100 Days of Cake

by Shari Goldhagen

  “As a matter of fact I did.” He smiles the world’s saddest smile and shakes his head. “Just this morning she called, and I started to tell her about what happened last night—I didn’t name you, obviously.” Suddenly he looks at me, worried. “I’m sorry. I guess I should have asked for your permission first—”

  “No, it’s fine.” If he’s telling her about it, that has to mean that something did happen, right? That there is something to tell and I didn’t just invent the whole thing.

  “Anyway, she stopped me and said I didn’t need to apologize. Would you like to know why?” He gives this big forced grin that doesn’t really make me want to know why at all, but I nod. It appears he’s really over that whole thing about not sharing personal stuff with me.

  “She said she can’t go on lying to me and giving me false hope. Because she’s not really thinking things over; she’s already thought and decided. We’re done-zo because she’s in love with this new Dolphins running back and they’re moving in together.”

  “That sucks; I’m sorry.” In my pocket my phone is vibrating with a new call, but it seems rude to look at it while Dr. Brooks is pouring his heart out.

  “Apparently, she met him covering a charity event a few months ago.” Dr. B. gulps the majority of his drink. “She doesn’t even like football. In the entire six years we dated, she complained every fucking time I turned on a game.”

  Six years. Wow. No wonder he’s taking it out on the wall. In the fireplace pile of broken things, there are a couple framed photos, and I can almost make out part of her strawberry-blond head.

  “Seriously, that’s not cool,” I offer.

  “What ya gonna do?” Dr. B. says to his empty glass, but after a minute he straightens up. “Enough about me. You sounded really upset on the phone. What’s going on? Is this more of what you were saying last night, about how you felt you failed the store?”

  “Sort of. I went back to clean up today, and Alex . . . Well, it turns out he isn’t actually dating my sister after all. . . .”

  Looking at the disaster in the fireplace and in the wall, where Dr. B. very obviously punched a hole, I feel heat on my cheeks. He must think I’m such a high school moron. Here I am having a panic attack because Alex isn’t dating my sister, and Dr. B.’s girlfriend of six (SIX!) years—who he was planning to spend his life with—told him she’s leaving him for some football star.

  “Uh-huh.” Dr. B. nods, but he looks like he’s entire galaxies away.

  “Yeah, they were only meeting to talk about me. I guess they were worried or something . . .” I peter out.

  “And that makes you feel violated?” he asks absently.

  Shrugging, I tell him I guess so. Saying anything more about Alex seems mean, considering what Dr. B. is going through. “I’m sorry. It . . . it seemed like a much bigger deal an hour ago. Maybe I should go.”

  Dr. B. shakes his head emphatically. “No, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart swells.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he asks, looking at his own empty glass.

  “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  “Somehow I don’t see you as a straight Jack Daniel’s kind of girl.”

  “Then how about a Jack and Coke?” I say, the teeniest bit proud that I know that is a drink.

  He raises an eyebrow at me.

  “What?” I try to sound casual. “I’ve had alcohol before; I’ll be eighteen in a month.”

  “A fact that I am painfully aware of.” He gives this small, knowing smile like we share a secret, but I feel like I’ve missed something.

  Still, I grin back and follow him into a generic galley kitchen, where he refills his glass with straight whiskey and makes me one that’s about two thirds soda. I’m not sure if it’s a lot of Jack, but it tastes absolutely awful—worse than the sacred FSU punch at Chris’s party. For the second sip, I hold the glass up to my mouth and don’t actually swallow anything. Hopefully Dr. B. doesn’t notice.

  Back in the living room, he turns on the stereo and takes a CD from a rack in the corner.

  He holds it up for me before sliding it into the tray on a bookshelf stereo. “Now, I know you may never have seen one of these before, but they are called ‘compact discs,’ and this is how we used to get our music back in the Stone Age.”

  “My mom has told tales about that ancient technology.” I joke, but seriously, why does he always have to bring up our age difference?

  The music starts, some mopey women singing about fading into someone that I think I once heard on a CW show. Dr. B. sits next to me on the frilly couch—not that close, but not that far away either.

  “You might have the edge on music, but I’d bet you a very special episode that I’ve seen more eighties and nineties sitcoms than you have,” I volunteer.

  “Oh, I sincerely doubt that,” he says.

  But he appears genuinely impressed with my encyclopedic knowledge of nearly every episode of Family Ties, The Cosby Show, and especially Who’s the Boss? Apparently he had a huge thing for Alyssa Milano as a kid.

  “Golden Girls, though, that’s my absolute jam.”

  “Get out.” He laughs. “I used to watch that every Saturday night with my parents back in Philly.”

  The whole thing definitely feels different from our sessions, but I’m not sure I would call it date-like, just more comfortable.

  Through the windows, I can see that it’s getting dark; I guess I hadn’t thought through how late it was when I came over. There’s no way Dr. B. can give me a ride home—I can tell he’s drunk—so I probably should get going before it’s pitch black. But when I mention this, Dr. B.’s eyes droop, and he looks boyishly crestfallen, much closer in age to the guys I go to school with than to my mom.

  “No, stay a little longer?” he says. “It’s silly, but I don’t want to be alone right now, and I like talking to you, Dr. Byrne.”

  As if I’m going to say no to that!

  For once I’m the one who’s helping someone sad—a bummer buster! But I am a tad worried when Dr. B. tops off our glasses, despite the fact that I haven’t actually drunk any of it. My phone is going off again, but I click the ignore button without even taking it out of my pocket.

  “I guess the doctor can stay in for a little while longer,” I say.

  “Good! Are you hungry? I don’t think I’ve eaten anything for days.”

  “Me either!”

  “You know, my years as a therapist have taught me there are two kinds of people in the world—stress eaters and stress starvers. We might have to look out for each other, Molly Byrne, make sure we don’t waste away.”

  “Don’t worry.” I smirk. “I’ve got your back.”

  “Good to hear.” He jokes that he hasn’t been back to the grocery store since the time my mom accosted him, and we both kind of giggle, because it seems strange now that it was ever weird for us to hang out outside my appointments.

  The only unexpired things we can find in the cabinets and fridge are a packet of Nestlé Toll House chocolate pieces and a box of Bisquick.

  “Chocolate chip pancakes it is!” he announces, and we mix up the batter.

  Stab of guilt thinking about Mom and the cakes and how she probably wouldn’t be on board with this type of therapy.

  When the food is done cooking, we take our plates and glasses (Dr. B.’s freshly topped off again; mine now full of plain Coke) into the dining area off the kitchen, where instead of a dining room table there is a giant wooden pool table and two worn recliners.

  Just seeing it makes me laugh. “One of these rooms is not like the others.” I wave my hand around to indicate the rest of the Martha Stewart Living condo.

  Laughing, Dr. B. explains that when he and “Fox 9’s own Whitney Lowe” moved here, he agreed to let her choose all the furniture—with his money, he might add—as long as he could have a pool table instead of a big formal dining room table that n
o one ever uses.

  “And she still gave me crap about it.” He shakes his head. “I let her decorate our whole place like we were ten-year-old girls having a tea party, and yet whenever anyone came over, she would go on and on about how she was marrying a child.”

  “That’s a bitch move.”

  “You know the best part?” Dr. B. asks. “She told me today that I can keep it all. I’m now the only single straight man in the Western world who owns this many slipcovers.”

  “You should burn them,” I say. “In a symbolic cleansing or something.”

  Pointing a finger at me, he nods. “You’re the best.”

  “Thanks,” I mumble. God, my face is on fire.

  We sit in the recliners and eat the pancakes (well, I eat mine; Dr. B. mainly just picks out a few chocolate pieces), and talk more about Golden Girls.

  “So, which one is your favorite?” he asks.

  “How can you ask that question?” I’m actually a little serious. “They’re all great in their own ways. It’s like asking a mother to pick her favorite child.”

  “Molly.” Dr. B. smiles. “You really are a thirty-seven-year-old trapped in a teenager’s body—not that it’s a bad body, mind you. It’s truly a lovely body.”

  His comment is flattering but weird. Like, I’m glad that he knows I have a body (I definitely wanted him to notice my body last night), but there’s something off about the way he says it.

  “Um, thanks.”

  I really should get going. Dr. B. looks like he might fall asleep in his chair. When he actually starts snoring, I reach into my pocket to call Elle and see if she can come get me—even though I know she’ll give me a the lecture to end all lectures.

  “Do you play?” Awake again, Dr. B. points toward the pool table.

  “A little.” Back when I used to go to such things, I played a few games at swim team parties if someone’s parents had a table in the basement, but we were mostly dicking around. I don’t know any of the rules or anything.

  “Show me what you’ve got!” With a sudden burst of energy, Dr. B. springs from his chair and reaches into the table pockets for the balls. When all the solids and stripes are ordered, he rolls the triangle up and down on the table a few times and tells me to pick out my cue while he refreshes our drinks.

  Having no idea about the criteria, I grab the shortest pole from the rack. Dr. B. calls out that he’s got to “drain the weasel”—an expression I never in a million years would have imagined him saying—and ducks into the bathroom. I take out my phone to see who called before. Five voice mail messages. The first one from Elle.

  “Ohmygod, Molly. Mark is amazing! Call me ASAP. Also, V and Alex aren’t dating; they’re just friends or something! Call me back!”

  Well, that information might have been helpful earlier in the day.

  Then four messages from Alex. The first one from right when I got to Dr. B.’s

  “Molly, I feel shitty about the way we left things. I shouldn’t have put you in that position. . . . Call me back if you want.”

  This is good. Even if I am still confused about everything, I hate myself when I think of Alex hating me. Before I can listen to the other messages, Dr. B. reappears, sipping his drink to keep the whiskey from sloshing over the side.

  “Why don’t you get things started?” I suggest.

  Dr. B. is really good. He ends up being stripes and manages to sink more than half the balls in his first turn, always announcing which one he’s going to be sending into which pocket. He even does these trick shots where he puts the cue behind his back or tosses it from hand to hand.

  “Dude, are you some sort of pool shark?” I ask.

  “What can I say? I saw The Color of Money a lot when I was a kid,” he says.

  “Never seen it.”

  “Oh, it’s a classic,” he says. “That can be your next movie assignment.”

  I wonder if he means we can watch it together like we did with Say Anything . . . . Wonder if he means we’d watch it in the office or if I would come over here again. I think I’d like that, but maybe when he hasn’t been drinking quite so much.

  Clearly he’s mega-sloshed. While his hands are pretty sure when he’s shooting, he stumbles multiple times as he circles the table, and his eyelids are sagging. Plus, he’s all sweaty, even though the air conditioner is jacked up so high that I’m freezing in my shorts and tank top. If I were a sitcom wife, I’d definitely have to say something about him slowing down. But I’m not, and saying something would make things weird.

  Maybe this is just his thing? There have been more than a few nights when Elle and I have had to pour her mom into bed when she came home totally wasted. Maybe this is just what some single adults do? (Obviously not perfect ones like Mom.)

  Finally Dr. B. misses a shot and announces it’s my turn. “I’m really glad you came over.” His words are running together. “I was having a crap-tastic day, and you’ve managed to cheer me up. Thank you.”

  “Anytime.”

  Leaning over the table, I position my index finger into a loop for the cue and do a couple of practice slides like I saw Dr. B. doing. When I actually try to take a shot, however, the cue slips and skids against the table without even hitting the white ball.

  “Scratch that scratch.” Dr. B. laughs and comes over. “Your stance is all wrong.” Putting his hands on my hips, he guides my legs back from the table. My shorts are pretty short, and his ring fingers and pinkies graze my outer thighs. It would be kind of exciting, except alcohol is radiating off him and he’s swaying and totally unsteady.

  “Now let’s do something about your arms.” He could just as easily show me, but instead he stands behind me, kind of draping himself over me as he bends my arms into position. “There you go.”

  Moving to steady myself, my butt rubs against the bulge of his crotch. Instinctively I hop away, and he chuckles under his breath. Thrusting my arms into the shot, we tap the three ball into the right middle pocket.

  “Thanks.” Straightening up, I move away a few inches, but Dr. B. is still lightly holding my right wrist. “My mom’s gonna be getting really worried. I should get going.”

  “Come on, Maw-leee.” It’s the same look that Alex had earlier when he almost kissed me. Dr. B. even stretches my name out the same way. But he smells of whiskey, and his eyes are glazed over. He’s so unstable, he’d probably tumble over if he weren’t holding on to me with one hand and leaning heavily on the table with the other.

  Without warning his lips smash into mine, tongue trying to work its way into my mouth. Sloppy and hot. And nothing like last night.

  Last night everything felt meaningful and romantic and slightly tortured in a Twilight kind of way. . . . Last night I wanted him to kiss me so bad, the ache became a solid, tangible thing. But this is just gross and awful and a little scary.

  I push him away, and he would fall over backward if he weren’t still holding my arm.

  “I should go.”

  “So you’re seriously going to leave?” His tone changes to a mix of incredulousness and anger, but it’s still slurry, which makes it even more dangerous somehow. I have no idea who this person is. “I’m gonna lose my fucking license for this!”

  “What are you—” I start, but stop. Of course. Even if it’s only for a few more weeks, I’m only seventeen; and he’s my doctor. Even if I was the one who kissed him last night, he could get into a lot of trouble for what we’re doing.

  “Is this some sick game for you?” he drawls, and I freeze. Just four hours ago Alex was telling me to stop playing mind games.

  “I . . .”

  “You flirt with me for months, and I try to ignore it—try to be the good guy, try to help you, blah, blah, blah. But the minute Whitney is out of the picture, you bat your lashes and insist I come to your fucking fish fest. Then you invite yourself over and prance around and rub your ass against me. You win, Molly. You want me to say ‘uncle’? Uncle, all right? I admit it, I want you. Whit’s off s
crewing some NFL star, so why not? Let’s do this.”

  “I didn’t mea—”

  But I did mean this. Some of this, at least. I did start acting more like Dr. B. was a guy I was crushing on than like he was my doctor. I did invent stuff so he would like me. And I did want him to come to the fund-raiser as more than just my shrink, definitely wanted him to kiss me on the stairwell. But . . . I didn’t want this. At least not this way, with him drunk and mean and disgusting.

  “No.”

  “So why are you here, then?”

  “Because . . .” I can feel myself starting to slip. He’s the one who makes me feel safe. But this is the opposite of safe. “You’re my doctor . . .”

  “Oh, so now you’re just my patient again? The sad little girl with the hermit crab who makes up stories about her dead dad?” He pulls me closer to him. “Is this what you did to that douche in Barbie and the Rockers? No wonder you made him crazy.”

  Without thinking, I jerk my knee up into his junk, really, really hard. Letting go of me, he crumples over into a moaning heap on the ground. Not looking back, I run out the door and to my bike. In the dark I struggle with the lock, get it free just as Dr. B. makes it to the door.

  “Wait, Molly. I . . .” Dr. B. is calling after me, but I’m pedaling as fast as possible down the road.

  I can’t stop thinking about Pickles and his simple little life on the dollhouse couch in the crabitat.

  Somehow I make it home. From the kitchen Mom calls out something, but I hurry up the stairs with an excuse about needing the bathroom.

  So hard to catch my breath.

  On my bed, panting.

  Finally I take out my phone to call Elle, and remember Alex’s other messages.

  Message 2: “Molly, I canceled on my friend and I’m coming back to the store. I’m sorry. Obviously you don’t have to go out with me if you don’t want to.”

  Message 3: “Okay, back at FishTopia, but you’re not here. It looks like you left in a hurry. Are you okay? Just give me a call when you can. I’m sorry.”

  The last one is from hours later, Alex’s tone completely different: