She peeked around his gray wool pants and waggled her eyebrows at me. “He was on the debate team in college. Can you tell?”
He did not take the bait. “It’s a yes or no question, Harmony. Is this an accurate portrayal of events?”
“He should have been a litigator,” she informed me. “I kept telling him.”
He crossed his arms and waited.
Finally, she let out a loud, impatient sigh. “Well, I guess you could see it that way, but you don’t have to be so melodramatic. My God.”
“I don’t have to be so melodramatic?” His short, sarcastic laugh was sounding as bitter as mine these days.
She crammed her aromatherapy candle back into her purse. “Don’t patronize me. I’m trying to move forward with a positive solution, and you’re just being mean.”
“Forgive me if I’m not ready to ‘move forward with a solution’ just yet. I’m still stuck in the ‘when did my life turn into an issue of the National Enquirer’ phase. And as for living together…” The debate club steam ran out as he grappled with this prospect. “That is the most…you are just…”
She slung her purse over her shoulder and got to her feet. “Kids complicate everything, don’t they? It’s been my problem for almost five years, and guess what, Alex? Now it’s your problem too. The whole time we were dating, you never shut up about how much you wanted the perfect wife and the perfect family, and you were going to be the perfect dad. Well, guess what, big guy? Your wish is granted!”
The path to serenity had taken a detour. But even now, with wild eyes and a ferocious scowl, Harmony looked glamorous and perfectly coiffed. Her gold and black curls flowed back, Wonder Woman style, as she took him apart.
“You always had something to prove, didn’t you? Blah blah blah, children’s charity; blah blah blah, ranch in Colorado. You just wanted to think that you could be a better father than your dad. Well, now’s your chance. Before you make fun of the Synchrona morals, why don’t you look at your own? Are you going to put up or shut up?”
“Do not bring my father into this.”
My eyes widened at the sharp steel in his voice.
“What are you going to do? Abandon your child like your dad did, or act like a man and take care of your family?” She pivoted and marched to the door. “I’ll see you at home.”
Slam.
We stood there, silent, for a few seconds. Then I opened my big mouth. “Listen. Alex. I know you’re angry with me right now, but you have to understand—”
“I’m leaving.” He picked up his jacket and headed for the door without a backward glance.
I nodded. “Okay, but if you want to talk about it—”
“With you? No thanks.” He paused but didn’t turn around.
“I expect this kind of crap from Harmony, but you…How dare you keep this from me?”
Suddenly, all my ethical hand-wringing over the past two weeks now seemed ridiculous. Cruel, even. I had let this go way too far. He had every right to his anger.
What do you say to a man whose emotional life is imploding before your eyes?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You should be.” He opened the door.
“But what happens now?”
Another slam of the door was the only reply.
“Holy cow. She said what about what and then what?” Cesca folded another red licorice whip into her mouth and chewed vigorously.
“You heard me.” I stopped StairMastering long enough to wipe the beaded sweat off my forehead. “And will you lay off the licorice? We’re supposed to be working out.”
“I am working out.” She pointed to the “calories burned” counter on her machine. “I’m working out so hard I need to refuel. Hence, the Twizzlers. Don’t get pissy with me just because your new boyfriend’s a deadbeat dad.”
I took a swig from my water bottle and cranked the StairMaster back up to hellish levels. “He didn’t even know his kid existed until this morning.”
“You have no idea how tempted I am to say something about rebound men. And also that I told you so.”
“Fight that temptation,” I advised. “I’m in no mood.”
“Fair enough.” She continued to refuel. “So Harmony actually said that she wanted to start living with him?”
“Yeah. She wants to start talking marriage.”
“That’s, like, the most psychotic thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“I know.”
“And why would she do that? I thought you said they can’t stand each other.”
“They can’t. For now.”
She narrowed her eyes and jabbed her index finger at me. “Oh, for God’s sake. Do not get sucked into some paranoid fantasy world where all exes live happily ever after in a delightful Nora Ephron comedy.”
“Is it really so paranoid?” I jabbed my index finger back at her.
“Yes.”
“Is it? Look at Lisa and Dennis.”
“Yeah, look at them.” She dispensed with the candy and increased her stair-climbing pace to a sprint. “Two superficial morons with bad taste in art. You have to get past this, Gwen. Not every guy you date is going to run back to his ex-girlfriend.”
“So, according to you, I’m deluded to even imagine that just because his ex showed up in my office, announced she bore his child, and asked him to live with her as a prelude to sending out wedding invitations, they might be thinking about getting back together? That’s crazy talk, according to you?”
Since she couldn’t refute this, she went on the defensive.
“Well, why do you care, anyway? Last I heard, you and Alex were just having fun and not getting attached.”
“Last you heard,” I muttered.
Cesca punched the “emergency stop” button on her StairMaster. The she punched the “emergency stop” button on my StairMaster. I stumbled into the handrails, nearly breaking my femur in the process.
“Ow! Dammit, Cesca!”
“Tell me all, right now.”
“Just because you grew up in a houseful of burly men doesn’t mean you can—”
“I have ways of making you talk.”
I threw up my hands. “Well, you know we slept together. And it was great, okay? And yes, it meant something to me and I’m a horrible cliché from the Lifetime channel, okay?”
“And…”
“And now it’s over. He was really pissed that I didn’t tell him about Harmony. He was irate.” I swallowed hard and turned to grab my water bottle.
“Eh.” She toweled off her StairMaster. “He’ll get over it after he has some time to absorb the shock.”
“I highly doubt that. He has major issues with paternal abandonment. He doesn’t get along with his dad. I found out all the gory details when Harmony announced them at the top of her lungs.”
“And this hurts your feelings because…?”
“When I asked him before about his family, he barely said a word, but now it turns out that this…this hopped-up, incense-addled sex kitten knows all about him. He told her everything about his dad. Me—nothing. Her—everything. And it turns out he was on the debate team in college! I didn’t know any of that stuff!”
She clamped a hand on my shoulder, the coach consoling the ousted quarterback. “Well. Isn’t it better that this happened now, before you got even more involved? The whole deal sounds like more baggage than the LAX arrivals terminal.”
“I guess.” I sighed.
“And if that doesn’t make you feel better, how about this: I have tickets to the Dodgers game tonight.”
“My cup runneth over.”
She frowned. “I was going to bring Mike, but I tell you, I have learned my lesson about that guy.”
I collected my towel, water bottle, and gym bag. “Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah.” She crushed her candy wrapper into a tiny ball for emphasis. “We are through, for good this time. I am never speaking to that jackass again. I don’t care how many times he calls.”
“I mean it! I don’t care how many bouquets he sends over.”
“Okay.”
“And if I ever start talking about getting back together with him, I want you to haul off and slap me across the face. For real this time.”
“Okay.”
“Gwen. Are you even listening to me at all?”
“Of course I am,” I lied. “Listen, let’s go get a Jamba Juice or something.”
As Cesca began to catalog Mike’s many flaws, I smiled vacantly and nodded. Ordinarily, I would have been happy to join in, but today, Mike’s transgressions didn’t seem all that bad. So he broke a few plates. People had done a lot worse. Naming no names.
One of the first things we’d learned about couples and family counseling is that the opposite of love isn’t hatred. It’s utter indifference. Where there’s strong emotion of any kind, there’s a chance for passion and reconciliation. And the brawl I’d just witnessed between Alex and Harmony had been anything but indifferent.
They knew just how to press each other’s buttons. And now she was ready to talk cohabitation. A hop, skip, and a jump away from taking stock of the linen closet and registering for new sheets, towels, and mystical scented candles.
To think that I’d been paranoid about Alex wanting to track down his former flame. I’d had the wrong ex all along.
9
Alex waited until Friday afternoon to call. Four long days after the showdown in my office. Four days of obsessively checking my e-mail and voice mail, bringing the cordless phone into the bathroom while I showered, and poring over research articles about the pros and cons of single parenthood. Every time the phone rang, I lunged for it.
And the phone rang a lot, because Mike had waged a massive campaign to win Cesca back. But as she refused to speak to him, I had been appointed screener.
The typical conversation went a little something like this:
Me: Hello?
Mike: Is C. there?
Me: Hmm. Let me check. [offer receiver to Cesca, who’d ward it off with the hand gestures of an air traffic controller clearing a 747 for takeoff] Nope, not here. Sorry.
Mike: Well, you better tell her to call me when she gets home. I’ve been sending her flowers all week, and she still needs to give me my lucky boxers back.
Me: Is that Whitesnake I hear in the background?
[Click. Dial tone.]
We had these lovely little chats at least three times a day, and when I wasn’t on the phone, I was bonding with the FTD guy, who daily dropped off bouquets for “Lady C.”
I myself received nothing. No calls. Definitely no flowers. Every afternoon when I walked to The Bomb Shelter to grab a cup of coffee I scanned the crowd for a familiar face, but Alex was never there. Of course. He was off with his brand-new insta-family, probably having carefree picnics on a red gingham blanket by the shore. Looking for shells and allowing himself to be buried in the sand. Buying everyone ice cream cones and saying things like, “Golly, that’s swell.”
But I did see Dennis. Wednesday afternoon, in the library of science and medicine. I ducked and hid behind a copy machine. A proud moment for ex-girlfriends everywhere.
By Wednesday evening, the heady scent of irises and daisies began to overpower the acrid undertone of romantic disappointment in our apartment.
“I know he’s a little weird at first,” Cesca said, reading the card on the latest arrangement of flowers, “but he had a very dysfunctional childhood. You just haven’t seen his sensitive side. And he does have good taste, doesn’t he? Look at these colors! He remembered about irises—Laker purple, my favorite.”
By Thursday, her defenses were dangerously weakened. “I mean, it’s pretty sweet of him to send me all these flowers. It must be expensive, especially since he doesn’t have a job right now.”
And then Friday afternoon. Waterloo. We were camped out on the sofa, staring at the TV in a postworkout stupor and munching our way through a giant bag of Swedish Fish.
“Gwen?”
“Yeah.”
“How bad would it be if I decided to give Mike one more shot?”
I sighed. “I’m supposed to reach over and slap you right now.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know. He’s a hard habit to break.”
“Listen to yourself. Men who make you quote Peter Cetera are not good for you.”
She slumped lower into the cushion. “Nobody’s perfect, you know. I’m not. You’re not.”
“True.” I didn’t take my eyes off the Dodgers game. “But that’s not the issue here.”
She put both feet up on the coffee table. Loudly. “Don’t patronize me. I’m just asking—”
“And I’m just telling.” I selected an orange Swedish Fish and popped it into my mouth. “You don’t have to listen.”
“You got that straight,” she huffed. “Know what? I don’t care. Next time he calls, I’m answering.”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
She gasped. “And you’re going to let me? What kind of friend are you? You know how toxic he is.”
I stared at her. “But you just said—”
“I know, but—” The phone rang.
We looked at the receiver. We looked at each other.
The phone rang again.
Cesca sighed. “What can I say? I’m a fool for a man who still lives at home and gets tattoos when he’s bored.” She snatched up the phone. “Hellooo?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, hi, Alex. Yeah, she’s right here. Hang on.”
She passed the phone over to me, hissing, “It’s Alex, it’s Alex.”
“I gathered,” I hissed back. Then I took a deep breath and turned away from my roommate. “Hello?”
“Hi, Gwen. It’s Alex.”
“So I hear.” I headed for my bedroom, where I could escape Cesca’s blatant eavesdropping. “How’ve you…you know, been?”
Furious? Vengeful? Looking into getting me fired?
But when he spoke again, he didn’t sound angry, just tense. “Between the new son and the crazed drama queen demanding I move into her house, how do you think I’ve been?”
I paced the perimeter of my bed. “My money’s on ‘not good.’”
“Not to mention all the lawyers.”
I paused. “Lawyers?”
“Yeah.” I could practically hear his tightly wound nerves twanging over the phone line. “In the space of four days, I’ve become the best client at the law firm we retain. Custody issues. Trust funds.”
“Any word on the DNA test yet?” A girl could always hope.
His grim sigh was answer enough. “Yeah. I don’t know who my lawyers had to bribe down at the lab, but they rushed the results. It’s official—I’m the father.”
Another long moment of silence.
I closed my eyes, cleared my throat, and tried again. “So. About Harmony. I just wanted to say that…I know I should have told you…”
“We’re not having this discussion over the phone.” And then his tone got even tenser, if such a thing were possible. “I want to see you tomorrow.”
When I reopened my eyes, I was staring directly at the closet door, which was ajar. I could see the Wedding Dress of Doom, gleaming away under the clear plastic casing. “Oh boy.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Why bother waiting?” I wedged the phone between my ear and shoulder and threw both hands up. “You can just break up with me right now. You don’t have to wait to do it to my face. Etiquette be damned.”
He paused. “Why do you think I’m breaking up with you?”
“Well…because…” I blinked. “Is this a trick question?”
“Are you always this defensive?”
I mulled this over for a few seconds. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Good to know. But let’s not jump the gun here.”
“So you still want to—”
“We’ll deal with all that later,” he said brusquely. “Right now I just need to know…We
ll, I wanted to ask you…” For the first time since I’d met him, he seemed hesitant.
“Yes?”
“You’ve been introduced to Leo, right?”
“Yes.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I haven’t. But Harmony has arranged a meeting tomorrow morning, and I think it might be a good idea to have you there.”
I dropped the phone on the bed, then snatched it back up. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“You’re his psychologist.”
“Not anymore! I transferred his case to another clinician.”
“I don’t have a lot of experience with kids.” There was a dark undercurrent of panic in his voice. “I know things are complicated between us right now. But I would really appreciate it if you could come with me.”
Need. That was what I heard in his voice. He needed me. Not because I was an irresistible femme fatale, not because I was a rock of support in uncertain times, but because I could run interference with a four-year-old.
And I owed him, big-time.
How touching.
“Oh, all right.”
“You’ll come?” His voice flooded with relief.
“If you insist. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“And Gwen.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m not getting back together with Harmony.”
“But she said—”
“She says a lot of things. Believe me, it’s not gonna happen.”
“Uh-huh.” I tried to sound convinced.
“No way, no day.” He paused again. “Listen, about Leo—do you think I should get him a present?”
I sat down on the edge of the twin-size mattress that had cradled our sleeping bodies just last week. “That might be a good idea.”
“Any suggestions?”
I grinned. “Think Spider-Man.”
10
As it turned out, Harmony welcomed my presence at the father-son reunion. According to Alex, who had spoken to his ex “too many times” since Monday, the illustrious Ms. St. James had a few things she wanted to discuss with me.
Exes and Ohs Page 9