by Молли Харпер
“I thought you knew!” Mama exclaimed.
“But I told you about the lake thing; I even asked which weekend would work for you.”
“I thought you were trying to get information out of me,” Mama said, tutting sympathetically as she dabbed my lips with one of the dozens of lipsticks she kept in her handbag, organized by time of day and occasion. My brother and I were younger reflections of our mother. Age hadn’t dulled the china doll blue eyes, but careful maintenance had kept the thunder out of her thighs and the gray out of her wavy blond bob. She said she’d give up and go “scary and natural” after her sixtieth birthday. Until then, she was coiffed, calorie-conscious, and carried an emergency makeup kit in her purse. “I thought you were playing dumb.”
“Obviously it wasn’t an act!” I hissed, blotting dutifully when she held a tissue to my mouth.
“Well, it explains your outfit,” she said, peering down her nose at my peridot-colored cotton sundress and high-heeled sandals. While bright and breezy, the ensemble was not exactly country-club caliber. My hair was in a ponytail, for God’s sake.
“He said a ‘nice dinner.’ For Mike, that means D’Angelo’s, for which this outfit is perfectly appropriate. And of course he didn’t think to warn me that I might want to dress up a little.”
“Still,” she said, tsking gently. “This green is not your color -”
“Mama! Focus!”
“Right, I’m sorry, baby. I thought you would like a surprise party,” Mama said, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing me tight, but somehow managing not to wrinkle her beaded peach suit. “A little bit of fuss over a girl’s birthday never hurts.”
“It’s not what I asked for,” I said, grinding my teeth as I leaned against the wall. “As usual, Mike didn’t listen to me. He didn’t really care about what I wanted. He’s using my birthday as an excuse to schmooze clients. He’s going to write my birthday party off as a business expense.”
Mama gasped. “Is that who all those people are?”
“And why isn’t Emmett here?”
“I don’t know,” Mama said, her own coral-coated lips thinning. “I thought it was strange that he didn’t mention anything about it, but I thought that was because Mike was throwing the party and he couldn’t find anything nice to say about it.”
My parents were as politically conservative as the next Southern Baptists, but woe to the person who teased the gay cub in front of my Mama Bear. Carla Gibson still avoids Mama at the Piggly Wiggly after trying to ban Emmett’s “Salute to Cher” from the senior talent show when we were in high school. Mama never complained about Mike or his family or how they treated Emmett. Well, she never complained directly… she did, however, wonder aloud why Mike couldn’t try a little harder with Emmett, why his parents always clammed up whenever Emmett was around. This was, of course, a hint for me to do something about their behavior. But I’d never figured out what that was supposed to be.
“He’ll be sorry to have missed the chance to make fun of the outfits in there.” Mama smirked, dusting powder across her nose. “Did you see that blue thing Penny Frensley is wearing? What was she thinking?”
“This is just so typical of Mike,” I groused. “And he didn’t even plan the damn thing. He let his secretary do it.”
“Well, she did a good job; it’s a perfectly nice party,” Mama conceded. When she saw the glare I was giving her, she added, “Which is entirely beside the point. You’re absolutely right. Mike was wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“Thank you.”
Mama gently brushed powder across the bridge of my nose. “You might want to do something about your jaw, honey. It’s clenched awfully tight.”
“Because I’m planning on chewing on Mike’s ass when I go back out there.”
“Lacey, I know that I taught you better than to have a tantrum in public,” she said, patting her hair purely for dramatic affect. “It reflects badly on me as a mama. Of course, I also taught you when somebody screws you over, even when that someone is your husband, you don’t just lie back and think of England.”
“I haven’t done anything irrevocable yet, have I?” I asked.
“No,” she assured me. “It was a very quiet hissy fit, barely noticeable. I only swooped in because you were doing that frozen beauty queen smile and that means you’re about five seconds from Chernobyl territory.” I laughed. She squeezed my shoulders. “I know my baby.”
She turned me toward the mirror to show me she’d painted my mouth a bloody-murder red. “The question is, what do you do from here?”
With what Mama called my “scary-pleasant hostess face” on, I floated across the room and very loudly, very sweetly thanked Beebee for putting together such a wonderful party for Mike.
“Oh, don’t think anything of it,” Beebee said, blushing to the roots of her hair. She kept looking over my shoulder for some sort of escape route. At the time I thought she was just uncomfortable being caught between her boss and his pissed-off wife. Now I think she was nervous that I’d figured them out and was about to smack her. “Mike - Mr. Terwilliger - just wanted to make sure you had a nice birthday.”
“Well, aren’t I the lucky girl?” I asked, my smile stretched tightly across my face.
Beebee didn’t answer, instead waving at the caterer to begin the circulation of canapes.
After Mike spent most of my birthday toast talking about the new online debt-tracking packages available through Terwilliger and Associates, I went around and introduced myself to nearly everyone in the room and asked them how they knew Mike. Including Mike’s parents.
My mother-in-law was not impressed with my display.
The problem was that, once again, my performance was so convincing that by the end of the night, Mike thought I’d really enjoyed myself. He really had no idea that he’d screwed up. He seemed so pleased with himself for weeks afterward, talking about how he knew it was right to trust the whole thing to Beebee. That she’d known to pick the best caterers and the best florists (Cherry Click, ironically enough) and then trusted their good taste. The implication was that I was a control freak who would have wanted to see to every detail myself, and look how much easier it was when you trusted the “experts.”
Sadly, even then, it didn’t occur to me that Mike would sleep with someone else, much less his secretary. I could believe him to be clueless, obtuse, even shamefully oblivious to the feelings of others, but never a cheater. I wanted to believe he was better than that. Or that he was too lazy to pull off an affair.
Looking back, the party probably served as an opportunity for Mike to introduce Beebee to his client list. To show them what a find she was, how beautiful and “well put together.” And by contrast, what an ungrateful social misfit I was. Really, who could blame him for replacing me with a more gracious model?
“I’m sorry,” Beebee said, smiling up at me and snapping me back into reality. “The phone just rings off the hook this time of year.”
As I stared into the dark depths of her eyes, I saw the smallest flicker of fear. Shame or embarrassment would have disappointed me. But fear I could work with.
A clarifying sense of purpose seemed to still everything in my head. I focused my gaze on Beebee’s face, her beautiful, troubled, guilt-clenched face. A sharp, sweet smile curved my lips. “So Beebee, tell me every little thing about yourself.”
4
Hell Hath No Fury … Like a Woman with a Mailing List
It’s that time of the month again…
As we head into those dog days of July, Mike would like to thank those who helped him get the toys he needs to enjoy his summer.
Thanks to you, he bought a new bass boat, which we don’t need; a condo in Florida, where we don’t spend any time, and a $2,000 set of golf clubs … which he has been using as an alibi to cover the fact that he has been remorselessly banging his secretary, Beebee, for the last six months.
Tragically, I didn’t suspect a thing. Right up until the moment Cherry Glick inadvertently
delivered a lovely floral arrangement to our house, apparently intended to celebrate the anniversary of the first time Beebee provided Mike with her special brand of administrative support. Sadly, even after this damning evidence and seeing Mike ram his tongue down Beebee’s throat - I didn’t quite grasp the depth of his deception. It took reading the contents of his secret e-mail account before I was convinced. I learned that cheap motel rooms have been christened. Office equipment has been sullied. And you should think twice before calling Mike’s work number during his lunch hour, because there’s a good chance that Beebee will be under his desk “assisting” him.
I must confess that I was disappointed by Mike’s overwrought prose, but I now understand why he insisted that I write this newsletter every month. I would say this is a case of those who can write, do; and those who can’t, do taxes.
And since seeing is believing, I could have included a Hustler-ready pictorial layout of photos of Mike’s work wife. However, I believe distributing these photos would be a felony. The camera work isn’t half-bad, though. It’s good to see that Mike has some skill in the bedroom, even if it’s just photography.
And what does Beebee have to say for herself? Not much. In fact, attempts to interview her for this issue were met with spaced-out indifference. I’ve had a hard time not blaming the conniving, store-bought-cleavage-baring-Oompa-Loompa-skinned adulteress for her part in the destruction of my marriage. But considering what she’s getting, Beebee has my sympathies.
I blame Mike. I blame Mike for not honoring the vows he made to me. I blame Mike for not being strong enough to pass up the temptation of readily available extramarital sex. And I blame Mike for not being enough of a man to tell me he was having an affair, instead letting me find out via a misdirected floral delivery.
I hope you enjoyed this new digital version of the Terwilliger and Associates Newsletter. Next month’s newsletter will not be written by me as I will be divorcing Mike’s cheating ass. As soon as I press send on this e-mail, I’m hiring Sammy “the Shark” Shackleton. I don’t know why they call him “the Shark,” but I did hear about a case where Sammy got a woman her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, his car, his boat and his manhood in a mayonnaise jar.
And one last thing, believe me when I say I will not be letting
Mike get off with “irreconcilable differences” in divorce court.
Mike Terwilliger will own up to being the faithless, loveless, spineless, shiftless, useless, dickless wonder he is.
I still couldn’t believe I’d written it. I’d opened a new document in E-mail Expo, selected the pathologically patriotic Independence Day template and written the first thing that popped into my head: “Mike Terwilliger is a lying, whoring degenerate who would have married his mother if it were legal.”
Everything was a little hazy after that.
Needless to say, talking to Beebee hadn’t improved my frame of mind. Staring at her was like looking into a particularly warped fun-house mirror. Mike was ruining our marriage for her? Sex with her, spending his nights with her, was worth hurting me? It was worth wrecking the life we’d built together?
I’d never be able to trust anything about my life again. I would question everything Mike said, from his after-work plans to telling me he loved me. For the rest of my life, I would look back on the little moments in my marriage, the parts of my life that I thought meant something, and know that they’d been tainted.
If I was going down, I was taking Mike with me.
My hand shaking, I moved the cursor and clicked on send.
And much faster than I would have imagined, a screen popped up, cheerfully announcing, “E-mail Expo has distributed your message!”
Distributed my message. To three hundred and two of our friends, family, and clients. Complete with dancing firecracker graphics.
There was no cancel button, no retrieve function. The genie was out of the bottle. The shit had hit the fan.
“Ohgodohgodohgod, what have I done? What have I done?!” I shrieked. I made a grab for the plug on the safety strip and yanked it out of the wall because, in my panicked brain, I thought somehow that might keep the message from spreading from my computer. But it was out - now there was no taking it back.
My eyes stinging, hot tears threatening to spill down my cheeks, I sagged back against the desk chair. It was all so useless. I couldn’t go back to living with Mike in that perfect, empty house, to those pictures of him pretending to be happy with me.
I glanced at the clock. It was a little after 1:00 a.m. I had a few more hours before my friends and neighbors woke up and checked their e-mail. My stomach churning, I bounced between dreading their discovering what a blind idiot I’d been and being happy that the final layer of bullshit would drop away. All of my cards were on the table. I felt … free. I didn’t have to smile while I lapped up Mike’s stupid lies. I didn’t have to pretend. I didn’t have to care anymore. What was done was done.
The slow-burning fuse for this particular act of self-destruction had been lit sometime in the afternoon. After my disastrous meeting with Beebee, I’d driven straight to Goote’s Jewelry Shop on Main Street and placed my wedding ring set on the counter. “How much can you give me for this, Mr. Leo?” I asked.
Leo Goote, who probably wore his jeweler’s loupe into the shower, had gone to church with my parents for forty years. “Lacey, honey, you don’t want to sell your wedding rings,” he said, the papery skin of his hands buckling as he wrapped them around mine. I stared into his kind, clear brown eyes and something told me that he knew. “You don’t want to do something you’ll regret.”
Gritting my teeth together and willing myself not to cry again, I gave Mr. Leo a tight-lipped smile. “No, Mr. Leo, I do. I’m going to be doing some traveling. And I need some cash.”
Leo spent another forty-five minutes trying to talk me out of selling the platinum-set 1.5 carat brilliant cut that Mike’s father had called a wise investment when he helped Mike select it from Leo’s stock. He gave me ten thousand dollars for the set, a practically unheard of price for Leo, who prided himself on resale value.
I, did, however, use Mike’s Visa to charge an obscenely large cushion-cut sapphire to replace my engagement ring. The ring itself didn’t really make me feel any better, other than covering a rather disturbing groove worn into my ring finger. But imagining Mike’s face when he opened the Visa bill did improve my mood.
As I left, Leo offered me a butterscotch candy, patted me on the head, and told me he would hold on to the rings for me for a while in case I changed my mind. I drove home, printed out the necessary documents from DoltYourselfDivorce.com and filed them at the county courthouse. When I returned, I found a technician from the Peace of Mind Locksmith Company waiting for me in the driveway. I’d called a service from two towns over to keep Mike from being tipped off about my plans to re-key every door in the house. The technician, a stocky guy in his forties whose shirt dubbed him “Roy,” assured me this would only take an hour.
I wandered into my suddenly silly bistro-themed kitchen with the ridiculously expensive appliances. And I felt a little lost. I was so alone. I wanted my mama. It seemed wrong to go through something like this without her. When the chips were down, my mother could be counted on to tell you you’d done something irretrievably stupid, but she loved you anyway. She was well aware of our faults, but God help the person who pointed them out to her.
My parents were out of town at Daddy’s annual Phi Rho Chi reunion in Hilton Head, a bunch of old businessmen remembering what life was like when they still had hair. It was the highlight of Daddy’s year. Right up there with the week he spent hunting with the Phi Ro’s at a stocked lodge in Missouri… and the week he spent deep-sea fishing with them in the Florida Keys. Mama was a very patient woman.
I’d dialed her number on my cell a dozen times, but always hit end before it rang. As much as Daddy loved his children, he would not come home early from the reunion unless it was to bury one of us. And even then, he
’d probably fly back to try to finish out the weekend. Mama had enough to deal with, pouring my dad into bed each night as the Phi Rho boys participated in the annual beer-related relay challenges. I didn’t want to put her in the position of choosing between the two of us. Besides, she’d probably need to conserve her strength for the aftermath of my little publication when she came home.
I can usually count on Emmett’s indignant wrath in situations like this. But Emmett was on a two-week trip to the Bahamas with his current boyfriend, a “freelance food service contractor” named James.
If this were a Renée Zellweger movie, my girlfriends would rush over here, alcohol and chocolate in hand, to assure me that everything was Mike’s fault, that I was perfect and I would find a better-looking, richer, more sexually expressive man in no time. The problem was that I didn’t have a lot of friends. Well, not any real friends. I knew some ladies from our Sunday school class. And I was friendly with the women in Junior League. We had couples we went to dinner with, clients that we entertained, but I didn’t have any girlfriends of my own. When you’re a couple, it’s hard finding friends that you and your husband agree on. Generally, you try to hang out with couples so no one feels left out or weird. But maybe the husbands get along but the wives hate each other. Or the wives get along great, but the husbands have nothing to talk about. It was just so much easier to hang around with Mike’s friends and their wives. It was the simplest way to get him to agree to socialize.
I let friendships with my single friends fall by the wayside because it just seemed like so much work to maintain them. Finding neutral conversational territory is a killer, especially when they’re out in the world working and your biggest problem is finding drapes that complement the new sofa. Plus, I couldn’t help but feel that my working friends judged my staying home, particularly when we didn’t have kids. The last time I had lunch with my friend Katie, a preschool teacher with three boys, she asked me what I did all day. I rambled on about appointments and meetings for about ten minutes before I realized I didn’t have a very good answer for her. We didn’t have lunch again.