“That’s really not necessary,” I said.
Little Joe flexed his jaw and his lips twitched. “You looked like you had your hands full.”
I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes further north, but thought better of it. Instead, I ignored his words and retrieved five dollars from my clutch. Holding one end of the bill, I wafted it toward him.
“Thank you for ordering my drink,” I said in my most saccharine voice.
He nodded and took the money. As he straightened it and slid it into his battered, brown leather wallet, he said, “Name’s Jack. Jack Holden.”
“Emily Bernal.” I scrubbed the dry bar with my pile of napkins until the bartender handed me my mojito. No fresh mint, so basically just a lemonade. I sighed. “Well, thanks again, and have a nice night.”
He touched the brim of his gray felt cowboy hat.
Before I’d turned away from Jack, my mother’s voice trilled in my ear like three-inch acrylic nails scratching across a chalkboard.
“There you are, Emily.”
I tried to hide my shudder. “Yes, but I was just headed to the ladies’ room.”
She beamed at me, reflecting a vision of what I would look like in twenty-five years, if genetics trumped will: Indecently long legs made even longer by stilettos, better-than-medium height, round blue eyes, and dewy, Mary Kay-slathered skin going crepe-y at the edges. She’d fit her trim body—thicker through the middle—in a snug dress slightly less long than was proper for her age, and was wearing the best blonde that money could buy from the shelves of Walmart. Trailer park meets the Southern church lady—that was my mother.
She opened her mouth to torture me. “I was just telling Doug Munroe what a wonderful paralegal you are,” she said, “and he wants to meet you. His law firm is really the best in town, and—”
“I’m not even sure if I’m staying,” I said. “And I have a job.” And the beginnings of a killer headache, I thought.
“A job in Dallas. If Rich isn’t going to do conversion therapy, then you’ve really got to—”
I pushed back from the bar and flashed her a megawatt smile. Before I could answer, though, Jack’s voice interrupted. “Agatha Phelps, always good to see you.”
My mother took notice of Jack, tilting her head to the side, and shaking it.
“Oh my, if it isn’t the infamous Jack Holden,” she said. “What trouble are you causing tonight?”
He wiped a smile from his face. “I have a question for you.”
She twinkled. “What is it?”
Jack’s voice dropped lower, and Mother leaned in. I tried not to. “What’s the difference between erotic and kinky?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” She raised her brows. “And I can’t think why any decent man should.” She leaned closer, twinkled brighter.
“Erotic uses a feather and kinky uses the whole chicken.” He smiled on the dimpled side of his face only. “And you know it’s only part of my job.”
My mother giggled like a tween girl. “That’s the only reason I’ll forgive your manners.”
I shook my head. “I’ll come find you later, Mother.” They both looked at me, my mother’s eyes wide like she’d forgotten I was there.
***
I studied my gap-toothed smile in the bathroom mirror, it and me in a gilded frame, and fluffed my bangs. They needed a spray of dry shampoo and blast of AquaNet, neither of which I had with me. I turned to the side and smoothed my hand over my stomach. At least there was no baby bump, yet, and my dress was nearly dry. I lifted my chest and shoulders. “Put ’em on a shelf, ladies,” my pageant coach used to remind us before we went onstage. That was more than twelve years ago, though, and my shelf was a little lower than it used to be.
A woman’s voice from behind a stall door crowed, “Did you see Emily Phelps? I can’t believe she showed her face tonight.”
A second voice snarked from the stall next to her. “I hear she’s not woman enough to keep her man.”
They both laughed like she was Melissa-flippin’-McCarthy or something.
I picked my drink up from the counter and tossed it at the ground outside the two stalls. Overpriced lemonade splashed its target, eliciting a squeal.
“Woops,” I said. “I guess I’m not woman enough to hold my drink either.”
Damn, that felt good. I tucked my five-pound clutch under my arm, pushed out the door, and headed for the pool area as fast as I could wobble on my heels. I’d look for my mother later. For now, I just wanted to stand outside the fence around the little pool at the center of the atrium and imagine myself 3000 miles away from all of this pettiness. I wouldn’t have a care in the world, and I’d gaze peacefully into the aquamarine ocean off of St. Marcos, the island home of my best friend, Katie. She used to be an attorney at Hailey & Hart, the law firm I probably still worked for in Dallas. Thinking of her in the same breath as I thought of my woes made me feel guilty, though. She’d emailed that morning asking if I’d heard from her husband, Nick, who hadn’t come home last night. I hoped Nick was only a big douchebag like my husband, Rich, and not truly missing. I needed to call her. Well, why not now? Or when I got to the pool, anyway. It’s not like I wanted to talk to anyone else.
But I had to make it past the happy couple’s receiving line—which I’d already been through, thank you very much—before I could stare at the swimming pool. That is, I had to get through the throng of people who probably thought that I regretted giving Scott back his promise ring when I left for Texas Tech—a throng of very familiar faces, all of them reacting visibly at the sight of mine. A former neighbor, from back when we lived in town. A classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation from AHS. Some kid I’d babysat when I was twelve. I fended off each greeting as I braved the gauntlet to the pool, repeating myself into a mantra.
“Oh my goodness!” Lean in, hug without touching bodies. One-handed shoulder-pat three times. “So great to see you. I’m meeting someone, can we catch up later?” Air kiss. “You, too. Bye-bye now!” Keep walking.
Was I as conspicuous as I felt? I tried not to imagine the inevitable whispers in my wake, because, sure as shooting, everyone here knew my business as well as if it had been front-page headline news—above the fold. I tested my face for the confident half-smile I was determined to wear and adjusted the corners of my mouth up ever so slightly.
The chlorine smell of the pool cut through to my cerebral cortex and I sharpened—in a good way. I placed my hands on the black metal top rail of the fence and looked over at the people gathered around the pool at patio tables. It wasn’t as crowded as the bar area, but that wasn’t saying much. My ex had married another local and they’d sprung for an open bar, so almost everyone in town had shown up. But I didn’t care if I was alone in the crowd. I didn’t care if I was standing in the stripper heels that I’d been forced to borrow from my mother who thought they were high-class. I didn’t care if my life was in shambles and my marriage was history. I only cared about the next few good breaths. My eyes found the water, and I sucked in the chemically poisoned air like it was a magic potion. If I could just have about two minutes of this to shock my senses, I might survive the night.
Still breathing deeply, I pulled out my phone, scrolled through my favorites page, and pressed Katie’s name. As it rang, I worried about the time difference. I could never remember which time of the year she was two hours later, versus the regular one hour later than me in Texas. Either way, it was only eight-thirty here. It would be okay. After three rings, she picked up.
“Emily?”
“Katie! Has Nick shown up? I haven’t heard from him at all.”
“No, and his plane is missing and the police are no help.” Her voice sounded brittle and shrill.
“Are you, um, holding up okay?” She used to have a problem with alcohol. I’d nearly added “sober,” but she didn’t sound drunk. Just scared.
“I’m not sure. But my in-laws are here—you remember Kurt and Julie?—and our nanny, Ruth. Kurt and I th
ink Nick headed to the Dominican Republic on a case he’s working. We’re headed there in the morning.”
Nick worked as a private investigator, so this didn’t sound totally implausible. “I’m praying for you guys.”
“Thank you. I was about to try to sleep, not that I’ll be able to. How are things with you? Everything good?”
Now was not the time to weigh her down with my problems. I crossed my fingers. “Fine. I’m great, other than worried about you.”
“Yeah, you and me both. Thanks for calling.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We hung up, and I stood staring at the water, my phone still in my hand. It sounded serious. Nick and Katie had twin baby girls and a preschool-age boy. I closed my eyes and said a short, silent prayer for Nick’s safe return, then added, And help me maintain just a little dignity as I go through all my . . . stuff. Amen.
A throat cleared beside me, and I jumped.
“So, you’re looking for a job?” a man’s voice asked.
My eyes, the traitorous little magnets, tracked to the right, following the pull of the sound that I already knew was the voice of Jack, the man formerly known as Little Joe.
“You following me?” I asked.
The dimple twitched. “I do believe I staked my claim here first.”
Oh. I didn’t have a response to that. I just tried another breath of bleachy air.
“Agatha Phelps is your mother.”
I pursed my lips, then answered. “I take it the two of you know each other.”
“She roped me into teaching a class on Apache religion and its Mountain Spirits a few weeks ago in an ‘Understanding our Neighbor’ series on different religions at her church.”
I snorted. “I didn’t think the Panhandle Believers congregation was into comparative religions.”
“Let’s just say it felt more like they were gathering information to convert the last of the heathens.”
“So why do you go there?”
“I don’t.” Jack raised an eyebrow at me—the one on the dimple side. “Your mother practically runs the place.”
“Tell me about it.”
“She talks about you.”
The muscles around my eyes and across my forehead tightened up. Someday, I’d owe half my wrinkles to my mother and the other half to Rich. “That’s great.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m looking for a legal assistant at my law firm.”
I reevaluated his cowboy authenticity again and decided he was still the real thing, just urbanized. I opened my mouth to say I wasn’t looking for a job, but what came out was, “What type of law?”
His nice, rumbly voice said, “Criminal defense, mostly.”
I shook my head. “No offense, but yuck. I do employment law.”
The dimple again, but not so much that it pulled the side of his mouth up.
“Based on your taste in jokes, you’d probably enjoy the sexual harassment cases.”
“My clients make your CEO harassment defendants look like they’re still wearing training pants.”
I remembered flipping through the paper that morning, over dry white bread and black coffee, because that’s how we roll at my mother’s house. What I recalled was a big criminal case, and quotes from the attorney. What was the name? Had it been Jack Holden? Yes. Yes it had.
“You’re that attorney who got the super pimp acquitted last week, aren’t you?” I said. “Whose client was the guy who ran the prostitution ring cleverly disguised as hot women delivering pizza in tap pants and bustiers? What do they call guys like him? Marketing geniuses? Or sleazeballs?”
He turned to me and dipped his head, speaking only after an uncomfortably intense and lengthy pause.
“You’re that woman whose husband took all her money and left her for a man who pretends to be a woman, aren’t you? What do they call that, experimentation? Or a fetish for transvestites?” He asked, sipping his Bourbon.
Boom! A sound like a cannon shook me to my pointy toes, followed by a nanosecond of stunned silence. A woman’s scream pierced the air just as a loud, slapping sound reverberated from the surface of the pool. Water splashed up on my dress and I gasped. Jack pushed himself in front of me. There was another moment of profound silence, then noise exploded all around us. I was tucked behind Jack, his arms extended low behind him, on either side of me. I stepped around him to get a view of the pool. A cloud of red was growing in the water around what looked to be a man’s torso.
“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Jack said.
I looked up from the grisly scene. The man had fallen from above the pool. My eyes climbed, searching each floor of balconies, moving like one of my grandmother’s old Selectric typeballs across a blank page. There! I saw her, three floors up, a gun dangling in her two hands, her black hair pulled back, her white apron tied over her burgundy maid’s dress. The shooter.
I leaned in toward Jack and pointed at the woman. “Better hurry, she looks like she needs a lawyer.”
To continue reading Heaven to Betsy, click here.
Excerpt from How to Screw Up Your Kids (Parenting Blended Families)
Despite Our Best Efforts
It’s not that we didn’t try to screw this parenting thing up. By all rights, we should have. We did everything that we possibly could that we weren’t supposed to do. We gave them refined sugar when they were babies, didn’t enforce nap times, spoiled them with expensive and unnecessary gifts. We said yes when we should have said no. We said no when we should have said yes. Our swear jar was always full.
Oh, yeah. And we were one of those “blended families”—you know the kind, the ones with broken homes, divorces, stepparents and complex custody arrangements. Those people. The ones other parents are leery of, like divorce is a communicable disease or something. Who knows? Maybe it is. My own parents even told me once that I had made my children a statistic by choosing to divorce their father. That I had created an at-risk home environment for them.
Me? Perpetual overachiever, business owner, attorney, former cheerleader and high school beauty queen? The one who’s never even smoked a cigarette, much less done drugs? My husband? Well, he’s the more likely candidate for an at-risk homemaker. Surfer, bass player, triathlon enthusiast. Oh yeah, and chemical engineer and former officer of a ten-billion-dollar company—but you know how those rock-n-rollers are. We probably teeter somewhere between the Bundys and the Cleavers.
But there we were, watching yet another of our kids cross yet another stage for yet another diploma, with honors, with accolades, with activities—with college scholarships, no less. Yeah, I know, yadda yadda yap. There we were, cheering as the announcer called Liz’s name. Three of her four siblings rose to clap, too. The fourth one, Thomas, couldn’t make it because he was doing time in the state penitentiary in Florida. (Just kidding. He had to work. At a job. That paid him and provided benefits.)
We tried our best to screw it up. We had the perfect formula. But we didn’t—not even close. Somehow two losers at their respective Round Ones in love and family unity got it close to perfect on Round Two. By our standards, anyway. Because we didn’t give a good goldarnit about anyone else’s.
What’s more? We got it right on purpose. We made a plan, and we executed the plan. And it worked. After all that effort to screw things up, after the people in our lives who loved us most wrung their hands and whispered behind our backs (and those who didn’t love us chortled in anticipation of our certain failure), we went out and done good.
Now, I’m no expert on child rearing (although I’ve had lots of practice), but I am an expert in helping grownups play nice and behave at work. How annoying is that? I know. I’m a scary hybrid of employment attorney and human resources professional, blended together to create a problem-solving HR consultant. And from where I sat, our blended household—or blendered family, as we call it—looked a lot like a dysfunctional workplace in our early days.
O
r a little warren of guinea pigs on which I could conduct my own version of animal testing.
The HR principles I applied at work were, in theory, principles for humans, humans anywhere. Blendering occurs in workplaces when a leadership team gets a couple of new members, and it happens in a home with kids from different families of origins. HR principles = people principles = blendering principles. Right? That was my theory, anyway.
Statistics tell me that you, dear reader, are or will be in similar straits: divorced, starting over, trying to make it work. If you’ve already been there and done that, I hope you’ve disappointed all your naysayers, too. You’ll enjoy this book all the more as you relate to the pains and the joys of blended families. But if you’re on the cusp of what feels like an express train descending into hell and wondering how to buy a ticket back, I can help you.
Really.
Okay, probably.
If not probably, then quite possibly.
At the very least, maybe I can say I warned you, or made you laugh. It’s a crazy and unpredictable ride, but the destination is worth it.
How did the Bradys do it?
Blendering Principle #1: It’s hard to get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going.
Most of the members of my generation know all we need to know about blended families from the Brady Bunch, right?
Not.
Please, folks. That was just a sappy television show, and didn’t Florence Henderson have an affair IRL with one of the TV sons? Sounds a lot like incest to me. We clearly need a new set of role models, yet I’d be vacationing in Fiji right now if I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, “Oh! You’re just like the Brady Bunch!”
The Bradys wove their magic through engaging scripts and clever sets, cute young actors and the star power of Florence Henderson. Eric and I didn’t have those crutches to lean on. Neither will you.
Real blended families start with two adults who want to pledge their troth, which in English means they want to marry. Or at least cohabitate with commitment. Oh, hell, maybe not even that. But that conundrum brings us to the genesis of our blended family success, and IMHO, a critical element.
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 32