“Mommy! I don’t want pancakes. I want cereal,” Molly whined.
“Me too! Cereal!” Hannah chimed in. She lifted up the top of her Little Mermaid pajamas, baring her round belly.
“We’re having pancakes,” Grace overruled, raising her voice over the cacophony of protests. She’d gotten up early to mix the healthy pancake batter—oatmeal, whole-grain flour, organic milk and eggs—and to toss together a salad of sliced strawberries, bananas, and blueberries. She served the round pancakes—and, okay, yes, they were a little tough—on scarlet Fiestaware plates, alongside the fruit salad and a scoop of organic yogurt, reaching around Natalie, who was strapped to Grace’s chest in a BabyBjörn carrier, to plunk the plates down on the table. Molly and Hannah sat down, still grumbling at being forced to choke down a lovingly prepared, healthy breakfast rather than bowls of overprocessed, sugar-coated cereal.
Ring-ring! Ring-ring!
The ring of the telephone caused Grace to start. She glanced at the clock—it was quarter to seven. Grace suppressed a groan. There was only one person in the world who called this early: her stepmother, Alice. Grace hadn’t consumed nearly enough coffee to deal with Alice, but she’d learned from past experience that ignoring her stepmother’s calls just backfired on her. Alice would grow increasingly agitated and continue to call again and again until Grace finally picked up, and then Grace would be subjected to a lecture on how thoughtless it was not to return Alice’s phone messages in a timely fashion.
“Hello,” Grace said, once she’d clicked the phone on.
“Hello, Grace.”
“Hello, Alice,” Grace said, forcing her voice to sound upbeat, when what she really wanted to do was beat herself into unconsciousness with the phone. “Wow, you’re up early. Were you out catching worms?”
“Excuse me?” Alice asked, a chill creeping into her tone.
“You know: The early bird catches the worm. Forget it, it was a bad joke. That’s about all I’m capable of at half-past dawn.”
“You weren’t asleep at this hour, were you?” Alice asked, with a disbelieving snort of laughter.
As if it were inconceivable that anyone would still be lazing in bed at quarter to seven—although it sort of was inconceivable in Grace’s house. Hannah routinely woke up at five-thirty and hurtled into her parents’ room first thing, and Natalie woke up soon after. Grace couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the luxury of sleeping in until seven.
“No, we’re up. As up as one can be at not quite seven a.m.,” Grace said. “But I’m just getting the girls their breakfast, so can I call you back?”
“This will just take a minute. Guess who I saw yesterday?”
“Who?”
“Guess,” Alice insisted.
Gah. “I don’t know. David Hasselhoff?”
“Who?”
“You know: the Hoff. Of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Grace.”
“I was just joking. Who did you see?”
“I want you to guess,” Alice insisted.
“Alice, since I’m never going to be able to guess, this could take a really, really long time, and I have to get Molly ready for school. So why don’t you just tell me?” Grace asked, struggling to keep her voice pleasant.
“Mary Beth Fisher.”
“Who?”
“Mary Beth Fisher. You remember. You met the Fishers at our Christmas party. He’s a lawyer, retired now, and she’s on the hospice committee with me.”
Grace had no idea who Alice was talking about. There had been approximately two bazillion people at the Christmas party, and besides, Grace had spent most of the evening sequestered in the guest room with a newborn who insisted on nursing every half hour.
But this was all besides the point. Clearly, Alice wanted to tell her something, and Grace wasn’t going to be able to get off the phone until she did.
“Right. How is Mary Ann?”
“Mary Beth. Mary Beth Fisher,” Alice repeated.
“Okay. How is Mary Beth?”
“She’s fine. Actually, she looked fabulous. She’s been getting chemical peels, and, I swear, she looks ten years younger. You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to get one, Grace. It would really brighten up your skin.”
Breathe in, breathe out, Grace told herself.
Alice continued, undaunted by Grace’s silence. “Anyway, Mary Beth’s daughter, Lana—do you know Lana?”
Grace swallowed back her exasperation. Why on earth would Alice think that she knew these people? They lived in a different city, for God’s sake.
“No. I don’t know Lana.”
“Lana just had a baby a few weeks ago. A little girl. Terrible pregnancy; she was on bed rest for months.”
“That’s too bad.” Grace looked over at Hannah and Molly; they were sitting quietly at the table, spooning fruit salad and pancakes into their mouths. It always made her nervous when the girls were too quiet. It usually meant they were plotting something. Grace held her hand over the phone and whispered at them, “What are you two up to?”
“Just eating, Mommy,” Molly said innocently. She ruined the effect by flashing her evil smile. Grace looked closer.
“Just eating, huh? Then why are you hiding your pancakes in your napkins?” Grace asked. The girls squealed with laughter—getting caught made it that much more fun—and put the pancakes back on their plates.
“How’d she see that?” Hannah asked Molly.
“I’m the all-seeing, all-knowing Mommy. And don’t ever forget it,” Grace said.
“Grace? Are you there?” Alice was saying into the phone.
“Yup, I’m here. I’ve heard every word you said,” Grace lied.
“Well, as I was saying, Mary Beth told me that Lana has already lost all of her baby weight,” Alice said triumphantly.
And now we come to it, Grace thought. The real reason for this early-morning phone call.
“She’s fitting into her old jeans already. Can you believe that?” Alice continued.
“It’s truly a miracle. Right up there with those portraits of Jesus that cry real tears,” Grace said flippantly. She rested a self-conscious hand on her stomach, which had, since Natalie’s birth, deflated into not one but three noticeable folds. Natalie shifted in the baby carrier, one tiny sock-covered foot bumping against Grace’s hand.
“So I told her how you’ve been struggling to get your baby weight off,” Alice continued blithely. “And she told me that Lana drank this amazing diet tea she found at the health-food store, and the weight just fell off her.”
Inside Grace, a war raged between annoyance and genuine interest. Finally, the interest won out.
“What kind of tea?” she asked grudgingly.
“It’s called Miracle Diet Tea. Did you write that down? I know how bad your memory is. I was just talking to Mark yesterday, and he said you forgot to send him a birthday card last week.”
Mark was Alice’s son, and Grace’s stepbrother. Grace hadn’t forgotten his birthday—she’d deliberately not sent a card, having decided that it was hypocritical to go on pretending she had any affection for Mark, who was a world-class prick.
Natalie began to stir in her baby carrier and make fretful mewling sounds. Excellent timing, Grace thought. A hungry baby was the world’s best excuse for getting off the phone.
“Alice, I have to go. Nat’s tuning up,” Grace said.
“All right. Give the girls my love.”
“Will do,” Grace said, and then she clicked the phone off.
She closed her eyes and counted to ten, until she felt the Alice-induced stress begin to ooze away.
“Good morning, everyone,” Louis said cheerfully, as he walked into the kitchen through the garage door. Grace opened her eyes and even managed a smile for her husband. Louis was wearing his royal-blue biking shorts, and his T-shirt was drenched with sweat.
“Daddy! Daddy!” the girls shrieked, nearly upsetting their plates in the ex
citement. Even baby Natalie cooed happily. She reached out fat little hands, opening and closing them like a crab.
Louis kissed his two older daughters on the top of their sleep-tousled heads, and then turned to look at his wife. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Alice,” Grace replied, waving the phone in explanation.
“Ah,” he said, immediately understanding.
“My eye is twitching. She actually gave me an eye twitch.”
“Look at it this way: She’s turned driving you crazy into an art form.”
“That’s true. She’s like the Mozart of annoying stepmothers,” Grace said. “So. Did you have a nice ride?”
Every Wednesday and Saturday morning, Louis got up early and biked around Orange Cove with his cycling club. There was a whole group of them that did this—insanity, Grace thought privately—winding their way up along the intracoastal on Ocean View Drive.
“I did,” Louis said. He bent over to kiss Grace, and she was suddenly all too aware of her morning breath and rumpled flannel pajamas. She lifted a hand to smooth back her hair, which was a snarled mess after yet another rough night with Natalie, who’d wanted to nurse every hour. Grace had finally just brought the baby into bed with them, so she could catch some sleep between nursing sessions.
Grace could suddenly hear her stepmother’s voice in her head, so clearly that she actually started and looked around, half-expecting to see Alice standing there, perfectly coiffed, with a sour expression on her bony face.
You shouldn’t let yourself go, Gracie. Louis is a good catch, and there are plenty of women out there who’d be happy to take him off your hands. If I were you, I’d get up and do my hair and makeup every morning before he leaves for work, so he remembers what he has at home before he gets around all of the cute young things in his office.
Grace gave a shudder. It was bad enough to have Alice annoying her over the phone; hearing her stepmother’s voice talking inside her head was just sick and wrong.
Besides, how the hell was she supposed to find the time to doll herself up every morning? Louis left for the office at seven forty-five sharp. If she were going to curl her hair and slap on some makeup in time to kiss him good-bye, she’d have to start getting up at five a.m. And Grace couldn’t afford to lose that precious half hour of sleep.
Anyway, since when was Louis the one who was considered the catch? Not that Grace didn’t love Louis—she adored him—but when they’d started dating, he’d been the one to pursue her. Unbeknownst to Grace, Louis had nursed a crush on her all the way through high school, when he’d been a band geek and she’d recently lost twenty pounds and developed the largest breasts in the freshman class. Louis was a late bloomer, and it wasn’t until the two ran into each other the summer after they’d graduated from college that Grace noticed how sexy he was now that his acne had cleared and how muscular he’d become since joining his college’s wrestling club.
Wait. What was she doing? Grace gave her head a forceful shake. “Ugh,” she said.
“What?” Louis asked, confused. Grace glanced over at her husband, the Catch, and realized he’d been talking all along and she hadn’t heard a word he’d said.
“Nothing. I’m just having an argument,” Grace said.
“With whom?”
“Alice. Sort of. Only obviously I’m not actually arguing with her for real, just inside my head.”
“Uh-oh,” Louis said. “That doesn’t sound good. Do you two need a minute alone to sort out your disagreement?”
“No, that’s okay. I think I’ve shut her up for the time being. What were you saying?”
“I said we took Ocean View all the way up and back again,” Louis said. “Nearly twenty miles. Not bad for an old man, huh?”
“That’s great, hon. Did you eat breakfast?” Grace asked.
“Yeah, we stopped for bagels and coffee.”
“Oh. I would have loved a bagel,” Molly said sadly, poking at her pancakes.
“Me too. I would have loved a bagel too,” Hannah mimicked.
Grace rolled her eyes. She held her own plate with the now-cold health pancakes—which, she had to admit, really did taste like cardboard—up over Natalie’s head and attempted to spoon food into her mouth without dropping any on the baby.
“Do you want me to take Nat so you can eat in peace?” Louis asked.
Grace gratefully unbuckled the baby and handed her over to Louis. He leaned against the counter, snuggling the baby up against his chest.
“How’s my baby girl? What a big girl you are, sleeping through the night,” he cooed.
Grace shot him a filthy look. “She didn’t sleep through the night. Did you seriously not hear her?”
Louis shook his head, looking surprised. “Not a peep. I saw that she was in bed with us this morning, but I figured the two of you fell asleep while she was nursing.”
“We did. But that was after she’d already gotten up five times—every hour, on the hour. Sort of like a cuckoo clock, only with bloodcurdling screams in place of the cuckoos,” Grace said pointedly.
“Oh, poor Mommy,” Louis said, looking down reproachfully at his youngest daughter. She beamed up at him with a gummy grin. He smiled back at her, then looked up at his wife, his eyes crinkling with sympathy. “I’d love to stay and help out, but I can’t be late for work today. I have an early client meeting.”
“That’s okay. I’ve already had two cups of coffee. Ten more, and I’ll just coast right through the day,” Grace said.
“Mom, can we be excused?” Molly called from the table.
“Yeah, can we be ’scused?” Hannah asked, as always, parroting her big sister.
“Go ahead. Molly, you’d better get dressed or you’ll be late for school. And no television, Hannah,” Grace called after the girls, as they clattered out of the room sounding like a herd of baby elephants.
“I heard some juicy gossip today,” Louis said, as Grace poured them each a cup of coffee—black for him, cream and sugar for her—and set the mugs on the newly vacated table, which was now in need of a wipe-down. Soggy chunks of pancake stuck to the wood table and yogurt dripped off the rims of the plates, as though the girls had eaten their breakfasts facefirst. Grace sighed. Maybe they had, and she just hadn’t noticed.
Louis settled Natalie down in her vibrating bouncer seat, and then sat across from Grace, who had perked up at the prospect of hearing some juicy news.
“Gossip? What kind of gossip?” she asked eagerly.
“You know the Meyers from down the street?”
“No. Oh, wait…are those the ones with the three teenage boys? The ones who had that big party last year when their parents were out of town, and the cops had to come and break it up?”
“That’s right. Anyway…” Louis paused for dramatic effect. “I found out today that the parents are swingers.”
“No! Really?” Grace asked, her mouth dropping open. The wife——Grace was pretty sure her name was Ellen—sort of looked the type: blonde, busty, and just a little trashy. She favored low-rider jeans, halter tops, and short-shorts, even though she was at least fifteen years past the age where she could pull off that sort of look. But the husband—Glen? Gary? Gene? What was his name?—was a troll. He was fifty pounds overweight and as hairy as a bear (which Grace knew because he insisted on mowing his lawn shirtless). Who would want to have sex with him? Except, presumably, Ellen. Or maybe that’s why they were swingers—maybe she was just desperate for the opportunity to sleep with someone who had more hair on his head than on his back.
“That’s what I heard. Skylar Banks was telling me this morning that Ellen invited her and Pete to a swingers party. Can you believe that?”
“Wait—Skylar’s in your biking club?” Grace asked, thinking, Ugh. Skylar Banks. Skylar was tall and skinny, with a long swish of shiny black hair, and probably looked amazing in her cycling shorts. The bitch.
“Yeah. I thought you knew that.”
“No, I didn’t. Did Skylar and h
er husband go to the party?”
“No.” Louis laughed, and took a sip of his coffee. “She said they talked about it—just to see what it was like—but chickened out.”
Grace frowned. She didn’t at all like Skylar Banks discussing her sex life with Louis. Then another thought occurred to her.
“So how does that work?” Grace asked.
“How does what work?”
“Swinging. I mean, I know you swap partners with another couple, but how? Do you all do it in the same bed, or do you go into separate bedrooms?” Grace continued.
“How would I know?” Louis said. He grimaced. “And I don’t want to know. Although Skylar did say that those sort of parties are more common than you might think.”
“Really? But, wait—why haven’t we ever been invited to one?” Grace asked, suddenly feeling put out at the idea. “What’s wrong with us?”
“I didn’t think you were into that sort of thing,” Louis said, looking at her oddly.
“Of course I’m not. It’s just a fidelity loophole, a way to screw around on your spouse and not feel guilty about it. But still. It’s nice to be asked. Like when Molly had her birthday party last year, we invited all of the kids in the neighborhood. Even those awful Tyler kids. You know, the ones with the mother who tells them to wipe their noses on their sleeves?”
“They’re nothing at all alike. One is a sex party, the other is a children’s birthday party.”
“But it’s only polite to ask everyone.”
Louis shook his head and got up to pour himself another cup of coffee.
“I’m sure we just don’t give off the right vibe. People don’t look at us and think: wild sex parties. Which is, I think, a good thing,” he said dryly. “More coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
Grace stared down at her now-empty plate, which looked like it had been licked clean. She didn’t even remember eating; she’d just mechanically lifted the fork to her mouth, over and over and over again. She could feel the pancakes forming a thick mass in her stomach.
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