Mrs. Perfect

by Jane Porter

  Tugging up my bottoms and yanking down the jacket, I tell myself I should go to Pilates this morning. It’d do me good. But it’s LuLu in the studio today, and LuLu’s style doesn’t work as well for me.

  Instead, I drop to the carpet next to my chaise and go through a couple of yoga poses, hoping that five minutes of floor work will equal an hour of Pilates. Closing my eyes, I take a pose, focus on breathing, focus on stretching, focus on being present and in the moment.

  Less than two minutes into my routine, Jemma crashes through the door, interrupting my Downward Dog. “I can’t find my butterfly hair elastic,” she cries, her long blond hair caught in one fist.

  “Did you check your room?” I ask, turning my head to peer through my arms at her as I inhale slowly to a count of three.

  “Yes, and it’s not there.”

  I exhale slowly to a count of three. “Then it’s probably in your bathroom.”

  “It’s not there, either. I’ve looked. Everywhere.”

  I’m inhaling again, and it takes me a moment to answer. “Then I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Mom.”

  I stand, brush off my hands, trying to ignore the low blue feeling that engulfs me. “Jemma, it’s your hair elastic.”

  “And you’re my mom,” she flashes before flouncing off.

  Fifteen minutes later, I’ve got the girls rounded up, backpacks on their backs, lunches in hand, and I walk them to their bus stop. Nathan’s upstairs in the bathroom, shaving at his sink when I return to the house.

  Our bathroom is enormous, a true spa retreat with heated marble parquet floor, his and her counters and sinks, glass shower, whirlpool tub, and heated towel bars.

  “You’re heading to work late today,” I say, leaning against one of the brown-and-white marble counters. This marble is probably my favorite stone in the house. Dark cocoa richly veined in white. It’s glamorous and masculine at the same time.

  He makes a face in the mirror. He’s shaving his neck now and pauses to tap his razor in the sink. “I’m actually heading to the airport. I have an eleven o’clock flight.”

  “You’re going out of town?” I can’t quite suppress the sharp edge in my voice. “Why didn’t you mention it before?”

  “I wasn’t sure I’d need to go until last night and you had book club and then I fell asleep.”

  I frown. His explanation is suspect at best. “I’d think you would have told me first thing this morning, then.”

  “You were asleep and then I was getting the kids ready for school.”

  “Your leaving town is more important than feeding the kids Froot Loops!”

  He looks at me in the mirror. His brown eyes hold mine. “I’m sorry, Taylor.”

  He sounds sincere, but at the same time something doesn’t feel right. “But it’s Back-to-School Night tonight.”

  He uses a washcloth to wipe away shaving cream residue. “You’ve got it down. You don’t need me there, and I need to be in Omaha.”

  I shake my head. “Arkansas two weeks ago. Omaha today. What’s next? Bakersfield?”

  He rinses his razor, takes his time answering, and when he finally speaks his voice is pitched low, his tone almost excessively patient. “I’ll try to get back tonight, but if I can’t wrap everything up today, I’ll be home tomorrow night. Either way, I’ll call you and let you know when I know more.”

  I don’t know if it’s his tone or his expression, but I feel something small and hard and sharp form in my gut as he combs his hair and then heads for our closet.

  He’s my Nathan, but he’s also a stranger.

  “Don’t you want to hear more about the girls’ teachers and their year?” I ask, following him.

  “You’ll tell me,” he answers, reaching for his suit jacket. “You always do.”

  His answer perplexes me, and I stand there, arms at my side, my brain racing to make sense of what he’s saying and what he’s not saying. This isn’t the Nathan I know. This isn’t the devoted dad who never missed anything pertaining to his children. “Are you okay? Are you not feeling well?”

  “I’m feeling fine.” But he’s picking up his briefcase and a small overnight bag, and I can’t help it, I feel as though he’s shutting me out.

  The cold, sharp knot in my gut grows bigger, and I open my mouth to ask what I really want to know.

  Are we okay?

  Is there someone else?

  Will you always love me?

  But I don’t. I can’t. Instead I kiss him and let him leave.

  For a long moment, I don’t know what I feel. I don’t know what to do with myself, either. I have a half hour before I have to drop Tori off at preschool. I should go sit with her. She’s just lying on the floor of the family room, watching cartoons. Instead I sit at my laptop computer in the little room off our bedroom that serves as my home office/wrapping paper/scrapbook room and get on the Internet to check out the flights to Sun Valley for the winter holiday: $380 each. Not bad. Not great. But it could be worse.

  I know Nathan said we couldn’t go this year, but he can’t be serious. Sun Valley is the place to be, and I love the town of Ketchum. Tons of our friends have houses or condos there. We usually book two hotel rooms, but this year we won’t go to a hotel. We can just stay with Kate and Bill. Their house is enormous—a seven-bedroom, seven-bath, ten-thousand-square-foot lodge—and they’ve asked us to stay with them every year. I book the five tickets and then reserve the car. By saving on a hotel, it’s almost free, isn’t it?

  Back in my room, I strip off my Juicy tracksuit and rummage through my built-in wardrobe drawers, searching for my tiny pink Cosabella thong panties and the matching pink bra.

  Years ago when I bought my first $200-plus bra, I felt guilty and sick. But $200 for a bra is nothing now. All of my lingerie is expensive. It’s Italian and French.

  Nathan claims that no one in his family ever spent that kind of money on underwear and that people with real money don’t blow it. The truly rich are far more conservative with cash than those who want to prove they’re successful.

  Living here in Bellevue, I’m not sure I agree, but I do know that Nathan’s family isn’t like mine. They have money, lots of money. They also detest me, at least his mom and sister. Nathan’s dad seemed to have a soft spot for me, but he died five years ago, and his mother and sister have just grown closer. And colder.

  It never crossed my mind that Nathan’s family would despise me. I’m an overachiever, former born again, straight-A student, and cheerleader. I wasn’t the most popular girl at Muir High (being born again had its drawbacks), but I was well liked enough to be put on the homecoming court and respected enough to be named ASB president.

  I didn’t get the same respect at USC. UCLA students mocked us by saying USC stood for University of Spoiled Children, but the truth is, I was there on full scholarship. A lot of us there were on scholarship, and I had a virtually free ride through a university that cost others over $30,000 a year in tuition alone.

  Nathan should have never told his parents about my scholarship. It prejudiced them against me. They were sure I was after his money.

  His mom said so to my face: “You do know under California state law that whatever assets one partner has before marriage remain with the partner after marriage.”

  I simply stared at her, and she added, as if clarifying her position, “If you marry Nathan, you’ll never have one penny of his trust fund. If you divorce him, you’ll have even less.”

  Even today, I’m just one step above poor white trash in their eyes.

  Nathan’s family is wrong, though. My family wasn’t affluent, but we weren’t white trash. At least, we weren’t until my mother fell into the gutter, but that was her choice, not ours.

  I step into slim, pale gold Adrienne Vittadini slacks topped by a pale gold Adrienne Vittadini knit top that has a long matching car coat. Scraping my hair back from my face into a tight, low ponytail, I study my reflection.

  There are times li
ke now where I realize I’m pretty. I’m grateful that God gave me this face. It’s what attracted Nathan in the first place. Dark blond hair. Strong eyebrows. Angled cheekbones. Good mouth. Great body. But I work it. I work it every day. Why?

  I like being Taylor Young. I need to be Taylor Young. I never want to be Tammy Jones again. That was my name on my birth certificate. That was who I was growing up.

  I change purses, choosing a white Coach bag with a natural leather trim to match my natural leather pumps.

  We weren’t always the most dysfunctional family on my block. We just turned out that way. Dad was religious, a deacon in the church. We attended church services twice a week as a family, and then in summer Cissy and I attended vacation Bible camp, first as campers and then as teen leaders.

  Growing up, we read a fair amount of the Bible. For all the scripture we read and all the verses we had to memorize, you’d think we were a good family. And to be fair, we were, at least until my mom, the deacon’s wife, started sleeping around. Before long, everyone in South Pasadena knew it but my dad.

  Four months into Mom’s affair, I went to my mom and told her if she didn’t tell Dad what was going on, I would.

  Mom decided she might be better off breaking the news, and she did, which resulted in a divorce. Dad got custody of my sister and me, and for two and a half years we tried to get on with things. But then Mom wanted back in. She missed us, and her fling had flung, so she begged Dad for another chance. Dad, being Christian, forgave her the way Christians should. They remarried when I was fifteen, and for two years we pretended nothing untoward had happened. Unfortunately, Mom couldn’t stay put. Two years later, she ran away with Ray, a truck driver who ended up getting arrested my senior year at Muir, serving serious time for assault with a deadly weapon.

  Interestingly, Mom stuck with him throughout his twenty-two-month prison stint.

  I could almost admire her for that.

  Purse over my shoulder and binder tucked under my arm, I head downstairs to wrestle Tori into shoes and drag a hairbrush through her blond curls until they’re shiny and smooth. “We’re running late,” I tell her. “We have to hurry and brush your teeth so we can go.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “It’s not a choice.”

  “I want to watch Blue’s Clues. It’s on next.”

  “Teeth, now.”

  “I’m not going to go.”

  I grab the remote, power off the TV, and look at her. “You have one minute to get upstairs and brush your teeth or you lose all TV privileges for the week.”

  Tori stomps her way up the curving staircase and down the hall to her shared bath. “I hate brushing my teeth.”

  I don’t answer. Arguing is pointless, and I need to get her to preschool on time. It’s a great preschool program, but they are rather firm on pickup and drop-off times. Apparently, children suffer more separation anxiety if they see other kids arrive late and/or leave early.

  Once Tori’s buckled in her car seat, I hit number 5 on speed dial. Voice mail is number 1. Nathan is number 2. School is number 3. Baby-sitter is always number 4, and my friends take up 5 through 10, with Patti always my top friend.

  “Patti,” I say, backing my pale gold Lexus out of the garage and into the September sunshine, “could we do an early lunch? I know we agreed on noon, but would eleven-thirty work for you?”

  “I can do that.”

  “Where do we want to eat?”

  “How about 520 Bar and Grill on Main Street?”

  “Great.”

  The 520 Bar & Grill was opened by the Brazens two years ago beneath their real estate office, and the restaurant still draws a good lunch crowd. Fortunately, Patti is close friends with Rondi Brazen and can always get a table at a moment’s notice.

  With two hours free between dropping Tori off and meeting Patti, I head to the mall to get a little shopping done. My sister has a birthday coming up, and I want to get her present bought, wrapped, and mailed soon.

  I bump into Kate on the first floor of Nordstrom’s, right next to the shoes.

  Kate has a daughter in second grade, too, but she and Brooke are in different classes. “How is it going so far?” I ask as we stop to chat.

  “Fine. So far.”

  “We’ll be working together on the second-grade class auction project,” I say, pulling my purse strap higher on my shoulder.

  “That’s right. As head room moms, we have to coordinate that ghastly class project. I hate that thing, I do.” Her freckled nose creases. “It’s the worst job for someone who isn’t creative. I glue and staple fabric instead of sew.”

  “We’ll figure it out together. Don’t worry.”

  Kate shakes her head in admiration. “You’re so good with all of that. I don’t know how you do it. Chair the auction and help out in the classroom.”

  I shake my head right back. “It’s because I have no life outside of the girls and school.”

  “Well, thank God for that. If we didn’t have you, I swear, the school would fall apart.”

  Kate is exaggerating. She’s even more important to the school than I am. Her husband, Bill, is second in command at Microsoft, and she’s pretty, not in that fake plastic surgery way, but in a healthy natural strawberry blond way that makes you think of skiing, golf, and quick getaways to Kauai. She’s nice, too, something you wouldn’t expect when your husband earns several hundred thousand a year, with annual bonuses of up to a million dollars.

  A million-dollar bonus. Not bad for a year’s work. And if it weren’t for her massive diamond ring—five carats, I think—and her Medina waterfront house, you wouldn’t know she’s rich. It’s not as if she drives a yellow Hummer like some of the mothers I know. Her car is a discreet navy Mercedes, a classic model with the original tan leather interior.

  Kate, as you can imagine, is every teacher’s dream room mom. Can you imagine not wanting Microsoft’s number two wife as your room mom? Can you imagine the technology benefits? The software?

  We chat a little more, and then we both glance at our watches at the same time. “Better go,” Kate exclaims. “I’ve got a women’s lunch over at the club. These things always sound fun until I actually have to go.”

  “I know what you mean.” We kiss good-bye, and we’re off.

  I stop in at Kit’s Cottage, a cute little place filled with adorable things that I find nearly irresistible. I love all the beach house items—the glass jars filled with gorgeous seashells and tied with aqua ribbon, the quaint painted signs pointing to the beach, the ornate oversize picture frames made from sand dollars.

  I buy a bracelet as a gift for my sister and then some cute frames for the girls’ rooms and a little painted sign to put in my potting shed. As the sales clerk rings up my purchases, I dash back and grab a few scented candles and a pretty potted topiary.

  “That’s it,” I say, slightly breathless and feeling rather triumphant as I pull out my checkbook. “I better get out of here before I’m late to meet my friend.”

  Unfortunately, parking isn’t easy on Main Street in Old Bellevue. I circle the block twice before finally locating a spot at a lot near the downtown park.

  I walk quickly to 520 Bar & Grill and find that Patti’s already there. She’s secured us a table outside on the patio beneath a shady tree. “How’s your day?” she asks as I slip into a chair opposite hers.

  “Good. I bumped into Kate at the mall.”

  “How is she?”

  “Good. How’s your day?”

  “Insane. Bellevue Schools Foundation meeting. Hearing and vision screening meeting at school. An hour in the classroom afterwards. Sometimes I feel like I never left school.”

  “Oh, I know. Today’s easy for me, but tomorrow’s going to be a nightmare. PTA board meeting, reading with the second graders, Pilates, errands, lunchroom duty. I dread it already.”

  “You need to stop with the lunchroom duty. I gave it up years ago and haven’t regretted it once.”

  “But
no one else volunteers.”

  “Because it’s a miserable job.” Patti’s iced tea arrives, and I signal to the waitress that I want one, too. “You’re too good an asset to waste on monitoring lunch trays and wiping up spilled milk.”

  “I don’t know that the school thinks I’m all that valuable,” I answer, flashing back to the moment when I discovered Marta would be head room mom in Mrs. Osborne’s class. “Seems like they’ll take anyone for any job.”

  “Don’t fool yourself. Not just anyone can chair an auction that raises a quarter of a million dollars. In three hours, no less.”

  “You and Kate always make me feel like a million bucks.”

  “You are! Taylor, you’re an achiever. You’re fiercely dedicated to your causes. I don’t know anyone who does as much for the school as you do.”

  I shrug even as I flush. It’s hard for me to accept a compliment. I never believe them. How can I? I wasn’t raised like my friends. I’ve gotten where I am by the skin of my teeth.

  We order our meals—salads with dressing on the side—and then I peel off my coat and let it hang on the back of my chair.

  “Let’s talk about what we want to accomplish at the next auction meeting,” I say, stabbing a shrimp with my fork once the salads arrive. “In my opinion, the chairs need to set goals. I want to hear what they’re going to do this month, and then we need to follow up with them in October to make sure they were able to accomplish their goals.”

  Patti nods. “Last year we netted a lot of money, but it was too chaotic. No one communicated, and until the last minute I didn’t know if Nel was going to be able to pull the auction off.”

  I stab another pink bay shrimp with my fork. “I’m a control freak. But you know that. Communication’s everything. We have to know what everyone’s working on, and we need to know if they’re having problems.”