Say Never Read online

  PRAISE FOR SAY NEVER

  “With her trademark humor, Janis Thomas gives a refreshing, heartfelt look at parenting, family, and letting go of the past.”

  —SUZANNE REDFEARN, AUTHOR OF HUSH LITTLE BABY

  SWEET NOTHINGS

  “One of July’s Hottest Beach Reads…”

  —POPSUGAR

  “Editor’s Pick”

  —FIRST FOR WOMEN MAGAZINE

  “Sparkling, witty and poignant, Sweet Nothings is absolutely delicious!”

  —JANE PORTER, AUTHOR OF THE GOOD DAUGHTER

  SOMETHING NEW

  “Chick Lit has a new heroine.”

  —MOLLY FISHER, THE NEW REPUBLIC

  “A breezy read.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “Janis Thomas is spot-on in capturing how it feels to be an upper-middle class suburban mom who longs for…something more. She writes with sparkle and humor.”

  —SALLY KOSLOW, AUTHOR OF THE LATE LAMENTED MOLLY MARX

  Say Never

  a novel

  Janis Thomas

  Published by Wedlock Publishing

  9121 Atlanta Avenue Suite 803

  Huntington Beach, CA 92646

  For more information about Wedlock Publishing, visit:

  WedlockPublishing.com

  This book is an original publication of Wedlock Publishing

  Copyright © 2014 by Janis Thomas

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2014 by Wedlock Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN 978-0-9906919-1-4

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Wedlock Publishing trade paperback edition: October 2014

  Cover design by Lan Gao

  eBook Design by Michael Campbell

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Shoney:

  sister, confidante, partner in song,

  and New Yorker at heart.

  I’m glad you’re here, sis.

  Prologue

  “Good morning New York, this is Barry Humphries…”

  “And this is Meg Monroe…”

  “You’re listening to the Barry and Meg Show.”

  “That’s right, coming to you from WTLC, the station that LOVES its listeners.”

  “Barry, do you have to say that every morning?”

  “Why, yes, Meg, I do. You know why? Because I LOVE our listeners. Don’t you?”

  “They’re okay as long as they don’t call in and say stupid things.”

  “Meg, our callers never say stupid things.”

  “You’re right, it’s mostly our guests who say stupid things.”

  “And we sure have a great guest this morning, Ramjun Imfar, who’s taken to picketing every 7-Eleven in Manhattan to get them to sell bigger sodas.”

  “It seems to me that’s a mayoral issue, don’t you agree Barry?”

  “You know me, politics isn’t really my thing. So, Meg, I know you wanted to share a story with all of us this morning.”

  “Yes, Barry, I do. I was at my gynecologist last week…”

  “Oh, dear, we’re not going to talk about your, uh, feminine area again, are we?”

  “It’s called a vagina, Barry, and before you go all apoplectic, I checked with the FCC and vagina is perfectly okay to say on air.”

  “Not this again…”

  “Actually, I was going to talk about being in the waiting room of my gyno’s office. And all these woman are in there with their huge bellies and their screaming children and their husbands who look as though they’d rather be cleaning toilets with their tongues than sitting in that room.”

  “That’s quite an image, Meg.”

  “Thanks, Bar. So, anyway, I was thinking that procreation is sort of a ridiculous notion. I mean, the only reason we have kids is to A) keep the species going and B) to prove to ourselves that we mean something in the Universe. You ask any middle-ager about themselves, and what do they say first? ‘I have three kids, one just graduated from MIT, the other is doing stem cell research, and the third just got out of rehab.’ Yes, they’re even proud of bad offspring, because, it’s one more sperm that knocked through an egg and multiplied into a sort of quasi-person that had to eventually squeeze out of a VA-GI-NA. Ta-dah! ‘Yes, he’s a serial killer, but I grew him in my loins! I really did something! Oh, uh, sorry about your daughters…’

  “And people like to see themselves in their kids, it makes them feel young, immortal. It makes them feel validated for being stupid. ‘Here’s little Kayla who looks exactly like me and has my eyes and my figure and will probably have my penchant for OxyContin. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Tee hee hee.’ We use our kids to excuse our own selfish, ridiculous behavior.”

  “Gee, Meg, that’s a little cynical. I think there are far loftier reasons for having kids. I think people have kids to, you know, spread their love, start a family.”

  “Family, shmamily.”

  “I take it you’re not close with yours, Meg.”

  “That’s another subject entirely, Barry. But now that you mention it, do you know anyone who gets along with their family?”

  Pause. Longer pause.

  “Exactly my point.”

  One

  I don’t want children. I never have. I’m not the type to have pangs at the sight of pregnant women, not even when they surround me in my OB/GYN’s waiting room, stroking their bellies and smiling contentedly as though they’ve unlocked the secret of life. That whole baby-business is not my bag.

  But now, as I listen to Dr. Kim drop the A-bomb on me, my stomach spasms violently.

  “Your hormone levels indicate that you are entering into menopause,” she says, reading through the test results in my chart.

  “You mean I’ll never have kids?”

  “That particular door is closing rapidly,” she replies. “Your periods will eventually stop and you will no longer be able to conceive.”

  Her diagnosis should make me elated. I should be doing cartwheels around the examination room. Domestic life was never in the cards for me. Marriage wasn’t something I longed for or dreamed about, ever. In my opinion, ‘As long as we both shall live’ sounds more like a motive than a promise. I gave it a shot—although I can’t remember exactly why—but after one failed attempt at matrimony, the idea of being a wifey and a mommy and living in the suburbs in a house with a white picket fence makes me shudder.

  Menopause is a good thing, I tell myself. No more periods, Meg. No more bloating and cramping and birth control pills that mess with your hormones. This is cause for celebration.

  But I don’t feel like celebrating. I feel conflicted. I’ll never have kids.

  I guess it’s sort of like chocolate. You might be ambivalent about chocolate, you might not even like chocolate, but the minute someone tells you you can never eat chocolate again, all you want to do is gnaw on a cocoa bean until you bleed Hershey’s. Except we’re talking about children, so it feels slightly more significant.

  I shift on the cold metal table, causing the sterile wax paper to bunch up under my butt. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out, which is unusual since I talk for a living. Dr. Kim glances at me over my chart, then reaches out and lays a cool hand on my forearm.

  “Meg, you’ve always said you don’t want kids.” Her tone is gentle, soothing. “I assumed this
news wouldn’t upset you too much.”

  “I’m not upset,” I say too quickly. “Just surprised. I mean, I’m only thirty-nine.”

  Dr. Kim narrows her eyes at me then scans my chart. “Didn’t you have a birthday last month?”

  I don’t answer. I haven’t been able to acknowledge the fact that I’m officially in my forties. The only people who know my true age are Dr. Kim, my shrink, my brother Danny, and a bartender at some dive in the East Village. I thought I could enter middle age gracefully. I was wrong. On the eve of my fortieth, I had a full blown mental breakdown that lasted exactly seventy-two hours—ironically, the same block of time one has to spend on psychiatric hold at Bellevue.

  Luckily, my birthday landed on the Friday of a long weekend, and by Tuesday I was back to my normal, albeit snarky, jaded and cynical self, so no one I work with was the wiser. But between Friday and Tuesday I managed to drink myself into a stupor, sleep with two different men, not including my regular squeeze Adam, streak through Central Park wearing only my Spanx and my Jimmy Choo pumps, lose eighteen hundred dollars at the OTB on Fourteenth Street, and, disguised as a drag queen, ride a float in the Gay Pride Parade.

  By the time I woke up on Monday night, my head full of cotton and my underwear conspicuously absent, I realized that I was having an itsy-bitsy problem with the idea of growing old.

  The funny thing is—and by funny, I don’t mean haha, I mean, oh shit—I have everything I always wanted. I have a moderately successful radio show, a great apartment that I own outright on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a handsome gentleman friend who does NOT want to get married but loves to make me scream with pleasure three nights a week, a great toned body that has never had to endure pregnancy or—help!—a nursing baby, a classically good-looking face that benefits from bi-annual cosmetic enhancements (read: Botox and Restylane) and weekly facials, and best of all, I live far away from my past, my ex-husband, my family, and the childhood memories that often plague me in my REM sleep.

  A little thing like getting older shouldn’t really bother a hot bitch like me, right? Fucking A.

  But since my birthday, things have been a bit off. I cry occasionally for no reason, like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, although she was able to control her crying jags, whereas I break into tears with no warning whatsoever. I have inexplicable cravings for things I ate as a child, like Cap’n Crunch and Fun Dip. I forget things all the time, like the names of my doorman and the super in my building and my neighbor’s dog and, oh yeah, my boss. I forget whether or not I’ve taken a Xanax, and I end up accidentally taking two, then find myself drooling onto my desk—or one of my coworker’s desks. And believe you me, my coworkers do not welcome my saliva on or near their personal property.

  I didn’t think I sustained a head injury during my birthday weekend, but I worried I had some other kind of neurological trauma, like an aneurysm or a brain tumor or a hemorrhage or something. I went to a neurologist-cum-sadist who put me through a battery of tests only to tell me that my brain was just hunky dory.

  But last week, at my annual well-woman exam, after swabbing my vajayjay and kneading my breasts and listening to my tales of mental woe, Dr. Kim suggested I have my hormone levels checked.

  And here we are.

  “The usual window for menopause is forty to sixty years of age,” Dr. Kim says. “So you’re within that window. Nothing to worry about in terms of other health issues. Your bloodwork came back normal.”

  “Yay for me.”

  “I’d rather not put you on any hormone replacement at this time. Let’s just see how things play out, yes?”

  Before I can answer, I hear the first eight bars of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” from inside my purse. I root through it and grab my cell phone, then glance at the caller ID. My brother’s number lights up the screen. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t answer his call while in the middle of an appointment. But I welcome any excuse to end the discussion about the impending obsolescence of my girl-parts.

  “I have to take this,” I tell Dr. Kim and she nods.

  “Just let me know if you have any more questions or concerns, Meg. You can me call anytime.”

  I nod my thanks and swipe at my screen as Dr. Kim leaves the room.

  “This is Meg Monroe,” I say, even though I know it’s my brother.

  “Meg, I need you.”

  “What the hell, Danny? Don’t you even say hello anymore?”

  “There’s been an accident.”

  I bolt to my feet, a slew of horrific images dancing around my head. “What?”

  “We’re all fine,” he says. “Pretty much.”

  “No one’s dead?” I just want to make sure. ‘Pretty much’ could mean any number of things with my brother, whose attention to detail is impaired by the severe case of ADHD he’s had since childhood. ‘Pretty much’ could mean that his entire family is in a coma, all of them hanging on by a thread.

  “No, everyone’s fine. Pretty much.”

  “Jesus, Danny. Just tell me what happened!”

  “Caroline’s Volvo was t-boned.”

  “Drunk driver?”

  “Of course not,” he cries. “She’s eight months pregnant!”

  “I didn’t mean your wife! I meant the other driver.”

  “Oh. No, no, no, it was some eighty-three year old woman with macular degeneration and diabetes. The kids weren’t in the car, thank God. And the baby’s fine. But Caroline’s leg was crushed on impact. She’s in the hospital right now, but they’ll be moving her to a rehab center in a couple of days. She’ll probably be there until the birth.”

  “God. What a nightmare. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. So, listen…um…I could really use your help, Meg. I’ve taken this week off, obviously. But I have to go back to work on Monday. And I don’t know what to do about the kids…”

  There is a long pause on the phone line, during which I pretend not to understand the point of his call, and he waits for me to understand the point of his call.

  “You’re not asking me what I think you’re asking me, right Danny?”

  “Look, it’s just…Caroline’s parents are in Florida—”

  “And I’m in New York,” I almost shout as I fumble through my purse for my travel pack of Motrin. I feel a migraine coming on.

  “—and they’re in an assisted living facility. You know how much older they are. And, Dad…Well, Dad can’t do it. That’s a given.”

  “What about that Hispanic woman who babysits for you, Consuela Something?” I ask, trying to ignore the roaring in my ears. A young nurse opens the door to the examining room and gives me a questioning look. I hold up my hand and mouth the words Just a minute.

  “Her name is Rosa,” Danny says. “And her visa stipulates that she has to spend a month of the year in Mexico. She’s down there now and won’t be back for another two weeks. Wouldn’t you know, now of all times!”

  “What about an agency?” I suggest.

  “We can’t afford to hire someone from an agency, what with the baby coming.”

  “It’s your own fault!” I cry. “You should have stopped at two kids!” The nurse glances at her watch then closes the door.

  “I don’t want a stranger watching my kids.”

  “Danny, I hate to point out the obvious, but I’m a stranger to them. The last time I saw McKenna, she was, what? Two? And Tebow was just a bun in the oven.”

  “But you’re family, Meg.”

  Ah. The dreaded F-word.

  “What about my job?”

  “You told me you have time off coming to you because you never take your vacation. You could even do your show from here, if you want. There’s this wonderful thing called the internet that makes these things possible. We have the studio in the back. It’s perfect.”

  “I have a co-host. We do the show together. Which would be impossible from your studio.”

  “Meg.” His voice is soft, pleading. “I know you have this whole anti-California, anti-family, anti-k
id thing going.”

  “I do not,” I argue, even though I do.

  “But I really need your help. If you tell me you can’t do it, I’ll understand. But if you can…possibly…It would only be ten days. Just until Thanksgiving. I’m off that whole weekend, then Rosa comes back. You could even stay for the holiday.”

  “I already have plans,” I say.

  “That’s okay. You could fly back Wednesday afternoon, as soon as I get out of work. Please, sis.”

  I hate the desperation in Danny’s voice. When we were kids, he used it on me a thousand times, and I always folded. But now I’m an adult. A million miles from my former self. Okay, three-thousand miles.

  The nurse appears again. She swings the door open and strides to the examining table, then tears off the section of wax paper that was previously beneath my butt. Loudly.

  “I have to go, Danny. I’m at the doctor’s office.”

  “Is everything okay?” he asks, suddenly concerned.

  My uterus is about to become a barren wasteland. “Just fabulous,” I say. “I’ll call you later.”

  I drop the phone into my purse and glance at the nurse. She apologizes without the slightest hint of remorse. I don’t fault her for doing her job and hustling me out of here. There are hoards of pregnant women in the waiting room, with their swollen bellies and varicose veins and lower backache and indigestion.

  I will never be one of them.

  Yay for me.

  * * *

  “I think you should go.”

  My assistant, Damien, peers at me over the rim of his margarita. I called him as soon as I left Dr. Kim’s office for an emergency meeting at our favorite Mexican restaurant in Midtown.

  “Are you kidding?” I say. “Have you gone totally mental?”

  “That’s my line, not yours. And, no, I’m not kidding.”

  Damien is a tall drink of water with close-cropped dark brown hair, green eyes, and a British accent that could melt the polar ice caps. He also happens to be as gay as the day is long. He is my closest confidant, my sounding board, and the one person—including my shrink—who keeps me from going off the rails. He is a few years younger than me and wants a career in radio broadcasting. I mentor him in exchange for his undying loyalty.