by Wendy Wax
She limped over to the freezer and stuffed the bags of ice inside. “Did I hear someone say double latte?”
“I bet Candace would pay extra to have one here,” Brooke said.
“I’d pay three times as much to be allowed to go have one somewhere else,” Candace retorted. “If I’d realized how far that other stand was, I would have driven my car and kept on going.”
Candace turned and stomped back outside. Amanda and Brooke followed. Each of them grabbed a bag of ice and hefted it inside.
When all the bags were in the freezer, Candace sank down onto the chair.
“So how’d you end up on concession duty today?” Amanda asked as Brooke turned back to the window.
“I’m not sure,” Candace said. “I think this is one of those drawbacks that you read about in magazines to dating a divorced man. When they’re taking you to fancy restaurants and trying to get you into bed, they’re not necessarily mentioning that they eat and breathe their kids’ sports. Dan’s actually full of surprises.” She blushed, and Amanda thought about the thoroughly sweet man who coached her son. He was tall and well built with an attractive smile and a truckload of patience, but she’d never thought about him naked. And certainly never pictured him in bed.
“One minute I was buttering his…toast,” Candace said. “The next I was offering to do this.” She fingered her pearls, the only part of her outfit, Amanda noticed, that didn’t bear signs of the ball field. “I am so out of my element here. I feel like Steve Irwin at a cocktail party.”
Amanda knew all about treading on unfamiliar ground. She’d been a wife for eighteen years and a full-time homemaker for fifteen of them. Now she stood on the threshold of a whole new life that she didn’t want and hadn’t asked for. The only current bright spot was that Rob didn’t appear to be coming to today’s game.
As if reading her mind, Candace asked, “Have you seen Anne Justiss yet?”
“Yes.” Amanda leaned against the prep table. “I found her whole Green Giant philosophy pretty unnerving. Doesn’t she seem a little…scary…to you?”
“Absolutely.” Candace smiled. “But I’ve been divorced three times now, and I can promise you this: when you walk into court, you don’t want to go there with Miss Congeniality at your side.”
chapter 5
T hat Monday morning, Amanda sat in front of Meghan and Wyatt’s computer, a steaming mug of coffee forgotten beside her. She’d gone online to check e-mail as soon as the kids left for school, but although her in-box indicated she could add inches to her bust (pointless at the moment) or get a penile extension (Rob’s had already extended far enough, thank you) there was nothing to which she needed to respond.
The day stretched ahead of her. She had no volunteer shifts scheduled, her appointment with Anne Justiss wasn’t until tomorrow, and although none of her friends and acquaintances had formally cut her, their calls had tapered off over the last weeks and she felt uncomfortable about calling them.
With a click of the mouse, she opened a newly created file she’d labeled “cleaning projects” and spent a few minutes perusing the list. Her hands on the keyboard belied her rapidly growing cleaning compulsion—she’d begun to wonder if the spirit of Martha Stewart had somehow invaded her body. They were dry and cracked and her fingernails were jagged. If she was going to scrub her way through this downturn in her life, she was going to have to wear gloves while she was doing it.
Logging on to Google, she typed in the words “rubber gloves for cleaning.”
Ten pages of possibilities popped up on the screen. Scrolling through the listings, she chose a pair of rubber gloves that had an embossed palm and were guaranteed strong enough for both polishing and waxing. Intrigued by the variety of offerings, she typed in “cleaning” and ten more pages of listings appeared. She followed the link to householdcleaningtips.com then clicked eagerly from site to site, printing out the most interesting products and cleaning tips and dragging them into her cleaning file.
Imagining Martha urging her on, she printed out the list of projects and pulled on her raggediest, most comfortable clothes—probably not at all what Martha would have worn to hunt down dust bunnies. After getting out her supplies and equipment, Amanda started to clean.
Vacuuming her air vents led to wiping down her baseboards, which segued into dusting the wooden blinds on every one of her thirty-eight windows. Shortly after lunch, she took a toothbrush to the grout in the master bathroom.
She poured herself into these domestic tasks, seeking the mental numbness that was supposed to accompany hard physical labor. What she found was a comforting sense of accomplishment that actually freed her brain from the loop of panic it had fallen into, and allowed it to travel at will.
At first her thoughts tumbled from one thing to the next in an odd sort of freefall. One minute she was remembering something one of the children did when they were little, the next it was naming the things she was cleaning in French, as the language she’d learned and then buried rushed back to the fore.
Le tapis beige est très beau. The beige carpet is quite lovely.
Les fenêtres miroitent comme des diamants au soleil. The windows sparkle like diamonds in the sun.
Sacre bleu! If she cleaned long enough she might actually become fluent in French again.
Without warning, her brain latched onto a less welcome image of Jean-Claude. Though she didn’t want to, she could actually see his face as he sank down on one knee—the goof—and asked her to marry him.
Sparing her nothing, her brain also allowed her to see the look on his face when she said no. And made her relive his withdrawal when she’d admitted that she didn’t trust in their love enough to leave everything she knew to spend her life with him in France.
It was afternoon and she was in the pantry alphabetizing her canned goods—a fact she intended to keep to herself—when her thoughts settled on tomorrow’s appointment with Anne Justiss. Although she hadn’t heard from Rob, she knew that her attorney had contacted his. She couldn’t put off telling the kids any longer.
Placing the final can on the shelf, she tried to figure out how she was going to do it. How did you set the scene for a conversation that no one wanted to have? Cushion it with food, Martha’s voice advised. And then it added, And make that food French.
“Wow!” Wyatt’s gaze took in the boldly colored tablecloth covering the kitchen table and the vase of cut flowers that sat in the center of it. He inhaled deeply and his eyes lit up like he’d just discovered a new big barrel bat under the Christmas tree. “Is it somebody’s birthday or something?”
He looked to Meghan who stood stock-still inside the kitchen door. “I’m definitely in the wrong house.” She made a show of turning to leave. “What, exactly, are we celebrating?”
Amanda’s heart thudded uncomfortably in her chest as she realized that the table did, in fact, look awfully celebratory. Much too celebratory for the news she was planning to reveal over dessert.
Had her subconscious, which now that she thought about it seemed oddly French, decided that since a divorce was the only logical next step it should be celebrated?
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I just thought we should take advantage of this one night we don’t have to be anywhere. And I was in the mood for something French.” Now there was an understatement. If she didn’t watch out, she was going to turn into a total Francophile.
Wyatt and Meghan tore into the Beef Bourguignon and crusty French bread she’d prepared with an enthusiasm that shamed Amanda. They ate as if they were starved, which she supposed they were. Even Meghan, who normally picked at her food and meticulously counted every calorie, ate with an abandon that turned the gourmet meal to ash on Amanda’s tongue.
Long before Rob left, her cooking had become strictly utilitarian. Since his departure, Meghan and Wyatt had been lucky to get something that wasn’t delivered to the door or carried home in a sack.
The meal she’d fussed over most of the afternoon, and about
which she’d felt so proud turned to lead in her stomach as she thought about the speech she’d been rehearsing while she cooked.
Surreptitiously she studied the faces of her children; Wyatt’s younger, rounder version of Rob’s blue eyes and sandy eyebrows, Meghan’s dark eyes and sharply angled cheekbones that were so similar to her own.
Picking at the food on her plate, she waited while they finished.
“So, mes enfants,” she said, striving for a light tone and a French accent. “I think eet ees time for zee dessert.”
“Cool.” Wyatt was still basking in his good fortune, his twelve-year-old brain unable to join such great food with the possibility of bad news.
Meghan got up to help clear the dishes without being asked—an event Amanda would have documented and photographed at any other time—then came back to the table and reclaimed her seat. Her expression turned wary, though whether it was due to the approaching calories or her instincts about what was to come, Amanda didn’t know.
Drawing in a steadying breath, Amanda picked up the crème brûlées from the counter and carried them to the table. “And now,” she said, “zee pièce de résistance.” She set the individual ramekins down with a flourish.
Wyatt’s smile broadened and he lifted his spoon and immediately dug in. Meghan shot her mother a look, the look of a Christian about to be fed to the lions.
Amanda retrieved her own dessert and forced herself to take a spoonful.
“So what do you think?” she asked, stalling, suddenly wishing for a knock to sound on the door or the phone to ring. She would have sold her soul for a single telemarketer.
“It’s great, Mom. Do you have any more?” Wyatt, so sunny and grateful, wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. She didn’t have the heart to tell him no.
“Sure. You can have the rest of mine.” She pushed the dessert gently toward him.
Meghan set down her spoon and pushed hers toward Wyatt too. “Here, Wy. I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”
The barb flew right over his head and hit Amanda as it was intended.
“Are we like totally fattened up for the slaughter now?” she asked. “Or are you hoping we’ll be so full we’ll be comatose and miss the bad news?”
Wyatt stopped eating.
Amanda folded her hands on the table and swallowed painfully. “Meghan’s right,” she said. “I do have some news and it’s, uhm, not particularly good. Though, I, uh, think in the end it will actually turn out to be for the best.”
They braced; Meghan, who was trying to sound so tough, clenched her body in an obvious way. Wyatt looked like a puppy who’d spotted the rolled-up newspaper coming toward it, but had no idea how to get out of the way.
Amanda knew that if she let herself look into his eyes, she’d be lost.
The carefully worded speech she’d practiced flew out of her head, forever lost and irretrievable. “I’m filing for divorce,” was all she could come up with. “I’ve hired an attorney and your dad and I are going to get divorced.”
There was a long silence, which Meghan finally sliced through. “Well, duh,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “He is dating someone else.”
Amanda felt the pain behind her daughter’s bravado; it was an angry slash of hurt she’d never be able to forget. A tear slid down Wyatt’s cheek.
“What did you think, you baby?” Meghan said to Wyatt, though Amanda noticed she couldn’t face his tears either. “Did you think they were going to kiss and make up?”
She stood and shoved her chair in. “Hey, at least we got a meal out of it.”
Wyatt didn’t move. He might have been a statue except for the tears sliding down his cheeks.
“That’s enough, Meghan. Please,” Amanda said. “Sit down so we can talk about this.”
“What’s there to talk about?” Her daughter’s voice was so brittle, her body so rigid, that Amanda was afraid it might break. “You couldn’t hold on to him,” Meghan said, “and he found somebody younger. It happens all the time.”
“Not to us.” Amanda reached for Wyatt’s hand and squeezed it hard. She reached up toward Meghan, but her daughter wanted none of her.
“I know how hard this has been,” Amanda whispered. “And I’m so, so sorry.”
“Right.” Meghan aimed her words at Amanda like bullets. “Should we start packing now? Or maybe we get to wait until the divorce is finished? He’ll probably want to give our house to Tiffany.”
“Meghan!” Amanda held on to Wyatt’s hand as if it were some sort of lifeline. “That’s enough!”
“Is that true, Mom?” Wyatt sounded dazed. “Chris Matthews had to move when his parents got divorced. His mom told him they couldn’t afford their house anymore.”
“No,” Amanda said, “that’s not going to happen.”
“Yeah,” Meghan scoffed, “like you have anything to say about it.”
Amanda stood on unsteady legs. Still clutching his hand, she drew Wyatt up with her then slid her other arm around Meghan. Her daughter didn’t shrug her off, but her shoulders were so stiff with anger that Amanda couldn’t shake the mental image of her shattering into pieces that could never be put together.
“I’ll have plenty to say about it,” Amanda said. “I’m meeting with the attorney tomorrow morning and no matter what happens, the one thing I can promise you is that we are not going to give up this house. I absolutely will not let that happen.”
She stared into her children’s eyes; Wyatt’s blue ones telegraphing his urgent need to believe, Meghan’s brown ones silently shouting her disbelief. In that moment, Amanda vowed to herself that she’d keep that promise she’d just made so blithely. She’d hold on to this house for her children no matter what it took. They were the innocent parties. Their entire world had shifted on its axis and they deserved something familiar to cling to.
They did the dishes together in silence, each retreating into the inner turbulence of their own thoughts. Amanda’s were filled with the pledge she’d just made. She’d have to make it clear that the house was not a negotiable item. She would not allow their home—and all that it represented—to be taken from her children.
No matter how hard Anne Justiss had to squeeze.
The Children’s Hospital Gala was underway by the time Candace and Dan arrived. It was early March and the theme was Spring Fling. The women’s gowns reflected that, the pastel shades and muted jewel tones providing a sophisticated accent to the grand ballroom’s sherbert décor.
“Remember,” Candace said, straightening the bow tie of Dan’s rented tuxedo, “there are all kinds of heavy hitters here tonight. This function could do a lot for your accounting practice.”
“My practice is doing fine.” Dan took her hand and guided it gently from his throat. “Why don’t we just enjoy ourselves?” He smiled impishly. “You look like a bonbon in that dress. Definitely good enough to eat.” He brushed his lips across her cheek. “And the orchestra sounds great.”
“You never liken a woman to a piece of candy,” she admonished, nonetheless pleased by the compliment. “Too fattening.” She scanned the room trying to determine the best place to start mingling. “And besides, I don’t think Christian Dior was going for ‘bonbon’ when he designed this gown.”
She made a subtle adjustment to her gown’s strapless bodice and slipped her arm through the crook of his. Then she led him toward a knot of couples on the far side of the dance floor.
“That’s Todd Williams on the left,” she whispered as they crossed the room. “He builds shopping centers. Walter Green is next to him. His family has always owned banks. They were just bought out by Bank of America.”
She drew him along with her enjoying the picture she knew they presented, but unsure how Dan would handle himself with this crowd. So far most of their time together had been spent in casual pursuits or in bed. She’d enjoyed both immensely, with the possible exception of the ballpark. But this was her milieu and, she assumed, as alien to him as the conce
ssion stand had been to her.
“Hello, darlings.” She went up on tiptoe to peck Walter Green on the cheek then slipped an arm around his wife’s waist for a social hug. “This is my friend, Dan Donovan. Dan, this is Walter and Tessa Green.”
The men extended their hands and shook. Candace was poised to facilitate conversation. If necessary, she could promote Dan and his company without him speaking a word.
“I know you, don’t I?” Walter said to Dan. “Is it from the club?”
Candace prepared to step in and save both men any embarrassment, but Dan was smiling easily. When he spoke it was with the same comfortable tone he used with the boys on his team and the clerk at the convenience store.
“I helped with an audit you were conducting before the merger. And then I strong-armed you into making a donation to the inner-city baseball program. We put your money to good use.”
“That’s right.” Walter’s smile was equally genuine. He turned to the man beside him and said, “Todd. Want you to meet Dan…”
“Donovan.” Dan put out his hand and shook comfortably. A moment later, the men were discussing the inner city baseball program and then moved on to the Braves’ current lineup. Candace accepted a glass of wine from a passing waiter and tuned in to Tessa, surprised to realize that Dan didn’t need her to run interference or help him through any social awkwardness.
Conversation among the women began with their offspring then turned, as it often did, to their “help.”
“I’d give anything for someone I could give instructions to in English,” Sandra Williams said. “Our maid is Brazilian, and she’s absolutely lovely, but I don’t speak a word of Portuguese and she has about ten words of English. We use sign language and charades in order to communicate. You can’t really get what you want when you can’t express the details.”
“Tell me about it.” Tessa leaned closer. “Have you ever tried to act out toilet paper?”
