a pony.” But this time it was for real. And the more I thought about it on the ride home, the more I saw that it was a great thing. And on top of it all, for what might have been the first time in his life, Bruce had done something completely on his own. Made a real decision, without consulting me, his mother or anybody. He deserved to feel good. And so did I. Something was finally happening in my life, something real. Like I’d been asleep for years, content to play the woman in the gray flannel suit, only now the alarm clock was ringing.
The train was pretty crowded, and I hadn’t noticed till then but the man sitting on my right was leaning up against me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he was clutching a ratty pink Barbie backpack tied up with brown cord. His left knee bounced up and down frenetically as he tapped his heel against the floor. On one foot, he wore a filthy Reebok cross-trainer smeared with what was probably not rust-colored paint. On the other foot, a purple toe with a black nail stuck out of a dirty sock. Disgusting. I’m so sick of this shit. His bulging eyes darted from my hand to my chest then back down to my hand. My Ring! He was staring at my Ring!
Normally, in situations like these, which occur not altogether infrequently on the A Train, I get up and move. But today, the sight of this greasy interloper inspired within me the courage to take a stand for all peace-loving female commuters everywhere.
I looked directly at him and cleared my throat. Bruce would have absolutely killed me. The guy looked up suddenly and when his eyes met mine, he let out a shriek so loud that the force of his very bad breath blew my bangs up off my forehead (In Style, April: “The New-Fashioned Fringe: Bangs Are Back!”). With a gasp, I jumped back onto the lady beside me. But she was wearing a Walkman and I guess she hadn’t heard him yell, so she freaked out and reflexively pushed me forward into the group of stunned passengers. I reached out wildly for the man standing in front of me wearing a black trench coat (as it turns out, a very sensible color for a trench coat). But he just deflected me and used the opportunity to slide into my seat. I landed on my hands and knees on the floor of the car. The crazy guy, whimpering a little, just rocked back and forth, staring at someone else’s hands.
By the time I got home, Bruce was already there. I threw down my newspaper-stained, Pruscilla-smelling, mud-smeared, formerly white trench coat and flopped onto the couch and cried again. We decided not to go for dinner, not to call our parents, not to call our friends. We just stayed in and ordered a pizza. It may not sound romantic, but it was. We talked and talked, and by the time we went to bed, I felt like myself again.
I woke up before Bruce the next morning, something which almost never happens. He’s the type who claims not to be a morning person, because it’s such an unpopular way to be, but who actually gets up on weekends at the exact same time, almost to the minute, that he does during the week. He usually spends Saturday and Sunday mornings on the Internet researching obscure factoids for his students or doing the grocery shopping or reorganizing my closet, while I sleep till noon and then thrash about in bed for a half hour or so complaining about him making noise. Like Bruce, I suppose I have an internal clock, too, it’s just that mine must be permanently set on Snooze because I’ve been working full-time since college and waking up at 7:00 a.m. was as torturous yesterday as it was my first day of work. I think it bugs the crap out of him, my sleeping in—his early-morning antics sure piss me off—although he’d never admit it. Let him think I’m lazy. I am.
In that blissful moment of nothingness before I opened my eyes, before true awareness set in, the first thing I remembered was that it was finally Saturday. Thank God, no work. Maybe I’ll just go back to sleep for a bit. Then later I’ll go into the city. Yeah. There’s that Clinique Gift With Purchase thing on now at Saks…and I need some new pants for work. But I refuse to buy a size 14. Okay, so no clothes shopping till I’ve dropped 15 pounds, till I’m a 10. Serves me right, after what I ate this week, and last night, that pizza…wait a minute…the pizza…ohmygod…Bruce….
And it all came flooding back. I turned over and looked at him. He lay on his back, still asleep, his chest rising and falling. Bruce always seems different without his glasses on, like I don’t really know him. Still cute, though. He was whistling softly through his nose. Did I really say yes? Did yesterday really happen? Am I actually going to marry this guy? My heart began to pound as I replayed the scene at work in my head about 37 times. God, I can’t believe I actually threw up. With a psychic snort, Bruce turned over and faced the wall.
Just to make sure it was all real, I pulled my left hand out from under the pillow. The room was dark, but there it was, plain as day—The Ring. Turns out it was his grandmother’s. Mr. Fulbright had kept it for Bruce since she died, like, twenty years ago. Last night was nice, come to think of it. Bruce told me all about how he’d been planning to propose, and how his dad had been in on the whole thing.
“My grandfather gave her this ring in 1939, the night before he left to fight in the war,” Bruce explained as he held my hand. “Six months later, he came back and married her. And nine months after that, my father was born in an air raid shelter during the Blitz.” Over the years, the Fulbright Nativity Story has evolved into an epic tale, complete with evil Nazis and valiant R.A.F. pilots fighting to the death in the Battle of Britain, including Bruce’s grandfather, shot down three months before little Bruce Jr. came into the world.
I already knew the story, minus the ring detail. Bruce’s dad, whose name is also Bruce (Bruce Jr., actually—yes, that makes my Bruce, Bruce Fulbright III. God, that better not make me Mrs. Bruce Fulbright III), loves talking about the night he was born. The only time he’s ever animated about anything seems to be when he’s telling stories about the war and his parents and the horror of butter rations and all that. It was as if being born was the only thing Bruce Sr. had ever done with any style, and it’s been all downhill from there.
Poor Mr. Fulbright. With the exception of Bruce, the only respect his family ever shows him is when he’s telling his stories, now only once or twice a year, usually on his birthday. His perpetually self-involved daughters know better than to dismiss him on this, and even Bertie tries her hardest to refrain from seeming bored. And while Bruce doesn’t quite hang on his dad’s every word like he probably did when he was a kid, now he listens intently. I’m sure trying to memorize every word so that one day he can tell his own kids. Make that our kids, I guess.
“An insane woman tried to steal the ring—this very ring—off her finger while she was in labor,” Bruce continued, almost in a whisper. This was a new twist. Sounds like ole Bruce Jr. was getting a bit carried away.
“Oh, come on,” I said, incredulous.
Bruce raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side. “I’m just telling you what he told me when he gave it to me.”
I looked down at The Ring, imagining a stoic, placenta-splattered Granny Fulbright fending off crazies in the bomb shelter as she simultaneously struggled to birth a child and hang on to the only thing she had left of her dead war-hero husband.
It made me think about my mom and what she must have gone through having me all alone, especially since her parents had disowned her because my dad wasn’t Italian, or even Catholic for that matter. But then I wondered if Granny Fulbright would have cruelly refused to let her child go to school in California, even though she’d scored over 1300 on her SATs and had a partial scholarship to UCLA… Oh, no wait…that was my mother. And I was the one stuck at NYU, pissing distance from the house I grew up in. No, there would be no great collegiate adventure for me. But that’s where I met Bruce, so I suppose it had all worked out for the best. If you consider marrying your first real boyfriend the best.
So last night was pretty good. We talked a ton about the wedding, what we wanted and all that. And we really laid our cards on the table. Bruce is as far from a commitmentphobe as is humanly possible in this city (Glamour, April: “Is Your Man Afraid To Commit? Take This Test and Find Out!”),
