Wicked Jealous: A Love Story

by Palmer, Robin

  With Nicola at therapy (“I’m thinking today’s the day I tell him that sometimes I hear voices,” she mentioned during our drive home, “just to shake things up a bit.”); One Person’s Garbage closed for the weekend because of “remodeling” (Brad’s code for “Because Luca just told me that he can no longer deal with the way I pull back whenever he tries to get close because I’m terrified of intimacy, I’m going to lie on my couch all day with my cat LiLo and watch The Way We Were over and over and try not to sob so hard that I break a rib when Babs says ‘Your girl is lovely, Hubbell’ at the end”); and nothing playing at the Nuart Theater that I hadn’t already seen five times, I didn’t have anywhere to go. Which is why, after I changed into my Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers T-shirt and a pair of my brother’s old Castle High sweats he had left behind (I didn’t care how expensive those orange yoga pants were—they were never going on my body again), I jumped on my bike and pedaled over to the AFCC.

  “Simone! You’re back!” exclaimed Cookie excitedly as I walked in.

  “Well, yeah,” I replied, a little less winded than last time. “I said I would be, remember?”

  “Oh, that’s just wonderful. You know, a lot of the girls didn’t think you’d actually return because they didn’t think you had that Zumba spirit, but I said, ‘Hey—just cool out. She’ll be back.’”

  “It’s ‘chill out,’” I corrected.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not cool out—it’s chill out.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  She took out her little notebook and made a note. It was like she had her own Urban Dictionary going there. “Thanks. But I’m going to double-check that with my granddaughter when I see her.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I agreed. I could hear the techno-Latin-fusion music start up in the gym. “Well, I’m going to go in,” I said. “I don’t want to miss a second of fun.”

  Cookie smiled. “You don’t know how happy this makes me, to see a young person like yourself embrace the Zumba lifestyle. Most kids your age just make fun of it.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” I said.

  At least not out loud.

  Maybe it was karma, because I did make fun of it in my mind, but the first fifteen minutes of class Zumba kicked my butt. Big-time. Which I guess is what it was supposed to do. But to my surprise, after that, the strangest thing happened. Not only did I get my limbs to work in the order in which they were supposed to, but I actually started . . . enjoying it. Like I was having fun. To the point where, at the end, when Jorge said, “And that’s a wrap!” I added my own semi-disappointed “Ohhh” to the chorus in the room.

  I still wasn’t willing to go to Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf with the group (“I have a feeling she’s very introverted,” I heard Marcia—a therapist—whisper to the women after I sputtered the very lame excuse that I had to get to the vet, because even though I didn’t have a cat, I liked to visit the sick ones there), but this time when I left, I didn’t go straight to 7-Eleven in search of Tastykakes. I was going to, but for some reason, the idea of scarfing that much sugar made my stomach do flip-flops. So I went to Whole Foods and after standing in front of the gluten-free, fruit-juice-sweetened cookies for a long time (at least they were healthy cookies), I found myself drifting over to an area of the supermarket where I had rarely ever set foot, unless it happened to be on the way to the snack aisle.

  The produce department.

  It was actually a beautiful sight—the dark lush green of the spinach and kale. The sunny, happy yellow squash. And the shiny bright red peppers that were the exact color of the walls in a Paris living room in this Paris in the Sixties photo book I had picked up at the Santa Monica flea market the weekend before.

  I had actually had plans to go to the flea market with my dad, like we used to. He’d even scheduled it in his iPhone, laptop, BlackBerry, and iPad—but right as we were walking out the door, Hillary told him they were booked for brunch with her mother and her new husband, and now that he was out of the hospital and was allowed to go out as long as he brought his oxygen tank she really wanted them to meet before the guy died. Although I had held my breath and said, “Pleasedotherightthingpleasedotherightthing,” silently to myself, the minute Hillary started swinging her hips as she clicked-clacked over to convince Dad, I saw his eyes glaze over, and I knew I’d be going alone, again.

  I sighed, and looked over the vegetables. For someone who tended to stick to the four major food groups of flour, salt, sugar, and artificial flavorings, facing the wall of colorful produce was also really overwhelming—especially when all the misters clicked on at the same time and hissing filled the air. That’s when I walked over to the deli section and bought myself a pound of prepared vegetables. They were smothered in oil and feta cheese and other things that probably made them a little less than healthy, but it was better than my usual dinner of pizza and pasta. I wasn’t sure if it was the exercise or the veggies or what, but that night I slept better than I had in ages.

  Much to my surprise, the veggie thing wasn’t a one-shot deal. A few days later, the craving for red peppers hit me like a shot. I wasn’t sure if it was the color reminding me of France, or that first pound of prepared veggies. In health class the year before we saw this DVD about the dangers of “gateway” drugs—things that led to more serious ones. Like, say, pot leading to cocaine, which then led to crack. In my case, veggies in butter and oil and cheese were a gateway food to other harder, healthier vegetables. Like red peppers with the teensiest bit of olive oil and garlic powder. And baked yams. And roasted brussels sprouts.

  The following Thursday when I got home from Zumba I did something that only weeks ago would have been unthinkable: I unbookmarked the Tastykakes page. I had no idea why my cravings for Butterscotch Krimpets were replaced with a desire for cinnamon-roasted butternut squash, but they were. I even started cruising the Web for veggie recipes and using the oven to cook things. A few weeks into the veggies and eating better, I realized my cargos were loose—really loose. The weight was coming off.

  During the holiday break, I added in another Zumba class on Tuesdays to escape Hillary. And when I finally caved in to the Zumba ladies’ pressure in January, and added a Saturday morning Zumba class into the mix on top of my Tuesday and Thursday ones (there was no way I was staying in the house while Hillary hosted a six-week How to Become a Modern-Day Goddess workshop in our living room), it really started to drop off. Soon I was trading my size 16 Old Navy cargos for 12s. If Nicola had her way, I would have traded them in for something all together different—like some of the vintage dresses at Brad’s—but a girl could handle only so much change at once.

  The thing about showing up at Zumba three times a week was that it wasn’t very long before I ran out of semi-viable excuses as to why I couldn’t join the ZB (Zumba Brigade) for coffee afterward. There were only so many made-up doctor and dentist visits a sixteen-year-old girl could go on before a bunch of mothers got worried and wanted to get involved by giving referrals for second opinions and stuff.

  Which is how, one Thursday afternoon in March after Jorge had me demonstrate one of the more complicated steps during class (recently, Cookie had confided in me that Jorge’s name was actually George, that he had graduated from Yale with a degree in theater, and that he had about as much Latino blood in him as I did, which was zero), I found myself sitting around a table with five middle-aged women at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on San Vicente in Brentwood sipping an iced coffee and feeling like a suspect from a CSI episode.

  “So where do you live, honey?” Cheryl asked as she sipped her half-caf-no-whip-two-Splenda mochachino and peered over her glasses.

  “Off of Montana,” I replied.

  “North or south?” Marcia demanded.

  “North.”

  “Ahh . . . very nice,” said the gro
up in perfect harmony. Because Brentwood was one of the nicer parts of L.A., there wasn’t really a wrong-side-of-the-tracks situation, but north of Montana was considered the very nice part of town instead of just the nice part of town.

  “And what does your father do?” asked Gwen, an African American woman who had gone as far as to change into a different matching yoga outfit post-Zumba.

  “He’s a TV writer. He created that show Ruh-Roh?”

  The collective gasp was so loud you would’ve thought I had said, “He came up with the cure for cancer?”

  Cookie gasped. “Oh my God—I love that show! It’s an acute case of excelitis!”

  The women looked at one another, confused. “Huh?” Cheryl said.

  “You know, like extremely excellent,” Cookie explained.

  “Actually, the ‘excel’ in excelitis has to do with looking at Microsoft Excel spreadsheets online for too long,” I replied.

  “It does?”

  I nodded.

  She took out her notebook. “Duly noted.”

  “But the show is marvelous,” Gwen said as the rest of the group nodded in agreement. Apparently, I was one of the few people on the planet who didn’t get why a talking dog was so funny.

  “And your mother? Does she work?” Beth asked.

  Oh no. The dreaded Mom moment. You’d think with sixteen and a half years worth of them, they would have gotten easier, but not so much.

  “Actually, my mom’s . . . not around,” I admitted.

  “Rehab?” Cheryl asked.

  “Up and moved to an ashram in Oregon?” Gwen suggested.

  “Left your dad for another woman?” Marcia guessed.

  Wow. Maybe my situation wasn’t as bad as I thought. “No. She died.”

  Cheryl patted my hand. “Oh, honey. I’m sorry. Cancer?” she asked with a cringe.

  I shook my head. “No. She, uh, died while she was giving birth to me.”

  The gasp at that was so loud that the old man and his much younger girlfriend at the next table looked over.

  “Oh, how awful!” Beth cried.

  “You poor thing!” Gwen exclaimed.

  I sipped at the last of my almost-empty iced coffee in order to avoid their eyes. I know I should have appreciated the fact that people felt bad for me, but I would rather have skipped the whole subject all together. When I had been seeing Dr. Gellert, he had tried to tell me that all my eating was an attempt to numb out from the unexpressed grief I had over my mom’s death and keep it from coming to the surface. And then he offered me a crystal bowl of M&M’s when I started to cry.

  “But your dad, he remarried, right?” asked Beth. “I mean, with his success, I’m sure women are lined up around the block.”

  I shook my head. “He’s had girlfriends over the years, but no one that serious until now. Hillary—this woman he’s been dating—moved in a few months ago. It was only supposed to be while they redid her floors, but—”

  Gwen held up her hand. “You don’t even have to continue. We all know exactly where this is going.”

  “You do?”

  “The floors are finished, and she’s still there,” Cookie said.

  “Right.”

  Marcia sighed. “That’s exactly the MO my ex-husband’s third wife used,” she said. “She was an executive at Paramount until she finally roped him into giving her a ring, and now she’s pregnant with their second child and is planning on having a water birth and wants me to be the midwife.” She looked at the group. “Just so you know, I said no.”

  The women nodded and clucked in approval.

  My stomach got all wonky. I had a feeling that if anyone knew the way evil gold-digging D-girls like Hillary worked, it was this group.

  Cheryl reached over and pulled me to her, surprising me with her strength. For someone so tiny, she was like a well-dressed barnacle. “Oh you poor, poor girl!” she tsked. “And you don’t even have a mother to commiserate with! I don’t even want to think about what it would be like for my son without me here.”

  I smiled. Her son was lucky. Out of all the women, I liked Cheryl the best. Although I got the sense that because she was so overprotective, he was probably the nerdy type—like a Russian Club member who tried to scrape together a goatee with very limited facial hair. Or a tie-dyed, faux dreadlocked MAKE PEACE, NOT NUCLEAR ARMS T-shirt-wearing type.

  “Oh look—here he is!”

  I managed to wrestle my head out of the death grip Cheryl had me in, and I saw that I was way off. Because her son was Jason Frank. Who, at that moment, was giving me a very strange look. Probably because his mom was holding me against her boobs while I sat around drinking coffee with a bunch of middle-aged Zumba-ers.

  “Jason, honey, this is—”

  “We know each other,” we mumbled in unison.

  “She goes to Castle Heights,” Jason said.

  “Really?! What a coincidence!” Cheryl said. “Honey, did you know that Simone doesn’t have a mother? She died giving birth to her. Isn’t that just awful?”

  Okay, really? Suddenly, I was wondering whether I needed to rethink my positive opinion about Cheryl.

  “I have a question, though,” she said. She turned to me. “Honey, what did you do when it came to things like menstruation? Did your dad explain it to you, or did you—”

  Okay—really really?! This seemingly sweet little woman was making it so that I was now going to have to transfer schools?!

  The good news was that with all the sweat that came pouring out of my forehead at that moment, I probably lost another three pounds. The bad news was that Jason looked like he was going to hurl right then and there. “Mom,” he said. “Stop.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “I was just curious.” She stood up. “Ladies, I’ll see you next class. I have to take Jason to the doctor. He’s got a bit of a rash that starts—”

  “Mom!” he barked.

  It was good to know that Cheryl was an equal- opportunity embarrasser. As much as it had sucked to grow up without a mom, I did have to say I didn’t miss that kind of thing.

  “I’m willing to pretend the last five minutes never happened if you are,” I mumbled as Cheryl said her good-byes.

  “Deal,” he mumbled back.

  Almost being embarrassed to death by the ZB was bad enough, but dinner with my family? Even worse.

  Per Dad’s shrink Dr. Melman, he wanted us to start having family dinners together on a regular basis. It was bad enough having to pass Hillary in the upstairs hall at home (I tried to time it so that didn’t happen often), so having to spend a Sunday night at Twin Dragon—especially when there was a special on IFC about Best Moments in French Cinema—was not high on my list of Things I Look Forward to Doing Now, Or at Any Time in my Life. I was, however, super excited to see Max, who was driving down from CalArts for the dinner.

  “Whoa!” he exclaimed when he walked up to the table as Dad e-mailed with his iPhone on his lap and Hillary stared into her snake compact, reapplying some of the latest red lipstick she had bought in her quest to get her lips the same color as mine. While I had inherited our mother’s jet-black hair, Max looked more like our dad, with brown hair that in the summer turned a little red, and big brown puppy-dog eyes. (“Doesn’t it all just scream, ‘Adopt me before they euthanize me?’” Nicola liked to say.) “Simone, you’ve lost even more weight since I saw you last month!”

  Hillary snapped her compact shut. “I keep telling her that she needs to make sure she doesn’t get too thin,” she warned. “Too thin is really not becoming. Believe me, I’ve been there. I know. Plus, the research about the Millennials—”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I cut her off.

  “Remind me again how you’re doing this,” she asked. “Fat Flush? South Beach? We
ight Watchers? The Flat Belly Diet—”

  “Zumba.”

  Hillary squinted before remembering that squinting gives you crow’s feet and makes you look old. “I’m not familiar with that,” she said. “Is it more protein or fruits and vegetables?”

  “It’s not a diet. It’s like a dance-exercise thing. To Latin music. You probably don’t know it because I don’t think it’s big with the Millennials,” I replied. “It’s mostly middle-aged housewives who do it. But it really works. Oh, and I stopped eating Butterscotch Krimpets after you went into my closet without asking and completely cleaned it out and replaced it with subpar chocolate.” I glanced toward my dad, but there was nothing other than more one-handed e-mailing.

  “Well, that’s great,” Hillary said, “but as your soon-to-be stepmother, I worry about you.” She shoved a plate of egg rolls toward me. “Which is why I think you should have an egg roll.” She plucked the one that my dad had in his non-e-mailing hand out of it and put it on my plate. “Or two.”

  I glanced over at Max and gave him a quick see-that?! look. He may have been one of those annoying give-someone-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-and-look-on-the-bright-side types, but even he had gotten with the program and realized that no matter how good Hillary may have looked in a bikini, she was nuts and had our father under some sort of weird spell and couldn’t be trusted. Especially after I called to tell him that I had overheard her telling the interior decorator that it was okay for her to move everything out of his bedroom so that they could start to talk about possible nursery designs.