Santa Monica

by Cassidy Lucas

  One mistake, she thought, and she was out. Like a bag of garbage.

  5

  Mel

  A THICK LAYER OF FOG HAD ROLLED IN FROM THE OCEAN, TURNING THE night air damp and sweet-smelling. Like vanilla cookies, Mel thought, inhaling deeply as she hurried up the front steps of her house, the smooth slate cool under her bare feet, a brown paper bag clutched in each of her hands.

  The bags were filled with $500 worth of medicinal marijuana goodies the cannabis delivery guy had just handed her in exchange for the stack of crisp twenties Mel had swiped from Adam’s dresser drawer stash. The second she’d clicked Purchase on Greenly.com, she could almost taste the first sweet hit—the pleasant burn in her lungs, the instant grounding calm that would spread from her head to her toes like a magic cloak. She’d earned this relief, goddammit: first she’d endured the V2Y! (cringe) party that morning, followed by an afternoon’s worth of criticism from Adam. He’d returned from Sloane’s soccer game an hour after the event ended, when Mel and Lettie were plucking the last stray cocktail umbrellas and crumpled napkins from the lawn, and immediately declared the backyard trashed. Mel had tried not to laugh as she watched Adam stoop over to examine a patch of slightly churned grass as if it were a dead body.

  Trashed? Mel had said to Adam, when Lettie was out of earshot. Give me a break.

  Then please give me the courtesy of respecting our property. That’s all I’m asking. I’m glad you threw a party, babe, and got some exercise in. But keeping up this yard isn’t cheap. Just be more mindful next time, okay? Then he’d veered over to the pool, grabbed the long-handled net, and fished out the postcards of Regina’s that had blown into the bright blue water along with a couple of soaked hand towels, his face tight with disapproval.

  Mel wished she’d had a glass of that putrid kombucha, just then, to toss in his face. There were few words she loathed more than mindful, which Santa Monicans constantly peppered throughout their sentences. Adam knew she hated it. So she’d answered him, in a tone that was admittedly snarkier than necessary, Okay, got it. Right on, and namaste!

  Adam hadn’t spoken to her for the rest of the day.

  Then, a few hours ago, he’d softened, and texted her a shirtless pic of himself in bed, chiseled arms flexing. An invitation for makeup sex. Which Mel knew would smooth things over and make both of them feel better—at least until their next round of the same argument, anyway.

  But tonight, she needed to get stoned more than she needed Adam’s restored goodwill, or her orgasm that would accompany it. (Makeup sex was always their hottest—and since moving to California, they’d had plenty of it—Adam still wanted her, even if she was the fattest woman in town, still moaned with delight over her naked body and went down on her almost every time.) At the moment, she needed a break from his constant expressions of “concern,” which, lately, felt more like expressions of his disappointment in her. So, she’d responded to his text: Sorry, I love you, but not tonight, and turned off her phone so she wouldn’t have to see his wounded responses. She could already imagine them: I wish you’d find a way to be less angry was one of his favorites. As if he’d had no part in her anger. Or perhaps a variation on the one he’d sent her last week: Consider ditching the weed & getting more sleep. Health affects mood. Another reminder of her lack of discipline.

  Since they’d moved west, he’d begun using that awful phrase more. You’ve got to take care of yourself, Mel. On the surface, it looked like a husband caring for his partner, but Mel knew Adam was a director in every aspect of his life, on and off the set. Too bad, she thought, remembering the svelte women exercising in her backyard that morning, he’d married the only woman in Santa Monica who lacked self-control.

  She didn’t want to think about the (kill me now) Version Two You! party. She must’ve been out of her mind to let Regina talk her into hosting twenty (twenty!) women for some cultish collective sweat-a-thon.

  The only bright spot in Mel’s day had been Zack, the sweet, handsome trainer with the y’all southern charm, even if his gung-ho energy reminded Mel of a car salesman. But, damn, those eyes—okay, and that body—had her forgiving him for even his “hashtag blessed” comment. More importantly, he seemed to forgive her for being more than just “out of shape.” It was as if he hadn’t noticed her blobby form among all those gazelles. She reminded herself that Zack was an aspiring actor, a fact she’d learned from Regina, who seemed to know a great deal about him. Could they be having a thing? Mel wondered. Was she the only woman in this town not having an affair? Regardless, Zack’s warmth and sincerity toward Mel could not be trusted, no matter how authentic it had seemed.

  Stop, she told herself. This was exactly the kind of overthinking that had Santa Monica women calling Mel funny and interesting, when what she knew they meant was crazy.

  Mel shook the contents of the brown bags onto the Oriental rug in the den and began sorting through the childproof tubes of vape pen cartridges and pretty glass jars of red-haired bud. She smiled, thinking of how, in just a few weeks, Sloane would count her candy at the end of Halloween night on this same rug. She plugged in both rechargeable vape pens, retrieved a black Sharpie pen from the junk drawer next to the kitchen sink, and began her ritual of labeling each of the cartridges filled with the amber-toned oil that reminded her of honey. Labeling minimized her risk of, God forbid, smoking the wrong strain at the wrong time. I was for indica, which she used only before sleep; S for sativa and its heady highs; and H for the more mellow hybrid, perfect for public outings to the beach and park, and, occasionally, to help Mel endure a school talent show.

  Labeling complete, she unwrapped one of the slender white pens containing a strain of Indica advertised on Greenly.com as calming and sucked on the tip. With each long inhale, the pen vibrated, causing her lips to tingle pleasantly. Soon, soon, she told herself, you’ll be CALM. After a few generous hits, she opened Tiny Sheep, the virtual sheep farm game app on her iPhone, and began the satisfying routine of shearing her cartoon sheep—they came in all colors, including patterns of polka dots and snowflakes—and even pairing them, male and female, in a little heart-shaped mating hut where, if she was lucky, they’d copulate and add a baby sheep to the flock.

  Normally, when she played the game stoned, it numbed her mind, blotting out any bothersome thoughts the weed had failed to erase. But now, the tiny sheep couples on her screen boomeranged Adam back into her thoughts. Since moving to Santa Monica, Mel had listened to women she hardly knew, especially the school moms, plus a handful of gay men, gush over Adam. You’re so lucky. Where’d you find him? Is he for real? As if, Mel inferred, a woman like her, with saddlebags and frown lines, could not possibly have landed such a man without divine intervention.

  Perhaps they were right. Perhaps Adam was too good for her, or Mel not good enough for him.

  Twenty years? Mel’s new mom-acquaintances gasped, when she revealed how long they’d been together. If Mel was feeling loosey-goosey after too much wine, she’d add, “I was the hot one back then!” Haha. But this was the truth. She was a bona fide hottie when they’d met in college—a trim chain-smoking modern dancer in her perpetual all-black uniform of patterned stockings, miniskirt, and faux leather platform boots. All types of guys had wanted her, from muscled-up soccer players wearing headbands and Umbros to hip raver boys with tongue piercings and wide-legged pants.

  Then she’d met Adam at the end of her senior year at RISD. Sweet and transparent film-guy Adam. What-you-see-is-what-you-get Adam. He seemed the very opposite of the guys she’d dated, aloof bad boys who had refused to call her “girlfriend,” claiming they weren’t into labels. Adam had wanted the whole world to know he and Mel were a couple—insisting on holding her hand as they walked across campus, a gesture Mel had, at first, recoiled from. Gentle, earnest Adam who wrote her cheesy love poems, sent flowers to her dorm room, and called sex “making love.”

  He was the man who had counted her contractions for three full days when she’d been in labor with Slo
ane. Who’d stayed up all night to help Mel finish her first big batch of wedding invitations soon after she’d opened the press, his ink-stained fingers Twilight-blue (Pantone number 19–3938) for days after. Who insisted he loved (loved!) performing oral. Who went to the women’s march after Trump won the election, wearing a T-shirt announcing, This Is What A Feminist Looks Like.

  Adam had given her everything she’d thought she wanted. A daughter whose spunk matched Mel’s own. A house so large and decadent, Mel could hardly believe it was theirs. Enough money to hire a housecleaner—a luxury she’d never imagined. Her frugal parents would have been jaw-hung with judgment if they knew about Lettie, having instilled in Mel that housekeepers were for the rich and lazy.

  Technically, she had time to do the cleaning herself, especially now that Dogwood Designs was, as the message on the letterpress website declared, On Hiatus. It sounded better than the truth, Mel thought.

  She’d been excited to introduce her letterpress work to a brand-new city where disposable incomes were sky-high and people viewed putting on lavish events as a critical life skill. She’d rented a shockingly expensive storefront on Montana Avenue and put in fifteen-hour days decorating Dogwood Designs West to understated perfection, coordinating the opening with Sloane’s first week of school at John Wayne Elementary. She’d imagined the comfort in introducing herself to the throngs of leggy, taut-skinned moms as the entrepreneur and artisan behind a buzzy new store on Santa Monica’s trendiest street. Slipping the business cards she’d painstakingly designed into their manicured hands.

  She’d actually forced herself to hand out the cards, feeling bumbling and awkward each time she introduced herself to yet another mom waiting outside the schoolyard, clad in a skintight “athleisure” outfit and space-age sneakers. Most of them cooed appreciatively and issued vague compliments in a language Mel had come to recognize as distinctly SoCal (no self-respecting fortysomething Brooklyn mom would say Adore this! or Stop it, you are amazing!), but none of them ever showed up at Dogwood Designs West.

  Nor did practically anyone else. For three months, Mel sat in near-solitude at the shop, growing increasingly despondent while bleeding money (earned entirely by Adam) into rent and advertising and social media placement. She’d even gone to such humiliating extremes as creating a few fake Yelp accounts from which she posted glowing reviews of her own store.

  Finally, at the end of ninety days, when the opt-out window Adam had wisely negotiated on the store’s lease was up (Had he somehow foreseen the failure? Mel wondered. Could he simply have wanted her to have something to do in those first months in LA, so that she would have less time to fixate on missing Brooklyn?), he’d convinced Mel to close Dogwood Designs West.

  I forbid you to view this as a failure, he’d coached her, his voice teeming with new LA-positivity. It’s just a different demographic here, babe. It turns out LA just isn’t a letterpress-shop kind of town. Different aesthetic values. Maybe your work is just too subtle and classy. This is an opportunity to do something new, go fully online, talk to Etsy. Or just give yourself a break from work, now that we can afford it. Start getting some exercise . . . Get to know the city . . .

  On Hiatus, Mel knew now, described not only her business but her life in a nutshell since they’d moved to the West Coast. Melissa Goldberg, on hiatus. Melissa Goldberg, her career in limbo but, on the surface, living the perfect life on the dreamy north side of Santa Monica, where the public schools were as good as any of the privates they’d been considering for Sloane in New York. A neighborhood where silent electric cars with six-figure price tags glided through magnolia-lined streets, disappearing behind the heavily secured gates of bloated Spanish revivals, stark modernist monstrosities, Tuscan villas, or faux elegant Tudors like Mel’s. Thanks to Adam, this was her life: ensconced in a massive house, surrounded by all the plants and flowers and trees (Six! She owned six trees!) she could only ever have dreamt about in Brooklyn.

  So why was it all so lonely? Why did she feel she was constantly letting Adam down, falling short, annoying him, even though, by her own assessment, she was the exact same Mel she’d always been? Chubby and neurotic and messy had been just fine by Adam in Brooklyn. Because she was also creative and funny and smart. Which added up to the woman he’d fallen head-over-heels in love with.

  Mel Version One.

  So, it was Adam who’d changed. Wasn’t it?

  Suddenly, she missed him, a wave of guilt welling up in her chest. Perhaps she’d take him up on his offer in the morning, rouse him from sleep with makeup sex, maybe even squeeze into one of the many pieces of lacy lingerie he’d bought her. Show him she was sorry. He was, after all, she thought as the vape pen’s vibration tickled her lips, as good as a man gets.

  She was in the middle of shearing a fully grown virtual sheep when her phone died. Too lazy to find a charger and still too amped to go to bed, she tiptoed into the bedroom and slipped Adam’s fully charged phone from his bedside table.

  She watched him for a moment. He slept like a corpse. When they’d first started dating, there were moments when she had feared him dead. Had failed to stop herself from giving in to her paranoid obsession and shaking him awake. Back then, he hadn’t minded. Found it endearing, even.

  Now, she was quite certain he’d call her crazy.

  Mel tiptoed back downstairs to the den and settled on the cool brown leather of the couch, Adam’s phone in one hand, CALM vape pen in the other. She scrolled through the news—op-ed after op-ed on the Big Cheeto and the inevitable death of democracy.

  Then she saw the texts.

  First the words: UR like

  Followed by: a tongue emoji, then a flame, a vibrating pink heart, and a lipstick kiss.

  Then: I’m thinking about u & how hot ur right now. We’re gonna do it again soon RIGHT!?!?

  Then: If peach is the emoji for ass what do I use 4 cunt?

  And finally: xoxoxox goodnight sexy (if ur still awake). U better delete this before we get in trouble lolz

  Mel released the smoke with a sharp cough that sent her into a spasmed hacking. She coughed until her eyes teared, whispering, “What the fuck?”

  The barely literate series of texts felt like a bastardization of the cute, private exchanges Mel and Adam had in the past. The lipstick kiss was her emoji—the one she often sent Adam mornings after they’d had sex. A cute reminder that she was thinking of him. To which he’d send the tongue emoji. And the other idiotic line, the question about emojis, the c-word—oh God. What was this?

  Reality closed in around Mel like a toxic fog: someone who was not her—not by any stretch of the imagination—was sending Adam the cartoonish kisses and tongues.

  Someone who assumed they’d do it again soon.

  So not only had Adam already cheated at least once, but he was planning to do it again.

  And with someone whose brain actually considered what the emoji for—

  Mel’s throat dropped and her stomach lurched; she was going to throw up.

  She shot up from the couch and rushed to the guest bathroom down the hall, still clutching Adam’s phone. She lifted the toilet seat and knelt on the cold tiles, bile roiling in her gut.

  But she could not vomit.

  She eased into a cross-legged position and looked at the messages again. It was from a 310 number she couldn’t identify. Later, she’d reverse-search it on Google and cross-check it with the contacts in her own phone, and come up with nothing.

  She sat on the bathroom floor, unable to stop reading the messages, over and over.

  Five in a row. Time-stamped 12:42 A.M., as if sent in a drunken, late-night deluge of feeling.

  Mel reached for the towel hanging on a silver bar above her. She pressed her face into the soft white cotton and sobbed into it.

  She tried to banish images of the possible sender from her mind, but they flashed relentlessly behind her eyes: a pigtailed teenager in booty shorts, speed-texting between hits off her Juul, or a twentysomething actress in
a slinky black dress, gyrating against Adam on the dance floor of a club, while Mel and Sloane slept in their oversized bedrooms in Santa Monica, oblivious.

  Finally, she sat up, took a screenshot of the texts and sent it to her own phone, making sure to erase the screenshot from Adam’s. Breath ragged, she stood unsteadily, using the bathroom wall for support. Silently, she made her way down the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom, where Adam was still snoring, and returned his phone to the bedside table and plugged it into the charger, exactly the way she’d found it.

  She climbed into bed, staying on the edge of the mattress, as far from Adam as possible. The combination of the weed and weeping had left her utterly exhausted, but she could not sleep.

  First thing in the morning, Mel resolved to herself, she’d confront Adam about the disgusting texts. As soon as her eyes opened—if they ever closed—she would start talking.

  She hoped she’d have the strength.

  WHEN MEL WOKE in the morning, having finally drifted off around dawn, Adam was in the shower; even on Sundays, he woke early and dressed in perfect weekend jeans and designer T-shirt ensembles just to take Sloane to soccer practice. California had made him a meticulous groomer and he now had more products for his hair and skin than Mel, another bit of suspicious evidence she’d overlooked, apparently.

  She checked his phone, which was still sitting on his bedside table, attached to the charger, just as she’d left it.

  Except the texts had disappeared.

  Nothing but squeaky-clean messages from his coworkers, jiu-jitsu buddies, soccer parents. Kiss emojis from Mel, pictures of Sloane.

  No trace of the filthy messages Mel had read last night.

  Adam had deleted them.

  He was definitely cheating.

  Mel felt ill all over. She curled around a pillow and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Mom?”

  Mel opened her eyes to see Sloane standing in the bedroom doorway, dressed in her favorite pajamas—a large gray tee that reached her knees. BALLER in block letters arched over a giant soccer ball. “Are you ever gonna get up? This is like the third time I’ve come in to see you.”