by Claire Cook
WHEN I GOT TO the Great Girlfriend Getaways office, Joni Robertson pushed herself up from her chair to give me a big hug. Her coarse gray hair smelled like violets, and hugging her always made me think of homemade bread just out of the oven.
She pushed me away to get a good look. “You hangin’ in there, kid?”
I nodded. “How ’bout you?”
“Don’t ask.” She pushed me away and headed for her desk. She was wearing jeans and a Great Girlfriend Getaways T-shirt with a hip new pair of Skechers Shape-ups. Joni was well into her seventies, solid and vibrant in a matter-of-fact way that sometimes inspired me, and other times made me wonder if I’d ever get there myself.
I pulled up a chair and took out a small notebook. “Okay, what do you need?”
She scrolled through some files on her computer. “That snippy little Kiki just quit on me. Can you pick up her four-to-midnight to night? I’ll try to get someone else in place by her next shift.”
“Got it. What else?”
“That new resort we’re using in St. John wants to exchange Web site banner links. Can you whip up something for them—logo, hyperlink, plus something fun and girlfriendy?”
I made a note. “Of course.”
Joni nodded. She scrolled for a while longer, then stopped and looked at me over her zebra-striped reading glasses. “Hey, you don’t want to jump in on that Costa Rican surfing trip, do you? I think we might need another set of hands. It’s only six days.”
It was positively Pavlovian the way I could feel myself salivate. Six days in Costa Rica. Sun and surf and an optional side trip to the rain forest. I could picture myself sprawled in a hammock on my hotel patio…sipping a drink out by the pool…curled up in my hotel room with a good book.
I could even see myself hanging ten on a surfboard, not that I’d ever surfed before. But Joni would hire a local expert for that. He’d be tall and toned, with narrow hips and broad, salty shoulders….
I shook it off. “You know I can’t,” I said.
Joni took off her glasses and cleaned them with her T-shirt. “Anastasia can stay with me. She’ll be fine. And so will you.”
“It’s too much,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I meant it was too much to ask of Joni, or too much for me to handle. Maybe both.
Joni gave me a long look. “Okay,” she said finally. “Just let me know when you’re ready.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Joni was more than a boss. She was my friend. When Seth abandoned Anastasia and me, I’d pulled away from just about everybody. Maybe I was embarrassed or even ashamed, or maybe I just felt that I no longer had anything in common with ordinary people. Joni filled the gap. Nothing shocked her, and she knew when to push and when to leave me alone.
I opened my mouth to tell Joni that Seth was back. Then I closed it again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she would say. I had this strange, irrational feeling, as if even the tiniest movement I made in any direction would trigger a series of events that could only lead to a train wreck.
I wanted to dig a nice, safe hole in the sand, just big enough to hold my daughter and me. We’d stay there until Seth blew by again, until Anastasia was older and stronger and safely grown up. We’d get through pierced ears and prom, camp and college. Once I was sure Anastasia had picked the right life partner, someone strong and reliable, we’d give Seth a quick call and he could walk her down the aisle.
Maybe.
7
WHEN ANASTASIA AND I OPENED THE DOOR TO GO OUT TO wait for the bus, Cynthia and her kids were walking toward us dragging two wooden porch railings.
“Here you go,” Cynthia said.
She and Parker placed their railing up against my house. Then Cynthia took the second railing from Lexi and Treasure, and rested it up against the first one. The kids ran off to wait for the bus.
The railings were made of white-painted wood, chunky and simple, and exactly what I would have replaced my rusty metal railings with if I could have afforded to.
“What are those for?” I asked.
Cynthia inspected her fingernails for chips. “Up to you, but I was thinking maybe earrings.”
“Cute,” I said. “Where did you get them?”
“I just told my client she should beef up her railings a little. Piece of pie.”
“How do you know they’ll fit?”
Cynthia winked. “I measured first, of course. After all, I am a professional.”
It finally sank in. “Ohmigod,” I said. “You have a client?”
Cynthia’s face lit up. She did a dance that involved circling her hips in her tennis skirt while she stirred an imaginary vat. “I have a client,” she sang. “I have a client. I have a cli-ent.”
By the time she finished her song, the bus had already pulled away. I felt a sharp stab of guilt, as if I’d let Anastasia down by not watching over her until the last possible second. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize her surrounded by a soft white protective light all the way to school.
When I opened my eyes, Cynthia was walking away.
“Thanks for the railings,” I yelled.
She waved one hand over her head, twisting her wrist back and forth, the jewels in her tennis bracelet glistening in the morning sun.
I SPENT THE MORNING designing a Great Girlfriends Getaway banner link for the St. John resort Web site. I really just needed a quick peek at the site to make sure my design would jump out, but also feel like it belonged. But I found myself browsing each and every page, imagining what it would be like to stretch out on all that white sand and snorkel in the turquoise waters.
At first, the sand and the sea were enough, but after a while I needed some companionship. So I pictured a man rubbing sunscreen on my back with strong, sure hands. I tried to turn, just enough to get a look at him, but he stayed out of sight. Then I tried turning him into Billy, but I couldn’t get him out of his red kimono and into a bathing suit, so as a fantasy, it was only moderately successful.
I forced myself to focus. I finished the banner ad and sent it off to Joni. Then I moved on to designing business cards for Billy to take with him to Japan. If I ordered them right away through the online print service I used, I’d get them in time for our next meeting.
I stayed with it, experimenting with fonts and colors, adding a photo of the Akira bike, until I had a card design that I thought would be just what he needed. I placed the order, using the one credit card I allowed myself. Then I got to work on the invoice, adding in a design fee and marking up the cards to what he’d pay at his local office supply store. If I had a few more Billy Sanders on my client list, I might actually be able to afford to hire someone to install my new porch railings.
All morning I’d been trying to keep myself from going into Anastasia’s room, but it turned out that reading one page in your daughter’s diary was a lot like trying to eat one potato chip.
“Okay, just one more,” I said out loud. I pushed myself away from the desk in the office area I’d made out of one end of my bedroom. As I walked by my bed on the way out, I grabbed my faded green comforter and pulled it up to meet the pillows in an underachieving attempt to make the bed.
For the first year or so after Anastasia and I moved in, I’d made my bed every day, so happy to actually own the room that surrounded it. But it got harder and harder to care about a room that no other adult saw. Now dirty clothes littered the floor, and two half-full glasses of water kept each other company on my bedside table.
Anastasia had made her bed this morning, as she’d done pretty much every morning since we’d moved in. Three evenly spaced purple and pink fake fur pillows, and a throng of stuffed animals, rested against her headboard.
I checked under the pillows, peeked under the twin bed, and found Anastasia’s diary wedged between the mattress and the box spring. I could feel the hard plastic eyes of the stuffed animals on me.
“What?” I said.
They stared back, silently judging me. I looked around the room, wond
ering if it were possible that my daughter had somehow gotten her hands on a hidden camera. Maybe Cynthia’s kids had given her one of their extra nanny cams.
I couldn’t handle staying in Anastasia’s room, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from snooping either, so I carried the diary out to the hallway.
The diary was locked. I went back to my bedroom office and grabbed one of the paper clips I kept in a mug with a broken handle. I sat down at my desk, straightened out one end of the paper clip, and wiggled it around until the lock gave. It was ridiculously easy. I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.
To dispose of the evidence, I buried the paper clip in the wastebasket under my desk. I stayed in my office chair and started flipping back to front through the little pink diary. I closed my eyes when I got to the poem I’d already seen. It was just too painful to read it again.
I skimmed an entry about how Anastasia wanted to sit with Becca on the bus, but she couldn’t because Becca was already sitting with Alle, who usually sat with Storie. I breathed a shallow sigh of relief, then flipped to another page.
I wish my father was President O’Bama, the first line said.
I smiled. So cute that she’d made the president Irish with that apostrophe. I breathed a half sigh of relief. It was starting to look like Anastasia was simply in the throes of some kind of normal, developmental daddy stage. Every ten-year-old in the country probably wished the president could be her father.
I kept reading. Then Melia and Sasha would be my sisters and we could share things. My room in the white house would be pink. Unless it had to be white. That would be ok if I could keep my pillows and stuff animals. My mom would have servents to answer the phone.
My eyes teared up. I wasn’t sure where we would stash Michelle O’Bama, but how sweet that Anastasia had thought to give me someone to answer the phone. Although maybe that was more about her being embarrassed by my headphone than about me being overworked.
I slid down to the floor of the hallway and turned a few more pages until I came to this:
Forgot all about me
Away in the Peach Core
Teaching kids who need him more
Helping kids in Africa get
Extra help on their home work
Really need him to come home and help me do mine
I jumped up as if I’d been stung by a bee. I slammed the little pink book closed and locked it, while I jogged out to the hallway and back into Anastasia’s room. I shoved the diary under her mattress as fast as I could and raced through my house. I pushed my screen door open so hard it crashed into the side of the house.
I grabbed one of my old rusty metal railings with both hands and yanked.
It didn’t budge.
I kicked it with one foot, then the other, like some psycho mom practicing her karate moves. Nothing happened, so I just kept kicking until I couldn’t kick anymore. Then I grabbed the railing with both hands and started rocking it back and forth, and back and forth, as hard and as fast as I could.
I wasn’t sure exactly when I started to scream, but somewhere during the second set of karate kicks, I realized that I was letting out a loud yell with every kick.
“I hate you,” I yelled. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
When Cynthia came out of her house, I was dripping with sweat and tired, just so tired. I crossed my arms over my chest and tried not to cry.
She pulled her bangs across her forehead as she walked. “Wow,” she said. “You’re such a Jill of all trades.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. I gave the railing a pathetic little kick. It didn’t move. I wiped one eye and then the other with the backs of my hands.
“Not to worry, girlfriend,” Cynthia said. “I have power tools. I’ll be right back.”
She took a few steps in the direction of her house, then stopped and turned around. “Oh, wait,” she said. Her hand was still on her forehead, as if she had a serious headache. She wasn’t the only one. “First I have a couple of tiny calls to make, and then I’ll be right back.”
As soon as Cynthia was out of sight, I went into my kitchen to call Seth. There was no way around it. They might eventually knock my railings down, but all the karate kicks and power tools in the world couldn’t change the fact that my daughter needed her father, and I had no choice but to let him back into our lives.
8
WE WERE HEADING FOR MEHICO. ALL FIFTEEN WOMEN AND three men gathered around the ancient kitchen, watching me unload my grocery bags, as if I were about to pull a rabbit out of my hat.
“Today,” I said, “we’ll be celebrating Cinco de Mayo.”
“But it’s only Tres de Mayo,” Ethel said. She was wearing a wild salmon-colored sweat suit that worked well with her I Love Lucy hair. She’d drawn thick orange lips over her much thinner ones, and I couldn’t stop looking at the places where she’d colored outside the lines.
“Close enough,” T-shirt Tom said. Not that he could see it through the fingerprints on his glasses, but today’s shirt read wish you were beer. I had to admit I kind of agreed with the sentiment. Maybe I should have tried to smuggle in some Dos Equis, to take the edge off while keeping the class culturally accurate.
I took a quick peek at the doorway, then pulled my attention back to the group.
“Cinco de Mayo,” I continued as I placed a measuring cup on the pitted counter, “celebrates the victory of the historic battle of 1863 between Mehico and France. The holiday is a symbol of Mexican pride and unity, and it includes lots of fun festivities.”
I reached into a large plastic bag and pulled out a piñata.
“Oooh,” the whole class said in one big breath.
The piñata was a tricolored papier-mâché donkey. To make up for the fact that I’d ordered it online from Oriental Trading, I told the group that the origin of the piñata dates back to centuries before the arrival of the first Spanish explorers on Mexican soil, and that Mexican Indians made piñatas from fragile earthenware jars painted to look like favorite gods.
It was a beautiful spring day. Sunlight poured through the tall windows of the kitchen, but I couldn’t seem to keep warm. I rubbed my hands together and took another quick glance at the empty doorway. As soon as Anastasia had left for school this morning, I’d jumped into the shower. For some ridiculous reason, I’d even shaved my legs and taken the time to slather on copious amounts of Vaseline Intensive Care.
I’d put on a white T-shirt and a gauzy navy skirt with an embroidered lace hem I’d bought on clearance two years ago at Anthropologie, not because I was dressing up, of course, but because my legs were too sticky for pants. I glanced down now and saw a big glob of lotion between two toes. I bent down and tried to rub it away.
They watched my every move. “Don’t we look pretty today, honey,” Ethel said when I finished rubbing. “New boyfriend?”
I could feel myself blush. I flipped my hair out from behind my ears and caught the scent of my Suave Tropical Coconut Shampoo.
“Authentic Mexican corn tortillas,” I said, “are made with a specially treated corn flour called masa harina.” I hadn’t been able to get my hands on fresh masa, which needs to be used right away, but I’d found some dried masa at the third supermarket I tried.
Making tortillas from scratch turned out to be a lot harder than it sounded. We added water to the masa harina and made dough, then divided the dough into small balls. I picked one up and flattened it with a rolling pin on a cutting board sprinkled with more masa. I peeled it off and tried to maneuver the paper-thin circle into one of the prehistoric skillets that had been heating on the stove.
The knuckles of both hands grazed the bottom of the skillet. “Shit,” I yelled, as I threw the tortilla-to-be up in the air.
Several women went into Florence Nightingale mode and circled around me.
“Are we in Italy now?” T-shirt Tom said. “Get it? Pizza?”
Good thing I’d brought store-bought tortillas for backup. The class k
icked into gear while I ran my hands under cold water.
One of the women scraped my aborted tortilla off the counter and started rolling out another masa ball. The others divided into groups. I’d found fresh asparagus on sale and steamed it last night, so one group cut it into one-inch pieces and added goat cheese and chopped cilantro. Another group shredded cooked chicken and mixed in black beans and tomato.
Ethel and her friends tore open the bags of Trader Joe’s Lite Mexican Blend shredded cheese, and another woman snipped open the packets of Wholly Guacamole. The class formed a long line and took turns spooning ingredients onto the tortillas. Then they moved on to the other frying pans, working quickly and efficiently, as if they’d been working together at a quesadilla factory most of their lives.
“I got one!” the woman attempting to make tortillas finally yelled. She flipped her masa-made tortilla onto a paper plate and held it up for everyone to see. The class applauded, even though it was shaped like an amoeba and riddled with holes.
I turned off the water and blotted my hands carefully with scratchy brown paper towels. They might be good for the environment, but they sure were a bitch on your blisters. I opened the bag of assorted candy and started stuffing the piñata. The early eaters came over to help me. When we finished, I stood on a chair and hung the donkey from one of the dusty fluorescent lights in the middle of the room, trying to ignore my throbbing hands.
After everybody finished eating and we packed up the leftovers, we formed a circle around the piñata. Each of the students took a blindfolded turn whacking at the donkey with the handle of a broom, while everybody else jumped out of the way.
I wondered what the liability issues were for giving weapons to blindfolded seniors.
“Take this, you ass,” Ethel yelled when it was her turn.
Everybody cheered. A few of the women did the Macarena while Ethel whacked away.
Eventually we made it around the circle, piñata still intact.