Mommy Tracked

by Whitney Gaskell

  And suddenly, sitting there with her slack stomach resting on her thighs, Grace began to blink back tears. She had a pretty good idea why they’d never been asked to swing. Louis had actually gotten better-looking with age, and women—women like the horrible Skylar, with her tacky overbleached teeth and nonexistent ass—were forever flirting with him, laughing girlishly up at him as they tossed their hair back.

  So obviously it’s me, Grace thought, miserable. I’m so fat and unattractive, no one wants to swing with me.

  Grace had always thought that once you were married, you wouldn’t have to ever face sexual rejection again. But now she felt like the girl who hasn’t been asked to the prom and ends up having to take her geeky cousin as a date instead.

  That afternoon, while Louis was at work, the baby was napping, and the girls were busy coloring at the kitchen table, Grace settled in at the computer. She clicked on Internet Explorer and typed in a new search: DIET PLANS. The results—all 38,200,000 of them—popped up. Grace began to browse through the list but quickly lost interest when she saw it was the same-old-same-old. Just calorie-counting plans, or the ones where you have to buy ready-made meals that taste like congealed chemicals. She wanted something different. Something that would work fast.

  Miracle Diet Tea, Grace thought, remembering what Alice had told her that morning. She typed the words DIET TEA into the search engine. This time there were only 19,800,000 results. And about halfway down on the first page, a blurb caught Grace’s eye:

  Having trouble losing that spare tire or excess baby weight? Miracle Diet Tea can help! Adding Miracle Diet Tea is a healthy way to speed up your metabolism so you burn off those unwanted pounds! And now, with our special 30-day money-back guarantee, there’s no reason not to give Miracle Diet Tea a try!

  Grace clicked onto the Web site. And ten minutes later, after reading about the Chinese herbal ingredients that had been proven effective and gushing testimonials from dozens of happy Miracle Diet Tea customers, she was convinced. Grace went to fetch her credit card from her wallet.

  six

  Anna

  I was thinking of something like this,” Anna said, showing her hairstylist, Jean Luc, a picture of Julia Roberts she’d clipped from InStyle magazine. Julia was walking her twins in a double stroller, and her hair fell in shiny waves around her lovely, glowing face. “I’m going on a date Saturday,” she confessed. “The first date I’ve had in years.”

  “We cut,” Jean Luc announced in a thick French accent. He was almost frighteningly good-looking, with his broad shoulders, piercing green eyes, and thick, glossy blond hair.

  “Not too much,” Anna said worriedly.

  “We cut,” Jean Luc said again firmly. “I make you très chic, très glamorous.”

  Chic and glamorous. Perfect, Anna thought with a twinge of excitement.

  It wasn’t until he started shampooing her hair that Anna noticed how sad Jean Luc looked. He kept sighing heavily, and at one point Anna thought she saw tears glistening in his eyes.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “My lover is left. Bastard. My life, she is finie.”

  “Oh, Jean Luc, I’m so sorry,” Anna said. Her heart squeezed with sympathy.

  “Marcus was—how you say?—sleeping around,” Jean Luc said. He pursed his thick lips together in a pout and began to scrub roughly at Anna’s scalp.

  “I know exactly you how you feel. The same thing happened to me, only in my case it was another woman,” Anna said, flinching. It felt like Jean Luc was ripping her hair out by the roots. “Ouch!”

  Jean Luc rinsed the shampoo from her hair, lifted the seat back to the upright position, and wrapped a towel around her dripping locks.

  “Men,” he pronounced, “they are pigs. Swine. How you say? Asshole.” The last word left his mouth in an angry hiss, and he turned and kicked the wall so hard, his Dr. Martens left a black mark on the light-blue paint.

  Later, Anna knew that’s when she should have stood up and walked right out of the salon, wet hair or no. Because while Jean Luc was a brilliant stylist, easily the best in town, the quality of his cuts depended greatly on his mood. When he was happy—in love and high on life—he was phenomenal. He’d lean back and scrutinize the hair to be cut, picking up a lock here and there. And suddenly he’d leap into motion, his hands moving nonstop, like a French Edward Scissorhands. Hair would fly through the air, and all you would hear would be the metallic snip-snip-snip of the scissors. Then, just as suddenly as he started, he’d stop. He’d set down his scissors, clap his hands, and say, “Is finish! Très belle!” And the client would turn her head from side to side, marveling at how gorgeous she looked.

  But when Jean Luc was in a dark mood, it was entirely possible that you’d leave the salon looking like a poodle who’d met up with the wrong end of a weed-whacker. Now, hearing Jean Luc mutter Gallic curses under his breath, Anna felt a twinge of concern. In fact, it wasn’t so much of a twinge as a big blaring siren, warning her to get away before it was too late.

  “Um,” she said. “Maybe…”

  But before she could finish this thought, Jean Luc sprang forward and began to cut. The scissors were moving so fast, they were almost blurred. He crouched down, hopped from side to side; all the while his hands were in constant motion. Hair flew everywhere, fluttering down around Anna like brown confetti.

  Ten minutes later, Anna was staring at the mirror in horror. Hot tears burned in her eyes, and all she could do was shake her head from side to side.

  “Très belle,” Jean Luc said sullenly.

  “You…you…you balded me,” Anna croaked.

  Her formerly long locks were gone, lying limply on the floor around the chair. Jean Luc had shorn her hair so that it was about an inch long all around, except for in the back, where there was some sort of weird Mrs. Brady flip. And the bangs—that was the worst part. He’d cut her bangs into a freakish asymmetrical eighties-style slant. One half was sticking straight up, the other bent back at a ludicrous forty-five-degree angle.

  “C’est très chic! Très Parisienne,” Jean Luc said, fluffing at the crown, teasing the hair up with his comb so that it was practically standing on end. It wasn’t making anything better. Now she looked like a human Q-tip. “You no like?”

  “No! I no like! I hate! I look hideous!” Anna said through clenched teeth.

  Jean Luc threw up his hands and started muttering in French. He opened a silver cigarette case, tapped a cigarette out, and lit it, seemingly unaware of the Florida health code.

  “But it’s très belle,” he tried again, although he really couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for it. He blew two long streams of smoke out of his nose.

  “No,” Anna hissed, waving away the cloud of smoke. “It. Is. Not. Très. Belle. You balded me.”

  Jean Luc sighed resignedly, stubbed out his cigarette on a vintage art-deco ashtray, and gave a dramatic shrug.

  “So I fix,” he said, picking up his scissors again.

  With tears still hot in her eyes, Anna just shook her head and slid off the seat. She snapped the black cape off and tossed it onto her vacated chair.

  “Forget it,” she said, thinking that if she let Jean Luc anywhere near her with those scissors again, she’d probably end up leaving with a buzz cut.

  “Hat,” Charlie said happily, looking up at Anna.

  “That’s right,” Anna said. “Mama’s wearing a baseball hat.”

  “Sba hat,” Charlie repeated.

  “Close enough,” Anna said with a sigh and wondered if she could get away with wearing a hat on her date with Noah.

  Anna and Charlie walked down the long boardwalk to the beach. Anna held on to Charlie with one hand, helping him navigate the sand-covered walkway, and in the other she carried a kite shaped like an enormous red and gold butterfly. As the boardwalk crested, the ocean came into view. The water was midnight blue and shimmering in the sunlight. The gentle roar of the waves instantly relaxed
Anna. The tension in her shoulders disappeared, her lungs opened up, and she rallied for the first time since Jean Luc had butchered her hair that morning. The sea always had this effect on her. It was part of the reason Anna had never left Florida—she couldn’t bear to live away from the beach.

  A strong breeze blew off the water, causing the kite to ripple and jump, and Anna had to let go of Charlie’s hand to keep the kite from getting away from her. The wind had kept sunbathers away from the beach, for the most part. Only a few people were spread out on the sand, hunkered down in beach chairs with striped towels spread across their laps. No one was braving the water—the late-February afternoon was cool, and the waves were churning—but a few intrepid souls were out parasurfing, skimming effortlessly along the water, pulled by the brightly colored parachutes.

  “Look!” Charlie called out. “Bird!”

  He pointed a chubby finger at a pelican that was skimming the water, dipping the tips of its wings in the sea as it fished for its dinner. Overcome with excitement, Charlie began to run down toward the ocean.

  “Charlie, don’t go too close to the water,” Anna called after him. He turned to look at her, a mischievous smile lighting up his face. Uh-oh. She knew that smile well. It meant: I’m going to do something so breathtakingly dangerous, it might actually cause the remaining hair on your head to instantly turn gray. “Let’s see if we can make your kite fly,” she said.

  But the temptation of the sea was too much. Charlie turned back toward the water, his face alight with interest. He’d always been fascinated with the ocean, and Anna knew that if she didn’t stop him, he’d end up marching right into the surf, fully dressed, and keep marching until he was quite literally in over his head and swept out to sea.

  Anna retrieved Charlie and, keeping one hand firmly on the back loop of his pants, began to unwrap the kite string with the other hand. Between the wind and Charlie’s struggles to get free of her grasp, it was slow going, but finally the kite was ready to fly. The wind rattled against the plastic, making the butterfly look like it was eager to jump up and test its wings.

  “Okay, sweetheart, are you ready?” Anna asked.

  Charlie’s eyes were round with wonder as Anna tossed the kite up into the brisk wind rolling off the ocean, and the butterfly took off, somersaulting through the sky. Charlie shrieked happily as he watched the kite’s flight.

  A heavy gust of wind blew toward the shore. The kite dipped dangerously and looked like it might make a crash landing. Anna tightened up on the string, trying to regain control. Once the kite had righted itself and begun soaring again, she glanced down at where Charlie was standing just a moment ago. He was gone.

  “Charlie?” she said, looking around.

  And there he was, again inching toward the water. In fact, much too close to the water.

  “Charlie,” Anna said again, her voice rising nervously.

  But Charlie didn’t even turn around. Instead, he continued to stride right into the surf, wobbling a bit as a wave rocked into him, the water sweeping up over his feet. The waves were treacherously high, white-capped and powerful as they rolled toward shore. Anna immediately had a nightmarish vision of Charlie being sucked into the undertow.

  “Charlie!” Anna shrieked. She let go of the kite string and ran after her son. The butterfly took a sharp turn up, spun a few times, and then dived into the grass-covered dunes at the back of the beach.

  Anna sprinted across the sand and snatched Charlie up just a moment before an enormous wave crashed into the shore, soaking her canvas sneakers. Charlie wrapped his plump arms around her neck and giggled happily.

  “You can’t run away from Mama like that,” she scolded him, as she carried him away from the water. “You scared Mama!”

  Charlie relaxed against his mother, clearly unfazed by the danger his adventure had put him in. In fact, Anna was pretty sure that if she put him down, he’d head right back toward the water.

  “Now, where did our kite go?” Anna mused aloud.

  “It’s up there.” An older woman in a pink warm-up suit, sitting nearby in a beach chair, pointed in the direction of the dunes.

  “Thank you,” Anna called back, and still holding Charlie, she began trudging up the soft sand.

  Technically, you weren’t supposed to go onto the dunes. They were fenced off, and there were signs warning of all the hideous things that would happen—exorbitant fines, draconian jail sentences—if you were caught frolicking in the protected areas. But Anna could see the butterfly kite fluttering just over the first dune, where it had caught on a low green bush. The string was tangled in the thorny branches.

  I’ll just run in and grab it before anyone sees us, Anna decided, and stepped awkwardly over the fence. Charlie was heavy and bulky in her arms, but Anna didn’t dare put him down. He’d head right for the water again.

  When Anna reached down for the kite, though, Charlie began struggling in her arms so much that she had to set him down.

  “Oof,” she said. “When did you get so big? Here, hold Mama’s hand.”

  But Charlie didn’t answer her. Instead, he immediately threw himself down on the sand and, giggling maniacally, began logrolling down the side of the dune. Sand stuck to his bare feet and wet pants legs. Anna glanced around nervously. She was pretty sure this was exactly the sort of activity the authorities had meant to prohibit.

  “Come on, let’s take the kite back to the beach,” Anna said. She waded into the green vegetation after her son. When she caught up to him, Charlie was holding a plant he’d plucked from the ground.

  “Pretty,” he said.

  “Oh, no.” Anna groaned. “Honey, you’re not supposed to pick the plants here.”

  “Green,” Charlie said, thrusting it at his mother.

  “Yes, it is green,” Anna agreed. She picked him up.

  “Three,” Charlie said next. He proudly held out the plant and counted, pointing to each shiny leaf as he did. “One, two, three!”

  Anna felt a flush of pride. Just two years old, and Charlie was already counting!

  I wonder if it’s too early to look into gifted-and-talented programs for him, she wondered. Wait…three leaves? Three shiny green leaves…? Anna felt a prick of discomfort. She looked closer at the plant Charlie was clutching in his small round hand and immediately recognized what it was.

  Oh, shit, Anna thought.

  Poison ivy.

  Two days later, Anna was doing what she always did when she was stressed out: cooking. She peered at the recipe for exotic mushroom pâté—a complicated process that required three types of mushrooms to be chopped in tiny, uniform squares—while talking to Grace on the phone.

  “I can’t go on this date,” Anna insisted. She tucked the phone under her chin and scratched her arms. The itch was maddening, like a million fleas crawling over her skin. “Noah’s supposed to pick me up in eight hours, and I look like hell.”

  “I can’t believe you got poison ivy,” Grace said. Anna could tell that her friend was trying not to laugh.

  “Grace! It’s not funny! It’s on my arms and my legs—it’s even on my face! I smeared calamine lotion all over, like the doctor said to do, but I’m still itching. I’m itching everywhere. And to add insult to serious injury, the police caught us walking off the dunes and gave me a ticket. The fine is five hundred dollars!”

  Anna rummaged through the utensil drawer until she found a plastic pasta fork. She used it to scratch her arms and legs, closing her eyes in bliss at the momentary relief. But as soon as she stopped scratching—and her doctor had sternly told her not to scratch—the itch returned, even worse than before.

  “Oh, poor you,” Grace said, sounding more sympathetic. “How’s Charlie?”

  Anna glanced down at her son. He was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, pushing his trains around a wooden oval train track and occasionally announcing, “I love trains! Toot, toot!” Their pug, Potato, was sitting next to him, staring at Charlie’s bowl of Goldfish cracker
s with a hawkish interest.

  Anna smiled at the familiar messy sight. She loved the chaos Charlie brought into their house. She loved the Duplo blocks strewn about the living room, the pajama top smelling of baby lotion and boy sleep discarded on the overstuffed chair, the turned-over sippy cup slowly leaking a puddle of milk onto the tile floor.

  Charlie looked up and smiled at Anna, his face alight, and she could almost feel her love for him pouring out of her.

  “He’s fine, thank God. The poison ivy didn’t affect him at all. He’s apparently immune.”

  “That’s good. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t go out. Not tonight, not looking like this.”

  “So call him and cancel.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? I can’t!”

  “You’re starting to sound a little hysterical.”

  “Well, I have an insane person’s haircut, and I’m covered with pink calamine lotion. There’s no way I can sit across the table from a man I’m that attracted to, while I scratch at myself. I can’t do it. It’s too mortifying to contemplate.”

  “Aha! So you are attracted to him!”

  “That’s so not the point. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me like this.”

  Anna checked the saucepan—the stock was reducing, and the kitchen was filled with the earthy smell of the mushrooms.

  “Why can’t you call him?” Grace asked patiently.

  “I tried. I don’t have his home phone number, so I called his store and left a message with some dippy salesclerk he has working there. But he didn’t call back, not that I’m surprised. I gave the clerk my name and number, and she just said, ‘Okay, dude,’ and hung up. I don’t trust anyone who calls me dude to be capable of delivering a phone message,” Anna ranted.

  “She’s probably in love with him herself and trying to sabotage your romance so she can have a crack at him,” Grace said darkly.