Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  Miss you both!

  Love,

  Amy

  Now that I’ve purged the need to dump all my problems onto my mother, my brain clears, and for one glorious moment I can breathe.

  And then someone extremely worrying rushes into the blank space: Matt Colburn.

  Matt and I began dating just before his meteoric climb upward, just after he started writing and producing Real World Vampires. Matt jumped right on the whole vampire/supernatural thing just as it was taking off. Despite what he says in interviews, he never had a flicker of interest in anything remotely supernatural before the show. He’s more of a social scientist than a writer or producer. His ability to scope out trends a millisecond before they take off is uncanny. After our relationship finally finished, he produced three hit movies, migrated right to the top of the entertainment world, and stayed there. I like to think that the two events were not related. That’s how I met Peter, stalking Matt at Comic-Con trying to find out if the reason he’d finished with me so abruptly was to start seeing someone else. It was: his future wife. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

  Matt ended our three-year relationship in a three-minute conversation when I called him up from a farm in Brazil in the middle of a trip. He announced that what we were doing was no longer practical; that he needed me to make a choice between him and my job, then and there. I wavered for one point two seconds and then chose the job. By the time I got back to LA and wanted to talk it through properly, he was seeing Kimberly. The problem with Matt and me was that each of us was always the most important person in our own lives. I wasn’t willing to ditch my coffee career/obsession to accompany him to premieres and be his mental support hotline/punching bag when he went through one of his self-flagellation episodes. I wasn’t willing to be physically there for the larger percentage of the year. And he wasn’t able to go for weeks in a row by himself.

  In the end, I suspect it was in some part the sex that finished our relationship. It was just so damned good that the pauses in between became almost unbearable. So we ended, and I married Peter on the rebound. Not to slight my marriage to Peter. We’ve hit the skids a little since the kids have come along, but who doesn’t? And honestly, Peter’s a much better match and a more supportive husband to me than Matt ever would have been. With Peter there’s a connection that was completely missing in anything Matt and I had. You quickly get the idea from watching Real World Vampires that its creator and writer isn’t the most nuanced of people. (And, by the way, shouldn’t that be Real-World Vampires? Maybe they thought a hyphen would confuse their target audience.) Personally, I always thought the show was slightly exploitive of the mentally ill. Each week Matt’s crew would profile some sad soul or even a group of unfortunates who sincerely believed they were actual vampires. Fascinating, disturbing, compelling. Matt jumped on the wave of reality TV right as it appeared on the horizon, and he rode that thing all the way to shore—making plenty of money as he went.

  It’s getting cold so I crawl back into bed. I see my glasses on my nightstand. I should take this golden opportunity to try and get some of the applesauce off the lenses. I walk into the bathroom, pick up a dampened Spider-Man washcloth, and gently rub at the applesauce. It’s not coming off. Whatever toxic mess of chemicals is in that sauce seems to have bonded with the lens. I rub with a little extra vigor. Big mistake—the lens pops out, straight onto Spidey. If it took me four days to get around to wiping sauce off my glasses, when am I going to find time to get them fixed? Is it still legally permissible to drive if I close one eye? I dig through the medicine cabinet and there at the bottom is a tube of Krazy Glue. Two minutes later and the lens is back in place; however, there is now a semitransparent trail of glue running across the center of the lens.

  Looks like by trying to make things better, I just made everything incrementally worse. I take this observation as a signal from up above that, likewise, it’s probably a really bad idea all around to call Matt.

  But you know what? I think I’m going to do it anyway.

  CHAPTER 6

  Peter is watching the kids and I’ve been allotted fifteen minutes in which to call Matt and convince him to read my husband’s script with a view to either buying it or passing it on to someone else willing to plonk down the money for it.

  I have the number for Colburn Entertainment, scrawled on a Post-it, in one hand and my iPhone in the other. Should I even make this call? It would be completely easy to tell Peter that I left a message with Matt’s assistant and then just give a series of “oh well, such is Hollywood” shrugs as time passes and the “phone call” is not returned. That’s a rather devious and dishonest way to approach things. However, if there’s a simple way to avoid making this call, I should probably take it. Now that I’m confronted with the moment, speaking to Matt—if I get through—is going to be super awkward. What do I say? “So remember the last time we spoke and you told me unless I ditched my career in order to support yours, we were over? Turns out the guy I opted to marry instead is—in direct contrast to your stupendous success—a colossal failure of a writer. So, even though we haven’t spoken in almost a decade, could you do me the kind of favor you probably wouldn’t extend to ninety-nine percent of the people you meet and please read, and potentially buy, his screenplay? Oh yes, and no one in Hollywood wants to work with my husband because of his bad/litigious attitude—but you probably know that already.”

  Well, it’s just not an easy conversation to have, is it? Plus, I’ll completely look like a stalker, like I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the past nine years for an excuse to call him. It’ll look like I never really forgot about him. It’ll look like part of me still wishes it were the olden days, that things had worked out differently. But Peter needs this. No one else is going to do him a favor, and in all honesty Matt’s probably his best way in. We both know that. Peter is a good writer, and who knows, if he’s written something interesting enough, Matt might take a risk on him. And, of course, the truth is, I want to talk to Matt. I want to know that his marriage bores him stupid and that—no matter how it looks to the outside world—his career success hasn’t made him happy at all.

  Should I? Shouldn’t I? My fingers apparently have made the choice on my behalf as they appear to be tapping out his number. Looks like I’m doing this. I take a deep breath. It doesn’t help. My finger shakes as I plug in the remaining digits. My heart’s ramming my breastbone like it wants to break free from my chest, free-fall down to my phone, and physically stop my finger from dialing. Too late. It’s ringing. I don’t know if I’m actually going to be able to get a word out. Too quickly someone picks up.

  “Colburn Entertainment.” An image flashes into my mind of the impossibly hip twenty-two-year-old girl on the other end of the line. Legs and arms at adolescently awkward angles, her pink pudgy lips all sulky and sultry.

  “Um, can I speak to Matt Colburn, please?” I can hear that I sound like a nervous mess. Ms. Sultry probably gets a hundred people a week trying to bluff their way into speaking with Matt. She’ll hear my tremble and think that I’m a wannabe.

  “Is he expecting your call?” The way she says it clearly indicates that she already knows the answer is “nope!”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Do you have a referral?” Eh? From my doctor?

  “No. Can I just leave a message for him?”

  “Sure,” she says, and somehow I doubt my message is ever going to make it into Matt’s hands. But that’s fine with me. I’ve done my duty. I leave my number, hang up, and mentally mark the close of the entire sequence of events. However, before I’ve even reached the bedroom door, my phone rings. Well, damn it. My arms and legs start to vibrate again. I pick up my phone and stare at the screen. Now that I see the number, I can’t believe I ever forgot it. It’s Matt’s cell. I drop the phone, then pick it up and answer.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “Amy?” Just two syllables out of his mouth and it’s like I’ve stepped throu
gh a fold in time. Nothing’s changed. He’s exactly the same person. We’re in exactly the same situation. I’ve just had him on pause all these years. I should not have made this call.

  “Matt. How are you?” I go for formal. For “let’s act as if we’ve never seen each other naked—ever.”

  “Amy? What’s happened? Why are you calling?” He’s not joining in with “formal,” and his tone’s gone straight to intimate. Conspiratorial. This isn’t helping my emotional system, which has gone from being flashflooded with adrenaline to saturated in oxytocin.

  “I’m actually calling to ask you a favor,” I say, trying very hard to keep the flirt out of my voice. Unfortunately, if there was a curly cord attached to this phone, I’d be twirling it between my fingers right now.

  “Where are you?” he says. There’s an urgency to his tone that I vaguely recognize. I’m not sure what the emotion is behind it. Regret? Lust? Passion? I’m possibly projecting here.

  “I’m at home, in Pasadena.”

  “Can we meet?” he asks. Meet? I wasn’t expecting this.

  “It’s okay, Matt. I don’t want to take up too much of your time.” Going for ultraformal now. “It’s Peter O’Hara. My . . . husband. He’s written a screenplay, and I was just wondering if you’d take a look at it.”

  “Oh, you were, were you,” he says teasingly. He thinks I’m lying! He thinks I’ve engineered this whole setup in order to get in touch with him.

  “Yes. I was. Will you look at it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great. What’s your e-mail?”

  “Hold up a minute. If I’m going to spend the time reading your husband’s screenplay, then I want to see you in person.”

  “Can we Skype?”

  “No.”

  “Why do we need to meet?”

  “Because now that I’ve heard your voice, I want to see you.” That urgent tone again.

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea?” I ask. It seems a pretty pertinent question at this point.

  “I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in about a decade.” Well, I can’t say I’m not flattered. But I have to draw this to a close.

  “I’m going to messenger it to your office.”

  “You do that and I’ll put it straight in the trash.” Bastard. Maybe I’ll just hang up. Pretend none of this ever happened. “Don’t hang up the phone, Amy.” He’s not as psychic as he seems. Hanging up on Matt when the conversation wasn’t going the way I wanted was always my thing.

  “Come on. I’m surrounded by a bunch of Hollywood jerk-offs all day. It’d be really cool to talk to someone real for a change.”

  “One of the little people.”

  “Don’t be like that. I know things finished weird between us. I miss you, Amy. You were a laugh. Let’s just meet to say hi. What have you got to lose?” Everything.

  “When?” I ask.

  “Soon. I’ll call you.” And with that he hangs up. The lack of “good-bye” somehow seems to make everything even more implicitly shady. Perhaps I’ll hand him a printout, we’ll all have a good laugh, and that’ll be the end of this episode of Real World Exes.

  Perhaps. In the meantime I’d better go and share the glad tidings with Peter—and check that there’s some ink in the printer.

  CHAPTER 7

  It’s a quarter till six. Day fourteen. Peter’s already left for HushMush. Smart guy. He knows if he’s still around when the kids wake up, he’ll never get away. I’m clinging to the side of our mattress in order to accommodate Violet’s body, currently dominating the middle of the bed in an X shape. Most of the night was spent in an unhappy H with Peter and me on the outside and Violet the horizontal line connecting our bodies. It’s not a configuration that lends itself to restful sleep.

  The last few days at home have been a complete disaster. I’ve yet to unpack my backpack or find my way to the grocery store. I still haven’t had time to pick that line of Krazy Glue off my glasses. Any day my new contact lenses will arrive in the mail. Apparently, right now they are in some depot in Ohio where they’ve been for about a week. However, until the glorious day that they arrive, I’m committed to glue-obscured vision. The only positive thing I can say about the last few days is that we haven’t been to the ER, though the police have been called on us, so we didn’t totally avoid involving emergency services within the first two weeks. I don’t know who put in the noise complaint to the cops. But I have my suspicions that it was my overly wholesome next-door neighbor—Lizzie.

  Lizzie thinks I am a lousy parent. She’s never said a word to that effect, but the thoughts are coming so loudly from her brain that she may as well have a permanent thought bubble over her head: Amy O’Hara’s such a bad mother, I’m worried she’ll have a detrimental effect on my children simply by osmosis. Quite frankly, after the last couple of weeks I’m considering donning a wooden placard around my neck: “World’s Worst Mother. Have Mercy.”

  So far this week I managed to induce a massive bout of diarrhea in my firstborn when I ignored his observation that Daddy never gave him cheese and forced him to eat a cheddar sandwich. What? We’d run out of peanut butter and I thought he was just being fussy. I completely forgot that he was lactose-intolerant, probably because I’d never actually witnessed an episode before. You can be reassured that the fact is now burned into my memory. I had to bribe him with three new game downloads before he’d swear not to tell Peter about it. And a “fun” trip to the pool didn’t go that well either. Turns out that reports of Violet’s progress at her swimming lessons had been vastly exaggerated, and when I rather enthusiastically threw her up in the air and into the pool (she asked me to!), she sank to the bottom like a stone. Luckily, the seventeen-year-old lifeguard was on the ball. On the same day that I nearly drowned my daughter, I also let both kids burn to a crisp. I’d been diligently applying sunscreen to them all afternoon only to realize—after they both started turning a scorched, raw pink—that I’d been slathering them with my very expired SPF 4 self-tanner from back when I cared more about tanning than skin cancer. On top of that, I can’t seem to cook a single thing that they both like to eat. I keep forgetting to put Violet down for a nap after lunch, which means she keeps drifting off while standing up and then falling over and hitting her head. All in all, far from the whole experience finally bonding us together, both kids now hate me and keep asking when Daddy’s coming home. Well, Billy still hates me, Violet’s as clingy as ever—yet still manages to scorn me at the same time.

  I too am wondering when Daddy is going to put in an appearance. Peter’s not saying anything about anything. Just disappearing before dawn, coming back after the kids are in bed, and then hunkering down in the office for yet more quality time with his MacBook. I am hoping that by virtue of sheer hours spent in the company of his laptop, his screenplay is being polished to a blazing shine. If questioned, he neither confirms nor denies this hope. Peter’s been pretty introverted the few moments we’ve seen him during waking hours—only opening his mouth occasionally to stop Billy and me from killing each other. It is, in fact, a complete relief to have one mouth in this house that stays more or less shut in my presence. Between the screaming, the whining, the crying, the talking, the laughing, the fake laughing, and the foot thundering, I think the decibel count alone is enough to send me running back to the workforce. Because here comes the admission, the admission that would have Peter straight to dancing the “I Told You So” jig if he and I were having in-depth communication these days: Looking after the kids all day is hard. Harder than sourcing coffee beans in countries without plumbing. So there.

  “Mommy.” There’s a prod-prod on my back. Perhaps keeping my eyes closed as a sign that I’m “sleeping” will somehow cause Violet to spontaneously develop empathy skills. She’ll think, Poor Mother must be exhausted. What a time of it she’s been having recently. I’ll entertain myself until she’s rested enough to make my breakfast.

  Prod-prod. “Mommy!” As I roll over to face her, I am confronte
d with a small pile of sand. How? And why? But at two weeks in, I’ve stopped asking those kinds of questions. Out loud, anyway.

  “I’m a baby lizard and you’re the mommy lizard.”

  “Right.”

  “The baby lizard wants milk.”

  “No ‘please’?”

  “Milk.”

  I grab my glasses and go to pick at the glue.

  “Miiiiiiiiilk!”

  I resign myself to limited vision for life, don the glasses, and make for the kitchen. And yes, a better parent would explain to their child that unless they ask nicely, there will be no milk at all. I am not that better parent.

  “Mommy! Walk like a lizard!” I’ve no idea how a lizard walks, but I do some kind of lizard waddle and that seems to satisfy her. Over the last few days I’ve learned that there’s no point in refusing to walk like a lizard/sing like a snowman/slither like a pink worm—a happy one. You just do it—without question. Or there will be big trouble.

  Violet and Billy both demand caterpillar pancakes for breakfast, which apparently is a firm favorite from Peter’s range of food-art specialties. I pretend I don’t hear them and serve up jelly sandwiches cut into wonky stars. That’s as special as it gets from Mommy.

  “Mommy, you’re a weirdo,” says Billy. “Sandwiches are lunch food.” Kid’s got a point, but the truth is, it’s difficult to compete with caterpillar pancakes by serving up Special K—which is about all we have left in the pantry. My other big concept is to serve scrambled eggs and put a happy face on it with ketchup, but I think I’m going to save that idea for a grand lunchtime reveal one day. Plus, we’re currently out of eggs. The domestic side of things, in general, seems to be rapidly falling apart. Peter transformed from “clean freak” to “typical male” the moment I got back from the airport, and no one appears to have stepped into the breach. The dishwasher’s permanently full, we’ve been using paper towels instead of toilet paper for about a week, the floor tiles are starting to get kind of sticky, and there’s a long smear of what could possibly be turd over the back door that’s been there since last Tuesday.