The Sleeping Beauty Proposal (2 page)

I found a spot for the egg timer on my stove and there it sat for years, reminding me every morning, as I flipped my Egg Beaters omelet with salsa and low-fat cheese, of what I was doing wrong. Like putting it by the stove instead of the phone, for starters.

One by one my closest friends from college got married. Mary Ann went to Germany, married a doctor, and had two children named Louise and Hanz. Sara married Gary, who lived in the apartment above us junior year. (We'd all seen that one coming.) Julia married a guy she met in law school. Lorraine married her dentist. Only Ellie and I were left and Ellie was looking, hard. She had egg timers next to every phone in her apartment, and one by the cell in her car. (I am not kidding.)

It haunted me, my egg timer. I'd think about it as I went to work, riding the number 73 Waverly bus to Harvard Square and taking the Red Line up to Thoreau College, where I'm an admissions counselor. I'd ask myself, is it me? Do men not find me attractive?

Clearly, that wasn't true. Guys asked me out all the time and they'd tell me that they loved my hair, which is nothing spectacular, your run-of-the-mill brown, or that they thought my legs were really strong. (Just what does that mean?) They said I was funny and had a great personality. But something about me was not marriage material.We'd last four, maybe five dates discussing, as always, their ex-girlfriends and how to win them back, and that was it. They never called again.

Why? I mean, I had the timer!

Maybe it was my job. Maybe it wasn't exciting enough to attract quality men. In a college town like Boston, everyone knows there are two types of admissions counselors: the recent graduates biding their time until something more exciting comes along, or the hacks, like me, who have decided to make a career out of breaking kids' hearts.

Not that I'm one of those. I'm not. I'm the person on the admissions committee who votes for Suzie Plain Cheese of Dayton, Ohio, because she's a hard worker and a sincere student who didn't pad her resume. I know Suzie will grow up to be a generous member of society, joining her community's school board and maybe leading a Girl Scout troop or two.

But Thoreau College is in a losing war against Harvard. (As if we could compete!) Inevitably, my Suzie is overruled in favor of the rich kid from New Jersey whose parents have paid for him to distribute clean needles in Ghana and for him to take classes that coach him to a perfect 2400 on the SATs.

So, I went to work and did what I could for the Suzie Plain Cheeses of the universe. I spent my lunch hours eating turkey sandwiches with diet mayo, lettuce, and tomato on whole wheat along with a Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke while reading their essays about the life-changing aspects of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. On the train home I read their explanations for why they bombed biology and, after a dinner of Lean Cuisine and a Skinny Cow sandwich, I read about their plans to take over the world while my overweight, diabetic cat, Jorge, barfed on the carpet by my feet.

I kept up this routine hoping that life might change of its own accord.

And then, just when I had given up and signed myself over to a limited existence in my Watertown apartment with my nearly blind cat, a miracle occurred.

I met Hugh.

Not any Hugh. Hugh Spencer. I'm sure you've heard of him or read one of his books. Though when we hooked up, he wasn't famous. He was just an assistant English English professor. I didn't repeat myself. He taught English and he
was
English. How cool is that?

All the freshman girls had crushes on him. His office hours were booked faster than a Rolling Stones reunion tour. And they weren't there to discuss his brilliant analysis of Shakespeare's use of feminine foil in
All's Well That Ends Well,
either.The guy is the spitting image of Hugh Grant, heavy-lidded blue eyes, that naughty grin, even the stutter. (Though Patty thinks it's totally affected and she may be right.)

Better yet, I didn't have to put out bait or trap him. He came to me. Literally. He opened the door of my office one night when I was “working” late and there I was, naturally, with my skirt over my head inspecting my ass with a hand mirror.

Granted, it wasn't the best of circumstances to meet a future husband. That's not exactly putting one's “best face forward,” you might say. But it was funny. Hugh had come looking for a flashlight to help Alice, our secretary, change her tire and what he got instead was an uncontrollable fit of hysterics.

I, of course, didn't find it funny at all. I was mortified! But no matter how hard I tried to explain that I was checking for cancer—having just taken a break to read a
Cosmo
article entitled "Killer MolesYou Don't See”—the more he doubled over. I mean, it was a matter of life and death. And he was laughing!

To make up for his callous attitude toward my health, he took me out to dinner. (All clear on the ass-mole front, by the way.) The next thing I knew we had one, two, three, four, five, and six dates. Then I stopped counting.

It was glorious. Saturdays we'd go to the North End and pick up fresh pasta for dinner. Sundays we'd sleep late and read the
NewYork Times.
We biked. We jogged. We had mind-blowing sex on fresh white 1,000-thread-count cotton sheets. It was like living in a catalogue.

Suddenly, I had Adirondack chairs on my front porch. I was wearing gray yoga pants and facing the morning sun with an earthenware cup of fair-trade espresso in my hand, Hugh kissing my neck, his abs chiseled above his Ralph Lauren striped boxers. My kitchen was bright with fresh vegetables, green peppers, red peppers, and organic garlic sautéing in heart-healthy safflower oil. I completely forgot the whole line of Lean Cuisine or my excitement when I learned that Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa now came in Cherry Cordial!

Then came the Big Hurdles. You know the ones I'm talking about—the meeting of each other's parents; the vacation at a beach house; the Christmas together, alone; the first anniversary.

Surely, I thought, he will pop the question soon.

Not that I was one of those desperate women who, having passed her thirtieth birthday, was anxious to get on with the next half of womanhood: being a wife and mother. I wasn't.

Really. It was merely that I enjoyed being with Hugh and he seemed to enjoy being with me and, unlike Patty, I was of the opinion that two people in love in their thirties who had been together for over a year should probably start discussing things like whether it was better to raise children in the security of the suburbs or amidst the stimulation of a city, and if Labradoodles really were safe with babies.

But the first anniversary came and went and the only diamond Hugh gave me was the one patterned on a blue silk scarf (to match my “cerulean” eyes). Nor was the famous Spencer family diamond ring hanging from the tree on our second Christmas, no sapphire at the bottom of my champagne flute on New Year's.

Summer arrived, bringing with it warm and romantic nights. We took what had become our “annual” vacation on Martha's Vineyard, strolling hand-in-hand down the beach as the fog rolled in. No diamond in the sand, either. And I looked. Looked hard.

Three years later, I was still looking, my big toe turning over clam shells and crab claws, certain a diamond-and-platinum solitaire had been dropped somewhere.What was he waiting for? He'd told me he loved me.That was now a given. He often brought up our old age, how he could see us hobbling down the same Vineyard beach in our twilight years. I assumed that by then we'd be married, if only for the Social Security.

Did I push? No. Even after the FedEx guy started accepting Hugh's signature in lieu of mine and my answering machine said, “Hugh and I can't come to the phone,” not once did I bring up the
M
word. I was so incredibly not that way.

Though plenty of women in my situation might have been that way. Might have feigned a pregnancy like Connie, a woman (shrew) I work with, who drew a tiny + sign in pink magic marker on her pregnancy test and left it by the toilet. (Not such a hot idea. Her loser boyfriend found the test, stepped outside to get the paper, and was never seen again.)

Nor did I leave the
New York Times
Weddings section about or conduct long, loud phone calls with Patty about my aging ovaries and whatnot.

Instead, I continued to play it cool. I shrugged when Hugh coyly asked if I ever thought about getting married. (A classic commitment-phobic boyfriend test to see if you're out to trap him, in my opinion. Don't fall for it!) I even managed to convince myself that marriage was not all that it was cut out to be.Women of our generation had no need for the financial support of men. Why be burdened when I could be free?

One day while we were lying by the Charles after a run, we finally had the Big Discussion and I learned Hugh had a “position” on marriage. It was this: Being unmarried keeps us fresh.

Turned out Todd, my older brother, had a corollary: Being unmarried keeps Hugh's options open.

"Mine, too,” I said, defensively.

To which Todd snorted, “Right. You want to get married, Genie, and you know it. The only reason why a man in his late thirties doesn't want to commit is because he thinks, hopes, that there's something better around the corner. I know. I am that thirty-seven -year-old man.”

It hurt. And for a while I was mad at Todd for being such a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Marriage was passé. Anyone with any intelligence knew that. Just because Hugh and I didn't have a slip of paper didn't mean we weren't committed to one another.

Like Hugh said, marriage was an anachronism left over from the days of tribal politics. (I have absolutely no idea what that means.) Our bond, he said, didn't need approval from the state. (Or commonwealth.We were in Massachusetts, after all.)

Besides, Hugh was working his heart out, teaching by day and drafting a new novel at night, a novel he needed to be a smashing bestseller so he could quit academics and write full-time. He was exhausted.Testy. It would have been unfair of me to pester him at this crucial point in his career with my neurotic whining about children and hobbling on the beach and just how long he planned on keeping his options open, anyway.

So I was patient. And my patience was rewarded with more abundance than I ever could have hoped for.

Hugh hit it big with his novel
Hopeful, Kansas,
a delightfully sappy romance about a handsome drama student named Dick Credo who's bent on becoming famous and who never noticed Dora Schlubb, the girl who tutored him in math and who secretly had a huge crush on him.

Dick Credo leaves his Kansas hometown of Hopeful, goes to Hollywood and becomes a megastar, and then is felled by drugs and alcohol and his reputation is ruined. So he ends up back in Hopeful and wouldn't you know that Dora, the girl who tutored him in math, is still carrying the proverbial torch.

She helps him heal and he sobers up and realizes he missed his true calling to become mayor of Hopeful and clean up all the Hopeful crime and marry the nerdy girl. Only, right before their wedding, Dora's diagnosed with some mysterious and quick-killing disease—but she keeps it from Dick—and she collapses into his arms at the altar,“her face as pale as the virginal white wedding dress she had saved for herself and for him.”

She didn't even get to ... you know ... with Dick, the Brad Pitt of Hopeful, Kansas. (If you ask me, there was more going on with Dick than just drugs and alcohol. But that's another book for another day.)

Anyway, Hugh's book landed smack at number 1 on the
New York Times
bestseller list and suddenly
People
magazine was interviewing him and he turned into an overnight celebrity, a kind of literary hottie.There were even groupies.

His publisher sent him on a book tour for three weeks, during which there were lots of questions from nosy journalists about which he preferred, boxers or briefs. (I would think to myself, “I know.”) And then there were the questions about me, which he handled artfully.

He'd say, “I have found the love of my life. We have a relationship that no novel, no matter how great, could do justice. It's the kind of love that makes my passion burn with unquenchable desire.”

I would swoon whenever I read that. I couldn't wait for him to come home so I could rip off his clothes and personally quench his flames.

Hugh's last stop on the book tour was an appearance on whatever the show is with Barbara Walters. Barbara ended the interview with what would become the question that changed my life: “Are you ever going to marry your own Dora?”

I was on the edge of my seat. I could not believe what was happening before my very eyes, especially when Hugh said he would ask “Dora” to be his wife if he could be assured the answer would be yes.

Well, of course the answer would be yes, silly. I wanted to reach out and grab him through the screen and shake him by the neck.That's when Barbara held up her finger, as if she'd just had a brilliant idea, and said, “Hugh. Why don't you ask her right now, here on live television? Ask your Dora to marry you.”

My heart stopped. My vision became tunnel as I stared, riveted, at the screen. This would be a moment we'd describe to our children (Meg, Beth, and Amy), and that Meg, Beth, and Amy would pass down for generations.

Hugh hemmed and blushed some more. Then, at Barbara's cajoling, he faced the camera and said, “You know how much I love you, my Dora. I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since the moment we met. While I've been away, I've been consumed, obsessed, desperate to hold you, touch you, kiss your soft, warm lips.”

Really? That's funny, because he only called once a day to ask if he had any voice mail and to make sure Jorge got his insulin shots.