Burning Down the Spouse

by Dakota Cassidy

  Maxine’s shoulders lifted in a wry shrug. “I got caught up, and when he was unfaithful, I blamed it on myself. When he was unfaithful for the third time, I’d just had enough. I hit the same wall I’m sure you hit when you confronted Mitch.”

  “On live TV,” Frankie murmured. In front of an entire nation. Woo to the hoo.

  Maxine chuckled, but it was laced with sympathy. “Yes. On live TV, and it was ugly, and I don’t doubt you’ll have some living that incident down to do. But here’s the thing, you hit that wall for a reason. I’m guessing because you were oppressed and tired of being Mitch’s pretty toy. Sometimes it happens out of the blue, and there’s no stopping it. You just explode.”

  Hindsight and utter humiliation made her wonder if she might have chosen a more private venue in which to do all that exploding, leading her back to the conclusion that she’d been plenty happy avoiding the memory.

  “I’ll give you this,” Maxine noted. “You didn’t stick around after you found out about his affair. Good for you. Me? Not so much. You did what your heart told you to do. But you didn’t fail your marriage, Frankie. Mitch just stopped being a team player.”

  Looking back, Frankie had to wonder if she’d ever even been on the team. She mostly just remembered sitting on the bench. The idea made her want to retreat back to her bed. Now. “Look, I appreciate you and your story, but I’ll figure this out alone. So thanks for stopping by.” Frankie made a move to get around Maxine, but her aunt stopped her.

  Gail’s finger waved in a no-nonsense manner, blocking the bathroom door. “Oh, no, missy. This is the longest I’ve seen you upright in months. No way are you going back to bed. Not on my watch.”

  Maxine held up her left hand, a shiny diamond and wedding band catching the bathroom’s light. “Look, Frankie. I can help you. I was broke and I had nowhere to go once, too. I lived here in the retirement village with my mother for almost a year, trying to get on my feet. Worse, I didn’t have a single job skill to my credit but the ability to put together a fabulous dinner party—oh, and shop. So get in the shower. I’ll go make some coffee with your aunt, and once you get dressed, we’ll talk.”

  Frustration welled in the form of a tight ball in Frankie’s chest. The part of her that just wanted to keep right on drifting rebelled. Who the hell did this woman think she was? The Dalai Lama of divorce? All serene and all-knowing? So they had some commonalities. Married young to older men who liked the just-over-jailbait chickies.

  Whatever. It was clear this Maxine wasn’t down on her luck anymore. She was remarried, judging by the size of that rock—a rock that didn’t come from the cubic zirconia store on QVC.

  Maxine’s life wasn’t any different than it’d been when she was married to her last husband. She’d just taken a year off from her trophy-wife duties and laid in wait to nab another rich guy. Mission accomplished. Frankie didn’t need lessons on how to snare rich potential husband number two. No more men. “I really just want to be left alone.”

  Maxine’s tongue clucked again in admonishment. “I bet you do. But here’s something to ponder while you wash your greasy hair and maybe attack a vat of deodorant, armpit first. How long do you suppose Gail can support you until you become a big, fat burden on her Social Security and retirement fund? What little money you have personally is running out.”

  Instantly, Frankie was indignant. She’d given Gail money every month for the food she’d barely touched and the water, according to her splendiferous odor, she’d hardly used. She would never stiff her aunt. “How do you know what my financial status is?”

  Gail snorted, pursing her lips. “Someone had to open your mail, kiddo. You sure as hell don’t. You don’t have but two hundred smackers in that account of yours. Now you know I don’t want your money, but I ain’t gonna live forever. You have car payments long overdue, too. They’re going to send in the repo man. If you want to keep that nice-lookin’ car and some untarnished credit when all’s said and done, you need to get it together. Plus, think of my Squeaky Kiki. She has to eat. She needs shots and veterinary care. You have to get on with the living, honey.”

  To what purpose? Frankie wanted to scream. What was there to live for? Instead, she let her indignant chest shrink in defeat.

  Maxine handed her a bar of soap and a fresh towel before reaching out to take Kiki from Gail. Kiki snuggled against Maxine’s ear, sighing with contentment. “Get in the shower, Frankie, and hurry up. The day awaits.”

  Bone weary, her muscles just didn’t want to cooperate. Her getup-and-go had gotten up and went and it was never coming back. She couldn’t summon the will or the energy to care about anything. Her eyes, pleading and teary, sought her Aunt Gail’s, searching for a crack in her hard veneer. “Can’t we just do this tomorrow? I promise I’ll get up tomorrow. Promise.”

  Maxine shook her head in Gail’s stead, and it wasn’t in the yes mode Frankie’d hoped for. “Nope. Today’s the day you start back on the road to recovery. It’s long. It really, really blows, but there’s a world out there that you have to be a part of unless you like card-board-box living and soup kitchens. By the looks of that bed Kiki sleeps in, I’d say she won’t love living under a bridge. Get it together, Frankie. It’s time for you to suck it up, princess.”

  Maxine marched out of the bathroom with Kiki, followed by her aunt, who’d refused to meet her eyes.

  A long, deep breath later, thankful for the silence and the chance to sit on the edge of the bathtub, Frankie almost collapsed in a boneless heap.

  The effort it’d taken to get from one room to the other, coupled with the sensory overload of Maxine’s chatter after four months of very few wordy exchanges with her Aunt Gail, and she was wrecked.

  Frankie dropped the bar of soap and towel to the floor with jellylike arms, letting her head rest against the salmon pink tiled wall, and attempted to make her mind go blank. She’d gotten incredibly good at it since she’d come to Gail’s. There shouldn’t be any problem summoning up some more numb.

  Yet, she couldn’t stop wondering.

  Suck it up, princess?

  What kind of new age crap was that?

  “I don’t hear water running, Frankie,” Maxine warned from behind the door. “I’ll put you in that shower myself. You’ve got ten minutes. Make that twenty—you’ll need to wash that greasy hair twice—and then I’m coming in.”

  Frankie rose on unsteady legs, gripping the towel rack. She didn’t doubt Maxine would do exactly as she stated. She also didn’t doubt she had neither the strength nor the kind of oomph it would take to stop her.

  Coffee wouldn’t kill her. A shower wouldn’t either.

  It was the sucking-princess thing that worried her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  There are two sides to every divorce: yours and shithead’s.

  —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  “Well, look at you. Bright as a shiny new penny,” her aunt crowed from a corner of her tiny kitchen. “Sit, honey, and I’ll pour you some coffee.”

  The very idea made her stomach turn. Yet Frankie found herself dragging a dinette chair out and dropping into it, scooping a bewildered, silent Kiki up to sit in her lap. Her jeans gaped at her waist, pushing at the bottom of her thin T-shirt, and she wasn’t even self-conscious enough to care. It was all she had in her to drag a brush through her wet hair and locate a pair of underwear.

  Maxine sat to her left, texting on her iPhone with the neon green cover. When she looked up, it was with a smile of encouragement. “Admit it. You feel better.”

  “I feel cleaner. That’s all I’m willing to cop to.”

  Gail snorted. “You sure smell better,” she teased, plunking down a yellowish brown ceramic mug filled with steaming coffee. The cup brought a familiar ache to Frankie’s chest, making her heart constrict. Her mother once had cups just like those.

  Cupping the mug with her icy hands, she sniffed the liquid out of habit. A bad one. One Mitch had instilled in her. He used to say if she could smell the chicory, then she
’d made an acceptable enough brew.

  Gail nudged her arm with a grunt before dropping a plate of Danish in the center of the table and sitting to Frankie’s right. “Not like the highfalutin stuff you’re used to. I’d bet my pressure socks on that. It’s just plain old Chock Full o’Nuts.”

  Frankie shook her head. “I’m sorry, Aunt Gail. That wasn’t why I smelled it. It’s an old . . . Just a habit.” She bit her lip before swallowing a gulp of the steaming liquid that burned her tongue and made her stomach roil.

  “A Mitch habit,” Maxine, all-knowing, all-seeing, said.

  Her eyes rolled upward. Yes. Mitch, Mitch, Mitch.

  Maxine sipped her coffee before saying, “It’s time to break all those old habits, Frankie. If you’ll just let me help, I promise you’ll be asking yourself, ‘Who the hell is Mitch Bennett?’ before long.”

  Frankie looked down into her coffee, unable to meet Maxine’s eyes. Just hearing his name spoken out loud was like a small stab wound to her gut. This forgetting who the hell Mitch was could be done much more effectively under some covers. Asleep. “What is it exactly that you do, uh, Maxine? Are you a divorce coach or something?”

  Maxine laughed, her bright face crinkling with a smile. “Uh, no. Though, that is a service we offer. We have a support group run by a retired therapist who once specialized in family counseling. I’m not a therapist. I have no official degree—”

  “Yet,” Gail interrupted with a grin, reaching over to stroke Kiki’s back. “Maxie here’s come a long way since she got the big D. She’s going to college to get her business degree.”

  The pride in her aunt’s eyes for Maxine made Frankie slink farther down in the chair. There’d once been the possibility of a degree in her future. Until she’d met Mitch, and he’d given her the perfect excuse to bail.

  “Right. What your aunt says is true. Though, that didn’t happen overnight. It took me a long time to get my act together enough to take courses. So it’s like I said, I’ve been where you are.”

  Divorced. Right. So what? “I don’t want to be rude, Maxine, Aunt Gail, but if you’re just here to talk me off the ledge with your ex-trophy wife divorce story, I’m good. I like the ledge. In fact, I’m considering pitching a tent here.”

  Maxine’s laughter, light and airy, once again filled the small dining area. “Bitter. Now that you’re awake, and we’ve forced you out of your cave, you’re pissed. That’s a good sign. It means you still have life in you.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase and stop beating around the proverbial bush. Just tell me why you’re here, and then I can go back to bed.”

  Maxine and Gail gave each other sidelong glances.

  “What?” Frankie fought a yelp in her frustration. “Hold on. Is Maxine some kind of hit woman? I know you hated Mitch, Aunt Gail, but we can’t afford bail,” she halfheartedly joked.

  Gail barked a laugh. “I’d figure it out. I bet everyone in the village’d chip in. That Mitch deserves a good slap in the kisser and some ceee-ment shoes.”

  Because all the seniors had been witness to Gail Lumley’s pathetic niece freak out on television while they ate their tuna casserole from TV trays. Oh. God.

  “I’m not a hit woman, Frankie. I own an employment agency, one specifically geared to help women just like you.”

  “You mean ones who’ve aired their dirty laundry on a live cooking show?”

  Maxine’s expression turned pained. She blew out a breath of air, making her cheeks puff outward. “That was a lot.”

  A lot? A. Lot? She let her head sink into her hands. To say what she’d done was “a lot” was like calling the Titanic’s sinking a little mishap in the water.

  “Look, Frankie, you’re going to be recognized. That’s a fact.”

  No siree. Not if she didn’t ever leave her aunt’s retirement village ranch, she wouldn’t.

  “Deal with it. Head-on. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Who wouldn’t threaten to, and I’ll paraphrase, ‘mash her husband’s testicles if—’”

  “Cubes,” Gail said with a firm nod. “Frankie said ‘cubes.’”

  Maxine nodded back. “Right—her husband’s cubes with a potato masher after finding out he was unfaithful? I can think of ten women offhand who’d give their eyeteeth to do it on national television. I’d bet there are a million women all over the nation still smiling over that particular broadcast of Mitch in the Kitchen. But it’s over. You can’t hide from it. And before you say it, you have to leave the village sometime.”

  Wasn’t it funny all the things she had to do? Where was this universal rule book that had all these requirements located anyway?

  “Not only do you have to leave the village, but your checking account says you have to work,” Maxine reminded her.

  Frankie’s cheeks stained red, a hazard of her fair skin. “Doing what? I have no skills other than being someone’s bitch.” She was quick to cast an apologetic glance in her aunt’s direction for her language, but it was the truth. She prepped food for a television show, and the only reason she’d been given the job in the first place was due to her nagging Mitch. She’d wanted to be more involved—to be more productive.

  Whoever the hell said idle hands were the devil’s playground was full of horse puckey.

  “My employment agency helps train women just like you. Trophy and even some non-trophy wives who’ve been sedentary in the workplace for long periods of time, and you do have a skill or two, Frankie. You just don’t know it yet.”

  Yeah. She could work the shit out of a Magic Bullet. Definitely employers all over the globe would trip over themselves to hire her because of that priceless skill.

  Yet Maxine’s smile was infuriatingly serene. “Tell me what you did when you worked for the Bon Appetit Channel.”

  “I did the food prep for Mitch’s show. I chopped and organized, made sure everything was at his disposal. I’m good with color, size, and texture for a camera, and that’s it. Seeing as I pitched a nationwide fit, I don’t think there’s a television station from here to the remotest regions of Siberia that would hire me. I guess my camera-worthy food prep days are over. Now McDonald’s might find me appealing, but I don’t suppose I can earn a living there as head Big Mac maker.” And she didn’t want a job anyway. She just wanted to go back to bed because that whole slew of sentences had taken way more energy and focus than she had to give.

  “But you probably learned a lot about cooking because you were exposed to so much of it, right?”

  Oh, she’d learned. In fact, she was responsible for many of the recipes Mitch featured on his show. But she’d also learned early on—shortly before Mitch proposed to her—she hated to cook. Like really hated it. Her shoulders lifted in a small shrug. “I know enough.”

  “Those are valuable skills, Frankie. How could you not see that?”

  Gail waved a cheese Danish at her. “Tell her where you went to school, Frankie,” her aunt prompted, a hint of the pride she’d earlier shown for Maxine in her words.

  Her voice lowered in more ugly shame. If this kept up, she’d have to hyphenate her name with the word. “I dropped out of the Culinary Institute of America.”

  “Because of Mitch?” Maxine asked, folding her hands on the table, staring directly at her.

  Her eyes began to feel heavy, every word an effort. “Not just because of him, no. He made for a good excuse, though. The truth is I really hated cooking school. It wasn’t nearly the fun my mother made it while I was growing up.”

  “Frannie was a good cook. The best of the best, my sister was,” Gail chirped, her eyes glassy from unshed tears.

  Yes. Her mother, the woman she’d been named after, had been the best of the best. Frankie would give up a major organ just to be able to talk to her right now.

  Her throat tightened, but she pressed onward, hoping to speed up Maxine’s departure. “There’s a lot of pressure in a professional kitchen versus the one you grew up in where no one flipped if you did something wrong. I just didn’t
love the process the way I thought I would. I kept thinking, ‘It’s just food, not the cure for erectile dysfunction.’ I could never buy into the big deal a chef would make if someone screwed up an order, but to them, it’s like an offense of the highest order. Anyway, I was waiting tables and going to school when I met Mitch. At the time, he was the sous chef at the restaurant I waited tables for. He loved food enough for the both of us. I used to really love to watch . . . to watch him . . . cook.” Frankie gulped.

  Maxine pressed a hand to hers in comfort. It felt strange and reassuring all in one touch. “And then he changed, I take it?”

  Had he—or was he always the self-absorbed, callous prick she’d born witness to the night she’d caught Mitch and Bamby? She couldn’t remember if he was always so domineering or if at that time in her life, his dictatorial behavior was the kind of guidance she’d needed rather than resented. “I don’t know. Maybe I changed . . .”

  Maxine nibbled on a Danish with pretty white teeth. “It’s neither here nor there. All of those things can be worked out later in our group sessions. For right now, you have a job interview. So go get your pretty on, and we’ll go.” She turned her attention back to her coffee, nonchalantly stirring it with the spoon, as though she hadn’t just set off a grenade.

  Frankie’s mouth fell open. A job interview? With whom? Who would hire her to do anything but maybe babysit their cave? “I’m not ready—to—I”—she sucked in an anxious breath—“I can’t . . .”

  “No, you can, and you will.” Maxine gave her the mom look, brushing crumbs from her hands onto the yellow paper napkins Gail provided. “You have to. You’ve been in bed for six months. Do you have any idea how much time you have to make up for? So no more lollygagging. Go put on something that says ‘hire me,’ and hurry. We have to meet Nikos at five at the diner.”

  The diner. The. Diner. Unmoving, Frankie said, “The diner.”