“Is Brooke still here?” Arthur’s voice makes me jolt in the armchair where I’m comfortably nestled.
When Brooke left I had the house all to myself for the first time in, well, forever…and for once I got to sit in my favorite spot in the living room without Arthur usurping me. Sugar is once again curled up on my lap. My cat, apparently, is more loyal to furniture than he is to me.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to creep on me like this?” I snap. “One day you’ll give me a real heart attack.”
“You also told me to come back invisible in case Brooke was still here,” he says, nonplussed by my rebuke, “and that is exactly how I proceeded.”
“Whatever.” My favorite reply when I don’t know what to say, especially when “sorry” or “you’re right” would be much more appropriate responses.
He seems somehow aware of this particular trait of mine, and he smiles, accepting my unoffered apology. Ah, months of cohabitation can do wonders for a relationship. As the thought crosses my mind, I feel flustered at the idea that Arthur is the first, and only, guy I’ve actually lived with.
Ah! Admittedly, not the most typical guy-roommate, considering that when he sleeps he evaporates into a jewelry case, that he only takes up the coat wardrobe as personal space, that he always does the dishes (magically so, but still), and that he always makes me breakfast.
Yep, since that first morning when he transformed the house into a culinary display that would have made breakfast at the Peninsula Hotel look like a casual arrangement. I told him he could tone it down a notch, and that a simple cappuccino-croissant combination would be perfect for me. From that day, on each morning I am presented with exactly that. I’m still not sure if he supernaturally conjures the food or if he buys it every morning before I wake up from the Starbucks across the street, because the taste is exactly the same.
He really is a nice guy. At least, he is now. I wonder how bad he was before Héloise, with all those other women he told me about, and especially with Morgene. She must have really hated him to doom him to this half-life for eternity, or truly loved him, or both. I think the force of the respective sentiments is proportional, especially after a breakup, although I don’t hate James. I never did. But I still have hope for us, for James and I, and I suppose hate arrives when the last bit of hope is lost.
I also worry I will not be able to help Arthur out of his curse. We tried a couple of other tricks with the same poor results, and I’ve leafed through all possible sources, from ancient legends to myths and superstitions. Nothing helpful came out.
“Was everything all right with your friends?” he asks, probably noticing my worried expression and assuming it has something to do with Brooke coming over.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about Brooke,” I lie and then proceed to give him a full account of the afternoon.
“So is she with child?” he asks.
Ah, Arthur. I smile at his choice of words; his old-fashionedness used to bother me, but it has grown on me. I almost find it compelling now.
“I have no idea. I’m waiting for the news myself.”
“I thought you said she did some sort of test here.”
“I did.” I skipped the mechanics, having a feeling that openly referring to the act of peeing on a stick would have made his nose wrinkle. “But then she changed her mind at the last minute,” I explain. “She sealed the test and ran off to her apartment to discover the result with Dave. She realized that, one way or the other, it was a moment she wanted to share with him.”
“What do you think it will say?”
“I think they’ll be fine whatever it says,” I reply, convinced. “If ever two people were made for each other, it’s them. Of course, I hope we’ll be having a little soft baby in our lives soon.” I regret my words the moment they escape my lips.
Arthur seems deeply perturbed by my baby talking. A thought suddenly strikes me. “Did you ever…I mean, were you…”
“No.” He answers the question I was trying to pose. “At least not that I know of,” he adds, pain clearly audible in his voice. “It is my deepest regret, never to have known the joy of being a father.”
At that moment the phone rings. It’s Brooke, so I have to pick up. I throw one last guilty, sideways glance at Arthur before summoning all my cheerfulness and beaming “Hello” into the phone. “How did it go?”
“Ally, you were totally right, men are dumbasses!”
“Oh,” I say, worried things didn’t go the way I predicted. “Tell me everything,” I encourage, eager to know what happened.
“You’re going to laugh so hard by the end of this.” She sounds cheerful and ecstatic, so I relax and listen to her story.
She basically went home to find Dave as a living picture of immaturity: he was sitting on the floor with his back leaning on the couch, intently killing a bunch of monsters with the PS4, wearing basketball shorts and a Red Hawks tank top. “In that moment,” she tells me, “I couldn’t help but think I’ll have to raise two babies, not one.”
After a brief moment of indecision, she told him everything with a big lump in her throat, her sitting on the couch, him still on the floor with his arms wrapped around her legs, sort of like a loyal dog. She told him she thought she might be pregnant, but wasn’t sure, that she wanted to get married and have the baby, but that she understood if he didn’t want to, and that she didn’t want him to marry her because he had to, or because it was the right thing to do.
“What did he say?” I can’t help asking.
“He just got up, ruffled my hair with a weird expression, and went into the bedroom.”
“Oh.”
“Ally, I swear I thought I was going to pass out.”
“So?”
“He was back in the living room in about two minutes.” I can hear the excitement growing in her voice. “And he…” She’s choking with emotion now. “He…went down on his knee and gave me the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.”
“He proposed?” I squeal, excited.
“Yes, right there in our living room, with Dragon Age in the background, wearing shorts and a tank top, and he had put on this stupid black bow tie. Ally, I felt my heart explode with love!”
“Brooke!” I am at a loss for words. This is so romantic. “I want to cry. I’m crying.” I gush, smiling and sniffling at the same time.
“I know.”
“Wait, this means he had already bought you a ring! When?” I ask, recovering my composure.
“The moron bought it eight months ago,” she says affectionately.
“Eight months? What was he waiting for?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t know. He muttered something about a special occasion—well I guess nothing could be more special than today.” She has a different note in her voice, suddenly making me remember where all of this started.
“So are you…?” I ask tentatively.
“I am.”
“I’m so happy for you guys! I’m going to be an aunt!”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Did you find out before or after he proposed?”
“After,” she says, and I can tell she’s glowing with happiness even if we are on the phone. “He said it didn’t matter what the test said, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. The plus sign was the icing on the cake. Oh Ally, I’m so happy! I didn’t think I could contain all this joy!”
“You dummy, you should have seen your face two hours ago,” I tease her. “Put that retarded fiancé of yours on the phone. I want to congratulate him as well.”
“Hey Ally.” His voice is spurting with glee.
“Hey daddy-Dave, congratulations! I am so thrilled for you.”
“I know. We’re so happy too. It’s the best day of my life.”
“We’ll have to celebrate soon,” I say.
“Yep, Ally, gotta go, my mom is calling on the other line for the second time since I told her. She’s going nuts. Talktoyousoonbye.”
“Bye.”
“Mary is going crazy.” Brooke’s back on the line. Mary is her soon-to-be mother-in-law. “Not even my mom went ballistic like that.”
“Uh-huh. Well, with a wedding and a baby on the way, I can understand. Have you talked any specifics yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Do you know when the baby is due?”
“I think around the end of April.”
“Are you going to have a shotgun wedding?” I ask jokingly.
“I’d rather think of it as a winter wedding, probably mid-November. What do you think?”
“I luurve the winter theme. We have serious work to do, buy some magazines, look for dresses, venues…wow, you must be over the moon!”
“I am,” she says simply.
Then she tells me she has a million other calls to make, that she loves me, and that she can’t wait to hug me. I tell her that I love her too, that I’ll buy some crazy stack of magazines and stop by their place tomorrow before I go to see my parents. I then ask for a picture of the ring, she promises to send it immediately, and after that we hang up.
Sure enough after just a few seconds my phone bleeps and I stare at a photo of Brooke’s hand adorned with the most beautiful ring. The diamond is a princess cut, and the band is made of two hand-braided wires covered with a pavè of tiny brilliants. It’s classic and original at the same time.
I stare at the image with mixed feelings. I’m happy for them, I am. But seeing them take such a big step forward, actually two big ones, makes me wonder where I stand and where I’m going. Stuck in the past and nowhere, I can’t help thinking. I feel so alone.
“You are not alone.” Arthur chips into my thoughts.
“Hey,” I say, faking offense. “I thought I was the one doing the mind-reading around here.”
“It did not take a genius, or a genie,” he jokes, “to interpret the dismayed expression on your face.”
I smile.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“No.” It’s too depressing. “Can we just watch TV and eat comfort food?”
“Absolutely,” he says, arranging a tray of my favorite junk food and sinking onto the couch, leaving the armchair and the soothing ball of fur that goes with it for me, I notice.
I’m so glad he’s here; I would have sunk into utter depression without him tonight.
By morning my bad mood has evaporated, and I truly enjoy leafing through a gazillion magazines with Brooke, making wedding plans. I might say that I managed to be only twenty percent jealous and eighty percent happy for her. Okay, maybe thirty-seventy.
Now it’s almost lunchtime and I have to go tell my parents about my new life plan. From Brooke’s apartment, I head straight to their house in Lake Forest. I go bearing gifts, hoping they won’t freak out about my joblessness and new life-changing, carpe-diem attitude.
Arthur has been with me all morning, invisible. I gave him a choice between coming as Melissa or unseen, and this time he said he would rather much disappear than impersonate a woman again. We had a repeat of the discussion where I tried to convey the concept that as a single twenty-eight-year-old daughter of an impossibly-keenly aspiring grandmother, I simply couldn’t bring home an eligible bachelor to meet my parents without ever hearing the end of it. Although, thinking about it, it could have been a good tactic to distract them from the main purpose of my visit.
“Baaabyy.” The moment I park the car in my parent’s driveway and exit it, my mom is already hugging me desperately.
“Mom, it’s ok. What’s up?” This is unusual behavior.
“You tell me,” she frets. “Are you okay, honey? Is it your health?”
“No, Mom, I’m fine.”
“You’re not sick?” she asks, breaking the hug.
“Nope.”
“Then why do you go around scaring your mother to death?” she howls.
“Did I? I’m so sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to.”
“So what was it that you couldn’t tell us on the phone?”
“If you let me get inside, I’ll tell you and Dad.” I put an arm around her waist and usher her inside.
At first they think I’m joking, then they get worried when I tell them I quit my job, excited when I inform them of my future career plans, and finally hysterical when I tell them I’ve booked them on a ninety-day world cruise.
I’m glad they took it so well; they were extremely supportive of my decision. They even went as far as telling me that they never thought I was right for an office job, but they never said anything because they didn’t want to pressure me in any way. Before I “won the lottery”, I guess that the financial security involved in a desk job was also a substantial variable taken into account in their discretion.
When I leave them, my mom is leafing through every travel magazine she has in the house, getting excited about all the places they will visit, and my dad is getting a Ph.D. on veterinary schools’ ranking in the country. I expect a full report before I get back home; he’s always been efficient and methodic like that. I leave their house filled with a sense of peaceful contentment. It felt good that it was me doing something for them for a change.
The peace of mind, however, is short-lived, because now that the weekend is almost over I want to go home and prepare myself for tomorrow. Monday is coming, and I have to put the last piece of the puzzle, my plan to win James back, in its place.