My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  One day, we were having wine by the pool around two o’clock. I sensed some major tension between Walter and G, but I just placed it on the fact that it was the anniversary of 9/11 and he had a military background. They both disappeared into the house for a while and when I came in, G was just sitting at the kitchen table alone. I asked, “Where’s Walter? Were you two getting it on in the laundry room? Ha-ha!”

  She said, “No, he left.”

  I asked, “What? Why?”

  To which she replied, “I don’t know, Heather, he’s just extremely jealous.”

  I asked, “Jealous of what?”

  G said, “Walter thinks I go out to happy hour too often after work.”

  And I replied, “Well, G, maybe you should pare it down a little.”

  She interrupted me. “Heather, Peter would never tell you that you couldn’t go to happy hour.”

  Actually, even if I wanted to go to happy hour, I couldn’t. I work at Chelsea Lately until seven p.m. when the prices go back to full price. My happiest hour is when I get to go to bed at nine twenty p.m.

  I felt a little bad for G and said, “Well, you know you can always talk to me about anything, even if you’re having problems with Walter.”

  Within moments of my saying that, Walter leaped back through the front door, still in his swim trunks and barefoot. He folded his arms and said, “Well, I’m glad G can talk to you, Heather, because she can’t talk to me. Let me ask you, do you think it’s appropriate that a married woman texts men at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning?”

  G leapt up in her swimsuit and said, “Oh my God, Walter, you’re so annoying. Can’t you just leave me alone?” She quickly walked down the hall to get away from him. We both followed.

  I was saying to them, “Wait a minute, you two. I think things are getting out of hand, and you don’t mean what you’re saying.”

  G said, “No, Walter, I just think you are so controlling all the time. I can’t take it.”

  Walter turned to me and said, “How is it that a man caring about his wife and her well-being, and the character of people she associates with is considered controlling?”

  All I wanted was for them to make up. I wasn’t trained in marriage counseling, especially to couples in bathing suits, just real estate and comedy, so I said, “I don’t want to see you two break up. You’re not going to be able to sell your house for what you paid for it.”

  It had all escalated with trust issues, yet there was no evidence of anyone cheating. G started crying, so of course I did too, and then Peter opened the door suddenly in his bathing suit and said, “Hey, who’s up for the hot tub?” He looked at the three of us, saw G and me crying, and uncomfortably said, “Well, I’ll leave the heater and jets on for whenever you guys are ready.” Then quickly shut the door.

  A couple months later, Walter moved out and G became a single mom. Since I worked all day, she would call Peter to ask questions, like about how she could refinance her house. She continued on this track for months, but never once asked Peter to file the papers to get it going so that he would be her mortgage broker. Instead he was just giving her free advice.

  Meanwhile, on weekends we still got together with G and her daughter, Emma. G said to me, “Oh, Emma said the cutest thing to me. She asked, When we get our new daddy, can he be just like Peter?”

  I’ve never thought my husband would cheat, neither have I had any indication that he had or would, but it’s still my biggest fear because I know that our marriage couldn’t survive infidelity. We’ve all seen those women on Oprah who couldn’t imagine that this would happen to them, so I forced myself to imagine what I would do if I discovered he was cheating. I would be incredibly friendly during the divorce. Everyone would say, “I can’t believe how great you two are working this out.” And I would reply, “Yes, we’re doing it for the kids. And I actually do like Peter.” But three years later, when everyone least suspected it, I would get my revenge. That’s clearly the smartest way to murder your cheating spouse.

  Of course, I’ve told this story to everyone I know, including Peter, so hopefully he won’t cheat. Otherwise this book is some damning evidence for the prosecution.

  I wasn’t aware that I was the jealous type when I married Peter, but a year after our wedding we went on a vacation to Cancún. One night, I thought I was pretty groovy by saying, “Hey, darling. Let’s go to a strip club.” To which Peter said, “Well, how much will it cost?” And I said, “Peter, don’t be frugal. We’re on vacation and the strippers will be cheaper because we’re in Mexico.”

  So we walked into Cancún’s Gold Fingero Club and paid twenty dollars apiece to get in. At first we sat and watched a little of the show, where girls played on the stripper pole. I was impressed with their upper-arm strength and how they could flip themselves around like gymnasts at the Olympics. At this point they were sporting string bikinis and taking off their tops—full nips. I was totally fine with it. I was married, having sex regularly. I was very open to sexuality and none of it was bothering me. Admittedly, I was the coolest wife around.

  We asked the proprietor for a lap dance, which would cost at least forty dollars, plus tip, depending on how much we enjoyed the experience. We were led into a little photo-booth type of room and Peter and I sat next to each other. Soon a cute little Mexican woman came in. She had an excellent body, nice, natural boobs, and pretty, brown long hair. She was wearing a bikini. So she turned on some music after drawing the curtain shut, and immediately started touching Peter and shoving her butt into his face. When I looked over at him, he was totally smiling. At first I thought, Oh good, he won’t mind the money. But then out of the blue I turned into Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. I put my arm in between them and said, “I don’t like this one bit.” The cute woman said, “Oh okaya, letta me giva you some atencióne!” She started to rub my boobs, and I started to cry. Peter immediately told her to stop. As we got up, he handed her a twenty-dollar bill (which impressed me). She said, “Wait, you paid for whole song. We’re only halfway through.” Peter said, “No, she can’t handle it,” and walked me out of Gold Fingero for a stroll along the beach.

  Anyway, not since the strip club had I felt this kind of jealousy. So I said to Peter very firmly, “I don’t want you talking to G anymore on the phone. She’s never going to give you the loan. And I wouldn’t want you to have her as a client anyway. If she calls again, tell her how busy you are and she should just go straight to her bank.” He said OK, and I figured that was that.

  Four days later, Peter called me at work and said he was at Chuck E. Cheese with the kids and that G had shown up. She apparently told him, “Oh, fancy meeting you here, Peter.” He was frozen scared. He asked me if he was in the midst of a prank and if there were hidden cameras, because he certainly did not want to be on Chelsea Lately for this. He was convinced that Chelsea and I had set the whole thing up, but we hadn’t. G and Peter just happened to go there at the same time.

  Peter and I have always enjoyed role playing in our sex life. Well, I enjoy it more than he does because I’m an actor and he is not, so he has a little trouble getting into character and improvising a scene so that it reaches a climactic point, pun intended. He’s a mortgage broker. I once came up with this one really good scenario, where I pretend to come to his office for a loan but I have really bad credit. I’m more than thirty days late on a Macy’s credit card and I need to be punished Fifty Shades of Grey style. “Give it to me, Christian Grey.” Then he has to teach me how to raise that FICO score to get the best rate. I like to play teenage hitchhiker or doctor, where he’s the doctor and I don’t have insurance but I need a breast exam and my yearly pap smear. My favorite is to play ABC’s The Bachelor, where I pretend we are in the fantasy suite and I have to screw him better than the other two girls left in order to get the final rose and the Neil Lane engagement ring. Now, of course, we’re very responsible during our sexy time and always make sure the children’s Benadryl has set in. But this whole thing with G h
ad got me thinking, so at my son’s T-ball game, I said to Peter, “Let’s pretend that we’re both divorced and we’re meeting at Little League for the first time.” We made small talk. I asked him what he did for a living. And he bought me a Diet Coke at the snack shack. I got cold and he put his arm around me. I said, “My son and I are going for ice cream, would you care to join us after the game?” Peter said, “I’m sorry, I’m not interested in dating single mothers.”

  14

  MY INAPPROPRIATE FRIEND

  Lucy was a whole new kind of crazy. She was my good friend up until eighth grade, when she moved away to Orange County. Originally we pen-palled for about a year, but then that got tiring and I soon found myself writing letters that I forgot to mail. When MySpace came around years later, she wrote me and we reconnected. She lived only fifteen minutes away in the Valley. Lucy had a husband, Carl, a twelve-year-old daughter, and a three-year-old son.

  We would watch episodes of The Bachelor together on the phone and dissect Bob Guiney (of season four) who was fat and thought of himself as hilarious. He sang all of the time and it was clear to us that he wanted to get a record deal and not a wife. He made out with girls left and right because he had that ugly-guy confidence that made no sense to either of us. I think the only bachelor who has surpassed Bob in his unattractiveness would have to be last year’s Ben Flajnik, who would be perfect for playing a Geico caveman. Anyways, after watching the season together every Monday night from nine p.m. to eleven, we were beginning to talk to and see more and more of each other. Bob Guiney at least gave us that.

  Often we would meet up for a walk and I noticed something about Lucy. Whenever we passed men, she would push out her J.Lo ass, flip her hair from one side to the other, and then giggle hello, starting up a conversation with them as if I wasn’t there. These conversations lasted up to fifteen minutes and made me feel what it must be like to be a patient dog. Walking got a bit boring for Lucy after a while and she wanted to turn it up a notch.

  One day during the blazing-hot summer, she called me and told me to meet her at a track and gave me the location. I had on a loose tank top and elastic-waist running shorts. I arrived at what turned out to be an all-boys’ school, but assumed Lucy chose it because it was summer and school was out of session. Lucy, always late, showed up sporting just a hot-pink Nike jog bra, full stomach with abs exposed, and low-cut booty shorts. She said to me, “Today we’re going to run.” Not one to readily exercise, I thought, looking at her body, that maybe I needed to step it up a notch. Lucy and I started jogging, and I began to feel like there were eyes on us. Was I being paranoid? I looked up and saw forty teenage boys looking out an open window at us and whistling. This would have been my dream when I was a junior-varsity cheerleader, because at fifteen I was flat as a board, and didn’t have these boobs. I was a late bloomer.

  I told Lucy we needed to stop. I simply was not comfortable with these teenage boys whacking off to us, especially because only the weird ones are required to be in summer school. Plus, I was a mother to two boys at the time, not to mention a wife.

  “Fine,” Lucy said, annoyed. “Let me go to the vending machine and get a bottle of water.”

  I stood off to the side, still feeling a bit naked in front of these boys, in deep fear they’d be let out for recess. At that point I would have felt safer playing basketball in the San Quentin prison yard with lifers.

  When I looked over, I saw Lucy pouring water over her chest as if she was Daisy Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard, the version starring Jessica Simpson. At that point I headed to my car, turned back again, and saw her talking to a boy who was standing near the soda machine. I beeped, and after lingering for a bit with the boy, Lucy finally came over.

  I said, “Lucy, how old was that boy? Who are you, Mary Kay Letourneau?”

  She said, “What? I was just being friendly.”

  Aside from those walks with her flirting with men, I didn’t know her chattiness extended to boys who were young enough to be her son.

  We were now on to a new season of The Bachelorette, starring a Bob Guiney’s reject. Once again we were engrossed in the multiple helicopter rides, fondling in hot tubs, and Chris Harrison’s wise words. Our viewing was enhanced by gallons of wine. Laughing our way through a new episode, I said to Lucy, “Can you believe how quickly love can move along?” referring to the typical eight-week courtship. Lucy replied, giggling, “Heather, I have something I want to tell you. Jeremy now calls me every night. We have amazing chemistry and just this unexplainable connection. Just like they talk about it on The Bachelor.”

  I said, “Jeremy? Who the heck is Jeremy?”

  Lucy continued. “Well, remember that day we were jogging at the track? I gave Jeremy my number and things just started to progress. I mean, love shouldn’t have an age, should it?”

  I was shocked. I said, “How old is Jeremy?”

  She replied, “He’s a senior. He’s the quarterback and wanted to work out with me, so I said OK. He says I’m not like other girls.”

  To which I retorted, “It’s because you’re not a girl. You’re a married mom.”

  “Oh, Heather,” she said. “You’re so judgmental.”

  I said, “No, Lucy, you’ll be seeing a judge . . . .”

  She interrupted, “It’s not like I’ve gone all the way with him.”

  I said, “Why? Are you saving it for prom night, to make it extra-special? You really have to cut this out. I have moral issues with this whole thing.”

  We moved on, and I assumed she had stopped her involvement with Jeremy the jailbait. I think the biggest problem with Lucy was that she craved attention. That was becoming very obvious to me. For one thing, every time we went out to a restaurant for lunch, she’d tell the waiter it was her son’s birthday and insist that the waiters gather at our table and sing to him. Then one day, when she called me on her Bluetooth while driving home from the mall with her thirteen-year-old daughter in the back, she said, “Heather, you’re not going to believe it. Have you ever heard of the rapper Chocolate-C?”

  I said, “No. And I like rap music.”

  Lucy then said, “Well, he approached me with his CD in front of Hot Dog on a Stick and said I had the most beautiful body he had ever seen. He asked me to be in one of his music videos, how about that?”

  Her daughter, Casey, chimed in, “Mom, it was just to be an extra.”

  Lucy screamed, “It was to be a lead dancer, Casey, show some respect! He said I had a better ass than Beyoncé.”

  The way she spoke to her daughter and the competitiveness really bothered me. But I sympathized with her because she was having a lot of marital problems. Carl was kind of an odd dude, and we never really socialized with him. I always thought it might have to do with Lucy’s proclivity to flirt.

  One day I went over to her house in the Valley, with my son Drake, who was three at the time, to play with her three-year-old. As we were drinking coffee and eating some fresh strawberries, she said, “What are the days that you’re most fertile in the month?” This woman had been having her period for more than twenty years. Shouldn’t she know her cycle by now?

  I said to her, “Well, it’s fourteen days before you expect your period. Why are you asking me?”

  “Well, you know that guy Roger from the gym?”

  “No, I don’t go to the gym,” I replied.

  “I saw him at happy hour last night. He has really cute dimples, so I went back to his place and you know. It just happened. Sorry, Heather, I’m not a nun.”

  I replied, “Wait, when do you get your period?”

  Lucy looked at her calendar and said, “The twenty-eighth.”

  I said, “Today is the fifteenth, so that’s a day over. You boned on the most fertile day of the month. I am guessing you didn’t use a condom?”

  “No, he didn’t have one and neither did his roommate. Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to latex.”

  “Wait, he has a roommate? You’re cheating with a man who
can’t even financially live on his own?” I asked in disbelief. “Forget that. Lucy, you have to get the morning-after pill right now.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Heather. I don’t like to put anything unnatural into my body. My body is my temple and it’s very sacred to me.”

  I was horrified and said, “Is sperm from a guy you met at the gym considered one hundred percent natural to you?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I mind having another baby. I mean, we should go to the gym just so you can see his dimples. Besides, he has dark hair like Carl.”

  I was perplexed. I said, “Would you really try and pass off another man’s child to your husband and have him raise it as his own?”

  “Carl never questioned me about him,” Lucy replied, looking down at her son.

  I knew I was done with her, but I felt this need to rectify the situation and I didn’t trust she would get the pill. Back then you needed a prescription for it, so I called my gyno and got one. I went to the Target pharmacy to pick it up and, lo and behold, the woman in the red shirt behind the counter was the gossipy mother from my son Drake’s preschool. Who knew that she could be into so many people’s business and still hold down a job as a pharmacy assistant? As she rang me up, looking at the name of the prescription, she said, oozing with sarcasm, “Isn’t this interesting!”

  I retorted, “Well, it’s not for me.” And she grabbed the little white bag back and said, “If it’s not for you, then legally I can’t give it to you.”

  Pulling the little white bag back, I said, “Fine, it is for me. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

  When I got to Lucy’s house, I acted like I was in Girl, Interrupted and made her swallow the morning-after pill in front of me, checking under her tongue and the roof of her mouth to make sure it actually went down.