Gretchen had held her ground about the sleeping arrangements, and the girls (for they were girls) slept in the living room in sleeping bags that Gretchen had purchased for a camping trip to the Poconos she and “Maximus” had gone on when they had been in the flush of young love. How long ago that seemed. Louise and Carly Rae (who was a still younger version of Louise, but without the glasses) switched off every night on who would sleep on the sofa and who had to sleep next to the pee pad.
At the beginning of their stay, there were little incidents that made Gretchen fume with fury. For example, when she noticed that her bottle of Molton Brown Indian Cress conditioner (which she loved because it gave her hair a sheen that made the color seem less brassy, and which was so expensive she actually had to budget for) was sitting on the edge of the tub, empty. She didn't know what was worse: that the girls had used it all up, or that they were too lazy to throw it away, or that they thought she was so clueless that if they didn't throw it away she wouldn't notice it was empty.
She had cornered Mike in his Room of Dreams, and he looked down in disbelief as she presented the empty bottle to him as if it were an exhibit for the prosecution. He had been dressed like a Victorian funeral director.
“Maximus! My conditioner!” Gretchen said. “They've used it all up. And it's not as if they didn't bring hundreds of bottles of their own with them when they came. It wasn't cheap.”
“I know it wasn't,” he had replied, then added tartly, “but you are.”
Or the time when, she couldn't remember where Louise and Mike were (it certainly wasn't giving the dog a much-needed walk, as it was snuffling around at her feet at that moment), and Carly Rae had confronted her in the kitchen. The girl was frying eggs, and had looked up at Gretchen as Gretchen struggled to make herself some 'old-person' tea. Carly Rae eyed her with the practiced disdain so common of her age.
“Umm...these eggs of yours...?” she said with a millennial whine that was like an ice pick in Gretchen’s skull.
“Yes? What about my eggs?” Gretchen said tetchily, bracing herself for whatever might come.
“I don't know where you got them from?”
Gretchen, gritting her teeth, noticed the girl didn't say 'bought,' as if the eggs had mysteriously materialized in a shopping bag that Gretchen happened to be carrying one day. (She was supplying food for all of them, including the dog.) Her fingers asphyxiated her tea mug.
There was accusation in Carly Rae's voice, and slight disgust, as she said: “They're not organic. I don't know if you know,” she was now speaking as if to a backward child, “but regular eggs contain all sorts of additives and preservatives that can trigger cancer and other diseases and illnesses.”
“Then I suggest you don't eat them.” It was a struggle to keep her tone light and calm. If the girl wanted to pay the extra for organic eggs, she should do it.
“Oh, I haveta eat them, I gotta eat something. But I'm just letting you know for your own good. For, you know, the next time you go shopping. But more than that. I worry about you, Gretchen. You're so nice. I don't care what Max says.”
A few days after they had moved in, Gretchen had asked Mike what the girls' work schedules were like, when they might not be physically there in the apartment so Gretchen could finally have a few minutes of alone time. He had rolled his eyes.
“Oh, they don't work!”
“Only losers work,” Louise had revealed out of the blue an hour later, apropos of nothing, as she and Carly Rae were braiding each other's hair on the sofa, and Carly Rae had solemnly nodded her head and eyed Gretchen with pity, as if Gretchen was one of the few not privy to this universal truth of their generation. Which let Gretchen know that, at some stage, Mike had told the girls she had asked about their employment status. It seemed to Gretchen they had probably shared a good laugh about it at her expense. She was the loser worker bee, and they were the queens of their bedbug-infested hive.
There were only a few years between Gretchen and Louise, and a few more between her and Carly Rae, but they were the important ones. Still closer to a teen than thirty. And they made Gretchen feel ancient at 28 years of age, and with the stress she thought she was looking it too.
She had asked them one night after they had eaten the food she had bought what they wanted to be ('when you grow up,' she bit her tongue from adding). Mike, hovering in a corner and inspecting their interaction as a sociologist might a tribe from Papua New Guinea, had smirked. For Louise, it was 'a shopper.' “A personal shopper?” Gretchen had asked, leaning forward with interest toward the black frames of the girl's glasses. Now, there was one job she wouldn't mind herself. Oh, for the chance to throw away the shackles of the airline and spend her days choosing Alex Trebek's neckties. Louise's nose had wrinkled with distaste. “Not for someone else!” While Gretchen struggled to understand how such a job might work, Carly Rae announced that she was going to be 'a celebrity.' She said it as if it were already written in the stars.
Whatever happened to girls who wanted to grow up to be ballerinas and nurses, Gretchen despaired.
Everybody wanted to be super rich, a star, famous. It was impossible for everyone to be famous. Yes, Gretchen knew what Andy Warhol had said, but she did some quick calculations that night while sitting on the edge of her bed, even though she wasn't good at math. If the world's population was 8 billion, and, presuming at any one time 2000 could be recognized worldwide, famous, at any one time, and there were 8,768 hours per year, so every hour 8000 people could get their 15 minutes of fame, that meant for the 8000 people famous this very hour to have their fifteen minutes of fame would take 70,144,000 years. For all 8 billion alive now to have their 15 minutes, therefore, would take 70,144,000,000 years. At least that's what Gretchen calculated, though as she was horrible at math if it made any sense or not was anybody's guess. She didn't know how she might break this gently to Louise and Carly Rae, because even as young as they were, they would probably be long dead before their allotted time slot became available, no matter what advances in medical technology might surface.
Gretchen discovered as the days dragged on and they talked to her—and maybe they couldn't work, but they could certainly talk—that, according to Louise and Carly Rae, everyone was lame, stupid, a loser, an idiot, unintelligent, mentally challenged. People who worked were stupid, the military forces were stupid, the books they read were stupid, the shows they watched were stupid. The only three in the world didn't seem to be stupid were Louise, Carly Rae and “Max.” And Nebuchadnezzar.
That they thought soldiers were stupid irked Gretchen. Thinking of the military bases of her youth made her feel warm and fuzzy, the result of a happy childhood with Ursula and Jed and her brothers Egbert and Vaughn in all the places around the world that needed the protection of the American forces. This love of the military had never won Gretchen any favors with her bleeding heart liberal friends and their knee-jerk reactions, but Gretchen couldn't help it. That's how she felt.
Soldiers, sailors, the Marines, the Air Force, all fought for their country and allowed these two, three, ungrateful brats their stupid freedom of speech to call them stupid. And Gretchen owned an actual Dolly Parton CD, not just mp3s, and listened to not only the poppy ones, “9 to 5” and “Islands In The Stream,” but also the hoedown, good ol' country boy, Grand Ole Opry ones like “Coat Of Many Colors” and “Joelene.” As Gretchen was getting older, she was becoming less liberal, as generally happens in any event. If you're young and liberal you have a heart, if you're old and liberal you have no brain.
On the eleventh day of their invasion, Gretchen staggered home from Idaho, her case pounding up the stairs behind her, and she knew something was up. As she reached the door, she could hear the girls hissing, “Here she comes!” “She's at the door!” “Shhh!” and heard footsteps racing to and fro. There was a smell pulsating through the door, and this time it wasn't marijuana. It was worse. It smelled like... She felt her stomach lurch with disgust. She ground the key into the lock, dreading
what she knew would soon confront her.
“Ta-dah!” Louise and Carly Rae chorused, the dog jumping and clawing at her legs. Their faces were shiny and bright, their eyes glittering with excitement, all three of them.
Gretchen flinched as Louise thrust a bouquet of flowers at her, and Carly Rae a box of Ferrero Rocher hazelnut chocolates. Gretchen's bag clattered to the floor.
“What on earth—?”
It was a difficult embrace, with the flowers and chocolates, the dog entwined in their legs and Gretchen wanting to push them away, but embrace the three of them did.
“We wanted to thank you for everything you've done for us!” Louise enthused, and Gretchen could detect no sarcasm.
“Yes, Gretchen,” Carly Rae bubbled, “we really appreciate it! You rock!”
“You've been awesome!” Louise agreed. “And so we worked all day long to cook you a special dinner!”
“Our mother's favorite recipe,” Carly Rae gushed.
“Glazed Bourbon-Mustard Ham!”
“And special deviled eggs! I got organic ones. For your health.”
“Everything's organic.”
“Come, come! We timed it just right! It just came out of the oven. We've got everything plated and ready for you. Our special guest.”
“You've got the place of honor at the table. Well, as much as we could make a place of honor.”
“And champagne, too!”
“Get over here!”
They pulled a startled Gretchen towards the tiny 'dining area,' an awkward corner just off the kitchen. Mike was already sitting at the table, sneering behind the shimmering flames of the candles. They had fit chairs that nobody ever sat in around the table, and tied a big green bow around the back of the old chair that always lurked, useless, between the TV and the bookshelf.
“We got a green bow. Because you're Irish,” Carly Rae said, pulling out the chair and guiding a stricken Gretchen into it. She sat down haltingly, her heart sinking as she looked down at the plates stretching across the table before her. They had even dredged up a tablecloth from somewhere, blue and white checks, and had fashioned napkins into swans or some bird-like creatures. They had carved and served up what looked like a ten-pound ham, succulent, juicy, perfectly cooked, peppered with cloves, and had taken the time to construct little chick faces into the deviled eggs, the beaks slivers of carrot, the eyes peppercorns.
“We know it's been difficult for you having us stay here.”
“We know we haven't been the best house guests.”
“And we always seem to be under your feet.”
“But our daddy paid for a new apartment.”
“We're moving out of here tomorrow and into that one.”
“Chelsea.”
“We just wanted to thank you.”
“We had such fun slumming it here with you!”
As they babbled on and on and sat down and pulled apart their napkins and sat them on their laps and poured out glasses of champagne, Cheers! Cheers! Cheers! Gretchen gripped her glass tightly, not able to tell which high-pitched voice belonged to whom. She was too busy strangling Mike with her eyes.
“I—I don't know what to say...” she said stiffly, unable to meet the girls' eyes. Her own were watering too much.
“Enjoy, darling,” Mike said with a smile.
They picked up their knives and forks and dug in. Except Gretchen. She tried to hide the heaves that gripped her throat, her stomach, with a wan smile. The aroma roiled from the ham, huge, pungent wafts that invaded her nostrils, flooded her nasal cavity, and attacked her olfactory neurons. Her brain panicked. She longed to bolt from the chair and spew up down the toilet.
How many times had she told Mike, then Maximus, that she hated, couldn't abide, loathed pork. It came from her childhood. She couldn't remember it, but her mother Ursula had told her many times the story of how, when she was a child, little Gretchen used to sneak into the refrigerator and eat the slices of ham from the packages that were supposed to be for the three children's school lunches. After doing it one time too many, their maid (they had been living in Turkey then, and maids were cheap) had sat Gretchen down at the kitchen table and forced her to eat five packages of ham in a row. Ursula and Jed had fired the woman, and Gretchen had never been able to eat ham again. She had been scarred for life, as least as far as ham was concerned. Why wouldn't Mike have brought this up when they told him what they were going to cook? For this special meal for her. Or had he planned the menu?
Gretchen pushed her plate away from her. “I—I can't eat ham,” she finally admitted.
The girls, forks aloft, looked at her in shock.
“Are you Jewish?” Carly Rae shrieked. “Or Muslim?”
“Yes.” It was the easiest thing to say. They'd be gone the next day, after all.
Louise punched Mike in the arm.
“Why didn't you tell us, silly?”
“And we went to all this trouble!” Carly Rae pouted.
“It's the first I've heard of it,” Mike said.
Gretchen hauled herself from the table. The terrible thing was, she was ravenous. She opened the cupboard for something to eat.
“You can still eat the eggs at least,” Carly Rae suggested, her young face twisted with concern.
“They're...covered with the juice,” Gretchen said, throat pinched.
“I feel awful now!” Louise wailed.
“We wanted to do something nice for you our last night here!” Carly Rae said.
“You guys go ahead and eat. Don't worry about me. Really. I'll be fine with this, this,” Gretchen scrabbled through the items in the cupboard, “can of corn. How were you to know?”
She could tell from their miserable faces that they hadn't known. As she screwed the opener around the lid the can, every day they had stayed there shifted in her mind, and the torture was suddenly now more palatable. Louise and Carly Rae weren't malicious, or weren't malicious per se; they were just young and dumb. Gretchen wasn't sure of the age of the dog, but it seemed dumb as well. As if runny eyes and an itchy throat weren't bad enough, the dog had pissed on her favori—her only cashmere sweater. She couldn't fault the three of them. Mike was another story, however. And he certainly wasn't young.
“I hope you don't mind, but the smell of that is making me sick. I think I'll eat my corn in the bedroom.”
She grabbed a spoon, not even bothering to heat her 'dinner' up.
When the girls were leaving the next morning, as Mike was, thank God, taking a shower, Louise sidled up to Gretchen and bent towards her. Their frames were almost touching, as if Louise feared Mike might somehow hear her through the splashing water and the door and the walls. “I appreciate him helping me and my sister out like this. But that ham thing... I have to tell you...” she whispered in Gretchen's ear, “I was so happy when I broke up with him. I think you should, too.”
Then they left. And here she and Mike finally were: alone together. But he was usually at one end of the apartment, she at the other. Those few times they talked, it wasn't conversation, it was confrontation. Gretchen was sick of the sight of Mike's toothbrush at the sink, the bristles tattered and manky and, when she sniffed them one day, exuding an odor of stale beer, tobacco and worse.
And that walk of his! When they had met, she had seen him as if gliding across the sidewalk, that boyish, disarming smile she rarely encountered any more on his face. Now she realized it wasn't gliding. It was mincing. Sometimes she wondered while walking down the street with him if people thought she was his fag hag. Or, worse, that he was a closet case and she the sad girlfriend who couldn't see the obvious.
Gretchen wished she could throw Mike into the Hudson River like they had the crabs and lobsters, but instead of setting him free, she hoped he would drown, or be mauled by sharks. On the mat before Phil, they had just been eliminated. Their Amazing Race had ended. If they wanted her for a reunion show, she would politely decline.
She spent all her time trying to scrimp and save, which w
as difficult as she herself had to pay every bill that tortured them—her name was on them all. She wanted to pay off that damn $2193 and get rid of him. So far she had put aside $167.
Gretchen had even gone so far one evening, a week after the girls had moved out and when Mike was out of the apartment 'writing poetry on a bench in a park,' to call her parents and ask them for the money. She knew her mom and dad would gladly bail her out. She felt ashamed as she pressed the number for their landline. She had wanted to make it on her own. Lead an adult life without her parents' help. That's why most of her purses weren't originals. Her parents, Ursula and Jed, would have gladly paid for an original Tory Burch for her, for a Chanel clutch. But Gretchen didn't want them to. She wanted to prove she was self-sufficient. Her own person. So she settled for knockoffs.
But now, $2026 in her account and she'd be free. The call went to voicemail. She called her dad's cell phone, though with less conviction. Voicemail again. Then, with even less conviction, she called her mother's cell phone. Voicemail. Then she remembered her parents had told her they were going on an 'Operas of the World' cruise. It sounded like a bizarre thing to do, especially for her dad, but if that's what they wanted to do... Apparently, they were somewhere in the Atlantic with no cell phone coverage.
Gretchen hung up, strangely relieved. Maybe this was God's way of telling her she should stick to her guns, do it alone. She'd just have to work harder, save more, then kick Mike out. At least Louise and Carly Rae were gone.
Gretchen was thinking of the girls fondly, perhaps even missing them, as she trudged, tense, up the stairs to the C200 for the 7:45 AM flight to Alabama. She winced at the key chain in the tiny side pocket of her red micro-skirt digging into the flesh of her hip. The fortune cookie in plastic, the remembrance of her and Mike's first wonderful date together, the one that said THIS IS RIGHT. When she flung the keys in whatever accommodation in some godforsaken outpost Nickel and Dime had sent her, she sometimes looked at the chain sitting there on whatever passed for a table or a desk and smiled tenderly, used to like a piece of Mike, or Maximus, as he was then, along with her for the ride. And as she was dealing with the sniping and turbulence and thin oxygen, she had liked the feel of a bit of him deep in her pocket, pressing against her skin. Now she felt it clawing at her flesh like something out of the Exorcist.
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 16