With This Ring, I'm Confused Read online

  “Just let me take some notes and see where I am, Purvi, okay?”

  “Where you are is back in Taiwan. The VP of engineering is there, and I want you to meet with him directly.” She claps her hands. “We’ve got to move on this.”

  I’m calm. Ohm. Ohm. “He’ll be back next week. Don’t react, Purvi. Act, don’t react. Remember that management training they sent us to?” Now these words coming from me have very little effect, as I am the resident drama queen.

  “With fire in his eyes, he’ll be back. I want to ward this off and be ready. This time, we’re ready,” she says in Patton form.

  I slink to my desk and look at the paperwork in front of me, and suddenly my eyes widen. “Our patent was filed before this date.” Once again, stress for nothing. Like I need additional cortisol released in my system. Makes you fat, you know? “They need to review this at the patent office. It’s our intellectual property, Purvi.” I look through the files quickly.

  “You’re avoiding the subject. I want you in Taiwan.”

  I am avoiding the subject. Ashley Stockingdale, U.S. Patent Attorney. Look at the nameplate. It says nothing about Taiwan on there, am I right? I lift it off my desk for reassurance. If I’m not mistaken, U.S. stands for United States; no foreign nations mentioned.

  My office phone rings. It’s my mother, according to caller ID. “My mom’s on the phone,” I say. Purvi, even in her excitement, knows a mother takes precedence. Purvi exits my office in a huff, and I kick the door closed gently. “Hi, Mom.”

  “It’s Mei Ling, not your mom. Do you know where she is? I’m at her house, but she’s not here.” Mei Ling is my sister-in-law and the mother to my mom’s only grandchild. Which, of course, gives her priority as my mother’s favorite “daughter.”

  “All I know is Mom couldn’t shop today because she had baby Davey. We went to the bridal boutique without her.” Trying to keep the pout out of my voice. She is my mother!

  “Oooh, what did you pick for the dresses? Am I going to be a hot mama?”

  Please. “Mei Ling, need I mention you’re a size four and I could put you in a gunny sack and you’d be a hot mama?”

  “I’m a two, actually.”

  “Must I hurt you?” I ask.

  “I just didn’t want you to order me the wrong size,” she says in all innocence.

  “I should make you wear padding if you’re going to stand up next to me.”

  “As if Kevin will have eyes for anyone else. He’s really a guy who has some capacity to love. Very opposite of Seth.”

  Not going there. “Did you call my mom’s cell phone?” I ask, getting back to the point of our conversation.

  “I don’t know why you bought her that thing. She never carries it. I don’t think she even knows how to charge it.” Mei Ling pauses a moment. “Yep, here it is on the kitchen counter. Dead.”

  “Is her car in the driveway?”

  Another pause. “Yes.”

  “Then she’s at the neighbor’s showing off Davey. Try 1705.”

  “Thanks, Ashley, I knew you’d know. Somehow a daughter always understands how her mother’s mind works.”

  Purvi’s outside my office window, and I can see that her bouncing, jittery self is anxious. I hang up the phone and go out to meet her. “Sometimes you’re hard to like, you know that?”

  “I’m not here to be liked. I want to book you on Sunday’s flight and assure the VP that everything is under control.”

  For the first time, I realize that marriage is going to impact my career. I’m planning a wedding, but more important, I’m getting married. To a man who spends his life saving sick children. Supposedly I have a dire emergency, and that means going to Taiwan to kiss the feet of an engineering VP. Please. If we’re going to get into the psychology of the moment, this is about Purvi trying to be above reproach while her husband is home; and I’m caught in the middle with a sixteen-hour plane ride. She’ll be over it by the time I’m in the air.

  I shake my head. “I’m not going to Taiwan.”

  “Ashley, it’s your job to go to Taiwan.” Purvi’s face is wrinkled with concern.

  Forgive me here, I’m having a moment. A moment when I’m thinking, I’m getting married to a surgeon. Like I need this stupid job. But I get attacked immediately with a pang of guilt and the thought of doing my job as unto the Lord.

  I look straight into Purvi’s brown eyes. Purvi’s like an Indian Barbie. She’s got this creamy exotic skin that makes you want to run and exfoliate. Plus, she’s got long, silky black hair that you can just see the model running her fingers through for a conditioner commercial. All this beauty combined with the intensity of Dick Cheney.

  “Let me call Kevin first, all right? I can’t just take off to Taiwan without telling my fiancé,” I say.

  “First, go meet with the new director of software. He’s got some processes he wants to speak to you about.”

  “We have a new director of software?”

  “He’s pretty good. Has some clean patent ideas already.” Purvi nods her head and looks at a piece of scrap paper in her hand. “His name is Seth. Seth Greenwood. We got him from Mitel.”

  I can’t breathe. I just stand here shaking my head. “No,” I say aloud.

  “No, what?”

  I grab the scrap from her hand. Seth Greenwood.

  Certainly, there are two Seth Greenwoods. There has to be. This one is not my ex-boyfriend. He can’t be. That Seth specialized in communications software. We make . . . I feel my eyes fall shut. We make networks. You don’t just change industries, but as soon as I think it, I know how related the fields are. My head is spinning, and I have lost the ability to swallow. Reality sinks in. There aren’t two Seth Greenwoods from Mitel. There’s only one. He’s bald, blue-eyed, and I once loved him with everything within me. This can’t be good.

  3

  I crumple up the paper in my hand. “Seth can wait, I think.”

  Purvi tosses her hand in the air. “Ashley, how you prioritize your day is beyond me. If you weren’t the best patent attorney out there, you’d be locked away for good. You’re like Howard Hughes: functional, business-savvy, but very, very strange.” In her up-lilting Indian accent, it sounds like a compliment.

  I start to laugh and collect the multitude of files on my desk. “I’m going to go home. Pack for Taiwan,” I say with a final grin. “Have Debra book me for Sunday’s flight,” I say, knowing it’s useless to fight fate. I am the girl who goes to Taiwan. I need to just accept my life, as does my future husband.

  I stuff the reports into my briefcase. “I’ll need time to prepare for the VP of engineering.” Which, of course, is a crock. With a sixteen-hour plane flight, I’ll have nothing but time. Mostly I just need to get away and think. My mind is overwrought with details. Details of a wedding, a few patents, and now an ex-boyfriend who can’t seem to leave my personal space alone. Gainnet is my territory. If I have to mark the hydrant, I will.

  Purvi is staring as I’m mumbling to myself. She knows not to mess with me when I act crazy. And I am definitely on the loony fringe today. I think Purvi has accepted my actions as part of my genius. Of course, there is no such genius. I’m just weird, off-center. She shakes her head and walks toward her office.

  “We’ll have you booked for Sunday. Think patent, not patent leather, all right? The time for shopping has come to an end.”

  My thoughts wander back to Seth and his unfortunate reappearance in my life. He and his sidekick, Sam, have changed churches because every once in a while, a great cloud comes and captures all the singles, lifts them up, and deposits them at the new, hipper church. I realize they all think this new experience will bring them closer to true spirituality, but really they’re just hoping for a better class of date. Granted, they all rotate together, which doesn’t allow for much fresh meat in this scenario. Hence, they stay put until the next cloud appears, and their old church goes on as before with people who do the actual work.

  My point is that Seth
floated away on this singles’ cloud, and I haven’t seen him since an unfortunate run-in the night I got engaged. As time skims on, I know now that I had no interest in seeing him. Hello, God, do you hear that? No interest!

  There are two ways I classify ex-boyfriends:

  1. The possible missed opportunity. (What if I’d said this? Done that? Was I supposed to bear his children? What if he wasn’t waiting for Jennifer Garner’s twin?)

  2. The Praise-His-Name Ex. You can’t say his name, i.e., Seth, without uttering a Thank you, Jesus! Thank you for sparing me from my own mortal blind spot.

  Seth is definitely the latter. Quality person, decent human being, and yet completely oblivious to the thoughts and needs of others. I think Seth has a kink in the emotional gene . . . as in, he doesn’t have one. I imagine him at the birth of his first child: “Great. Great. What’s for dinner, honey? Do you need me to take something out of the oven?”

  At some point in my life, I found his aloofness sexy and intriguing. Now I see it for the major issue it is, and rather than intriguing, I would call it something closer to coldhearted and detached. I exhale a deep breath and look toward the software hallway.

  Of all the telecom joints in the world, he walks into mine.

  I dash out of the office without looking back or confirming my flight. Purvi didn’t look right. I probably shouldn’t have left, but I drive home and get lost in the music. Oblivious to the wedding planner from the dark side, or the reappearance of Seth, or the fact that Kevin is busy again. I’m going to focus on tomorrow’s breakfast with the doctor of my dreams. And my new shoes: Kenneth Cole wedding sandals with a beaded ankle strap. Ah yes, the world fades away at the thought of unworn shoes. They’re like a flower of promise; an unhinged bud.

  Once on the porch, I drop my briefcase at the door and fumble with the keys. I can hear Rhett, my mini-horse-sized dog, panting on the other side of the door. “Hi, baby, Mommy’s home.”

  As I enter the house, Rhett is barking happily, and his tongue is lapping at my nylons in between yelps. “Shh, Rhett!” I say as I pat his head.

  My eye is drawn to a white trail cluttering Kay’s perfectly organized house. There’s shredded paper everywhere through the living room and down the long hallway. “What did you do?” I pick up a sheet and see that it’s tissue paper.

  “Rhett!”

  I pick up another and follow the path to my new shoe box. My new, now-opened shoe box. Breathing heavily here. I close my eyes to prepare. Lifting my lids and picking up the footwear, I see the wedding sandal covered with dog slobber as tiny crystal beads fall to the hardwood floor. I slump down onto the couch. “Forty pairs of shoes, Rhett. You have to go for the gold every time?”

  Okay, the shoes are history. I’m moving on. Anxiety will get me nowhere. I’m going to relish anticipating my date with Kevin tomorrow since that’s all I have left. The phone rings, and I run for it while yanking Rhett out to the backyard to do some time. I grab the vacuum on the way back.

  “Hello,” I say, kicking the vacuum into an upright position.

  “Ashley, it’s Emily. Your boss said you went home.”

  Oh, right, the other benefit: I also had freedom from the dark side. Not.

  “Hi, Emily, I brought home my laptop to search patents here. How did the bridesmaid dress search go?”

  “I have something fabulous in mind; I had hoped they’d have something to do it justice. That shop is awfully tiny, and I just don’t think it’s going to do at all. I’ll have a sketch for you by the end of the week, and we can get started with a seamstress. Is my brothah there by chance?”

  “I think he had a surgery this afternoon. Do you need something?” A lobotomy, perhaps? Bad Ashley.

  “I ran into this guy after you left the coffee shop. He says there’s a get-together tonight in San Carlos at his place. I wanted to see if I could hitch a ride with Keh-vin.”

  Emily is a grown woman. She’s twenty-five years old, and she does not need a babysitter. But this thought doesn’t have time to register. She obviously needs a babysitter. The way I figure it, if she plans my wedding and does a good job, she goes home to Atlanta to start her own business, and I’m free. But if she meets someone, it significantly throws a wrench into my life, as well as into her future plans of being employable. I consider this a life coach moment. Life coach, or self-indulgent interloper. You be the judge.

  “Where are you, Emily? Did Brea drop you off at Kevin’s?”

  “She couldn’t leave me in town, said you’d hurt her. I don’t understand all this talk of violence among friends. It’s not civil at all.”

  She’s home safe. Audible sigh of relief here. “Kay and I usually watch a movie on Friday night. Why don’t you come over here instead?” I shrug, not that she can see me. “Wouldn’t that be more fun than going out with people you don’t know?”

  “He was really handsome, Ashley.”

  And your brother will really kill me. “Handsome men are a dime a dozen in Silicon Valley.” Granted, they all have issues and more money than social skills, but we digress. “I can invite a few guys from the singles group over. I’m sure there’s a few you’d consider handsome, and you’d be safe.” Unless you are a video-game controller, they have no trouble keeping their hands off you.

  “Ashley, no offense, but y’all don’t drink, and y’all act like you’re on Happy Days. It’s my last weekend in California; I want to party. I don’t want to sit around with a bunch of losers who can’t get a date. No offense.”

  “No, of course not.” I’m going to regret this question. “Is the guy under forty?”

  “Ashley Stockingdale, I am a big girl. I know my brothah thinks I am fohteen, but I can assure you I am capable of seeing to myself.”

  Okay, but you’re not.

  “It has nothing to do with you being an adult, Emily. This is California. We don’t just go to parties of people we don’t know. Even on eBay, you check out someone’s references, am I right? Safety first?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about. I prefer older men, Ashley. Matt is perfectly respectable, and I’m a fine judge of character.”

  I’m trying to hold this back, but I know it’s coming. Wait for it . . . “Do you want me to go to the party too?”

  “Heavens, no! Whatever would my friend think? I’ll just take a cab. You needn’t worry over me. I’ll extend my Southern hospitality without worry.”

  Time for some psychology. “A cab? Do we even have cabs in Silicon Valley?”

  “Of course you do,” Emily says. “Haven’t you been to the airport?”

  “Granted, I’ve seen them at the airport. I just never actually knew someone who used one.” Getting my voice of disgust on here. “Are they, you know . . . dirty?”

  “Dirty?”

  “Never mind. Just take a moist towelette with you. And I wouldn’t wear white.”

  Long pause.

  “I’ve got my friend’s number. Maybe he’ll pick me up,” Emily says in her chipper voice.

  I slap my forehead. Does this girl not get a clue? And how does this translate to Mensa membership, which my fiancé’s family seems to worship? Subtle is not going to work. “Emily, you can’t go meet some guy in California at his house. People meet in restaurants, coffeehouses, that sort of thing. Personal safety is what I’m worried about. I don’t really care who you date.” Although I would prefer someone in Georgia.

  “Y’all aren’t very friendly here in California.”

  “We all don’t want to get attacked.”

  Another long pause. “Can we invite him to your place?”

  Choices: I can let my future sister-in-law go to a man’s house alone, I can invite this prime suspect into my home, or I can let Kevin worry. “Yeah, he can come.”

  “Thanks, Ashley, I’m going to call him right now! I’ll warn him your friends are nerds.”

  Stellar.

  She hangs up on me, and I settle onto the couch, still gripping my lost wedding shoe and
staring at the vacuum, knowing I should get up and do something about the trail of beads.

  “The red egg and ginger party!” I shout, and Rhett barks.

  My roommate, Kay, comes in just as I say it. “Are you talking to yourself again?”

  “I just figured out how to get out of Taiwan.”

  “You’re keeping your job, right? Because I’m trying to find a new roommate before the wedding, but it won’t do me any good if you can’t pay the mortgage, and employment isn’t exactly your strong suit.”

  “Forget about that. Like I can afford to quit after that tax bill. They’re having a red egg and ginger party tomorrow night for my brother’s baby. That’s why my mom kept Davey all day. It’s the excuse I need to stay home and focus on the patents on my desk.”

  Red egg and ginger parties are held when a baby is one month old and are notoriously expensive. You invite everyone you know and formally name your baby. And you feed people. Lots of people, with lots of great buffet food. Sit-down if you can afford it, but quantity is what seems most important.

  “How do you figure red eggs and ginger are going to impress your boss? When’s your flight? Can’t you just postpone it? It’s a party, Ashley, not a three-day ceremony. Are you going to try and convince Purvi this is Monsoon Wedding for babies?”

  “Don’t confuse me with the facts. It’s cultural. No human resources department can fight culture in California.” I stand up and do a spin. “Purvi will understand, and by the time it’s over, the VP of engineering will return and life will go on as planned.”

  Kay has dropped her keys at her “landing spot,” the place at the door where she starts her proper organization. She slips her briefcase into the custom space created for her things. “You seem satisfied with yourself. Since when does it bother you to go to Taiwan?”

  “Since I have a wedding to plan and only four months left to do it. I don’t even have the chapel yet, and since church meets in a high school, I’m not getting married there.”

  “I thought Kevin’s sister was in charge of all that.”