Brenda Janowitz: Scot on the Rocks

One heavenly month later, Douglas begged me to move in with him. Seriously. It was, like, embarrassing. I really couldn’t say no. I mean, the guy was deeply, madly, passionately in love with me! You would have done the same thing. But, don’t worry about me, because I did it all very much by the rules. Literally. I was reading that book called The Rules at the time. It’s all about snagging a man and then getting said man to marry you. Quickly. Okay, so even on its truncated deadlines, that book didn’t suggest even having sex with a man within the first month of dating, much less moving in with him, but those girls never met Douglas. And if my grandmother asks you, we may have been living together, but we most certainly were not having sex. You know what, if my grandmother asks you, don’t even tell her that we were living together. That’s just easier. And anyway, I don’t think that Grandma even realized it at the time. Even when Douglas picked up the telephone, he had such a thick accent that she usually hung up thinking it was the wrong number. But I digress.

The whole thing seemed to be in the bag. By the time I got Trip’s wedding invite, I’d be blissfully engaged (or even married!) to my handsome Scottish boyfriend. Piece of cake, right?

No! That’s not right! It was definitely not a piece of cake! By the time Trip’s wedding came around, not only was I so not engaged, but Douglas and I had also broken up, leaving me both boyfriend-less and homeless! And he proposed to another woman! Who, as you might have caught earlier, had a stupid, stupid name!

Aren’t you even paying attention?!

Luckily for me, my best friend Vanessa was paying attention. Post-breakup, she was my rock. She was even kind enough to let me stay with her and her husband Marcus. After I showed up on her doorstep crying hysterically, begging to come in, that is.

Even in my time of need, though, I was really a pleasure to be around. In fact, I think that in their heart of hearts, they actually enjoyed having me there. Marcus was always working late and was never at home, so I kept Vanessa company on the nights that we, ourselves, didn’t have to work late.

I was also very helpful in the kitchen. I even made dinner once or twice. Well, not so much made dinner as stood in front of the fridge staring blankly into its vast coldness. But it’s really the thought that counts with those things.

“Did the governor call?” Vanessa asked me on one such evening, as she walked into the apartment. She took off her three-inch stiletto heels, which she wore every day despite the fact that she was five foot eight.

“No,” I told her, marveling at the fact that I have such impressive friends, they were actually sitting around waiting for the governor to call. Yes, my friends were out waiting for heads of state to call, while I was standing in front of the refrigerator in my bathrobe, eating raw cookie dough straight from the package as if it were a hot dog, or some other food product that might be acceptable to eat while clutching said food product in one’s fist.

Oh, please. As if you never did that, too.

I guess that’s the way life is when you are the sole offspring of glamorous parents like Vanessa’s — her father, originally from the West Indies, is a world-renowned heart surgeon, and her mother, a former model, now owns a gallery in Tribeca that specializes in African-American art. She grew up in a palatial house in New Jersey that was in the same cul-de-sac as a hip-hop mogul and his child bride. The only famous person in my family is my mother’s cousin Ernie, who once placed second in the Ben’s Kosher Deli matzo-ball eating competition.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, sliding her long legs under her body as she sat down at the kitchen counter.

“Me? No. I’m absolutely fine. Why on earth would I want to talk about it?” I asked.

“When I come home to find my best friend eating like she’s going to the electric chair, I figure she needs to talk about it,” she explained. Electric chair? Governor calling…Clever.

I suppose to some people, that sort of behavior screams “cry for help.” To me, it screams “typical Monday night at home.”

“No, Vanessa. I’m okay,” I said, slowly backing away from the refrigerator. The truth is that I did want to talk about it. It was the only thing that I wanted to talk about, but it seemed as if all I did all day was talk about it, so at night, I would be better off doing more productive things with my time. Like standing in front of the refrigerator in my bathrobe eating raw cookie dough from the tube.

You see, Vanessa never had to worry about the things that I worry about on a daily basis. Will I ever find someone? Will I ever get married? Will I ever have children? Or am I destined to end up like Old Mrs. White, the lady who lived next door to me growing up? I used to pass by her house every day on my walk home from elementary school. She always seemed like such a kind woman, tending to her garden and waving hello to every neighbor who passed by. There was always the faint smell of vanilla on her hands, as if she had been baking cookies all day. Some days, she would even bring out chocolate chip cookies to the neighborhood kids when she saw us playing kickball out on the street (store bought — go figure). One day, she told me that she recently became a grandmother and wanted to show me pictures. I was delighted! After all, what eight-year-old girl doesn’t love babies? She pulled out the photos, and I was so excited to see them that I could barely get my hands around the pictures fast enough. Holding the photos by their edges, ever so carefully, I took a peek. To my horror, they were photos of kittens. Kittens! As in: baby cats. Basically, her kittens had been more successful at finding a mate and reproducing than she had. I was scarred for life. I went home that very night and threw out all of my Hello Kitty stickers. The sight of a cat still makes me cringe.

Vanessa, on the other hand, met her husband Marcus on her very first day at Howard University. How’s that for luck? He spotted her attempting to pull her suitcase up a flight of stairs, and, ever the gentleman, offered to help. The rest is history. They got married exactly one year after graduation. Isn’t that so cute you could die? I think that the story of the day they met also involved him inviting her to a fraternity party that same evening, and then making out with her shamelessly at said party, but that part of the story usually gets edited out in polite company. There’s a rumor among people who have known her from her Howard days that one groomsman alluded to the alleged make-out incident at Vanessa and Marcus’s rehearsal dinner. As the story goes, that man never made it down the aisle.

The first man that I met on my first day of college asked me who the “hot blonde” helping me move in was. It was my mother. I told him so. He asked if she was single. When I told him that she was not single, and in fact, was very much married, he asked, “Happily?”

And he didn’t even offer to help me with my bags.

I met Vanessa at a law school event being cosponsored by the Black Law Students Association and the Jewish Law Students Association. We gravitated toward each other, seemingly the only two people there solely for the free pizza and beer. We spent most of our free time from then on out together, studying and just generally trying to make it through law school as a team. Marcus was rarely at home, since he was first in medical school and then starting out his residency in surgery. Trip, who became the third in our study group after we met him at a Student Bar Association happy hour, used to accuse Vanessa of making up Marcus entirely so that no one would ask her out, thus leaving her more time to study (logic that completely escapes me).