The Kitchen Shrink

by Dee Detarsio

  What is he talking about? I wondered. My cheek brushed the rough stubble of his jaw line and I smelled his aftershave, or the soap that he had used. He wasn’t much taller than I was, but he was very muscular. His arms held me tightly. I turned my head slightly and just kissed the hollow in his neck right under his ear. My eyes were closed but my mouth must have been slightly open because I felt my front teeth scrape the skin on his neck. He said my name and held me close while his hands straightened over my hair and his head moved from side to side. His mouth found my cheek and dried my tears with silent kisses. He was so close I could inhale his exhales. Sweet buttery ice cream and red wine.

  He pulled me even closer and kissed my temple through my hair. My hands, which had lay limply in my lap pressed up against him. We were now cheek to cheek, breathing in harmony. I remember wondering if I turned my head a mere two inches to the right, what would happen? I turned my head. Two inches. My little decision set events in motion. As if given a signal, he captured my lips and began sucking hard.

  “Lisby, what are you doing in there?” Daria knocked on the refrigerator door, bringing my attention back to her and away from the detour of a train wreck my thoughts had taken.

  “What have you done?” she asked, trying to pull it open wider.

  I stared at the refrigerator bulb as if in a trance, and tried not to be a Lookie Lou at my own emotional crack-up. No such luck. It was my own private peep show, starring me!, that I couldn’t turn away from.

  The touch of his tongue on my lips released a torrent of emotions. I bit into his mouth and I’m ashamed to say, ground myself even closer to him. His response was like electricity arcing from him to me and back. His tongue was the ground wire to high voltage, and to beat the electricity cliché to death, my hands were sparking and began fumbling at his shirt. My fingers slid under his collar, the backs of my hands rubbing his jutting collarbone. He picked up my legs and tossed me back on the couch, breaking contact only to lie beside me. Then his hands were on my ass.

  I remember kissing him for all I was worth, when he came up for air and stroked my hair. “Lisby,” he said sweetly, “you are so sweet. Are you OK?”

  Why do men have to talk? I just kissed him some more, but he tried again. “Honey, are you alright? You haven’t said two words all night.”

  I jammed my pelvis up against him, slung my right leg over his body and in my shining moment ripped my mouth off of his and whispered in his ear “Fuck me.”

  What was I thinking?

  “What are you thinking about?” Daria said louder, interrupting my stroll down memory shame. After pulling me out of the cool white light of the refrigerator and the dirty dark corners of my reverie, Daria stood almost nose-to-nose to me, searching, for what? I wondered. A scarlet letter? C for Cream Puff Coitus? I am not unaware of the irony of doing it with a man (called the Martinator) bearing cream puffs. I tried not to shift my eyes, but she won.

  “Spill,” she commanded. “Who did you sleep with?”

  How did she know? “How do you know I slept with someone?” I bluffed.

  She took a step back and waved her hand. “Who was it, and it better be good. Just tell me it wasn’t your ex-husband.”

  “It wasn’t my ex-husband,” I agreed. Which now that I think of, would have been a million times better.

  “The FedEx guy?” she asked, quirking her perfect-amount-of-hair eyebrows, looking almost impressed. We had always given him points for being one of the rare men who could pull off a short-pant uniform.

  I shook my head. Wondering how I had even gotten drawn into confessing. Well, there was no way I was going to tell her. None. And have her mock me until my dying day? Because let’s face it, had Daria been the one to play slap and tickle with the Martinator I quite frankly would have had to reconsider our friendship. That may make me seem shallow, but, then again, you haven’t met the Martinator.

  He was the guy who had the corner house with a perfectly manicured lawn (no problem since he rarely had his kids following his divorce), who put a sign up warning dogs not to pee. While dogs can’t read, apparently karma can because somehow dogs loved to crap in his yard, garbage picked that spot to shelter from the wind and birds loved to die there. He was compulsive about keeping his car immaculate and his house just so, when someone really needed to tell him to apply a little of that elbow grease to his social skills. His temper was legendary. He was persona non grata at the community Little League fields.

  Daria tapped her finger on her lip, as if mentally tabulating all the men I probably ran into.

  “Give it up, Daria. Please?” I begged her.

  She kept on mumbling, “Brett’s brother? No. Produce guy at Albertson’s? No. Dang, he’s not on the circuit. Who could it be?”

  If you showed a little kid still pictures of Daria’s face and had them identify emotions, they would have had no problem saying, “That lady doesn’t believe something,” followed by, “That lady is really scared,” followed by, “Hey, where’d the lady go?” since they could no longer see her, because she was doubled over. Daria slowly stood back up, tall, almost resolved. She grabbed me by the upper arms.

  “Tell me,” she paused to draw a breath. Sometimes I wanted to smack the drama out of her and this was one of those times, “Tell me you didn’t eff the Martinator. Say it.” She shook me now.

  “I didn’t eff the Martinator,” I said. The freaking human lie detector was having none of it. She stared me down, and I knew she saw the microscopic droplets of sweat mildewing my upper lip.

  “You had sex with him, didn’t you? Didn’t you?” She saw me clench my fists and wailed.

  “Keep your voice down, would you, my kids are home!” I hissed at her, pissed at myself.

  “How could you sleep with that goober?” Her voice came out in a whisper that spoke volumes. She rubbed her hands up and down my arms as if trying to wash away images of me and Goober.

  “He’s not a goober.”

  “Oh, sorry. Dork.”

  “He’s not a dork.”

  “The whole town calls him The Martinator, how could he not be a dork?”

  “You’re right.” I hung my head. “He is a big dork. He’s kind of adorkable. And, he was very kind to me.”

  “I bet.” She tossed off a fast jerking-off motion. “What were you thinking?”

  “Obviously, I wasn’t. He has these amazing muscle-y arms.” I attempted to have one point of justification.

  “Come on! He wears plaid shirts.”

  “While I know the state of California frowns on plaid, it isn’t a misdemeanor.”

  She waved her hands, looking really pissed. “How did this happen?”

  I plopped down on a bar stool. “Well, I haven’t had sex for like a year.”

  “And how long before that since you had an orgasm?”

  “Right?” I laughed weakly with her. Whew, I thought. Maybe I can divert her attention.

  “Not so fast,” Daria read my thoughts. “Deets.”

  “There are no details,” I said firmly in my best mom voice.

  “Come on. You don’t roll in the hay with The Martinator and not have some tales to tell. Oh honey, it’s worse than I thought.”

  “Um, it actually wasn’t that bad.”

  “Come on!” She exploded. “Why didn’t you just sit on your little,” she made quote marks in the air “foot massager’ and call it a day? An A-O-K day?” She emphasized the O in case I missed that part.

  “Daria. Please. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You could have gone to Brookstone and discreetly purchased one of their therapeutic massage devices for your pretend sciatic problem or neck tension or whatever, but noooo….” She shook her head at me. My own mother couldn’t have been more disapproving. “This is big.” She was not smiling. She sat on the stool next to me and leaned way into my personal space. “I don’t want the details, because quite frankly, you don’t appear nearly ashamed enough and I just don’t want to know about it,
but just tell me one thing.”

  “What?”

  She pressed her lips together firmly before speaking. “Tell me you’re not dating him.”

  “No. Oh, for Pete’s sake. Knock it off. It’s over and done.”

  She leaned against the counter. Drama queen. I felt my adrenalin rush tingle out through my fingertips. So now she knows. I deserve a reward, I told myself, grabbing some M&Ms. As odd as it sounds, confession had done me good. Like I had done something truly terrible and Daria still liked me. I had just taken the first fistful of my vitamin Ms, when I realized there was more. “What? What?”

  “He’s called you, hasn’t he?”

  “I told him, basically, thanks but no thanks.” There was no basically about it, he was so persistent, that’s exactly what I had told him to finally get him off the phone.

  “OK,” Daria said. “This makes what I have to tell you super easy. In fact, I’m ashamed of myself for waiting so long; perhaps I could have averted a tragedy.”

  “Come off it. I admit, I’m not proud of myself for doing it with The Martinator, but it’s not like I committed a crime, cheated on anyone or killed somebody.”

  “You pert near killed the perfect image I had of you,” Daria said. “So, my friend, let me tell you what I’m gonna do.”

  Chapter 3

  Reality Check

  Before I could even stop shaking my head, Daria had twirled and whirled her lush curves in an exotic dance around my kitchen, shaking her long glossy dark curls as she spilled out what she had done, all for little ol’ me, excitement bouncing off the dingy white tiles of my counter top. If it had been directed at someone other than myself, I would have been all for it.

  “Daria, thanks for thinking of me, but I’m not doing it. No how. No way. And just because I had a little indiscretion, doesn’t make me a candidate for something so bizarre.”

  “A little indiscretion? Honey, if that’s what you call a little indiscretion, I’d hate to see what a big boo-boo would be in your eyes. Now if you call it a little indigestion, that I could believe, because I want to vomit.”

  “Daria. Enough. Like you never slept with someone you later regretted.”

  “Yeah, like 20 years ago. When we were supposed to.”

  “Well, I did it. It’s over. It will never happen again. And, I’m fine.”

  “You will be.”

  “Will be what?”

  “You will be fine. I promise. The producers looked it all over, I had photos and I did a write-up, I even got you in before I knew how desperate you were.”

  My phone hummed in my back pocket. I never had ESP although I always wanted to, but I knew it was my son Ryan putting a rush on his ice cream order. I reached into the cupboard for a bowl and slammed it shut. A piece of drywall, about the size of one of Daria’s bottles of nail polish, fell from near the ceiling right on my head. “What the? Ouch,” I said rubbing through my hair.

  “Oh, this is just too perfect,” Daria said, retrieving the plaster piece from the floor, holding it up in her right fist like a medal.

  “What are you talking about?” I scooped the ice cream into the bowl and told Daria I’d be right back as I raced upstairs.

  “Ryan?” I knocked on his door.

  “Yup,” I heard from my son of many words.

  “Here you go,” I said, walking in and over to Ryan, who was lying on his bed. “How are you doing? How was school today?” Like I had to ask.

  “Fine.” This from the kid who loved getting book store gift cards from my relatives on his birthday so he could sell them to me at a markup.

  “What time do you have football?”

  “Hour.”

  I reached over and tried to ruffle his untidy wave of brown hair, but he jerked away. He always was pretty non-demonstrative. Even as a baby I had to work hard for cuddles. I decided to go for it. I sat on his bed, and touched his man-hairy leg. He kicked to bounce my hand off.

  “Sorry. I just miss you, that’s all.”

  Was that a nod? He scooped a bite of ice cream.

  “Everything going OK with you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Have you heard from your dad?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I know he’s going to your game. Maybe you can see him after.”

  No response.

  “How’s Nicole been?”

  Eyebrows rise. I always ask each of my kids how the other one is doing. Sometimes it pays off and I get some info, but usually not. I stood up. Then I leaned in for a hug. His muscle shirt held yesterday’s pungent efforts. He smelled like a musky sweaty testosterone filled almost-man, but I could still catch a whiff of my little baby Ryan. I pulled tighter and dropped a kiss on the top of his head.

  “ ‘anks,” I think I heard before I closed his door.

  Was he high? I wondered.

  I stopped by Nicole’s room just to say “hey” and knocked on her door before trying the handle. An inch into it, I heard “Go away! Get out! Quit spying on me!” she yelled, covering her cell phone.

  Heavy sigh. I headed downstairs to Daria and her plan that was so not going to happen. I may have lost my kids to the forces of puberty, but at least I had some control over my own life. “Daria,” I called out as I clattered back into the kitchen. She was on her cell and got off as soon as she saw me.

  “It’s almost a done deal,” she said. “They want to meet you!”

  “Who wants to meet me? What are you talking about and what have you done?”

  Chapter 4

  The Kitchen Shrink

  Daria wheedled and cajoled. But I was having none of it. She actually wanted me to be on a reality TV show being produced by a friend of hers. Apparently, the network loved the idea and purchased 7 new shows to be aired beginning in May. Prime time. It was going to air across the country. As in everywhere. She said they already had three other participants, they just needed a fourth.

  “You would be so perfect for it! It’s not like all those other gross reality TV shows. You don’t have to rappel off a building, eat cow balls or hook up with anybody, unless you want to that is,” she laughed. “This is a good thing. It’s Martha Stewart meets home renovation meets Dr. Phil who hooks up with Dr. Laura Berman, but not in a sexual way,” she said, adding, “unless you want it to. Oh, Lisby. Look at you. You have been so down and you are such a great person. Come on, open yourself up and just try something new and get your house re-done, for free!”

  “Daria. In case you haven’t noticed. I’m in the middle of a not great life right now. Why in the world would I want to go on national television and air my dirty laundry? I just can’t understand people who do that. Or why they do that. You of all people know that my kids are at that rebellious stage. I have no idea what they’re going to do next. And I can’t do that to them, put them on TV, under the microscope of the whole voyeuristic world.”

  “Elizabeth, listen to me. This is a good thing. It could be the reality TV kick in the pants that you need. This really could be good therapy for you. And,” she megaphoned her hands around her mouth, “YOU CAN GET YOUR HOUSE FIXED UP FOR FREE!” Call us frustrated cheerleaders, we seem to holler at each other like that, a lot.

  “Have you not heard a word I said?” I asked her. “My kids call me Mrs. Moody Mean Jeans, it’s not like we have some lovely family tableau going on around here. In fact, there really is nothing interesting going on.” Nothing I want the public to see, I thought, remembering the hissy fit I had thrown that very morning when Nicole had tried to pass a whole jumbled laundry basket of clean clothes back down to me to be washed and folded. Again.

  “Well, there was something pretty interesting going on the other night,” Daria muttered under her breath, but loud enough I heard her all the same.

  “Thank you for winning my argument for me. Do you really think I want something like sleeping with the Martinator on TV?”

  “You said it was never going to happen again.”

  “Well, it’s not, I�
�m just saying, life is messy. No need to rub my nose in it. Trust me. My life would make for bad TV. I’m sure there are hundreds of people who would jump at the chance. I prefer to live my little life fucking up off screen, thank you very much.”

  “Lisby. Listen. There is nothing real about reality television. Just do it to get your house fixed up, meet some people, have some fun. Fun is what you are sorely lacking, my friend. I even think they want it to be a helpful, feel-good show.’”

  “Nice idea, but I know how it works. They want the drama. They catch me screaming at my kids for, oh, I don’t know, staying out all night and then they edit it making me look like a shrew going off the deep end and cut it to look like I freak out when my daughter asks me for a drink of water or something. “

  “Sure, they do have their tricks for creating a good storyline,” Daria agreed. “But this is different, it’s more a Do-It-Yourself show.”

  “Do what myself?” I snapped. “I’m not a construction worker. I’m not an actress, I don’t have big boobs, I wasn’t in a sex tape and I will never, ever understand Snookie, OK? There is absolutely nothing special about me. In fact, I can’t think of anyone else less likely to be in a reality series. So, just forget it. I can’t handle this right now. I have enough going on, you know, trying to work out my real life and real life problems without worrying about fake reality.”

  “Honey, I understand. Believe me, I do,” she countered. “Just think about it. Just meet the producers and let them explain how they want this to be different. This show is called “The Kitchen Shrink,” with the premise that if your life is messed up your house probably is, too, and by fixing up both, it becomes the ultimate life and home makeover. They plan on using home renovation as a living model of Feng Shui to restore harmony and balance to your world. It’ll be hands-on and the viewers will get to know you as you take concrete, ha ha, steps to physically change and improve your environment to see what happens in your life. Lisby, I really want this for you. You know I’ve got your back, don’t you?”