Mrs. Perfect

by Jane Porter

  Books, reports, essays, musical instruments. The list overwhelms me. Not because kids shouldn’t learn and do these things, but because I know Jemma, and just like last year, this year she will fight me every step of the way. I excelled in school. Jemma either can’t or won’t. As I learned last year, Jemma will do anything to get out of homework, including lying about her assignments.

  I close my eyes, exhausted. Blue. I don’t even know why I feel blue. I have everything I ever wanted, and as a sixteen-year-old I wished for a lot. Beauty. Wealth. Success.

  I wanted a handsome, rich husband, one who was good in bed but not so sexy that I’d worry about him. I wanted him to have good values and a great family. I wanted him to be ambitious and successful. I wanted us to live in a big, beautiful house and know beautiful, glamorous people. I wanted 2.5 beautiful children; the .5 was a baby. (In my mind the baby never grew up, just gurgled and cooed like a precious pink or blue bundle in the pram, and it was a pram because we were going to be a family like those in InStyle, people who could afford a proper English nanny, and the proper English nanny would of course want one of those huge, solid English prams.)

  I wanted all this. And jumping ahead sixteen years, I realize, I’ve got it.

  All of it.

  The gorgeous husband, the house, the 2.5 kids (although the baby did grow up; she’s four and a half now). I even got the nanny who once pushed the proper pram.

  And the problem—if there is a problem, and I even hesitate to call it a problem—is that this life, my life, looks good from the outside, but it’s not so fun on the inside. On the inside, it’s intense. On the inside, it’s endless stress.

  Sighing softly, I look up, straight into Marta Zinsser’s eyes. I don’t know how long she’s been watching me, but our gazes collide and then lock. For a moment, I feel like crying. The day rushes at me: Nathan leaving abruptly, the declined credit card, the conversation with Lucy, the American Express statement. But just as quickly, I remember my friends and my commitment to the school and my family. I lift my chin, square my shoulders. I’ve got nothing to apologize for. I’m doing the best I can.

  Marta looks away. Good.

  The next morning when my alarm goes off, I hit snooze twice. I don’t want to wake up. And then I remember that Nathan’s not here. I roll out of bed and stumble down the hall to wake up the girls, still wearing the pink-striped nightshirt the girls gave me for Valentine’s Day. It has a big heart on the chest and another big red heart low on the back hem, the heart dancing just over my butt cheek.

  Brooke is my light sleeper and morning person. I wake her first because it’s easy. Tori rolls over to go back to sleep. Jemma glares at me, her thick honey hair a tangled mess on her pillow. “I don’t want to get up,” she says, her beautiful face creased by her frown.

  “I didn’t want to get up, either,” I answer, “but I did.”

  “I hate school.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I do.”

  “Come on.” I haul the covers off her. “Be downstairs in ten minutes.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  I look at her over my shoulder. Her skin is a light gold from the last of her summer tan, and her long hair has shimmery sun streaks. With her dark lashes and light eyes, she’s pretty, too pretty. She’s going to wrap the wrong people around her little finger, I think, people who will cater to her instead of teaching her right from wrong. I have to teach her right from wrong. “You’re on your own for homework. No help from Annika. No help from me.”

  “Mom!”

  I ignore her shout and head back to Tori’s room. “Get up, little girl. It’s late. We’ve already overslept.”

  Downstairs, I look in the cupboards and try to figure out what I can make that everyone will eat. Unlike Nathan, I don’t feed them junk. Having lived with an eating disorder for nearly twenty years, I wouldn’t want to wish my craziness on anyone else, much less my daughters.

  At the back of the pantry I see the red-and-white canister: Quaker Oats. Oatmeal it is.

  Tori is delighted by hot oatmeal for breakfast. Brooke less so. Jemma makes retching noises.

  I’m not in a good mood, and Jemma isn’t helping things at all. “Eat it. It’s good for you.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Jemma whines, shoving her bowl away.

  “It’s not if you put brown sugar and raisins on it,” Tori says, heaping a second spoon of brown sugar into her small bowl.

  “I hate raisins.”

  “We don’t say ‘hate,’” I correct wearily, “it’s not polite. We say ‘I don’t prefer.’”

  Jemma looks at me disdainfully. “You say ‘hate’ all the time.”

  “I’m wrong, then. And just because I do something doesn’t make it right.”

  Brooke dumps some sugar on her oatmeal and then nearly drowns it with milk. “Dad makes us good stuff in the morning. Eggs, pancakes, French toast.”

  I pour three little glasses of orange juice. “Your dad is more of a morning person than I am.”

  “He just loves us more,” Jemma replies, draining her juice.

  I pour myself a thimbleful. “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I give up. Fine. “Okay, yes, he does. Feel better? Now finish your breakfast, brush your teeth, and go to school.” And I smile. It’s a feral smile, but at least it makes me feel good.

  Chapter Seven

  With a half hour to go before I drop Tori at preschool, I head upstairs to shower and do my hair.

  Blowing my hair dry with the big round brush, I realize I’m due to have my color done. I know the appointment has already been made, but I’m not looking forward to going and sitting for two hours for the color processing. I have good hair and have always taken care of it, but like everything else, it takes effort.

  Once my hair is dry, I dress. I’m wearing a black fringed Chanel blazer today with a pair of True Religion jeans and black Gucci loafers.

  Back in the bathroom, I twist my hair back before switching my wallet and keys and lip gloss from yesterday’s Coach bag to a year-old black-and-pink Chanel purse. Sliding on my oversize sunglasses, I go back downstairs to herd Tori to the garage. She looks adorable in her gray plaid skirt and white Peter Pan–collar blouse, and as I lift her into the car, I can’t resist covering her face with kisses. “My darling little girl.”

  “Ew,” she giggles.

  “Watch your hands,” I say, adjusting the straps of her car seat.

  She lifts her hands into the air and out of harm’s way. “When is Daddy coming home?”

  “Late tonight,” I answer, shutting her door and heading to the driver’s side. “We’ll all be asleep when he gets home,” I add, sliding behind the steering wheel, “but at least he’ll be here when you wake up in the morning.”

  I start the car and am backing out of the garage when she asks, “What’s a affair?”

  I hit the brakes harder than I intend and turn to look at her. “What did you say?”

  Tori with her cherubic round cheeks, blue eyes, and blond ponytails shrugs innocently. “Jemma said she hoped Daddy wasn’t having a affair. But I don’t know what it is.”

  My heart’s pounding. My hands suddenly feel damp on the steering wheel. “Daddy’s not having an affair.”

  “But what is it?”

  “It’s . . .” I swallow, grip the steering wheel tighter. “It’s . . . an adult thing. But Daddy’s not.”

  Tori smiles at me, small dimples appearing in her cheeks. “’Kay.”

  ’Kay.

  My eyes burn and I turn around to finish backing out. Nathan wouldn’t have an affair, I tell myself, feeling anything but okay. Nathan wouldn’t. He’s not the type. He loves us. All of us. Including me.

  Nathan and I met at a Lambda Chi fraternity party at USC. The party was a costume party with a cowboy and Indian theme, a fact I wouldn’t have remembered if I didn’t have a framed photo of that night of me and two of my sorority sisters and Nathan. I didn
’t know Nathan at the point when the photo was snapped. He was the friend of my friend—her older sister had apparently dated him the year before—and there we all were arm in arm and grinning our smashed-out-of-our-mind grins. My Pocahontas top is sliding off my tan shoulder, and my eyeliner is slightly smudged along with the war paint stripes on the bridge of my nose and across my cheekbones.

  But I’m young and thin and tan and smiling.

  I think of the Nathan I met at the party and how dazzled I was by him then. He wasn’t just a USC quarterback. He was drop-dead gorgeous and Mr. November in the “Men of USC” calendar.

  I’d been bulimic only four months at the point I met Nathan, bulimia as new to me as the USC campus itself, learning it from the older, wiser girls in the house. I didn’t even have a name for it in those early years. Everybody did it. Eat a big breakfast, barf. Eat too much, barf. Eat dessert, barf. You barf until the barfing becomes habit. You barf until you barf even when you don’t want to.

  I thought it was a fast, cheap weight control technique. I had no idea it would become the new center of my universe.

  In the meantime, Nathan and I began to see a lot more of each other. He was my best friend Lindy’s big brother at the fraternity, and he’d drop by the Pi Phi house to see Lindy and then, according to Lindy, ask about me.

  The next Lambda Chi party was the autumn formal, which was essentially a prom for the university Greek crowd, and Nathan, USC second-string quarterback, asked me to be his date.

  I was over the moon. So nervous. So worried about what I’d wear. Lindy and I went shopping for a new dress for the formal, but nothing seemed right. In the end, I bought a vintage Dior cocktail dress. It cost less than a new dress. In the black sheath, I felt very sophisticated and nothing like Tammy Jones.

  Nathan and I danced all night, slow dancing even to the fast songs, and by the end of the evening, I was head over heels in love.

  I’ve been in love with Nathan ever since.

  Instead of driving straight to Points Elementary, I stop in at the Starbucks on 8th Street across from the mall. I don’t know why I chose this location. It’s always so busy in the morning, and as usual, the line stretches to the door. But I wait my turn, trying to ignore my growling stomach, telling myself that a coffee is sufficient even as I eye the other women in line to see who is slimmer.

  No one. Good. Yet I feel so empty today, empty and hungry, but I sternly remind myself that being hungry has benefits. Being hungry means I can keep my figure.

  Yet what is the point of keeping my figure if I can’t keep my husband?

  Nathan has been distant lately, and he has traveled to odd cities, cities that seem awfully far off the McKee radar. But what do I know about McKee business? The McKees are mavericks, billionaires who do business out of the box.

  The line moves, and I reach the long glass case of bakery goods. The cookies, rolls, and cakes tease me, tempt me. Maybe I could eat a low-fat crumb coffee cake without doing too much harm. The problem is, I don’t want a low-fat crumb cake. I want the enormous chewy molasses cookies or the chocolate mint frosted brownies. I want dark fudge brownies with dark fudge icing.

  “What can I get for you?” the barista asks me.

  “Short skim, no foam double latte,” I answer.

  “Anything to go with that?”

  “No.” Thank God I still have a little control.

  I’m in the office after lunch duty ends, grateful I wore flats today after the past hour and a half on my feet. Now I’m in the copy room, where we’re copying and collating Friday’s school bulletin, which all the kids take home in their Friday folders. Fortunately, I don’t have to tackle the daunting task alone. Kathleen and Lori are also in the copy room with me, and having worked with both of them before, I at least feel like I’m among friends.

  “Did you see that article in this morning’s paper? The one on the value of stay-at-home moms?” Kathleen asks as she fills the copier with lime green paper. “According to recent studies, stay-at-home moms are worth close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.”

  Kathleen has just one child, a son named Michael, who was in first grade with Brooke last year. Kathleen apparently used to have a mucky-muck job until her son was born and has been a stay-at-home mom since. I’ve always gotten the feeling she’s not entirely happy being home.

  “If stay-at-home moms were paid,” Lori retorts, grimacing. “And if we were paid for all we do, I wouldn’t have to work. But that’s not the case.” Lori has three kids, three restaurant locations, and a brand-new “counter” in the Microsoft campus cafeteria. Her daughter, Jill, is Jemma’s age. She also has a son named Mike, but he’s still just a preschooler.

  “Either way we’re seriously undervalued,” Kathleen continues, punching in the number of copies needed. “According to the study, working moms are putting in forty-four hours a week on their career job and 49.8 hours a week on their ‘work’ at home, while the stay-at-home moms clock 91.6 hours. Nearly two more hours of work a week.”

  “Is this another study the media is turning into the ‘mommy wars’?” Lori asks, opening the ream of red paper that we’ll use next. “Because I find these studies highly suspect. Working moms often do everything stay-at-home moms do. It just means we’ve got to juggle two or three things at one time. Folding laundry while we book our business travel. Help with homework via the phone while we commute.”

  Kathleen stiffens. “I’m not criticizing working moms, I’m just sharing the results of the study, and according to the study, stay-at-home moms are undervalued and underappreciated.”

  “In that case, I think all moms are undervalued and underappreciated,” Alice Dunlop, the school secretary, interjects as she enters the copy room to give us another page to be copied for the newsletter.

  My phone vibrates in my purse, and checking the number, I see it’s Nathan. I leave the copy room to take the call in the quiet outside.

  “Good morning,” I greet him, gently closing the front office door behind me, my insides suddenly all rumbly as I remember Tori’s question this morning about the meaning of an affair. “Long time no talk.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s been extremely hectic.”

  “Things not going well?”

  “No, things are going extremely well, but it’s one meeting after another, and by the time I get a free moment, you’re either in a meeting or still sleeping.”

  “The time difference is hard,” I agree, wanting to believe him, wanting to believe that everything is as good as it’s always been. Nathan and I are solid. We’re the perfect couple. Everyone knows that. Even I know that. “So we’ll see you late tonight?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. It doesn’t look like I can wrap everything up by tonight. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be home until Friday—”

  “That’s two more days!”

  “Honey, it’s not by choice.”

  I picture him in bed with a sultry brunette, a gorgeous Salma Hayek–type seductress. My fingers ball into a fist. My stomach aches. “We miss you,” I say huskily.

  “I miss you, too, darling. I’ll call tonight, once the girls are home from school. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Hanging up, I stand there for a moment, phone clutched in my hand, my insides on fire. For a moment, I swing wildly from despair to calm to despair again.

  I’m still standing frozen, lost in the horrific fantasies of Nathan making love to a luscious, passionate woman I can’t even compete with, when the office door opens and a little girl bounds out.

  “Hello, Mrs. Young.”

  Shaking away the pictures, I turn to see Eva Zinsser standing in front of me, smiling her shy smile. I force a smile. “Hello, Eva.”

  “I like the fringe on your jacket,” she says. “And the buttons, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  She’s still studying me. “Is it a designer jacket?”

  She’s such a strange thing, so serious that it always unnerves me a little. “Yes, i
t is.”

  Her gaze sharpens. “Is it Chanel?”

  “Yes, it is.” I’m astounded. Not even my daughters would know such a thing. “How did you guess?”

  She shrugs. “I like fashion, and it has the Chanel details. The buttons. The fabric.”

  I want to remind her she’s just a fifth grader—she’s not supposed to know such things—but Eva’s suddenly being called.

  We both turn and spot Marta, Eva’s mother, approaching. “Eva, we’re late,” Marta calls. “We have to hurry.”

  Marta, unlike her daughter, knows nothing about fashion, dressed in her usual antiestablishment wardrobe of camo pants and a long white men’s workshirt. Her black hair is loose. She wears taupe flip-flops. She’s not hippie as much as f-you. It’s the f-you part that drives me nuts. How can she get away with it? Why doesn’t she care more?

  Eva takes her mother’s hand. “Mom, Mrs. Taylor’s jacket is Chanel. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  A mocking expression crosses Marta’s features as she turns to look at me. Her gaze coolly sweeps over me. “Yes, it is beautiful.”

  I stiffen. I can’t help it. Marta has that effect on me. But I force a saccharine smile. “Nice to see you, Marta.”

  Marta sees through my smile. Her eyes glint back at me. “Nice to see you, too, Taylor. Things going well?”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Wonderful.”

  We stand and smile at each other, even as I think, I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. “We’ll have another auction meeting soon,” I say.

  “I can’t wait,” Marta answers. And with one last condescending smile, she walks into the office with Eva to sign her out of school.