“Now, hold on.” Gorby puts a fist to his mouth and attempts to hold in a burp. He fails. “Why you so surprised that she knows, Tom? You kids were hitched, right? Didn’t she get the whole Christmas Eve rigmarole?”
“Thank you, Gorby,” Katherine says, leaning forward to peer around me and offer him a beaming smile. “Thank you for asking. Tom? You want to take this one?”
Shit. This conversation is long overdue, and yet right now, I’d rather be anywhere else.
“Don’t clam up now, Tom. This is great stuff,” Gorby says as he takes a long sip of soda. “We’re making good progress.”
“Progress?” Progress in what, the world’s weirdest couple’s therapy?
“Yeah, don’t clam up now, Tom!” Katherine gives me an encouraging pat on the shoulder and grins.
“Okay, fine. You really want to do this?” I ask her, raising a challenging eyebrow.
Her grin slips slightly because she knows as well as I do that we’re entering uncharted territory. But she must know too that it needs to be done.
“Rebecca and I are great listeners,” Gorby urges. “We have that Dr. Phil on all the time, and his rule number five for talking and listening is to be an active listener. Or was it rule number six?”
“Alright, Gorb. You asked for it.” I shift a little, putting my attention on him because it’s easier than looking at Katherine as I say this. “No. I did not propose to Katherine here on Christmas Eve, as is my family tradition.”
“I see.” Gorby nods. “And Katherine? How did that make you feel?”
He and I both look over at her.
She sniffs. “Indifferent. Once I learned about it.”
“Now, Katherine.” Gorby’s voice is slightly chiding. “We’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t get comfy with our feelings.”
“I don’t have those. Ask anyone.”
“Don’t,” I tell her quietly before I can think better of it. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you don’t feel. Not with me. Katherine, you want to know why I didn’t propose on—”
“Wait. Stop.”
There’s a desperation in her command that I don’t understand. That I need to understand. “Why—”
“Please, Tom.” Her voice is calmer now but just as firm. “Let’s focus on the future. So we can both just . . . move on.”
“I thought we were supposed to get comfy with our feelings?” I say with a smile, trying to coax her to smile back.
She doesn’t. “Listen. I didn’t bust my ass to get you home by Christmas Eve so you could wallow down memory lane. Okay?”
I say nothing.
“Gorby? Don’t you agree? That Tom needs to focus on moving on?” It’s more command than question, and a tense silence follows, interrupted only by Gorby giving his soda one final mega sip.
The cab remains quiet except for his blissed-out ahhhhhhh before he speaks. “Well now, see, I hate to disagree with such a pretty lady, but . . .”
Katherine leans forward again, shoots the driver a murderous glare. “Gorby!”
I smile in spite of myself because it’s the same voice she uses with stubborn witnesses, recalcitrant clients, and opposing counsels. It works in the courtroom, and it works here too because Gorby clears his throat and nods.
“Now, Tom,” Gorby says. “Confronting our ghosts is good, but we can’t live in the past. You see the difference?”
“I wasn’t—”
“You got your proposal planned?” Gorby continues. “Let’s do some exercises in that area.”
“Oooh, yes, let’s,” Katherine exclaims gleefully in an abrupt role reversal now that I’m in the hot seat and she gets to dodge the sticky emotional stuff completely.
“I’m good,” I say a little desperately. “I’ve done the proposal plenty of times in my head.”
Gorby is giving a rueful shake of his head. “Won’t work. Comes out different when you say it out loud.”
“Does it?” I snap, getting a little fed up with Gorby and his unsolicited advice that is digging into places I don’t want to go. “Says who? Dr. Phil again?”
“Don’t be grumpy, Tom,” Katherine says. “And he’s right. You know I always practice my closing statements aloud.”
“That’s different.” I look at the clock. Three hours to go. And no exit route.
“Not really that different,” she presses. “Doesn’t Lolo deserve better than some shoddy, off-the-cuff ramble?”
She doesn’t add like the one you gave me, but I wonder if she’s thinking it. Hope desperately that she isn’t. Hope that she understands . . .
“Go on now, Tom,” Gorby says. “You just pretend we’re not right here, and you’re down on one knee in front of Lulu.”
Neither Katherine nor I correct him.
I close my eyes. “If I do this practice proposal nonsense, I want something in return. An hour of no talking.”
Gorby slurps his empty cup. “Hmm. I suppose that’d be fine. Katherine?”
“Sure, I can handle that.” She makes a gesturing motion with her hand. “Proceed, Tom. Propose away.”
I can’t believe I’m considering doing this, but the prospect of silence at the end is too tempting.
I clear my throat. “Okay, um. Well, Lolo. We’ve been dating almost a year now. We’ve had some good times. We’re well suited . . .”
Katherine pretends to fall asleep. “Good God, Tom. Do you want her to say no?”
Before I can reply, Gorby chimes in, because of course he does.
“It’s got to be romantic, Tom.”
I shove my thumbs into my eye sockets. “Does it, Gorby?”
“Here.” He fiddles with the knob of the radio until he finds a song he likes. “This will help. Get you in the amorous mood.”
Katherine nods. “Amorous,” she repeats.
Gloria Estefan’s balladesque “Christmas through Your Eyes” fills the tiny cab. I almost wish for another car accident.
“Come on now, Tom. Don’t be shy.”
I take a deep breath. The sooner I appease them, the sooner I get my hour of silence. “Okay, um. Lolo. My family has a very important Christmas Eve tradition . . .”
Katherine looks quickly down at her hands, and I glance over. “Hey, if this—”
“No, no.” She looks up, smiling again. “I’m totally good. This proposal, on the other hand. You want me to google proposal ideas? Just as a backup script?”
“Good idea. Never be too proud to ask for help, Tom,” Gorby says. “Speaking of . . .” He hands me a bag of nacho-cheese Doritos, which I open for him with a sigh and hand back.
“You know,” Gorby says around the crunch of a chip. “I think the problem here is that you’re just talking to air. Not a real person. Why don’t you practice on Katherine there.”
“Yeah, we did that once. Ended really well,” I mutter.
“No, no, he’s right!” Katherine says excitedly, pulling at my earlobe until I’m forced to face her.
She fluffs her hair and bats her lashes. “Here. Pretend I’m Lolo. No, no, wait . . . I bet my cans are better than hers.”
Katherine tries to flatten her breasts with her palms. “Okay, now go.”
Gloria belts out the final notes of her song, and the station rolls right into another holiday song, and not something safe and grating like “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” but the haunting opening notes of Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne.”