“I just, well, you know how much I love you and that I would protect you no matter what, right?” This just slips out—I didn’t think about it, and I’m immediately terrified that I’ve alienated Emma by saying too much. It’s ridiculous that I’m afraid of my own daughter.
“Yeah, whatever,” she answers.
I’ll take it—it’s not a declaration of her love, but she didn’t roll her eyes. I glance at my watch and realize that Emma’s bus was late, and I need to get Will off the bus right away. “Please tell your brothers I’m going to the bus stop and just watch them for a few minutes, okay? Oh and please, please help Trevor with his math.”
“Fine,” she says as the screen door slams behind her.
I’m almost giddy as I walk down the street to the bus stop. Emma didn’t fight with me, and she answered my requests with “fine,” instead of stoning me with silence. I feel like maybe we’re turning a corner. I know it’s kind of pathetic that I’m lapping up the crumbs she’s offering me, but I am. I’ll take what I can get.
Just as I get to the corner, my phone buzzes with a text from Andi. I glance at it. It just says, You didn’t answer my fb msg. Did it upset you?
I answer, No, just haven’t had time to read it yet. Was it upsetting? I can take it.
Not upsetting really or at least it shouldn’t be, she answers quickly. It’s nothing that you didn’t know—just kind of a continuation of our conversation at the park, follows right behind in a second text.
Okay. I’ll read it now. I’m at the bus stop waiting for Will. BTW, I accosted a paparazzo outside of my house—nearly strangled him with his camera strap when he pointed the camera at Emma, I shoot back.
Awesome. U kick ass :-) is Andi’s reply.
I go to Facebook on my cell phone and click on Andi’s message. All it says is, You will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t give Ben another chance—more than just a slice of pizza and sending him home. Maybe all this shit happened for a reason, and that reason is so you and Ben can find each other again. If it didn’t happen, I bet you would have gotten sick of Nick, looked up Ben on fb and hooked up anyway, and then you would have been the one with the dirty mistress. There I go again with the dirty mistress. BTW, what’s the word for the male version of a dirty mistress? Why isn’t there a word for it??? There should be! I’m going to Google it and see if there is. TTYL.
Her next message says, Look what I found on Wikipedia—‘There is no specific word in English for a ‘male mistress’, a man in the same relationship to a woman as a mistress is to a man, except for the more general term ‘lover,’ which does not carry the same implications. ‘Paramour’ is sometimes used, but this term can apply to either partner in a relationship, so it is not exclusively male.’ There should be a word for a male mistress, shouldn’t there? Anyway, my point was that I just know that you and Ben are meant to be together, and maybe Nick cheating on you first is the best thing that could have happened. Maybe your life is like a snow globe—so much more beautiful when it’s shaken up.
I look up to see Will’s bus rounding the corner, so I quickly write back, OK—since you put it that way, I’ll think about it. I close the message, but not before YAY!!!!! pops up. I wonder if Andi is right. Maybe we are meant to be and “all this shit” just sped up the process. Perhaps we’re like an article that I read in the Saturday senior section of the newspaper about a couple who knew each other forty years earlier and when their respective spouses passed away, they got together. I know I would have never cheated on Nick, so perhaps I should be grateful that he cheated on me. I don’t think I could ever be grateful to Sloane, though, for launching that video. Yes, it led Ben to me, but that’s what Facebook is for—he could have found me, and not seen me naked first. Perhaps I would have had a chance to get a spray tan and lose five pounds. Perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up loathed by my own daughter—and ridiculed by half the town.
“Hey, Mom,” Will says brightly as he gets off the bus. “Guess what I brought home?”
“I don’t know, Pumpkin. What?”
“You guessed!” he squeals as he pulls a small pumpkin out of his backpack. “We went pumpkin picking today! How come you didn’t go on the trip? A bunch of other moms were there.”
I realize with a growing sense of dread that I had signed up to chaperone the pumpkin picking trip over a month ago. I can see the slip—right at the bottom I had checked, “Will chaperone.”
“Oh honey, I’m so sorry,” I say as I hug Will tightly. “I had some stuff going on and I just didn’t realize it was today.”
“It’s okay, Mom. There were a lot of other moms there. I even heard one say she wasn’t surprised that you didn’t come. I guess she knew you were busy.”
I hope Will never loses his innocence and guileless optimism. “Thanks, Sweetie. I’ll make sure I come on the next trip. I promise. I baked a lot too today. I’ll give you a super special snack when we get home.”
Will hugs me back and then races down the street to the house. I walk slowly as I contemplate my next move. Do I just abandon all hope of being involved in my kids’ school lives? Do I just give up on going on class trips or being involved in the PTA? Or do I hold my head high and go back there for more humiliation and punishment? What about Ben? Do I give him a second chance? Do I let tomorrow night’s pizza date be more than I planned?
After I give Will his snack—a slice of apple cake, a rugelach and a glass of milk—and help him and Trevor with their homework, I set Sam up in the living room with five boxes of puzzles. I figure that ought to keep him busy for a while. Emma helped Trevor finish his math earlier and even studied with him, and Will finished all his homework, so I let them play Xbox. Emma is holed up in her room, hopefully doing her own homework, so I take my laptop and steal up to my bedroom for a few minutes. I don’t want anyone looking over my shoulder, and I want to take a few minutes to reread Ben’s messages to me for the umpteenth time.
Did Nick ever feel this remorseful for his real affair? Ben is so remorseful, and he just thought about cheating on me—he didn’t even do it. Plus, it was two decades ago. How many husbands contemplate having an affair and never carry through with it, but never apologize to their wives, because why would they? What good would it do to apologize for something that never happened? It would just cause pain for the wife.
I would imagine that there are tons of men who fall into this category—thought about an affair, but never actually followed through. Lord knows that I thought about having an affair while I was with Nick, but I never acted on it. There wasn’t really anyone specific—maybe a handsome dad at the playground or the cute guy who coached baseball—I would look at them and maybe imagine a different life.
Ben never acted on it either, so can I really hold it against him? Who knows, maybe if the opportunity had presented itself, maybe I would have cheated. What if that cute single dad at the playground asked me to lunch and stole a kiss while the kids played? Would I really have been strong enough to say no when my marriage was unraveling? I’d like to think I would have been, but I guess you can never say until you’re in the situation. But I know Ben was strong enough—I believe him. Though, I suppose he could tell me anything at this point, so long after the fact. I know in my heart that he’s telling the truth; that he contemplated it and walked away—when he was only twenty-two. I have to give him some credit for that.
Before I go back downstairs to make dinner, I Google myself. I’m not even slightly surprised to find Suburban Sex Goddess Goes Ballistic, Attacks Photog! already up. It doesn’t take them long to get photos out there. The link says that I must have lost my mind, due to my husband leaving me and all the media attention and physically attacked and threatened an innocent photographer. The accompanying photo certainly looks threatening, taken as I lunge at him. The other photos are no better, with captions like, “SSG a train wreck as she hits rock bottom,” under a photo of me in my sweats with no makeup on.
I vow to stop Googling myself
—no good ever comes of it. How quickly did that paparazzo file that story and sell the photos—the incredibly unflattering photos? He snapped them only hours before they were posted. I just give up—I can’t keep up with how quickly images of me, stories about my faults and opinions on my shortcomings spin out into a web of half-truths. I decide right then and there to take control and grant one interview to one reputable magazine, so that I can tell my side of the story. So many magazines and talk shows have called me, and I’ve turned them all down. But what if that idiotic little photographer was right and my enigma status is keeping people interested in me? I’ll do anything to get my privacy back; to get back to normal and maybe showing people how boring I really am will work, even though my attempt to do just that this afternoon failed miserably. Maybe I can even put a plug in for my soon-to-be business.
I feel a little lighter now that I’ve decided to take control, or at least some reasonable semblance of control. My old therapist called right after dinner and said that of course she would see us, even though she’s not taking new patients. I made an appointment for a week from Saturday, since after school is crazy, and Nick has the kids this weekend. I’m sure Emma will give me a hard time, but she has to go with us. Even if I just get them to go once, it will be a victory and will hopefully help.
Suddenly, I feel like maybe tomorrow can be a real date with Ben, so after I get everyone to sleep I settle on the couch with my laptop and a cup of tea. I’m going to send him a message saying that maybe we can go to a nicer restaurant, one not quite in the run-down vicinity of the train station. And maybe I’ll even pick him up at the train station again. Reinforcements are definitely needed for this task, so I go back into the kitchen and grab a couple of rugelach, putting them on the teacup saucer.
Once I’m back on the couch savoring the flaky, sweet, nutty deliciousness, I click on Ben’s Facebook page instead of the message. I just want to stare at him for a moment, while I think about what to say. Staring back at me, though, is not only Ben, but a picture of Ben with his arm around a beautiful woman—she’s kissing his cheek. Stunningly gorgeous would be an understatement. It looks like she’s the one who took the picture. Her name is Rebecca Jones, and she must have just tagged Ben in the picture because it looks like it showed up on his page only two minutes earlier. If I hadn’t gone back for the rugelach, I would have just looked at his profile picture for a few moments and gone to messages. But now I don’t know what to do.
It’s not like Ben put the picture up, I reason. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything—she just grabbed him and took the picture and he doesn’t even really know her. Maybe, I try to convince myself, she’s a friend of a friend. But then I notice the comment, Having the best time tonight. Love you much, my Ben.
He’s her Ben. Her Ben. So, he can’t be my Ben. I feel like throwing up now. All the feelings that I didn’t have looking at Nick and Sloane’s photo, I have when I look at Ben and Rebecca’s, which really makes absolutely no sense because I was with Nick for years and years, and we were married (technically still are married)—we have a family together, for god sakes. And yet, this picture of Ben and Rebecca makes me physically ill. How can that be? I pick up Daisy, who’s been napping at my feet, and bury my face in her fur. Dogs will never disappoint. “Why can’t Ben be more like you?” I ask her. She kisses my nose then struggles to jump out of my arms so I set her down. “Fine,” I say, “I’ll just cuddle with Charlotte.” But Charlotte is hiding somewhere under a bed, and I’m just too tired to look for her.
I collapse back on the couch with my laptop and am about to click on “share” below the picture to send it to Andi, when I realize that it will show up on Facebook that I’ve shared it. I am so grateful that I thought of that before sending it. Instead, I do a “save as” and save it to my desktop. Then I send it to Andi as an attachment. See this? I think I should just be friends with Ben for now, I type in the message box. Then I copy and paste Rebecca’s comment and hit send. I know that I am acting like a seventh grader again, but I just can’t help it.
Even Andi admits, It looks bad in her next message. Maybe she’s his cousin?
I write back, Andi, did you notice the color of her skin—a gorgeous café au lait that literally makes me want to weep, but clearly shows she’s not related to Ben?
Um, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that, she shoots back. Then, Just ask him who she is.
No way will I ask him. I write back. I’m just going to think of him as an old friend, just as I planned, before you got all in my head with your ‘this is meant to be.’ Some things from your youth just can’t be recaptured. Maybe our relationship is one of them.
You’re a stupid woman, she answers.
Thanks a lot. Listen, I can’t get involved with someone who is even possibly involved with someone else and you should understand that. I can’t get my heart broken again. Even though in hindsight I know you’re right, and it was probably for the best that Nick took up with Sloane—not just because of Ben, but also because I really wasn’t happy for a long time—it still hurt like hell. I’m sure this would hurt even worse.
I know it did, but does that mean you should never love again? Andi shoots back.
No, of course not. But for right now I need to be a little overprotective of my heart. It was so hard getting over Ben the first time. I don’t know how I could do it again, especially so soon after Nick. So, maybe you can cut me some slack, even if you think Ben and I are like a movie. I hit send before I can think twice about my little tirade and I immediately feel bad.
My phone rings a second later. “I’m sorry,” Andi says, before I can even get out, “Hello.” “I just wanted to tell you that she likely means nothing, and you really shouldn’t let a photo stop you from a chance to be with someone who really could be the love of your life.”
“It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it literally, and I’m sure my message came across more nasty than I intended.”
“I kind of deserved it. I shouldn’t have called you ‘stupid,’ and I shouldn’t have kept pushing.”
“You know, I often wish I was a lesbian. Women resolve arguments so much more easily. I mean, I’m sure lesbians have their nasty moments, but I think it would be easier to be involved with another woman, plus, you’d have two moms to take care of things. Haven’t I said that before?” I’m pretty sure I’ve told Andi I wished I was a lesbian many times, especially when Nick pissed me off.
“Yes, you have and I agree. It’s a fucking shame we’re not both lesbians, because we would make an awesome couple.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say with a laugh. “Any chance we could be like Meredith Baxter Birney—late in life change?”
“I think you are or you’re not,” Andi answers. “I don’t think she changed late in life; I think she just realized that she had been hiding—from herself and hiding herself from others.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right, but it’s a nice thought. Anyway, so you agree that I should keep it casual tomorrow night, or better yet, not go out with him at all? I think that would be the best because I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t want to jump him the moment I saw him, and I just don’t need the complication right now.”
“No, I actually don’t think that. I think you should give him a chance to explain and then decide. Maybe Rebecca is a gorgeous lesbian. Click on her page and see if she’s interested in men or women.”
I do that while Andi holds on and unfortunately, she’s interested in men. “Nope—she’s straight.”
“Damn,” Andi says. “That would have been nice and tidy, huh? Does it say if she’s in a relationship?”
“Uh oh—relationship status is, It’s complicated. The worst. Exactly what I would write if I were dating a sexy, emotionally unavailable man like Ben,” I say.
“Maybe Ben’s not the one she’s complicated with. Maybe they’re just friends.” I can tell Andi is just trying to make me feel better and I love her for it, but it’s not really working.
“Listen,” I say. “I’m just going to go to sleep, cuddled with my fur babies, although I’m sure Charlotte will jump off the bed in five minutes, if I can even find her. I’ll think about it more in the morning. Good night and thanks for being there, even if you did call me stupid.”
“Anytime. Night.” Andi blows me a kiss over the phone before we hang up.
I realize after I hang up that I really can’t cancel at the last minute on Ben. If I’m going to cancel, I really should do it tonight, before he goes to work, since he probably was going straight to meet me from there.
I try to figure out what to write to make it seem like I’m canceling because of something unavoidable. Something he can’t argue with. Hi Ben, I type then stop, trying to decide what to write. So sorry, but I can’t make pizza tomorrow night. Hopefully we can get together another time soon. Max.
I reread it. Short, to the point, yet still vague—perfect. I hit send. And then I fall into bed. Tonight I’m not checking my phone for messages. I need to clear Ben from my brain.
Chapter Nine
THE NEXT MORNING Emma shocks me with a hug. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know when I’ll get another one, so I hug her back with all my might and start to cry. “Really, Mom,” she snaps. “I give you a hug and you start to cry. You’re kind of pathetic.”
For some reason this makes me laugh. Emma starts laughing too. “You’re so weird,” she says before pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
“It’s just that, well, Emma it’s been ages since you hugged me, and I’m so used to you being mad at me now, that the hug shocked me and made me so happy, I started to cry. Why did you suddenly hug me? Have you finally forgiven me?”
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