My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  Even though he’s logged more than a thousand hours under the sea, on their first dive, they go down farther because he convinces her that there’s much cooler fish lurking below. He then proceeds to lovingly hold her hand and lead her farther and farther into the abyss. In the next scene, he comes up to the boat alone.

  He asks the rest of the divers, “Hey, has anyone seen my beautiful bride?” The Coast Guard comes, and days later they bring up her lifeless body. It is clear that someone had let all of the air out of her oxygen tank. The authorities become suspicious when they realize the husband had conveniently taken out a million-dollar insurance policy on the wife who only made $30,000 as a kindergarten teacher. On Law & Order: SVU, when Mariska Hargitay goes to question the husband, instead of being scared to death, like I would be, he walks around their home folding clothes, changing a lightbulb, and cooking a spaghetti dinner. Mariska, in her typical investigation, discovers that he had slept with the maid of honor at the couple’s rehearsal dinner.

  Peter is very comfortable around water. Whenever he attempts something dangerous, like tossing our two-year-old Drake into the pool at our friend’s country club on Labor Day weekend, I don’t object because every time I try he retorts, “Please, I was a lifeguard in San Diego.” However, when Drake threw up French fries into the pool that weekend and the club had to close the pool for three hours because of Peter’s lifeguard antics, I got annoyed. I’m sorry, but reminding people to reapply their sunscreen on the beach is a little different than being a member of SEAL Team Six.

  However, Peter is himself an experienced scuba diver with many more hours underwater than me. A couple years into our marriage he told me he had business in Ecuador and we could go to the nearby Galápagos Islands for a few days to check out the reef there. I was excited for this vacation mostly because for once it would not include a timeshare presentation. Since our honeymoon, every trip we had taken involved hearing a ninety-minute speech on how we could be part owners of a world-class resort. Once the salesman had driven us around in a golf cart explaining how $350 a month was actually an investment in real estate, and we had to tell him no several times before he reluctantly gave us the $75 gift card to Cheesecake Factory that was included with our discounted room.

  I was excited and I’m always up for the beach. All I heard was island, not fourth-grade field trip with animals like it turned out to be. We boarded a boat that was not the size of a Carnival Cruise, or even Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s yacht. Instead, it looked like the boat from Gilligan’s Island. This region of the Galápagos Islands is a protected habitat, and no fancy hotels can be built there, which is a real shame because hotels mean cocktails, and nature is much more enjoyable with a buzz on. Peter and I had bunk beds, so it wasn’t even as romantic as I thought it would be. The second day, we were woken up at five a.m. to see turtles humping. I never knew how turtles did it, but they do it from behind, one on top of the other looking bored. Evolution is simply not that exciting.

  After watching the turtle porn, I put on a cute sundress, with wedge heels and bangle bracelets that nearly doomed me when the sound of them clanging together apparently disturbed the blue-footed booby (the birds with the blue feet). Everybody else was wearing advanced Birkenstocks that can take you from water to sea to sand and the rocks. My wedge heels made my walking on the rocks more than wobbly. I wondered to myself, Why hadn’t Peter told me more about this trip? I thought I’d be sipping Piña Coladas.

  The next morning Peter said, “Boy, do I have a surprise for you! I paid extra so that we can go scuba diving today. The Galápagos is supposed to be better than the Great Barrier Reef.”

  I had by now acquired an entire hour and a half log time as a scuba diver. So I asked Peter how they were going to let me scuba dive if I wasn’t properly certified. Peter then proudly displayed a PADI card with my name on it that he had illegally mocked up by scanning his real PADI certification card on the computer. I was flattered that he had taken the time to essentially make a fake ID for me. Peter and I then got onto a small boat with just a guide. We went out far, and way past the sand that felt like white flour on your feet. Peter said, “We’re definitely going to see coral and big fish because nobody can kill them here.”

  As we did our daunting back flip into the ocean, we slowly went down into the super-clear water. Peter was right. I saw a giant lobster, big enough to feed a football team. Suddenly, I accidentally pushed the wrong button on my geared-up suit, and shot like a rocket all the way up to the clearing. I had no idea how to get back down, but what immediately disturbed me was that Peter didn’t check on me. The guide came up and over to help me while Peter was busy counting colorful blow-fish. I had 48 Hours Mystery running through my mind, and was just glad that I had made it out alive.

  As much as I hate scuba diving, I am even more freaked out by skiing. When I was about six, I watched a made-for-TV movie about a girl named Sheila. She was on a professional college ski team and very competitive with her teammate Suzie. On the day of the big race, as she watched Suzie turn a particularly tricky corner, Sheila thought, “Suzie’s going a little bit slow around that turn. Even though our coach warned us about going too fast around it, I bet I could cut a few seconds off and beat Suzie.” Sheila swishes the snow off her highly waxed skis and when the buzzer sounds she takes the curve going faster than her coach told her to ever go. Immediately, she goes out of control and smashes through the mesh nets that line the side of the ski course. In the next scene, she’s being raced through the hospital corridor with her eyes frantically moving from right to left, her head in a neck brace. Her family rushes in and says, “Will she ever ski again?” And the doctor says, “No, in fact, she’ll never walk again.” In the end, Suzie comes to Sheila’s hospital room to bring her flowers and she’s wearing a gold medal.

  While my fear of skiing was deeply rooted thanks to Sheila, I did go to Lake Tahoe with my family at age nine, and was able to make my skis into the shape of a piece of pizza and French fries. However, I was never really interested in advancing further than that.

  When I first started dating Peter, a skiing enthusiast, he took me on a trip to Mammoth Mountain in California. I told him to go ahead and go off on his own, as I took a lesson. We planned to meet for lunch (my favorite skiing activity) at noon, so by ten forty-five, I decided I didn’t want to be late. Plus it takes a few minutes to take your skis off and place them against the wooden ski racks and then trudge through the snow into the warm lodge. By one, Peter was off again, which meant I had another four hours to kill. I told him I was taking another lesson, but instead I just had Bloody Marys and never went back outside.

  Once we were married, the first six years we couldn’t go skiing because we always had a newborn to take care of, and then they became toddlers, which are even worse. We started up again when Drake was a bit older, since we had a friend who had a four-bedroom house in Mammoth. A free vacation is a free vacation, even if it involves skiing and not a sunny beach. This time I was upfront with Peter and told him I really just wasn’t into skiing. He was fine with my choice—he knew he hadn’t married Suzy Chapstick. I told him he should also be grateful that I wouldn’t need a knee replacement at fifty because I simply am not athletic. Plus, an added bonus to Peter, I was one less ski ticket to buy.

  I did decide to put some of my fears aside on our next trip to Mammoth and agreed to ski with Brandon, then four, and Drake, who was seven. Drake could kind of snowplow, but I had to put Brandon on a reindeer’s leash and take him down the slope, which really didn’t slope too much at all. The lines were really slow and Brandon would start eating the dirty snow. After telling him three times to stop it, I just gave up.

  Brandon right before he started to eat snow off the bottom of his ski.

  The day just became more irritating as it went along. At one point, I was taking Brandon to the bathroom when a woman stopped me and said, “I know you probably hate this. But I just have to tell you I watch Chelsea Lately all of the time. And .
. .” I had to cut her off because I could barely see Brandon’s brown hair anymore in the crowd and I didn’t want this to become an episode of Without a Trace. So I said to her, “I’m sorry but my son—” In a pissy tone of voice, she replied, “Oh, I know, I know. I’m sorry. I give you a half hour of my night five days a week and you can’t spare one minute for me.” She stormed off as I tried to speed walk in my ski boots, heel-toe, heel-toe, feeling like Jeremy Renner in the movie The Hurt Locker, breathing heavily in the bulky outfit he had to wear when he was attempting to detonate a bomb. I just hoped that some perverted man wouldn’t offer to help Brandon out of his ski jumpsuit.

  That night on Twitter, I received a tweet under mentions that said, “Saw @HeatherMcDonald skiing. What a bitch. Tried to tell her I liked the show. Guess she doesn’t have time for fans.” I don’t know, sometimes you can’t win. But on the cheery side, I had saved my son from sexual molestation.

  We were staying at Peter’s friend Marvin’s four-bedroom house. He was recently divorced, and had a twenty-three-year-old girlfriend, Mimi, who was studying for her LSATs. Dinner the first night was fun because we got a sitter and went out. I felt reinvigorated reliving my USC days by talking to Mimi.

  The next morning Brandon crawled into our bed and said to me, “Mommy, will you play Monopoly with me?” My heart started to beat with the possibility of an out for skiing. So I said to him, “Well, you have to make a choice. You can either go outside in the subzero weather and ski, or you can lie in the big cozy warm bed with Mommy all day and play Monopoly.” He said without flinching, “I want to play Monopoly.” I felt like I had won a big lottery scratch-off ticket. Drake said he didn’t want to go skiing either, and asked if he could be the dog on the board game. There we were, the three of us, in the house with Mimi.

  There was only one living room with a TV and that’s where Mimi insisted on placing all of her study guides. This was the same room where we intended to play Monopoly. The huffing and puffing from Mimi that went on whenever one of the boys scored some property and got excited became annoying. Why didn’t she move to a bedroom, or better yet the Starbucks right up the street? I tried to empathize, but it’s been a long time since I studied for a test. It was a battle of wills. And I said to her, “I’m sorry. I know that when my sister studied for the LSATs seventeen years ago, she was a real bitch too.”

  Mimi replied, “Well, maybe I wouldn’t be so bitchy if you had a handle on your kids.”

  This got me feeling defensive. “Well, frankly, I’m surprised you’re so critical of them seeing as you’re closer to their age than Marvin’s.”

  She was seething. “Well, when Marvin and I have children, they certainly won’t act like your monkeys.”

  I just blurted out “You bitch” at her, and she just said it right back. I said, “Really, as an aspiring attorney, that’s your best counterargument? I hate to break it to you, but you’re no Star Jones. I can’t see you as a trial lawyer with your type of lame defenses.”

  Suddenly Mimi started to cry. I had obviously touched a raw nerve and this made me feel bad. I looked at the clock and it was already one, which is the time I normally start my après ski drinking anyway. I grabbed a bottle of wine and asked her if she would like a glass too. I turned on Nickelodeon—I knew the boys would stay glued to the TV so I could give Mimi some life advice.

  I told it to her straight. “You’re gorgeous. You’re a size two on the most bloated day of your period, and you’re smart, because you’re going to law school. Do you really want to spend your precious twenties, while you’re juggling torts and contracts, hanging out with a man in his mid-forties and his friends and their annoying families?”

  I had Mimi’s attention, so I continued, “Look, it’s hot and sexy now to have a forty-three-year-old guy who wants to pork you in the office supply room.” By the way, I’m a huge fan of illicit office sex, at least in movies. That is where the girl is wearing the tight pencil skirt and whoever the boss is just turns her around, pulls up the skirt around her waist, and does her right there next to the Xerox machine. I continued, “But, Mimi, then what happens? You get married and ten years later, sure, it’s still kind of hot. He still likes to fuck and party. But twenty years later, and he’s sixty-three and you’re still a hot forty-three? He doesn’t want to go out anymore. In fact, he’s retired. And the Porsche hasn’t been driven in six years. The sex swing? Well, that has a stack of folded laundry on it that his lazy wrinkled ass won’t even put away for you. You’ll start hiding his Viagra and putting Xanax in his red wine so that he’ll pass out and won’t bother you. Mimi—that will be your reality.”

  Within an hour, I had talked Mimi out of her relationship. She was on her way to the Mammoth airport for a flight back to L.A.

  I had some explaining to do to Marvin when he came home from the slopes. Not only was his house a mess, wine bottles emptied, and Monopoly money strewn throughout all four bedrooms, but his hot twenty-three-year-old girlfriend was gone too.

  Needless to say, Peter lost a friend and we never got to stay at Marvin’s plush ski house again.

  This past year, we could afford not to bunk with anyone and stayed at the Westin at the foot of the mountain. Brandon took lessons from a Swiss ski instructor, who wouldn’t take any of his five-year-old bullshit. Now he can ski, along with his brother and me. It was actually really fun. I’m going to start my own “It Gets Better” campaign just like gay celebrities have done in personal videos for gay teens telling them how it gets better in time. I’m going to get the word out to moms of very young children that when it comes to skiing, it gets better too (sorry, Marvin).

  13

  NOT WITH MY MAN YOU DON’T

  In Woodland Hills, where I live, there are several mom groups and Internet listservs. A service matches you up with mothers of similar-aged children and you meet at a different mother’s house each week, or perhaps even at a park. I was in a group with Elaine and her four-year-old son. We became insta-friends because, well to be honest, I wanted to list her house. Still she was fun and helped make the hour before naptime go by quicker. One evening we were on the phone and she screamed, “Goddammit, Bobby, you’re such a fucking asshole. Every day, every fucking day, twenty-four hours a day it’s all about fucking Bobby. Can’t you just give me a minute so that I can talk on the phone with my friend Heather?” I was a little startled by the way she was talking to her husband and wanted to immediately get off the phone. I said, “Oh, your husband is home? Why don’t you deal with him and then call me later?” She replied matter-of-factly, “Oh that’s not my husband, that’s Bobby Jr. Wait, hold on. ‘I said get your own fucking Lucky Charms!’ ”

  She had always said how happy she was that she gave up her job at CBS to raise her son, so this came as a shock to me. The following Thursday, the group met at an indoor play space called Jump & Fun. Bobby Jr. was playing with a boy named Kirby. They were immersed in the world of Thomas the train and his track. Kirby took Bobby Jr.’s train and cut in front of him on the track. When Elaine saw that, she started screaming at the child. “What do you think you’re doing? My son, Bobby, was playing with that train.” Just then the other boy’s mother stepped in and said, “Whoa! I think we should let the boys work it out.” Elaine said, “No, I’m not going to let it just rest. Your son is clearly a bully. I suggest you reprimand him now or I will consider filing assault charges against your four-year-old!” The other woman told Elaine she was being ridiculous and if she didn’t stop, she would tell the owners of the play space. Elaine then made her way over to me and said in a huff, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, can you believe that fucker? Besides, she’s too fat to even break it up. That’s why she doesn’t want to get involved.” I said to Elaine, “Um, I do believe she mentioned she was seven months pregnant. I don’t think you should be calling her a fat-ass.”

  Elaine felt like suddenly I was playing sides and I could tell some expletives were coming my way. “Fuck that, Heather, you seem very lax about everythin
g, and I just don’t think we share the same parenting philosophy. I don’t think you have my or little Bobby’s back.” To which I said, “It’s Thomas the train that we’re talking about.”

  “No, Heather, it’s more than just that. It’s not over just a train. We’ve been growing apart for a long time now. I think it’s time Bobby and I find another playground, so fuck you again. Bobby, come to Mommy, we’re getting the fuck out of here.”

  It was good that she had decided to leave, because Jump & Fun’s bouncer was about to escort her out anyway. I sure was going to miss Elaine’s house parties. The last one had been for her husband’s fortieth and she had roped off a VIP area, where she served more expensive wine. I was lucky enough to make the VIP list. Sure it felt awkward standing in the alcove area of her townhome, talking to someone in the living room area as I sipped my Cakebread Chardonnay while the non-VIPs drank their Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw wine. We don’t live in a communist society, and there are different classes of friends. Am I to feel guilty that I was placed in a higher caste?

  Another woman who had witnessed Elaine’s freak-out came over to me. “Hi, I’m Gigi. I was in a playgroup with Elaine a year ago, and she’s insane. She accused my daughter of being a LEGO smuggler, and threatened to call the authorities on her.”

  Gigi and I hung out for the rest of the afternoon and formed our own alliance. She was the definition of a hot mom. She wasn’t slutty in any way. She was just good-looking and had a really toned body. Her husband, Walter, was fun and friendly, so he and Peter became close. We started hanging out a lot. During the summer they would come over often for our pool parties where we all got decked out in our swimsuits.