Silly question. Ally raises her dough covered hand excitedly and I grab the menu out of our junk drawer, then hand it to Carter.
“Answer your question?”
He takes it and laughs, then makes the call.
* * *
A couple of hours later and three batches of sugar cookies in, the three of us sit at the kitchen table, stuffed from Pork Fried Rice, white rice, Beef Lo Mein, General Tsao’s Chicken and more cookies than I care to count.
“Ally,” Carter says after shoving cookie number seven into his mouth. “I venture to say, these are just as good as your mom’s.”
“I doubt that,” she says, modestly, but . . .
“He’s right.” I nod and swallow down the sugary goodness. “They’re absolutely delicious.”
“Really?” She beams.
I give her a nod. “Don’t let it go to your head, Ally, but yeah, you did great!”
“Only ten more batches to go,” she says with only a tad less enthusiasm than me when I’m on the home stretch of finishing. “I don’t know how you do this all the time, I’m exhausted.”
I sigh. “All in a day’s work of a mother, I guess.”
She rolls her eyes and gets back up to start another sheet.
“Oh brother.”
Carter and I start cleaning up the Chinese mess we’ve made and when the trash can is full, I start to pull it out.
“Here let me help,” he says but I wave him off.
“I’ve got it.” I take the trash bag out of the container and twist it tied. “Be right back.”
I walk it out to the curb and am stopped short, just before I make it. The smile I’ve been donning for the entire evening is suddenly wiped away. Just like that.
“James?”
He’s leaning against his car with a bottle of something in his hand. He takes a swig and sways to one side. “Ready to cut me out completely already, eh, Iris?” He smirks. “Izzie.”
I look back toward the front door, still sitting open. I can’t see Ally, which is good; she shouldn’t see her father like this.
“James, I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately, but you should go.”
“Why?” He blurts out at me with a drunken slur. “So you and your little boyfriend can have some privacy?” He adds a little louder, “With my daughter?”
I snort, disgusted, and turn to go back inside.
“Where do you think you’re going, Iris?” he calls out louder still.
I turn and shush him but he couldn’t care less. “I’m not done talking to you.”
Carter’s attention is turned to us and he’s making his way down the hallway. I probably have about five seconds to make James go away.
“We can talk some other time, James, but not tonight.”
“Why? You fucking him again?”
“Excuse me?”
A light turns on next door at Naked Paul’s house.
Great.
This is about to turn into Circe de Spangler here in a minute if I don’t get my ex to leave. Me. Alone. James waves his bottle at the door. I’m sure Carter is standing there but I can’t bring myself to turn and make eye contact with him.
“There a problem, Iris?” he calls from the door.
I turn my head only half way so he can hear me. “No problem, Carter.”
Not yet, anyway.
I walk toward James, who’s got this smirk on his face that makes me want to slap him. When I’m close enough that I know only he will hear me, I glare at him hard.
“Who I fuck and who I don’t fuck became absolutely none of your business a long time ago. Why you even care is beyond me, but you are not going to come here and try to embarrass me out of seeing Carter. Got it?”
He laughs an intoxicated laugh and chokes a little. “You don’t even know who you’re fucking do you?”
Across the street, Alex has now come outside. She must be psychic. After all, she did predict earlier that the universe would be imploding. That’s precisely what this feels like.
“Iris? Is that you dear?” Cynthia calls out from down the sidewalk. She’s in her robe and slippers and I can tell, Beatrice is not far behind her.
“Can you please just go, James?” I beg him. Desperate now.
And Carter, who has decided things are definitely not okay out here, is now standing just behind me. “Yeah, James, maybe you should go.”
“I don’t think so,” he slurs to Carter. “Not until I straighten a few things out with my wife.”
“Ex. Wife,” I say. “And I thought we straightened everything out that needed straightening the other night.”
“Do you even know this guy? Iris?” He points to Carter.
The crowd is circling in, closer now. There’s no way this is going to stay private at this point, even though I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I rub the side of my temple. I feel a headache coming on. I peek back at the house. I still don’t see Ally. At least that’s good.
“I mean he used to be a lawyer,” James says like he’s just uncovered some deep dark secret here.
“So?” Because hello? Who cares what he used to do.
“As in ex,” he chops his wrists together, making an X. I guess he thinks I need a visual. “As in, they disbarred him. Iris, they don’t disbar nice guys.”
Disbar is a strong word. I turn and look up at Carter, who seems as surprised as I am to hear the news.
“Exactly how in the fuck would you know that?”
“Is that true?” I ask Carter.
He nods and looks back to James. “Long story.”
“Ha!” James taps his nose with the hand he’s still holding his liquor with. “Gotcha.”
“I’m waiting, asshole.”
James straightens up and pulls at the bottom of his suit jacket. “I know people.”
“Yeah,” Carter says. Then he leans in to make his point. “Well so do I.”
James blows him off. “Yeah well I’m guessing the people you know aren’t exactly the good type,” he says.
“Can you two please calm down?” More neighbors come out of their homes to watch the spectacle.
“Want me to call 911, Iris?” Paul asks. I do a criss-cross motion with my hands. “No, no, Paul, everything’s fine, just . . . go to bed everyone.”
“Fuck you! You don’t know anything about me.” Carter’s face twists up with disgust as he points at my ex.
This is, of course, while I try to convince the neighborhood that we’re all adults here.
“Neither does Iris, which is precisely my point.” James puts his hands up like Rocky. He thinks he’s won some battle of wits here; except he has none at this point.
“I’d really like to talk about this some other time, guys,” I say.
That’s when Carter throws out, “She doesn’t know you either though, does she James.”
“And if, wait, what?”
“Yeah,” James mimics me. “What?”
“Or maybe she does.” Carter is seething. “She just couldn’t prove it.”
I step in between the two men, forgetting all about the others now.
“What do mean by that, Carter?”
He still looks quite angry but when the two of us are standing there he only sees me and his expression changes. His shoulders relax. “I’m sorry, Iris, I didn’t mean to---”
“What, are you talking about?”
He peeks over at James, then back to me and takes a deep breath. “He’s sleeping with your neighbor.”
I’ve just been punched in the throat. “W . . . what?”
Sleeping? Neighbor? I almost laugh. Surely he’s joking.
“I wasn’t gonna tell you,” he says. “Being that it’s really none of my business and all. But this guy, Iris,” he waves a hand toward James, “he’s a dick!”
Did he say what I think he said? I stare over at James, looking for some sort of confirmation. Hoping for a denial.
“That’s bullshit,” James yells. He pulls his bottle backwards and takes a swing at Carter, missing him, thank God.
“Of course you’re not even man enough to admit it,” Carter says.
I’m still a bit dumbfounded by this information. “What neighbor?”
Naked Paul has made his way over to us and he’s trying to take James out of the equation but James pushes past him. “He’s full of shit Iris.”
“I don’t know if---“
“What. Neighbor?” I push Carter.
“Meg,” he finally concedes in telling me. Begrudgingly.
I shake my head and blink a few times. I’m dreaming this. This whole night is a dream. That’s it. Definitely punched in the throat.
Wake up, Iris.
“No,” I say. “You’re lying, she wouldn’t---“
“She?” James cuts me off with a look of surprise. “How about I wouldn’t! Izzie, you know how much I hate that bitch. Why in the hell would I even entertain the idea of---”
“Maybe you like the way I tie you up,” a woman’s voice cuts him off, mid-explanation and I don’t have to look to know who’s joined our discussion out here in the street.
It’s Meg. She’s standing there, determined and affronted with her fucking pink-fluff robe pulled tight around her waist. I think I’m going to be sick. I close my eyes. I want to wake up now.
“Wait.”
James points at Meg. “You fucking whore!”
“Screw you, James. It’s about time we told Iris, don’t you think, Sweetpea?”
I’m dizzy. And I can’t breathe.
“Iris?” someone says.
“I don’t need this shit.” James screams up to the sky. His words become muffled.
“Oh, you need it alright: you need it like I need you stop coming over for booty calls every third night of the week.”
Third night of the week.
Third night of the week?
When Meg says this, I recall back when James and I were together – how James always had to work late on the . . . “Third night.”
“What?” Carter asks me.
But I can’t look at him right now. I turn to my ex-husband with tears welling up. “How long has this been going on?”
I might have been able to handle it had they started seeing each other after the divorce. Eventually, maybe . . . but . . .
“James?”
He doesn’t answer me so I look to Meg. Her lip is quivering. Her eyes begin to well up with tears. “Don’t. Don’t you dare!”
“Iris.”
“Oh my God!”
“Mom?” Ally calls from the front door.
Oh, shit.
“Ally, go inside, honey.” My voice shakes.
“No,” James says. “I think it’s high time she spends more time with her old man. “Come on Ally bear; you’re gonna live with dad for a while.”
“No she’s not.” There’s no way he’s taking her from me. Not now.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “She is!”
Ally stands still. I’m sure she’s debating this inside her head, but overall, this is her big chance, to go live with her father and be rid of all my rules and nags and impatience once and for all.
I wait for it to happen.
“Ally, honey, come on.”
But it never does.
She doesn’t have anything to say as a matter of fact. She only gives the both of us a look of disgust before turning to go back inside.
“Of course.” James throws his arms up into the air and curses the sky. “Fine!”
Meg watches James start to go. After which, she looks to me for something. What I don’t know. I can’t imagine she expects sympathy from me right now – not after I just found out that after all the years of me crying on her shoulder over how I thought he was seeing someone else, it was her the entire time.
No. I don’t feel sorry for her.
Not today.
Not ever.
She turns to leave when she realizes she can’t break my cold stare. Carter puts an arm around me. He rubs a hand along my arm and it feels good but I don’t know if I can deal with this right now.
“You okay?”
I nod then gesture toward my ex-husband as he tries to open his car door, failing miserably.
“He really shouldn’t drive like this.”
The last thing Ally needs is to lose her father. Asshole or not. Carter peers over his shoulder at James, who’s trying to find his keys even though they’re right there in his hand. I can tell from the expression he’s wearing, which says he’d much rather punch James in the face than help him out right now, that he wants to say no.
“I’ll make sure he gets home,” he says – because he’s Carter Blackwood, and a nice guy.
I smile apologetically up at him. “Thanks.”
After a weak tussle, Carter manages to get the keys from James and Paul tells him he’ll follow behind to make sure Carter gets home after.
When they leave, I’m surrounded by friends who care but I don’t have anything to say to them right now. I go back into the house where I don’t have to deal with the drama of what’s about to start going around the rumor mill. I shut the door. I lock up. I turn the lights out. Then I slide down to the floor and close my eyes, trying to breathe.
“You okay?” Ally asks from the top of the stairs.
I nod. “You?”
She shrugs.
“You wanna talk about it?” I ask her even though I can’t say I have any idea whatsoever what to say right now.
“Not really,” she says. “Is that okay?”
I close my eyes for a moment. I rest my head against the door then I open them and look up at my daughter who shouldn’t be dealing with this type of bullshit. Not at her age.
“I don’t think I know what’s okay and what’s not okay anymore to be truthful, Ally.”
She stands there. I can barely see her except for a silhouette and I hate that I don’t know what she’s thinking.
She sniffles and then says, “I think I’m gonna go to bed.”
“What about your cookies?”
“Forget the cookies, they get what they get.”
A shadow only, she moves slowly down the hall and disappears. It only takes me another ten minutes to get myself up and get my mind moving past what just happened outside my home. I walk to the kitchen and pull the now burned batch of sugar cookies Ally was last working on, out of the oven. I slide them into the trash. Then I finish baking the rest of the batch she made.
Chapter 16. Carter
About halfway down Spirit Drive, James is already passed out in the passenger’s seat of his borrowed Mercedes. He leaves me with no choice but to search him for his wallet when we stop at a light so I can find out where he lives. I open it to find his license and in the front flap, there’s a picture of him with Iris and Ally. One of those professionally taken photos from quite a while ago. Ally is young, maybe four or five. The picture looks worn and something in me has me taking the photo out for a closer look.
Iris is smiling. It’s a good smile: a genuine smile. I’m guessing it’s because of Ally, based on how she’s holding her in her arms and doesn’t seem to want to let go. James is there, included in the tight knit looking threesome, of course, but I can tell from his expression that he was disconnected even back in the early days of their relationship.
I go to put it back, and that’s when I see the picture that’s been slipped in behind this one. It is a photo booth string of James with Meg – one where they’re touching tongues. In the next, she’s licking his cheek. There’s another where they’re full on making out and in the last pic, Meg is taking her top off. Who knows when this one was taken. Honestly, I don’t give a shit, but I know Iris wouldn’t want her picture touching it so I tuck the one of the three of them into my shirt pocket and go about my original business of finding his address.
Once I know where I’m headed, I check the rear view mirror every once in a while and I can see
Naked Paul behind me in his old, beat-up Beetle. He’s seat dancing to something and I smile at the guy’s love for life.
We hit a pothole and James bounces awake next to me.
“Take me back.” He sits up to look around and see where he is.
“Not a chance in hell,” I tell him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I promised Iris I’d get you home, so . . .”
I leave it at that and he huffs out his disapproval then crosses his arms as he stares out the window. “Well aren’t you just Prince fucking Charming!”
“Hardly, but Iris doesn’t need to deal with anymore of your bullshit than she has to.”
James swings his head around. “I love her.”
But I don’t buy in to his gibberish simply because he says it with a little bit of umph. “More bullshit.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway? You don’t know what I feel.” He taps his chest like there’s something in there.
I know better though. “I know if you love someone, fucking someone else isn’t an option. It’s not even a fleeting fucking thought.”
He’s quiet now but I’m pissed off and not quite finished.
“I know if you loved Iris at all you wouldn’t have looked twice at her friend, much less screwed around with her behind her back.”
“Fuck you,” he slurs and points at me.
“Ouch, good one.”
“You have no idea about Iris and me,” he spits out at me. “We’ve known each other a long time – and we’ll know each other for even longer.” He hiccups. “But you,” he laughs, “you’ll be gone by the end of the month.”
We pull up to his house and I help him out of the car. It takes every ounce of self-control not to throw him into the dirt and leave him there, but I don’t. I signal Paul to wait while I drag James up to his front door and when I open it for him, I can feel how empty it is inside.
Just like him.
I shove the keys to his car into his hands and turn to go.
“She’ll come back to me!” he yells as I approach Paul’s Beetle. “She’ll come back and you’ll just be some fling she forgets about in no time!”
“Goodnight, James.” I flip him the bird over my shoulder without looking back. I slide into the passenger’s side of the Beetle and Paul pulls away.
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