Lemondrop

The following essay is an excerpt from "Overexposed," a novel by Susan Shapiro about a single woman in the big city jealous of her sister-in-law, who has a doctor husband and four kids. Reprinted on Lemondrop with permission.

As a tall, black-clad, chain-smoking workaholic with a big mouth and big feet who fled to Manhattan post-college, I always hated wedding season, afraid I wasn't the marrying type.

It seemed impossible to please myself and a man simultaneously, not to mention my family. Growing up I'd flunked all Midwest suburban feminine rituals, forever frustrating my mother, a domestic goddess who'd tied the knot at 19. Yet since we were all invited to my friend Andrea's nuptials at our conservative Michigan synagogue, Mom was pleasantly shocked when I set up a first double date with my parents, me, and my potential new beau, Charles. Not as shocked as I was.

"What are you wearing?" she asked when she picked me up from Metro airport.
"My long black dress with the eyelet sleeves." I lit a cigarette.
"Not that black shmata!?!" Mom shrieked.

Cut to Somerset Mall, rushing through Neiman Marcus. "She needs a dress for a wedding tomorrow. Size six, low cut," she told Anne, the saleswoman.

Anne noted my black GAP sweater, jeans, cowboy boots. "This is nice," she said, pinpointing the one expensive object on my body -- a gold heart pendant on a black rope. I wasn't into jewelry but the heart's jagged rim seemed cool and edgy.

"Used to wear it on my sleeve, now it's around my neck," I joked. Nobody laughed.

"More like size eight, depending on the fit," I clarified. "Must be black."

Anne brought out a tiny beaded mini that would barely cover my thighs.

"Too Madonna."
"You like Madonna," Mom said.

I liked her in ripped clothes when she'd posed during orgies.

Anne took out a low cut strapless with sequins and boa.

"What's your Yiddish word for overdone? Farputzed?" I asked.
"Wedding's black tie," Mom said. "Everyone will be farputzed."

"Celine Dion in Vegas."
"She's happily married and makes millions. Try it," Mom ordered.
"I haven't slept with Charles," I admitted.
"Why not?" She sounded incredulous.

My red-headed mother – who'd saved it for her wedding day – cried when I confessed I'd lost it to my high school beau at fifteen. Yet now, her thirty-two year old left-wing single journalist daughter who was "freelance everything" was dating Charles, a charming neurosurgeon who worked at my dad's hospital, which apparently changed all the rules. I'd been taken by his looks, brains and erudite humor when I'd picked him up at a party -- before I learned his profession and home address: two blocks from my folks. I didn't mention Charles had invited me to meet his mother at his 37th birthday on Sunday, afraid it would inspire a Detroit Jewish News engagement notice.

In the dressing room I slipped the sequined number over my head. It got stuck between my shoulder and elbow, tangling with my necklace. Mom walked in, untangling me.

We then scoured Saks, Ann Taylor, Anne Klein, Barney's, Henri Bendel and Betsey Johnson for glitzy garments that were definitely not me. I tried on black boas, sequins, strapless, minis, midis, maxis, with fringe on bottom, taffeta on sleeves, slits up sides. When Mom handed me a short, tight satin Armani that cost $3800, I caught what we were really doing here: seeking the dress that would bring Charles to his knees. The wedding she wanted was her only daughter's. To mom's dismay, I decided to stick with my long, comfortable eyelet.

On Saturday, my father greeted Charles at the door. Cursing the cost of malpractice insurance ("No money without proven malice"), they went to Dad's den. Mom spruced up my dress with her jewelry, lamenting, "We should have bought the Armani." She brushed my bangs out of my eyes like she had when I was a little girl.

Downstairs Charles stood next to my father. The same height, in matching tuxedos, they both had thick short hair, though Dad's was gray. I hadn't noticed they looked like father and son. "Let's take separate cars," I said.

With no mate, kids, car, or investments, I'd felt like a failure, avoiding my childhood temple for twelve years. Yet now I was giddy as Charles led me down the shul's aisle. A third wave feminist shrinkaholic, I was sure facing down my demons on the couch for a decade had de-fanged my past. But as everyone checked out Charles, I saw my glee was based on the shallow feat of landing a successful doctor date. I'd become the superficial princess I'd spent my life parodying! Worse, I was falling for him. I'd recently been dumped by a broke Brooklyn bohemian. How healing to be courted by a gentlemen with a real job.

During the ceremony, Dad sat to my right, Charles to my left. My father translated the Hebrew into my ear: "Four sheep, three goats, two cows and seven ducks."

"Is that my dowry too?" I whispered.
"Charles is a nice man," he whispered back.

"So the big shot New Yorker found a husband," the rabbi's wife said during cocktail hour.
"This is my FRIEND Charles." I downed a flute of champagne.
"Your husband is so handsome," a girlfriend purred.
"Thanks. Yours isn't so bad either," Charles answered with a wink.

I was embarrassed.

"Wouldn't be so terrible. Would it?" he said.

Wow. Mentioning marriage in public? We'd only been on three dates, had just kissed with clothes on and were long-distance. But Charles was hot. I remembered a Birmingham hotel where we could spend a few hours on the way home.

While I'd drank, smoked and bedded bad boy artists, Andrea the bride had dated "the three N's: nerds, nebbishes and nudnicks." Older, I used to give her advice. Her groom, Wayne, a dashing lawyer, seemed to confirm all my psychobabble: You have to be yourself. Find a man who enhances your life. Never settle. I was always brilliant with other people's love lives.

Wayne thought Charles looked familiar. Opposing sides of malpractice litigation? But Mom said, "Wayne's father had a brain aneurysm. Guess who treated him?" Everyone muttered, "That's the doctor who saved his life." Wayne's Dad bear hugged him. The parent pleasing reached its crescendo as we slow danced to Sunrise, Sunset next to my folks. I'd finally made them proud. Not for my masters degree, hard-won prestigious bylines, or charity work. For landing an impressive male escort.

They left at midnight; Charles insisted we stay. We Bunny Hopped, Bumped and Macarena-ed. Andrea got a mensch lawyer; I'd get a mensch medicine man, I fantasized, plastered. Then I worried I'd became a rebel not for political reasons, but as a reaction to rejection. I didn't even know there was a part of me that longed to land a doctor like Dad, becoming the daughter my mother always wanted. Swaying in Charles's arms to Stevie Wonder's For Once In My Life, I questioned my urbanity. Working a hundred hours weekly didn't pay my rent. With millions of people in side-by-side apartments, I still managed to be lonely. I was stunned to admit to myself that I would actually move back to the Midwest for the right man.

"Mom made me try on every dress at the mall but we couldn't find a new one," I confessed, hiccupping, feeling like the prom queen.

"You look perfect," Charles said.

Before leaving he gathered cookies, macaroons, and brownies from the sweet table, placing them in napkins in his pocket. "For our moms." The gesture was either adorable or pathological; I was too drunk to decide. The groom's father said, "Without you, I wouldn't be here tonight." Charles deserved a trophy for All Star Jewish Wedding Guest.

Driving me home through my old haunts, I was about to suggest the hotel when he said, "Kadima's coming tomorrow." His tone implied it was important; I couldn't focus on why.

"Who?" I turned the radio off.
"Kadima. I mentioned her."
"Your out of town cousin?"
"My friend's wife's cousin."
She wasn't a relative? "How old is she?" I'd pictured a twelve-year-old.
"She's twenty," he said. "Turning into a real beauty."
Why would an unrelated twenty-year-old beauty come to his intimate birthday party?

"You invited her? As your date?" I shouldn't have drank. I was confused. So I was just the pal while she was the marrying type? "Orthodox girls don't do it," I declared, not meaning to say it out loud, hiccupping, my cigarette flying out the window.

"I think my mom invited her," he mumbled.

At my parents' house, he walked me to the door, kissing me quickly on the lips.

"Best wedding I've ever been to. See you tomorrow." He handed me the now crumbled cakes.

I waved goodbye. In my parents' kitchen I ate the stolen sweets myself, pretending I wasn't hurt and mortified I'd misread all his signals, feeling dizzy. In my still-pink bathroom I threw up the champagne, cookies, and little hot dogs. Then I booked an earlier return flight.

In my Manhattan studio Sunday, I returned my wrinkled eyelet dress to my closet, crying. Noticing my flashing phone machine, I hoped it was Charles, upset I missed his party.

"Hi, honey," Mom said. "I found your heart at Neiman Marcus. You left it in the dressing room. I'm mailing it back to you."

He never called. A year later I heard he married the Orthodox girl.

Three years after that I wed a Charles – a taller sardonic Manhattan comedy writer with long lopsided curly hair, torn jeans and ripped sneakers, nicknamed "Charlie," who fit me perfectly. After wearing black to the Soho loft to get hitched by a judge, we said "I do" again under a West Bloomfield chuppah before Rabbi Groner, in a fancy dress my shrink insisted I let Mom pick out and pay for, the only time I ever wore white.


Susan Shapiro, a Manhattan-based journalism professor, has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Newsweek, Salon.com, Daily Beast, The Forward, Village Voice, People, More, Glamour and Cosmopolitan. She's co-editor of "Food for the Soul" and author of the nonfiction books "Only As Good As Your Word," "Lighting Up," "Secrets of a Fix-Up Fanatic" and "Five Men Who Broke My Heart," which was optioned for a feature film. She recently sold two novels, "Overexposed" and "Speed Shrinking." Sue lives with her husband, a TV/film writer, in Greenwich Village, where she teaches her own "instant gratification takes too long" writing method at the New School, NYU and in private workshops and seminars.