“Concerned? I see,” I answered, having regained composure and possession of my wits. I didn’t care if this gorgeous guy was Mr. Universe himself, he had no right to—to pry into my soul and bring out all the things I was doing wrong.
“I’m not trying to pry into your soul, Erica. I’m just worried.”
I looked up at him in horror as I realized I had spoken my thoughts. Did I also say the Mr. Universe part? Aw, to hell with it all. I didn’t give a damn anymore about anything. I was just tired and wanted to go home to Madeleine and Warren. And a cartload of aspirin.
Mr. Foxham—Julian—had not returned behind his desk, but lingered with his butt on the armrest of a nearby chair, facing me.
I sighed. This guy was like a hound with a carcass. And he wasn’t letting go of it. Better get it out, if it helped the kids. “I’m not—exactly in the best place at the moment,” I managed.
He nodded sympathetically. “Problems?”
“Just stressed and overworked. I’ve got so many responsibilities I’d have to be a schizophrenic to handle every role in my life and not go crazy. Does it show that much?”
He chuckled and bent to look into my face, but really looking inside my head as if to see how many personalities lurked inside me. “No. It’s just the way the kids talk about you. You are their heroine.”
I grinned back, sitting up a bit higher. “Hmm,” I said, trying not to sound too impressed, although my whole life had just been made in this one sad, but unexpectedly glorious, moment.
“If they had to choose between their dad and their numerous moms, it would be you any day—every single one of you in there.”
So not only was the hunk sympathetic, he also had a sense of humor. Big deal. “Ah, I’m not sure I would try to encourage this kind of confession from a pair of kids, Mr. Foxham,” I drawled softly, back in the saddle.
He looked at me squarely with those light-green-blue eyes, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. Jesus, imagine if he reached out and touched me.
“It was something they revealed spontaneously. I didn’t elicit it. No one did. Here, have a look.”
I glanced at the sheets of paper put in front of me, recognizing Madeleine and Warren’s writing. I read Madeleine’s first. Her literacy levels were superior to her age, I’d been told time and time again. But still she was a child with a child’s thoughts. I smiled at the colored sparkles all over the page.
My mom she works for a hotel for lots of nasty people but picks us up from school on time and bakes us a cake and make us supper never in a hurry to finish our evening bath when we talk and laugh then she tucks us into bed she doesn’t read us bedtime stories from a book no sir, she tells us about the weird people she meets every day and she even makes their voices and makes us laugh. (There was a smiley face instead of a period) My friends say she’s big, but to me she is a star. I love her better than my dad who yells at her you’re too fat and ruins his life. I hate my dad. Maddy Cantelli.
Whoa. The story of my life spread out for the world on one scribbly page. I let out a storm of air, trying to catch my breath at the same time. The result was that I was choking on my own saliva, and Mr. Foxham—Julian—had to give me a smart smack on the back. First, he rips my clothes off, now this. Our encounters were destined to be physical. Which, on any other day, would’ve sounded very promising, at least in theory.
“Better?” he asked, offering me a glass of water, which I took gratefully, downing it in one swig. Maddy Cantelli. She had used my maiden name, forsaking her own last name. Jesus.
“She gets the punctuation from me—or lack of it,” I tittered, clearing my throat, my eyes still watery from my close encounter with asphyxiation. “You see, I go on and on, even when I speak, just like I’m doing now, you see. And the surname? That’s my maiden name, and this is just one of her many Italian moments,” I continued, flashing him one of my brilliant pseudo-smiles. “I’m Italian, you see, and she always wants to hear about Italy. She hates the name Lowenstein. So do I really, but that’s the way it is,” I finally sighed, stealing him a hopeful glance. He wasn’t buying it, of course.
“So you’re Italian? So am I. I mean, my mother was.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Not that she’s Italian—that she’s no longer—”
Julian waved it away. “My adoptive parents are English. My real mother was Italian.”
So that was where his Mediterranean looks came from. I was fascinated. Somewhere there was a woman who had abandoned her baby. Oh, if only she could see the man he’d become. I shuddered at the thought of abandoning either of my kids.
“Oh. Well, we Italians are a bit—well, you know. Original, to quote you. But we’re good, solid people.”
He smiled. “I would like to retrieve my roots, learn to speak Italian, drink in the culture, cook.”
All things I could do with my eyes closed, but there was no way I was offering to spend time with him. I had enough problems of my own.
He cleared his throat. “So, Erica—the contents of the letter—are they true? Is there a problem at home? Please forgive me, but you know, we are—”
Worried, yeah. No shit. Here I was, sitting like a little schoolgirl on detention as this guy tried to stick his nose in my family business. And he actually expected me to pour out my soul to him in one go—all the pain and hurt and humiliation I’d been through because my husband saw me as a walrus and I always imagined killing him. Consequently, to keep my family together, I had to jump through hoops day in, day out. How dare he question my love for my children—the reason I lived.
He sat there, his long fingers resting on the edge of the armchair, just waiting, like one would wait for a cappuccino. Easy for him to be so calm and collected, while inside I was screaming.
I jumped to my feet. “I’m sorry; I can’t do this right now. Thank you for your concern,” I managed as I brushed past him and out of his office, tears in my eyes, and clutching Warren’s unread confession in my fist.
I wandered aimlessly through the school grounds, watching a game of baseball and then finally plopped myself down onto a bench, smoothing the wrinkled sheets of paper over my thigh. Not that I was dying to hear more about my withering marriage or my fat ass, but it was a Now or Never epiphany moment.
My Dad is a prick, I read, and then moaned. I agreed with him fully, of course, but never, ever had I wanted my children to wake up from their innocent childhood and see the truth.
He never plays baseball with me, goes to the games on his own and always sits in front of the TV watching the pros play. He never smiles, and says what do we know about his life and dreams. I have a dream, too. That one day I hit him over the head with a baseball bat. And it feels good, like I hit a home run. And then we’re all free.
Oh, my God—my poor kid had inherited my killer thoughts after all.
He keeps it behind his bed and at night hits my mother with it. (What?) I know because I can hear her crying sometimes. Even if I give her a hard time, I love my mother. She’s cool, even when she tries to play baseball with me. Last week she swung so hard she fell on the grass and saw stars, but she laughed and asked me to teach her.
I sat there and, as quietly as I could, bawled my eyes out into my scarf. Our deepest, most intimate secrets were now disclosed, splayed wide open for a stranger to see. Worse than that, a stranger whose job was to judge us. But the baseball bat part was all wrong. Ira had never ever touched any of us. Images of social services carting my kids away shot through my mind, brandishing my brain cells with words like incompetent and inept mother and I was so ashamed. Was I that much of a loser?
“Erica,” came the deep voice of scholarly authority.
I stiffened and swiped at my eyes. How long had he been standing there?
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
“No, not really,” I answered stonily, refus
ing to look at him.
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
I shrugged. “It’s your school.”
He sat down next to me, looking ahead of him, but funnily I felt he was very tuned into my situation. All this time I’d been wondering about him as my dream man, a fresh start, or maybe just a quick scene, and here he was, with a front-seat, humongous panoramic view of me, my life and my exterior vastness and interior littleness. There was no way I could ever hide from him and pretend I was someone else now.
At least he had the decency to be quiet. I had to hand him that. I enjoyed the silence for a while. He seemed okay with it, too.
“The baseball bat part—it isn’t true,” I finally whispered.
He turned to me. I knew he didn’t believe me.
“Really, it isn’t.”
Stormy aquamarine eyes bored into mine. “The last bell’s about to ring, Erica. Why don’t you come into my office and freshen yourself up,” he suggested gently and then grinned. “I have this amazing bathroom with really expensive tiles. The previous principal must have splurged the school’s yearly budget on it.”
“No, that’s okay, thanks. I think I’ll go use the little girls’ room.” The last thing I needed was to be seen exiting the principal’s toilet. Then my reputation of lousy mother would be complete. Didn’t he know any better?
“Yes, on second thoughts, that’s a better idea,” he said, as if reading my mind and offering me his hand to lift me to my feet. I pretended I didn’t see it and brushed past him.
The little girls’ room was not such a good idea after all. The mirror was too low and I had to squat to see myself. And I almost fell over again at the sight of me. Yesterday’s mascara (now how the hell had I missed that?) streamed in black lines down my cheeks. Dried whatever-it-was—hopefully not snot—caked my nostrils, and my hair, once in a tight, professional bun, was now a mess. Plus I stank too much to be true. I removed my coat and air-dried my armpits. Then I slicked my hair back behind my ears into a semblance of a ponytail and rubbed the various kinds of guck off my face. There. Not pristine, but much better. I left the building without saying goodbye and waited in the car to gather my wits.
“Hi,” I chirped as the kids tumbled in, schoolbags landing on the back seat.
“What happened to you?” Warren asked as Madeleine started pulling her drawings out of her satchel to show me. There were rainbows and colorful flowers everywhere. The drawings of a happy, serene little girl.
How long would this childhood happiness last if I didn’t get my ass into gear pronto? As I turned on the ignition, I realized I need a year-long plan with all the things that needed changing.
Late that night, I went through my precious stack of Ville e Casali, a glossy Italian home magazine that had an enormous real estate listing of luxury homes and farmhouses throughout Italy. I flipped to the Tuscany section and feasted my eyes on all the possibilities, my mouth watering every single time despite the fact that I knew each listing verbatim.
Beautiful, two-story stone buildings, solid like a fortress, surrounded by vineyards and green fields and patios and pools where I could see the kids frolicking and being happy. Inside, magnificent terracotta tiles and chestnut wood beams on the ceilings supporting terracotta vaults. Large spaces, big, sunny rooms and the cicadas singing outside in the sun. Lazy lunches under the wisteria-laden pergola, sipping a glass of my own wine with Paul (in absence of a proper male lead) as my gaze spread over the land I owned. Day in, day out, just my loved ones and me.
I sighed, flipped the magazine shut, hauled the stack back onto the nightstand and pulled out my notepad to stare at the year-long plan I’d written only a few months ago. It was like someone else had scrawled those hopeful words. How things had changed in such a short space of time:
HOME, I’d written. Okay with grocery shopping and meals. Plan B—Zia Maria’s food. Need to hire a sitter. And a cleaner. I can’t do it all by myself.
JOB. Fulfilling. Well-paid. But need to cut back on the hours.
KIDS. Warren needs extra attention. Maddy’s a dream.
Now I added, Problem—how to be there for them all the time?
And then I smiled and wrote: Solution: Move to Tuscany and start your own business once and for all.
And then my eyes darted to the box at the bottom titled Love Life with Ira’s name in it. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I crossed his name out, back and forth, until I couldn’t see it anymore. And then I wrote Julian: in a parallel world.
Chapter 11:
Turbo Mama
If it weren’t for my job, I’d never see any other place outside Boston City Center. It had widened my horizons, but slimmed (I do hate that word) my chances of being a good mother and wife —according to Ira.
“Erica, you just can’t keep going off on business all the time,” Ira had said to me during one of my calls home in-between meetings.
“And you,” I snapped back, “can’t keep talking to me like I’m your dumb wife. You lost that right when I opened my eyes and saw you for what you really are.”
He groaned. “You have to be here every day. Your mother is driving me crazy again!”
I huffed. God, I hated him. But he was right. Marcy was not by any stretch of the imagination anyone’s ideal babysitter. “There’s no one that can do this job here but me.”
I heard him snort. What Ira refused to understand was that fieldwork had given me the bonuses that we needed in order to stay afloat. We were living way beyond our means, and at the end of every month I calculated we’d just made it, and breathed a sigh of relief. Until the next month. But next month I’d be free of his car payments and, yes, even the rental of his office space. He was on his own from now on, and my purse strings breathed a sigh of relief.
For being an economics expert, Ira had no idea of our financial situation. I was sure he’d screwed up his company because of his lack of organizational skills. He concentrated too much energy on maintaining his IT equipment rather than his clients and services. What Ira needed was to accept advice. If not from me then at least from someone else, who would make him wake up and smell the coffee.
“I’ve got someone else on the line; I have to go,” he said hastily, and hung up, but I knew it wasn’t true. I shut my cell phone, feeling like shit. There was no better word for it. A few more weeks and I’d be free of him.
I looked in the mirror and saw a young old girl, with bags under her once pretty eyes, a messy head of hair and a face bathed in anxiety and exhaustion.
I was going away on business already twice a month, and had greatly improved the quality of our hotels, much to my boss’s joy, so even more trips would have to be made. But I was missing out on the most important hours of my children’s lives. They were growing up—and I was growing old—away from them.
That night, like every other night I was away on business, I lay in a luxurious hotel room, this time in Seattle, hours before my real bedtime. Sleep eluding me as usual, I stared at the ceiling and listened to the typical hotel sounds—the heating system quietly humming recycled air though the vents, the wheels of the suitcase cart softly squeaking through the plush, thick carpeting of the corridors, toilets flushing (no amount of luxury can eliminate that) and the occasional grinding of keys in bathroom-door locks. I missed my children terribly.
As I lay there, waiting to fall asleep, Julian, or my projection of him, quietly stepped into the room.
What are you doing here? I asked, sitting up suddenly, but he puts his finger against my lips and shushes me gently. I’m your erotic dream, he whispers.
Oh, I answer. That made so much more sense.
He sits on the edge of my bed and as I open my mouth to speak, he catches my lips in a toe-curling kiss, his mouth hot, soft but firm on mine, coaxing (as if he’d need to) a response from me. Now, I hadn’t kissed him a
nd never would unless I could get him drunk and abduct him, but if I ever did manage to, that is the kind of kiss that would shake me from my foundations to my roof beams.
You’re so beautiful, Erica, he whispers, sliding under the covers, which at that point become redundant seeing how hot it is in there all of a sudden. Can I make love to you?
You need to ask, foxy headmaster?
Then I’m going to have to keep you here all night on detention.
Fine by me. Kiss me again, Headmaster Foxham, and keep doing what you’re doing down there...
And then a loud screech brought me to my senses, pushing him right off me. What? Where had he gone? I slapped at the alarm clock uselessly and moaned in grievance, leaning over the side of the bed, scanning the carpeting, wishing he’d been real, willing him back to me, and willing myself to continue with the dream. But, as a dearly departed one, he was lost to me forever. Or at least until my next erotic dream.
* * *
The next day when I got back home, I decided on a multi-point plan towards my own well-being. I wanted to work less and enjoy my children more.
“Can’t Jackie go to Denver?” I asked my boss. “She’s willing to go and I really need to stay home a bit more, Mr. Farthington. Like we’d agreed.”
He seemed to consider it. “Jackie’s great, but she lacks your flair. I need you out in the field, Erica.”
“You promised it would only be a couple of times per semester. I practically live in my Samsonite.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. No.”
And that was his final word. But not mine.
* * *
Maddy was a jubilant little girl. Perhaps a little too jubilant. And she loved the hotel elevators. Just what I had counted on. Our guests were amused by this charming little thing that hopped on and off for hours on end, striking ballet poses when the doors opened on her. She was a bit too vain for my taste, just like my mother. I hoped it would wear off soon. But today it served my purpose.
The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) Page 10