Something New (9781101612262) Read online

  A New Beginning

  I realize that it’s possible that I am having a midlife crisis, although I am loath to use that expression since it means that I only expect to live to be eighty-four. (But, honestly, who really wants to live that long anyway, unless you’re fabulous like Jessica Tandy or Ruby Dee?) But the plain truth is that I am going through something, whether it’s a midlife crisis or early menopause or simply crushing boredom. At some point between being a good wife and a good mother and always doing the right thing, I have lost me. So, instead of taking Zoloft, as half of the women in the PTA do, or succumbing to twice-weekly couch sessions with the local shrink, I am going to take matters into my own hands. I am going to renew myself. I am going to recapture my former babe status. I am going to do something for me. Something that has nothing to do with my children, whom I adore, or my husband, whom I do love. Something that is solely about Ellen Ivers.

  Something New

  Janis Thomas

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  published by the penguin group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  Copyright © 2012 by Janis Thomas.

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

  Cover photo by Michael Filonow / Gallery Stock.

  Book design by Laura K. Corless.

  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 in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / November 2012

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thomas, Janis.

  Something new / Janis Thomas.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61226-2

  1. Housewives—Fiction. 2. Midlife crisis—Fiction 3. Blogs—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3620.H62796S66 2012

  813’.6—dc23 2011052124

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON

  All my heart, Mom.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a book is a solitary process, but publishing a book, like raising a child, takes a village. Thank you to Wendy Sherman, my fantastic agent, for your belief in my work and your many talents, and to the staff at Wendy Sherman Associates. Thanks to Jackie Cantor at Berkley for taking a chance on me, for your keen eye, and your love of laughter. To Amanda Ng for your patience in answering my many questions, and to Berkley Books for welcoming me into your fold.

  I have been blessed with an amazing family, too many members to name here, but you are all special to me. Thanks, Dad, for your unfailing generosity and support and your writer’s empathy. I love our debates, even though I know I drive you crazy! Thanks to my brothers, Mark and Craig, and to my niece Jacqueline for donating your time and energy and paper and ink. Thanks to my sister Sharilyn for the music, for your infectious enthusiasm, and for lovingly taking care of my kids whenever I needed some quiet time to write. And, of course, Mom, thank you for everything.

  To Linda Coler-Fields, you are as essential to my life as the nose on my face. Thank you for your constancy and counsel. Thanks to Super-Penny Thiedemann, for your love, your Virgoan attention to detail, and your brainstorming techniques (read: martinis). A big Thank-You to my Aunt Hilary, my cousins, and the Friends of Fiction (and Sometimes Non) Book Club who so generously read Something New fresh from my computer, and who gave me the confidence to send it out into the world. You guys are my lucky charm! Thanks to Michael Steven Gregory and the Southern California Writers Conference for providing a safe haven for us lunatics—uh—writers. You work tirelessly to support us and help us achieve success. Thanks, also, to Monique High, for setting this all in motion.

  Finally, thanks to my husband, Alex, for your love and for your patience during those times when I was so consumed with my work, I was only pretending to listen to you. And to my kids, A.J. and Elle. You won’t be able to read my books for decades, but you inspire me every single day, and I love you both more than words can say.

  Something New

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Epilogue

  • One •

  I am not a desperate housewife. Desperate is far too dramatic a word for someone who lives in a twenty-three-hundred-square-foot house in a bucolic suburb like Garden Hills. Malcontent is also an overly strident description, better suited to furtive, angry rebels meeting in the basement of some dilapidated tenement, putting the finishing touches on their blueprints for how they are going to overthrow “the Man.” So, it is fair to say that I am neither desperate nor malcontent. I am bored.

  Boredom is a common occurrence in matrimonial suburbia, insidious in the way it can masquerade as complacency. A lot of my peers suffer from it, and the ways in which they deal with it are as varied as their cars. (A myriad of styles, colors, and makes, but each of them worth enough to feed a third-world country.) Bridget Lowell joined a modern-day EST group that provides her with numerous opportunities to “live with dignity,” one of which is to compile a list of all the things she’s done wrong in her life and attempt to make them right. Given what I know about Bridget, she’ll be at it till hell freezes over. Jim Lampert bought a Harley Davidson and has taken to zipping off on weekends sans wife, children, and minivan. Laurie Hanson has had every line between her neck and her hairline injected with Botox. She may no longer be bored, but
she sure as hell looks bored, since she can’t muster up a single expression of emotion on her placid face.

  I thought I was immune to the midlife boredom routine. After all, I am married to a great guy who makes a great living selling office supplies, have three point five children (the point five is our dog, Sally), live in a great neighborhood in Southern California, and have all the creature comforts I desire. Sure, I gave up my career, but I manage to keep busy with the whole motherhood thing and find it quite rewarding—most of the time. I throw dinner parties, wowing my friends with my culinary skills (learned from the Food Network), and throw parties for my kids, wowing their friends with cool, completely off-the-wall cakes (also learned from the Food Network). I race here and there in my silver Ford Flex, dropping the kids at school, sports, ballet, junior guards. I make the appropriate noises when one of them gets the Principal’s Award, or when my husband wins a new account. I do all the shopping and cooking, and most of the cleaning (except twice a month when Delmy shows up with her SUV of a vacuum). I help with homework and belong to a book club with six of my friends. (I try not to make pretentious selections like a few of the other members seem to do. I mean, Atlas Shrugged?) I volunteer at the school. I am an avid recycler. I give the occasional blow job to my husband when he’s feeling stressed out. So, all in all, my days are pretty full.

  But my forty-third birthday approaches—a day that will signal that I am no longer a hair’s breadth away from my thirties, but firmly entrenched in my forties. And I find that I am feeling wistful about my life. And bored. I am looking at things differently. I am looking at myself differently.

  I have begun to gaze in the mirror for longer periods of time now. In the mornings, before my children wake up, and at night, after they have surrendered to sleep. There I stand, down the hall from my little progenies, staring at my reflection and wondering just who the hell it is staring back at me. I trace the wrinkles around my eyes with my index finger, lines that can be called laugh lines in your twenties and thirties, but in your forties must be labeled crow’s feet. I run my hands through my reddish-brown hair, noting that ten years of Miss Clairol have stripped it of its luster and bounce. I pull my shirt up and spy the harsh effect gravity has had on my breasts, the havoc that childbirth has wreaked on my abdomen. And I think, Wow, Ellen. Look what you’ve become.

  I was considered a babe once, sometime around the Clinton administration. But that time has long since passed. I have become a suburban cliché. The kind of woman lambasted ferociously by a certain chauvinistic shock jock on talk radio. The kind of woman who was once hot but has let herself go. I wasn’t aware of the slide; I had simply changed my focus. I mean, who has time to pluck her eyebrows or shave her legs when she has three children to feed, clothe, and ferry to school?

  And worse still, my husband, Jonah, is the kind of man who doesn’t even see bushy eyebrows or hairy legs. He no longer loves me for how I look (which he did when we were first together, telling me that I made him hard every time I flashed my baby blues at him). He loves me for who I am. This may come across as a compliment, like he is the very best kind of unconditionally loving person, and he is. But when no one demands that you keep yourself in shape and properly groomed, well, you just don’t keep yourself in shape and properly groomed. Whenever I complain about my flabby stomach, Jonah lovingly slips his arms around my middle and tells me that I grew three perfect babies in there and I should be proud of that fact. This little nugget used to reassure me. Now, it makes me want to punch him in the face.

  I know I sound ungrateful, and I know there are millions of women out there who would kill for a man who loves them despite the mushroom cap spilling over the waistband of their favorite pair of jeans. My friend Mia, for one. Her husband has taken to making not-so-subtle comments about the size of her thighs and has even gone so far as to place Jenny Craig coupons on the refrigerator door. (I told her that if Jonah ever did that to me, I would beer-batter and fry up the coupons and force-feed them to him with Tabasco sauce.) My cousin Jill complains that her husband, Greg, never compliments her like he did when they were dating and that he rarely initiates sex. Jonah compliments me all the time, but lately I have come to mistrust these ministrations from him. “You look wonderful,” he says in his most sincere voice, but I question whether he really sees me anymore. And when we make love, which we do at least once a month or more, as scheduling and children allow, I can’t help but wonder whether he is replacing me in his mind with one of his attractive work colleagues, or an acquaintance at the club, or this particular checker at the grocery store who looks exactly like a porn star. Not that I blame him, really. I mean, if I weren’t so busy trying to figure out who he’s mentally fucking, I’d probably be fantasizing about someone else too.

  I have started to suspect that the term perfect marriage is an oxymoron. I have started to wonder whether all marriages, even good ones like mine, harbor lies of omission and petty resentments and secret longings. Whether all husbands and wives sink into a quagmire of ambivalence, which they ignore in order to preserve the sanctity of their union. I have even begun to question whether human beings are truly meant to commit to one single person for the entirety of their lifetimes. The divorce rate being what it is, apparently I am not the only person to raise such questions.

  I realize that it’s possible that I am having a midlife crisis, although I am loath to use that expression since it means that I only expect to live to be eighty-four. (Although, honestly, who wants to live that long anyway, unless you’re fabulous like Jessica Tandy or Ruby Dee?) But the plain truth is that I am going through something, whether it’s a midlife crisis or early menopause or simply crushing boredom. At some point between being a good wife and a good mother and always doing the right thing, I have lost me. So, instead of taking Zoloft, as half of the women in the PTA do, or succumbing to twice-weekly couch sessions with the local shrink, I am going to take matters into my own hands. I am going to renew myself. I am going to recapture my former babe status. I am going to do something for me. Something that has nothing to do with my children or my husband. Something that is solely about Ellen Ivers.

  I’ve decided to start with an area of my life over which I have a modicum of control: my outside. I am going to start working out again and eating right, like I used to do. I am going to invest in some beauty products that target the skin of “women of a certain age” (my age). Because I know that when you feel good about yourself, when you are confident in how you look, you open yourself up to a world of possibilities. And possibilities can lead to adventures, both large and small.

  I feel better for having made this resolution, even though I have no idea what kind of adventure might be headed my way. I only know that reinvention is the mother of satisfaction. And I could use a little of that. Couldn’t we all?

  • Two •

  Of course, resolutions are easily made, but without inspiration and motivation, they are nearly impossible to keep. I realize this on the fourth day of my supposed renaissance when I bypass the treadmill and head straight for my son Connor’s Pop-Tarts, which are calling to me from the kitchen counter where he left them. I’d been diligent for three days, jogging a total of six miles, sweating my saggy boobs off, my heart thumping alarmingly in my chest, cursing with every seemingly endless minute on the torturous machine. But by Thursday, my resolve has been whittled down to nothing, as I wonder just what the hell I am doing this for. Or, more to the point, for whom? When you have a husband who loves you no matter how you look, why put yourself through this hideous, organ-jarring exercise? For the endorphins? Please. I can get just as high on sugar and caffeine with a fraction of the effort.

  I have also given up on the gaggle of wrinkle creams and rejuvenating tonics and facial scrubs and moisturizers that I purchased at Target Monday morning. It’s not that I am suddenly accepting of the trails that time has blazed on my forehead. It’s more a matter of perseverance. By the time I’ve finished the dishes, checked homework, herded my
children to bed, folded laundry, and answered my e-mails, I barely have enough energy reserved for washing my face and scrubbing my teeth before I fall, exhausted, onto my pillow. And I have discovered that beauty regimens are pretty grueling. You need a degree in anti-aging just to master the process. Seriously, universities ought to offer a course. Lines-Be-Gone 101. First comes the scrub, then comes the toner, then the undereye cream, which must be applied before the targeted wrinkle erase, which is followed by the all-over age-defying serum, and finally comes the moisturizer. I was in labor for less time than it takes to apply this shit.

  And besides, who is going to care if my wrinkles suddenly seem to fade? Who is going to notice that my stomach is flatter than it’s been since the birth of my last child? Perhaps hearing that Hugh Jackman is coming to Garden Hills for a little fun in the sun would produce the inspiration I need. But Hugh is too busy promoting his films. Besides, he has better places to recreate, like San Tropez or Fiji or Monte Carlo. So here I am at ten a.m. eating the last strawberry-frosted Pop-Tart in the box, knowing that Connor will be really irked when he finds I’ve pilfered his goods (even though I buy them). As I finish it off, I wonder how I am going to fill the hour I’ve just acquired by not doing the treadmill, and I get annoyed with myself for losing my steam so easily.

  After I swallow down the last of the crumbs, I give my cousin Jill a call to see what she’s up to. She promptly tells me that I must be telepathic because she was just about to call me. And I should come over immediately. She says this as though there is something of vital importance that I must see or hear, but I know Jill too well. Most likely, she can’t wait to show me the color she chose for her toenails at her mani-pedi this morning. But since I have nothing better to do, I agree, telling her I’ll be there in five minutes.