With such a wide variety of frogs, it's safe to assume
that out there, somewhere, is a frog with just about any
pattern you could imagine.
June
It's not that I'm a killjoy. I'm really not. Or that I
can't be happy for other people. I can. In fact, I am. I'm
nice. Warm. And I truly understand that if you're one of
the other people, not me, but if you are another person,
the one everyone is supposed to be happy for because
you're celebrating that thing; if you are that person,
then you want to make sure that everyone you want to
invite to celebrate that thing with you knows about it
way, way in advance, so everyone is available to come and
be happy and help celebrate your thing.
I understand this. What's more, if I had a thing to
celebrate, I would want this, too. But I don't. I don't
ever have any of those things, so when I open my mail and
the faces of a smiling couple slip out of the envelope on
the front side of a magnet I'm to stick on my fridge, so
every time I reach for the milk I remember to Save The
Date for their thing, I have to admit that I don't feel
happy. I don't feel excited. I don't think, wow, I can't
wait to go this thing. What a blast it'll be. I'll dance
the night away in a brand-new spaghetti-strapped Betsey
Johnson.No.I just feel worried.Very, very worried that I
have now been given a whole year to Save The Date, and
when it finally arrives I don't know if I will even have
one to take me to the thing.
I wish I could say that did not happen. That last summer
when the envelope arrived, and the picture of my friend
Brooke and her then fiancé Mitch came tumbling out of the
lavender lace-lined envelope, all I felt was sheer joy for
their love. Sheer anticipation to celebrate their union.
Complete happiness for my friends, without giving a second
thought to myself. But I'm not one to lie.
Instead, I ran to the phone and called Brooke, because
even though I don't have anything to celebrate with my
friends, they are my friends and I can tell them anything.
"It's gorgeous!" I said, fingering the gauzy white lace
that outlined the perimeter of the envelope. "This is
probably the most beautiful and classiest Save-The-Date
card I ever got."
"Thanks," said Brooke."I think that's what they're showing
now." Brooke has really good taste, but she always
undercuts it by saying that she's only following a trend.
As this is America and when I last looked we still had
freedom of choice, at least in stationery, I think she
should take more credit for her tasteful selection. Let's
face it, a group e-mail might also be a trend but Brooke
chose not to go that way.
"So..." I began. "Of course," she answered, reading my
mind.
"And what if I don't?"
"Oh, Karrie. You'll be fine, even if you don't have a
date. You know my family, we have people in common. I
invited Jane and William. Fred, too, if he can fly in from
L.A."
How many more years will I have to go through this? "Okay.
That's good. Hey — are you sure Mitch doesn't have any
friends?"
"No," she said apologetically. "I'm sorry. Wait." She
paused."Well, there is one, maybe, but we don't really
think he's actually —"
"Thanks, Brooke. Never mind. I'm sorry. I don't want to
rain on your parade or anything. It's just —"
"Just forget it. It's a gorgeous day. Get outside. The
wedding's a year away. An entire year. You can call me the
day before and bring someone. But I'm sure you'll be with
somebody next year at this time. Someone really great. A
prince! God, Kar, you could be engaged by then."
Theoretically, I could have been. Theoretically, some day
I still could. Theoretically, anything is possible. It's
just that I am out of theories how I have reached this
point in my life without it ever happening. People my age
are going around for the second time, while I have yet to
sign off on the first.
It was all I could think about when I woke up the day of
Brooke and Mitch's wedding. The thought pressed up hard
against my temples. The invitation had arrived two months
ago addressed to Ms. Karrie Kline and Guest. Guest. A nice
word. Inviting. It conjured up images of hospitality, good
food and good cheer. Karrie Kline and Guest was only meant
to be kind.Optimistic and inclusive.It was not meant to
throw me into a tailspin where I had to spend the months
before the wedding reexamining my already dissected dating
life.
But that's what I did while I marked the days off the
calendar and it came closer and closer to the wedding, and
I still had no date. I still had no Guest. It doesn't
matter, said everyone to whom it really didn't. Bring
anyone.Bring a gay friend. For God's sake, bring a girl!
Don't laugh. I once did.
Last spring I was invited to a Bat Mitzvah. In
Connecticut. With Guest. Sounds lovely, but that was a
particularly tricky situation. For this occasion I didn't
just need a Guest. A simple escort would not do. I needed
someone who was willing to travel to Connecticut, spend
two hours attending the service at the synagogue and an
hour eating at the kiddush after.Someone who would then
travel on to the restaurant and spend four hours at the
party seated at a table of strangers with whom they'd be
able to socialize, and willing to converse. I needed
someone who would make a ten-hour commitment, and someone
who had a car.
I wound up taking my friend Anne because a) she wanted to
go,and b) she could borrow her sort-of-ex's car.Her sort-
of-ex was Jewish and Anne was not, which had never been a
problem between them, until one morning Carl woke up and
decided to become religious. That decision was unlucky for
Anne because it created a wedge in their relationship, but
lucky for me because as a Sabbath observer, Chaim, as he
now preferred to be called, no longer drove on the Sabbath
making both Anne, and his car, available to me.
To be quite honest, Anne turned out to be a pretty fun
date. Chaim had interested her in the culture and she knew
how to dance the Hora, and since she is a social worker,
Anne knew how to bring out the best in people. After the
stilted "How do you know the Goldmans?" chat over the
French onion soup and the arugula salad, the men cliqued
off and talked sports. The four other women, originally
suspicious of Anne and me, the unmarried, un-mom singles
from the city, suddenly found themselves swept up in what
turned into a woman's study group at Table Ten. Anne
spurred the women into raising their glass and their
consciousness. By the end of the day, we were all fast
friends, the other women only wishing they could lead
cosmopolitan and cultured lives like Anne and me.
Okay.I confess. There is something to that.I did not envy
their suburban carpools and soccer games.But wait until
the first day one of them comes home to a mailbox filled
with an invitation to traipse off alone to a Bat Mitzvah
in Connecticut via the subway, Metro-North train, and
local taxi cabs, knowing the travel time would be spent
praying you wouldn't feel awkward standing alone with no
one to talk to during all the awkward moments you'd be
standing alone with no one to talk to because that's what
happened when you went to one of those things dateless and
alone.
Well, I bet in that moment they'd happily trade their
MetroCard for Metro-North knowing all they had to do was
look across the dining room table and say,"Honey, we have
a thing on the twentieth, so don't make any plans." At any
rate, despite the success of the Connecticut Bat Mitzvah,
Anne was unavailable to come with me to the wedding.
Believe me, I asked.
So here it is. Already June. An entire year has passed
since the arrival of the Save-The-Date card. Today's the
day. Brooke and Mitch's wedding. Sadly, this gray, drizzly
Sunday matches my mood. I lay in bed looking out the
window and hoped everything would clear up. Soon.
Having locked myself in the bathroom stall just ten
minutes into my arrival at the wedding, it became evident
that while my location had changed my mood most definitely
had not. I peered down the toilet as if I were Alice
examining the rabbit hole before taking the plunge. That
would not have been so bad, I thought, watching it
automatically flush and wishing it could have taken me
along.
The ceremony would not begin for at least twenty-five more
minutes. Then cocktails, dinner, dancing and dessert. I
didn't know a soul. The bride, groom, and their families
never socialize when they're the guests of honor; they're
too busy running around.
Fred couldn't fly in from L.A., and my cell phone rang on
the M23 bus with terrible news from Jane telling me that
she and William had to cancel last minute because little
Eve had come down with croup. I knew the terrible part of
the news was that this sweet little two-year-old girl was
coughing her head off, achy and miserable, but I, too, was
achy and miserable from my subway ride downtown and my
fifteen-minute wait in the drizzly rain for the crosstown
bus that would take me to the Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers.
Perhaps as a young girl I was overly influenced by reruns
of Doris Day movies, but I could not imagine any
circumstance in which Doris would don a strapless
dress,dab a drop of perfume at her neck and exit her
boudoir to be greeted only by her dog before she dashed
out on the town with just the MTA to whisk her away.
I made my way down the steps of the bus, closing my
phone,opening my umbrella,and buttoning my pink trench
coat as the rain uncooperatively came down harder. It had
taken my entire wherewithal not to beg Jane to make
William stay home alone with Eve, so she could come in
from New Jersey and be for me at this thing what Anne had
been at that other one.
I did not feel good about me in those moments. I did not
feel gracious and kind and caring. But then again, so
what. Had I wailed into the phone,"Jane! No! You have to
come. I don't care if Eve is sick, I don't care about
William. Who's going to sit with me at the table when
everyone else gets up to dance?"
Well, that might have been slightly inappropriate and
maybe rendered me slightly insane. But, instead, I showed
my concern, which in fact was genuine, and promised to go
out to Ridgewood the following day. As an official grownup
I only get to act that stuff out onstage or in my
imagination, which thankfully remained highly overactive.
I crossed the parking lot and watched the valets usher
couples out of their cars and into the Lighthouse.Mitch
was my age, but Brooke was younger. Brooke had felt she
was marrying late and Mitch was surprised he was marrying
at all. To me, Brooke at thirty-nine, got in just under
the wire. She'd turn forty next year and would not have to
deal with the syndrome of being Forty and Still Single.
The people emerging from cars ranged in ages, but my eyes
gravitated to a handful of couples in their late thirties
to midforties that must have been cousins and college
friends of both Brooke and Mitch.Well dressed and well-
groomed, they stepped out of taxis, SUV's and BMW's. The
women tucked their right hands into their men's while
their left hands casually swung, showing off diamond rings
that sparkled as they caught the light of the day.
I observed the couples walking and noticed they did not
speak, assuming it to be a silent ease between them. I
assumed they were each privately replaying the happy
memories of their happy day. But as my mother Millie
always says,"You don't know what goes on behind closed
doors." In my all-consuming fear of entering solo, I found
myself slightly comforted by the possibility that my
happily-ever-after fantasy of them may really be more
hoppily-ever-after.
That miniscule moment of comfort was instantly dispelled
the second the front doors flung open. Before me stood
more than a hundred people divided into clusters. Animated
clusters. Tanned, well-dressed clusters dotted the entire
front hall; laughing and kibbutzing, sipping champagne and
smiling. The lights shone bright like the mood, violinists
fiddled out cheerful, stringy tunes, and every variation
on the white flower perched inside tall crystal vases that
lined the small tables in and about the clusters.
"Can I take your coat?"