Happy Hour

by Michele Scott

  Nora seemed to understand her this time as she turned away and sliced up the cheese. Jamie gave up trying to play blue-ribbon hostess, and went upstairs to change out of the t-shirt that was now covered in orange sauce and the jeans she wore every weekend. Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rang and she dashed down the stairs. Peeking in the kitchen, she saw that Nora had covered her butt. She passed her and Dorothy staring at the boob tube in the den. Nora had even given Dorothy a glass of wine. Jamie smiled weakly at Nora, who shook her head at her, as Dorothy reached for the housekeeper’s hand. “Gracias,” Jamie whispered.

  “Mas dinero. Queiro mas.” Nora rubbed her fingers together.

  Jamie shrugged her shoulders and walked to the front door, knowing exactly what Nora wanted.

  The friends all rolled in together.

  “It smells…” Danielle wrinkled up her nose.

  “Burnt,” Jamie replied. Her friends laughed and followed her into the combined open family room and kitchen. “Sorry, but uh, no duck a l’orange for you.” She waved her hand over a tray of cheese and crackers, grapes, apple slices and strawberries. “Dig in. It’s gourmet, I assure you.”

  “I don’t do duck anyway.” Danielle smiled and reached for the bottle of Viognier in the ice bucket. “You try too hard. You should know by now that we aren’t a difficult crowd to please.”

  “Look who’s talking.” Alyssa took a seat on the end barstool and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She wore a cream colored v-neck sweater that contrasted beautifully with her dark skin. “What was it you served last time? Veal scallopini?”

  “We were drinking Italian wines,” Danielle replied.

  “Personally, I am with Jamie on this. I get sick of the gourmet food.” Kat handed Danielle the corkscrew at the end of the counter.

  “Sure,” Jamie said. “Christian’s food is so horribly boring.”

  “No, of course not. But you know it’s nice to have something simple sometimes. And it’s better on my waistline. I swear my husband doesn’t know how to cook without using a cup of butter and cream in every sauce.” She pinched her waist. “And it shows. Just look at my ass. I could hardly squeeze into these.” She turned around and patted her butt. “And I won’t even show you the excess baggage hanging over these suckers. Thank God for loose fitting blouses.” She ruffled out her blouse. It was on the larger, longer side, which as far as her friends were concerned was totally unnecessary. Kat seemed to have a skewed image of her body shape. “Not to mention black. Thank God for the color black.” Kat’s flowy blouse happened to be black.

  “Please. You look great,” Danielle said. “Here.” She’d uncorked the wine and poured glasses for each of them. “So I have some news.”

  They all leaned in over the kitchen counter.

  “Yes. What is it?” Kat waved her hands in small circles.

  “The Bastard’s child bride is preggers again!”

  Kat almost spit out her sip of wine. Jamie’s went down the wrong way, causing her to cough for a minute, and Alyssa’s eyes widened.

  “I know. How stupid! First Al knocks her up while screwing her behind my back and she has twins. They’re barely three and now another one is on the way.” Danielle picked up her glass and swirled the light golden contents around.

  “How do you feel about that?” Jamie asked.

  “Feel about it?” Danielle laughed. “I think it’s fabulous.” She swallowed another sip of wine. “Wait a minute, you all thought this would drive me batty again? No seriously, this is the best news I could get. When I heard, all I could think about was a fifty-year-old Al having to change more diapers, being woken up in the middle of the night, and then going through all the toddler stages again. Times three.” She held up three fingers and grinned. “It’s perfect revenge for me. I only have two years until Cassie leaves the roost and then I can travel, go back to school if I want to, and really grow my winery. Al is starting over at fifty. He has all of these babies to deal with and raise. I mean, what if she leaves his aging ass? He’ll have to pay Stacey up the ying-yang.”

  Jamie could see her point but also couldn’t help feeling sorry for another baby whose dad wouldn’t exactly be father of the year. Not the way Nate was.

  “What about the girls? Does Shannon know? Or Cassie?” Kat asked, referring to Danielle’s sixteen- and twenty-one year old daughters.

  “Cassie knows and she’s not saying much, but that’s no shocker. These days she doesn’t say much anyway. I think this will probably affect her harder than Shannon. You know, Cassie has always been daddy’s little girl and the competition has stiffened with Stacey and then the twins and now a new baby. If this new baby is a boy, that will only make things worse for her. Al always wanted a son more than he wanted his daughters.”

  “Funny enough though, she always defends him because he gives her whatever the hell she wants. She’s learned how to work him and he gives in to her. I am always telling him that spoiling her with clothes, money, and a car isn’t the way to raise a happy, self-sufficient child. She hates me right now, because I told her that she had to get a job this summer.” Danielle popped a strawberry in her mouth, washing it down with a sip of wine. “I know it might sound mean or wrong, but I can’t help hoping that Al’s new family at least brings Cassie back to me.”

  “What do you mean?” Alyssa asked. “She’s your daughter. She may be acting like a teenager, but I think her actions are normal. I didn’t like my mom all that much at sixteen either.”

  Danielle nodded. “The problem is that everything her dad does is wonderful. That’s only because of the money and gifts. I know that I shouldn’t take it personally, but it’s hard not to. Everything I do is wrong in her eyes. Every time she speaks to me it’s in this adversarial tone, like I’m to blame for all the wrongs in her life and in her world. As if I’m to blame for the divorce! In her eyes, I might even be the one to blame for Stacey and the twins and now the new kid. The other day she suggested that I needed new clothes and a makeover. She even muttered something about how her father might have stayed if I’d worn better clothes!”

  “She did not!” Jamie said.

  Danielle shrugged. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to do it all over again, but tell you what, I do miss the days when I was on a pedestal. This too shall pass right? And Shannon will be home next month. I never went through any of this with her. Maybe she can talk some sense into her sister. What about you all? What’s going on in your worlds for the last couple of weeks? I feel like I’ve been out of touch working in the lab and getting ready for harvest.”

  “I found out my mother is coming to visit for the summer.” Kat lifted her glass up to toast. “Woo-hoo, doesn’t that sound like a reason to celebrate?”

  “From everything you’ve told us, it sounds like a reason to drink,” Alyssa replied, and refilled Kat’s almost empty glass.

  “Venus is coming?” Jamie asked.

  “Yes. Birkenstocks and Ram Das aplenty. She suggested I get a wheat grass juicer and told me where I can order the freshest, most chlorophylled wheat grass. She hinted that I may possibly want to start growing it myself.”

  “Oh, no.” Jamie picked up a piece of cheese.

  “Oh, yeah. And I’m making you all go to Bikram yoga with us. It’s only about a hundred and five degrees in the room, and they say you usually stop puking after the first few sessions if you drink lots of water. My mother will tell you it’s so powerfully Zen.”

  “Sounds like a blast. She’s coming for the entire summer?” Danielle asked.

  “We’re still negotiating the terms,” Kat replied. “That’s my big news, and of course, Perry has another new girlfriend. This one is even old enough to buy alcohol. The boys say she’s twenty-two, and she is not a stripper but a receptionist in a hair salon.” She touched the ends of her shoulder length, chestnut colored hair. “The best part is that the Sperm Donor told me that she was a doctor. When I met her, I actually asked her where her medical practice was located.”
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br />   “Nuh-uh. No, you didn’t,” Alyssa said.

  Kat shrugged. “I couldn’t help it. Poor thing says to me that it’s not a practice but a salon.”

  “What did the Sperm Donor do?” Jamie asked.

  “Turned bright red, looked at me like I was pure evil, and grabbed Barbie by the arm while he yelled for the boys to hurry up.”

  “Priceless.” Jamie walked over to the opposite counter and grabbed a bottle of Pinot Noir from the Oregon coast to open.

  “Now we know Danielle’s and my latest turmoil, how about you two?” Kat asked. “Alyssa? What’s up?”

  Alyssa shook her head and smiled, setting her glass onto the counter. “Nothing. I don’t have anything at all really going on.”

  The other women didn’t know Alyssa the way that Jamie did. The introvert of the group, Alyssa seemed to always tread lightly with them. Even after a couple of years of knowing her, Jamie still felt like she’d only scratched the surface. They always included her. They cared about her. Alyssa knew it too, but evident through sorrow tinged laughter and soft speech, something held on tightly to Alyssa. Jamie guessed it to be pretty damn heavy for her to keep her guard up all the time. Jamie, for one, didn’t believe her when she said that nothing was going on.

  “Nothing at all?” Danielle asked, eyebrows raised. “No man, or men, or any art sales? How is the painting going?”

  Alyssa shifted in the barstool. “Okay, yeah, you know, I’m working on a new oil.”

  Jamie clapped her hands. “Stop being so humble. Tell us about it.”

  “It’s another one of the little boy pieces.”

  “In the series?” Danielle asked.

  “Yes.”

  Alyssa had painted two paintings so far of a small African American boy. In the first he looked to be about a year old crawling through a field of grapevines, his skin lighter than the soil on the ground, his eyes happy, a sweet toothless smile on his face. The grapes around him were golden-hued, and Alyssa captured an innocence and beauty with the sunlight raining down on the baby and the grapes. In the next painting she’d done, the child looked about three, but it was clearly the same child. Anyone who saw the paintings recognized that. This one showed the toddler on his toes, reaching up to pick a purple grape.

  “What’s this one like?” Jamie asked.

  “You’ll have to wait. When I’m finished, you all need to come by and see it. I think it’s my favorite,” she replied.

  “Do you know the child that you paint?” Danielle asked.

  Alyssa took a sip of wine and shook her head. “He’s a part of my imagination.”

  “You know what I think?” Kat said. “I think Alyssa wants a baby.”

  “Ha! No way. I’m not the marrying, family type. I’m not.”

  They all eyed her, and Jamie wondered if her other two friends had the same thought…Was she trying to convince herself or them?

  “You may be the smartest of us all. You know what? I’ve always been really interested in drawing. I’m not great at it, but I like it. I was thinking about dropping in on one of your art classes,” Danielle said. “I’m on the Harvest Festival committee and I have an idea in mind for the poster. I might actually try and do the artwork myself.

  “I’m starting a new class in two weeks on Wednesdays from six to eight. I’ll give you a discount. I know the owner.” Alyssa chuckled.

  “I would love that. Maybe we can grab a bite after.”

  “Oh, do that. Come by our restaurant. I work Wednesdays and Christian has come up with this terrific new menu. Everything is fresh, organic, super good.” Kat clucked her tongue.

  “It’s a plan. What about you, J? Can you meet us?” Alyssa asked.

  “I wish I could. But not with Dorothy and Maddie. I can’t go.”

  “Can’t Nora come by?”

  “No. She won’t do extra nights. I’ve asked.” Jamie didn’t want her friends to know about her difficult financial situation.

  “Bummer,” Kat said.

  “I know. Sorry.” She popped a grape into her mouth. “You know, Danielle, I can relate a bit to your woes with the bastard buying off Cassie.”

  “How so?”

  “Maddie’s aunt and uncle dropped her off right before you all arrived and of course, they’ve trumped me again.”

  “What did they do?” Danielle asked.

  “Horses. Susan has gotten back into horses and offered Maddie riding lessons.”

  They all stared at Jamie. She nodded. “Yep.”

  “Without asking you?” Alyssa asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wait a minute. They live in the city. Where’s the horse?”

  “Correction. They live in Marin County. My guess is that the horse is at some pretty posh place. I can’t compete with that.”

  “You can’t be driving her to riding lessons there. It’s too far and what’s with not talking to you first?” Kat reached for the wine. “What is it with all these people who think they have to buy a child’s love? Don’t they get that it won’t last? It’s not for real? Yuck. That’s exactly how the Sperm Donor works it too. It’s disgusting.”

  Jamie sighed. “This thing with Maddie and them, it bugs me. It’s not like Nate and David were super close. Sure we got together and hung out sometimes on the holidays, birthdays, that sort of thing, but Nate had some issues about David and his obsessive need for material things.”

  “Isn’t that an attorney thing?” Kat asked. “I mean, aren’t they notorious for always wanting more?”

  Jamie frowned. “Not Nate. Sure we had nice things but my husband’s first priority was his family. His law practice came second.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean Nate, it just slipped out.” Kat picked up her wine glass.

  “It’s fine. Nate and I always thought David married Susan for her money. She isn’t exactly, I don’t know, down to earth. She is Ms. Upper Echelon of society. Kind of affected, but I’m torn. I feel like David is a connection to Nate for Maddie and she loves going with them.”

  “What nine-year-old wouldn’t? If they treat her like a princess and spoil the hell out of her, of course she wants to go with them.” Danielle shook her head.

  “I know that. I get that. What I do about it without being the bad guy is another thing. Maybe I’m paranoid. I just can’t help but feel as if they’re coveting my child. It’s like they want her for their own. Does that sound, I don’t know—do you think I’m freaking out?”

  Kat crossed her arms. “No. It sounds like a mother who loves her child. I’m sorry but they sound like assholes. They don’t have kids, right?” Jamie shook her head. “Okay, that’s their issue not yours. I agree it’s not fun to be the bad guy, but c’mon, pony up. No pun intended, but seriously, that’s what being a parent is all about. I say you have to put your foot down, or they’re going to create a little monster and when they’re finished with her, you’ll have to deal with it.”

  “Kat’s right. They can’t have her all the time. She’s yours. It’s that simple and I have a solution.” Danielle smiled smugly. “Tyler Meeks.”

  “Who? What?” Jamie shoved the plate of cheese and crackers to the side.

  “Tyler and his two sisters run the Napa Valley Riding Center. Place is five minutes from here. You pass it all the time.”

  Jamie nodded.

  “I hear he is an awesome teacher. His oldest sister gave my girls lessons when they were little and he was a teen at the time. I recently read in the paper that he now runs horsemanship for the handicapped program and he’s also giving lessons to kids. He is really nice to look at, too. At least he was at seventeen. I can only imagine him ten years later.” She wiggled her eyebrows.

  “Danielle!” Jamie threw a grape at her.

  “What? You don’t notice hot guys? Come on. Even the young ones are fun to look at, and now he’s legal. Hmm, maybe I’ll go take some riding lessons from him myself.”

  “You are so bad,” Kat said.

  “Yeah and yo
u’re not?” Danielle smiled. “And don’t you look at me like that.” She pointed at Alyssa. “I got a feeling you got more diva in you than you let on. You all act like a bunch of old women. Get with the program. Good wine, hot guys, and sex. That’s what I want to talk about, because God knows I’m not having any.” She glanced at all of them. “Oh. No one else is either? Old women. Goddamn. We need to get crazy. That’s what we all need. And you Kat, you’re the married one, I suspect you’re at least having sex. And your husband with that Irish lilt? The dirty talk must sound so melodic.”

  Kat picked up another handful of grapes and pelted Danielle with them. Jamie and Alyssa followed suit.

  “Now that’s better!” Danielle said, laughing. “It’s not sex, but at least it’s fun.” Before long they were all in a fit of laughter, tossing grapes and acting like schoolgirls. Pure escape and total fun. And that was Sunday happy hour.

  CHAPTER SIX

  May

  Danielle

  Danielle took out the bottle of wine, now aged for a little over two years. This could be it. The one. The winner. Her first bottle of Déesse. Goddess wine. The grapes started out as Bastillia grapes and, if Al had honored his marriage vows a few years ago, they likely would have gone into a Bastillia wine. Doubtful though that the Bastillia wine would have been this wine, because this wine had been hand crafted in artisan fashion by Danielle herself.

  Guess it was a good thing that, unsatisfied, Al had cheated and left her for Stacey—Stacey the vixen—who’d evil-eyed Danielle at that charity event over three years ago, as if she were the witch. Now the twentysomething luscious redhead had to keep up the image for good old Al these days—an image that took a big hit when his big news wove its way through the valley. Stacey could have Al’s money, and the paunch around his waistline, as well as his lame sense of humor.

  Al had been unsatisfied. That one stupid word brought Danielle to tears many times over the last few years, wondering if she’d really aged all that badly. She didn’t think so. At forty-five, she thought she was still attractive. Men glanced her way and even smiled at her. Her friends told her she looked a lot like Julianne Moore. Not a compliment to turn down. Granted it came from Jamie, Kat and Alyssa, but still.