by Josie Brown
“Gee, Lyssa, sounds like you’ve been cavorting with these losers too.” Suddenly suspicious, Tammy gives me the once-over. “What, are you their new mascot or something?”
“Who, me? No! I—I just . . . well, I just don’t see the harm in having a wide circle of friends, is all.”
“With all the socializing you’re doing these days, it’s no wonder our food drive is in the crapper.”
I flinch as Margot’s declaration hits its target succinctly. “That’s not fair! I’ve been working my ass off—”
“Oh, really?” As she says this, she glares pointedly at my bum before flipping open the MacBook she brought with her. “If that were the case, productivity wouldn’t be down 78.4 percent.” Her nod is barely perceptible, but Colleen catches it, and is scurrying to hit the TV remote. The family room television screen comes alive with a bar graph of three rows made up of graphics of cans. “As you can see from this analysis of the past three years’ drives . . .”
And for the next hour, instead of the usual gossiping and mommy one-upmanship we enjoy so much, I and the rest of the board are treated to a fully animated HDTV PowerPoint presentation showcasing the intricate details of running a boffo off-the-charts school event, Margot Hardaway–style. You can take the girl out of the boardroom, but you can’t take the boardroom out of the girl. Corporate America’s loss is Paradise Heights’s gain.
The theme from Rocky crescendos as each page melds into the next. One shows fifth-graders stacking cans into a pyramid that reaches the ceiling. I recognize the voice-over on the presentation: it’s an actress from a sitcom that’s been off the air for at least eight years. She’s now a full-time mommy here in the Heights, so I’m guessing Margot got her on the cheap.
“Each successive year has had a quantum leap over the previous year. Your event manual explains the primary cause for this phenomenal success: simply put, it’s KPE! That is, Kindergarten Parent Enthusiasm. The social anxiety these parents feel for their children is channeled into hyperactivism within their children’s new classrooms—which in turn translates into enough cans—”
“Manual? But I never got a manual!” I can feel the beads of sweat forming on my brow.
Margot sighs and shakes her head in annoyance. “Sure you did. I handed it to you myself. Don’t you remember? It has a burgundy binder.”
Ah, yes, I remember now: a 486-page tome filled with footnoted analyses within sections labeled “Creative Sales Techniques,” “Classroom Incentive Programs,” “Post-Program Analytics,” “Data Management,” “Manpower Analysis,” and on and on . . .
Yes, I did try to read through it, but by page 73 I was sporting one whopper of a headache. And I guess I should never have left it open on the kitchen counter, because the whole section on “Team-Level Analysis” was smeared with jelly when Mickey made a sandwich over it, and is now stuck together.
Quickly I turn around to make sure the laundry room door is closed. Otherwise, Margot may notice it’s being used to prop up the washing machine so that it doesn’t rumba across the floor when Tanner stuffs too many of his and Mickey’s dirty towels into the wash.
Damn it, I hate being put on the defensive. Time to turn the tables. “You know, the purpose of a volunteer event is grass roots. Everyone is supposed to pitch in and help. Margot, if you actually got in the trenches with me, maybe it wouldn’t be floundering right now.”
“We’re—that is, you’re floundering because you don’t know how to inspire anyone to action. I guess we aren’t all natural-born leaders.” She pauses the presentation and scans the room. “You have a point, though. Someone’s got to bail you out. Any volunteers?”
Except for a hiccup out of Colleen, the room is silent. These women may share a lot of things—recipes, babysitters, doctors, sometimes even vacations—but when it comes to screwups, it’s every woman for herself.
“Ah, well, busy schedules all around, I guess. Sorry, Lyssa, dear. You’re on your own. It’ll just take a little extra planning on your part, is all.”
But her tone says it all: I’ve already failed.
Margot’s crown is safe for yet another year.
As she takes a sip from her glass, the frozen presentation page dissolves to her screen saver: a picture of Margot, lying out by the pool at her palatial Maui beach house with her hubby, Gerard, a cardiologist.
“Oops, sorry, girls!” But she’s not really. She just wants us to remember that her picture-perfect life is the result of more than a little extra planning on her part.
It also has to do with marrying well.
As her friends ooh and aah over Gerard’s toned, tanned, and hairless chest, Margot boasts that he’s hairless all over, even under the postage stamp–size Speedo that rises, like the Barnum and Bailey big top, over his obvious bulge.
In fact, she manscapes his twigs and berries herself, as part of their lovemaking ritual.
Yeah, right.
Margot is no subservient geisha, and we all know it. Truth be told, Gerard used to go to the Heights of Beauty for a little waxwork around his package—until Margot caught the waxing technician throwing in a free hand job.
Her best friend, Tammy, leaked that little tidbit to Brooke, which in Paradise Heights is the equivalent of giving Brian Williams a late-breaking news item.
To our frenemies, indiscretion is the greater part of malice.
As Margot informs us as to why plucking is much more meticulous than waxing, I just tune out—until she comes to the part about “first aid.” “Every now and then, even I miss the hair. Just goes to show that no one’s perfect. . . .”
Ouch.
Yes, she’s a sadist. Not that this is news to anyone. That her tweezers grab hold of skin instead of hair . . . well, chalk it up to Margot extracting her ounce of flesh from Gerard, literally as well as figuratively.
Or to holding on for dear life, with all its imperfections.
8:53 p.m.
The meeting finally wraps up just as Ted saunters through the door. Instinctively all eyes move in his direction. In the space of a nanosecond, their brains have processed his vital statistics: tall, handsome, swarthy good looks, taken . . . but is he smitten?
He, too, assesses the situation: six women, of whom five are stoically married, if not out-and-out unhappy about it.
He doesn’t presume he should count me among them.
He gives Brooke a wink as he reminds us of the results of their last tennis game, and massages Isabelle’s neck, which has her practically purring. When he compliments Tammy on her tan, she demurely nudges her halter top in order to show that her golden glaze is full-bodied.
Had he challenged that claim, I’ve no doubt she would have squeezed out of her jeans and yanked down her thong too, in order to prove that she meant what she said.
Then we could have seen for ourselves if she waxes, shaves, or plucks.
And if she does it as well as Margot.
One of Tammy’s straps is relaxed enough to give Ted and the rest of us a quick peek at a nipple. Her “Oops! Sorry . . .” convinces no one that it was an accident.
Ted feigns missing her little striptease. “Damn, Tammy! Next time give me some warning.” I know better. His smile is too wide. When we play Go Fish with the kids, it’s his tell.
As he helps the women into their coats and gives them each a peck on the cheek, Tammy turns and gives me a hug that almost strangles me. “We miss you, girl! Don’t be such a stranger.”
Ted looks at her strangely. “Why do you say that? Lyssa is here all day long.”
“Is that what she tells you? Boy, I wish my Charlie were as gullible! Harry Wilder is Lyssa’s new best friend. She’d much rather hang out with him than with us.”
Before I have a chance to call her on this, Brooke murmurs just low enough for me to hear, whether I want to or not: “Sweetheart, you can’t play Switzerland. Choose a side. For your sake, I hope it’s the right one.”
22
“There is no disguise which can
hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.”
—François de La Rochefoucauld
10:17 p.m.
Let’s fuck,” says Ted.
Seriously, this is his idea of foreplay.
I look up from the bathtub I’m scrubbing—the one between Olivia’s bedroom and the guest room. Its scum ring is the result of our daughter’s newfound love affair with mud pies and all other primal faux baked goods. I barely had time to throw her into the tub before the board arrived, and certainly had no time at all to wash it out immediately afterward. So to ensure that my guests’ powder-room visits were limited to the downstairs lavatory, particularly Margot’s (why is it that those with the tiniest bladders are the biggest clean freaks?), I locked the hall door to this bathroom and barricaded it with Olivia’s Imaginarium Glitter Suite Dollhouse.
With this gossip-hungry group, I’ve learned to take no chances.
Whereas I avoided this shame, that last little jibe from Tammy was the cherry on the cake of this seventeen-hour-long day. I was fully prepared for a fight as opposed to a love tussle, so Ted’s reaction to her remark is a surprise.
Relieved, I smile wanly and rise from my knees—only to feel Ted’s arm around my waist. As he yanks me close, the canister of Comet I’m holding is crushed, and a green mushroom cloud has us choking midkiss.
But even this doesn’t deter him from the task at hand:
Nailing me.
The only thing I can figure is that Tammy’s taunt about Harry has made him jealous.
Well, what do you know! Ted has a new turn-on. . . .
“Hey, babe, what say we do it, like, right here in the tub?” He eyes my handiwork with a nod. No, it’s not that Ted feels cleanliness is next to godliness, and certainly not as it pertains to booty calls. “You know how I like to watch you get all lathered up. Or, hey, you can hike up there on the vanity.” Without a second thought, he backhands Olivia’s Disney Princess toothbrush, tumbler, and soap dish into the sink, patting the counter in anticipation.
Ah, so that’s how it’s going to be: whoopee is to be made, but not anywhere as mundane as our bedroom suite. We are to live dangerously, even if that means doing so within yelping distance of the innocents who have sprung from our loins.
This should bother me, I know. I am truly bone tired. The fact that Ted just got in from yet another late-night sales meeting, and that his eyes have that undeniable Glenlivet glaze, is the prime indicator that I can expect snoring as opposed to snuggling after our little lovefest.
Then again, beggars can’t be choosers, and our sex drought has gone on too long. So instead of bombarding him with the battery of naked Barbies that form Olivia’s in-tub swim team, I pause, pretending to seriously consider his interesting offer but all the while thinking, Dude, ain’t no way in hell I’ll risk waking Olivia with my fake moans, which I do only to keep you stoked enough that I can come too before you peter out, or having her walk in to go potty only to see us going at it like two hot, horny bonobos—
Whoa. Just think how much those shrink bills would set us back. . . .
Instead, I whisper back, “Mmmm, love it! So naughty! But I have a better idea. . . .”
Taking his hand in mine, I lead him out into the hall, down the stairs, and out into the backyard, far away from the eyes and ears of our offspring.
Beyond the pool, silhouetted in full moonlight, is the toolshed.
The name is a misnomer. It holds anything but. Instead it is a repository of past lives, both Ted’s and mine. Two whole walls are filled with his old high school and college basketball trophies. In some alternate universe, one in which he has two good knees and no tendinitis, the Ted Harper he was meant to be has just re-upped with the Lakers, having accepted a contract befitting the league’s top scorer. Are we married? I doubt it. Unlike this Ted, that one has enough challenges on the court. Somewhere in that new life, scoring has to be easy, right? For both Teds, the issue is never quantity. But in the eye of the pop tart, the supermodel, or the celebutante, there is nothing sexy about software sales, so advantage: Laker Ted.
On my side of the shed is a tall bookcase filled with coffee cans that hold paintbrushes and quart-sized cans of acrylic paints arranged by hue. An avalanche of some of my old paintings has slid below the sill of the shed’s window, where they were propped. On an easel is a portrait of Mickey. It is my latest attempt at rediscovering the talent I once believed in so fiercely. It is how he looked at three: full-cheeked and sloe-eyed, nodding off with his head against a windowpane as he waits for his big brother to come home from school.
Ted ignores it even as he scouts the perfect place to ravage me. I’m praying he settles for the room’s only soft surface, a daybed. It is covered in a pink sateen duvet and laden with stuffed animals. I’d hoped this dainty tableau would induce Olivia to make the shed her playhouse, but she’s not having it. Not yet, anyway. She’s still too young to feel comfortable playing alone this far from the house.
So that Ted will take the hint, I fall back onto it with a come-hither chuckle and rip open the buttons of my blouse, but he’s not buying it. He pulls me up. From behind me, he unzips my jeans, then yanks them down to my ankles. He kisses the insteps of my feet as he untangles them from denim.
His hands roam gently between my legs and beyond the silk panel of my panties, his fingers stroking and probing until he elicits a groan and a shudder. “You want it, don’t you?”
“Yes, I want it.” My voice trembles just enough for him to think I really mean it.
But what I really want is the one thing he’s not willing to give me:
His undying love, for as long as we both shall live.
In the meantime, I’ll settle for being the best fuck he’s ever had.
No amount of gusto on my part can trump that one thing I know turns him on: the thrill of the chase.
Well, today I’ve discovered another: jealousy.
Thanks, Harry. Next time, the doughnuts are on me.
Tonight, though, what Ted has in mind entails no rubbing, straddling, probing, pumping, sucking, or Cirque du Soleil acrobatics on my part. He is on a mission: to earn back my lust.
My job is to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Or stand, as the case may be. He walks me over to the window, kicking aside the canvases that get in his way. As they slide like dominoes over our feet, he curses me under his breath: “Damn it, Lys! Why do you keep these around anyway? Can’t you unload them on craigslist? There’s got to be a starving artist who’ll take them off your hands for a few bucks.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he can ditch his stupid trophies on some starving athletes, but he shuts me up with a face-suck, then flips me around so that I’m facing out the window.
“There. Hands on the sill.” Ted’s hot breath dampens the hairs on the back of my neck, but it’s the index finger that hooks onto my panties and slowly pulls them down to my ankles that makes me shiver. So that I can spread my legs, he raises one foot, grazing the arch with his hand, then does the same with the other, before repositioning me, arched and straining on tiptoe. To steady himself behind me, he holds on to my hips. I hold my breath, waiting for the plunge.
Finally, when he enters me, I moan. Each time he drives himself deep inside me, my breasts jiggle. At the same time, the loosest pane in the window shakes, rattles, and rolls as his fist hits the sill. He’s in the zone, and he just assumes I am too.
So why aren’t I? I should be feeling joy, lust, gratitude, happiness; I know it.
But I don’t.
I feel used.
To put myself into the moment, I try to think of something that makes me happy. What immediately comes to mind is the newest blossom on the crimson candy cane amaryllis that Harry gave me. This in turn has me remembering Harry’s admiration of my green thumb. Next thing I know, I’m thinking about Harry’s thumb. . . . Oh, all right, I’ll admit it: it’s not just his thumb that comes to mind, but those long, thick finger
s too—
And what that implies about any appendage he might stuff into a leopard bong thong. . . .
My moan jolts me out of the fantasy, but Ted takes it as a cue to up the ante. The locomotion in his love train is moving us full steam ahead in unison. So that my thoughts don’t end up back in Harry’s underwear drawer, I open my eyes and stare out the window. The full moon is not kind to the sycamores lining the street. In its glow, the shadows of their branches, shorn of all leaves, become an army of grotesque goblins rampaging over our lawn. The street beyond is lit up like a stage in the glow of the antique streetlamps Pete fought so hard for—
And that’s when I see Harry.
He is out walking Lucky, who is sniffing the ground before making the pit stop that will have Harry scooping poop with the plastic bag already over one hand.
But no, instead he glances over—
Oh, my God, he sees me.
At least, I presume he’s seen me—seen us, that is, or perhaps heard us, what with the way the window is shaking, as if we’re in the middle of an earthquake or something—because he does a double take, then slowly walks in our direction, as if to get a better look.
It suddenly occurs to me that Harry has seen enough of my jubblies. I want to duck below the windowsill, but Ted has me pinned. “Ted! . . . TED—”
My whispers fall on deaf ears. Ted keeps pounding away at me. As he climaxes, he roars ecstatically.
Harry, now fearing the worst, is looking for a way to jump the fence so that he can check things out.
“Ted, stop, please!” To make my point, I reach back and smack him on the rump.
He moans loudly. “Aw, honey, give me a minute to catch my breath! I’m not a machine, you know.”
But he’s willing to give it the old college try. He pulls me close again. This time, to get him to listen, I slap him—hard—in the face. “No, listen! Someone—someone is out there.”
“Fuck it. . . . What?” My hit has deflated him, both figuratively and literally. I’m now allowed to duck below the window. Realizing his own exposure, Ted crouches, too.
“Jesus, it’s that Wilder guy! What the hell is he doing out there anyway? What is he, some sort of pervert?”
