Brenda Janowitz: Jack With a Twist

“That’s it,” Vanessa says, pointing at the sketch.

“I know,” I say, turning toward her and smiling.

“Ta da!” my mother says as she comes out of the dressing room in one of Monique’s gowns. I am immediately concerned about this for two reasons: the first is that Monique did not tell my mother to try on any of the sample dresses. Rather, she merely brought her to a rack and told her to start looking. The second is that it’s not a mother-of-the-bride dress at all. It is one of Monique’s wedding dresses.

“Did Monique give her more champagne?” I whisper to Vanessa. Vanessa laughs out loud and then quickly covers her mouth with her hand.

Now, if I were Monique, I would have screamed, “Take that dress off right this instant, you drunken deranged idiot!” But, Monique is far too classy for such things. Instead, she says, “Ah, yes, Ms. Miller, what a gorgeous figure. You look good in everything I create. Let me help you out of that and we can discuss your mother-of-the-bride dress.”

My cell phone rings as Monique and my mother are walking back to the fitting room. I look at my caller ID and see that it’s my fiancé, Jack.

“Jackie,” I say. Just seeing his number come up on my caller ID makes me smile uncontrollably.

“Brookie,” he says. “How’s it going?”

“Fabulous,” I say, fantasizing about how perfect we are going to look together on our wedding day. Even if Jack showed up in a paper bag, he’d look great—all shaggy brown hair and gorgeous baby blue eyes—but I’m sure that he’ll wear an actual tuxedo. A brown paper bag wouldn’t really match my couture.

“That good?” he asks. “So, I guess your mother is behaving herself?”

“Well, no,” I say, glancing over at my mother who is now dancing by herself to the soft jazz Monique has playing, spinning in tiny circles like a little girl at her own birthday party. “But, it doesn’t matter. Jack, I found it.”

“Found what?” he asks.

“The one,” I say, barely believing it as the words come out of my mouth.

“I thought I was the one?” he asks. “Don’t tell me that you found another guy to marry?” He pauses dramatically. “Well, even if you did, you found him at a bridal boutique, so I’m sure I can take him.”

“No, I mean—” I say. “Okay, yes, you are the one, you know that. I didn’t mean that.”

“What did you mean?” he says and I can practically see his devilish little smile through the phone lines.

“I mean, I found it! I found the perfect wedding dress.”

Column Five

Sightings…

WHAT “monster” Hollywood star was seen walking into Monique deVouvray’s Upper East Side townhouse yesterday? She’s vowed, after her two failed marriages, never to walk down the aisle again, but could this visit to the most exclusive wedding dress designer in the world mean that she’s finally tying the knot with her longtime boyfriend and “model” father of her child?

Since Jack and I have been engaged, we’ve been living in delicious sin in a two-bedroom apartment in Gramercy Park. Okay, okay, we’ve actually been living in sin since before we got engaged, but you get the general point I’m trying to make. The point is that things are fabulous, even if we did jump the gun on the whole moving-in thing just a bit. But if anyone asks you, just tell them that we were engaged before we moved in together. Especially my grandmother. She is eighty-two years old and a very traditional Jewish woman from Poland who most certainly would not understand living with someone to whom you are not married. In her day, a nice Jewish girl would never live with someone without the benefit of clergy. Unless you were hiding out from the Nazis, in which case it would then be perfectly all right to cohabit for a period of time. And maybe even make out a little bit. I’m not sure about that one. But to be officially, legally living in sin? Well, that’s a big no-no.

Which is why she has no idea that Jack and I actually live together. I almost got busted at our last holiday dinner—after a few too many glasses of Manischewitz kosher wine (yes, I know, tastes like grape juice, but still amazingly effective in getting you tipsy), she cornered me and wanted to know all about my fiancé. She started with the easy questions, like where did he grow up? (A suburb outside of Philly.) How many siblings does he have? (Three sisters.) What does his father do for a living? (Federal judge for the Third Circuit.) Then, she asked a seemingly innocuous question that completely threw me for a loop: “Where in the city does Jack live?” When I carefully told her that he lived in Gramercy, she was delighted. She said: “How lovely! Do the two of you live close to each other?” So I did what any girl in my position would do. I cheerily responded, “Yes!” Which really isn’t lying, if you think about it. We do live close to each other. Very very very close. All I actually did was to leave out the part about how close we live to each other. I just couldn’t bring myself to actually tell her about the we-sleep-in-the-same-bed part.

Oh, please! As if you’d be running to tell your eighty-two-year-old grandmother that you were living in sin.

But a life of sin has been working out for Jack and me just fine.

“So, there’s talk of this big new case coming in to the firm,” Jack says to me on Saturday morning. We’re seated at our breakfast bar with mugs of hot coffee and the newspapers sprawled out.

I know. A lazy Saturday morning with your fiancé, a hot cup of coffee and The New York Times. Heaven.

“That’s great, honey!” I say, taking a bite of my toasted sesame bagel. “Which partner is bringing it in?”

“Mel, I think,” he says and I nod in agreement. “Which is perfect since he loves my work.” I nod again, since I know that if Mel is, in fact, the senior partner bringing the new case in to the firm, Jack’s got a great chance of being assigned to it and taking the lead on it.

I should explain: Jack and I met when we worked together at my old law firm, Gilson, Hecht and Trattner, which is why I know all of the partners there and how things work in general. I’ve since left big-firm life for a smaller law practice, but Jack is still at Gilson, Hecht, where he recently became a partner.

“This could be really huge for me, Brooke,” Jack says and I look up from my coffee at him. He moves a stray curl of my shoulder-length auburn hair back behind my ear with a finger.

“You’ve already made partner, Jack,” I say, putting my hand on his cheek. His face is rough to my touch since he hasn’t yet shaved this morning. He looks so sexy when he’s got that slight trace of a shadow. “Everyone loves you and thinks you’re amazing. You’ve proven yourself at the firm. That’s why they made you a partner in the first place. Don’t you get to sit back and breathe at this point?”

“Brooke, I really need this,” he says, “there are over three hundred associates at Gilson, Hecht and over one hundred partners—I just need that one big case to come my way to establish me as a force to be reckoned with in the firm. Rumor has it that this case may even involve a celebrity, so there would be media recognition, too.”

“Ooh, celebs,” I coo. “I hope it’s J. Lo.”

“She doesn’t like to be called that anymore,” Jack says, “and I’m being really serious here. I want to take my career to the next level. Soon we’re going to be thinking about children and I want to be able to support them in the lifestyle to which you’ve become accustomed.”