The Sleeping Beauty Proposal

Since my old address is defunct and I refuse to let my mother give out my new one (lest Hugh should find me), wedding gifts are piling up in my office.

White boxes with silver bows and billows of white tissue paper. Plate after plate of heartbreakingly beautiful Chauteaubriand fine china by Bernardaud, the edges etched in gold with cheerful sprigs of pink thistles. Coordinating Waterford stemware with tiny gold bands along the base. Teacups. Saucers. Even creamers and dessert bowls.

And the miracle of it is, I’ve registered for not one piece. Someone must be signing me up for Reed & Barton, Spode, Orrefors, and Bernardaud in my place. Naturally, my first suspect is Lucy. Only she would have taste this ornate. If it were my mother, it’d be her plain white Wedgwood all the way.

“This is the life, eh?” she says, watching as I untie another silver bow. "Get engaged. Go online and sign up for gifts and bingo, the next you know you’re pulling two-hundred-dollar platters off the UPS truck.”

She is referring to a Roman antique gold salmon platter I received—correction, Hugh and I received—last week from Zoe Murray, my mother’s college roommate. Alice found the idea of serving smelly fish on a glass platter etched in 14-karat gold to be terrifically ridiculous. Then again, the only fish Alice likes is followed by the word stick.

“Yowzee!” she exclaims, reading the card as I pull out a heavy cut-glass cake platter. “It’s Baccarat. It’s from the dean.” Before I can stop her, she is at my computer indulging in her newest hobby: checking the prices of my gifts on the Bloomingdale’s registry.

The dean! Oh, man. This is really getting out of hand. How does he know I’m getting married? Please tell me my mother did not send a wedding invitation to the dean, who hardly knows me. I keep reminding her to keep the list to close family and friends. And she keeps “forgetting.”

“That cake platter’s over a thousand dollars!”Alice pushes back my swivel chair. “A thousand dollars for a cake platter. Can you imagine? What if you left it at the school bake sale?”

“Well, I wouldn’t, would I?” I say this calmly though my shaking hand belies my utter horror. A one-thousand-dollar cake platter. Of course, this is to curry favor with Hugh, Thoreau’s hottest celebrity.

A treasure for Thoreau’s finest treasures.
May you always have your cake and eat it too.
Best wishes on your fabulous adventure,

It’s an adventure, all right. Now I’ve got the dean to add to my list of apologies. And thank-you notes. I’ve been writing thank-you notes every night after work while Nick paints trim in the kitchen.

Nick and I’ve been doing a lot of talking during our painting and note-writing sessions. Mostly he tells stories about his childhood on the island of Leros, which happens to be the home of the goddess Artemis, a fierce feminist, who once sicked dogs on a mortal man because he saw her naked. Somewhat over the top, if you ask me.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the tradition on Leros is for women to pass property down to their daughters instead of the more traditional patriarchal route.To Nick, it is perfectly natural for me, the future wife, to present my future husband with a marital home. I think I might like Leros.

Especially the way he describes it—Grecian blue skies and the turquoise Aegean lapping the white beaches framing the island’s scrabbly hills. No wonder the Germans, the Italians, the Crusaders, the Turks, even Homer’s Argonauts have all sought to conquer the place.

The good thing about Nick, aside from his being a halfway decent raconteur, is that he’s encouraging me to be a self-reliant home owner. For example, when the faucet in the bathroom started dripping, he didn’t just change the washer; he showed me how. (It’s really easy. Just replace a worn rubber ring with another. Men have gotten so much mileage out of this one stupid act.)

It was a Saturday night and I was alone, naturally. Patty was off doing her thing and Steve was playing at a club that was way too loud and crowded with teenagers for me to consider visiting. I was in the dining room cutting out French toile curtains for the windows that face Mrs. Ipilito’s house and trying not to think about where Nick went on his date.

At least I was pretty sure it was a date. Around six, I heard him leave, taking the steps two at a time. He was whistling and he looked good. Freshly showered with damp hair. Denim shirt over khakis. Definitely date wear. Not that I was spying out my front window or anything.

Six turned into nine and nine turned into midnight. I had cut out all my curtains, plus linings, and had finished off an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s Pistachio Pistachio on the theory that I hadn’t had any dinner, really, and it was hot. I refused to acknowledge that I was heartsick over the fact that Nick hadn’t returned, which meant he might be having fun with another woman.

I don’t know why it bothered me so much that night. Certainly, he’d gone out before. Yet before he had always returned around nine. If he saw my light on, he might stop by and help himself to whatever was in my fridge, make his usual perfunctory inquiries about Hugh (the going lie was that Hugh was rushing to finish the rough draft of his follow-up novel before our wedding and could not spare one minute of socializing). We’d chat about our days and then he’d look at his watch and leave.

I’d come to anticipate his visits, cherish them, even downing coffee so I could stay up way past my bedtime until I heard his knock. That night, though, I feared his knock might never come—ever.

Resigned, I slipped into a loose T-shirt, brushed my teeth, and went to bed only to be awakened by the creak of bedsprings above. Nick and whoever in the heat of passion, and quite a lot of passion at that.Throwing my pillow over my head, I tried to block out the sounds, tried not to imagine him with someone else, kissing her neck, moving his naked body against hers, wanting her, desiring her....

It was no use. I had to get out of there. I’d simply make myself a cup of tea, read a magazine in the living room, and wait for them to go to sleep. But no sooner did I turn on the kitchen light than I heard it. More than a drip, drip, drip. More like a gush, gush, gush. There was a leak. A serious leak at that.

My first thought was the freezer. Once when I was a teenager, I’d forgotten to close a basement freezer and it defrosted all over my parents’ basement floor. My freezer, however, was securely closed. Nor was it my sink or the bathroom. The leak was in the basement.

Sure enough, a pipe had burst. Already there was at least an inch of water on the floor. Water was creeping everywhere— around the washer and dryer, around the boiler. It had reached the bottom step and was climbing.

What to do? I couldn’t knock on Nick’s door and burst in on him with another woman. Not that I would have minded breaking them apart. But I had my dignity to consider and also Nick’s. This was truly a dilemma and I didn’t have the luxury of time to debate my options.

Finally, I had a stroke of brilliance. I could call him on the telephone.That way I wouldn’t actually have to see them together. So, I ran upstairs and did just that, listening to his phone ringing in the kitchen above me. No answer. Only his machine. I hysterically babbled something about an emergency with the pipes, hung up, and waited.

Nothing. He did not call me back and ask what was wrong. I did not hear him open his door and go to the basement. He didn’t even go to the kitchen to check the message. Now, I was no longer sad or embarrassed. I was infuriated. How could he ignore this crisis? How could he ignore me?

That was it. I had to go up there and get his help if I had to rip the door off the hinges myself. Loaded for bear, I dashed up to his apartment and banged like a fishwife.

After a few minutes came the sound of delicate footsteps and the click of his kitchen light going on.The door opened and there stood one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.Taller than I would have expected, but otherwise exactly as I imagined. Creamy white skin. Big pools of soft brown eyes. Black curling hair cascading over the shoulder of Nick’s T-shirt. I knew that T-shirt because it was the same one I borrowed the night I moved in. Only it was a bit larger on her.

Fighting back my own flood of emotions, I said as calmly as possible, “I need to speak to Nick. We have an emergency in the basement.”

Got that. I understood he wasn’t mine and never would be and that I felt as if my life, for now, had lost its spark. There was still the flooded basement to deal with. “I need Nick.” Gathering her English was about as good as my Greek, I pointed to the bedroom and added for emphasis, “In there.”

A man in the bedroom hollered something in Greek. Elena hollered back and suddenly Nick appeared in only his jeans. I was so mortified to have caught him in this intimate moment that I kept my gaze squarely on Elena.

Adrien? Taking a closer look, I realized the man in the jeans was not Nick, but a much younger version with a boyish lanky body and wild unkempt hair.

“Nick’s brother,” he said in flawless English. Like Nick, he spoke with hardly an accent. “What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? I wanted to parrot back. You’re boinking your brother’s girlfriend, that’s what’s wrong.

Seeing my incomprehension, he said,“Nick let us use his place while Elena’s in town. I kidnapped her from her aunt’s.” He put his arm around Elena in the same loving way Nick sometimes puts his arm around me. “We’re not supposed to, uh, you know, until we get married next year. Elena comes from a very strict, very traditional Greek family.They’d disown her if they found out what we were doing here.”

Adrien laughed. “Elena’s fifteen years younger than he is.” He translated this for her and she, too, laughed, shaking her head and saying, “Nick. Old.”

He was so not old. Nick was perfect. Handsome. Mature. Funny. Well read. Extremely sexy. He was fantastic!

It didn’t matter anymore.The house could wash away for all I cared.Todd must have misunderstood. Nick was probably going to lease the apartment to Adrien after he fixed it up. And Patty was so busy with work, she didn’t pay attention to what I was saying when I asked about Nick’s fiancée.

No way to find out because Adrien was already talking to Nick on his cell. I could hear Nick spouting instructions as Adrien ran downstairs, leaving me alone with Elena in the kitchen.

“No!” She shook her head vigorously. "No.” Then, tilting her head coyly, she asked, “You like Nick?”