Live a Little

by Kim Green

  “You don’t have to yell!” Sue yells.

  I take it down a notch, my attempt to locate the happy place abandoned. “Look, I want to tell them the truth, but I can’t right now, because then what will happen to Laurie’s credibility? And the Breast Cancer Alliance budget for next year? And my gallery pieces? And my guest spot on Laurie’s show? And my column? And the book deal? I know this can’t go on forever, but a lot of people depend on me because of it. I can’t just let them down.” I think of Jean, of Doreen, of the other women from the support group, the women who watch me on Laurie’s show, and the money from the sale of my bust constructions that has funded, if not breast-cancer research itself, a nice chaise for the support-group lounge and a subsidy for member child care.

  Sue pushes back her chair and hoists herself upward. “I can’t stand it anymore. I feel so guilty. I can barely look your mom or Phil or the kids in the eye. You’re out of your mind, you know that?”

  “I tried to tell them! They didn’t listen, remember?”

  “I never thought it would go this far.” Sue’s bottom lip quivers.

  “This is the thanks I get for fixing things with Arlo and putting your family back together for you? For massaging your disgusting pregnancy bunions and running your baths and shopping for the goddamn black Perigord truffles and Tibetan saffron you want, even though I had to go all the way to Burlingame for it, and driving Fina to school forty-five miles away every damn day while you rail at Rachael Ray just for being cute?” Now that Arlo has agreed to give biological fatherhood a shake, I am here to help Sue move back into her house, I’m not here to get crucified for past sins, and I am pissed.

  “Oh, you’re going to take credit for fixing my family, too?” She raises her eyes to the sky in appeal. “Thank you, queen of the universe!”

  “I’m the one who went to talk some sense into Arlo! What were you doing while I was traipsing around fixing things up? Lying on your fat ass eating bonbons and watching soaps, that’s what! While Tamarind sinks into obsolescence because la capitana has decamped for some poolside moping.”

  Sue points one of her short, blunt-nailed little fingers at me. “Don’t ever say that about Tamarind! I kept you in frittatas for more years than you deserve!”

  “Is Tamarind all you care about? Your little”—I point my nose in the air— “ hoity-toity rabbit-food palace for the appetite-impaired?” I regret the words as soon as they come out. “Sue,” I say immediately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that—”

  “Of course you did.” She clings to the butcher block as if faint.

  “No, really, this conversation has gotten totally off track. Sue, please.”

  “Quel,” Sue says tiredly, “we both know we’ll be friends tomorrow, and the day after, and probably next month and next year, so I’m not going to waste our time pretending otherwise. But here’s the deal: I am going to take a step back for a while. I’m going to grow this baby, and then I’m going to raise it. I wouldn’t presume to give you an ultimatum or anything, but this is how I feel: I don’t want to be around your family right now. I know what’s going on. They don’t. It sucks. I can’t do it. I don’t have the energy.”

  She shakes her curly head and levels me with her clear gray gaze. “You’ve changed, Quel, you have. I’m glad you’re living your dream and all, I really am, but I’m not sure if the Raquel of your dreams is the one I would have become friends with, if I had met her first.”

  CHAPTER 27

  A See’s Candies Moment

  I am awakened by pebbles hitting my window at 2:46 A.M. Goddammit, Phil, can’t you just remember what day it is? Is that so hard?

  I roll over and burrow under the blankets, willing the noise to cease. I had a terrible time getting to sleep, what with the fight with Sue and my children’s continued unexplained absences, which could point to all manner of scenarios, all of them bad.

  Tat. Tat, tat, tat.

  Shit.

  Phil and I have maintained separate residences since the, well, separation. I think we both like it this way, the safety net of marriage unfastened but not as yet discarded and consigned to the Dumpster. That doesn’t preclude our biweekly midnight rendezvous, which are scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays.

  It is Thursday.

  Tat. Tat, tat, tat, TAT.

  What’d he throw, a boulder? Incensed and bleary-eyed with exhaustion, I extract myself from the tangle of sheets, stub my toe on the bedpost, yelp, and feel my way toward the window.

  “Go away,” I hiss. “What do you think this is, the Mustang Ranch?” Nevada’s most famous legal brothel is, what, a mere three hundred miles away? Dear Hubby can go there to get his fix if he can still afford it.

  “I think the feds seized the place a couple years ago,” Duke Dunne says. He is standing under my bedroom window, in my rosebushes, looking quite satisfied with himself, if a little out of place. He still looks like Gael García Bernal, but like GGB stuck someplace incongruous and unworthy of his greatness, like Kentucky Fried Chicken.

  “What are you doing here?” We haven’t seen each other since the accident. As far as I’m concerned, the statute of limitations on our relationship expired along with Duke’s motorcycle. There are things that aren’t meant to be, after all. See how Zen I can be when I am pretty sure what I am doing is illegal in Alabama?

  “I have to talk to you,” he says.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Drove.”

  “A car?” It is strange, but he and his freewheeling persona are so linked to beachcombing in my mind that I cannot imagine him taking conventional modes of transportation.

  “It’s Freshie’s,” he says, naming the friend he was staying with in Santa Cruz. “Hey, let me in, will you? I gotta take a leak.”

  I let him in the front door, not even bothering to tiptoe around or make myself passably attractive. Why bother? Everything is unraveling anyway. Why not give the kids something sordid to tell Phil’s lawyer when the time comes? If Duke wants to spirit me south of the border this time, he can do it with me in my robe and night cream, sans support bra.

  After showing Duke to the powder room, I lead him to the kitchen. The sight of Duke Dunne surrounded by the mundane trappings of my real life, the soccer schedules and overloaded trash compactor and commemorative plastic cups from McDonald’s, almost makes me laugh. Strangely, it does not diminish him; it’s the kitchen that looks fake and weird, like someone’s ponderous, mocking idea of a kitchen.

  “I’m sorry I woke you up.” Duke reaches out to touch me and seems to reconsider. “I’m going back to Sayulita tomorrow.”

  “Do you want some cereal?” He shakes his head, and I pour myself a heaping bowl of peanut-butter puffs and milk and dig in.

  “How are you doing?” I say. I have to say, he doesn’t look well, sort of flushed, with matted hair and a hint of body odor I don’t recall from our earlier adventures. I wonder if he’d consent to a shower. We could take one together, to save water. California often has a drought on, you know. It can’t hurt to plan for the future. For the children.

  He waves me off. “Whatever. I just wanted to. . . I came over ’cause we never agreed on”—his eyes rake me up and down—“Christ, I’m so fuckin’ into you,” he says.

  I drop the spoon, which splashes some milk on Duke’s sleeve. Impulsively, I brush his arm; I feel it tremble under the worn denim. He grabs my face in his hands. My hands travel involuntarily to his arms again. The knotty ropes of muscle under my fingers make me a little dizzy.

  “It’s you,” he says.

  “What’s me?” I hope he can’t smell my breath. I brushed my teeth before bed, but I did have garlic scampi for dinner. Twice.

  “I think I’m in love with you,” he says impatiently.

  “Duke,” I say gently. “You’re conflating things. Boredom.

  Change. Wanting something different. We don’t really know each other, do we? You were ready for something to happen, and I was there. I’m an idea
, that’s all. A bad one.” I am on solid ground when it comes to bad ideas and escapism. In this matter, finally, I am an expert.

  Duke kisses me.

  As kisses go, it is sloppy and unstudied. Duke’s mouth is gamey with the taste of all-nighter and misconceived ideas. My hands slide into his wild thatch of brown-gold hair. It is thick and slippery, like seal coat. Our teeth slap together once, twice, before we gain traction and sink into the kiss. He is a grunter the way I’ve been told I am a moaner, his every inadvertent utterance a spark that sends flames licking up my belly. This (last) time, I am gratified to discover he is still Duke, still achingly unformed and problematic, not a generic force barging its way into my space with stubble and neediness bared.

  “Raquel,” he murmurs against my cheek.

  He pushes my robe apart. The bar stool wobbles, but his grasp on me is firm. I understand why people invent words like “automagically,” because, lo and behold, my legs automagically part and wrap themselves around him. We kiss violently for a while, or it could be minutes. I don’t know. Everything is bright and stark and overclarified, even a little bit ugly, like a sex scene in a French movie aiming to shock. It is, I am fully aware, a perfect good-bye.

  “I’m not saying good-bye to you,” he says, nuzzling my ear and neck and lips. The sound of his breath ragged against my face makes me weak. Duke’s palm steals under my cami and around my breast, rough and possessive and deliciously dirty and—do I imagine this?—just a little bit awed. For the first time in memory, I am able to see my ample, prone-to-sagging forty-three-year-old rack through someone else’s eyes, and the view is favorable. Under the patchwork Levi’s, Duke’s crotch is alive and hard. I slide tighter against him, reaching deep for something I didn’t think I wanted to find a moment ago. The jeans give a satisfying leap.

  It is, without question, the best kiss I have ever had.

  The kiss does something instantaneous and irrevocable to memories of all other kisses. Not only do I recall all of them in a moment of instant, beautifully preserved clarity, but I am, perhaps for the first time ever, able to view them with the tenderness and lack of judgment they deserve. It’s as if I opened a box of See’s Candies, and each one represented a single aspect of myself, from the singularity of dark chocolate to the artless delight of moist caramel. With Ren, I see now, I was toffee brittle, so stratified with girlish passion and unfulfilled need, that to kiss me was to shatter me. The girl who first met Phil Rose was pure milk-chocolate buttercream, primed and velvety, with a drop of rummy sophistication fermented by Ren’s injurious abandonment. Later, Mrs. Raquel Rose: bitter nougat, studded with the salty crunch of nuts, coated in complex truffle.

  The kiss shatters two notions I have always held dear: first, that you have to be in love with somebody—really, truly, planning-your-future in love—for a kiss to portend a great next thirty minutes. And second, that hellos are always better than good-byes when it comes to sex.

  Something falls. It is not me, and I don’t think it is Duke, who is wrapped so greedily around me that he may as well be a carnivorous plant.

  I look up.

  Taylor and Micah stand at the kitchen entrance, looking way too alert for four A.M. Tay stomps her fake-UGG-shod foot again, her face flushed with childlike mutiny. Then she rears back and kicks the wall. It leaves a hole the size of an overturned coffee spill. Unfortunately, it is not big enough for me to crawl into. Tay steps over the crumbs of plaster and takes a few tentative steps into the room.

  “Funny, I thought it was past the kids’ bedtime,” she says.

  “Syrup?” I ask.

  All three takers sit obediently while I pour a generous amount of Vermont’s finest over their pancakes.

  “Powdered sugar?”

  Duke declines, but Taylor and Micah both nod. The butter has already melted, forming frothy puddles.

  “Coffee?”

  I have never offered my children caffeine at home, but then neither have they stumbled upon me making out with Taylor’s surf instructor on the kitchen island or kicked in a wall with nary a repercussion. Grasping the need to flow with the surreal nature of this encounter, the kids simply hold out their mugs and accept the brew. Truthfully, I am impressed. Children really are resilient.

  Everyone eats.

  I take in the civilized scene and think, I could get used to this.

  Micah breaks the silence. “Have you ever surfed Mavericks?”

  Duke swallows a bite of banana pancake. “Yeah.”

  “What was it like? Was it insane?” Enthusiastic. One immortal young athlete to another.

  “It’s like dropping off a thirty-foot ledge into thin air. If you survive the chops on the face— which are bigger than what most people ever ride ever— you do it again. And again. The drops are unbelievable. The wave jacks so hard . . . I’m not sure I’d even try it again. I feel lucky.” He looks hard at me as he says this. I blush.

  “Are you moving in?” Taylor asks abruptly.

  “Nobody’s moving in,” I answer sharply, glancing at Duke to see if the suggestion has caused apoplexy. Apparently, it is so off-the-charts ridiculous—or he is so deluded by romantic notions of my viability as a MILF—that it causes no distress; he continues to wolf our premature breakfast at a hangover pace.

  I do not want to insult my kids’ intelligence by dragging out the old chestnut about Duke and me being “just friends.” I don’t care what anyone else does: I do not nibble the seashell ridge of my friends’ ears while they convulse against me, and my friends do not hook their thumbs under the strings of my bikini briefs and massage my hip flexors until I scream. Nor do I intend to apologize for carrying on with Duke Dunne in the middle of the night in our kitchen. It occurs to me that to acknowledge the moral inferiority of your paradigm to your children is to yank the very foundation of life out from under them. The fact that your actions or beliefs may indeed be morally inferior is secondary. They are going to have to trust me on this one.

  “I just want to know.” Taylor looks at me. Her eyes brim. “So I can get you declared incompetent, get legally emancipated from you and Dad, and go to L.A. to model.”

  Micah laughs. “She thinks she’s Lindsay Lohan or something.”

  Although I tend to agree, I don’t like Micah’s tone, which is somewhere between disdainful and downright nasty. Yet I dare not mock Taylor’s anger. If I were the one in her position, the foyer mirrors would have come down along with the wall.

  “No one is moving in with anyone,” I say again. “We can talk about the emancipation of Taylor when everybody’s calmed down and had some breakfast.”

  “I hadn’t asked your mother yet,” says Duke over a mouthful. “I’m not sure I’m the marrying type. I’m a free spirit, too.”

  “Duke, for God’s sake.” But I can’t help grinning.

  Micah cuts in. “Did you know she drives a minivan?”

  “Do you have kids?” Taylor continues the Inquisition, this time flicking the bullwhip at Duke, building her case to take before a mock judge.

  “No. I was married for a year after college, but we didn’t have any kids. It didn’t work out.”

  The pugnacious Schultz chin sticks out at this newsy nugget. “Sounds like you are the marrying type, you just suck at it.”

  “Taylor!” I scold.

  Duke laughs. “You know, she’s right. My little sister said the same thing once. She said something to the effect of, if you really want to be a good husband, then don’t get married in the first place. I thought it was pretty smart for a twelve-year-old.”

  “Very observant,” Micah notes.

  Duke cocks his head. “She’s single, if you’re interested. Just graduated from UCLA. Brainy, a little bossy, if you ask me. You want her number?”

  “I’m gay.”

  Duke nods. “Oh, yeah, Raquel told me that. Duh.” He tugs his goatee. “Dude! This dude I know in Santa Cruz—”

  “Guys.” My hands grip the table, not white-knuckled, exactly, but c
lose. I may have wanted to flirt with the idea of the blended family, but this is getting ridiculous. Duke as late-night rosebush trampler I can take; Duke as yenta, not so much.

  I glance out the window as the sun peeks over the houses across the street, sending them into shadow. Daylight makes me think of reality, which pushes several important things to the forefront of my worry basket: Sue; the pieces I need to finish for Saskia; whether Duke and I have anything resembling a future together; whether Phil and I have anything resembling a future together; what the kids are going to tell Phil; what I’m going to tell Phil; how I’m going to end this giant fiasco. Last night doesn’t strike me as officially regrettable yet, but I see, now that the moon has descended, it soon will. Maybe it was worth it, though. Maybe my See’s Candies moment will flavor things to come.

  CHAPTER 28

  How to Win a Time Slot Without Even Trying

  “Ms. Rose, I saw your new show at San Francisco MOMA, and I have to say, I was so moved.” Shiny Pony, Laurie’s associate producer, holds her clipboard firmly to her scant chest, as if physically reining in the torrent of sentimentalism that threatens to burst forth, shearing its way through the prim layers of mauve cotton-Lycra button-down and Banana Republic wool crepe. She is staring at me with the fevered admiration formerly reserved for, well, Laurie.

  Mindful of not smearing my makeup or mussing my hair, I lean forward and grasp Shiny’s blunt-nailed hand, giving it an encouraging squeeze. Also, I give her the thousand-watt smile, baring teeth recently bleached by lasers in the warm-modern office of Dr. Quentin Sloane, who, everyone knows, is the man responsible for the porcelain grins of every news anchor, aspiring starlet, and celebrity artist in town. Gratefully, Shiny returns my squeeze, then slips away with great reluctance, her eyes misty.

  Don’t laugh. In the months since my first taping, I have developed a highly functional repertoire of such gestures: the sisterly half-hug, the empathetic shoulder stroke, the prim white-girl power salute, the killer grin. In fact, as Ma observed rather pointedly on a recent family outing, where I was swarmed by well-wishers and fans of the show, my smile was starting to resemble Tom Cruise’s in terms of pure eat-your-enemies-with-a-side-of-salsa gusto. I never thought I’d say this, but really, Tom is not that bad. I’m sure he’s just trying to make his fans feel good. And if it makes them feel good, why not?