Wendy Markham - Slightly Engaged

Pop never comes right out and says what Fat Naso did, but I do know that he didn’t just stand by, and that Scully was never seen again. Pop is real proud of that.

But he definitely isn’t proud of me, his daughter, the puttana.

Okay, he’s never actually come right out and called me a puttana. But I know that to him and the rest of my family, a woman who blatantly sleeps with a man who isn’t her husband is a whore.

The thing is, I don’t feel like a whore. Should I?

I ask my friends just that.

“You? A ho? Get outta here,” is Latisha’s response.

“A whore is somebody who turns tricks for money, Tracey,” Yvonne informs me, in case I didn’t know the Webster’s definition.

But Brenda, who grew up in an Italian-American Catholic family like mine, gets it. “My parents would have killed me if I lived with Paulie before we got married. They’d have called me a puttana and worse.”

“What could be worse than puttana?” I ask her, and she shrugs.

So do I. Then I say, “I wonder if it’s even worth it.”

“If what’s worth what?” Yvonne asks, releasing a smoke ring that wafts into my face. Funny how my own smoke—the smoke I’m inhaling directly into my lungs—doesn’t bother me, but secondhand smoke does.

Mental note: Stop for patch on way home. Time to quit.

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought of that. Jack has been after me to quit smoking for a while now. He even promised me a weekend trip to a fancy spa outside Providence if I can go for an entire month without a cigarette.

So far, I’ve made it through an entire morning. Several times.

It’s the afternoon lull that’s a deal-breaker for me. I can never seem to get past the postlunch hump without lighting up. But I swear I will, sooner or later. I’ll do it for Jack. I’d do anything for Jack.

“I wonder if living with Jack is worth the grief that my parents give me,” I tell my friends. “Maybe if I weren’t living with him, I’d already have a ring on my finger. Do you think I would?”

Without the slightest hesitation, they all nod.

Terrific.

I definitely should have held out, like Dianne did. Well, it’s too late now.

“What do you think I should do?” I ask the three of them. “And don’t tell me to break up with Will, because I know I can’t.”

“Will?” Latisha echoes, her eyebrows edging toward her cornrows.

“What?”

“You said Will, Tracey,” Brenda points out. “Instead of Jack.”

“I did not.”

“Oh, yes, you did. And I bet it’s Freudian,” Yvonne informs me. “You’re in the same boat with Jack that you were with Will a few years ago.”

“I am not,” I protest, even though I realize she might be onto something. “Jack isn’t Will. Jack loves me. Jack wants to live with me. Jack—”

“Doesn’t want to marry you,” Yvonne cuts in. “Right?”

“Wrong. He’s just not ready yet. It happens all the time with men.”

Nobody says anything.

I glance from Brenda (who started dating the devoted Paulie in junior high) to Latisha (who turned down dedicated Derek’s repeated proposals for over a year) to Yvonne (who only intended to have a green card marriage and was promptly swept off her feet by dashing Thor).

Well, what do they know? Their relationships are the exception.

“You know what they say, Tracey,” Brenda tells me. “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never will.”

“Was,” Yvonne corrects, stubbing out her cigarette. “If it doesn’t, it never was. Not Will.”

“Why does everybody keep slipping up and saying ‘Will’?” Latisha asks slyly. “Does Brenda have a subconscious thing for him, too? Bren, are you secretly lusting after Will?”

“Yeah, and I’m secretly lusting after Carson from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, too.”

Did I mention that all my friends were convinced Will was closeted and I was a deluded fag hag? No? Well, they did. And obviously still do. At least the Will-being-closeted part.

“Look, Tracey, the point is, maybe you need to set Jack free and see what happens.”

Maybe Brenda’s right. Good Lord, is this dismal, or what?

“Come on,” Latisha says cheerfully. “I bet it’s time for dinner.”

After a ladies’ room pit stop, where I ensure that I am still looking ravishing in red—so why doesn’t Jack want to marry me?—we troop back out to the ballroom, where the band is playing “Always and Forever.” That song, I recall, is supposed to be Mike and Dianne’s first dance together. But the dance floor is empty, the newlyweds are nowhere in sight, and the crowd seems vaguely uneasy.

“What happened to the bride and groom?” I ask Jack, sliding into my seat.

He sips his scotch. “Oh, they left.”

“They left?”

“Yeah, you just missed it. They started dancing and then they had an argument. You should have seen it, Trace,” he says almost gleefully. “She was shaking her fist at him and everything. Right out there on the dance floor with everyone watching. Then she went stomping away and he chased after her. Wuss.”

“Don’t call him that,” I say sharply, despite the fact that I silently called him the same thing a few hours ago. “He isn’t a wuss. He’s a man who’s…who’s in love.”

Oh, please, I think.

“Oh, please.” Jack rolls his eyes and tilts his glass again.

I look around the table and see that nobody is listening to our conversation. They’re all caught up in the bridal debacle, oblivious to the antibridal one that’s brewing between me and Jack right under their noses.

“If you and I were married, I’d hope you’d come after me if we had a fight and I left,” I say unreasonably.

Jack feigns confusion. Or maybe, in his pickled stupor, he really is confused. He says, “Huh? What does this have to do with us?”

“It has everything to do with us. I’m talking about marriage, here, Jack. And the future of our relationship.”

I am?

Hell, yes, I am. And it’s high time I brought it up.

“I’m talking about why you don’t want to get married,” I go on.

“Who says I don’t want to get married?”

“You do.”

“No, I don’t.”

Hope springs eternal. “So you want to get married?”

“Now?”

“No, of course not now. Just…someday.”

“Sure,” he says noncommittally. “Someday.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a few years, maybe.”

Hope takes a hike.

“A few years?” I echo, supremely pissed. “Maybe?”

“What’s the rush?”

I’m silent, glaring into the tossed salad that materialized on my place mat while I was gone. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation here. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation at all. But now that it’s under way, there’s no going back. I struggle to think of what I want to say next.

I assume Jack’s doing the same thing.

Until he asks, “Do you want your tomato?”

I watch him poke his fork into it without waiting for a reply.

He has some nerve! Aside from the fact that he just sidestepped the issue at hand, everybody knows the tomato is the best part of a salad, and that restaurants and caterers are for some reason notoriously skimpy with them.

Then again, maybe everybody doesn’t know. Or care.

But I do, and I do. It’s like tomatoes are some rare, expensive delicacy not to be squandered. When I make a salad, I cut up a couple of them so I can have some in every bite. But perhaps I’m alone in my passion. Maybe most people don’t like tomatoes, and they’re only in a salad for a splash of color to liven up the aesthetic.

Who knows?

Who cares?