Something New (9781101612262) Page 31
She thumps her tail as if in agreement.
When we return home, Sally finally accepts the cookies from my pocket and carries them to her dog bed where she munches away on them—loudly. I check voice mail, but there are no messages, and I realize that Jonah has not called at all today. A whisper of unease skitters through me, but I shake it off. Jonah and the kids are a thousand miles away. They are probably spending the day watching Grandpa shoot at desert rats with his own father’s army rifle, which he loves to show off. (Thankfully, he has terrible aim, and as far as I remember, he has managed to hit one only once, and only because he tripped on a rock at the same time that he pulled the trigger.)
I pick up the phone again and dial my in-laws’ phone number. Their machine picks up after the second ring, and a hollow anonymous voice asks me to leave a message.
“Hi…It’s Ellen. I haven’t heard from the kids today. Just wanted to say hi. Tell them I miss them. Hope you’re having fun.”
I replace the phone to its cradle and stare at the counter, realizing with surprising intensity that I do miss my kids. Jonah? Not on your life. But Connor’s sunny smile, Matthew’s constant look of concern, and Jessie’s off-key singing? I miss them all.
The evening stretches out before me. On a whim, I decide that I am going to cook a lavish meal for myself. I have been so strict with everything that has passed my lips of late—well, excluding Ben’s tongue and the Ben and Jerry’s tangent, but neither of those counts as eating, merely lapses in judgment. I feel like Linda Campbell unknowingly sucker-punched me in the brain, not to mention the heart. Which is not to say that I am in love with Ben Campbell or that I am harboring any fantasies about the two of us running away together. I am neither sixteen nor delusional. But I have fallen in love with the idea of Ben Campbell, with the notion of being his lover, with the thought of being wanted by someone with whom I have no other ties. It is exhilarating and liberating in a duplicitous and clandestine kind of way. But I don’t know if I can go forward with someone who has purposefully deceived me. I still have my integrity. Sort of.
And to add to all of that, my husband may well be having an affair. Which equally infuriates me and makes me jealous. Not, mind you, in the healthy “my husband’s cheating, I’ll kill him” kind of way but in the foot-stamping “he’s already cheated and I haven’t gotten to yet and now I might never get to!” kind of way. Needless to say, I am feeling vulnerable and unsure of myself and utterly lost. And what better comfort is there than good food?
Unfortunately, my refrigerator will not comply. It has a host of items fit for a family of five, meaning food so bland in taste and texture, it will not offend a single person in the house. Frozen dinners and ground beef and a fryer chicken that would take three days to thaw out, plus all of the leftovers from the previous week, which are quickly gaining momentum in the smell department, and a drawer full of dejected-looking veggies. If I am going to have a gourmet meal, it isn’t coming out of this kitchen. I consider ordering Chinese, quickly change my mind, and head for the stairs.
Forty minutes later I am seated at a lovely table for two in the chichi Garden Hills restaurant Flowers. While I usually shy away from eating out alone, tonight I feel almost smug with my own independence.
I gaze around the richly appointed dining room. Flowers’s claim to fame is that the executive chef, Joey Winter, was challenged to a throwdown by Bobby Flay over his famous pommes frites, which are amazing, redolent with roasted garlic and shaved Parmesan. Unfortunately, Joey got his ass kicked as Bobby showed up with a deep-fryer the size of a Jacuzzi, killer Cajun spices, and an aioli dipping sauce that was, apparently, trés magnifique. Still, Joey’s French fries—that’s what they are—rock, and the rest of his food is delicious as well. The prices are extortionate, but worth it, and since I am alone, I am free to order the most expensive thing on the menu without compunction. I glance at the placard posted next to the wine bar and read the market price of the lobster.…uh, maybe not. Maybe I’ll just settle for the beef Wellington, which, as I remember from my one and only previous visit with Jonah on our tenth anniversary, was melt-in-your-mouth scrumptious.
A waiter with slicked-back brown hair and an indulgent smile approaches my table and leans toward me expectantly.
“Good evening,” he intones with an accent that is a cross between Cockney English, French, and Count Chocula. “Would madame like something to drink while waiting for your dinner companion?”
I blink at him a few times, processing his question. “Uh, uh,” I stammer.
“Perhaps you would like to wait for your company,” he suggests, backing away from me as though I have bubonic plague.
“No, I—” But he is already gone, striding briskly to a table in the far corner.
Now, this is the new millennium. People eat by themselves all the time. So I am surprised by the waiter’s assumption that I am meeting someone. Apparently, people don’t dine solo in Flowers. I look around the room, and sure enough, there is not a single single person in the restaurant save for me. I glance at the empty place across from me, the vacant chair, and I feel my pulse start to race. My heart thuds in my chest and my throat goes dry. I reach for the water glass on the table in front of me and am alarmed to see my hand shake. I yank it back and place it in my lap, with my other shaking appendage, where it can do no harm.
And then, a deliriously funny thing happens. And when I say funny, I mean that every inmate of every sanitarium across the country would be in straitjacketed stitches over it. I have a vision. Yes, right there in the dining room of the most luxurious restaurant in Garden Hills. I am waking up in my bed, alone; the space next to me that is usually inhabited by my husband is barren. I am sitting at my dinner table with my three sullen children. Jonah’s chair is gone. I am driving in the minivan, the passenger seat empty, the kids arguing behind me while I slowly go mad. I am watching a high school graduation, maybe Connor’s. I look around at all the proud parents, holding hands and resting their heads against each other’s shoulders, but Jonah is conspicuously absent. I am sitting in a glamorous restaurant, by myself amid a sea of couples and groups.… Oh wait, that’s really happening.
I bolt out of my seat, almost knocking it over, grab my purse, and head for the door as fast as my wobbly legs will take me. My waiter catches a glimpse of my hasty departure and hurries after me, probably riled about being denied a tip for his thirty seconds of service.
“Is everything all right with madame?” he inquires solicitously, pawing at my sleeve as I reach the hostess stand. I have the sudden urge to swat him with my purse and tell him to pick a country whose dialect he can master.
“Everything is fine with madame,” I tell him. “My husband is stuck at work, so I won’t be staying.”
“Ah,” he nods, removing his fingers from my blouse. “How regrettable. Well, next time.”
I push through the door and make a beeline for the Lexus, which I had the sense to park on the street rather than with the valet service, which is free only if you don’t count the traditional and expected five-dollar tip. I start the ignition and race toward home, the radio blasting at full volume with me singing along to Collective Soul at the top of my lungs. I stop only once, at the McDonald’s drive-through, where I purchase an Angus wrap and a small fries. This is the fast-food version of beef Wellington and pommes frites, and it is not what I anticipated when I left home earlier tonight, but hell. A girl’s got to eat. Even an almost-forty-three-year-old girl.
When the gods of foresight sent their vision to me at the swanky Flowers, they probably did not anticipate that I would glean the wrong lesson from it. I am certain they intended for me to appreciate the perils of being a divorcée, which seems, at best, unappealing, and at worst, downright tragic. But I took from my vision an entirely different lesson: I do not want to stay in a marriage because I am afraid of the alternative. I don’t want to remain in a complacent union out of fear. I don’t want to be with someone I don’t love and who doesn’t l
ove me simply because I don’t want to be alone. And these realizations raise the question: Do Jonah and I love each other any more?
None of this has anything to do with Ben. Still, the million-dollar question remains, and it has been lurking in the back of my mind all day. Will I meet him tomorrow morning or won’t I? And the answer to that question leads to more questions. If I go, mindless of Ben’s deception, mindful of his forgiving wife and my own possibly two-timing husband, will it be the experience I want it to be? I don’t mean the sex. I know the sex will be phenomenal, apocalyptic, mind-blowing. But will it give me what I need, right now, in my life? Seeing as how I’m not even sure what I need, it’s a tough one. And if I don’t go, will I be not going for the right reasons? Will I be not going in order to preserve a marriage that I suspect camouflages the reality of two people living together with nothing in common aside from their children? Will I be not going so that I can feel morally and ethically sound? And just where will that get me? To heaven? Last time I checked, God takes sinners and saints both. And by not going, will I be missing out on something that could bring me extraordinary pleasure, not just physically, but emotionally as well? Will I regret not going for the rest of my life because I do, in fact, know what I’ll be missing?
Another thing is plaguing me as well, doing a do-si-do in my brain alongside thoughts of Ben and thoughts of Jonah, and that is my blog. Tomorrow is the last day of the competition, my last post for the Ladies Living-Well Journal. I have no idea what my final post will be, but that’s not my main worry since I have managed to conjure up complete posts out of thin air and bullshit. And I am not attached to the outcome, whether I’ll win or lose, because what are the odds, really? I am a good writer, but there must be at least one blogger out of the thousands of entries who is as good as me, and who probably writes about more important and socially relevant subjects than men’s resemblance to cheese balls. What concerns me is the day after tomorrow. Without the motivation of the competition, will I actually sit my fat ass down at my computer and compose? If I want to continue blogging, I will have to set up my own site, buy a domain name, come up with some kind of coherent theme, then map out a stringent daily schedule of writing for no other reason than I want to. As inspired as I was a week ago, I am beginning to feel my resolve slip. And what does that say about my reinvention? First goes the writing, then goes the treadmill, then goes the healthy eating, the glowing skin, and I’ll be right back where I was a month ago.
I really need to find an Overthinkers Anonymous meeting, I tell myself as I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom. When my mental masturbation hits Defcon One, and I feel like my eyes are going to burst out of my sockets for all of the gray-matter activity pressing against them, I roll over and reach into my nightstand drawer for my last resort, my little ally for that one activity that can actually clear my mind. The batteries are low, and therefore the vibration comes in fits and starts, but it will have to do.
I don’t fantasize about Ben, and of course not Jonah, but instead envision a steamy scenario with a tropical setting starring Hugh Jackman. But, in the end, Hugh only takes me halfway there before I fall, exhausted, fast asleep.
• Twenty-five •
On the drive to the Garden Hills Police Department’s safe haven for witnesses and errant husbands, I find myself thinking about something Jill said. Not yesterday at lunch, because, honestly, I was in such a state at the time that I can barely recall anything that was said, by her or me, but something she said in my garage on Tuesday. Several things she said, actually.
We make choices, and we have to stick with them. We have responsibilities and commitments, and we have to live up to them, even when they practically crush us. All we can do is just make the best of it.
When I awoke this morning, I had already made up my mind to meet Ben. There was no thought behind this decision, no mulling it over or obsessing about it or yanking my hair out in frustration. I simply knew I had to go. But now, as I weave through the sunny streets of my city, I realize that Jill’s words have inspired me, although, as with the gods of foresight, not in the way she meant them.
All we can do is just make the best of it.
This notion is not only depressing, it is ludicrous. Seriously, what are we supposed to do? Just sit around, mentally crossing off the days, ambling in a haze of ambivalence through the rest of our lives, accepting our sorry lot, until, when death finally comes for us, it is a merciful relief? Jesus! I don’t want to amble. I want to charge! I want to suck every ounce of life out of this sorry state of existence right up until I’m so old that I have to use a straw! If that includes making mistakes of gigantic proportions, so be it. I will embrace my mistakes. I will celebrate them, if for no other reason than because they keep me from drowning in a sea of apathy.
When I turn onto La Croix, a parking spot magically opens up right in front of the designated building, and I take this as a sign. I pull into the space left vacant by a dented Chevy Blazer with a couple of surfboards on the top rack that roars in the direction of the beach in a trail of fumes. I turn off the ignition and sit for a few moments, staring sightlessly through the windshield, sucking in a dozen calming breaths. Then I get out of the Lexus and gaze up at the two-story apartment house.
The complex is unremarkable for this area, with a brown-and-beige wood-sided façade and simple landscaping that includes the indigenous succulent ground cover, flowering hedges, and several obligatory palm trees. I follow the concrete path up to a breezeway, walk past twelve metal mailboxes and a bulletin board that holds a cornucopia of multicolored flyers hawking everything from a cheap sofa to discount personal training. The staircase looms ahead. With each ascending step, my heart beats more furiously in my chest, and it’s not solely from the exertion.
The door to apartment eight opens a microsecond after I ring the bell. Ben stands before me, a vision in unbuttoned jeans, no shirt, a towel slung around his neck, his hair just-showered wet, and an eighth of an inch of beard growth peppering his chin. He smiles warmly at me and a single thought steamrolls over all other thoughts in my brain.
I want this man.
He steps aside wordlessly to let me pass, but I stand frozen for moment. Never in my life has a man actually taken my breath away, at least not one who wasn’t being projected onto a movie screen. I want to hurl myself at him and wrap myself around him and rocket to the stars at the speed of light.
“Come in,” he urges.
I walk into the apartment. The interior is what you would expect from a dwelling that is home to no one. The walls are bare, the furniture is clearly an amalgamation of thrift store purchases, and there are no personal effects or items of interest decorating the room. The plus side is that two walls in the living room are made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, through which the sunshine blazes, cheering the otherwise drab surroundings. At least it’s better than a dingy bathroom in a bar.
“Can I get you something?” Ben asks, coming up beside me and gingerly placing his hand on the small of my back. “Coffee?”
I shake my head. My heart is still pounding, and I fear that adding caffeine to my body chemistry would give me a coronary.
He nods, then leans in and kisses me softly on the cheek. I turn toward him and his lips slide to mine, never breaking contact with my skin. My first instinct is to pull away. He and I should talk first, and I fear that once we get started with the touching and kissing and, uh, the rest, there will be no stopping us until we are a sweaty, sated, horizontal mass. But Ben breaks off the kiss first and takes a step back.
“Are you…okay?” He is looking at me intently, as if reading my mind.
“I’m fine,” I assure him.
“Sit, sit,” he says, gesturing to the worn gray-green couch. “I’m sorry about my ensemble.” He chuckles as he crosses the room and grabs a white oxford shirt hanging over the back of a chair. He quickly puts it on, tossing aside the towel, and all I can think is, Oh, please, no! Don’t cover those spectacular pecs.
“Good,” he answers, taking a seat next to me and relaxing back against the cushions. “I can’t really talk about it.” He grins, embarrassed. “Ongoing case. But we got what we needed. Thanks for asking.” He reaches over and brushes his fingertips against my cheek. “I heard there was some excitement at my house yesterday,” he says, pulling his hand back and raking it through his wet hair.
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“Thanks for your help. Linda is a wunderkind at litigation, but she’s not great with exploding pipes. Anyway, the plumber came out and fixed it, and everything’s drying out nicely, including the boys.”
We sit in awkward silence for a moment. Then he cocks his head at me. “This is kind of weird, huh?”
I exhale, possibly for the first time since I entered the apartment. “Yeah. It is. Kind of.”
“Yeah, well, I thought, maybe. I don’t know what I thought.…I’m not really, uh, well versed at extramarital seduction.”
I feel myself go rigid, and Ben notices.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I’m silent.
“It’s just, this is a first for me,” Ben says. “And obviously for you, too. Which makes me feel great, that you’d choose me, that you’d want to.…Oh, God, I should just get my jaw wired shut!”
I want to laugh, he is so earnest, but I can’t laugh, because he has just lied to me again, twice, in the last thirty seconds. I could overlook one fib, said over drinks in a bar. But two? Three, all together? What kind of woman am I, anyway? Have I no standards? Just don’t think about him naked from the waist up and you’ll be fine. I stand and immediately move to the door. I turn back to him but keep my eyes on the floor.
“I’m sorry, Ben.”
He bolts off the sofa and takes a few steps toward me. “Wait. Don’t go. Ellen, what? What is it?”