Roger reaches for his napkin and nervously mops his brow again. The perspiration is trailing down the sides of his face and dripping onto the shoulders of his “not favorite” blue shirt.
I can feel my blood reaching dangerously high temperature levels as my husband squirms in front of us. My children are all gaping at their father, curious to find out who this perky blond bundle of joy is.
“Um, it’s good to see you—” Roger is saying before I interrupt.
“Roger, do you want to introduce us to your little friend?” I beam at her, my teeth clenched so tightly in a fake smile that I’m afraid I’m going to get lockjaw. Roger blankly stares at me for a second, as if he is sure that he knows me, but he can’t quite place who I am.
Annoyed, I wave my hand around the table. “You know...us. Your family. Your patient wife and very impressionable children?” This subtle reminder seems to jog his memory.
“Yeah, um, of course. Um, this is Victoria, everyone.” Roger continues to gawk at us. Perhaps he’s forgotten our names and wants us to help him out.
Of course her name is Victoria. Do they call her Tori? Or Vicky? Oh...Vicki with an i! Perfect name for a girl who probably spent most of her high school career at the top of a pyramid or the backseat of a car.
Of course, my children do not oblige their father and introduce themselves. They continue to stare at her. I can almost hear the wheels in Lexie’s head, wondering if the girl will shrink into a fairy and fly away with Peter Pan in a cloud of pixie dust. The resemblance to the Disney fairy is uncanny. Roger grabs his water glass and begins to chug away with his eyes closed, possibly hoping that the girl will be gone when he opens them.
Allie, God bless her, finally opens her snarky little mouth.
“So,” she asks, draping her arm casually across the back of her father’s chair, “how do you know my father?” If I’m not mistaken, I detect a bit of a head roll at the end of that sentence, her eyes flickering with challenge. I want to leap to my feet, squeeze her in a hug, and cover her face with kisses.
The girl, who has obviously met with female adversity before, just beams with the hospitality of a Southern Belle at a pie baking contest. “Why, your father was my principal for four long years. I spent a lot of time in the principal’s office, didn’t I, Mr. Maxwell?” She snorts with laughter as she nudges him with her elbow.
I glower at Roger who is literally the color of an eggplant. Plenty of time in the principal’s office? What does that mean?
I don’t have time to ask him, because Victoria continues, “Why if it weren’t for all the time we spent together, I don’t know where I’d be!” Victoria giggles and rests her hand on Roger’s arm.
Roger literally shoots water out of his nose, dousing both Evan and Colt.
“Cool!” Colt is completely stoked by his father’s talent. “Can you show me how to do that?”
“I can do it! Watch this!” Evan volunteers as he reaches for the glass of water in front of me.
Thankfully, my mommy instincts are spot on and I can remove the water out of harm’s way while simultaneously continuing to mentally navigate the perverse thoughts of my husband having an affair with one of his students. I feel nauseated and lightheaded, and this time, not from mixing alcohol with medication. Everything I thought I knew to be true has been questioned in the span of the time it took us to not order dinner.
After possibly seeing my father with another woman today, and then this bimbo with her hand on my husband’s arm, I’m not sure what is real anymore.
Is everyone destined to cheat on their spouse? Is it just a matter of time? I recall my sister Beth and the predicament she got us both in last year. She was having an affair with one of the other parents in her daughter’s class because she felt like her husband didn’t love her and thought he was cheating on her. Turns out he had been cheating on her for years. But that the guy she was cheating with was scamming her for money. It was a very uncomfortable situation that ended with me and Beth in the trunk of a car, and Jason coming to our rescue.
Ironically, that night my sister had confided in me that she was jealous of me and the fact that Roger would never cheat on me. But the way he’s acting around this overly perky twenty-something, I’m not so sure anymore.
Without another word, I push back my chair, nearly catching it on the plush carpeting, rise to my feet, and storm out of the restaurant. Let Roger and his “girlfriend” deal with the kids.
~Nine~
“Mrs. Maxwell! What a pleasure to see you again!” the ticket agent practically gushes when I arrive at the counter, bags rolling behind me, carry-on over my shoulder. Her sparkly teeth are still sparkly.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I mumble, pushing my ticket toward her.
She raises her perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “Is something wrong?” She seems genuinely concerned, cocking her head to the side. Glancing at the ticket, she adds, “You’re leaving so soon. You just got here.”
I shift the weight of my carry-on to my other shoulder. “Let’s just say the vacation wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”
The ticket agent, whose name tag reads, Fiona, arches both of her eyebrows this time. “That doesn’t sound good. And you’re missing the rest of your brood.” She waves at the emptiness behind me.
“Well, I needed to get away from them for a little while.”
Her eyes widen. Of course, she’s thinking that I’m a beast of a mother for wanting to escape and seek some solace.
“And your husband?”
“Yup. He’s not exactly in my good graces,” I tell her, fighting back the tears that are pricking my eyelids.
Fiona taps her perfectly manicured fingertip against her plump red lips. “That won’t do,” she murmurs. “That won’t do at all.” She stares off into the distance as if she is contemplating something deep and complex. “Complex” doesn’t describe my situation—woman gives birth, gets fat, man cheats on wife with skinny young blonde, kids are a pain in the rear end. It’s the same old tired story playing out in my own private theater in my head. Nothing complex about that.
I can’t help the sarcasm that slides off of my tongue. “Well, I’m so sorry that I’ve screwed things up, but you’ll have to cut me some slack. I knew this vacation was a bad idea from the get go. So if you will just stamp my ticket or scan it or whatever the heck you do, I will be out of here and on my merry way.”
Fiona shakes her head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
I stare at her, open mouthed. Why are the gods screwing with me today? “I can’t stay here,” I manage to whisper, those pesky tears breaking free and tumbling down my cheeks.
“No, you’re right. You can’t,” Fiona agrees as she feverishly clicks away at her keyboard. I hear the printer on the counter whirling to life. “That’s why I’m sending you to Hawaii.” She beams at me as she slides my newly printed ticket across the counter.
I stare at the ticket in my trembling hand. “Hawaii? By myself?”
Fiona nods. “Yes. Ten nights and eleven days in completely uninterrupted bliss.” She steps out from behind the counter, and suddenly her arms are loaded with paperback novels. “These are all for you.”
I accept them, clutching them to my chest, my once tears of sorrow, now turning to joy.
“But you’ll also have to work on your blog,” she instructs with a waggle of her finger.
“I will!” I promise as I skip down the jet bridge toward the plane destined for Hawaii.
“Mom! Can you hurry up?” Lexie’s voice cuts through me like glass as I rise from the toilet bowl. God forbid I go to the bathroom without an audience, I muse. Then I remember that we only have one bathroom for this lovely vacation. This is going to be a daily occurrence.
“I’ll be out in a minute. I’m sure you can hold it! You’re a big girl now,” I shout back while I turn the tap on to wash my hands. The water flow spurts, and then trickles. I turn it off, deciding not to wash my hands. I will most likely end up wi
th soap caked on my palms with this lack of water pressure. Why is it that every hotel we ever visit has absolutely no water pressure?
“I don’t have to go to the bathroom,” she calls out through the door. “We need to go get me a bathing suit!”
“And I need shoes!” Colt chimes in.
“And I’m out of mascara!” Allie adds.
Are they all just standing around, waiting for me to get out of the bathroom? I’m glad I didn’t know that before I went in. I might have had performance anxiety.
“Fine,” I say, throwing open the door. “I guess we will have to see where the nearest store is. If there even is a store.” I point to the desk that is crammed in the corner of the room. “Get the map.” I direct the statement at any one of my children who would like to oblige me. None of them move.
Sighing, I realize I need to be more specific for my instruction-ally challenged children. “Allie, get me the map.”
Huffing with annoyance, she stomps over to the other side of the room (the whole twenty feet), stepping over Evan, who is pretending to make a snow angel in the middle of the carpet—I shudder, the thought of bedbugs crawling all over the carpet.
Allie throws the map book on the bed while I flip open the lid to my suitcase, searching for my own bathing suit. Might as well be prepared for the beach when we get back.
“What do I do with it?” Allie asks as she stares at the book, like it has been retrieved from the library of a colony of lepers.
“Open it and tell me where the nearest store is.” I head back into the bathroom to put my bathing suit on.
“What? I don’t know how to read this!” Allie screeches at me through the door. I lean my head against the mirror. High school junior— doesn’t know how to read a map. What do they teach them in school anyway? How to text while eating a bowl of soup?
I strip down to my bare skin and call back, “Ask your father then!”
“He’s not here! He left when you were in the bathroom!” Allie reports.
I start to tug the uncooperative suit over my jiggly thighs and my heart stops momentarily. How could I miss the fact that he wasn’t in the room?
Could he be off with his girlfriend? Then, I shake that thought from my head and yank my suit over my belly. No, that’s not possible. Roger assured me that there was absolutely nothing going on between him and Victoria.
After I had stormed out of the restaurant last night and back to our hotel room—where I promptly ordered room service as I had wanted to do in the first place—Roger came into the room by himself, bearing gifts in the form of chocolate and a bottle of wine. He had timidly approached me and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Where are the kids?” I asked, craning my neck to see over his shoulder. They were not following him. “Did you leave your girlfriend to babysit them in the restaurant?”
“Amy. You’re being ridiculous. There is nothing going on with Victoria.”
“Ha! You knew who I meant by girlfriend,” I accused while snatching up the chocolate and inspecting it suspiciously. It was dark chocolate...my favorite. It led me to be further convinced of Roger’s guilt.
“I don’t have a girlfriend, Amy.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Where are the children?” I hopped off the bed and rummaged through the desk drawer in search of a corkscrew to open the wine with.
Roger ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I gave them each twenty dollar bill and pointed them in the direction of the game room,” he explained. “I needed to talk to you alone.”
“Well, I have nothing to say to you,” I retorted, still unable to open my bottle of wine. I started wracking my brain to remember those foolproof Pinterest methods for opening wine bottles when you don’t have a corkscrew.
“I know that didn’t look good—” Roger started to say to me, standing and holding up the corkscrew that was sitting on top of the nightstand.
“You’re damn right,” I had snapped back while snatching the corkscrew out of his hand.
“But I assure you, Amy, Victoria was nothing but a student to me. A troubled one at that. She really did spend a lot of time in my office.”
I glowered at him while he patted my arm patronizingly. I pulled my arm away and proceeded to stab the wine bottle cork with the corkscrew. I twisted it awkwardly into the cork, bits of it falling all over the floor.
“She lost both of her parents in a motorcycle accident her sophomore year. She was once a promising honors student, but after the accident, she turned to alcohol to cope with her grief. This led her to skip classes, show up drunk, and become very promiscuous. The janitor caught her having sex with another female student.”
I must have looked shocked and appalled, because Roger smirked as he added the kicker. “On the stage in the auditorium.”
“Oh.”
“We had a lot of conferences with guidance, hoping to steer her on the right path,” Roger commented as he took the bottle of wine out of my hands and uncorked it without a hitch. “That’s what she meant by she didn’t know where she’d be without me, I guess.”
“So this is all in the past?” I asked with trepidation, watching Roger pour me a glass in one of the Dixie cups on the vanity.
“Yes,” Roger assured me. “She graduated five years ago.” He grabbed both my hands and looked me in the eyes, an uncharacteristic move for Roger. “Amy, I love you. And I love my job. I would never jeopardize either of those things. Okay?”
I nodded my head, and took a sip of the minuscule bit of wine that Roger poured. And then more sips. And then, before I knew it, a little bit vacation hanky panky had ensued. Nothing you dear readers need to know about in depth. If you want to read stuff like that, you can peruse the erotica section of your local bookstore.
Okay, so maybe I had overreacted when I saw Victoria at the restaurant—don’t judge me. You don’t know what assumption you would have come to if a bubbly young blond thing had ruined your dinner by giving your husband a hug and telling his family that she spent a lot of time in his office. Also, I may be a tad bit premenstrual, and that never works out well for my relationship with Roger.—I tend to blow much of what he does out of proportion at those times of the month.
So now I repeat to myself, you’ve overreacted, Amy. Nothing is going on between Roger and the bimbo...er, I mean, girl. As I continue to contort my body in order to fit in my death trap of a bathing suit, I realize I must definitely be due for a visit from Aunt Flo. My normally poochy belly now makes me look like I’m five months pregnant—rather than the usual three month pregnant look. I force myself to look in the mirror, a groan escaping my lips. I look awful. I feel awful.
Standing up straight, I suck in my gut. Well, that helps a little. Except, now I can’t breathe.
With a sigh, I let out all the air that I’ve been holding in. Shaking my head with disgust, I throw open the bathroom door and flick off the light. I’ll grab a cover up when we go to the store.
Speaking of the store, we still don’t know how to get to one. Or where one would be located. The kids are studying the map like Grant invading Richmond (I think that’s correct...I’d have to ask Roger for sure) and none of them seem to have a clue how to figure it out.
This does not bode well for any of them figuring out how to visit me in the nursing home, I think wryly. Then again, without my Satnav, I’m pretty lost, too. It’s one of Roger’s pet peeves about me. Yes, believe it or not, he actually has pet peeves about me. And unlike him, I try to work on them. I have ceased leaving the windows open when the air conditioner is on, and I clean my hair out of the shower drain. Has he gotten out of that damn chair yet?
“The pool!” Evan shouts as he pokes the paper on the bed.
“No, that's the ocean, Evan,” Allie tells him gently. “See all this white stuff in front of the blue? That’s the sand.”
“I love the sand! Can I play in the sand?” Evan beams at his big sister, love exploding from his eyes. He adores her, and she’s usually real
ly patient and caring with him. I must be doing something right. This scene looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Or at least a postcard that says “Welcome to the Beach”.
“Yup,” she tells him, patting his little curly head. “Just as soon as we figure out how to read this fucking map.”
And...we’re back.
“Not necessary, Allie,” I admonish half-heartedly.
“Sorry,” she mumbles back.
As I pull a pair of terry cloth shorts over my bathing suit, I ask the kids, “Any idea where your father is?”
Allie shrugs. “He said something about having to check the dinner reservations for tonight.”
“Why didn’t he just use the phone?” I point to the phone on the nightstand.
“He said something about, and I quote, ‘the God damn restaurant lost the fucking reservation again!’ Don’t forget, that’s a quote.” She smirks at me. The kids discovered using the words “and I quote” when referring to their father’s colorful phrases, was a way to curse without me yelling at them or making them put money in the swear jar. We actually held court on this one night over dinner—was it constitutional for them to be punished for simply relaying what someone else had said? The general consensus was no. We lost that vote four to two. I don’t even know why we entertained the conversation at all, but I guess we were just happy the children were using intelligent words like constitutional and consensus.
“Come on, guys,” I say, reaching for the mesh beach bag that contains our towels, sunblock, and the paperback book that I’m definitely not going to be getting the chance to read. “I think we need to stop at the front desk and find out where the nearest store is. We’ll probably run into your father.” I glance at the digital clock on the nightstand. It’s already 10:30 and we haven’t even gotten Lexie a bathing suit yet. “Maybe there’s a shuttle bus or something that takes us into town.”
“I don’t want to ride on a gross shuttle bus. I’ll just stay here. Get me Max Factor black—” Allie starts to say before Evan joins in.
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