Slightly Married by Wendy Markham Page B

chance to tell anyone about our engagement in person.
    Not together, anyway.
    Last night before bed, I nonchalantly mentioned to Jack that I’d had lunch with Buckley and shared our news with him. He wanted to know what Buckley had to say about it.
    He asked me that question in the most casual way, not even looking up from his iPod, which he was programming with a couple of Springsteen albums for today’s train trip out to Jersey.
    I, of course, answered the casual question in the most casual way. “He said congratulations.” And that he isn’t sure he wants to marry Sonja . “Oh, and he said the four of us should go out. He wants to celebrate with us.”
    “Really?”
    Not really…but that’s what I want. Actually, it’s what I should want. I should want all of us to go on being a happy little foursome. Maybe we can all move to the same suburb and have babies and, I don’t know, play bridge or whatever it is that old married suburban foursomes do together.
    At the very least, Buckley should stand up in our wedding. Which I plan to mention to Jack the first chance I get.
    I spent the rest of the walk to the restaurant dwelling on that strange lunch Buckley and I had shared. He definitely seemed unusually quiet as we finished our sashimi, and I was relieved when it was time for me to hurry back to the office.
    I haven’t heard from him since, not that it’s surprising. It’s not like Buckley and I connect every single day. I rarely give it much advance thought, but now I’ve been wondering when and where I’m going to see him again, and what he’s going to say about Sonja.
    I push them both firmly out of my mind now, because tonight is the night I’ve been looking forward to all week.
    The West Side is teeming with a pretheater crowd, and so is Gallagher’s.
    I pause a few feet from the door to balance on one foot at a time while wedging my feet into the excruciating-but-to-die-for heels again.
    Jack’s sister Emily is really into shoes. I know she’ll notice and approve. I also know she’ll notice—and disapprove of—Aerosoles.
    I shouldn’t care what Jack’s sister thinks of me, and maybe I won’t, once I’m officially part of the family. But for now, I still want to put my best foot forward, and I don’t want it to be wearing an Aerosole.
    Wilma is waiting right inside the entrance. She’s looking very Hepburnesque as usual this evening. (Audrey, not Katharine.) She’s wearing an adorable nubby wool coat and hat over a chic black dress with coordinating velvet pumps and pearls.
    With Jack’s mom are three of his four sisters: Emily, Rachel and Jeannie.
    Emily, who works for a fashion showroom and is built like a model, has on jeans, boots and a leather jacket. So does Rachel, but Emily’s jeans are more fashionably cut, her boots have high, thin heels, and her leather is black, not brown.
    “Ooh, Tracey, great shoes,” Emily says, first thing. What did I tell you?
    “Thanks,” I say. “How’s everything going?”
    “Great,” Emily replies, and adds somewhat cheerfully, “Although I broke up with Giancarlo.”
    “Oh, no.” I could have sworn her boyfriend’s name was Dale. I guess he was the one before Giancarlo. Emily changes boyfriends as often as she changes sweaters. But I ask sympathetically, “What happened?”
    “No one specific thing. He’s just a pompous ass.”
    “I’d say that’s pretty specific,” is Jeannie’s typically dry comment.
    Plainer than her sisters and a little on the chunky side, she probably came straight from her court-reporter job. She’s wearing a plain crepe navy dress and low-heeled pumps, a long charcoal winter dress coat slung over her arm.
    Of course, Jack’s father, who wasn’t invited, is conspicuously absent. The decision not to include him was Jack’s call. The Candells are fairly recently, and not so amicably, divorced. I guess Jack figured his father’s presence might put a damper on any optimistic, marriage-related toasts.
    I