“I cannot let my date walk out of here alone. Hold on a sec.” He flagged the waitress, who model-walked over. She dropped the check down on our table as if she had been expecting it. And gave me a wry look that I couldn’t decipher. Oh—I bet he brought all his dates here. Hm.
He pulled out his wallet and dropped a ten and a twenty down on the table. The wallet gaped open, and I could see he had a wad of cash. I stifled the quick flash of envy that almost overtook my lust. Hey, only five more sins and I’d have a complete set!
We walked outside into the brisk February air. He kissed me quickly, then stepped into the street and waved a cab down. As I got in, he took a twenty out of his pants pocket and handed it to me. “I was hoping to send you home in the morning, but since you’re so bloody moral—” he said, grinning a little, as if to take the sting out of his words.
I felt abashed. “Thanks, Simon. I appreciate it.”
“See you Saturday. And work on those scruples, hm?”
That wasn’t all I had to work on, I thought, as the cab sped away.
A Clockwork Orange Chiffon Cake
It’s not a futuristic fantasy, but a deliciously whimsical piece of reality that could shock you into behaving badly. Almost so dense and packed with orange zest as to be allegorical, this dessert seems as if it’s innocent until it hits you with its flavor, wallops you with the overpowering aroma of power. And orange.
14
“AND YOU JUST . . . LEFT? MAN, YOU ARE GIVING THIS MAN the worst case of blue balls.”
“Well, thanks for making me feel bad. And as if I’m back in high school. Do you think he’ll still ask me to the prom?”
I sighed and rolled onto my back on the bed. It was late, way later than I should be up, but Keisha had started the last showing—I think it was Quadrophenia—and she couldn’t talk until now. Not that I could sleep anyway. My mind was roiling with all sorts of things: Simon’s kisses, my hesitancy, my lack of money, self-confidence, health insurance. The minor stuff.
Keisha snorted. “I think he’ll ask you what the fuck is wrong with you. Oh, wait, that’s me. And forgive my memory, but didn’t we have this conversation last time? And you decided to go for it?”
“It just didn’t feel right.”
“Then he must be doing something wrong.”
“Not that. That feels great.”
“Then what’s the problem? You’ve got the urge, he’s got the dick. Insert tab A into slot B. Works like a charm.”
“My friend the pottymouth. Look, Keisha, it’s more than that.”
Her tone got serious. “What is it then, hon?”
“I dunno. It’s just that—well, since Hugh left, I’ve been thinking about what I want from my life. From a relationship. And I don’t think it’s this.”
“A few weeks of incredible passion with a gorgeous British guy who’s only here for a short time? That’s a romance book right there.”
“I know. I think I read it. And it ends well, but it’s not for me. Not for Aidan, not now.”
“You can’t deny yourself because of your son,” she said in a forceful tone.
I felt myself start to get angry. “I’m not, Keisha. Anytime someone says they don’t want something that seems to be good on the surface, someone accuses them of doing it as some sort of self-sacrifice. It’s not. It’s not a good fit, not for either one of us.”
“Okay,” she said, abashed. Then her voice got a bit wheedling. “But wouldn’t it be fun, just for one night?”
My mind drifted back to Simon, his kisses, how his hands felt on my body. Oh, God yes, it would be fun. My body could handle it, but could I?
“He said he wanted to introduce me to his mother.”
“Really?” She sounded almost as amazed as I was. “That sounds so serious. He didn’t strike me as a get-serious-right-away kind of guy.”
“No, I know. I didn’t think so, either. I have no idea what’s up with that at all.”
“Does that mean he’ll buy you dinner and maybe pay the utility bill?”
“If only.” I sighed. “He does flash a lot of cash.” I sighed in my now-familiar fiscal envy and moved on to what I’d been dying to tell her since I saw the brown-haired pinhead. “I saw Hugh again, too,” I admitted. “With her.”
“No way. Did she have a big zit?” Her voice was hopeful.
“Not unless you count Hugh.”
She laughed, that big belly laugh that always cheered me up. “Were you with Simon the Sexpot? Ooh, I bet Hugh felt all kinds of insecure.”
“I think so, actually. It was fun for a minute in a very vengeful way. But then Simon began to crow—”
“Cock of the walk, huh?” Keisha joked.
“And Sylvia was all that and a side of fries, and I just felt—”
“Like your poor pitiful self. Can it, Molly, you deserve better than that.”
I bit my tongue before I said something totally defensive and pitiful. Hey, at least I was learning.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after a moment. “I shouldn’t say shit like that to you. It’s just that I know—”
“You know it’s true,” I said, a little dispiritedly. “It’s so goddamned hard, Keisha, and then even when I get the prime stallion, I need to check his teeth.”
And why, the question lay unanswered, hadn’t I checked Hugh out more thoroughly?
To be fair to the prick, he had been charming at first. And he had cared for me, as much as he could. It was only after we’d been together for a while that his selfish streak started to emerge, overwhelming whatever niceness he’d shown me.
And if I hadn’t been with him, I wouldn’t have Aidan. Okay, point taken.
“It’s okay, hon. If it doesn’t feel right, you shouldn’t do it. Although I wish you’d say that to yourself when it comes to your tired analogies.”
“Screw you.”
“Right back at you. And your mama, too. Speaking of which, how is she?”
“Driving me insane. Those goddamned figurines all over the place, her eyes getting all wide every time I even mention a man, making a face when she sees what I’m reading. Or saying. Or doing.”
“Really? You’d think she’d be over that after forty years.” Both of us knew she didn’t really believe that.
“She’s here. She’s hovering. She practically jumped through the phone when Simon called.”
“Is she going to lose her house? How does that work, anyway? I thought if you lost money on investments, you just . . . lost it.”
I sighed. “I have no clue. I guess she gambled that the stocks she invested in would pay off, so she took out another mortgage. I don’t know who the hell gave her that advice. She’s not sure what’ll happen if she defaults on the loan. And the deadline is at the end of the month, so she’s contacting her lawyer, thankfully an old friend, to see what she can do.”
“That’s rough. I’m sorry. Tell her I said hello, okay?”
“Sure.” I waited a heartbeat, then asked what was uppermost in my mind. “What’s up with you and the Great White Hope?”
I could almost see her squirming at the other end of the phone. “I’m moving in next month.”
“Did you tell him about your . . . ?”
“Issues?”
“I was going to say concerns. But call them issues, if you want.”
“Yeah, he knows. He said he promises to talk about his ashy skin and take up smoking Newports if it’ll make me more comfortable.”
“Well, at least he knows his stereotypes. And what does your dad think?”
“Dad’s over the moon about it. He can’t believe I’m even worried about the whole race thing because Mike is such a great guy. You should’ve seen him last Sunday watching football with my dad, even though I know for a fact Mike’s never watched an entire game in his life.”
“He sounds really great, Keisha. I can’t wait to meet him.”
“Yeah. It’s just that, I’ve always been so aware of my skin. My dad doesn’t talk abou
t it much, but things were hard for them here. People always looked at them like “couldn’t you find someone your own color?” Never mind no one could figure out if me and my brothers were black or white. I’d always vowed I’d choose a black man, like my mom did. I wish Mike weren’t so great, this would be easier.” Her tone sounded mournful.
Not for the first time, and for sure not for the last, I thought about the choices I’d made. Hugh’s background was as similar to mine as possible, but that didn’t seem to matter for the long term. If Keisha loved this guy, and he loved her—and what’s more told her he loved her—she stood a lot better chance of being happy than I had been, matching Caucasian couple or not.
“Honey, did someone accidentally tell you love was easy? Because, you know, it’s not.”
“Isn’t that a bitch?”
“Yeah, but would it be so rewarding if it were easy?”
“They say that about reading Proust, and did you ever finish that thing?”
“No. You?”
“No, me neither.”
“Bye, hon. Gotta read Proust. Or go to sleep. One or the other.”
“Bye. Sleep well.”
The papers came the next day. They were in a long, official-looking envelope. The return address sported a company name about five inches long. I stuck my thumb in the flap and began to rip.
Dear Ms. McLaughlin:
Enclosed please find the details of the final settlement negotiated between you and Mr. McLaughlin. Please sign, date, and return in the enclosed envelope. If the settlement is accepted, you will receive notification of final divorce within eight weeks.
If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Bradford.
Sincerely,
Lawrence K. Bradford, Esq. lkb/dw
Enclosures
My copy editor’s mind immediately noticed they’d used enclosed twice in two sentences. My woman’s mind realized this was it.
Divorce.
Final.
I stood there, clutching the papers to my chest as I thought about how it all came down to a few sheets of fancy vellum and a pen. Me and Hugh, watching Star Trek in the dorm lounge. Hugh sweating over his final exams with me coaching him so he could pass Ethics and Morals in the Twentieth Century. Graduating an hour before Hugh because Hagan came before McLaughlin, and lording it over him that entire night for being done with college first. Our wedding song, Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”; our first apartment together, and its grotesque hallway carpeting; Aidan’s birth.
The night he came home and told me he was leaving.
I looked down at the envelope again, my eyes blinded by tears. I remember watching my mother cry when my father left. Funny how the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Another Hagan woman, another departing man.
And now Hugh wasn’t even going to support us. As I found a pen to sign the documents, I hesitated a moment.
Why should I let him get away with failing us again? Why should I accept the agreement, made when Hugh and I had been working on an amicable—and generous financial—divorce? Back when Hugh had generous finances.
I dropped the pen on the table and shoved the papers away. Standing up, I strode to the window, looking out at the usual assortment of midday Brooklyn life: Caribbean nannies meandering slowly down the sidewalk pushing their charges, a Fresh Direct truck double-parked a few doors down, a young woman walking an enormous black dog. This was life. My life. And I loved it, and deserved not to have to change it because my husband was a cheating asshole. I spun on my heel and headed back to the table.
I stuffed the papers into an envelope and scribbled a quick note to my lawyer. He’d be surprised, but he’d been urging me to be more aggressive with the settlements anyway. I sealed the whole package with a decisive press of my fingers. I wanted them out of the house as soon as possible before I regretted being the strong woman I should have been all along.
Hugh would probably resent me, maybe even grow to hate me, but I couldn’t care about that. I had more important things to worry about. Like Aidan. And now my mother.
I dropped the envelope in the mailbox on the way to pick Aidan up from school. I walked away quickly, knowing that was the last time I’d be crying over Hugh.
Aidan was already looking for me when I arrived, and my stomach tensed at what I saw in his face: hope, anxiety, toy lust.
“Mommy, can we go to the toy store before we go home? Jason told me about a new Power Rangers toy he got yesterday.”
I had a mental image of Aidan holding my wallet upside down and shaking it. “We can look, honey, but we can’t buy anything. Maybe we can put it on the list for your birthday.”
His lower lip stuck out almost immediately. How come I can say “get dressed” about a thousand times in the morning and he doesn’t hear me, but when I say no he understands right away?
“But, Mommy, my birthday is so far away from now.” He drew out the last part of the sentence in a long screechy wail. I saw a couple nearby mothers give me understanding looks.
“Not that far away, honey. Only two months.” I thought about the joys of eating, and paying rent, and watching cable. I didn’t think Aidan would like being homeless, hungry, and relying on network TV. I hardened my heart a little. “And besides, you’ve got loads of toys at home you probably don’t even remember.”
“But Jason said his birthday party was a Power Rangers party, and he said I’d need to bring one to come.”
“You’ve got plenty of Power Rangers, honey.”
He glared at me in disbelief. “Not Power Rangers Alien Planet,” he said, as if I should know the difference.
“I’m sorry, honey, but Mommy just can’t afford it right now. You’ll just have to go to the party with one of your other Power Rangers.”
“Then I won’t go,” he said with all the certainty of a piqued six-year-old.
“We’ll talk about it later. Look, let’s go home, Grandma is out”—evading the creditors—“on an errand, you and I can watch Scooby-Doo or something. Lissa’s coming over tomorrow night, too.”
“You’re going out again?” he asked hopefully.
“No. We’re just going to hang out at home, all together tonight.”
“You’ll let Lissa play with me, though, right?”
“Sure I will. After she plays with me for a little.”
Once we were home, cookies and juice in stomach and Shaggy doing his beatnik thing on the television, I made myself a cup of coffee and sorted through the papers I’d jammed in Aidan’s backpack. Sure enough, there was an invite to Jason’s birthday party among the notices for bake sales, special art projects, and infectious disease notices.
Please bring an agile grown-up it read at the bottom. Whatever happened to drop-off parties? Not touchy-feely enough for Park Slope, I guessed. “Agile grown-up” was definitely not me, not with the way the muscle spasms were tap-dancing on my lumbar. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit to Hugh I couldn’t handle something. I tapped the invite against my teeth. I had time to think of something.
Saturday was a nasty, rainy day, the kind of day that made me just want to sit inside, drink tea, and read lurid romance novels. Which, if pressed, I’d have to admit was just about every day.
Simon called at nine in the morning, his voice lowered a few octaves, still groggy from sleep. “Be there in an hour and a half,” he mumbled. I, of course, had been up since seven, but I still wasn’t very functional. Some days there was just not enough coffee in the world.
“Who was that, Molly?” my mother asked, trying to appear nonchalant. I could tell she was jumping out of her skin to get a glimpse of my new boyfriend, as she called him.
“The Library of Congress, Mom. It seems they’ve just discovered those books I read are actually well written, and they wanted to invite me to do a seminar on Romance Novels and the Women Who Love Them.”
She scowled. Apparently she didn’t think I was as funny as I did. “Molly. It’s bad enough you read
that trash, do you have to make jokes about it, too?”
“I’d rather read that trash, as you call it, than plod through another hundred pages of Hardy’s morose prose. Hey, can we call it morprose? Think of all the authors who’d qualify . . . James, Trollope, Richardson . . .”
She held her hand up, steam almost coming out of her ears. “Enough, Molly.”
I knew when to stop teasing her. “Sorry, Mom. Yes, that was Simon on the phone. He’s still coming out here, and I’ll drop Aidan off at his party and then we’ll be going out to brunch.” At least, I thought, with Simon I got fed well. Given my economic status, I’d take whatever I could get. Unless it meant I had to put out. I wasn’t that hard up. I hoped.
The phone rang again, and Mom’s face fell. I could tell she assumed it was Simon calling to cancel.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Molly, this is Stephanie, Nicky’s mother?”
“Hi, Stephanie. What’s up?”
“Well, it seems Nicky’s got himself a bad cold, so we have to cancel the party today. We’re rescheduling for next week. Can Aidan make it?”
I thought. “Um, no, actually, he’s at his dad’s that weekend. But I’ll drop Nicky’s gift into school this week. I hope he feels better.”
“Thanks, sorry about that.”
“No problem, thanks for calling.”
You’re sorry. I’m the one who has to figure out what to do with my date and my son. Together.
I hung up the phone. Mom had a midday meeting with a credit counselor, and she was already dying to cancel. I knew she’d volunteer to sit with Aidan while I went out on my big brunch date, but I really wanted her to see the counselor. Maybe he’d be able to figure out a way for her to keep her house and move back into it. Which, in addition to saving her house, would save my sanity.
“That was Stephanie, Nicky’s mom,” I said before she could ask. “Aidan, can you come in here?” I yelled.
Aidan trotted in, a big smear of chocolate Pop-Tart on his face. Thank goodness the Maternal Nutrition Police weren’t anywhere around. “What?”
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