Mike, Mike & Me

by Wendy Markham

  “Beau, be careful.”

  “I am being careful. I’m not stupid.”

  “No, but you are vulnerable when it comes to him. He had such a hold on you back when you were dating him.”

  I squirm, remembering all too clearly my fierce attraction to Mike. Remembering what it was like to lie in his arms, to be kissed by him, loved by him…

  “I was young,” I tell Valerie, pouring myself another cup of coffee.

  “No kidding.”

  “I’m older and wiser now.”

  “We’re all older,” she says, “but the wiser thing…well, I’m not so sure about that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That no matter how old a person is, she isn’t always in control of her emotions when it comes to the opposite sex.”

  “Are we talking about me, or you, Val?”

  “Both.” She tells me about her latest failed romance, with a man she didn’t realize was married. “Oldest story in the book,” she says. “I wish I could say that I broke it off the minute I found out he had a wife and kids.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No. I never broke it off, period. He dumped me.”

  “I’m sorry.” But not really. Of course I’m not sorry that her married lover cut her loose.

  “So am I. Still.”

  “Val…”

  “I know, Beau. But I was crazy about him. So crazy about him that I managed to overlook all the things that were wrong about our relationship, and all the people I was potentially hurting. Including myself.”

  “Point taken. Don’t worry. I’m not going to get involved with Mike again. I love Mike. My Mike. I wouldn’t do anything behind his back.”

  “You did once before.”

  “That was different. We weren’t married. We didn’t have three children and a life together.”

  “Just be careful,” she says again. “You can’t trust yourself around him.”

  “I’m not around him. We’re just e-mailing.”

  “You’re playing with fire.”

  “Oh, come on, Val.” I laugh. Nervously.

  “I’m serious, Beau.”

  “I’m fine, Valerie. Trust me.”

  Silence. Clearly, she doesn’t trust me.

  Time to change the subject to something a little less volatile. “Tell me about your trip to Denver,” I suggest.

  She does.

  As she talks, I check on the boys, making sure there are no signs of chocolate in the drool on Tyler’s chin, then retrieving silver foil Hershey’s Kiss wrappers from the floor, the crevices between the couch cushions, the soil around the potted ficus tree.

  Then I head down the hall and make the beds, wipe the gobs of turquoise toothpaste out of the sinks, empty the bathroom wastebaskets Melina forgot to empty yesterday.

  The whole time Valerie is chattering about her trip and I’m going about my mundane morning routine, I find myself battling intrusive, titillating memories of a dark-haired, dark-eyed Mike who isn’t the dark-haired, dark-eyed Mike I married.

  “I have to get to a meeting,” Valerie says reluctantly at last, as, back in the kitchen, I start the French toast for the boys’ breakfast.

  “I should go, too. I have to get…dressed.”

  “Lucky you,” she says with a wistful laugh. “I’d kill to stay in my pajamas past seven some morning.”

  “Come up to visit us soon and I promise you can,” I tell her.

  “Maybe I will.” But she won’t. “Or you can come down to the city, Beau, for lunch and a matinee.”

  “Maybe I will.” But I won’t.

  Despite our best intentions, Val and I will never have that day-to-day kind of friendship again. I feel a pang of loss every time I talk to her. Loss, yet also a touch of reassurance, because we still know each other inside and out in the ways that really count.

  We hang up with the promise to reconnect in person before the summer is over.

  I slap a pat of butter on the griddle and set it on the burner, thinking about Mike.

  The wrong Mike.

  Valerie is right. I never did have any willpower where he was concerned. Despite my best intentions, one glance from him, or the slightest touch, would have me back in his arms again.

  The best thing to do, I decide, whisking milk into eggs in a bowl, is to ignore his e-mails from here on in. I’ll just delete them without reading. He’ll get the message.

  The phone rings as I’m flipping the first four slices of egg-soaked bread.

  It’s Mike.

  The right Mike.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making breakfast for the boys. What are you doing?”

  “Wishing I were anywhere other than here. The train was late and only one elevator is working in my building. It’s going to be a bad day. I can tell already. Maybe I can get out of here early tonight.”

  “That would be great,” I say, knowing he won’t. He never does.

  “Thank God there are only two more weeks until vacation. I really need it this year.”

  “Yeah.” I sit down at the table and sip my lukewarm coffee. “But I wish we were going away, Mike.”

  “I know you do, Beau. But there’s too much to do around the house, and…”

  And he just wants to be home, because he so rarely is. I know that. Suddenly, I’m so sick of the same-old, same-old everything that it’s all I can do not to scream.

  I desperately need a change of scenery. So desperately that I can’t help making a last-ditch attempt to sway him.

  “If we went to the Cape or somewhere for even just part of the week, Mike, I could hire a mother’s helper when we got back and you and I could work on the house stuff together.”

  “Not this year,” he says, though he does sound contrite. “I know you’re bored, Beau.”

  “I’m not bored.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You’re right. I am.”

  He laughs. Not a mean laugh; more of a sympathetic chuckle.

  “It’s just hard,” I say, “being at home with the kids all the time. And I know it’s hard for you to be at work all the time.”

  “Yeah. But I like to get away once in a while, too. Listen, maybe you and I can go somewhere romantic for a long weekend for our anniversary this fall.”

  “Really?” I try to sound enthusiastic, but our anniversary isn’t until October.

  “Sure. We’ll talk about it. Hang in there, Babs.”

  “I’m hanging in there,” I say with a sigh. I really should tell him someday how much I hate when he calls me Babs.

  “I love you,” he adds. “I’ll see you tonight. Oh, and one more thing—”

  “Hmm?”

  “Melina.”

  “Mike…do we have to get into this now?”

  “Beau, when I got into the shower this morning, the drain was filled with hair. And I’m not as upset that I’m losing it as I am that she’s not cleaning it out. Wasn’t she there yesterday?”

  “Yes. I guess she forgot to do our shower.”

  “And our sink. There was a big gob of dried toothpaste in it.”

  I sigh.

  “We have to talk to her, Beau.”

  “I know. I will.”

  “You need to call her and tell her that if she wants to come next week, she’s got to get her act together.”

  “I can’t call her, Mike.”

  “Why not?”

  “She told me her phone got disconnected again. She hasn’t even been able to talk to her kids in Guatemala in weeks.”

  “Oh, come on, Beau. With what we’re paying her, she can afford to fly to Guatemala every week to see them in person.”

  “No, she can’t. She’s poor, Mike.”

  “She has you brainwashed, Beau. Why are you so protective of her?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him with a sigh.

  But I do know, and he wouldn’t understand. It’s that mutual maternal thing, that constant sense of empathy
for a fellow female. I really hate that she’s here scrubbing our toilet and her children are in another country.

  All right, maybe it’s been awhile since she actually scrubbed our toilet. After she left yesterday, I spotted a stray poop stain in the bowl in the hall bathroom and cleaned it myself before Mike got home.

  Too bad I didn’t check the sink and shower drain in the master bath as well.

  “If you don’t talk to her, Beau, I will.”

  “No, I’ll do it. When she comes next week, I’ll talk to her in person. But she doesn’t speak English, remember?”

  “Then how did she tell you about her kids in Guatemala and her disconnected phone?”

  “She knows a few words, and she uses sign language. We can communicate that way most of the time. I’m just going to have to figure out how to tell her she needs to make a little more effort.”

  “No, not a little more effort. Mucho effort.”

  “Right. Mucho effort.” I shake my head. Why does everything have to be so complicated? “I really hate stuff like this, Mike.”

  “I know you do. You’re too nonconfrontational, Beau. You need to learn how to deal with things head-on. Listen, I have to take another call. See you tonight.”

  “See you tonight.”

  I hang up and hoist my nonconfrontational self from the table. As I turn back to the stove, I realize that the neglected French toast is sending up a cloud of black smoke.

  “Shit!”

  “Mommy, you said a bad word,” a small voice promptly announces from the next room.

  I rush over to the stove. In my haste to lift the griddle from the burner, I scorch the side of my hand on the open gas flame.

  “Shit!” I exclaim again, wincing in pain.

  “Mommy! You said the bad word again!” Josh scolds.

  “Mommy’s very sorry,” I call, biting back an even badder word as I run my stinging hand under cold water.

  “Shit is a bad word,” Josh informs me, materializing in the kitchen.

  “I know it’s a bad word, Josh, and you shouldn’t say it either.”

  “Well, I was just telling you what you said, Mommy.”

  I clench my teeth. “Mommy knows what she said, Josh. Mommy couldn’t help it. Mommy got hurt.”

  Another set of footsteps patter into the kitchen immediately. I look up to see that my firstborn has joined his little brother in the doorway, still clad in his baseball print SkivvyDoodles with a fierce case of bedhead. His big dark eyes, so like his daddy’s, are worried.

  “What happened to you, Mommy? Are you okay?”

  I turn off the water and wrap my blistering hand in a dish towel. “I’m fine, sweetie. I just got burned.”

  “Were you playing with matches?”

  I smile and kiss the spiky patch of hair on top of Mikey’s head, and then the identical one on Josh’s. “No, I wasn’t playing with matches.”

  “Good. Because that’s naughty.”

  “And dangerous, too,” Josh adds solemnly.

  “You’re right, boys. It is naughty and dangerous.”

  So, I think ruefully, scraping the charred toast into the garbage can, is playing with fire.

  sixteen

  The past

  As luck would have it, before Mike could accept the job in Silicon Valley, the software company in Manhattan called him for a third interview. They flew him back to New York the first week in August and put him up at a hotel in the East Fifties, near their office.

  It wasn’t a luxury hotel like the Plaza or the Waldorf, just one of those Manhattan East Suite places. Still, I was impressed. Like I said, in my industry, entry-level applicants are lucky if they’re allowed to keep a pen after an interview. They certainly aren’t put up in hotel suites complete with kitchenettes and coffeemakers.

  Naturally, I was staying with Mike while he was here. His idea, not mine. Not that I protested. But I didn’t dare suggest it myself, lest he inform me he wasn’t ready for a commitment like that.

  Ironically, Mike called and told me about the interview the morning after my non-date with Other Mike at La Margarita. He sounded so upbeat about the software place and so excited to see me that I instantly realized I’d made a big mistake the night before. I wouldn’t be seeing Other Mike again. No way was I going to jeopardize my longtime relationship for a few laughs and a great pair of dimples.

  I told myself he probably wouldn’t even call me again, anyway. But when he did—twice—I screened his calls. My Mike was back in town, maybe for good, and that was all that mattered.

  “You know what we should do tomorrow?” I asked him as we lounged in bed watching The Tonight Show the night he arrived.

  “No, what should we do?” He nuzzled my neck. We were both naked, limbs lazily entwined under the covers. Naturally, we had made a beeline for the hotel from the airport.

  “I should call in sick to work, and we should stay here all day, in bed,” I said, raking my fingers through his short, dark hair.

  “Can’t. I have my interview in the morning, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I stifled a yawn.

  “Sleepy?” he asked with a smile.

  “A little.”

  “I wish I were. It’s barely nine o’clock my time.”

  His time.

  My time.

  That our body clocks were no longer in sync really bothered me. We used to fall asleep together and wake together, but not anymore. Now, whenever he was here visiting, I heard him prowling around long after I was drifting in and out of consciousness. Then, when at last I was feeling refreshed and wide awake by the light of day, it was impossible to rouse him for breakfast before noon.

  “You know,” I said, stifling another yawn, “I can still call in sick tomorrow morning and wait here for you. And when you finish your interview, you can come right back here and we can celebrate.”

  He laughed. “Celebrate what?”

  “That you got the job. You’re going to, you know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m psychic.” I pressed my lips to his bare chest, then laid my head against it.

  He tightened his arms around me. “Oh, yeah? Well, go ahead and tell me what else is going to happen, then. What does my future hold?”

  I grabbed his hand and pretended to examine his palm. “Hmm, let’s see. You’re going to live happily ever after.”

  “Where?”

  “In New York,” I said decidedly, tempted to add, with me.

  I bit back that last part, though, knowing I didn’t dare. He might be back in town and considering taking a job here, but that didn’t mean he’d changed his mind about our moving in together.

  “I don’t know, Beau,” he said, and his voice was no longer teasing. “The research job out West still sounds pretty good. And I might not get an offer tomorrow.”

  “You will,” I said with a confidence that didn’t quite resonate. “They don’t fly you back for another interview and put you up in a hotel if they’re not serious about you.”

  “Well, what if I screw up the interview tomorrow?”

  I pulled back to look up into his uncertain gaze. “You won’t,” I said, running a fingertip down his cheek. “You’re great, Mike, and they’ll want you…”

  Just as much as I do.

  He kissed me, on the lips this time, tenderly. “I hope they do. But if they don’t—”

  “They will.”

  “But if they don’t,” he repeated, “we’ll have to talk, Beau.”

  I frowned. “About your moving up to San Francisco. I know.”

  He nodded. “It wouldn’t have to be forever. And it wouldn’t mean our relationship has to change. We’ve been separated for as long as we’ve known each other. We’ve always managed to make it work.”

  “This is different.”

  “How?”

  “It’s much farther away. And before, we always knew there was an end in sight. We always knew we’d be together for the whole summer, every summer.”
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  “True.”

  “We were supposed to be together this summer,” I reminded him.

  “I know. But this thing with Bradley has been an incredible experience, Beau. I know you don’t understand a whole lot about technology, but this project we’re working on has the power to change the world. And the research job in Silicon Valley is the same type of thing.”

  “You said it might also be a big waste of time.”

  “Right,” he admitted. “There’s no way of knowing. But listen…you have to trust me. You know I’m crazy about you.”

  My heart skipped a beat, the way it always did when he looked at me that way and said something like that.

  “I’m crazy about you, too,” I said softly.

  “I’m not going to let go of everything we have together just because I’m living across the country. You’ll come out to visit. And maybe you’ll love it so much you’ll want to move out there, too.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Maybe I’ll want to come back East.”

  “What if you don’t?”

  “We’ll work it out. You’re overthinking everything, and you’re getting way ahead, anyway. Maybe the job in New York will come through.”

  “It’ll come through,” I said again, firmly, almost daring to believe that I could make it happen by sheer will.

  “And if it doesn’t come through, we’ll work things out.”

  I sighed. “I can’t stand the thought of living apart again, Mike.”

  “I know. Believe me, Beau, it doesn’t sound great to me, either. I don’t like being away from you. I keep thinking about all the things we could be doing together…and I get worried that you’re going to find somebody else.”

  My heart stopped.

  “Why would you worry about that?” I asked slowly, wondering if he could possibly know what I had done.

  Not that what I had done was so wrong. I had drinks and dinner with another guy. So what? It wasn’t even a date. We didn’t even kiss.

  But you wanted to, I reminded myself. You wanted him to kiss you. If he had tried, you would have let him.

  Good thing he hadn’t tried.

  My definition of cheating was kissing somebody else. If there was no kissing, there was no cheating.

  And anyway, I reminded myself, Mike was just speaking hypothetically. Still…