Something New (9781101612262) Read online

  “You’re saying I look like Hervé Villechaize?” I exclaim.

  “No, no,” he says, laughing with me. “It was just the evil grin. You’re a lot better looking than Hervé Villechaize.”

  “Wow,” I say. “Thanks so much.”

  Both of us still smiling, our eyes meet. And for an instant, I cannot feel any of my limbs, cannot detect my heartbeat, cannot draw in a breath. I am certain that Ben is not experiencing the same set of bizarre symptoms I am, but that fact does not diminish the effect his direct gaze is having on me. I quickly make a show of glancing at my watch and see that practice is due to conclude in two minutes. I stand up suddenly, almost lose my balance, barely avoid tumbling down the bleachers (firmly dispelling the myth that Matthew gets his klutziness from his dad), and feel Ben’s firm grip on my forearm, steadying me. In that split second, I notice that his fingers are long and hairless and his nails are clipped short.

  “Thanks,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush. “I’ve got to get moving. Still three more extracurricular activities to get to.”

  He releases his hold on my arm. “Three more?” he asks with surprise. “Today?”

  “Three kids, twelve thousand activities,” I joke, and he smiles.

  “Wow. I’m glad I stopped at two kids.”

  I feel that I should say something other than See you around or Welcome to the area, but I can’t think of anything pithy or humorous, so I just give him a little halfhearted wave as I climb down the bleachers. I pass Maddy and Tina and feel their speculative stares boring into the back of my head as I clamber over to the field to collect my son. Matthew is talking to Liam about something of apparent grave importance, gesticulating madly, and as they approach, I catch the word Transformer. Liam’s big brown eyes are wide as Matthew explains something to him about regeneration or transmutation or whatever it is that Transformers do. I call to Matthew, trying to hustle him along, and receive a furrowed-brow look that tells me he’s in the middle of a very important discussion that cannot be rushed. I check my watch again, then put a hand to my hip.

  “Matthew. Now.”

  “Looks like Liam and Matthew are already thick as thieves.”

  I turn to Ben, who is suddenly standing next to me. I nod. “Yeah. Transformers.”

  “Maybe we can get them together for, you know, a play date or something.”

  I glance at him and unsuccessfully suppress a grin. “They’re ten. You don’t call them play dates at ten.”

  He shrugs in a self-deprecating fashion. “What do you call them, then? I mean, I should probably get familiar with the current lingo.”

  “Just ‘hanging out’ is sufficient.”

  “I’ll remember that. I don’t want to be the uncool dad.”

  As if that would ever be possible.

  “Matthew,” I say again with a fraction more urgency in my tone. Ben comes to my assistance and calls to Liam, who immediately obeys and marches over to his dad. Matthew follows. Introductions are made all around, and I’m impressed by Liam’s manners as he politely puts his hand out to shake mine and tells me that it’s very nice to meet me. (I am happy if my kids manage to utter Hi instead of just grunting self-consciously when meeting new people.) I compliment Liam on his soccer skills and earn a toothy, sideways smile. Ben affectionately ruffles Liam’s hair, and we all move toward the parking lot, the boys shuffling ahead and resuming their debate about which is the most awesome Transformer.

  We reach my Flex, and Matthew and Liam do a quick knuckle bump before Matthew jumps into the backseat.

  “Good luck with the rest of your day,” Ben calls to me, then shifts his attention to his son. I get behind the wheel and start the car, watching through the windshield as father and son head for their own car. I think of Ben Campbell’s hand on my arm. Those strong, lean fingers. I shake my head as if to clear it, take a deep breath, then peel out of the parking lot as the next phase of Operation: Thursday Afternoon gets underway.

  • Four •

  On “Mad Dash” evenings, Jonah has the good grace to alleviate me of dinner duty, picking up takeout on the way home. Tonight he has opted for Dragon King, the local Chinese place that makes the best scallion pancakes within a hundred miles. Usually, I lay waste to at least four of the eight pancakes, but tonight, the first one I pull from the carton sits uneaten on my plate. I am currently trying to estimate the amount of calories and saturated fat contained in a single wedge of the deep-fried disk. My kids happily munch on their egg rolls (at their age, fat and calorie counting is an alien concept), and I have to remind them, for the four-thousandth time, to chew with their mouths closed. Jonah has reached his scallion pancake quota and is now shoveling chicken lo mein onto his plate with enthusiasm. He offers me the ravaged carton and I shake my head, garnering a look of puzzlement.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  I nod and smile reassuringly. “I grabbed a snack at the Y,” I lie.

  I am not in the habit of deceiving my husband, but a little fib like this seems harmless. It goes to the greater good. In marriages—mine, anyway—I have found that it is problematic for one party to engage in self-improvement tactics when the other is not. It shifts the balance of power too much. Like the time Jonah did Atkins. I was so envious of his sudden fitness that I consciously whipped up his favorite carb-rich dishes at dinner just to punish him. Or the time I joined a yoga studio at Jill’s insistence and started going to classes before breakfast. Suddenly, Jonah was besieged with early-morning client meetings and vendor emergencies that had to be solved at the crack of dawn, so that I could barely make it to half the weekly sessions. Ultimately, I had to let my membership lapse. I will admit that I was secretly relieved to have an excuse to give up yoga, as the only position I truly enjoyed making—and was moderately successful at—was Corpse. But still.

  “You forgot to eat lunch, didn’t you?”

  I nod and smile again, thinking of the Pop-Tarts. For some reason, I have gotten back on track with my whole resolution, reclaiming-my-former-babe-status thing. The Pop-Tart transgression was merely a setback. (And if I do the treadmill after dinner, I can erase those two or three hundred calories in forty minutes.) For the rest of the day I only chose healthy fuel for my body—a salad at lunch and a protein bar in the late afternoon to keep me from turning into Low-Blood-Sugar Monster Mom. I am now opting for the tofu with mixed vegetables instead of the lo mein and scallion pancakes.

  At this time, I am not drawing a correlation between my renewed desire to lose weight and my acquaintance with Ben Campbell. He hasn’t entered my mind at all over the past few hours. Really, he hasn’t. Okay, this isn’t quite true. He has. But only his hands, which have intermittently come to mind since our bleacher encounter. I tell myself that it is only natural to revisit the touch of a man other than your husband, regardless of how inconsequential or innocent said touch was. I am certainly not thinking of Ben sexually—this is the truth. I can appreciate his good looks, in the same way that I appreciate, say, Brad Pitt’s appeal. And Ben is definitely one of those all-around great guys to whom women can’t help but be attracted. But he is also, clearly, happily married, with a terrific family life. And so am I. So am I.

  However, tonight, I find myself looking at Jonah more critically than usual. The way his blue-gray eyes—which are beautiful and expressive—disappear when he smiles. Normally, I find this endearing, but tonight it inexplicably irks me. And the way he purposely lets a noodle hang down over his chin so that he can noisily slurp it into his mouth for the amusement of our children. I always laugh along with the kids, but tonight, this humorous display disgusts me. And how he sniffs at the wine in his glass before he takes a sip, as though his nose will reveal to him a bounty of secrets about the Beaujolais he is about to imbibe. Tonight, this action seems as pretentious as it is absurd. Jonah guzzles any and all kinds of wine set before him, including ones that taste like jet fuel.

  Still, when he slides his hand across the table and intertwines his fingers with min
e, I don’t think of Ben Campbell. I think of Jonah. My husband. With whom I have spent the last fourteen plus years of my life, and with whom I will spend the next forty or so. He is as solid a man as they come. His family comes first and without exception. He is a true “the glass is half full” kind of guy, always looking on the bright side of things (sometimes to the degree that I want to smack him). He may not be the best listener in the world—his eyes start to glaze over whenever I get philosophical, or when one of the kids takes too long telling a story—but he is always there for us. And he never complains when I ask him to pick up tampons on his way home.

  I give his fingers a squeeze, then make a point of planting a kiss on his cheek before I get up to clear the paper plates from the table. Sally, our lab mix, eyes me from her dog bed just inside the kitchen. When I say lab mix I am only referring to what the gal from the shelter wrote on the adoption form when we brought her home. I’m certain she does have some lab in her. Along with a bit of every breed of dog known to man. Perhaps some noncanine breeds as well—when she rolls around in the mud in our backyard, she often closely resembles a shaggy elephant seal. She is large and hairy, and she has a tail that could bring down a pillar of solid stone when she gets excited. (I have the bruised calves to prove it.) Her eyes are brown and look like they have been tattooed with eyeliner, her ears flop like a bloodhound on steroids, and when she shakes herself dry, she hurls wads of saliva, dousing any and all innocent bystanders with a veritable geyser of dog slobber. But she is sweet tempered and affectionate, although not the most efficient home protector. In fact, as a guard dog, she stinks. When the doorbell rings, she races up the stairs and tries to bury all ninety-eight pounds of herself in the six-inch crawl space under Jessie’s canopy bed, probably hoping against hope that my eight-year-old daughter will protect her.

  Surreptitiously, I bend over and place the scallion pancake just in front of Sally’s nose. She sniffs it once, then rolls over and shows me her belly, as if to say, I’m watching my weight, too. But the second I turn away from her, I hear a slurp of epic proportions, and when I turn back around, the pancake has vanished.

  Now that we’ve finished dinner, there is no longer anything to keep my children’s mouths busy, thus the pre-dessert conversation begins. While I clean up, Jessie regales her brothers and her father with her exploits at rehearsal, gesturing wildly for dramatic effect as she talks about one particular Oompa-Loompa who doesn’t know his right foot from his left and cannot, just cannot, learn the steps for their first big number. Jessie, who excels at ballet and is an avid fan of the Wii dancing game, is intolerant of such incompetence. I almost expect her to stand up and shout, “I cannot vork under zese conditions!” She does stand up, without any exclamations, and proceeds to perform the Oompa-Loompa dance number without making a single mistake. My husband and Matthew applaud her, causing her to beam with pride, but Connor just rolls his eyes.

  “That is so easy!” he balks. “I could do that.”

  “Oh really?” Jonah fires back. “Let’s see it, Baryshnikov.”

  “What? Now?” Connor’s preteen cockiness wavers.

  “Right now,” Jonah replies with a knowing grin. As a father, Jonah is aces. He has the uncanny ability to reprimand without anger, to call our children on their transgressions without browbeating them. He uses humor to defuse situations like this rather than choosing humiliation techniques. He taps into their thought processes, inspiring them to really understand the implications and consequences of their behavior. I envy him. Even on my best day, I am more likely to yell and scream than sit them down for a soul-searching heart to heart. But as a mom, I don’t have this luxury. Who has time for a behavioral postmortem when dinner needs to be cooked or homework reviewed or baseball/soccer/karate/ballet/tennis uniforms laundered/stitched/patched/purchased? Screaming and yelling are quick and to the point, however fruitless they may be.

  “Okay, fine.” Connor has risen to the challenge, even though we all know what is about to happen. He takes one step, then another.

  “Wrong,” chirps Jessie.

  “I don’t know where the music starts,” he says defensively.

  “That’s all right,” Jonah says with a smile. “Jessie will sing while you dance. Go ahead, Jessie.”

  Jessie begins a rousing, if painfully out-of-tune, rendition of the Oompa-Loompa song. Connor executes the first few steps correctly.

  “Oompa-Loompa Loompa di doo, I have another puzzle for you. Oompa-Loompa Loompa di di. If you are wise you’ll listen to me.”

  By the end of the stanza, Connor begins to lose his place, fumbling around the dining room with no apparent direction while Jessie and Matthew giggle. He throws his hands in the air and smiles good-naturedly, then completes his performance with a combination moonwalk/robot move. Then he falls into his chair, defeated.

  “Okay, it’s not that easy,” he concedes as his siblings and dad applaud his effort.

  “I did like that last move,” says Jonah. “They ought to think about using it in the play.”

  “Daddy, that’s silly,” Jessie says solemnly. “Oompa-Loompas don’t moonwalk!”

  “That would be cool, though,” Matthew offers.

  I arrive at the table with four dishes of Breyer’s ice cream, and the conversation screeches to a halt as Jonah and the kids dig in. I walk away from the table and Jonah calls to me.

  “You’re not having dessert?”

  I turn back to him and see that he is wearing a speculative look. I shake my head.

  “Maybe later,” I tell him. “When I’m not so full.”

  I manage to plod through two miles on the treadmill during the allotted hour of television my kids enjoy nightly. Jonah wanders in and out of the upstairs bonus room at regular intervals, tossing banal questions at me like, “Have you seen my gray-and-turquoise tie?” or “Were you able to pick up more deodorant soap?” or “Where is that copy of Business Weekly I brought home from the office?” I huff and puff and breathlessly sputter my answers. (“No.” Gasp. “Yes.” Gasp. “On the coffee table next to the coasters…” Gasp, gasp.)

  When, thankfully, I finish, I guzzle down a glass of water and throw a towel over my shoulder, then walk downstairs on rubbery legs to the family room, where I find Matthew and Jessie playing tug-of-war with the remote. Jessie is like the TV police. When the kids’ hour is up and the show is over, she feels that it is her obligation to officially bring the session to a close by turning off the television and the cable box. Her brothers always take issue with this, claiming that the hour isn’t really over until the TiVo kicks back to live TV.

  “I was watching that commercial!” shrieks Matthew. He has fifteen pounds on Jessie, and his hands are bigger, but I’m betting on my daughter for this round.

  “Commercials are bad for your brain,” she tells him righteously.

  “But I wanted to see it!”

  “That’s enough.”

  Three sets of eyes turn to me and three mouths instantly start to laugh.

  “Yo, Mom,” Connor says around his smile. “Nice look.”

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Jessie asks, her concern smothered by her laughter.

  “You look like you’re gonna keel over,” Matthew chimes in.

  I catch sight of myself in the mirror over the piano and almost shriek myself. My hair is a sweaty, tangled mass, my face is as red as a lobster, and my eyes look as though they are about to pop out of my head. I break into a grin and regard my children.

  “Well,” I say. “We can’t all be naturally beautiful, can we?”

  They laugh some more, but their laughter turns to grumbling when I tell them it’s time for bed. Connor gives me the least resistance, knowing that, as the eldest, he gets an extra half hour to read quietly in his room. He has recently discovered the J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings series and can’t wait to get back to Frodo and his cronies. Matthew stamps his foot and informs me that he won’t go to his room until he gets to watch the commercial that Jessie’s remote-
hoarding has deprived him of. I shake my head firmly and point to the stairs. Jessie looks up at me with her big blue doe eyes and insists that she needs a glass of milk to help her sleep. I shake my head again and jab a finger at the stairs. Reluctantly, she and Matthew trudge to the second floor, where they and their older brother hurry through their nightly ablutions while I supervise.

  When at last all three are safely ensconced in their beds, I drag myself to the master bathroom to shower. I crank the water to hot and step beneath the spray, then stand unmoving for a full minute, allowing the hot stream to wash the profusion of sweat from my body. I reach for the soap and begin to lather myself, moving my hands over this body that has been mine, for better and for worse, for the past forty-two years.

  I have always had a little extra meat on my bones. Frankly, after the births of each of my kids, a little extra meat turned into a couple of porterhouse steaks. But I do have occasional moments of appreciation for what nature has given me. I may never have been rail thin, but I have always been strong and healthy. I don’t get winded easily, I have never been struck with serious illness, and I never need to ask my husband to lift heavy items. (Although I often do ask for his help in order to stroke his inner caveman.)

  Perhaps it is my imagination, or just wishful thinking, but as I run the soap across my torso, I can feel the definition of my rib cage more clearly than I did a few days ago. And my stomach seems to be a little less shelflike in its protuberance. I am secretly pleased, although I know I still have a long way to go to reach my goal, which is to fit into my wedding dress (I have no idea where the damn thing is, probably stuffed in a bag, tucked away in the attic next to my unfinished novel). But it’s a start, and I resolve to complete three miles on the treadmill tomorrow and promise myself that ne’er another Pop-Tart shall cross my lips.