Significant Others

by Baron, Marilyn

  “Honey, maybe there’s something else we need to talk about. Is there something going on between you and Marc that I don’t know about?”

  “No, there isn’t,” I denied hotly. “Okay, I’ll leave all this stuff here, except the notes on the ad campaign. I think you’ll want to see those. Let’s go.”

  We walked out the door and took the elevator to the pool in front of her building.

  It was unusually warm for December, and we pulled together two matching lounge chairs. It had been too long since I’d really relaxed. I stretched and settled myself in a position to soak up the sun.

  “This is nice, isn’t it, Honey?” Dee Dee smiled. It was worth taking a break from work just to see my mother smile.

  “Yes,” I sighed, surprised to feel the stress and strain slowly drain out of my body. I must have dozed off, and before I did I vaguely noted my mother covering me with her towel and slipping my hat lower down on my face.

  After the sun worked its magic, my inner lounge lizard decided to take a dip in the heated pool and swim a few laps. As I was about to climb up the ladder, I noticed a frog splashing about frantically in the pool. Frogs are quick to jump into a pool, but then they can’t get themselves out, and eventually they succumb to the chlorinated water before they even know they are in trouble. I guess it’s something like a lobster being slowly boiled in water that starts out cool. So I set out to rescue him. I chased him around the pool a few times. Naturally he was scared. I imagined I could hear his little frog heart beating out of cadence. Winded, I finally caught him in my cupped hands and placed him carefully on the decking.

  He wasn’t a cute little green creature at all, but a big bullfrog with a yellowish-green back and brown markings. And he was staring up at me, impudently.

  “Go on, hop away, now,” I urged, motioning him along.

  I tapped him lightly with my forefinger, but he refused to move. Maybe he was waterlogged or stunned. He tilted his head and skewered me with his bulging black frog eyes.

  “Okay, what do you want from me? A kiss? Maybe you’re so grateful I saved your life that you want to grant me three wishes?” If I did get three wishes, I knew what they’d be. That my father would come back to us. That my mother wouldn’t sell the company. That Marc would still love me.

  There was no answer from the frog.

  “What?” I challenged.

  I climbed out of the pool and stood next to him, dripping water on the decking and onto the silent frog. He hopped back a step. I nudged him gently with my toe, and finally he turned and hopped away slowly, like he was out for his morning constitutional, without a care in the world.

  I laughed. When I returned to my lounge chair, I toweled myself off.

  “That was fun,” I admitted. It had been years since I felt so relaxed. I had a lot of work to do, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what it was.

  “Okay, Honey, you wanted to talk about Mr. Reddekker’s offer?”

  “Mom, do you know how lucky you are that Hammond Reddekker, probably one of the richest, most successful men in this country, singled our company out? What a tribute this is to you and Daddy and what you built together.”

  “With a lot of help from you and your brother,” Dee Dee acknowledged.

  “Daddy had such big plans, and I have plans of my own. Imagine what Palladino Properties could become with Mr. Reddekker’s financial backing and connections,” I stated. “It would put us right on the national map.”

  “I’m exactly where I want to be on the national map,” Dee Dee protested.

  “What, here in Millennium Gardens?”

  “What’s wrong with Millennium Gardens?”

  “Well, for one thing, if you stay here, your brain will atrophy.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Dee Dee disagreed. “Do you think all we talk about are bowel movements and early-bird specials? You can’t imagine all the activities they have here for us. I’ve made a lot of friends. My sister is here.”

  “And your children and grandchildren are not,” I argued.

  “That’s the only drawback. Donny visits a lot”—I guess she didn’t have to say, “And you don’t”—“and I’ll be making frequent trips back to Atlanta.”

  “Mom, I told you about the national TV spots I planned for Donny. Here, I have some sketches for you to look at.”

  Dee Dee examined the contents of the folder and handed it back to me.

  “It’s brilliant, really, Honey, but all this is not for me. I’ve had my time. I’m in a different place now. The future is for you and Donny.”

  “But Mom, that’s exactly my point. If you sell, there is no future for Donny and me, or for Hannah. I think she wants to come to work for Palladino Properties after she graduates.”

  “You can still work in the real estate field. Mr. Reddekker is offering me a small fortune. You and Donny will be getting part of that.”

  “Mom, I know you’re not making this decision based on the money. Daddy left you well provided for. But do you think he would have wanted you to give away his company?”

  “I’m not giving it away,” Dee Dee argued. “I think I’m making a smart business decision.”

  My mother looked over at me and sighed. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you. That’s really what this is all about. That’s why you took time out of your busy schedule to come all the way down here.”

  “I’m not mad,” I denied quickly, but the minute the words tumbled out of my mouth I realized they weren’t true. I was furious with my mother.

  “I never thought you would do this to Daddy or to us,” I said, lifting my chin.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Honey,” my mother said. “Don’t you think I know how much that company meant to your father? And I know how much it means to you. But I don’t have the capability to run the business on a national scale. I think the best way is to sell outright. Your husband agrees.”

  I definitely didn’t want to hear about my husband right now, and how he was plotting with my mother behind my back to take away the one thing that meant the most to me.

  Things went from bad to worse after that, when my loofah fell apart in the shower. I mean, what did that say about my ability to hold it all together? I pouted as the sponge unraveled into two long yellow mesh strands and sagged onto the white tile floor.

  After I stepped out and toweled, I dried my hair and decided I was calm enough to call Marc at his office in the middle of the day. I was obviously failing in my mission to change my mother’s mind. Now it was time to enlist my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s help in changing my mother’s mind about the buyout. He owed me that. But time was one thing I did not have enough of.

  Trisha did not answer. The receptionist said Marc was at lunch. I looked at my watch. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon. That was some long lunch. Then I called Marc’s cell phone and got him on the fifth ring. He sounded sleepy and satisfied. I swear I could hear the sound of Trisha’s laughter in the background. I wondered if they were in our bedroom. My first reaction was, God, I hope the sheets are clean and the bed is made and that Trisha doesn’t look in my messy closet or dresser drawers. I didn’t want that home wrecker to find out what a horrible homemaker I was. How pitiful is that?

  Barbara had said I couldn’t act like I knew about their affair, not yet. So I had to pretend everything was okay. But my blood was boiling. And my suspicions were confirmed. I was so mad I couldn’t even remember what I wanted to say, so I hung up the phone.

  About an hour later, my cell phone rang and I answered it. It was Hannah, and she was hysterical.

  “Hold on. Calm down, honey. Where are you calling from? Aruba? What’s wrong? I can’t hear you if you don’t stop crying. Where are the Winslows?”

  “M-Mommy. I c-came home to s-surprise you,” she sobbed.

  “Oh, honey, that’s wonderful. I’m down visiting Grandma for a few days, but I’ll be home soon.”

  “Don’t come home,” she said frantically.

  �
�Hannah, you’re not making any sense. Have you called your father? He’ll come home early from work. As a matter of fact—”

  I could hear Marc’s raised voice in the background. “Hannah, give me the phone. Let me talk to your mother.”

  “Oh, your dad came home to see you. That’s wonderful.” How convenient that Marc was already home.

  “No,” she screamed. “I’m going to tell her.”

  “I said give me the phone,” Marc ordered in a voice I had rarely heard him use in our entire married life.

  “Hannah?” I asked nervously. “Is everything all right?”

  “No,” Hannah sniffled. “I came home to try to find you, and all I found was Dad in his bathrobe. He wasn’t alone.”

  Oh, God in heaven! Marc, you bastard. I’m going to strangle you. How could you?

  “He’s here with this woman, and she’s barely dressed.”

  The images of Trisha in the photographs would never leave my head, and it was a hundred times worse because now my daughter would be seeing them live and in person for the rest of her life, too.

  “Honey,” Marc had the phone now. “I can explain.”

  “Marc,” I said evenly. “I want you to get rid of that trash and put my daughter on the next plane to Ft. Lauderdale. Now.”

  “Honey, baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “I don’t care what you meant to happen. And you should be apologizing to our daughter. I want to see my little girl now, you miserable bastard. What have you done to us?”

  I couldn’t catch my breath. I was hyperventilating.

  “For God’s sake, put some clothes on,” I heard him shout at Trisha. “Get in the bathroom.”

  “I’ll bring her down to Florida,” Marc said to me.

  “I hate you, I hate you,” I could hear Hannah screaming in the background. “I hate both of you.”

  At this point I didn’t know if she meant she hated me or Trisha. This was beyond horrible.

  “Put Hannah back on the phone,” I demanded. He did.

  “I’m not going anywhere with him,” Hannah cried. Him being the interloper, the stranger, the liar, the cheat, not the father who had loved and treasured her all his life.

  “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry you had to see that. I wish I could be there for you right now. I don’t want you to fly alone in your state of mind. So if your father wants to bring you down, it’s okay.”

  “Are you guys going to get a divorce?” She hiccupped.

  “We don’t need to talk about that now. I just want to see you. So hurry down here, okay?”

  “I love you, Mommy,” she whispered, still choking on her tears.

  “I love you too, baby. I’ll see you soon.” At least Marc had the decency not to get back on the phone. Divorce is too good for the cheating scum. I am going to bypass the divorce phase and go straight to the lingering and painful death phase and maim the miserable creep as soon as he steps foot in this condo.

  How could I explain this to Hannah? And would I have enough time before they got here to plan Marc’s demise and give him what he deserved? I needed to call in the reinforcements. I needed my best friend Vicky.

  Chapter Six: The Boss from Hell

  “Vicky? Did I get you at a bad time?” I whispered into the BlackBerry when I was back in the guest room.

  “No, I’m on my way in to work.”

  “It’s almost the end of the afternoon!”

  “Hello. Don’t you listen to the news? We’re in the middle of a major ice storm here, and I should be home snuggling with my honey in my warm bed. But of course Grant went into the office. It’s unnatural for me to get to work before ten anyway. Yesterday I got in at nine and my boss was shocked. I told her not to expect me to sustain that level of punctuality. It’s already turning out to be a really bad day.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, the boss from hell is out of town, and I forgot to call ahead to the hotel and find out the thread count of the sheets. Now she’s on a major rampage. She claims she couldn’t sleep. Like the princess and the pea.”

  “What?”

  “She refuses to stay at a hotel if the bed sheets don’t have a thread count of at least 300. She prefers 100 percent Egyptian cotton or pure silk.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Totally. I think she’s convinced she’s a member of the aristocracy or the royal family.”

  “And she’s the CEO of one of the largest corporations in the country?” Note to self. Now I know what I’m going to buy my best friend for Christmas. A set of Frette deluxe bed sheets.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it? And she makes me buy this special liquid hand wash—Molton Brown—that they use at Buckingham Palace, for her executive washroom. It costs more than $25 a bottle, and she insists I get it at Neiman Marcus. And you know how her Royal Pain in the “HighnAss” expects me to take the seeds out of her grapes? Well, yesterday she caught me with a grape in my mouth, trying to spit out the seed.”

  “What did she say? We are not amused, as in the royal ‘We’?”

  “No. She yelled and screamed and lectured me on the value of being sanitary. I think she was just outraged because our stock is tanking, but I was hoping she’d fire me.”

  “And?”

  “No such luck. She told me I’d better not put that grape in the good crystal bowl.”

  “Can’t you just buy her seedless grapes?”

  “She prefers the taste of the big red seeded ones, so I’m the unfortunate one stuck with pitting them. She can’t fire me because no one else will do what I do. It’s humiliating. I don’t know why I put up with her.”

  “Because she pays really well? And she can’t run the company without you? I thought you said it would be a cold day in Hell before you worked for Annabelle Crawford again.”

  “It’s pretty damn cold out here right now,” Vicky answered. “And working for her is like childbirth. You forget how much it hurts the first time and then you find yourself pregnant again. There’s that—and the ironclad employee agreement I signed.”

  “It’s always something,” I said. “No job is worth that aggravation.”

  “I know. But being assistant to the CEO is my dream job. Other than wanting to be CEO myself someday. And I’m the best Assistant To in this city.”

  “Okay, who am I to stand in the way of Annabelle Crawford’s high thread count? But I know you didn’t get your MBA to spit seeds out of your boss’s grapes.”

  “Actually I’m getting plenty of opportunities to practice the skills I learned in business school—accounting and marketing. Accounting for my whereabouts every single minute of every day and doing Annabelle’s marketing at the grocery store, not to mention picking up and delivering her dry cleaning. Keeping track of that woman is like herding cats.”

  “You know you can always come to work for Palladino Properties,” I offered. “We could really use you right now. If this merger goes through, you’d make a great CEO. Mom, Donny, and I can sell houses, but managing a business, that was Dad’s forte. We don’t have the time or the expertise.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d kill for the opportunity to be CEO of a Hammond Reddekker company.”

  “Let me talk to Mom and Donny. Maybe you coming to work for us would make a difference to my mother. She says she’s made up her mind about selling, but I think there’s still a chance she may agree to a merger. She’s not in a very good place now. But I need your help on a personal level. Can you drive and talk at the same time?”

  “Of course I can. I’m a woman; I can multitask. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, first I want to check on Winnie the Pooh.”

  “You mean Winnie the Poop?” Vicky asked dryly. “When I undertook this assignment of dog sitting, I didn’t realize she would be doing her business all over my house, including on my formerly priceless Oriental rugs.”

  “Sorry. You knew she’s not potty trained.”

  “That�
�s an understatement.”

  “She’s too old to leave in the kennel. She’s losing control of her bladder.”

  “Aren’t we all? Hey, Honey, you know, I don’t mind dog sitting, but why didn’t you leave her with Marc?”

  “Because I don’t trust him,” I answered. “He has loose morals and he’s a bad influence on my dog.”

  “You want to explain that?”

  “Not really,” I said, changing the subject.

  I still hadn’t told Marc about the last time I picked Winnie the Pooh up at the animal hospital where we boarded her and that after I settled my bill the doctor’s daughter, who was the office manager, had motioned me into one of the empty rooms.

  “We’ve noticed that Winnie is deteriorating since the last time he was here,” she began.

  “She. Winnie the Pooh is a she. And that’s because she hates the kennel. And I’ve kept her here too long.”

  “No, we noticed it the first day you brought him in,” the doctor’s daughter explained calmly. “He paces and circles and falls down on his hind legs. He’s blind and he can’t hear, and I just wanted to let you know it might be time to think about—”

  She left the thought out there hanging like somebody’s dirty laundry.

  “No,” I said vehemently, before I broke down in tears and realized, and then voiced, “I’m not ready.”

  She handed me a tissue. Marc should have been there. Why isn’t he here to help me handle this emergency? Oh yes, he’s too busy making it with Trisha.

  “Do you want me to call the doctor in?”

  “No,” I replied. “Is she sick?”

  “No,” she answered.

  “Is she in pain?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, why do you want to kill her? Just because she’s old?”

  She sighed. “That’s not how we refer to it. It’s just that we know it’s best for you to keep Winnie alive but is it best for him?”

  “Winnie is a girl!” I shouted. “How many times do I have to tell you? Winnie the Pooh is a girl!” I’d been boarding her there for seventeen years and they couldn’t even get that right.

  “I need more time,” I said, grabbing Winnie the Pooh and rushing out of there, vowing never to return. Which is why I’d designated Vicky to watch my dog.