Happily Ever Madder : Misadventures of a Mad Fat Girl (9781101607107)

by Mcafee, Stephanie

“Not that I’m aware of,” I say.

  “Popping bones is dangerous,” Avery says with authority. “Massage, however”—she places her hands on my shoulders and starts to rub—“is a different story. I bet you’ve been taking aspirin all morning, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say, “and drinking lots of water.”

  “Water is good,” she says in a motherly tone as she takes down my ponytail and combs through my hair with her fingers. “But this is better.”

  I moan and groan as Avery massages my head, neck, back, and shoulders. Then she starts massaging my scalp and I feel sure I’m going to overdose on pure pleasure. She moves her fingers to my temples, then back down on my neck, and I don’t ever want her to stop, but she finally does.

  “Avery!” I say, getting up off the floor. “You should think about setting up one of those funny-looking chairs at the mall.”

  “Yeah, right,” she says, laughing. “So have you had lunch?”

  “No.”

  “I figured as much, so I picked you up something,” she says and pats me on the back. I pray a thousand little prayers she’s about to hand me a greasy brown bag from Bee Bop’s. “I picked it up at Eden’s Treats and I think you’ll really like it.”

  No! I think. I need an effin’ cheeseburger!

  “Thanks, Avery, that was very thoughtful.”

  “Don’t worry,” she says, getting up, “it’s not a vegetarian dish. Eden’s does serve meat, well, chicken, and it’s cage-free, no hormones.”

  “Okay,” I say and wonder what the hell difference it makes if a chicken lives in a cage or roams the prairies before being shipped off to the slaughterhouse. I guess happy chickens taste better.

  Avery grabs two white bags off the counter and invites me to join her in the break room. I walk across the gallery like the bride of Frankenstein.

  I fix us both some water, and she grabs two paper plates and unloads the bag. One rolled-up little thing for her and one rolled-up little thing for me.

  Great.

  I look down and don’t want to touch it, let alone eat it.

  “It’s buffalo chicken,” she says.

  “What’s buffalo chicken?” I ask, eyeballing the mysterious little thing on my plate.

  “It’s a shredded buffalo chicken wrap,” she says enthusiastically, and I know that I’m going to have to eat this thing or it’s going to hurt her feelings. I pick it up and sniff it and Avery starts to laugh.

  “There’s no ranch dressing,” I whine.

  “No, but there is a celery stalk,” she says cheerfully.

  “Hey, did you catch Olivia’s last name last night?” I ask, thinking if maybe I talk nonstop until she finishes her lunch, then she’ll leave and I can toss this giant rat pellet into the trash.

  “Uh, no.” She thinks for a minute. “Tia didn’t say, did she?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  She looks at my alleged buffalo chicken wrap. “Just try it. You won’t die.”

  Shit.

  “I might, you never know,” I say, wondering if I could convince her that I was allergic to chicken that wasn’t still on the bone. She bores a hole into me with her exotic blue eyes, so finally I pick the damn thing up and take a bite, and much to my surprise, it’s good.

  “Dang! This is tasty!” I exclaim.

  “Told you,” she says and gets back to nibbling on what she claims is a veggie wrap.

  After lunch, it doesn’t take much coaxing to get Avery to go upstairs and spend some time in her new studio. When it sounds like she’s good and settled in, I go lie back down on the sofa like she told me not to. I think about Tia and wonder why she wouldn’t mention that Olivia is Lenore Kennashaw’s daughter-in-law. Olivia doesn’t strike me as the type who would go for Lenore’s bull, but you never know about people when it comes to their families. Tia can’t stand Lenore any more than I can, so I can only assume that Olivia feels the same way or they wouldn’t be such good friends.

  My cell phone rings and it’s Chloe again, so I pick it up and apologize for not calling her back. After a few minutes of polite chitchat, she tells me she’s thinking about buying a house.

  “Okay,” I say. Just before I moved to Pelican Cove, Chloe divorced a horribly wicked man that I hated with a passion, and she’s been renting my grandmother’s house in Bugtussle ever since. “Are you about to get married?” I ask, thinking how great it would be if she married J. J. Jackson, the handsome and genteel sheriff of Bugtussle, Mississippi.

  “No!” she says adamantly. “It’s a little too soon for that!” She goes on to explain how she’s never had a place of her own and that’s really what she wants right now.

  “What will you do with the house if I move out?” she asks cautiously.

  “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter, Chloe,” I tell her. “You’ve got to do what’s right for you. That’s all you need to be concerned with.”

  “I don’t want to leave you in a tight spot.”

  “You won’t leave me in a tight spot at all. Gramma Jones’s house was empty for two years back when we were in college, remember? Besides, that’ll be a great place to stay when I come back to Bugtussle for a visit, which I think is going to have to be sooner rather than later.”

  “I’d be happy to show it for you if you decide to sell,” Chloe says, and although I haven’t even thought about what I’d do if she moved out, I immediately balk at that suggestion.

  “I don’t want to sell it,” I say quickly.

  “Okay, well, you don’t have to worry about it right now, because even if I wrote a check tomorrow, it would probably be the first of the year before I actually move out.”

  “Have you found a place?” I ask, not even wanting to discuss putting my house on the market.

  “Well, I’ve been looking around for a while, but nothing really caught my interest until this past weekend. Do you know John and Ginger Moon?”

  “Yeah, I went to school with him and she’s from Corinth, right?”

  “Yes, them. Well, he got transferred to Texas with his job, so they just put their house up for sale.”

  “Don’t they live in that big white house on the lake?”

  “That’s the place,” she squeaks, and I can tell she’s really excited.

  “Wow, you would be crazy not to buy that place! It’s gorgeous!”

  “I know! I want it so bad!”

  “Well, go get it, my friend!” I say, genuinely excited for her. “I can’t wait to plan the housewarming party.”

  “Oh, Ace, I was so afraid you would be mad at me for moving out of your house.”

  “Chloe, you’re crazy. You’ve got to live your life, sweetheart. And you should probably get off the phone with me now and call your Realtor before someone else snatches that place up.”

  “I think I’ll do that,” she says.

  “Keep me posted,” I say.

  We say our good-byes, and I hang up the phone knowing there is no way in hell that I’m selling my grandmother’s house in Bugtussle. It’s all I have left of my family, and I’m not getting rid of it. Not now. Not ever.

  At five o’clock, Avery goes outside and fetches the OPEN sign. She can tell something is bothering me, but I chalk it up to the prolonged hangover. I don’t know if she buys that or if she’s just being polite, but she doesn’t say anything else. All I can think about is getting home and snuggling up on the sofa with Buster Loo.

  I call Mason and ask him what time he’ll be home, and he tells me that it’s going to be after dinner. I wonder if he would’ve been able to come home on time had he not gone in late this morning because of me. I ask him if he needs some supper and he tells me that he and Connor are having pizza delivered. I ask about Allison and he tells me that she and Connor got into it at lunchtime and she left and went to Tallahassee for the weekend.

  “So she’ll be back?” I ask, worried and thinking I should try harder to listen to her boring stories.

  “Oh yeah,” he says, like it’s no b
ig deal. “They do this every couple of months. She’ll be back at work on Monday.”

  For some odd reason, I’m relieved to hear that. “Mason, is there anything I can do?” I ask him. “Make some copies, file some papers, anything?”

  “Oh no, sweetie, it’s okay,” he says. “I just finished going over Mr. Marks’s foreclosure documents and, like I suspected, mistakes were made, so now we’re just doing research and getting ready to go to battle with these bastards.”

  “Okay,” I say, praying he won’t elaborate any more than that. “Well, I guess I’ll go get a cheeseburger and head home, then.”

  “All right, babe, see you later.”

  “Hey!” I say. “Do you have to work tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” he says, slowly. “When we reopen this case, things are going to get nasty and we’ve got to be prepared.” He pauses. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” I say and tell myself that it has to be.

  I drive to Bee Bop’s and get myself a double cheeseburger with bacon, an order of loaded tots, and a gigantic cherry limeade. I put the food in the backseat so I won’t touch it on the way home and then eat in the kitchen with Buster Loo perched next to my foot. He’s sitting up like a Coke bottle, waving his front paws, begging. When I’m finished, I offer him a dog treat, but he won’t go near it. Instead, he goes and sits by the garbage can where I just threw the Bee Bop’s bag and gives me that “I can’t believe you treat me this way” look.

  I open the fridge and get him a piece of cheese, and that makes him happy, so he follows me into the living room and we snuggle up and watch TV until we both doze off.

  23

  Saturday morning, I take Buster Loo for an extralong walk at Pelican Trails to make up for not walking him the day before. The weather is nice and warm, so after I get back home, I decide to spend a few hours at the beach.

  I’m sitting on my beach towel, spraying myself down with sunscreen, when I notice I’m the only female in sight sporting the prototypical skirted swimsuit favored by chubby girls. I don’t know if some kind of sorority of skinny girls has invaded the area or if the gym was closed and all the hot-bodied ladies took to the beach, but there are tanned and toned bikini-clad chicks as far the eye can see in either direction.

  I tell myself not to worry about it. I mean, I wasn’t worried about it last night when I scarfed down that bacon cheeseburger and tater tots smothered in chili and cheese, so there’s no sense in worrying about it now.

  I call Tia to see what she’s doing, and she’s working, so I call Jalena. She tells me all about a new guy she went out with last night and I listen with great interest as she rambles on about him. She’s at the Tanger Outlets mall in Foley and apologizes for not inviting me to join her.

  “I thought you would be hanging out with your man-honey today, and I didn’t want to impose,” she says.

  “The man-honey has been working a lot lately,” I tell her.

  She asks me if I’ve been to the outlet mall yet, and when I tell her that I haven’t, she gets excited and starts telling me all about the “big girl” shops they have there.

  “You can actually find something to wear that doesn’t look like it was made for a circus clown,” she says with great enthusiasm. “And the best part is that you won’t have to rob a liquor store to buy an outfit!”

  “What a novel concept,” I say wryly. “Cool clothes for fat girls at affordable prices. I’m tempted not to believe you.”

  “Girl, I know, but I swear on my stack of low-fat cookbooks that I’m tellin’ you the truth,” Jalena says, laughing. “You’ve got to come shopping with me sometime.”

  “I would love that,” I say, thinking again how great it is to have a fellow fatty for a friend.

  We talk for a few more minutes; then I tell her to have a good day shopping and she tells me to have a good day at the beach. I push the button to end that call and then dial up Lilly Lane and talk to her for an hour.

  She tells me there’s a rumor going around about two teachers at the middle school having an extramarital affair, so we gossip about that for a while. I tell her I wish I was there so we could do some undercover investigating, and she laughs and says she thought the same thing when she heard about it.

  “You need to come home,” she says. “I know we were just down there a few weeks ago, but we didn’t have time to really visit.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m ready.”

  She asks how things are going with the gallery, and I tell her I sold one painting to Kevin Jacobs, the guy I called her raving about the first day I was open for business. She has a good, hearty laugh about that. We talk about Chloe and the house she’s looking at, and how happy we are for her that she’s finally getting her life all ironed out. She asks about wedding plans and I tell her I’m working on it but a long way from having it done. We have another “wish you were here” conversation, and I hang up the phone feeling worse instead of better.

  I look out at the ocean, ignoring all the swimsuit supermodels, and hope this homesick thing is just a phase. I tell myself again that it was not a mistake to move down here.

  “So what if I’m a miserable failure and have sold only one painting in a month,” I say out loud because the sound of the waves drowns out everything. “I came down here and I tried. That’s more than most people get to do.”

  I pack up and head home, wondering how in the world anyone could feel worse after a few hours on the beach. Before going up the steps to our neighborhood, I turn to look at the ocean, hoping it hasn’t stopped working its magic on my soul.

  Saturday night, Mason comes home and I don’t know if it’s because we start drinking or because he’s gearing up for a big legal battle, but he takes it upon himself to share what seems like each and every individual detail about the lawsuit. I never thought I would have absolutely zero interest in listening to Mason McKenzie, but as it turns out, I was wrong. The more he talks, the more I drink, and I wish we could go back to when he didn’t want to talk about work.

  I think for a second about giving him a thirty-minute lecture on the pros and cons of the eight main brushes I use for acrylic paint just to get him off the subject, but I don’t because that wouldn’t be fair to him. It’s not his fault I’m in a bad mood. It’s mine. So I sit patiently and listen, nodding and doing my best to feign interest.

  He finally wraps up his lengthy discourse with, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this, because I know you have no idea what I’m talking about,” and that just rubs me the wrong way.

  “Well, maybe if I was smart like Allison I could better understand your lofty and intellectual conversation,” I say, not even checking the sarcasm in my voice.

  “What?” he says. “Why would you say something like that? That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, reminding myself again that he is not the bad guy here. “That was uncalled for.”

  “Is there a problem?” he asks. “Something you want to talk about?”

  “I’m just homesick,” I tell him. “And I’m disappointed because I didn’t sell a single painting this week and I really thought I would be doing a lot better at this point. Especially after so many people turned out for the opening.” I sigh and think maybe after that horrendous speech I gave, everyone collectively decided that I was a dipshit unworthy of their patronage no matter how good my artwork was. “I’m never going to make any money if things don’t pick up.” I think about what Sylvie Best said to me and wonder if they went ahead and sabotaged me just for the hell of it.

  “Ace,” he says, coming to sit next to me on the love seat. “You have to give it time. Remember when I first opened the office down here? I had to work part-time at the Blue Oyster for almost a year to make ends meet.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I tell him.

  “Well, I didn’t tell many people, because I wanted everyone back home to think I was a hotshot lawyer making big bucks down in Pelican Cove. As a matter of fact
, I think the only person I told was Ethan Allen.” He smiles at me. “But you don’t have to worry about that because you have me to take care of you. It doesn’t matter if you ever make a dime at that gallery; just go in there and do your thing and be happy.”

  “I can’t be happy if I’m not making enough money to at least cover the damn utility bill,” I say. “I barely made enough at the auction to cover my set-up cost, and I’ve brought in a whopping one hundred dollars since. I can’t just be a bum.”

  “You aren’t being a bum,” he says. “It’s a man’s job to take care of his wife.”

  I look at him and say nothing because all I can think about is his mother, who, in my opinion, is a worthless, snobby bitch. She grew up rich and went off to Ole Miss, where she wasted no time finding and marrying Mason’s dad, who, to this very day, caters to her every need. Rachel McKenzie’s entire existence depends on the success and benevolence of her husband, and I cringe at the thought of being like her. I look at Mason and hope against hope that he doesn’t expect me to live off him like that for the rest of my life. Because I won’t do it.

  He puts his arms around me and I put my head on his shoulder and Buster Loo barrels in from the sunroom, jumps into my lap, and then wedges his little chiweenie head in between ours.

  “Look at us,” Mason says. “Family hug!”

  Sunday my mood is somewhat better. Mason decides to rent a catamaran and we spend the day on the water and I forget all about my problems. We pick up dinner on the way home and get in bed just before eight o’clock, both of us exhausted from a full day of salt water and sun.

  24

  Monday, Mason is gone before I get up, and I take Buster Loo out for a seaside stroll before getting ready and heading to work. Avery and I didn’t do any rearranging on Friday, and since it didn’t seem to make any difference anyway, I elect to leave everything where it is for now.

  I go straight to my office, flip open my wedding notebook, and get to work. I look up the Web site for Beach House Bed and Breakfast and decide to drive out there this afternoon. I piddle around the rest of the morning, making to-do lists and such. I have a few customers but no buyers. Avery comes in at one and she’s all excited about something she wants to paint, so she runs straight upstairs and gets to work.