The Unexpected List (The List Trilogy) (17 page)

I left New York three weeks ago, and I’ve barely spoken to Leo since.  He’s been working twenty-four hours a day on the Hedge thing-a-ma-jig with Taddeo, but progress has been super slow.  Everything is still such a mess in New York, and he’s worried that it’s going to take longer than expected to get things going at a pace where he’s comfortable moving back to California.  But, staying true to my promise to Taddeo to not get in the way of their friendship, I haven’t said a word about how much our new set up scares me and about my fear of him never coming back.

Another thing moving along at a slug’s pace is our wedding.  In fact, there’s still been no mention of it.  With all of the 9/11 business and Leo’s hectic schedule, it just doesn’t seem right to bring it up…it doesn’t feel right to be happy.   Besides, what am I going to bring up?  Our parents haven’t met, my friends have never met any of his friends…Shit, half of my friends haven’t even met the other half of my friends!  And what the hell am I going to wear?   I can’t wear white again.  Been there, done that, and I’ll just have to remind Leo of that little tidbit if I bring up dresses, so it’s best not to.  There’s no reason to register for gifts.   It’d be pretty tacky of me to do that twice in a lifetime.   Sigh…Something tells me Barbie doesn’t get two dream weddings in her lifetime.  Nope, all of the tasteful divorced Barbie’s quietly elope.

The closest Leo and I have come to the subject of our wedding is when we talk about the engagement ring.   He’s asked me a few times over the phone if I love it and, of course, the answer is yes.  It’s spectacular!  Whenever I wear it, I even get stopped by strangers who ask to take a peek at it.  Yes, you read that correctly…
whenever I wear it.

Leo bought the ring back in June, right about the time I mentioned my suspicions to Kelly that he might ask me to marry him soon.  Apparently, right after we went on our trip down memory lane to Mill Valley and San Louis Obispo, he ran out and bought it.  Last month when he got down on his knee and proposed, he adoringly said, “The next time I go back to those places I want to bring my wife” and then he slipped off the pewter Banana Republic ring I’d been wearing since we got back together in March and slipped on the diamond sparkler.  His original plan was to ask me to marry him at the Ritz Carlton on my birthday, but it was scrapped when Taddeo came to town.  Then, the fight happened, and he wanted to wait until his black eye went away before he made another attempt.  That next attempt was set for the night I sprang Freakmont on him, which explains why he was as mad as he was about it.  By the time he simmered down from that night it was already September.  He made reservations back at the Ritz Carlton for the weekend of September fourteenth, but we all know what got in the way of that.  Knowing it would probably be weeks until he saw me in person again because of his new business partnership with Taddeo, he decided to do it when I visited New York last month.   I’m glad he did, because it’ll give us an endearing story to tell our kids one day.  But, and I’ll only admit this here, even though I’m scared about him being stuck in New York for more than five months, I’m a little relieved that he’ll be there for at least the next few.  It gives me time to drop the M bomb on my best friends…who I know will be quick to drop the M bomb on Kurt.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I want to keep my engagement from Kurt. For the past few weeks I’ve been sitting in my cottage listening to every love song ever written, drinking wine and trying to make sense out of feelings that should’ve been left on Dr. Maria’s couch. One drunken minute I think I’m hiding my engagement because of guilt. Marrying the guy I had an affair with makes me feel bad.  Sure, marrying Leo makes me look like less of a whore, and it’s proof that I really did fall in love with the person I chose to break my marital vows with.  But, it seems like one more undeserved slap in Kurt’s face.  I struggle with defending my union with Leo without feeling the shame that encases it.   But then the next drunken minute I think I’m hiding my engagement from Kurt because I have a feeling, given his recent come to Jesus moment at the coffee shop about being an emotional lame ass for the last fifteen years, that he’ll knock my cottage door down to tell me I’m making a huge mistake.  Of course I’d stand up for my choice, but it’s just one more emotionally-charged encounter with him I don’t want to have.  Bad, bad things happen when I’m around Kurt.  Buried feelings surface, and he makes me think about stuff I don’t want to think about anymore.  But, when I turn off my persuasive love songs and sober up and really reflect on why I’m hiding my engagement from Kurt, I know the answer. And boy, I’m sure as hell glad I don’t sit on Dr. Maria’s couch anymore because she’d kill me if I revealed it to her.  I don’t want Kurt to find out I’m engaged because…I don’t want to hurt him.  Even after all of this time, I’m still trying to protect the feelings of a man who never asked me to.  What’s scary is that in the process of doing that, I continue to assault the feelings of the man I love and the man who has vulnerably asked me time and again not to break his heart.

Right now I only wear my engagement ring at the yoga studios.  When I’m around my rag tag team, I get to celebrate my excitement about becoming Leo’s wife.  I get to talk about how far we’ve come and about how far we plan on going.  I get to start over.  But, outside of the studios, when I’m around Craig and Kendall or Courtney and Nicole, I hide my fresh start.

Cracking open my beer and reaching for the cigarette Nicole’s handing to me, I whisper to Kelly, “For now, it’s just our little secret.”  And then I allow myself to enjoy the simplicity of the moment while we all light up.

Fur Reals?

November, 2001

It’s beginning to look like things in Chrissy-land are getting back to normal (which, by the way probably isn’t saying much because that’s only half of what’s normal in Normal-land).

It’s been almost two months since I ran out of that coffee shop and away from Kurt, and the guilt or fear or whatever it was that I had about him finding out about my engagement has since subsided.  In fact, the longer I’ve been able to sit and think about it, how dare he try to make-up for the past like that…and in a coffee shop!  I loved Kurt more than anything in my life, for most of my life, but not anymore.  And if my new marriage stands a chance in hell, I better start acting like that.  And I have.  I never bring the subject of Kurt up around my friends and whenever they do, I leave the room.  So far, Craig seems to be the only one who’s noticed my valiant effort, and he even complimented me on it at the last get together with the gang.  He continues to support my relationship with Leo, and I’ve actually decided that he’ll be the first gang member I’ll tell of my engagement…when it’s the right time.  Baby steps…

My friendships with Courtney and Nicole are completely back to normal now that we all agree that Leo will never be a gang member
and
I now know the full reason why they met Kayla.  If I hadn’t had a full blown Chrissy meltdown at the cemetery that day and driven off so quickly, they would’ve been able to tell me that Kurt brought her, un-announced, to a barbeque at Courtney’s house.  They hated every second of her and told Kurt to keep her infantile sorority-ass as far away from them as possible.  (Their husbands, however, totally enjoyed her and her boobs.)  I have no doubt that my best friends will jump up and down and clap at the news of my engagement…when they hear of it.  Baby steps…

My special time with Kendall has come to mean so much more to me than I ever thought possible.   Since I’ve started picking her up three days a week, she’s adopted so many of my characteristics and Craig has even forgiven me for most of them!  Shoes are her number one favorite accessory, she never leaves home without her Mac lip gloss and pathetically, “HELLS NO” has escaped from her mouth on a few occasions. The staff at The Happy Hearts daycare center greets me by first name and sends me invitations to all of her special events and you can bet I’m at each and every one. I’m even mistaken as her mother by new staff and when it happens, Kendall and I just look at each other and giggle.  Even though I hide it from Kendall, being called her mother is like a straight shot to my heart.  But, for some reason she really enjoys it, so I follow her lead every time and laugh away.  Kendall misses “Weo” and the snipe hunting marathons they used to get into, and she’s at the top of the list of people who will be overjoyed to know that he’s soon to become my husband…when the news hits the stands.  Baby steps…

And speaking of my future husband…his dot is becoming less grey now as talk of the wedding has commenced.  As we were wrapping up our phone conversation tonight with twenty-six “I love you’s” and forty-seven “No, you hang-up firsts,” Leo blurted out with, “Oh, wait…I almost forgot!  Tell me some place you’ve never been before.”

“Why?”

“Just tell me.”

I’ve traveled to so many places with Kurt and with my old job, it takes me a few minutes to hone in on an answer.  Before I’m about to say, Russia, Leo interjects with, “Make it somewhere tropical.”

Looking down at the plastic water bottle I’m drinking out of, I think,
hmmmm
, that looks like a nice place.

“Fiji.”

“That’s crazy because that’s
exactly
what I was gonna suggest!”

“For what?”

“The place we get married.  Just you and me…”

“…All alone on a beach. Oh, Leo, it sounds perfect. ”

And it does.  No wedding dress, no wedding cake, no gift registry, and no thank you cards.  But, mostly…no guests and no laughing at me for the second walk around the block.  Oh, c’mon, you know you place bets on every second marriage you’re invited to!  You know you scoff at the big whoop-di-doo the second chance bride makes of her big second wedding day!  You know you kick your date under the pew as the second chance bride takes that second walk down the aisle in her big fat white second chance dress.  You say exactly what I’d say, “Honey, you shoulda got married on some remote beach like all of the other self-respecting second chance brides!”  Which, is where I’ll be thanks to my overly private fiancé who hates large crowds and chaos.

I hang up the phone with Leo happier than I’ve been in a very long time.  After taking a long energized sip of my wine, I reach for the remote.  But, the second I click on the TV, I click it off, fearing I’ll catch some of the 9/11 footage that continues to run twenty-four-seven.   Wanting to hang onto my happiness for as long as I can, I reach for a piece of paper and get to work.

1)  Marry Leo on the beach in Fiji.

2)  Find our dream house together.

3)  Have a baby.

4)  Get a dog.

Yes…things in Chrissy-land are totally back to normal.

Acceptance

December, 2001

According to all of the books I
tried
to read when Kelly was diagnosed with terminal cancer, there are five stages of grief.  First you’ve got your denial.  I imagine this is what I experienced when I turned my office at the clothing company into a medical research lab and tried to find the cure for pancreatic cancer.  For a girl who never got better than a C- in Science and was told by her high school counselor that she wasn’t even qualified to chew gum, I’d say I was in serious denial.  A few days into my research, I remembered how scientifically challenged I was and realized my efforts to cure Kelly were useless. All hopelessness was reinforced when Internet search after Internet search yielded the same results, “SHE’S GONNA DIE!”  As you can imagine, this made me mad…really, really mad.  I was kicked in the ass to the next stage, anger.  For as angry and negative of a person as I am, one would think I‘d still be sitting in this stage.  Surprisingly it was a short one for me.  I figured since, at that point in my life, I had so many demons and lies at my disposal due to my underground relationship with Leo, it would be a better use of my time
and
Kelly’s time to skip anger and get right to the bargaining stage.  And, that I did.  “Please, God, I promise to start believing in you if you’ll just let Kelly live.”  And, “Please, God, if you make the cancer go away, I won’t have another drink as long as I live.” And, “Please, God, just take me.  I’m the lying cheating childless person who deserves to die, not Kelly.”   God didn’t listen to me.  Shocker.  When Craig stopped returning my calls a few weeks before Kelly died, I knew I was out of bargaining chips, and I became pretty depressed- stage four.  I was depressed, but it was weird though, because at this point the depression wasn’t about losing Kelly.  One of the perks (yes, I just called it a perk) of pancreatic cancer is you get used to dealing with loss pretty quickly.  It’s one of the deadliest cancers and since I already learned that way back in the denial stage, I multi-tasked and took care of my depression about losing Kelly then.  The reason for the depression I was experiencing at stage four was from feeling powerless.  But I kind of got lucky again with this stage.  You see, because I had so much therapy with Dr. Maria about feeling powerless with Kurt for all of those years, I kind of knew how to handle it.  And, thousands of dollars of therapy taught me to handle it by…simply refusing to feel it.  And, that I did by jumping into the fifth stage, acceptance.  Acceptance was peaceful, and I was glad to have quickly arrived.  My journey through the five stages of grief was very strange
- Mostly because I was already at the end of the stages when everyone else was just beginning.
  I guess it explains why I could deliver Kelly’s eulogy without freaking out.  I guess it’s why I could take care of Nicole and Courtney in Mexico.  I guess it explains why Kelly’s death immediately made me want to take risks…live life…find love.

That old saying, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, is super true.  And, since I know this so well from personal experience, I know I’ll eventually get to the acceptance stage of what Kurt just unexpectedly showed up to my cottage to tell me.  The difference this time though is I’ll probably arrive at acceptance at the same time as everyone else.