sorry, folks.”

I drove the Dino to the Amtrak in New Carrollton to catch his
northbound train. We didn't say much in the car. What was there to say?

“I'll call you when I get home,” Paul said. He wasn't looking at me.

“Okay,” I said.

I pulled away, not waiting for Paul to go inside the station. I didn't want to see him and I didn't want him to see me cry.