The Break-Up Diet: A Memoir

by Annette Fix

  Was he serious? Bullshit, ass-covering pseudoexcuse. Had the man never read a college class syllabus? Are middle school teachers busier than university professors? What the hell is wrong with this picture?

  My right leg twitched and bounced uncontrollably under the table. “Somebody needs to start thinking outside of the box,” I said, trying not to completely lose it.

  I looked from one face to another and could see it clearly. Without so much as a ripple, they were going to let Josh slip quietly and unnoticed between the cracks in the system. I measured my tone carefully. “Please have the secretary make a copy of my son's records. I'm withdrawing him from this school.”

  Principal looked excited to play his trump card. “The standard protocol is for the new school to request his records and they will be mailed at that time. To the school.”

  I reached across the table and pulled Josh's file and a pen from in front of Counselor. I scrawled our address on the cover in oversized letters and slid it across the table to Principal. “Here's your request. I'll be homeschooling.” I stood and walked out of the room.

  When Josh rose from the bench in the hall, I put my arm around his shoulders and we stepped outside into the ocean-chilled air.

  “So, what happened? What did they say?” Josh stopped walking and waited for my answer.

  I was the lioness who had fought an entire pack of jackals to save the life of her young cub. My hands shook and the pulse in my head felt like it would burst through my temples.

  “I've decided I'm going to homeschool you.” The reality of my decision was starting to sink in. “It will be fun, we'll do all kinds of cool stuff,” I said.

  Josh's forehead wrinkled. “Are you sure? Who's going to teach me math? You suck at math.”

  “We'll get a tutor if we have to.” I forced a smile. “Don't worry, we can do this.”

  no scent negative associations

  Saturday, October 27

  There's an old aphorism that some women change boyfriends like they change their underwear. It doesn't work that way with me. I change perfumes whenever my relationships fail.

  Contradiction. Uninhibited. Poison. Past boyfriends could be defined by each of these. When a relationship ended, I swore I'd never trust anyone wielding both a smile and a penis ever again. Then I met Kevin, and never felt like a really long time.

  Kevin was supposed to be a fresh start, full of promises for the future. Unlike the others, Kevin believed in the South Orange County fairytale—the custom tract home, the Lexus SUV, the 2.5 private school honor students, and the incontinent Golden Retriever.

  Kevin was Allure by Chanel. Soft, warm, and subtle—until he left me. I needed a new perfume. Something without memories attached.

  Josh balked ten feet in from the entrance to Nordstrom. “Mom, can I go get a soda at the food court? It stinks in here.” He always chose to escape unless it was a store that sold baseball equipment or computer games.

  “Can I?” He reluctantly followed me deeper into the store, awaiting my answer.

  “No soda. But you can have a lemonade.” I handed him a five-dollar bill. “Bring back the right change.”

  He sprinted toward the doorway into the mall and dodged between the displays like he was running the gauntlet.

  I wandered along the perfume counters, fingertips trailing the glass, stopping to sniff samples.

  A well-preserved sales shark with a helmet of over-sprayed hair hovered nearby. “Can I help you find something?”

  “Not right now, I'm just smelling.” I coughed and waved my hand through a fog of perfume.

  “Of course…” the woman trailed off, as if finishing her sentence was a waste of time.

  My eyes moved across the many displays. Unique bottles always caught my eye first.

  Classique by Jean-Paul Gaultier. Nice bottle—a dress form with part of the glass decorated in the shape of a full bustier. I sprayed my wrists and rubbed them together to warm the scent on my skin. I hate those paper tabs; you can never tell how the perfume really smells.

  I caught sight of my reflection in the mirrored wall. Someone else was wearing my clothes and my face. I reached up to touch my hair. It was short and weightless. Do I like my hair like this? I tilted my head a little to the side. Would Kevin like my hair like this? The tips tickled the top of my shoulder. I slowly shook my head. The bob swung gently against my neck, a heavy curtain of hair no longer waved along my back.

  The sales shark circled and cleared her throat with mock delicacy. “Would you like to buy that?”

  Buy it? You mean staring in the mirror catatonically for who knows how long, while clutching a bottle of perfume isn't good for business?

  “Yes, please. A set with perfumed lotion,” I said.

  While she rang up the purchase, Josh appeared beside me with his cup of lemonade. He squeaked out an elaborate tune with the straw by dragging it up and down through the bisected hole in the plastic lid. It sounded a little like the Gilligan's Island theme song.

  I flashed Josh my stop-that-before-I choke-you look.

  “Okay, let's go.” I tucked the bag handles into the crook of my arm and walked toward the exit. I paused beside the door and waited for Josh to open it.

  He looked at the door and then at me. “Why are we standing here?” He took a deep pull on the straw that ended in a damp slurp.

  “Don't you think it's about time you start holding doors open for ladies?”

  “You're not a lady, you're my Mom,” he said.

  I've decided that it's the little moments of child rearing that remind me the process is the next best thing to enduring a root canal.

  “Humor me,” I said.

  i write, therefore i am

  Sunday, October 28

  I stacked the projects in neat piles on my desk and opened my Day Runner to the month-at-a-glance view of November. Deadlines. The writing jobs were marked in green ink—for money. The bills due were red—which basically meant, somebody please shoot me on or before this date. There was more red than green. Always.

  I pulled out a blank piece of paper to organize my writing related tasks.

  to do list:

  1. Write marketing brochures for computer technical support company and refrigeration systems company.

  Boring. Guaranteed to knock my creative muse unconscious with bone-dry freelance work. But it bills out at $100 an hour, so that's good CPR.

  2. Meet with start-up magazine publisher to discuss layout and design.

  Goofy, sweaty guy with the bad idea of creating a magazine for strip club patrons. But he pays for my editorial input—which makes him my new best friend.

  3. Meet with photographer to select stock images for the debut issue.

  Watch in disgust as photo guy uses a program on his computer to manipulate pictures of women into the “perfect” specimens—further perpetuating eating disorders in young girls and unnecessary plastic surgery in women who try to measure up to images of women who don't really exist.

  4. Write inane features and articles that appeal to mammary-obsessed males with double-digit IQs.

  Why? Because I'm paid $1,000 a week for it and I'm riding the cash cow until it's butchered by reality.

  5. Come up with a pseudonym.

  So no one can trace this creative disaster back to me.

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I may as well stand naked on a street corner with a sign that reads Will Write For Food stapled to my forehead.

  Writing prostitution. Are real prostitutes too tired at the end of a workday to enjoy sex for personal pleasure? I did know that working as a topless dancer made going out dancing at nightclubs less than appealing.

  I pushed aside the freelance to-do list and opened the screenwriting software to my Disney spec script in progress. I watched the cursor blink at the tail of the last sentence I'd written. I wanted to focus on my screenwriting, but it would be a long time until that would pay the bills. The freelance stuff really needed to be done first, but
it felt mindless to slap adjectives together so Joe Consumer would buy whatever Company X was selling.

  A frustration tantrum was building. Feeding my creative writing muse was like supporting a 900-pound, spoiled gorilla that eats everything. Conferences, seminars, how-to books by every guru in the business, writer's retreats, pitch fests, workshops, networking breakfasts, trade subscriptions, entertainment industry organization memberships. None of it was cheap. Yet, I'd give it all up, right after I gave up breathing.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to reach that quiet space of creative peace. I found Kevin's face embossed on my mind in the darkness behind my eyelids.

  God, I love him so much. For his beauty, the kindness in his soul—and for his potential. I believed we could accomplish anything through our love and support of each other. He wanted to play golf on the PGA Tour. I wanted the world to embrace my stories. I knew if we worked together, we could make it happen.

  I still believed that. But somewhere along the way, he stopped.

  grid iron vs. nine iron

  Monday, October 29

  I heard the phone ring once. Josh called downstairs, “Mom, it's for yooou.”

  I gave the spoon a final lick, threw away the last of the chocolate pudding cup containers, and reached across the counter to pick up the cordless phone. The sound of Josh hanging up the other end clattered in my ear.

  “Hey girl!” Heather's perky voice practically bounced through the line. “Let's go out for Monday Night Football.”

  I was tempted to pretend she had the wrong number, but she already heard Josh, so reciting the only sentence I knew in Vietnamese wouldn't have worked.

  “We can order something greasy and watch the guys…um, I mean, the game,” she said.

  “Thanks anyway, but I don't think so.” Because honestly, I'd rather stay home, lock myself in my room, and cry facedown on the floor until I'm completely feathered with carpet fuzz.

  “Well, at least let me buy you a cranberry juice. It'll take your mind off what's-his-name,” she said.

  Impossible.

  “I'm not taking no for an answer. You need this. I'll meet you at the Aliso Viejo tavern in twenty minutes,” she said.

  If I got into my car right now and drove south at eighty-five miles an hour for twenty minutes, how far away could I get from the AV tavern? Not quite to the Mexican border, probably only to the Camp Pendleton Marine Base.

  “Don't even think about standing me up,” she said.

  It might be good to go out. Kevin doesn't work on Mondays. Maybe he'll come down to hang out with some of his buddies, maybe they'll go to Monday Night Football at the AV tavern, and maybe he'll walk in, see me again, and realize how much he really loves me, and maybe he'll ask me to marry him right there in the middle of the bar in front of everyone. It could happen.

  “Okay, I'll go.”

  When I hung up, Josh leaned on the kitchen counter wearing his let's-make-a-deal face. “Since you're going somewhere, can I have Adam over for dinner?”

  “I don't care, but you have to make sure his mother knows I won't be here to supervise.”

  Josh rolled his eyes. “I don't need you to watch. I've made spaghetti a hundred million times.”

  I pulled him into a headlock. “Make sure she knows,”

  I said. “Ack…okay, I will,” he choked out the words.

  When I turned into the sports bar parking lot, I scanned the aisles looking for Kevin's steel blue truck.

  Maybe he's not coming.

  Maybe he's just not here yet.

  The tavern was filling fast, but I saw Heather waving her arms at the bar like an airline traffic flagman, her short auburn hair bounced with her movements.

  “Hey,” Heather hugged me tightly and released quickly. “Look at you— your hair. Forget the hair—you're so skinny!”

  “Compliments of the break-up diet,” I said.

  “How much weight have you lost? Are you eating at all? You look sick.”

  “Eight pounds so far.”

  “In a week? I wish Derek would break up with me.” Heather patted her rounded hips.

  No. You don't.

  My eyes filled with tears, and my nose tingled, threatening to run.

  Heather saw my total breakdown only seconds away. “Let's order some drinks and greasy food.” She waved to the bartender and wrapped her arm around my shoulder like the wing of a mother hen. “Are you hungry? Have you eaten anything today?”

  “A chocolate whey protein shake with a Hershey bar blended in it for breakfast and five chocolate pudding cups before I got here.”

  “YEEEAAH! Birdie!” A guy's voice boomed louder than the football announcer on the big screen.

  I turned to see three random guys crowded around a video game that stood wedged in the corner between the dartboard and the pool table. It was Golden Tee.

  Kevin's favorite.

  He loved to rout his buddies on the golf course and on the electric greens of that video game.

  It still baffled me how grown men could get so wrapped up in video games. There should almost be a screening question prior to the first date—Bachelor #1, Which do you do more often: A. Play video games? Or B. Masturbate?

  Kevin played Golden Tee whenever we stopped at the neighborhood tavern, always trying to top his last score. He slept and breathed golf in any and every form he could find. Kevin's passion for the game was tangible—the very core of his being radiated the classic mystery of the fifteenth-century game.

  So beautiful.

  As I peeked over Kevin's shoulder, he spun from the screen to face me. “Did you see that shot, Annette?” He picked me up and twirled me in a kiss.

  As usual, Carter and Stan groaned in defeat, but they never stopped trying.

  “The next round is on you guys,” Kevin said.

  Stan went to the bar to order another round of Samuel Adams while Carter dug into his pocket for quarters to buy the next round of golf.

  I perched on a barstool near the drink rail and watched Kevin enter his initials in the electronic scoreboard. I poked my straw into the melting ice at the bottom of my glass, slurping the last of the watery remains.

  My eyes roved over his tan, lean frame. He turned from the machine and matched my gaze. Kevin walked over and stood between my knees, dotting my forehead and the tip of my nose with kisses. Kevin's lips moved over mine. His kiss blocked out everyone and everything around us. He whispered against my ear, “I love you, Princess.”

  “That's cranberry juice with a lime, right?” Heather said, dragging me back to reality.

  “Uh, yeah…” I pulled out of the fog. “…and light ice.”

  Will I ever be able to go places I've been with Kevin and not think about him?

  A weight of emotion pressed heavily on my chest. The sounds of people drinking, talking, and cheering the game, came as muffled vibrations in my head. I let my eyelids slide closed to block out the room.

  “Are you tired?” Heather set her hand lightly on my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I think so.” My tears began to brim.

  “Maybe it's too soon to go out,” Heather said.

  “Maybe a little.”

  does mapquest give life directions?

  Tuesday, October 30

  I jotted notes while Josh peered over my shoulder.

  “Thank you for all your information. You've been a great help,” I said into the phone before hanging up.

  The local contact for the HomeSchool Association of California seemed to be a nice lady. She explained how to file an R4 form with the Department of Education and suggested a list of resources for purchasing textbooks and study guides. There were so many decisions to make. But as a certified education junkie, I was pretty excited about the possibilities.

  I turned to the computer screen and went back to browsing the Irvine Valley College online catalogue. “I think I'll enroll us in a language class,” I said more to myself than to Josh.

  Josh sat on the floor at my feet. �
��Language? Don't you mean an English class?” he said.

  “No. I mean like ASL—an American Sign Language class. That would be fun. And I think it would be easier for you to start with that instead of a foreign language.”

  Josh looked at me like I'd just grown a third eye. “What good is learning sign language?”

  “I dunno. I guess I can always use it to yell at you in public so no one else will know what I'm saying.”

  “Yeah, that's real funny.” Josh rolled his eyes. He pulled the notebook off the desk and scanned the handwritten list of subjects. “Mom, I want Kevin to teach me the pre-algebra. Can I ask him when he gets here?”

  A knot instantly tightened in my chest. “I don't think so, sweetie.”

  “Why? Do you think he won't want to?”

  I knew it would come up this week, but I still hadn't prepared what to say. I stood up from the desk chair and motioned for Josh to sit beside me on the edge of the bed.

  “You know Kevin has been staying at the company apartment because the drive is so far…”

  Josh nodded.

  “Well, he won't be coming home on his days off anymore. He wants to live there all the time now.”

  I bowed my head slightly, hoping Josh wouldn't notice the tears welling in my eyes.

  “So, we're moving to Los Angeles with him?” Josh's voice sounded both hopeful and confused.

  “No, honey. Kevin and I aren't going to be in a relationship anymore.” My tears spilled over.

  Josh leaned to wrap his arms around my shoulders in an awkward hug. “It's okay, Mom.” He squeezed a little harder. “It's okay if it's you and me again. We don't need him anyway.”

  I knew his dismissive comment came from his deep loyalty to me. And maybe a desire to mask his own disappointment. Josh liked Kevin, so much that he had even tried to learn to play golf, though I knew he'd rather play baseball. They were both people-pleasers whose quiet emotions ran deep.