Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

How do women do this? How do they go out and get insulted in the pursuit of beauty and perfection day in and day out? I want to draw my hands back from this woman and hide them in my pockets. As she gets busy, she starts in on me in Vietnamese. Why can’t a woman like me take care of myself? What am I doing all day? Her coworker nods her head and comes back with a question about how come we always dress like slobs. Jeans, tennis shoes, never heels, never anything nice. So much money and so little taste, she says.

  “Why wear nice clothes,” I ask in rusty Vietnamese, “if some kid is inevitably going to wipe his greasy hands on your cashmere?” My manicurist’s face turns red.

  “This only happens on TV, right?” I continue. “Where the client actually knows what you are saying about her in a language most Americans have no hope of understanding. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  One of the women starts laughing. “Where did you learn Vietnamese?” she asks.

  “In Vietnam, of course.”

  “You speak very well. You are the first white person to come in here and speak it. I’ve been here for ten years.”

  My manicurist apologizes for insulting me. I dismiss it. “You’re probably right,” I say. “I wear the same thing every day. Except when I’m breaking and entering. For that, I wear black.” They both laugh, although it is clear they have no idea what I’m talking about. The Vietnamese feels funny on my tongue and in my mouth. It has been a very long time. By the time I’m ready to leave, my nails look better than they ever have and my toes are positively gorgeous, which is some sort of miracle. I am advised to come back again soon and visit with my new Vietnamese friends. I promise I will, thinking it will probably take Theo’s graduation from high school or some event like that to get me to go back. I have an hour to kill before I meet Avery for lunch, so I sit outside a coffee shop with a double espresso loaded with sugar. I close my eyes and think of Rome.

  I was there because a United Nations official was using the World Food Program to transport weapons to rebels in Africa. It was a brilliant strategy. Bury the guns under the rice and no one was the wiser. However, he was making certain people very angry and we were asked to stop him. And I did, borrowing a page from Blackford’s playbook. I lured the gentleman in question back to my very lovely hotel room and handcuffed him to a chair. When I told him the handcuffs were actually meant to restrain him until EU officials arrived rather than for deviant sexual acts, he was very disappointed and called me all sorts of names. After he left with his escorts, I filled the giant bathtub and submerged myself up to my chin. I thought it might help me relax, which was, of course, a ridiculous idea. I never relaxed. I was not even sure how it was done. I closed my eyes and tried to quiet the ringing in my ears.

  Ian Blackford chose that moment to appear in my bathroom doorway. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black sweater, and he eyed me like prey.

  “What are you doing here?” I screamed, practically levitating out of the tub. I grabbed one of the huge fluffy towels from the rack and covered myself as best I could while still in the water. “Get out,” I demanded. “Now!”

  “You have fantastic breasts,” he said.

  “That is so cliché,” I sputtered, furious. “It’s like James Bond and those fucking martinis.”

  “Are you suggesting I resemble Mr. Bond?” He took a long look at himself in the mirror, turning side to side.

  “Sean Connery?” he said.

  “Oh, please, don’t flatter yourself.”

  “Pierce?”

  “What are you doing in my bathroom?” He stared at me, silent.

  “Okay,” I said finally, “maybe Pierce, but only the parts where he looks like shit. Now can you please get out of my bathroom?” The last part came out a little bit squeaky for my taste.

  Blackford continued to admire himself in the mirror. “Sally, you and I both know that Pierce never looks like shit.”

  “Please leave.”

  Blackford ignored my request and took a seat on the closed toilet, one hand dipped casually in my tub, perilously close to my foot. Don’t touch me, I thought. Please dear God, do not let this man touch me. I don’t know what I’ll do if he touches me. Die, most likely.

  “Sal, you did a bad thing tonight. Bruce was my friend and now he’s useless. I wish you’d told me.”

  “Well, checking in with you is not really high on my priority list,” I said, although it’s hard to be indignant with any authority while sitting in a bathtub partially covered in a wet towel.

  “Sal, Sal, Sal,” he said, shaking his head, “but we have this history together. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “What history? The fact that you keep turning up rather unexpectedly in places like my bathroom? That is not history. That is crime.”

  He laughed. “Is your moral compass so true that you cannot appreciate the finer points of this relationship?”

  “We have no relationship,” I shouted, standing up in a cascade of bath water and putting my hands on my naked hips for emphasis. “Now, please get out of here so I can get dressed.”

  Ian Blackford’s icy blue eyes started at my knees and slowly made their way up my body. As they moved, I could feel the heat radiating off my skin. I reached for a dry towel, my shaking hands giving me away.

  “Don’t,” he said in a voice I’d never heard before. “Let me finish.” And for some reason my hand stopped short of the towel and hung there in midair, hovering like a butterfly, as Blackford completed his survey of my body. Die for sure.

  “Thank you,” he said when he was done. Standing to his full height, he gave me a last glance and left the bathroom. When I was dry and dressed, I went out into the room, expecting to see him lying on my bed, helping himself to my uncorked bottle of cabernet. But he was gone. I can admit all these years later that I felt something akin to disappointment. It took several days before the thought of his eyes drinking me in did not cause a thin sheen of sweat to blossom across my forehead. Even now, sitting here in the sun, downing my double espresso, I shudder at the thought of him.

  I scan the sidewalks, my eyes sweeping back and forth as if I have front row seats at the U.S. Open. And of course, I see him everywhere. Standing at the ATM, in line at the bagel shop, passing in a car or on the bus, in the middle of the crosswalk, talking on a cell phone, eating a sandwich two tables down. I could never sense when Blackford would show up. There were times, dark ones, boring ones, when I found myself praying for him to appear, and he never would. It was always when I wasn’t thinking about him, when he’d drifted into the dark recesses of my mind, that he would show up, almost as if he knew I was forgetting.

  But now he is nowhere. I wonder if he really knows I’m here. I wonder if Simon Still is telling the truth or manipulating me for some other purpose of which I am unaware. It is a habit of ex-spies to see conspiracy everywhere. I can sit here and tie myself up in paranoid knots or I can try and enjoy the last sip of my espresso.

  Avery admires my nails as we wait for a table at a very hip restaurant I’ve never heard of.

  “Where is Theo?” she asks.

  “Oh, Will’s sister is in town and she’s looking after him,” I say.

  “I thought Will was an only child?” Avery asks. Damn. Yes. This is true. Now why didn’t I think of that?

  “It’s actually his cousin but he calls her a sister because they were very close growing up,” I say, which sounds like bullshit even to me. Avery nods her head. There is a reason why I’ve asked her to lunch, and while I very much enjoy her company that is not it. Avery’s husband is a chemistry professor at the other big-name university in the Bay Area, and I desperately need him to translate Malcolm’s notes. However, I still don’t have a plan for how to ask her without making it seem totally weird and out of the ordinary. Gee, Avery, I broke into this famous professor’s lab last night and stole his notes and I’d really like Jonathan to help me translate them into a language I can understand. Do you mind passing these on to him? Somehow I don’t think that will fly
.

  “Have you ever been to Mexico?” Avery asks. “We’re thinking of a house rental on the beach there sometime in the next few months.”

  Yes, but not to anyplace you’d like to visit.

  “I hear Cabo San Lucas is nice,” I say. “Feels kind of remote.” Once I ended up walking a twenty-mile stretch of very empty Cabo desert without so much as an ounce of liquid in sight. I’d chased a gun smuggler into the endless sandy brush. He had extra gas on board his vehicle. I did not. I lost that round, but I made him pay later.

  “Really remote.” I swallow down a huge gulp of water; the thought of the Baja Peninsula is enough to make my throat dry. “It’s a nice vacation spot.”

  “My Spanish is lousy,” Avery admits. “How did you get by? Do you speak at all?”

  “A little,” I say. “I can manage.”

  Our salads come, mine drowning in goat cheese and oil, hers cheese- and oil-free. Avery stares at my plate.

  “How do you do it?” she asks.

  “What?” I shovel in a huge mouthful of salad. Criminal activity in the middle of the night leaves one with a serious appetite.

  “Eat like that and look like you do,” she says.

  What do I look like other than the brown hair and blue eyes? Well, it’s a good question. I’m five feet seven inches with pale skin. I’ve never had a problem with weight, mostly because I tend toward the hyperactive side. I’m meticulous about avoiding the sun, which is good considering I spent a lot of years in a hat and sunglasses. Overall, the word that best describes me is ordinary. There are certain men and women who find that very thing attractive and others who would not notice me if they tripped over me on the sidewalk. Which very nicely served to keep me alive on a number of occasions.

  I look at Avery over another heaping forkful of salad. She is, by anyone’s definition, the perfect woman. Perfect height, shape, hair color, eye color, face symmetry, voice tone. And yet she does not see it.

  “It’s lettuce,” I say, holding up some greens. “For exercise, I beat up yoga instructors.” Avery shakes her head.

  “You are a strange one, Lucy Hamilton, and someday I’m going to figure you out.”

  I hope not. You might not like me as much if you did.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” I ask.

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “I’m working on an article,” I begin, “for a chemistry monthly, and I have some notes that need translating, some stuff beyond my level of expertise. Do you think Jon would take a look for me?”

  “Of course he would. I didn’t know you were a writer.”

  “I used to do some stuff on the side. This is a favor for an editor friend of mine.” I’m just making this up as I go along and hoping for the best.

  “Jon’s around. Just stop by and I’m sure he’ll have no problem taking a look.”

  Now, I think, how does now work for you? Blackford is going to pop up at any moment, like one of those whack-a-mole carnival games, and I have nothing to bargain with.

  “Maybe over the weekend?” Avery nods her head in response and is back to Mexico and other vacation possibilities.

  After lunch, I wander in and out of a few expensive clothing boutiques that have absolutely no relevance to my life. I walk slowly among the racks, touching the soft fabrics, but buy nothing. I stop for another espresso even though my hands are literally twitching from too much caffeine. I keep looking for Blackford. I keep seeing him everywhere. By late afternoon, I’m out of useless time-killing activities and I announce to no one in particular that I’m going home. Wherever Simon is, even he can’t argue that I didn’t follow my orders.

  23

  I am in the kitchen trying to make salsa, which is kind of comical, when Will walks through the front door. I hear his key, his hello, the thud of his suitcase as he drops it in the hallway. Theo leaps up from the kitchen floor where he is filling a pasta pot with wooden blocks and tears down the hallway, launching himself into Will’s arms.

  “Whoa there, cowboy,” I hear Will say.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Theo howls. Ten seconds later, the two of them, now tangled up with one another, enter the kitchen.

  “Hello, love,” my gorgeous husband says and kisses me. I feel a little bolt of electricity travel from my lips to my toes. Nice.

  “Hello,” I murmur into his neck, “welcome home.” I always find myself breathing a sigh of relief when Will returns from wherever he has been. It’s almost as if when he’s gone, I can’t quite believe he exists. When he is here, I know he’s real. I can touch him for proof.

  “How was your night?” he asks, trying to settle our very excited child back on the floor with limited success.

  “Fine,” I say, “nothing much happened.”

  “Pauline came,” Theo chimes in from at my feet. “She played cars. I like her.”

  Will raises his eyebrow at me. “Who is Pauline?”

  “Oh, no one,” I say, panicking. “A friend who was here.”

  “Mommy went out.” Suddenly I find myself wishing for the days when my little boy didn’t possess a vocabulary beyond “gimme” and “no.”

  “She watched him. I had an appointment. Um, you know, dentist, teeth cleaning. Do you want a glass of wine?” I say, hoping to redirect this conversation to any other topic.

  He nods and gets down on the floor with Theo. I watch them there, two blond heads bent together over the business at hand. I wonder what, if anything, my DNA had to do with the making of this child. He resembles his father in every way, and the older he gets, the more of Will’s personality starts to show through. I want to get down on the floor and squeeze them both to me and shut out the ridiculousness of Ian Blackford and Simon Still. But I don’t. Instead, I turn back to the massacre that is my salsa and try to steady myself.

  After Theo is in bed, Will and I sit on the couch drinking wine and eating chips and salsa. He really must love me because he does not make one negative comment about the soupy red mixture I have placed in front of him. It is also a point in his favor that he finds the occasional dinner of chips and salsa perfectly acceptable. In fact, we are in agreement that the simple pleasure of a wonderfully greasy chip and a bite of tongue-burning salsa can sometimes be better than dinner at Chez Panisse. Okay, maybe not. But it will do in a pinch. We start in on a bottle of red, totally inappropriate, but pretty good anyway, and within a few minutes we start to relax.

  “I love Washington,” Will says. “Don’t you miss it?”

  “Well, let me think about that. No. Not at all.”

  Summers in Washington did terrible things to my hair, not to mention the rest of me.

  “I thought we got a lot on the record. It was hopeful.”

  “You might be the only person I’ve ever met who has used ‘hopeful’ to describe Washington.”

  He throws a chip at my head. I eat it.

  “Small steps, Lucy. If we all keep taking small steps, we’ll get there.”

  “You should put that on a poster.”

  Our bare feet are layered like bricks. I examine his toes, which are the only toes I can remember seeing that aren’t hideous. Mine are hideous. Even with the killer pedicure, they are still cringe-worthy.

  “Nice toes.”

  “Thanks. My reward for surviving the dentist,” I lie.

  “Good. You should treat yourself to things. You are too selfless.”

  I stifle a horrified laugh and blurt out, “What if someone you thought was one way suddenly turned out to be entirely different?”

  Will sits up a little straighter. My feet fall away from his.

  “Are you talking specifics or hypothetically?” he asks slowly.

  “Hypothetically,” I say, swallowing hard. “Something someone asked me at the playground the other day.”

  He thinks about this for a minute.

  “You know all of my secrets, and someday I hope to know all of yours,” he says. “Because I’m pretty sure I don’t yet. But that’s one of the reasons I
married you. I want to take the rest of my life to find out.”

  It’s a pretty good answer. And as much as I’d like to believe him, I have yet to encounter a happily ever after without strings attached.

  The next day is Saturday and I sleep in. Will gets up with Theo, and I hear them muddling around in the kitchen, Theo making unreasonable demands and his dad trying desperately to figure out if this is normal. Does he really get to eat chocolate bunnies for breakfast? Or chocolate milk, for that matter? I lie in bed with the covers pulled up to my nose, reveling in the amazing softness of the sheets, how cool they are on my skin, kind of like Theo’s hands when he is exploring my face, touching my nose and eyelids and mouth. I love these moments. The weekend holds such promise, a chance to undo the drudgery of the week, shed the weight of obligation and routine, and do only what you feel like doing. Exercise free will.

  I had no idea weekends could be so great until I actually had a few. Agents with the USAWMD don’t have weekends. I mean, technically they have them when they are not on a mission, but I don’t recall ever realizing I was having one. I worked every waking hour of every day. If I didn’t, inevitably I got to thinking about what a train wreck my life was and that was downright depressing.

  But now the weekends are cherished, a time for the three of us to wander through the empty and unscheduled days together. When I eventually make it downstairs, Will has a mug of sweet, milky coffee waiting for me. Theo is under the table, playing with his mini yellow Corvette. There are tinfoil chocolate bunny wrappers on the floor.

  “I see he found the chocolate,” I say.

  “Hardly seemed like a battle worth fighting,” Will responds. “I didn’t see myself winning.”

  “No,” I agree, “there was very little chance of that happening. He’s relentless.”

  “And we’ve already been through the sugar high, so you timed your entrance wisely.”

  “Excellent.” I take a long slug of coffee. “What should we do today?”

  “I have that kite-surfing lesson down at Crissy Field. Do you guys want to come and watch me get run over by a tanker or two?”