Slightly Engaged. Wendy Markham

Brenda says with a shake of her big curly black hair. “Did you think I looked like a cockroach, too?”

      “Of course we didn’t, Bren,” I say reassuringly, avoiding Yvonne’s and Latisha’s eyes in case they, too, remember that we’d all cattily wondered how Brenda, in her billowing sequin-studded gown and towering rhinestone and tulle headpiece perched atop a mountain of teased hair, was going to fit through the doorway of the honeymoon suite.

      “Yeah, I’ll bet you didn’t.” Brenda knowingly shakes her head at me, no doubt reminiscing about how we’d snidely speculated whether Yvonne got a senior citizen discount on the caterer for her green card marriage to her much younger Nordic pen pal, Thor. Oh, and how just last May we placed bets on whether Latisha’s enormous lactating boobs would actually pop out of her low-cut bridal bodice when she bent over to cut the cake.

      “Babe, what could anyone possibly say about you?” Paulie asks, patting Brenda’s shoulder. “Yo-aw go-aw-jus.”

      It takes me a second to decipher Paulie’s accent, and when I do, I have to smile. He and Brenda are so cute together. She’s far from gorgeous these days, with perpetual dark circles under her eyes and thirty extra pounds of postpregnancy weight. But Paulie is still madly in love with her after two years of marriage and a colicky newborn.

      “When I get married, I don’t know if I’ll dare to invite any of you,” I find myself saying. “There are plenty of things you can say about me.”

      “Tracey, we would never!” Brenda protests, then asks, nudging Jack’s arm, “So when are you guys getting married, anyway?”

      Terrific. I don’t dare look at him.

      “I was thinking a year from next February thirtieth would be good,” Jack says without missing a beat.

      “Very funny,” I mutter as the men chortle and the women bathe me in sympathetic glances.

      I reach for my gin and tonic and find that it’s empty. I’m about to flag down the passing waiter when I realize somebody’s got to drive the lemon-fresh minicar home. Judging by the way Jack’s imbibing, I’m assuming he’s assuming it won’t be him.

      “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s raise a glass as our best man, Mike’s brother, Tom Middleford, toasts the bride and groom.”

      “He better keep it short and sweet,” Latisha murmurs as we all obediently lift our champagne flutes. “I’m ready for prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes.”

      I’m ready for prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes, too. What a shame that I was compelled to order the poached salmon and steamed baby vegetables.

      Yes, I live in constant fear of gaining back all the weight I lost two summers ago. So far, that hasn’t happened, thank God. But it might. The second I let down my guard, I’ll find myself straining to zip the old fat jeans I keep in the top of my closet as a reminder.

      With a sigh, I sip my ice water—which you wouldn’t expect would taste like tap water in a fancy place like this, but it does—and turn my attention to the toast.

      Unfortunately, Mike’s brother Tom is as eloquent a speaker as Mike is a writer. Meaning, his big speech is all but incoherent. Not because he’s drunk—at least, he doesn’t look drunk. What he looks is distressed. Distressed that his beloved big brother has just been joined for all eternity to a cockroach in a tiara.

      Or maybe I’m reading too much into his expression and his rambling, emotional speech. Maybe I shouldn’t assume that just because I’ve never met anyone who actually likes Dianne, such a person doesn’t exist. Maybe the best man is overcome by joy, and not sorrow.

      Nah.

      By the time Tom winds down his toast with a dismal, “Cheers,” I’m feeling mighty depressed about the evening ahead.

      “Anybody want to come to the smoking room with me?” Yvonne asks, snapping open her black clutch and pulling out a pack of Marlboros and a fancy lighter.

      All of us women immediately take her up on it, including Latisha, who doesn’t even smoke.

      The men—Yvonne’s husband, Thor, Brenda’s husband, Paulie, Latisha’s husband, Derek, and my non-husband, Jack—are content to stay put at the round flower-and-candle-bedecked table.

      The four of us traipse through the ballroom and out into the hallway, where a tiny closed-in space has been graciously set aside for those of us who are willpower-challenged, cancer-defiant, and thus still addicted to nicotine. A noxious haze rolls out when we open the door, but we pile into the crowded room and light up.

      Rather, three of us light up. Latisha fans the air with a hand that sports the recently bestowed wedding band she claimed not to want or need. As she fans, she asks, “Tracey, is it my imagination, or is Jack not into getting married?”

      “Oh, it’s your imagination,” I tell her breezily. “He’s actually got a diamond ring in his jacket pocket and he’s just waiting for the right moment to pop the question.”

      Everyone laughs.

      I try to laugh but end up making the kind of sound one might make if an MTA bus rolled over one’s pinkie toe.

      “Are you okay?” Brenda asks as Latisha pats my arm and Yvonne’s eyes take on the deadly gleam reserved for bosses who ask her to start payment reqs at five to five on Friday afternoons and eligible bachelors who refuse to marry their live-in girlfriends.

      “Yes,” I say, inhaling my filtered menthol. “I’m okay.”

      When met with dubious silence, I add, “Sort of.”

      “Are you sure?” Brenda asks.

      “Of course she’s not okay,” Yvonne barks. “Her boyfriend refuses to marry her. She feels like shit. Who wouldn’t?”

      Maybe somebody who hasn’t been told that she should feel like shit, I can’t help thinking. I mean, if my friends weren’t here to validate my irritation with Jack, I might be able to convince myself that it’s just a typical guy thing; that I should just bear with him a while longer.

      After all, Jack isn’t downright commitmentphobic like my ex-boyfriend, Will, whom I dated for years without his even entertaining the notion of cohabitation.

      No, Jack asked me to move in with him practically the second we met.

      Then again…

      Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?

      Yeah, me too. But only lately. For the first year of our relationship, I was blissfully happy and oblivious to the idea of ulterior motives.

      But that was back when I assumed that Engagement, Marriage and Baby Carriage would be the logical progression of our relationship. That’s how it seems to work for everyone else I know, though Latisha swapped the order of Marriage and Baby Carriage, and I seriously doubt there’s a Baby Carriage in Yvonne’s immediate future.

      Meanwhile, now that Jack and I are stalled at phase one, Living Together, I can’t help wondering why he wanted to do that in the first place.

      Was he merely desperate to get away from Mike’s eternal chipperness? Dianne’s eternal wenchiness? Brooklyn?

      Obviously, he could never have afforded a Manhattan apartment with a roommate, because half the rent on a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment is way beyond a media supervisor’s salary.

      Half the rent on a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment is just barely within Jack’s budget, and mine. So if we weren’t living together, he’d still be in a borough and I’d still be in my dingy downtown studio.

      Or maybe I’d have given up on New York City by now and moved back to my hometown way upstate. That’s what everyone back home always expected me to do sooner or later. The residents of Brookside know that one doesn’t leave home without someday regretting it…or, at the very least, paying a terrible price.

      I